#and she's probably talking to auster who is her friend

[xbuster]

マリベル by Yamamoto Souichirou

Translated and typeset by me

[lya-dustin]

The Dornish Lady

It's probably not what you expected @maidmerrymint ,but it is what came out sorry.

Aemond x older!Dornish!witch (because lets face it, witch milfs are his canon type)

Rated: slightly M for smut 🔞

Gif by @gameofthronesdaily

You came with the Dornish contingent, serving as the true Ambassador as well as court seer.

Had you not been so untouchable, his mother would have delighted on putting you to trial and burning you for witchcraft.

But people feared you and worshipped you as if you were the Maiden and the Crone wrapped in a beautiful package.

You were also the life of the party and slowly chipped away at the austerity his mother instilled.

You have a beautiful laugh, a sultry thing that has him coming to your rooms even if propriety didn’t allow for him to visit you without invitation.

“Do not lurk about, your highness, I do not bite.” You tease and beckon him to come closer to where you and some friends drink and talk things that would have his mother running at you with a lit torch.

The only available seat is on the couch you had draped yourself on like a Rhoynish goddess.

You do not keep your tanned legs on the floor for long, as the conversation and Dornish wines flow he finds himself alone with you and your legs on his lap.

Eventually every guest at your quiet dinner leaves and the two of you are finally alone.

“Go ahead, your highness, I see the way you look at me. Tonight is your only chance, my sweet boy.” You say with a voice as smooth as silk.

He wants you, has wanted you from the second you came into court and refused to cower in submission to his mother and grandsire.

But nothing stirs the fire in his loins like the way you call him sweet boy.

You are not much older than him, well, not enough to cause scandal anyways.

And yet you act as he, at nine and ten, is merely a boy playing at being a man.

“Tonight is your chance to prove me wrong, if you so wish it.” You whisper as if you read his mind.

Perhaps you did, at court you defy the Seven by reading fortunes in cups of tea and playing cards and palms.

Mother wanted you gone because you told her something she did not like.

“If you came here for a look into your future, you could just say it.” There is a tinge of disappointment when you say it, as if you hated how your ability is what people see not your charm, sharp wit and political ability.

“No, that is not all I want from you, my lady.” He said feeling himself too awkward to even speak to you of such base desires.

Deep inside he is not the confident prince who is better than his elder siblings in every way.

It is all a façade you peel off like a knife cutting the thin peel of an apple.

And yet he gains confidence when your dark eyes shine with desire as his cool fingers trail up the firm and silky shaven legs underneath the wine red dress you wear.

“I am afraid you are too overdressed for this, my prince.” You say breathlessly.

You are thrice widowed.

And wonderfully experienced, or so he concludes as you, a godsless woman, rides him like a prized thoroughbred.

Aemond has never felt more alive as you reach your pleasure and your dark eyes roll into the back of your head.

And yet when you come back to your senses, your hands shake in terror and your beautiful face weeps not from ecstasy but out of pain.

“It is not a crown they will put on you and your brothers, sweet boy. It is a noose.” You say as a tear slid down your eye and onto his pale cheek.

[reinekinthos]

fine milkers  — about sirius, obsessing over her moony's tits (pt.2) pt.1 here

lesbian wolfstar | hogwarts | getting together | it will definitely get explicit.

—

“She's so beautiful Jamie, her hair smells like… apples. How can her hair smell like apples?”

Sirius might as well have hearts beating out of her eyes. Jamie lifts hers to the ceiling in a silent prayer for fortitude as her best friend keeps talking. “Her tits... they are so—“ big. Sirius doesn't finish her sentence. Instead, she makes a vague vulgar hand gesture around her chest, as if she is holding onto two Bludgers.

Jamie wrinkles her nose but can’t help but laugh. Remus' breasts are huge, and Sirius has wanted to get her mouth on them for a long time now. This is not new information.

Sirius wails.

“Don't laugh at me!” Sirius leans over the table, smacking the side of Jamie’s head. “How could you be so cruel to your best friend? Have some sympathy— I'm in love with a straight girl!”

Jamie outright cackles at this. “You daft pillock.”

Sirius is not a daft pillock, thank you very much. Jamie Potter's just a bitch.

“What about Moony makes you think “this is a heterosexual woman”? Are you blind?”

Sirius narrows her eyes into a disdainful stance. “What are you talking about?”

Jamie shrugs. “Moony is a lesbian. Everybody knows. Probably even McGonagall,” she pretends to think for a second. “Kreacher too.”

Sirius makes a face. “How would Krea—Moony is not into women. If she was, Binns would have looked for a Sirius Lupin when he called the roll earlier.”

“You are so embarrassing,” Jamie informs her. “It’s been years, just ask her if she wants to shag already.”

Sirius kicks her.

It is not just a physical thing. Sirius loves Remus. Loves her patience. Her maturity. Her unperturbed calm. Her unwitting eroticism. Her unearthly, lunar beauty. Her secret, hidden pain. She loves Remus. She wants Remus.

Sexually, obviously. But there's… a strong romantic component to that want, too. She wants to date her. To take her to Hogsmeade and hold her hand. To stargaze together. To blow her a kiss from the pitch after a successful Quidditch match. To cuddle her. To fall asleep in her arms.

It's not just about wanting to shove her up against a wall and get a hand inside her knickers.

“Okay, fine, ask for her hand in marriage already!”

When Jamie opens her mouth to add something, Sirius can only imagine it will be another lie, Binns scoffs from the other side of the room and Sirius doesn't have the strength to pretend to not be guilty.

The professor, with an irritated expression on his face, swings his arm to point in their direction and says, “what are you doing there in the last row, laughing?”

He pronounces the word “laughing” with the same tone someone else might use to say “torturing half—bloods” or “summoning evil spirits”.

Since Sirius can't be bothered to answer, it's Jamie who stands up to speak. “Well, Professor, it’s true that we were laughing. You should know that we were laughing because, in fact, we found the subject we were discussing amusing, but there was nothing life-threatening or legally actionable in our amusement, I assure you...”

Sirius can see three rows ahead Remus slapping herself in mortification.

James is still talking. “… Now, it’s clear to me as to anyone else that has been laughing loudly and uninterruptedly for the entire class period that this might suggest that we were being inattentive, or insolent, or even cheerfully moronic, but I myself find that a bit of drollery in this austere context does the heart good and therefore, necessarily, only deepens the joy of learning. As for the relationship between laughter and the Second Goblin Revolution…”

He doesn’t let Jamie complete her thought. Binns barks: “Cut it out, Potter!” and luckily the bell rings.

Remus waits for them leaning against the wall outside the class with her trademark expression of disapproval. It makes her look like a disappointed mum.

Sirius giggles at the thought. If Remus was a lesbian, they would be already married and Remus would be pregnant with their third child — Sir Padfoot III Lupin Black.

“Had fun?” she asks when Sirius approaches her and presses her forearm against the wall above Remus' head. Remus' hair is in a high bun with a few pieces framing her face delicately. So pretty, Sirius thinks, absolutely besotted.

Too bad Remus is probably thinking that she is a buffoon.

“Not really,” Sirius says, trying not to blush at the way Remus peers up at her through her thick, dark lashes. Sirius plays absentmindedly with a tear in her skirt. “We were talking about you.”

“About me?” Remus gives her a sidelong glance, and Sirius giggles.

Remus' lip twitches at the sound. Sirius reaches out to poke her waist playfully before settling back onto her previous position; as they lounge lazily in the hallway the students split up towards their next classes. Sirius watches Jamie wink at her suggestively as she leaves for practice with Mary and Marlene.

Sirius hums, barely acknowledging Jamie's antics to not encourage her. “Prongs think you’re a lesbian. Don’t worry, I told her you aren’t.”

Remus stills and Sirius looks around to see if someone casted a freezing charm. “Why would I worry?” she shifts, turning her head towards Sirius and staring curiously.

“I know you’re not homophobic or anything, I didn’t mean it like that,” Sirius rushes to assure.

Remus looks conflicted for a moment. “No, I mean,” she says slowly. “Why would I worry? It’s true.”

Sirius lets out an awkward laugh before the meaning of her words actually hit her and she freezes as she is.

“Huh?” she asks dumbly.

“I am a lesbian,” Remus says slowly again, like when she had to explain to Sirius how muggle currency works.

“What?”

“I’m a lesbian,” Remus repeats. No one moves. “I don’t hide it.” The way she says it makes it sound like she thinks she's quite obvious about it.

Her eyes remain on Sirius' frozen face until they hear a student scream somewhere behind them.

The student can die, for all Sirius cares right now.

“I— I didn’t know?” she stares silently at Remus wondering what she's thinking. Her ears have gone pink and her chest goes up and down gently with her breaths. Sirius has to force herself not to stare at her tits.

Suddenly she feels like their entire friendship has changed, she sees everything through a different lens. It all has a different context now.

A lesbian? Remus is a lesbian? Sirius could have been worshiping her body this entire time, but she hadn’t been? Granted, being a lesbian didn’t mean Remus reciprocated her feelings, but still!

She could have been seducing Remus this entire time and what was she doing? Calling her tits fine milkers?! 

“I—I thought you knew and that you have been just teasing me about it,” Remus says.

Sirius shakes her head but says nothing.

Remus sighs. “Listen, it changes nothing. I know you were just joking— it’s not like I've ever taken it seriously...”

It changes everything.

“… Or taken you seriously.”

Sirius can’t think of a good reason they’re not scissoring instead of having this conversation. She exhales sharply.

Finally Remus smiles tentatively and says: “Alright, I’m glad we had this talk.”

Sirius feels a bit like she’s floating but she nods nevertheless.

She covers her eyes with one hand as Remus leaves. She thinks of her challenging look as she repeated “I am a lesbian” as if she was waiting for Sirius to do something about it.

Well, Sirius feels the inexplicable urge to do something about it; to grab Remus’ hand, drag her in their dorm room, throw her down onto the floor and eat her alive.

Sirius swallows, her eyes huge.

She wants to yell it at Remus right now, hey guess what, I love you, but she can’t do it yet. Can’t do it like this, as Remus is walking away down the hallway and they can clearly hear a Gryffindor shooting hexes at Snape. Jamie, probably.

She rubs at her eyes, lets the warm feeling in her chest pool outward. Yeah, she knows what she has to do.

Despite making a life-altering decision, nothing much changes over the next few days. Sirius goes to class as normal, but she feels a lot farther from the emotional mess she’s been before.

Something different has begun sparking in her chest after an undetermined period of time. It takes awhile for her to pinpoint what it is, and when she does, she blushes like a stupid.

It’s excitement.

There’s nothing wrong with being excited.

She’s looking forward to declaring her undying love to Remus, and that’s normal. Well, not entirely normal; Sirius envisioned a few concessions that she will never recount, even under threat of death, but still. It’s mostly normal.

What do people do to show their affection? Sirius is tempted to search for answers in the library, but she doesn’t think her pride would ever recover.

She’s a simple woman. Remus knows this. And there’s no way she would be able to misinterpret the gesture of Sirius showing up with chocolate.

When she goes to Jamie for advice, her best friend laughs in her face, reminding her that she has been gifting Remus chocolate since they were eleven. It won’t take her anywhere.

Sirius wants to do something nice. A little bit romantic, maybe, if she dares to use the word. Something to show Remus how much she cares.

Jamie is more practical, seduce her, she tells her. “She already knows that you love her. You transform into a dog for her. What’s missing is seduction.”

Seduction?

Seduction.

[undyingembers]

OC Kiss Week - Victoire & Siavash

An OC Kiss Week entry featuring my Rogue Trader Victoire and @dujour13's Siavash. Thank you for letting me do this to him. This was fun.

There are some content tags for this one. Warhammer 40K is very grimdark, and Victoire is...not a nice person. I'm grateful for Dujour for letting me do this to her charcter.

cw: torture mention; shooting mention

Even hours after she put down the little insurrection on Dargonus, Victoire still smelled of blood and gunpowder. Her principal colony was used to a little unrest now and then—people wanting free time, increased pay, and, Emperor forbid, limited working hours. This time was different. This time, the peasants didn’t simply ask for more bread and fewer lashes. There was talk of wanting to create beauty and art and fulfilment in doing what they enjoyed instead of serving the Imperium. Workers shirked their duties to go dance and feast in the hills. Their bad behavior didn’t abate no matter how many lashes they received. Eventually, even the foreman and enforcers put down their whips to go join in the discussions and festivities, encouraged to see the people they oversaw as fellow workers and people. The governor of Dargonus couldn’t keep it under control, so the Rogue Trader had to fly all the way to Mundus Valancius system to deal with it personally.

Victoire put an end to that brutally. She gathered all her armies to gun down the celebrations, had the Drusian priests to deliver sermons on austerity and devotion, and punished everyone who stood in her way.

They were able to put an end to all of this at last. The very last of the agitators held a large bonfire and feast right outside the capital. They even had the nerve to send Victoire an invitation to “see for herself what it was like”. Victoire responded by personally leading a squadron to gun everyone down.

Now, Victoire was in a shuttlecraft with the sole survivor of that massacre. Victoire had expected the chief agitator to be some grand revolutionary inspiring the rabble with speeches and heroics. However, from her reports, it seems that it had happened almost by accident. Some charming stranger had come into one of the bars and chatted and greeted everyone as if he were a friend, playing his music, imagining a world where the patrons there drank for enjoyment instead of getting through the hardship and monotony of the day.  

What she saw now was a broken bird in a cage. The man’s amber-touched yellow hair fell limply around his sallow cheeks. His hazel eyes stared blankly ahead of him. According to Victoire’s officers, he was already like that when they found him, which was partly why Victoire had decided to forgo the usual torture.

Victoire had not meant for this man to survive. It was a miracle that he had. Now everyone he led was dead. She could only imagine how that felt.

“No one was rebelling against you,” the man said in a hoarse broken voice. “We were just getting together. Raising each other up. Enjoying life.”

Victoire gripped this poor fool by the chin and forced him to meet her gaze.

“You should never have crossed me,” said Victoire. Her captive did not resist as she leaned over and planted her red lips on his forehead.

“Things don’t have to be like this,” he said. Odd, even in this broken state, he’s still spouting this nonsense. It was almost as if it were his nature. “Even you don’t have to live in such a miserable world.”

Victoire let go and stepped away before his words could unsettle her even more.

The shuttle dropped them off in a grassy area of the planet Dargonus. The place was riddled with large trees, boulders, and the ruins probably left behind by some xenos that had settled on the planet long before mankind came in. It was a good location to give her prisoner a fighting chance.

The guards dragged him out and uncuffed his wrists. The poor man looked around confusedly.

Victoire cocked her sniper rifle. “I’ll give you an hour’s head start,” she said before taking off in the shuttle again.

[quinloki]

Wire - Longing

Reader style - Afab she/her Time slot - Business Hours Client Name - (⌐■_■) Anonymous! CW: a little self-deprecating on the reader's part, but sweet.

You sat inside The Club, nursing a drink and picking at your food. You weren’t displeased with the drink or the food. You weren’t truly displeased with anything.

The problem was your own fault.

Of all The Club had to offer, you had to fall for someone who wasn’t on the proverbial menu. He was tall, handsome, austere. Perfect. His slight discomfort in the suit he wore was probably only noticeable to you because you’d been noticing him for so long, but that didn’t bother you.

You were completely enamored. Smitten. Ruined, truthfully. You’d come here because a friend had recommended it, and your first sit down had been with one of the people recommended on the beginner’s list.

The freckle-faced, dark haired young man that had been your first host was probably the only reason you’d been able to return. Ace was bright and cheerful, guiding and easy to talk to without being too much. He seemed far beyond you, and honestly the business itself seemed to exist on some plane beyond what you deserved, but your discomfort was strictly internal.

It was never the fault of anyone in The Club.

You sigh again, wondering if you’ll be able to work up the courage to visit the club after hours. While Wire didn’t host, you knew he was an available escort option.

The only thing stopping you was that you didn’t know if it would be rude to not have sex with him. It wasn’t that you were against the idea, but you just wanted to exist with him first.

So all you could do for now was enjoy the club’s atmosphere, and food, and just watch him work. The bouncers were all disciplined, and the club rarely experienced any real issues. You were sure things were probably more wild at the start, but the business had a very solid positive reputation in the city, despite how spicy things could get.

It wasn’t just because he was tall. You sip your drink, eyes flitting over to him in the corner. The cropped cut of his hair, curly and on the edges of wild, too short to be of any note, and the style of his sideburns suited him so well they didn’t stand out either.

Dark eyes, dark hair, a quiet demeanor. Low energy. He’s one of the best bouncers, so he’s not afraid of anything to be doing that kind of work. Everyone calls him a gentle giant, and you can’t deny the idea of just being man-handled by him would solve half your problems.

You sigh. Perfect in every way.

But he doesn’t host.

You’re either going to have to sit with this feeling in your chest for the rest of your life, or stop coming to the club. That, or buck-up and show up during after hours.

“Miss?” A young man with blonde hair and a swirl in his eyebrow catches your attention and you turn to see him. Sanji was on the name plate and he smiles as you smile at him.

“Yes?”

“A gift, if you’re okay with it.” He states, setting a fruit parfait in front of you. “From one of our bouncers.”

“Oh… I,” you can feel the heat rushing into your face.

“He hopes it will lift the lady’s spirits a little.” Sanji explains, setting a spoon down and stepping away after you manage to murmur a soft thanks.

You look up from the dessert, looking toward Wire, and see him look away. It might be your imagination that sees his face go pink, but even if that’s not the case, the subtle sweetness of the parfait does indeed lift your spirits.

[butter-leopard]

On the Longest Night

Story by Nicole Hawberry

Illustrations by Rama Thorn

Summary: A little holiday story in which nothing of note happens but visiting friends, lighting candles, and waiting up for lost souls.

Tags: winter solstice, alternative holiday traditions, asexual main character, lesbian moms, cozy fantasy, doctoral research, Edwardian-era-flavored setting, alchemy never died

Content warnings: past loss of family, loneliness

6,300 words

Suggested tea pairing*: Tranquility by Yumchaa

*unsponsored!

~

On the evening of winter solstice, Ann left her rooms at sunset.

She hefted her basket of gifts and made her way across the quad, boots crunching on grit that had been thrown down to break up the ice. A confection of pink clouds towered atop the university roofs. It quickly dispersed into darkness, and all across the courtyard, the alchemic lamps blinked on. One hissed to life as Ann passed beneath. 

She stopped first at the home of Dr. Nir, who she’d known since she’d been an undergrad at Sweetwind College. When Dr. Nir had moved here to Janos University, she’d talked Ann into coming along to pursue her graduate studies. Soon after, she’d introduced Ann to her current mentor, Dr. Longway.

At Dr. Nir’s apartment, Ann accepted a glass of cherry cordial and a plate of tiny spiced meat tarts, and politely turned down an invitation to stay for a game of word cards.

She visited the home of Dr. Longway himself next and found that he was out. Ann smiled at the thought of the droll professor making rounds on winter solstice, doling out presents. She left his present on the front step with the pile of packages already growing there. Hopefully he’d appreciate the striped socks she’d knit him in bold yellow and black yarn, in memory of the bee that had followed him across campus one late summer day. He dryly joked that the encounter had left him hesitant to take afternoon walks, but Ann could tell he was at least half serious.

Next, she went to the home of the librarian, Davith. There, to the amazement of his two children, she pulled a handsome box of miniature wooden games out of her gift basket. From the corner of her eye, Ann caught Davith’s sharp look, but she didn’t meet his gaze. She only watched the kids go through the box, crying out with every discovery they made.

It had been a stretch to buy the box of games on her limited budget, but Davith was a good friend to her, and he had saved her research several times by tracking down rare books. She was glad to be able to do this for his family. She only regretted she couldn’t afford to get them proper artisan-crafted toys—ones that danced and lit up and made noise all on their own. These ones had been made by an apprentice artisan as practice pieces, so they were well-made but not infused with any life of their own.

The children begged Ann to sing at least one song with them, but Davith glanced in sympathy at the gifts piled in Ann’s basket before explaining to them that she might have other people to visit. Ann gave him a grateful smile. In truth, she dearly wanted to stay, but she did have a lot of stops to make and not much time.

She made three more drop-offs to colleagues and professors who were out, probably delivering presents, like her. It was just as well, because she didn’t have the heart to turn down many more offers of food and company as she hastened to empty her basket. Each stop brought her closer to the edge of the university, through austere gardens filled with bare branches, dark green juniper bushes, and red solstice ribbons.

By her seventh stop, she was making good time and allowed herself to get sucked into an audio play on a friend’s phonograph. The drama and music reminded her of the rare times she’d visited the theater with her family, and she forgot herself completely until she glanced at the clock and, with a stumbling apology, hurried out.

Her last stop was the farthest. It brought her beyond the university’s walls and across the bridge to the Camp of the Arts. She gave thanks that the morning’s ice had long ago melted as she rushed over the cobblestones.

The Camp of the Arts was everything the university wasn’t. The streets branched messily and were cramped with townhomes, cafes, and studios of different architectural styles and ages. Older structures made of creaking wood and brightly-colored cloth leaned shoulders with newer brick buildings. The newer buildings were no less flamboyant, with their spiraling murals and the mosaics that glittered across multiple shopfronts.

Ann passed the open-air market where she’d bought the games for Davith’s children. Most of the market was closed for the evening, but several food vendors served spiced bubbly cider and fried dough, and groups of merrymakers wove up and down the narrow lanes of shuttered market stalls, taking in the bright decorations: strings of glowing baubles, paper cutouts of twirling snowflakes, musical pipes playing songs. The smell of cinnamon and sweet fry oil tempted Ann, but she kept moving.

The whimsical decorations continued into the residential neighborhood. Strings of paper lamps crisscrossed overhead, drenching everything below in colored light. A stilt-walker leaned to blow bubbles at a group of children, who shrieked and scattered.

Ann stopped at the front step of a familiar townhouse. The house had been decked out in bunches of multicolored ribbons and little bells that rang themselves. Out of their delicate tinkling, Ann could just make out a solstice melody.

A clocktower tolled the hour. Planning, with regret, to make this visit short, she took the last parcel from her basket and rapped on the door. The apology she’d readied froze when Ulma’s face appeared in the doorway and brightened at the sight of Ann. Then Ann was being ushered into the warmth and light and savory smells of her friend’s home.

Ann was still attempting to navigate greetings and apologies when a streak of orange and white shot toward her and tangled around her ankles, putting her further off balance.

“Oh!” Ann said to the calico kitten. “You’ve gotten so big!”

She bent to pet it, and the basket on her arm dipped with sudden weight as a small black shape leapt into it, claws scrabbling.

Ann laughed under the double assault. Ulma laughed, too, and took the wrapped gift from Ann’s hand so Ann could catch her balance.

“That package is for you, anyway,” Ann said.

She set the basket down. Inside, the black kitten—which was nearly full-grown, like its sibling—had found the scrap of cushioning fabric at the bottom and was already curled on its side, attacking the cloth with front and back feet.

Sensing something more interesting going on than greetings from a human, the little calico twisted under Ann’s hand to inspect the basket. In moments, it had tumbled inside to bat paws with the other kitten.

“The pests!” Ulma said. “I’m sorry.”

Ann teased the kittens with the scrap. “They’re not doing any harm.”

“Do you have any more stops after this one? Would you like to stay for dinner? We’re having roast.”

Ann already knew this by the delicious smells. She would have loved to stay; the house was so beautiful, filled with candles and bunches of prickly-grape leaves and more of the tiny bells. And the company would have been even better; Ann loved Ulma and her husband, Teddy.

Apologetically, she shook her head. “This is my last one, but I’ve got to get home.”

“Oh, good—so you have plans. That’s great, as long as you aren’t alone. We knew you weren’t traveling to see your folks this year.”

“Thank you,” Ann said. “The invitation means a lot.”

She took something soft and long from her pocket and handed it to Ulma, who accepted it with slight puzzlement, then recognition.

“My socks! I was wondering where these had gone. And—a pair of Teddy’s, too?”

At Ulma’s questioning look, Ann winked and lightly touched the side of her nose.

Ulma glanced at the squishy package she’d taken from Ann a couple minutes before.

“I needed a size reference,” Ann said, with a sheepish shrug.

Ulma laughed. “I’m sure I have no idea what’s inside this gift you handed me! Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back.” She disappeared through the open door, leaving Ann alone in the entryway.

Ann always loved visiting Ulma and Teddy’s house, even when it wasn’t a holiday. The couple were artisans, and they kept a rotating display of their works on the shelves and sideboards here. She mourned that she hadn’t visited them in months; she’d been so busy with her doctoral work. Now for the winter solstice, the entry hall was filled with even more wonderful things. She toured the room, running her finger lightly over the wonders: a tiny music box in the shape of a snowflake, a miniature castle with a rotating disk of costumed dancers, a wolf playing the fiddle. Ulma and Teddy had made all of them together. Ulma built the metal mechanical parts of the music boxes, and Teddy carved, polished, and stained the wood that housed them. Which of them infused the pieces with life, though? Ann was watching the wolf smoothly draw its bow across the fiddle, as if she could puzzle this out, when Ulma reappeared. She had a parcel under one arm, a pale wooden box under the other, and a tray of spice cakes in her hands. The cakes were shiny with icing and dotted with fat currants.

“I should have done this in the kitchen,” Ulma lamented as she handed the tray to Ann, set the package on a side cabinet, and opened the wooden box, which was empty. She popped the spice cakes into it while Ann watched, bemused.

As Ulma added the last cake and latched the box shut, she said, “At least take these with you to share.”

Ann didn’t know what to say except, “Thank you.” She let Ulma take the empty tray from her and press the warm box into her hands.

“And this is for you,” Ulma said, reclaiming the wrapped package from the cabinet and proffering it to Ann. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to go gifting this year. We’ve been busy with the roast, and our son’s airship had to stop in Rosewood for bad weather. The kids are the ones who usually go out.”

“I hope they make it safely.”

“Oh, they’ll be fine. The kids were pushing snow down each other’s collars, last I heard.” Ulma’s mouth twisted in a smirk. There was probably a story there. Ulma was sweet but took vengeful delight in her son’s parenting misadventures.

Ann felt bad for him, but couldn’t help her own, answering smile. She bent to tuck the gifts into the basket and then paused when she saw the two cats curled inside, now dozing together.

“Look,” she whispered.

Ulma’s curious look dissolved as she caught sight of them. She gave a “tsk!” and scooped them out, one floppy kitten in each hand.

“Here, they can have the scrap,” Ann said. “Happy solstice, you two. You’re so easy to choose a gift for.”

In the few minutes she’d spent in the warmth of Ulma’s home, Ann had forgotten how cold it was. She paused on the doorstep to wrap her scarf tighter around her neck. As she made her way back through the Camp of the Arts, she kept close to the buildings, out of the wind, catching good smells and sounds of laughter and currents of warm air from cracked windows.

As she reached the university’s moat, the chill took on a wet bite. The noise and bright glow of lamps fell away, becoming only muffled sounds and flashes of light reflecting off the black surface of the water. Ann passed several people on the bridge, many of them carrying lanterns. Their voices echoed around the short tunnel of the university’s gate as Ann passed through it, under the portcullis that had not been lowered in generations.

After the bright colors of the Camp, Janos University seemed so dark, lit only by the steady white illumination of the alchemic lamps.

A wreath had been placed on her door. Ann glanced around the hall, wondering if it had been placed there by one of her neighbors. Bags of candied fruit and nuts had been pinned among its pine needles and prickly-grape leaves.

Beneath the wreath, mounded against the door, a small pile of packages waited for her. The sight surprised her, though she didn’t why it should. Heart warm, she knelt to put them into her basket. From the wreath, she chose a bag of candied fruit for herself and left the rest for any spirits that wandered by that night.

The living room looked just the way it had when she’d left earlier: spool of ribbon, scrap fabric, and scissors out for wrapping presents, an empty tea mug and a plate of toasted nut bread on a chair nearby—and the usual mess everywhere else.

With horror, she realized it was a disaster.

Since early summer, she’d been so focused on her research, she hadn’t taken notice of her surroundings. The apartment looked like the den of some book- and yarn-hoarding creature, a little nesting bird or rodent.

She checked the clock on the mantel. She didn’t have the time to spare, but she also didn’t have a choice.

Her desk offered the only clear surface large enough for the basket of gifts. She set it there, atop her research notes, then sloughed off her warm winter clothes and got a fire going. When the wood was crackling and sending up orange flames, she attacked the living room. There wasn’t much she could do in a small amount of time, but she could at least put things in neater piles.

First, she swept the scrap fabric, ribbon, and scissors into a craft basket and returned the toast and tea mug to the kitchen. Then she ran around the apartment, gathering armfuls of books. At first, she tried to organize them in some relevant way, but when she found herself deciding whether to separate Dr. Rafa’el’s books from the three stacks of research, she quickly gave up and, in a frantic rush, piled them all together.

For a moment, she hesitated over all the knitting, thinking she should arrange it by project, but then she remembered herself and dumped it all on the corner of the couch—the one that was too stiff to sit on, anyway.

One of the projects was an unfortunate first attempt to knit a gryphon doll for her niece. The wings were blocky and looked like two blankets flapping on its back, and she’d forgotten to give it forelegs. She intended to try putting it to rights at some point without completely unraveling it, but until then, it would sit with her balls of yarn, looking confused and left out. Some emotion—pity, or love—urged her to pull it out of the pile and set it on top to watch her finish cleaning the apartment.

Ann pulled long strips of telegraph tape from the desk and threw them into a crate of prints. She suspected one of the messages was a short winter solstice story from her niece; it had arrived earlier in a flurry of metallic clacking.

From the dining table, she swept a pile of equipment for her upcoming research trip into a box and pushed the box—clinking with vials of antinausea draughts—under the bed in her room. Straightening, she spotted a piece of paper on the ground and recognized it as a letter from Dr. Rafa’el. He’d sent this one to her at the holiday years ago; it was one of her favorites. Earlier in the week, in a fit of nostalgia, she’d pulled it out to read. He was usually polite and serious to a fault, but this one contained a rare, silly drawing by him, and it always made her smile.

She tucked it in the closet with the rest of the letters, and spared a moment to wonder how Dr. Rafa’el was doing and how he was celebrating the holiday. She couldn’t imagine him making visits on solstice evening with a basket of presents on his arm, but also, she couldn’t imagine him not. Was he visiting family? Funny, from the years they’d corresponded, Ann could recount his personal philosophies, his favorite operas, and the way he took tea, but she didn’t know if he was married or if he had kids. Siblings. Nieces or nephews that telegraphed him with stories and cost him a fortune in telegraph tape...

Realizing she was smiling again, and that she’d been standing in her dark room, staring at her closet for several minutes, she shook her head at herself.

When at last she was done, the apartment still looked like her own—the apartment of a doctoral student lost in her dissertation work—but it seemed (at least she hoped) a bit less desperate. If nothing else, some of the floor was visible. In a word, it was acceptable, and she relaxed a fraction.

She still had a lot to do.

The fire had burned itself into smoldering coals nearly perfect for cooking. With her limited time, she should have opted to make dinner at the stove, but stubbornly, Ann rearranged the coals and added more wood. They always made winter solstice dinner at the hearth. It was tradition.

Ann retrieved the iron pot from where it lived for most of the year in a corner of the kitchen and set it over the coals on its three squat legs. Soon, the apartment was filled with the sound of sizzling and the smells of rosemary and parsnip. Beef stew wouldn’t make for a particularly fancy meal, but it would be warming and—she hoped—appreciated.

In her apartment, Ann had a total of three chairs. While the stew bubbled, she gathered these around the small dining table, spread out a lace tablecloth, and arranged three place settings. She put a knit cushion on each of the chairs.

Seeing the table this way did something funny to her. It had never been only her and them before.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, with a snap of her fingers. She retrieved the box of spice cakes and, after a minute of rummaging, found a serving platter to set them on. They looked too good like that, dressed with icing and currants. It made Ann smile. A lot of love had gone into them.

All she had left, now, were the finishing touches.

From beneath the couch, she pulled a wicker box filled with her most precious holiday decorations. First, she took out the bunch of silver bells. It was one of the few artisan-crafted items Ann owned, and it had been given to her by Mum and Auntie when she left home. Though the bells didn’t ring on their own or play music, the silver never tarnished and their nest of ribbons looked as crisp as if just-tied. Then, she lifted the little soul lantern from its protective fold of velvet cloth.

She stepped outside to hang the on the hook above her door and set the lantern on her doorstep. Across the courtyard, children whooped and a man called out a greeting. Ann crossed her arms over her chest, breath frosting, and watched their group go by. The atmosphere had taken on a rare, hazy quality that softened the lamp and lantern lights, making them into ghosts.

After the crackling cold, the air inside her apartment was thick with heat and rich smells. The door sealed out the children’s laughter, and in the insulated quiet, the clock above the mantel ticked the seconds.

Suddenly, the apartment was very small and very large and very empty and very close. She didn’t look at the clock. Now that it was almost time, she couldn’t.

To keep her hands moving, she placed a pan of wine over the fire and added cider and spices. She rearranged the contents of the dining table. Added the gifts from her basket to the mantel with the other cards and presents. Relocated her teapots so they could all fit. Sat on the vacant end of the stiff couch and watched the fragrant steam rise from the mulled wine. After a time, she realized she’d pulled out her talisman—the one Dr. Rafa’el had sent her years before—and was stroking its silky feathers, something she did when she was nervous.

The clock chimed ten.

“All right,” she said to the knit gryphon sitting on the hill of wool next to her. She tucked the talisman back under the collar of her sweater and went to the door.

“Welcome,” she whispered, and locked it.

From the wicker box, she took the last objects: two silver candle holders. She placed a slender taper in each and lit them with a flame from the hearth, as she’d been taught.

The pale-yellow beeswax burned sweetly. Once upon a time, the women of fishing villages had gathered together to dip the tapers that they’d later burn in their houses at night—lights to guide home their husbands and sons. Brothers. Fathers.

Ann placed the candles on the windowsill.

Winter solstice. Everywhere across campus and in all pockets of civilization, people set candles and lanterns in thresholds and in windows, on gate posts and at the edges of camp—beacons promising warmth and safe haven to all stray souls. Family and strangers gathered at the fireside, sharing bounty and story, reinforcing old connections, creating new. On the longest night, everyone had a home and hearth.

Ann ladled three bowls of stew. She set these on the small dining table with warm bread, a pot of honey, and butter. She poured mulled wine into each of the mugs.

“I hope you enjoy,” she whispered to the table.

She had intended to take a seat at it, but in the end, she took her meal to the hearth. Maybe this was rude, but somehow, it felt right. She ate while listening to the murmur and snap of the coals, and allowed herself to feel at peace. She hadn’t known what she would feel, sharing the holiday this way, but it wasn’t bad. It was…good. It was quiet, and she felt connected. Inexplicably, paradoxically so.

Outside, the approaching clang of a bell marked the passage of a solstice search party, a procession of candle bearers who traveled from door to door, guiding the way for lost spirits. They neared Ann's door, and the bell went silent. Into that pause, the bearers would be lighting the lantern on her doorstep. The peal of the bell resumed a few seconds later, and the procession moved on, drawing the spirits along with flame and sound—helping them find their way home, and, if not, helping them find friendly shelter.

She listened to the sounds disappear. In the gentle quiet that followed, she tried to sense any difference in the apartment. A shift of the air, a watchful presence that hadn’t been there before, maybe an inexplicable flicker of the candleflames at the window. How did these things work? She’d never been in an otherwise empty room on the night of solstice.

The clock continued to tick. Her bowl, now empty, cooled in her hands.

If any spirits had found their way inside when the procession passed by, Ann could not detect them any better than she could when surrounded by five other women and a small flock of birds all making music and conversation together.

There was also the alternative: that there weren’t any spirits because the souls that would have visited her hadn’t been lost.

In the fireplace, a log popped.

She rose to put her bowl in the kitchen, then covered both bowls of stew on the table, reckoning it wouldn’t hurt to keep the contents warm and clean. Just in case.

She tried not to be disappointed. It wasn’t like she’d expected to speak with them. It wasn’t like she had expected…anything, really.

Her hands rested on the back of a dining chair. She realized she was gazing at Ulma’s spice cakes. She picked one up, inhaled the sweet butteriness, and took a bite. The dense dough was still very slightly warm. The fragrance of spices and orange peel evoked memories of late nights in the sitting room with her foster sisters, playing number tiles and weaving leftover ribbons into bracelets and solstice crowns.

What were their mothers doing tonight? Was the house very quiet? Were they listening to music and enjoying an evening without four demons flinging bells at each other behind their backs? Ann hoped they were. She hoped it wasn’t as strange for Mum and Auntie as it was for her, gathering all the cards and packages from the mantel and settling on the floor with them.

“Miss you all,” she said to them. “Thank you for these.”

 She opened the cards first, starting with one from a friend she kept in touch with from primary school. She unfolded the handwritten note she’d come to expect every winter, with its accompanying heliograph, and saw that her friend’s family had an extra tiny, bald person this year. The firelight glowed through the creamy paper, silhouetting the words as she read them.

The cards from her university friends and mentors were also familiar and expected: most offered short greetings and wishes for a happy holiday, as they did every year.

Opening the cards from her sisters, however, was an odd experience. Usually, she received family updates and holiday tidings in person. This year, however, they’d agreed not to get together. With Ann preparing a research proposal for her expedition in spring, Linden caring for her one-month-old, Alyssum opening a business, and Heather off in the northern ice pole, they were all too busy—or too far—to travel home.

Ann had braced herself for missing them, but still wasn’t prepared for the ache at reading their words. The feeling eased as she continued, though, and it seemed rather like they were there with her. She could hear their distinct voices as they recounted new baby troubles, happy accidents in floral arrangement, and spousal drama.

Only after she had read the letters did she remember she might not be alone.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing at the table. “Just in case you’re listening: This one is from Linden. Her first child was born last month. All she wants for solstice is sleep. I wish I had some to spare, but I’ve been woefully low on my own supply lately.” She picked up the other letter. “This one is from Alyssum. She decided to open a flower shop—in autumn. Good luck to her. Sorry; that was mean. She’s actually doing quite well for herself. She received so many orders for solstice swags, she closed the shop early in the month. I’m proud of her.” She set the page down. “There’s no card from Heather. She sent it last month because mail is unpredictable for her. She’s at the northern ice pole. That’s her gift on the mantel, the carved antler. She got it from a tribe she stayed with for a few weeks.”

Ann treasured the piece. She had stopped to run her fingers over it many times since she’d unwrapped it from its cushioning strip of fur. It depicted a tiny sled being pulled by dogs, just like Heather’s. Every time Ann looked at it, she imagined the tread of paws on snow, the whispering slide of runners, the vast silence and frosting breaths—and smiled.

She loved all of her foster sisters, but Heather’s sense of adventure had always spoken to something inside Ann. Even if Ann herself was too timid and book-bound—and too afflicted by height sickness—to strike out on her own adventures, it made her heart full to think of Heather camping under the ribbon of northern lights.

Ann smiled and added, “I think you’d like them all, my foster sisters.”

After slipping each of the cards into their envelopes, she tucked them into the chest of drawers for safe keeping.

She unwrapped each of the presents next, revealing—from her university friends—caramels, mittens, knitting needles, and a hat.

Her sisters had sent colorful sweets, an anklet, the clay impression of a baby foot, a glass vial filled with delicate dried flowers, and two notebooks bound in soft leather (one from each of them).

Dr. Longway’s present made her stomach drop, even as she smiled. “You’re terrible.” It was a rubber stamp with her name and her title, as it would be when she completed her dissertation and graduated her doctoral program. She’d lamented so often that she would never finish. “I guess I have to get through it, now. This stamp is too handsome to waste. And ‘Dr. Fairweather’ does have a nice ring to it.”

The gift from Ulma and Teddy made her gasp. They had made her a gleaming music box the size of her palm. It bore a motif of feathers and ivy leaves, and when she thumbed the switch, it filled the room with the soft strains of her favorite solstice carol. She couldn’t decide if she felt more grateful or guilty. Had she hinted too hard by fawning over the boxes when she visited? Then she remembered the genuine smile on Ulma’s face and, with a vow to make them something extra nice for their birthdays, set aside the guilt.

She placed the music box on the mantel, delighting when it moved onto a new song and continued to play.

Only the brown paper parcel from her foster mothers remained.

Bells tolled—big bells this time, from across the courtyard, marking midnight. Ann added another log to the fire and a pinch of incense that made the flames flash green. She sat back down with the package. The brown paper was the rough kind used to wrap meat. Ann loved this quirk of Auntie’s: the woman who so loved fine, frilly things delighted in wrapping presents with the most unassuming paper and jute twine. It made the treasures inside all the more dear.

Ann picked at the knot of twine until the loopy bow sprang open, then unfolded the paper a corner at a time to reveal a tissue-wrapped bundle. It was floppy and thick in her hands. She pulled aside the tissue, then frowned quizzically at the knit inside. Bright jewel tones clashed in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but was…unexpected. She unfolded it to reveal a child’s blanket. This was odd. Mum and Auntie did often give blankets as gifts, but they favored quilts and creamy-colored crochet throws with tasselly ends.

An envelope fell to the floor. Ann draped the blanket on her lap and opened it to find a heliograph of Apple the cat curled in a basket of laundry, a recipe card for Mum and Auntie’s solstice-morning scones, and a letter in Mum’s handwriting, pasted with whimsical paper cutouts of birds and snowflakes. Ann brushed her thumb over the texture of them.

Dear Ann,

How is your project going?

Auntie brought home three loaves of solstice bread today. One is your favorite, with crushed pistachios. Auntie doesn’t like that one, and the one with candied cherries is more than enough for me. What are we going to do with all this bread !! I might give it to the neighbors when Auntie is out. I doubt she’ll notice it’s gone. There is so much food in the kitchen. I think we forget that you girls won’t be home for the holiday. Maybe we’ll have to invite some of the old women from the quilting class. Some of them haven’t got family anymore. The class is a way for them to get out and see people. You know Auntie and I stopped asking much for the class years ago, just enough to cover the supplies. Ettia’s bank stopped paying out her fee months ago but we won’t say anything to her about it. The class is the highlight of her week.

The letter went on for several more long, rambling paragraphs as Mum covered news of the shop, the decorations they’d put up, Apple’s bout of sickness (“She’s fine now, she threw up a big hairball one morning. Auntie stepped in it. Now she won’t stop screaming for food”), and their slow renovation of the house.

Auntie and I were cleaning out some old trunks in the back room and found this. It’s your baby blanket. I thought you might like to have it.

Mum’s neat handwriting continued on for the rest of the page, but Ann stopped there.

Her baby blanket. That hit her in an odd way and she blinked, and then it hit her harder when she realized that her mom, her real mom, must have knit this—or even her grandmother.

She spread the blanket beneath her hands, taking in the pattern of the colors, absorbing the deep, almost primordial familiarity. Her fingers bunched the knit and she pressed it to her mouth, blinking sudden tears. She didn’t even know what she wept for.

She glanced toward the table. She took a deep inhale, but the blanket just smelled like home, the home she grew up in with Mum and Auntie. With Mum and Auntie—and her foster sisters and their birds and a host of dolls and swathes of fabric draped over every surface. The home where they hid in closets and flicked thimbles from under the bed and placed the cutlery on the table just so. The home where she’d hidden behind the lemon balm in the summer and fashioned fairy gardens out of patches of moss, where she sneaked out of her room at night to steal tablespoons of jam from the ice chest, where she curled between Mum and Auntie when she couldn’t fall sleep in her own bed. Home. Lavender sachets and ginger syrup, glass pitchers of minty water and lacy drapes fluttering in the breeze.

She wasn’t even sure if it comforted her that it smelled like her childhood, or if she was disappointed that it didn’t smell like something else—like someplace else.

The fire burned down. The music box from Ulma and Teddy continued to play. Ann lowered the blanket and got up to turn it off. She covered the stew pot, poured the remaining mulled wine into a jar, and organized all the gifts.

The clock’s chime at the half hour found her at her desk, staring at her dissertation notes. She didn’t remember sitting down. Muscle memory must have brought her there, where she’d spent so much of the past year.

She set the notebook aside and pulled the telegraph machine toward herself. She thought for a moment, then tapped out a message to Mum and Auntie, wishing them a happy holiday and thanking them for the blanket. She almost asked them about it. They rarely talked about her parents; Ann still wasn’t sure how, or if, they’d known them. But after staring at the telegraph for several minutes, she flipped off the lamp and stood.

At the table, where the bowls of stew sat with the wine and the remaining cakes, she whispered a happy solstice and a thank you.

Briefly, she considered stepping outside to clear her head and breathe fresh air, but the soul lanterns had been lit. While it wasn’t taboo to leave the house after the search party had passed, it didn’t feel right. So instead, Ann cleaned the dishes and did, after all, organize her stacks of books. She even made an attempt to read her niece’s holiday story, but her gaze kept skating over the length of telegraph tape without reading the words.

Ann poured herself a last mug of wine and settled on the couch. Next to her, the little knit gryphon listed on its perch. She picked it up and ran her fingers over the stitches, frowning. The blocky wings flopped.

She should unravel it. Or maybe not.

It was time for bed.  

The blanket still lay in a neat heap on the floor. She hesitated before she picked it up, bunching it in her hands as she stared at it and then spreading it open. It was even smaller than she’d originally thought, vibrant with color and soft.

She looked at it for a long time before finally taking it with her to the bedroom. On the windowsill, the candles were nearly burned down. She left them, and would leave the window latch unlocked tonight. Just in case.

fin.

(Li'l author note: Happy holidays, and thank you for reading! Ann's story will continue in 2023. ☕️📚🪶 -Lep 💜)

[carewyncromwell]

“Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around.”

x~x~x~x

HPHM Cardverse developed by @ariparri​​​ ❤️

x~x~x~x

When Carewyn Cromwell started her first year of university in the Kingdom of Hearts, it took a while before she made any friends. When she was young, she’d always stayed rather close to home, preferring the company of her brother and mother over just about anyone else. The few close friends Carewyn had made outside of her own family when she was young she stayed in touch with through letters, since they all lived in the Land of Clubs or the Diamond Empire. As fate would have it, however, the two closest friends Carewyn made at the university of Hearts ended up being two of her most faithful courtiers, once she became Queen of Hearts. The first of these was the future Ace of Hearts, Barnaby Lee.

By all accounts, Barnaby Lee shouldn’t have made it into such an illustrious university. His academic record was hardly promising. But what Barnaby lacked in scholarly knowledge he made up for in both physical and emotional strength -- his talent for horseback riding, as well as multiple types of combat, had managed to secure him a full scholarship from the previous Ace of Hearts, with the thought that he could excel as part of the military. Barnaby’s family all having been respected, but fearsome military men themselves didn’t hurt either.

When Barnaby made it to university, though, he found himself a bit out of place. Having been raised largely at home by his neglectful parents and grandmother, he really had very little experience making friends. Everyone seemed to expect that he’d be just like the rest of his family, and so either kept their distance out of fear or encouraged him to join all the university’s sports teams and challenge all of his fellow classmates to duels. Barnaby himself didn’t mind this too much, since truthfully he did love competing against admirable opponents and he really liked being praised when he won...but it was still kind of lonely after class and practice everyday, having to eat meals alone.

It was in mid-October that Carewyn and Barnaby first collided. Barnaby had just finished up with a duel with a much older student and was feeling pretty pleased with himself -- his lip was bleeding and his shoulder was bruised, but it’d been an invigorating duel, and just about everyone was cheering for him after the fact. Even as he walked off across the grounds by himself, there was a slight pep to his step.

Around lunchtime, Barnaby would often go to the orchard just north of the university grounds to pick some apples. He would then bring a bag of them back with him to school so he could feed the land and winged horses kept in the university’s stable.

Barnaby had just about made it to the stable when he caught sight of a familiar white shape beside the back stairs of the library. One of the horse racing team’s steeds was standing next to a young lady sitting primly on the stairs. She was dressed kind of austerely in a high-necked white shirt and a long corseted black skirt -- even the hair ribbon in her ginger ponytail was black. The lack of color was grim and strange, compared to how most people at school dressed. Similarly strange was what was at her side -- a rather beat-up looking metal box decorated with chipped green paint, out of which she’d fetched what looked like a canteen, a teabag, and some sugar cubes.

Something stirred in Barnaby’s memory. Didn’t he hear people talking about an exchange student from the Country of Spades? Cromwell, Barnaby thought they called her. He remembered some of the girls who came to watch him at the most recent Abraxan Derby meet claimed she was such a snob that she never attended any parties -- probably because her entire wardrobe was made up of ugly black dresses that made her look like a spinster.

Seems a bit mean of them to say, Barnaby couldn’t help but think as the young woman offered some sugar cubes to the white horse. She doesn’t look that snobby to me.

With a broad smile, he strode right up to her.

“It looks like Snowball likes you!”

Carewyn looked up, startled. Her eyes darted from the horse to back up at the muscled young man.

“Snowball...then he’s yours,” she surmised.

Her gaze lingered critically on his cut lip.

“Not really,” said Barnaby. “I mean, yeah, I ride him during horse races. The stable’s staff named him Champion, but I’d started calling him Snowball long before finding that out, so I’ve just kept doing it. He seems to like it a lot better than ‘Champion’ -- ”

Indeed, Snowball the horse had trotted right over to Barnaby, pressing his nose affectionately into his cheek. The muscled man laughed as he clapped the horse gently on the flank.

“Hey, buddy!” he said brightly.

The horse immediately set about sniffing at Barnaby’s shirt and pockets, shoving up against him roughly. Barnaby only proceeded to laugh harder, even as Snowball nipped at his clothes.

“Hey, hey! Don’t worry, I didn’t forget...”

He fumbled with the bag on his back, reaching into it to fetch out an apple. Snowball snatched it up in his teeth and gobbled it up eagerly. Carewyn’s expression softened noticeably as she watched.

“He’s a beautiful horse,” she said admiringly.

Barnaby grinned. “Yeah, he is. He’s actually the youngest, you know -- barely five years old. But he’s a natural on the race course, if you can convince him to let you ride him...”

He cocked his head a bit to the left like a curious dog.

“I’m...kind of surprised he let you feed him,” he admitted sheepishly. “Snowball’s always been a little wary of strangers.”

“I noticed,” said Carewyn. “It took me some time to get close to him, when I found him grazing in the garden just outside the library.”

Barnaby blinked. “Outside the library?”

“Yes -- I suppose whoever was in the stable last must’ve left the door unlatched or something and he took the chance to escape.”

Barnaby considered this, before his lips upturned in a smile. “Yeah, suppose so...it’s a good thing you knew how to handle him!”

Carewyn shook her head modestly. “It wasn’t that hard. I had to calm down a lost Abraxan once before...and all any animal really needs is some kindness.”

Her eyes flickered back down to Barnaby’s cut lip again.

“...You’re bleeding,” she said after a moment.

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Barnaby said with a smile. “I was in a duel -- swords at first, but he got a good hit on me with his fist after I disarmed him. Don’t worry, though -- I got him pretty good too, even if I lost!”

Carewyn didn’t look the least bit reassured by that. Her lips came together in a thin line. Then, after what looked like a moment of thought, her jaw set determinedly and she plunged a hand into her ugly metal lunchbox. She fetched out a knitted napkin and immediately unscrewed her canteen, pouring some of the hot water onto the white cloth.

“Here.”

Barnaby blinked in surprise as the smaller girl immediately set about cleaning the injury.

“Oh -- ah -- you really don’t have to do that!” he said. “It doesn’t hurt...”

“It may not hurt, but you are hurt,” Carewyn shut him down very firmly. “And no one should have to walk around with blood on their face. It should at least be cleaned, if not properly bandaged.”

Barnaby watched her work, faintly stunned, even as she refused to look him in the eye. Instead she kept her eyes locked on her wet napkin cleaning his chin.

“What were you even doing dueling anyone in the first place?” she muttered, sounding very disapproving. “You could’ve been hurt far worse -- that other person could’ve been hurt far worse too...”

Barnaby suddenly felt incredibly sheepish. “Well, uh...we were just dueling, you know? He challenged me after class because one of our classmates was talking to me and he didn’t want me talking to her...reckon he was just trying to impress her or something, but I like dueling with swords, so I thought it’d be fun...”

“Fun?” Carewyn recurred sharply. “How is it fun to cause others pain? How is it fun, to gamble your life away in the name of showing off? How is it fun to play at war like it’s all just some silly little game?”

Her brows were knit tightly over her eyes as she withdrew her hand at last, tucking the soiled napkin away in her lunchbox.

“You could’ve both been seriously hurt,” she said, her voice becoming much quieter and more solemn.

Barnaby tilted his head curiously as he trailed a hand along Snowball’s flank.

“You really don’t like fighting, do you, Carewyn?”

Carewyn was startled when Barnaby called her by name, since she hadn’t given it formally to him. She recovered quickly, though.

“No, I don’t,” she said lowly.

“Why?”

Carewyn looked up at him. Rather than challenging, his voice and face came across as oddly innocent -- sincerely curious.

“Well...” she said slowly, as Barnaby slowly lowered himself down onto the step next to her, “back home...in the Country of Spades...things aren’t as stable as they are here.”

“Because your king was assassinated?” asked Barnaby. He’d heard his uncle Cecil talk about it once.

Carewyn folded her hands in her lap, her gaze falling down to them rather than up at Barnaby.

“Right. Since King Coby’s death, the Country of Spades has been run by our Ace, Patricia Rakepick. She leads the army of Spades. And there are those in the army that...well...are very interested in the prospect of war. Or at least, they’re interested in the industry of it -- the financial boom the production of weapons could provide, however temporary. They’re interested in lining their own pockets and chasing glory for themselves, rather than protecting the innocent or dealing with any of the consequences.”

Her blue eyes grew darker.

“Fighting and war aren’t a game there,” she said softly. “They’re a nightmare -- one many of us pray won’t come to life.”

With a soft murr, Snowball brought his nose up beside Carewyn’s cheek -- she gently stroked his mane to soothe him. Barnaby’s face grew sadder as his gaze fell down to his feet.

“It sounds like it must’ve been scary to live there,” he murmured.

Carewyn glanced up at him out the side of her eye. After a moment, she offered him a brave smile.

“Maybe right now...but it won’t always be. Once my family joins me here in the Kingdom of Hearts and I graduate, I plan to change things. Laws might be different from land to land, but there are ordinances that apply to all of Cinderhaven. Once I’ve learned everything I can, I want to help those people back home get to safety too...do it so legally that no one can make them worry about retaliation.”

Barnaby’s eyes brightened a bit hearing this. “Really? Wow -- that’s awesome!”

Carewyn couldn’t bite back a smile despite herself. The encouragement, however boyish and uninformed, was vindicating.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said firmly. “And well...I want to be happy -- my family to be happy. I don’t want us to look over our shoulders our whole lives, forever in fear. No one else should have to, either.”

Barnaby nodded. “Yeah! I mean, no, they shouldn’t.”

His face spread into a slightly wider, but softer smile.

“You know...it’s really wrong, what people say about you. You’re not snobby at all -- you’re nice, really nice. And smart, too.”

His green eyes sparkled as he took hold of her shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re here with us, and not back there. Now we can protect you! And if the Ace of Spades tries to take you or your family away, well...now you’re one of us! So if she wants you, she’ll have to contend with all of us first!”

Carewyn blinked, taken aback by the earnest smile on the other boy’s face. Her eyes fell down to his hand on her shoulder uncomfortably.

“Thank you,” she said with a weak smile. “But I don’t want anyone fighting for me -- I’m hardly worth that, and I don’t want anyone hurt on my account.”

Barnaby, however, looked unfazed. “Hey, captains never stand by and let innocent people get hurt! And I know I’ll be a captain one day -- everyone says so.”

He grinned at her. “So if anyone tries to take a swipe at you, it’ll be up to Future-Captain Barnaby Lee to protect you!”

Snowball gave a loud snort.

“Oh, yeah -- and Lieutenant Snowball, of course!” added Barnaby brightly.

Carewyn bit her lip to try to hold in a laugh. “Well, thank you, Captain. But I don’t intend to sit demurely to the side -- if you aim to protect me, I’m going to look after you too.”

She reached into her dress pocket and fetched out some black thread with a needle poked through the spool.

“To start with, I’m going to fix that rip in the back of your shirt. You should ice up that bruise on your shoulder too, when you get home...”

~*~

Several years later, Carewyn was appointed as the new Queen of Hearts. Not long after that, on Carewyn’s recommendation, Barnaby was appointed the new Ace of Hearts and leader of the Kingdom’s army. As Ace, Barnaby was vigilant and passionate in his protection of his King and Queen, and Diego and Carewyn in return expressed a lot of fondness and support for Barnaby. This didn’t mean that whenever Barnaby threw himself in front of Carewyn to protect her that she didn’t fuss over him like a mother duck every single time.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Carewyn murmured, her voice betraying some anxiety despite the stoicism of her face, “he could’ve hurt you -- ”

“But...but he was trying to threaten you, Carewyn ,” Barnaby said, his earnest, boyish face scrunched up in righteous anger. “He pulled a knife out of his belt -- I’m pretty sure he wanted to point it at your neck -- ”

“I’m not afraid of cowards like Shiratori,” Carewyn said coldly.

Barnaby smiled slightly. “I know, but...well, he’s gonna go crawling on back to the Queen of Spades, isn’t he? I don’t want Rakepick thinking that I’m going to let any of her people hurt the Queen of Hearts on my watch!”

“Nor do I,” said Diego with an approving nod. The King of Hearts glanced at his counterpart a bit more solemnly. “Do you think challenging the Queen of Spades’s courage in front of her ‘messenger’ might persuade her to come talk to us in person?”

“That was the goal,” conceded Carewyn, “but I’m not holding out much hope it’ll work. However proud of a person Rakepick is, she’s not hot-blooded. She’s far too calculating to just barrel in to protect her own pride.”

She sighed tiredly.

“I’ll have to continue my ‘negotiations’ through the written word,” she said begrudgingly. “If I’m able to coax Rakepick to meet with us on neutral ground, though, I’d like you to be our escort, Barnaby.”

Barnaby grinned, his hand resting over his chest as he bowed. “I’ll be right beside you, Majesties!”

[luchicm04]

lost in the forest - part 22

Masterlist

Summary: A formal meeting is called upon and Karen comes face to face with her guests' long lasting enemies.

Pairing: Senju Tobirama/Original Female Character

Tag: #lost in the forest fic

posted on ao3

Word Count: 3.1k

So, as some might've noticed, I changed the title of the fic because I realized that accent in the original title was a mistake. The author probably made an error and mistook the words 'pérdida' and 'perdida', meaning loss and lost, respectively.

Also, there are many errors like that during all the fic, so that's why I trying to be careful when translating. Otherwise, many sentences would make no sense and the story would lose its charm. I bet that's happened to more than one who has read a google-translated fic.

I remind you that English is just my second language, not my mother language. If there are any mistakes in the words, pls notify me so I can change it.

Overall warnings: canon-typical violence, adult content, time skips, angst, kidnapping

A demure white yukata with a delicate braided hairstyle that highlights her foreign features. The clothing is completely different from all the ones she has owned since she began participating in the affairs of this clan, simple and modest that radiates the main plan they are about to sign before the eyes of the nobles and lords of these lands. 

Karen feels out of place, but there she is, looking up at the exit door where she can notice a Hashirama talking to the insurance council giving warnings to eb careful, a common thing for fear that this is a trap. 

Nobody believes that it is that simple to formalize peace, which makes her sigh. 

“Be very careful.” Mikami has gone to see her off with a sleeping Matsuo. Her eyes are fearful. 

“I’ll be fine, I’ll just be a witness,” she says with the excitement of being out for the second time... she has a nasty taste in her mouth about it, but she thinks it’s too positive to think it will be different. Karen has faith in it. 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’ll go alone with Tobirama and Hashirama,” she reminds her friend in an attempt to divert her own fear. She gives a needed hug almost waking up the kid. “Remember that I’ll be back soon... for Matsuo-kun's future, right?” 

“Fine.” She looks doubtful but accepts. “Tobirama-sama,” she greets the austere young man who blinks slower than usual in their direction to accept the greeting with slight seconds of distance. 

“Are you ready?” Oblivious and firm, the leader’s brother comments, accepting the greeting while Mikami leaves with a slow stammering, more so because the child began to cry and there are many people around anxious about this income.  

“Yes,” she sighs, looking at her own clothes. Just like her, he is wearing something simple in white colors. “I guess transportation for me is too much to ask, right?” 

“We do not have time to waste... on your type of transportation,” he frowns with the ‘you’re stupid’ to which she doesn’t retaliate. 

“I was hoping you had some kind of carriage,” she sighs, disappointed with the type of response she gets. “Tamamo-san, Jenshi-san,” she greets two of the councilors who approach. 

“Greetings, young Karen-san... Tobirama-sama. Can we talk?” He asks her partner, who raises his eyebrow firmly. 

“You already talked to Hashirama, you do not have to talk to me,” he says, noticing that there is some tension in this regard. She supposes these are things that remain after several days of internal hostility for what peace meant. 

Letting the death of others be in vain, according to them. 

“Yes, but we would like to cover some topics with you,” Tamamo comments with an arch, looking at her. “If you would excuse us.” 

“Alright... I’ll go with Hashirama.” Karen is almost about to leave but her head is slightly stopped by a rough movement from her partner, with those firm red eyes that she doesn’t dare move. 

“As I told you, you already spoke with Hashirama,” he comments more seriously than normal looking at the two elderly people who look irritated. “The war will end with this. A step forward for the future.” 

“You know what we think about it.” Jenshi looks annoyed, but lets out some venom, not caring if she listens. She looks at Tobirama with slight doubt, without letting her go completely. What does he want her to do? It’s not like she can do anything. 

“The blood has already been spilled. It is not necessary for new generations to grow up with a war whose beginning we do not understand,” Tobirama replies in his own way what she already said before, which surprises her, and she does not avoid looking at him with her eyes slightly open. “Is that not right, Karen?” 

“War has always been this complicated, for those who do not forget, for those who lost a lot... leaving all that behind so that the future is promising is difficult,” the civilian states, doubtfully adding to this conversation in which she did not want to participate. She hates her position, but she clings to her spot despite the bad faces of the elders. “But that does not mean it is impossible,” she sighs slightly. “Trust Hashirama, with the fact that achieving this has been a success.” 

“A civilian would not understand,” one of the elders responds bitterly and confidently. 

“A civilian who knows about wars,” Tobirama adds without missing a beat. 

Karen remains in her place without knowing what else to add in this peak of severe wills. She gulps, staying put out of pride and foolishness. She has the need to run, which itches down her back... however, there she is, in the middle of three men who could easily kill her and throw away her body. 

Ironic. Where are her self-preservation instincts? …ah yes, she forgot about that for a long time. 

“I just hope this does not turn out worse, that those Uchihas do not bite our hand,” Jenshin spits arrogantly, as if that clan wasn’t more important than them... a different class. 

“They are shinobi, humans like all of us. I am sure they have also given in to this because they have lost a lot too, right? So, do not discredit that.” Karen is a little bitter about the way he said it. This is how internal conflicts start. “And I would like to make something clear... when the council begins to plan something behind the leader’s back, I assure you that it will be the certain fall of its power.” 

“A threat?” Tamamo frowns. 

“I am a civilian. I cannot threaten but indicate what I know from the experience of other nations,” Karen raises her gaze. “And it would be sad if the Senju clan became lost due to your own arrogance... due to your own pride in leaving things behind to work together for a better future, something that both Hashirama and Tobirama have worked so hard for. Do not make it ruin itself just because a few do not want to leave the past, to build a future without stopping learning from it.” 

The two old men look at each other and then turn around without any comment. Tobirama doesn’t say anything. 

“I think they both no longer want their grandchildren to propose to me,” she says sarcastically, without a hint of joy. 

“Did you want to marry them?” 

“It’s sarcasm,” she sighs as she rolls her eyes, because the joke is lost on its own. 

“...” The albino looks at her for a long time. 

“Ask away,” she insists before the silence between them. 

“Is what you said true?” 

“What part?” 

“About... the fall of nations?” 

“Somewhat,” she explains with a light sigh. “But I think it can be worked on. If it’s achieved, this will be an advance for the future.” 

“You sound so confident.” 

“I have seen you work. Although stupid and difficult to understand, you have a good head... you are born leaders.” 

“You do not fall behind.” 

“Even if I’m a civilian?” The woman mocks. 

“Even if you are,” he quickly accepts, without noticing the tone implied. Seriously, this man cannot take anything as a joke. 

“Alright, it’s time to go,” Hashirama interrupts them when he looks at them with amused doubt. “Well?” 

“Nothing is wrong,” his brother assures coldly. Karen feels she’s missing something and doubts seeing a strange gesture in the always shining man, that she falters when she’s swiftly carried as a princess. 

“Warn before!” She complains when she is accommodated. Karen frowns at the distant man who ignores her, not avoiding screaming from the excitement of the speed of this technique. She closes her eyes and clings to the yukata with a chaotic thought of doing something about the transportation system. 

This is not suitable for everyone. 

She has vertigo. 

──

The nobles are notable and now she sees why many doubt the invented title that Hashirama himself said when introducing her. The Fire Daimyo looks interested, with a pensative gesture. “Shinji-sama,” Karen says with neat etiquette reviewed by an ephemeral Mikami, who insisted on explaining to her in detail the type of environment that she would be surrounded with. 

These nobles, as witnesses of this important step between chinobi clans, are an important piece to formalize the pact. 

“Karen-san... strange name,” the man assures with a curious glow. 

“Yes, a curious name,” the woman accepts without missing a beat. The place is spacious, with light traditional monuments and well-kept gardens. As they explained to her, it is one of the many houses of the young lord of these lands, located at some neutral point of the two shinobi families. 

An agreement that they managed to obtain after so much push and pull. 

“Do you have a last name? ...or your father’s name.” 

“Huh?” 

“You know, the house you belong to.” 

“Ah,” she sees the point that she frankly missed, which makes her think about it. “Saucedo.” 

“Sarucedo?” 

“No, it is pronounced Saucedo,” she sighs at the error of her own town. The man blinks to laugh. 

“It is not from around here.” 

“No... it is not,” she states strangely. Karen had spent a long time without mentioning her last name, something that was lost among all the drama that has happened since her arrival. 

“It sounds important.” 

“Oh... well.” 

“Hashirama says that you are a prominent noble. I mean, to be so hand in hand and get both clans to take a step for this.” 

“He gave me a lot of credit.” 

“It is remarkable. Do not discredit your work out of modesty,” the man says with a flirtatious smile. “So, do not despite yourself.” 

“I do not, it is just that... well, many of the pacts and contacts were made by them, I only helped with some things.” 

“Even so,” the nobleman gives her a discreet gesture. His clothes up close look soft, expensive and quite decorated, differentiating themselves from them, who come in white clothes. “I am surprised that a noble like you, being a civilian, would still help them. A notable step for the Saucedo house.” 

“Uh...” She doesn’t know what to say because of the formality, it sounds different. “It is a step... that it had to do to achieve this... for its future.” 

“You have a point. However, many do not take the time to do this, you know?” 

“I imagine. You are all busy people.” 

“I am not just saying this because of the time. Girls do not do this,” he points out amusingly. “But that makes the flower more interesting, you know?” He takes a step forward. “One that I would like to add to my harem,” the man says direct and sure of what he wants, almost making her cough loudly, but she holds back for seconds and smiles with an uncertain shine. 

“I am sorry to hear that, but the Saucedo house is in disgrace. I do not think my father is looking for any kind of outside help at the moment, it is not customary,” she quickly invents, letting herself be carried away by her lie. 

“Are you sure? ...I can give a dowry for adding you.” 

“Not at all. We do not manage ourselves by dowry, but by the ability of the child.” 

“You are skilled. You would be a very good woman in my domains, and I assure you the Saucedo house will greatly improve its status by relating to the Shinji house, of the Fire Daimyo.” 

Finding herself in trouble, Karen sighs. “I apologize... I appreciate the gesture, but the truth is... this is more complicated than I want to explain.” 

“Oh, I see.” The man looks understanding. She doesn’t know what kind of story is drawn in his mind, as if he understood why a noblewoman stays with the shinobi. “Whatever you wish. If you accept and are not defiled by any of them,” he says with a slightly contemptuous tone towards the shinobis. “I would like you to consider me,” he adds smiling. 

Karen wants to leave already... she wants to hit this man, but thank all the gods, the missing clan arrived. 

The Uchihas are more imposing and wilder than the Senju family, she is sure of it when she sees their leader, whose mane is abnormally spiked and explosive, along with another young man with a dead look. Both look at each other to go where the Senju were waiting with their flag. 

The beginning of this formality. 

──

Peace is a difficult thing to reach, maintain and manage... which she can notice upon approaching as one of the not-so-neutral witnesses. Karen is glad to be away from the gaze of a terrible Daimyo, who continues to insist that her family must consider marrying her. 

Hashirama looks worried but has placed her next to him with a worried gesture. “Are you alright?” He questions in English noticing how Mr. Shinji now is with the leader of the Uchiha clan. 

“Yes,” she answers with a sigh. “I just finished tightening the rope on the figurative neck with your ‘noble’ lie... you know?” She huffs tired of socializing so much. She sees the man’s doubt, that is clearly reflected in his face. “Apparently, I am a noblewoman from the Saucedo house, that is in disgrace. Don’t ask why... the point is that the man thinks that adding me as a concubine will fix this.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah... but don’t worry, I invented other things about my family and why my father can’t talk to him,” she points out, proud of getting at least a little out of this mess. 

“I’m sorry I left you with him.” 

“You have better things to deal with,” the woman dismisses to look around. “He looks imposing... more than Mikami told me.” 

“Madara?” 

“Yes,” she accepts with a curious look. “Although, I think his hair is to be envied. Just like you, you have lots of it.” 

“Out of everything that happened and the exchange... you are interested in the hair?” Hashirama mocks slightly, less tense than at the start. 

“Of course, it’s remarkable,” she shrugs, not at all guilty. “I’m glad this turned out alright,” she says, looking at the man next to her. “That your dream, or at least a part of it, was achieved.” 

“If you hadn’t been here... I assure you it wouldn’t be possible,” he declares firmly, with an emotional sparkle in his eyes. 

“Not at all. I’m sure you’d manage to do it some way,” the woman declares and then looks at a bitter Tobirama, who doesn’t take his eyes off the other Uchiha. Both look noticeable hostile, but with no intention of throwing the first kunai. “They don’t get along, do they?” 

“They are natural enemies. Unlike Madara and I, they... it’s complicated.” 

“I see,” she sighs to focus again. “Can we go now?” 

Hashirama laughs and then looks at Madara, who stares at them from his place. The Daimyo looks proud for a few seconds, stating again how important this will be for his nation, and how it would trigger more clans to follow their example. 

Making Karen learn that it’s not just the Senjus and the Uchihas in this world. 

A noticeable and fearful thing for the simple civilian, who only lets herself go with the flow. 

Great... right? 

──

The celebration would take place in a week, which has turned the clan into chaos between arrangements, security and more. Karen sighs with a basket of vegetables that she just helped collect, because they are all taken aback in an unprecedented event. The Uchiha clan would come, as part of an important exchange that has everyone anxious. 

To the point that even she has been put to work. 

Tobirama watches her from his spot, organizing some little ones to clean an old room in the main house, catching up with her with a slight frown. “I told you not to participate.” 

“It’s not like I had asked for this,” she sighs, the basket that was too heavy for her taste being snatched away. She huffs embarrassingly for such a careless appearance, but maybe Granma Kaori forgot in her haste that she doesn’t have the same stamina as the other women. 

“You are weak.” 

“Thank you for reminding me...” She snorts indignantly, wanting to take the basket back. “Kaori-san needs them for the stew.” 

“You are weak and clumsy,” the man adds bitterly, rasing said instrument. “As a woman of the Saucedo house, it is not convenient for you.” 

“Are you mocking me?” Karen frowns at the impudence of using her last name in that tone. Tobirama ignores her to snort. 

“There are too many things to do to deal with another bothersome civilian woman.” 

“I am not a bother.” 

“You are.” 

“Are you seriously fighting with me instead of going to organize clan stuff?!” 

The man stops in that passageway that goes to the main house. The garden is a little behind them and there are people coming and going with different activities. “I do not want you to come to the covenant dinner.” 

“Huh?” 

“You do not have to participate. You are not from the clan.” 

“I’m sorry, but I think there is no negotiation in this. Hashirama said it was okay for me to go.” 

“You are a civilian.” 

“Yeah, and?” 

“There will be drinks.” 

“Alright, I see your point,” she bites bitterly, remembering that the last event didn’t go so well. She still feels the sting in her jaw and the anxiety of nightmares at night, which are calmed by knowing that she’s fine for now. “Couldn’t you say it nicer?” 

“You are stubborn.” 

“We both are,” she frowns indignantly to sigh and see that the basket would not be returned. “As part of the nobles, the Daimyo requested for me to be present at this event.” 

“No.” 

“Hashirama must have told you.” 

“It is not negotiable.” 

“Tobirama, I’m not asking,” she frowns. “It’s the peace that’s at stake and I know I’m a fundamental part of it, although I don’t want to witness this going out of context being used for something bad...” 

“...” 

“Mr. Shinji is sure that with me present, you will remember that it is a peace treaty,” she snorts, remembering that annoying favor that Daimyo asked of her. “At least he didn’t send one of his servants or notaries to confirm that this dinner will take place.” 

Tobirama looks upset. “You say Hashirama knew.” 

“Yes, he was present when he gave the warning, along with Madara-san.” 

“Mmmm...” He doesn’t look happy, and he disappears with her basket. She growls because at least she hopes that he remembers where that basket goes, and that Kaori doesn’t scold her for not arriving with said vegetables for the stew. She sighs, not understanding what exactly happened but she’s so tired of pretending she’s not, as she’s been working so hard since dawn. 

She needs a vacation, she’s sure of it. 

A/N: A chapter to say present!! …and that this is opening the way to a certain foundation. As you will see, our dear OC has just invented a whole affair and an important family in disgrace that will bring her many problems as a noblewoman, something that perhaps will explode on her later.

Poor girl.

Still, peace has finally arrived. What will happen next? …that’s a good question, since now they need to organize themselves as an allied clan. The first step is trust and this was demonstrated by the Senju in giving them instructions to go to their clan for dinner, something that was not well received by many of the councilors... but they complied due to the tremendous imposingness of their leader.

Hashirama was firm and fearsome when he instructed that there was no turning back, so they reluctantly accepted. She still doesn’t know the Uchihas that well, our Karen only had a first impression. What will happen?

We will find out soon.

Author-chan out! 

[tales-from-the-neath]

FicSwap - Info

OCs

Nyx Darkhelm - The Charming Noblefox

Addressed As: Si- er, Mad- er, yes.

Species: Golden anthropomorphic fox

Pronouns: They/Them

Profession: Campaigner, but they’re going for Silverer

Closest To: The Constables

Associated Stats: Persuasive

Associated Quirks: Steadfast, Magnanimous, Austere

Ambition: Heart's Desire

PoSI Status: A Person of Some Importance

Nyx is a Persuasive golden fox of mysterious and unknown gender, always sporting either their Parabola-Linen Suit or a black suit accented with red and trimmed with gold. Pinned to their lapel is an elegant golden rose, complimenting their fur and suit rather nicely.

Nyx, due to their aristocratic background, is formal and quite charming. Well-spoken and well-mannered, they are a delight to be acquainted with.

Alisha Scott - The Irritable Captain

Addressed As: Captain

Species: Human

Pronouns: She/Her

Profession: Zailor

Closest To: The Docks

Associated Stats: Dangerous

Associated Quirks: Heartless, Ruthless, Daring

Ambition: Nemesis

PoSI Status: Not quite a Person of Some Importance

Alisha is a curt, easily-annoyed woman with a background as a Captain in the Irish Navy. She isn’t exactly talkative, and when she does, prefers to keep things short and concise.

Alisha always has her Zailor’s Zuit, as well as her old headdress from her time in the Irish Navy. Always with her is some kind of weapon, which currently is an Ancient Hunting Rifle.

Mr Roses

Addressed As: Roses, Mr Roses

Species: Whatever the hell the Masters are

Pronouns: It/Its

Profession: Master of the Bazaar, jurisdiction over all things floral; works with Mr Mirrors

Closest To: None

Roses works very closely with Mirrors, as the land beyond the glass has always been something of interest for it.

Unfortunately, its English is not the best, with its sentences sometimes coming off as cut off or unfinished. However, it’s still learning (mainly from Pages, who probably isn’t the best teacher due to its “Pages-isms…”)!

Roses is known to be relatively neutral, enjoying the company of the other Masters (especially Chimes, whenever it’s around; or Pages, because of how much fun the two have together; or Mirrors, whenever it and Roses aren’t working) as well as Londoners.

Just like with the other Masters, you do not mention the Second City to it. While Wines would give you its worst vintage, and Iron would write your name in its book, Roses, well… Roses gives you a completely horrendous, wilting rose that lost all its colour. And don’t bother asking about the smell.

Roses’ area of trade focuses on all things floral, whenever it isn’t working with Mirrors on studying Parabola. Need a flower to give to someone, or to wear yourself? Roses is the Master to go to!

Roses tends to have a bit of a playful personality, causing small bits of mischief every once in a while. Other than that, it can be quite friendly! It’s a bit chatty, despite its broken English, and easy to get along with. Those who it considers its closest friends are gifted several red and gold roses to either be displayed in one’s home or worn on their outfit!

Personal Preferences

Will Accept

Writing about my OCs

Shipping my OCs

Really, just about anything that isn't outlined in my Do Not Send list

Do Not Send

NSFW

A whole lot of PoSI references (Nyx just got PoSI yesterday)

Ambition spoilers (especially HD or Nemesis)

Heavy horror (some is okay, but don't go overboard)

NOTE:

This will very likely be updated a lot as I think of more to add, so please come back to this post every now and then just to keep yourself updated!

[vespersposts]

Wildchild [13]

Hi lovelies, 🐾

hope you'll love the new chapter.

Daiki is a teasing mess, you are pretty angry and things are gonna mix up once again.

Cruel author V!

👀This is a regular chapter, so no warning ahead!

Thank your for your support !

💮Wildchild Masterlist 💮

💣PS: I apologize in advance for any grammatical and/or spelling mistakes, English is not my first language (bear with me!).

➿Genre: long story, contains angst, fluff and smut parts.

The swish of the ball passing through the net, after the rebound taken on the bounce, under the eyes of a beautiful girl dressed in red, cheering for him and devouring him with her eyes since he arrived at the basketball court and asked to play.

He is the king of the court, the coolest of the cool and he has  probably even scored a quickie, all in a scant hour.

So what's all the fuss about? 

He rolls up the sleeves of his dark T-shirt over his shoulders and starts going again, because only he knows how much bitterness he feels inside.

"Before I moved, I'm sure I was deeply in love with you....I am no longer the girl I used to be, and you are no longer the boy I liked so much" 

He clenches his jaw and shoots again, and again from the bench the girl in red exults, calling his name. He wishes you two would meet at that precise moment, so you would understand what it means to be attracted to someone.

Too bad you're at home playing stupid songs on the piano, missing the chance to see how wrong you are about everything.

Too bad you never cheered for him like that, but always sat on the bench, collecting tactics and data from Momoi, filling water bottles and having that maniac Wakamatsu look at your ass, just for the sake of laughing at his face when he pointed it out. 

You were his quest. 

He had to be the one to sit between you and Satsuki, waiting for the manager to hand him the towel so that you could put your small hand next to his and, under the guise of fetching him a drink, hide behind his broad back to whisper sinful appreciations of his body for which he would  so gladly reward you later.

The austere appearance and naughty mind, the self-control and the complete ruin, all your extremes had made him dependent on you, because he alone knew them.

"Boy, you're  in trouble!" he hears the playmaker of your team trio laugh, at the end of the game, as his fan approaches.

She smiles at you, talks in fits and starts, has already prepared a bottle of water and even a note and stuns you with her beautiful legs in view, her flattery and hands under her breasts.

He squeezes his eyes shut and wipes away the sweat with the hem of your t-shirt and when he feels, again, that predatory glance on his body, he has proof.

The girl in the red dress was not like you, no one was like you.

As if you were even remotely comparable, as if any girl who had been hanging around with him was even close to you.

"It’s flattering, but got a girl back home" he lies, letting himself be followed to the bench where he receives a towel and the  ringing phone.

He smiles, because for once, your childhood friend disturbs you with purpose.

"Satsuki, guess where I am?" he exclaims excitedly, too bad that on the other end of the line you're experiencing the worst possible version of Momoi. 

"I don't give a damn where you are, Daichan. I just need to understand why you're acting like a moron! She doesn't want to come to the fair because of you... Even Tetsu couldn't convince her! On Monday we leave for basketball camp and I swear, if you ruin my fireworks evening with Testu I'll break your head!” she tells in one breath.

"And what do you think I might do?" he asks her,  sipping water.

"Apologise and start acting like an adult!" she sighs and closes the call.

Not quite a declaration of love, but a reason powerful enough to get him on his way home.

During the shower at home, wearing clothes, walking the ten-minute walk between your homes, he wonders how he could possibly ring the doorbell less than twenty-four hours after he's done everything he could to make you understand that he considers you a burden, and not look like a jerk. 

He turned the corner and when he saw the big wooden door, he knew he couldn't. He passes a bicycle that someone has left near the wall covered by the creeper, straightens his back and gets distracted again. Through the open windows he hears you playing an uptempo song, maybe an anime opening, which you sing, cheerfully laughing at the words you don't know. He clutches the handle of the canvas bag Natsume gave him, a present , and listens closer, because there is something deeply wrong with that song. There is someone else singing it, laughing along with you. 

Someone of his same sex.

The same one who actually opens the door for him. 

An ordinary face, with the powerful body of a young man.

"And who on earth are you?" he asks, observing the astonished expression with which he stares at you.

"Aomine Daiki! The amazing Aomine Daiki! Are you for real? I don't fucking believe it! Hurry up!  There’s Aomine Daiki!" he is told, his name pronounced as a frantic spell.

If he weren't about to slap him, he'd even find it funny. 

But now, he has to deal with your puzzled expression and the urge to laugh passes him by immediately.

"He got jammed" he smiles at you, accepting your invitation to enter, closing the heavy door behind him. You look at him with slight suspicion, and then turn to the boy as if to apologise for the situation. Both bare feet, both with that gleam on your face left by an afternoon full of pleasurables pastimes. 

Wait, did he interrupt something he doesn't even dare to imagine?

“This is Kenta, probably your biggest fan in Japan. It would be nice if you could be kind for once” you tell him, stepping to the side of the boy who looks at you as if you were a fairy. Dressed in pale blue sundress, your back fully exposed by the neck tie, hair gathered in a bun, he swears he is feeling the magic too.

"Kenta knows I am joking" he said to the boy, holding out his hand. "Thank you for your support. Are you a player, too?" he asks, passing him to leave the canvas bag on the bench.

"Yes at school but..." stammers the other, still in disbelief to find himself in front of his idol.

"There is an open playground, right at the end of this block, near the post office. I hang out there a lot, during the holidays. Come whenever you want and show me something!" he offers, keeping his gaze fixed on the prize, and immediately moves to join you at the fridge, where you are retrieving something cool to drink.

"Isn't he a little young?" he taunts, trapping your pretty little body between his and the appliance, gently and secretly brushing your silky spine with a finger.

"Don't get all over me" you say quietly, returning to the table, not caring that you practically have to move him by weight.

He shrugs and sits down next to his new friend, who tells him about finding the shirt in the girl's room and how much of a surprise it was to learn of your friendship.

"What were the chances?" he points out, much more at ease.

"The real question is...Why do you have such easy access to her bedroom, boy?" He comments, just for the sake of provocation. 

A joke that amuses no one but him.

He sees Kenta glowing red, searching for an explanation that doesn't want to come out of his mouth, taking a sip of drink that goes wrong sideways, making him cough hard, awakening the hostess' anger.

"You really are an idiot!" he hears you snort. " His grandfather fixed my piano and he came by today to see if everything is alright. Between the two, I still don't understand why YOU are here!" you tell him in a sharp tone.

"Satsuki sent me. The fair” he quickly confesses, opening a hand to solicit an answer.

"No, the answer is no" you tell him, checking the boy to see if he is still breathing.

"She told me she will break my head if I don't convince you" he replies with a smirk.

"So be it, you won't miss your brain" you smile at him, setting your glass down.

"Natsume has sewn you a yukata for the occasion, you'll break her heart! “ he tempts you, sure you can't resist his mother.

"You put it on, with those beautiful legs you know how many compliments!" you laugh, shifting your attention back to the younger boy who, managing to breathe again, looks at you with a confused expression.

"You really are childish" he snorts, because he is losing his patience.

''If I were, I would tell you to take your girlfriend to the fair, but I'm just telling you I don't want to go, what's wrong with that? “ you explain amiably, with that half smile of someone who knows exactly what is getting into.

He has to bite his tongue not to answer, has to remember that there is that stranger sitting next to you, otherwise he would have already grabbed your soft thighs, lifted you onto his lap to press you against the wall, exposing your warm skin to the caress of his hands, allowing his fingers to reach your core, teasing you, making you beg to give you what you deserve until you both become one groaning being. 

At the mere thought he feels his senses awaken with an urgency that alarms him.

How can he already be so turned on?

“Are you gonna disappoint Satsuki and Tetsu?” he tried one more time.

“Are you gonna disappoint your Yuriko doll? You know she doesn’t like me ” you reply “See, there’s no way out, so it’s not my fault, this is how it must be !” your smile turns unbearably sweet.

Or maybe not.

"I can be your date, you if you want… I mean if it doesn't embarrass you " you hear a voice coming from behind "I've never been to a fair with a group. So… your friends and his girlfriend won't be sad" he finishes his reasoning, excited about the solution he has found.

He only has to look at the change in the expression on your face, to know that he got what he came for. 

How could you be so angry and yet so proud of him?

He trapped you with his goodwill, yet you can't bring yourself to tell him to mind his own bloody business, moved by that gesture, because you know you would have done the same at his age. 

That’s why you cannot bounce back.

How could you disappoint the expectations of your pet Kenta who all proudly wags his tail around you?

How can you refuse a little boy a midsummer's dream?

“Fine, then” he hears your voice become calm again as you look at him: a long, icy glaze that tells him you are starting the next game.

"I'll have Satsuki send you the details " he says, getting up from the bench in one smooth motion. "Kenta, thanks for your help, I'll see you tomorrow" he smiled, noticing how you didn't even move to walk you to the door.

Still, he feels your eyes on his shoulders as he raises a hand in greeting: he knows you’re mad , but you also know that tomorrow night he can make it up to you.

You have always enjoyed him when he was a bit wild.

After all, heated pacemaking sessions were your favourite for a reason.

[winterapocalypse]

Winter Apocalypse chapter 6

The Magic Sygils

Renly Baratheon loved everything about being in his seventh year at Winter Hogwarts, especially because he understood what many could not. Namely, that the final year had been created solely and exclusively for partying - the professors absolutely no longer cared about the performance of the students on their way out, after all, they had learned their magic, and all the younger students respected them as if they had achieved enlightenment or who knows what. But Renly knew that most of the seventh years were nobodies, some more and some less. So Renly, having come into possession of the Marauder's Map (which was rumoured to have been created by his older brother Robert and the austere, wand-wielding, magic-fighting professor Ned Stark when they were still young and particularly stupid) had decided to deal with his senior year as he saw fit, i.e. drinking too much butterbeer and skipping as many classes as possible (Venom's note: bravo Renly xD you're a good boy!). Of course, he'd been doing this since about the fourth year, but at least now that he knew the location of every single person at Winter Hogwarts, it was much easier for him to avoid his poor loser brother Stannis, who as soon as he finished his Defence Against the Dark Arts class would go looking for him halfway around the castle. Renly was convinced he had a radar of some kind to detect when he was skipping class.

So that morning Renly got up calmly, probably at least half an hour late, stood in front of the mirror for an endless amount of time before deciding that her long black hair absolutely needed to be put up in an elegant braid that day and finally had breakfast with a juicy peach in the Slytherin common room, and then decided to go and look for Loras Tyrell. He would probably have to get him out of some class with an excuse. He shrugged and set off, wandering serenely through the corridors.

What he had not expected, however, was to be confronted by two figures once he had exited his dormitory - he recognised them both immediately.

"Dearest Chris!" chirped Renly with a bewitching smile. "Have you and your special friend decided to give up classes?"

"What? No, I would never do that," replied the young blond with the mighty physique. His short Sothoryosian friend seemed to find this amusing, letting out a giggle that was stopped by a knowing look from the other.

"Oh, well, that's a shame." Renly placed a hand on his shoulder, definitely not an excuse to feel up his toned physique. Chris looked at her vaguely indignant and shifted it with his own. "I was just going to find Loras…maybe you fancy a butterbeer too."

"Yes I want a butterbeer, homes!" the long-haired boy looked extremely enthusiastic at the idea. Renly shot him a wink.

"Eddie, focus on what we were doing at least for once…" sighed the young and charming - at least in Renly's eyes - Chris DeBenedetti, adjusting the scarf in Hufflepgjkds colours around his neck. How a hufflekjgsjds and a Slytherin like Eddie Guerrero were such good friends Renly had never explained.

"Oh, were you doing something…secret?" Renly was beginning to be completely intrigued by the matter. Loras might as well had been waiting after all.

"We were looking for the loser professor of defence against the dark arts." Eddie shrugged and the other gave him an incredulous look.

"It was supposed to be a secret!" muttered Chris exasperatedly, covering his face with one hand. And what a big, mighty hand, Renly thought.

"You mean my brother? Who in their right mind would want to meet my brother on purpose?" asked Renly amused.

'Oh, we were stalking him. But we're not that good, ese. He was talking to that chick in red earlier…not sure what the hell she does for a living or here at Winter Hogwarts. Anyway, they were talking about something juicy, I tell ya." Eddie nodded convinced of his own words, and Renly decided he had found what to do with his day.

"If only I had a map that could tell us where they went…" Renly shrugged off the braid falling over his shoulder haughtily, and immediately saw the Slytherin's eyes glow with a mischievous light.

Twenty minutes later they were all three hiding behind a wall on the third floor - a forbidden place where if they were found they would more or less be expelled before they could say "quidditch". But this mattered little to Renly, his school career had already been made. A little further on, his loser brother Stannis was arguing with the woman in red - an almost mystical figure at Winter Hogwarts, because more or less no one really understood who she was and what her role in the school was.

"That horse was crucial. There's no way they could have failed like that. It was the last of the seals. Do you know what that means? Apocalypse! Or maybe worse!" thundered Stannis altered.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

[dwjfansitearchive]

INVENTING THE MIDDLE AGES

This is a talk originally given at a conference on the middle ages, held at Nottingham University in 1997.

 (This is about influences.)

When I was asked to speak at this conference I wondered if there was anything I had to say at all. I was rather off the whole idea of the Middle Ages, since I had recently finished writing a thing called The Tough Guide to Fantasyland which pokes fun at the large number of adult fantasies set in what the writers fondly believe to be a medieval landscape. That is to say, all towns have the houses leaning out over the pavements so that the occupants can empty chamber pots on those below and contain lots of winding alleys heaped with refuse; in the countryside there is subsistence farming, if that . . .

Farming obviously takes place, since produce appears in the MARKETS and the tour will sometimes take you past cultivated fields. But most fields will have been trampled or burnt by ARMIES, or else parched by magical drought. Dairy farming seems very rare. This probably accounts for the extreme dullness of most meals in Fantasyland (see STEW, FOOD, STEW, SCURVY, STEW, etc.).

Hovels are small squalid dwellings, either in a VILLAGE or occasionally up a MOUNTAIN, and probably most resemble huts. The people who live in hovels are evidently rather lazy and not very good with their hands, since in no cases have any repairs ever been done to these buildings (tumbledown, rotting thatch, etc.) and there is no such thing as a clean Hovel. Indoors, the occupants eke out a wretched existence, which you can see they would, given the draughts, smoke and general lack of house-cleaning. This need not alarm you. The Tour will not require you to enter a Hovel that is inhabited. If you enter one at all, it will be long-deserted and there will be sanitary arrangements out the back.

. . . and merchants tend to be rushing about the place with nameless merchandise in bales. And when the story gets to a castle, you will always find the occupants chewing chicken drumsticks and then throwing the bones to the dogs.

My spleen was aroused about this kind of thing while I was helping a friend compile an encyclopedia of fantasy. We were going through the possible entries alphabetically, and it was at the point when we came to the entry on Nunnery and both chorused ‘Nunneries are for sacking’ that I said ‘You know these books are all so much the same that I could write the guidebook for this country!’ after which I thought Why not? and did so. Here is NUNNERY:

Nunneries. The Rule is that any Nunnery you approach, particularly if you are in dire need of rest, Healing or provisions, will prove to have been recently sacked. You will find the place a smoking ruin littered with corpses. You will be shocked and wonder who could have done this thing. Your natural curiosity will shortly be satisfied, because there is a further Rule that there will be one survivor, either a very young NOVICE or a very old nun, who will give you a graphic account of the raping and burning and the names of the perpetrators. If old she will then die, thus saving you from having to take her along and feed her from your dwindling provisions; if a Novice, she will either die likewise or prove to be not as nunnish as you first thought, in which case you may be glad to have her along.

Monasteries. Thick stone buildings on a steep hill. They are full of passages, cloisters and tiny cells, all with no HEATING, and inhabited by MONKS, mostly elderly and austere, some rather addled intheir wits. At the Monastery’s head will be an Abbot, who is often portly and sly. These establishments have three uses: 1 For Scrolls … 2 For sanctuary and rest … 3 For sacking …

Scrolls are important sources of information about either HISTORY or MAGIC, and are only to be found jealously guarded in a MONASTERY or TEMPLE. You will usually have to steal your copy. Against this inconvenience is the highly useful fact that the Information in the Scroll will be wholly correct. There is, for some reason, no such thing as a lying, mistaken or inaccurate Scroll.

It is all very historical, in that all the characters wear cloaks and go round waving swords, and the only transport is horses. These effusions are mostly written by people in California – which probably accounts for the fact that all the inhabitants of the barbarian North go around in the snow wearing nothing but a fur loincloth – and the writers are quite frank about their attitude to historical knowledge.

History is generally patchy and unreliable. Any real information about past events in either lost or contained in a SCROLL jealously guarded in a MONASTERY or TEMPLE. All that can be ascertained with any certainty is: 1 That there once was an Empire … 2 That there was once a Wizards’ War … See LEGENDS, as more reliable sources of information.

After all what does any of this matter when the main point of the book – or books: they are nearly always trilogies – is a quest to conquer the Dark Lord and Save the World?

You can see that this left me with a jaundiced view. These writers are inventing the middle ages all right, I thought, but this is very much How Not To Do It. But then I thought, Oh come on! There is a positive side to the matter or I wouldn’t have got so irritated. What I, personally, think of as the Middle Ages has to have been an abiding influence on me – I know that, and it’s not simply because I happen to be married to a medievalist. For instance, in the book I’m currently writing I called two of the characters – quite spontaneously – Kit and Callette. And it was only alter a while that I thought ‘Those names are familiar from somewhere else,’ and realised they were the names of Will’s wife and daughter in Piers Plowman. My two characters happen to be griffins, which rather hid the connection from me at first. But the influence is hard to pin down for one very good reason. I write mainly for children.

Children as a group have almost no sense of history at all. They are by their nature the most forward-looking section of the population. They are intent on growing up. Most of them can’t wait to be adult. For this reason, they are not going to be very interested in books that are not about here and now and what is to come. When I first started writing for children, I made a conscious decision to write mostly about the present day (or a semblance of the present day set in an alternative world) and not to go out of my way to inculcate a sense of history that isn’t there.

Now a lot of children’s writers do write historical novels, and a lot more introduce people out of the past in the manner of Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill. I don’t find this easy to do. The one time I tried to write a historical novel – about Tenth Century Iceland – I did quite a lot of research for it, until I came hard up against a fact I just couldn’t get my mind round: there were no trees in Iceland at that time. I found I just could not conceive of a landscape wholly without trees. And I couldn’t write that book – or any other with a proper historical setting. Those absent trees caused me to realise that there was always going to be something I couldn’t get my mind round, whatever period I might choose. I do actually quite envy people who don’t have this problem, but as far as I am concerned it is a complete block. Mostly it is that I suspect that my thoughts have been trained to run in certain grooves, according to the Twentieth Century, and the thoughts of people living at different times in the past would have been trained to run in quite other grooves. I wouldn’t be able to get my mind round their minds, if you see what I mean.

I have two other powerful reasons for not writing historically. First, as a child I hated overt didacticism in books. We had a long shelf of books that tried to teach you something under the disguise of a story, and we labelled that shelf Goddy Books. My own children felt just the same. Second, one of my sons at about 12 developed a total passion for Kipling’s Kim, which he read over and over again. I was under the impression that, to him, this book was a historical novel recreating an empire and an India which had disappeared long before he was born. Not a bit of it. When he was 15, he confessed that he had thought Kim was a fantasy set in an alternative world and that Kipling had made all the India stuff up. So much, I thought, for inculcating a sense of history. It’s possible that many children regard historical novels as this kind of fantasy. In which they are not exactly wrong.

All the same, I have a strong sense that everything I do write is quite deeply influenced by what I perceive as the Middle Ages. I am grateful for having been asked to speak here. It has made me dig about and find out just what that influence is. It starts with two things dragged from memory.

First, when I was eight, I started reading Malory in the edition my mother had used as an undergraduate – my parents did not really believe in books specially for children, so the language was a bit of a struggle, and the small print, but I read with enormous enthusiasm. Things like ‘How Sir Launcelot slew three Giants and set a Castle Free’ really turned me on. I had got to the middle of Tristram and Isolt, when my mother told me sternly that I must remember that knights didn’t really wear armour in King Arthur’s day. This totally bewildered me. ‘How did they manage then, when they were fighting?’ I wondered, and pondered deeply. My ponderings led me to locate that sense that everyone acquires, that there is a ‘story-time’ which has nothing to do with history. ‘Story-time’ is when things bizarre or adventurous or enchanted can happen, as in the ‘Once upon a time’ of fairy stories. So of course the knights could wear armour: they were in this ‘story-time’ and it didn’t matter. (I was slightly irritated, as an adult, when I read T. H. White’s Sword in the Stone and found him painstakingly and patronizingly describing this ‘story-time’. It is something everyone knows about. I just happened to know it consciously rather early on).

Second, about four years alter that, my father suddenly took it into his head to give his daughters an educational trip to the National Gallery – he did this sort of thing at arbitrary intervals and usually managed to arrive so late that wherever-it-was was shut for the day. On this occasion, his timing was off and the National Gallery was actually still open, and we went round. One picture caught my fancy. It was of a little bishop in pink robes appearing over and over again in a rocky landscape. He was obviously being in several places at once, the way saints and other supernaturally gifted folk can be. I was fascinated, because it was so clearly a ‘story-time’ picture. My father, looking over my shoulder, explained that the bishop was wearing the wrong clothes. He was dressed as a medieval bishop would be at the time of the painter, whereas in his real lifetime he would be wearing a toga. My father then led me in front of a huge painting of the martyrdom of St Sebastian and delivered a lecture on the meaning of the word ‘anacronism’. I stared at the archer bending down in the foreground of the painting – who, my father stated, should really have been dressed as a Roman legionary – and I stared at the points stretching so tightly across his linen drawers between his hose and whatever held the hose up, and I couldn’t help thinking How uncomfortable this particular medieval fashion must have been – he’d have been better off in a Roman tunic. But it was interesting. It was quite obvious that in the Middle Ages (whenever that far-off misty time was) people conceived of this ‘story-time’ as being contemporary with their own. That made me very wistful at the time because I couldn’t imagine my favourite knight, Sir Gawain, in a suit or tweeds however hard I strained to see it.

This is actually a very important idea. If you are going to write for a non-historical, forward-looking audience, you ideally need the ‘story-time’ to be here and now. I took this idea up with enthusiasm. It is why most of what I write is set in this modern age whenever possible. For instance, writing an early book called Eight Days of Luke, in which the Norse gods appear as modern men and woman and Slepnir – Woden’s horse – as a large white car chauffeured by a Valkyrie, I was quite consciously imitating what I took to be a medieval treatment of ‘story-time’.

Anyway, in due course I went up to Oxford and read English, where a large part of the course concerned itself with what was called Middle English – and it is a very odd thing that there were quite a few women who were there at the same time as me – none of whom I met – who all went on to write successfully for children afterwards. I have never known what quite inspired them all, but with me I know it was suddenly being confronted with the way writers from the Middle Ages handled narratives. They were all so different, that was the amazing thing, and all so good at it.

Foremost, of course, was the highly sophisticated Chaucer. In the Canterbury Tales you could watch Chaucer show his sophistication by adjusting his style and manner according to who was telling what kind of story. He seems to play with narrative in a way that can be perfectly wicked at times (and I know I thought recently, Well, if Chaucer can send up tail-rhyme romance in Sir Thopas, no doubt out of the same sort of irritation I feel at Californian writers of fantasy, then I can do the same in The Tough Guide).But with Chaucer, apart from Sir Thopas, each of his stories is a serious exercise in a certain type of narrative – he sets boundaries and shows what can be done within them (and without realising it at the time, I joyfully picked up on this notion. There are fairly severe boundaries set if you write for children – and I don’t mean tedious things like political correctness, which varies from decade to decade, I mean things like not using language that is too complicated and not using those kind of situations in which two people of opposite sexes are sparring for openings or dominance, because most children find both these things puzzling. And you want to give your readers the benefit of your own knowledge of the world without being overtly didactic, as I said. So you see what you can do inside these limits, and usually also, sadly, within certain limits of political correctness – as Chaucer himself says, making a virtue of necessity. And of course you can do a very great deal. It’s a challenge). Chaucer himself only seems to have scratched the surface of what might be done – he didn’t finish the exercise of the Canterbury Tales. I think among what he did do, I admire most his ability to tell a story which is well known – as in Troilus – or a story in which it is quite clear what is coming – as in The Reeve’s Tale – and still get you to respond as if you had no idea what was coming next. That is something I have tried to do too, and I know the difficulties. But Chaucer is such a deft and elastic writer, so experimental as well as serious, that I at least came away with the feeling that because he so obviously made narrative an exercise of skills, no one was ever quite comfortable telling a straight story again. It wasn’t quite respectable to write a naive narrative like Malory did later – Malory wasn’t respectable and probably didn’t care: he just crashed ahead telling his story in and-and-and chunks, building brick by brick, telling the relevant and irrelevant things in almost exactly the same tone of voice, so that the overall shape was not apparent until he got to the end. But you feel everybody else found they couldn’t do that: they had to make that kind of story at least an allegory, or put in a lot of philosophy. Or something more refined.

Now the beauty of this situation is that it frees up the straight story to be devoted to children. Unfortunately, it also frees it for writers from California to get to work with their quests and Dark Lords – there’s a reverse side to everything. I know I did pounce on this freeing up: I can tell a story because no one else wants to! Oh good.

But then, by complete contrast, I came up against Langland, who is doing something entirely different and wholly serious and not exactly straight narrative at all. Langland haunts me because he is such a strange mixture of deep thinking and jamming down what happens to be in his head and hoping, then thinking, thinking, taking in another swatch of ideas and thinking again. His work reminds me of the tide coming in – you know how one wave comes frilling up and erases a few footprints in the sand, and then goes back, and the next comes in over the top of it and gets a bit further, until the sea is right up where the deep footprints and the ice-cream papers are. Langland seems to me quite as inexorable, and he covers pretty well everything in his way. And at the end of Piers Plowman the tide goes out again. Damn! Still haven’t quite got to the sea wall. Have to go out and look for Piers again. What has always impressed me here is what you can achieve if you get behind your narrative (or as-it-were narrative) and really push – the ideas start to run about over the top of it interlaced like the foam on the top of waves. The first thing Langland taught me is that ideas are just as important as a story – I hadn’t grasped that before then. The next thing was slightly more accidental – that is the way what you are saying and how you are saying it are very closely linked. I don’t know if anyone here has ever tried to write Langland’s kind of alliterative verse. I had a go once or twice. It’s not easy. You find, unless you are violently inventive about it, that the form forces you to go back and repeat the latest half-line at the beginning of the next line, only in different terms. Langland is good enough at it that he doesn’t do this much, but the impulse is there and contributes to the overlapping, wave after wave, tide-coming-in nature of the narrative.

Learning a little from this, I discovered that I always had to let the book I was writing find its own style. Only in that way can you be sure that you are doing the right thing by your subject matter. It’s a strange feeling – as if the book has a life of its own.

Of all the writers I discovered as a student, Langland gets under my skin most – witness the way I called my two griffins Kit and Callette. A long time ago, I wrote a novel that was based on Piers Plowman. Oh dear. Publishers to a man and woman sent it back to me on the grounds that the main character was not present at the most important parts of the action. Quite true. Probably only Langland could get away with something like that. Much later, I wrote another book called Fire and Hemlock,in which I tried not to make that mistake and in which I got behind the narrative and pushed, Langland fashion. Langland lies behind that particular book in a way I find it hard to define, even more than the ballad of Tam Lin or Eliot’s Four Quartets, which are present in the foreground (possibly rather as the Bible and prayerbook were to Langland – or so I hope). I think it is in the movement of the narrative that his influence lies, but I am not sure. It is orchestrated in a tidelike advance and retreat, full of partial repetitions, where some things acquire a new meaning at each advance. Or so I hope.

On the other hand, when I think about learning to orchestrate a narrative, particularly the more ordinary, clipping style of narrative, I realise that I learnt that from the Gawain poet. He has it down absolutely in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He knows when to pass quickly over time, and when to dwell on episodes – that is, he knows when to just tell you things were so and when to make you feel them so in your gut – and he knows what action to dwell on, and what colours, noises, details to highlight (or show in closeup) – when to give direct speech, when indirect – and, even more important, how to balance the mixture out, so that the story is never overweighted in the wrong place. This is all the organizational stuff that Jane Austen had laboriously to teach herself when she rewrote Pride and Prejudice using an almanack. The Gawain poet has got it all. I think I use him as a sort of paradigm narrator all the time. Furthermore, he backs up my discovery in the National Gallery by having his ‘story-time’ in his own present time really. His magical characters live in an up-to-date modern castle, with all the latest architectural features. I think my Chrestomanci books owe quite a lot to this.

I’ll pass over Henrysson. I never got on with him. But there is one other work from within the time I think of as the Middle Ages, which almost did more than teach me – it came as revelation – and that is Sir Orfeo.This is a work that, alas, lies behind quite a lot of the Californian quest stories, and any PreRaphaelitism (which is still alive too and living in California, where ‘writers make romantic stories about elves and mist and dim blowings and things) and it is of course a romantic poem. I never could work out whether the person or persons who wrote it knew what they were doing or not. At any rate, the reason I found it such a revelation was that it was the story of Orpheus and Euridice – which is the kind of story you might call ‘hard myth’ (on an analogy with ‘hard science fiction’, meaning the crystal clear, nitty gritty, no nonsense kind) which has been transmogrified into as it were ‘soft myth’ as a story of fairyland and enchantment. Orpheus goes to Hades. Sir Orpheo has to negotiate with something hazier, possibly with wider powers than a mere god of the dead –something that can grab you at midday if you sleep under a certain kind of tree. Until I read this poem, I hadn’t realised that this sort of translation from one type of story to another was possible. Once I did realise, I did some furious thinking, lasting for about ten years, and came up with the discovery that translating need not apply only to types of story. You can make other kinds of translation as well, all equally useful and all equally telling. The other kinds I began to use straight away and almost habitually. Are there minorities persecuted for physical facts they can’t help? Then translate those minorities into witches who develop at puberty powers they can’t suppress and get burnt for it. Or I wanted to write about children of divorced parents whose mother remarries. Translate the problems these children have into magical or alchemical misadventures. Or a boy struggling into adolescence in the face of an unkind family? Have the boy’s feelings appear in the shape of the Norse gods. But in all these instances you must not cheat. You must have the magical occurrences strongly effective in their own terms – they must leave their mark on the everyday life of the characters in the story – just as Sir Orfeo hangs together consistently in terms of faerie rather than Hades.

Oddly enough, it took me a while to learn to translate an actual story. I suppose I began doing it with Charmed Life,which is really what they call a Gothic Romance reversed – young heroine defenceless in frowning Cornish castle ruled by a flinty-hearted macho lord – only in this case the young heroine is a sort of fifth column for an attack on the castle and most people are defenceless before her. By then I was up and running and did it again with Howl’s Moving Castle – fairy story heroine goes bravely to castle to rescue prince under enchantment except that in this case they rescue one another, quarrelling fiercely while they do. And in Hexwood I had real medievalising fun translating chunks of Arthurian stories into a story about a super computer.

Actually, I find I have abashed myself considerably by comparing the things I do with these masterpieces out of the past. What I am really trying to describe is the things I found in the Middle Ages and what they meant to me. I think the Middle Ages invented me, rather than the other way round. And I’d like to conclude with telling you about the lady in Australia. I was in Sydney giving a talk and the lady came up to me saying she was writing a study of a book of mine called The Magicians of Caprona. I enjoyed writing that particular book. I got the name Caprona from Dante (another borrowing from the Middle Ages) and, like Chaucer and Shakespeare after him, I’d cheerfully borrowed the story of Romeo and Juliet and put it in there. What the lady said to me was, ‘Pardon me, is your intertextuality intentional?’ I said ‘You what?’ And she said, ‘Did you know that you’ve put the story of Romeo and Juliet into your book?’ ‘Oh that,’ I said. ‘Yes of course.’ It seemed extraordinary to me that anyone could think that one could write anything without being heavily indebted to things that had gone before – and not know it. What I want to say is, yes, I do know really where I’m getting it from and it is intentional and very grateful I am too. I must thank the organisers of the conference for making me dig about and find all this out.

Copyright Diana Wynne Jones

(on web archive)

[straycatboogie]

2022/07/13 English

Today was a day off. This morning, I talked with a friend online by Discord. I talked about the group home I live in, the election we experienced, the English conversation class I attend, and the job I'm keeping on doing. It was a pleasant time, but I could say nothing about the things I would want to do in my dreams. The dreams I want to make real... I don't have any future visions as clear things. Once I had them as wishing to be a bestseller writer. If it was too big, then I would like to be a great writer... but now, I lost such a great purpose. I might give up, or I might be satisfied with my current state.

As I wrote on Facebook, I have to say that "I' have lost my dreams completely" and that's all. Indeed, I have various things to do more. I want to keep on using job coaches at my workplace. I also want to keep on writing this journal. I want to enjoy the love too. But what should be the dreams? All I want to do from the bottom of my mind are "I want many readers" and "I want various reactions to my writings". But they have been already realized now. That's enough... maybe I know how should be the state 'satisfaction'. As I wrote once, I think that this is good like the characters in Yasujiro Ozu's movies. I remember they say "If we wished, we could be greedy more and more". Probably I am tired of having desires or dreams.

In the afternoon I enjoyed chatting with a Muslim woman who lives in America. She said that I am beautiful. I'm not such a great and clean person, as I always write. I have a certain desire for love... but I don't show the nasty essences in me because it is uncool. That's my style. We talked about literature. I recommended her one of my beloved novels, Paul Auster's "Moon Palace". She recommended Delia Owens's "Where The Crawdads Sing". I googled about it and found that it had been translated into Japanese and praised highly. I should read it as soon as possible.

She told me that Daniel Auster, the son of Paul Auster, had passed away because of an overdose of heroin. He must be still young... So, as an addicted person, I thought about what I could write about this death. I can never make any fiction so I should try to confess my shameful life based on my past and some of the Japanese traditional novels. I thought I found what I should do 'now'. Time won't wait. I write something even if I have not tried or learned enough. That's my nature. I will read Ocean Vuong's or Yiyun Li's novels.

[detkhamani]

Final Confessional

Mentions (by name): Luna, Sebastián, Xavier, Thomas, Astrid, Emmie, Riley, Juni & Chris Notes: Khamani’s last confessional of the season

“Hi Khamani,” the producer started as he sat down, securing the tiny mic to his shirt.

Khamani nodded ‘hello’ back and waited for the prompted questions to start.

“Being one of our original Ship-Mates, you’ve had an interesting time while you’ve been here.”

“You think so?” Khamani asked neutrally.

The producer shrugged, “Wouldn’t you? You started out with a quiet, austere demeanor. You made some friendships, or acquaintances with Thomas and Xavier. It seemed like you were interested in Astrid at first but then you set your sights on Luna.”

“And that makes for an interesting time here?” he asked.

The producer was thinly veiling her growing irritation as she replied, “Not on face value but it’s clear by now that your...courting methods or lack thereof rubbed some people the wrong way.”

Khamani rolled his eyes, “Yeah. That horse has been beaten to death, as I’m sure is also clear by now.”

“So does that mean Luna’s forgiven you for how things went after Emmie told her about your true intentions?”

This time, Khamani deadpanned. “I know you guys already know the answer to this. Between Riley blindsiding me with him wanting answers about what happened, and then Emmie and me recently talking about it, you guys had cameras and mics for both of those discussions. And even if you didn’t, do you really think Luna and I would be very openly dating if she hadn’t forgiven me?”

The producer hesitated and then said, “Fair enough. Where do things stand between you and Astrid?”

“Maybe we’re friends. I don’t really go around asking people if I’m friends with them or not, I guess. Either way, she’s a great person who seems like she’s found a good thing with Cisco and I wish her nothing but the best.”

“That’s sweet,” the producer replied. “And what about your other friendships? If I remember correctly, you and Thomas hit it off fast, building the shelters together. And you started a friendship with Xavier and Juni as well. And there’s you and Sebastián.”

“Sebastián and I were friends long before either of us came here. And I’d like to think that Thomas, Xavier and I will, at the very least, stay in touch after we’re all off this island. Probably Juni too, and I’d had a good couple of talks with Chris. I hope the two of them are able to relax and enjoy getting ready for their baby.”

“What kind of a future are you hoping for with Luna?”

Khamani paused for just a moment, a small smile appearing on his face as he steadied his gaze past the camera to the producer, “A good one. I know I’m lucky to be with her. I want our future to be one that’s loving, supportive and lasting.”

“Do you love her?”

Without hesitating, Khamani said, “Yeah. I do love Luna.”

The producer smiled and practically cooed at that but spoke up, “Okay, last question: what would you say are your highs and lows of being on Ship-Wrecked?”

“Easy enough,” Khamani replied. “Highs? My relationship with Luna, the friendships I made on the island. The lows are the obvious ones we’ve already talked about, plus the low hygiene and food provisions. I like to go camping but that’s usually for a few days--a week, tops. The months of this was something else entirely.”

[estherdedlock]

Just some fun Brideshead/Secret History side-by-sides:

Brideshead: His room was filled with a strange jumble of objects---a harmonium in a gothic case, an elephant’s-foot waste-paper basket, a dome of wax fruit, two disproportionately large Sèvres vases, framed drawings by Daumier...”

Secret History: ...everywhere I looked was some fresh oddity: an old stereopticon (the palmy avenues of a ghostly Nice, receding in the sepia distance); arrowheads in a dusty glass case; a staghorn fern; a bird’s skeleton.

Brideshead: When I spoke he turned a face which showed no ravages of the evening before, but was fresh and sullen as a disappointed child’s.

Secret History: He was still drunk, but his night of boozing had done more damage to his clothes than to anything else; his face was fresh and flushed as a child’s.

There are actually several descriptions of Charles in his dissipation that recall not just Sebastian Flyte, but specifically, Anthony Andrews’ Sebastian Flyte as seen in the British miniseries.

You know, so many lit critics call out Donna Tartt’s highbrow influences (Waugh, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Dostoyevsky), but no one ever highlights how much pop culture is reflected in her work, pop culture of the early 1980s, in particular. The Brideshead Revisited miniseries was a massively popular hit when it aired in the US in early 1982, and was probably many Americans’ first introduction to Evelyn Waugh. The journalist Lili Anolik, who profiled Bennington in the 1980s for Esquire, has said that the faux-Oxonians of the Bennington campus were intentionally mimicking the style of the TV series.

I’ve talked about the similarities between the Macaulay twins and V.C. Andrews’ incestuous siblings from the Flowers in the Attic saga; I’m still convinced that Tartt was devouring those paperback potboilers in high school just like everyone else back then. And there’s so much Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick in her work: All that Jazz Age ghostliness of “long-dead celebrants from some forgotten garden party” owes more to The Shining (book and movie) than The Great Gatsby. (I also see a lot of Stephen King’s novella, The Body--which was adapted into the movie Stand By Me--in Tartt’s The Little Friend).

I don’t mean any of this as a criticism. It makes perfect sense that the pop culture of the day would find its way into her writing, but it’s funny how no one ever seems to call it out. I think critics love to idealize Donna Tartt as very austere and esoteric, so far above pop culture that she’s no more aware of it than Henry Winter was aware of the moon landing. But that’s bosh: A good writer uses everything that comes her way, whether it’s been sitting on a library shelf for hundreds of years or it was just racked at the supermarket checkout counter.

[kashimos-hajime]

twenty questions (7/8) | r.b.

summary: No, he refuses to lose someone else. Not again, not you. Never fucking you. Or, after four years, Reiner meets you once more.

WARNINGS: angst, just conversation, a bit of violence, mentions of trauma, children ummmmm yeee, jean also appears <3 true king pairing: reiner braun x fem!reader word count: 8.3k

a/n: reiner returns!! welcome to the penultimate chapter and thank you for being on this journey with me :) again, song is not mine! it’s the wellerman sea shanty hehe

masterlist

crossposted on ao3 x

Morning streams through the curtains.

You part the billowy white fabric, pushing open the window breathing in the late morning air. As always, it’s warm and ripe with the aroma of the fresh bread from the bakery you live above, and as you lean on the windowsill, you hear the door below you chiming with new patrons. You smile to yourself, resting your chin on your hand.

Even still, you can’t help but admire how beautiful it is, especially in the streets here, far away from a industrial zone. The Liberio interment zone is small, yes, but it’s no less beautiful. The architecture of brick and glass all hold an austere beauty, and when the sunset is upon you, the shadows they cast and the warmth that embraces the stone is something you’ve never quite seen before. There’s a church, and you’ve sat inside day a few days before, watching the light stream through the stained glass in amazement.

A knock at the door takes you from your thoughts and you let out a sharp noise of surprise, gaze ripping away from the busy streets. A tremor shoots through you and you swallow harshly, waiting in bated breath.

“The shop’s busy as bees, today!” your landlord admonishes on the other side. You let out a relieved sigh, relaxing a bit. “If you want, I can still save you a loaf!”

“No, thank you!” you shout over your shoulder, reaching to close the window and get ready for the day. Sliding a warm vest onto your shoulders, you adjust the hat on your head and grab your bag from the counter, your bare fingers a bit cold and numb.

You burn at the thought of Reiner. You don’t want to see him, even if you live in the same city now, but all the same, it’s hard to avoid him. After all, it’ll only be so long before you’re forced to confront your past, push yourself into his way because how long, really, can you stay away from him? As you slide the white armband onto your bicep, your heart tightens. You’ve seen the man he’s grown into—handsome, tired, lonely. That only reflects in you.

Pulling your arms through your jacket, you stare at the woodgrain beneath your feet emptily.

Why am I even here? 

Coming to Marley, of all places. Some days, you can’t wrap your head around it, before you’re reminded of the reason. It all has a purpose. You just have to keep going—keep moving forward.

Continuing through your loft, you shove your feet into boots and head out for the day. The festival’s tonight—you have lots to do before then.

.

Night slips in.

Reiner frowns when he realizes he’s walking back to the stage. He’s been trailing after the sound for a good half-hour, but considering they stay relatively nearby his final destination, he’s never felt the urge to detract. 

He still can’t place the tune that’s been hummed, whistled, sang gently and leading him on, and as the sky darkens and the crowd noise grows louder, he realizes that his trail is slowly growing colder and colder.

“Hey, Reiner!” His head swivels to find Gabi waving at him and he meanders over, frowning a bit. “Where’d you go? The others said you wandered off.”

“I took a walk to clear my head,” he says dismissively, ignoring her frown deepening. “I see you’ve recovered from your food coma.” Immediately, Gabi’s frown turns into a pout and she rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine.” He snorts, turning to survey the area. The others are milling about. Zeke and Colt are talking by the bench, and Pieck and Porco are off together, as usual. They’re not half as inconspicuous as they think they are. Finding Udo and Zofia, his brow wrinkles when he can’t catch sight of a certain blond boy. 

“Where’s Falco?”

“He ran off earlier, saying he saw someone he knew,” Gabi says, waving it away. “He’s always being so weird. Who else could he know besides us?”

“What, are you jealous?” he teases, ruffling Gabi’s hair and she lets out a squawk, smacking at his hand. Chuckling gently, he surveys the area again as they walk towards their seats. Zeke and Colt give him a nod in greeting, one he returns. 

“Why would I be jealous?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” he replies distantly. His eyes keep searching, a ticklish feeling at the nape of his neck. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or if he can really hear that tune still at the edge of his hearing, nagging for his attention. Sighing, he crosses his arms over his chest. “What Falco does during his free time isn’t on your need-to-know basis, Gabi.”

“I know. I’m just saying—he doesn’t even have any friends besides us,” she says pointedly just as someone calls his name.

“Mister Braun!” Falco skids to a stop in front of him, his forehead gleaming with sweat, even in the cooler night air. Panting, he leans forward on his knees, meeting Reiner’s eyes, and Gabi tilts her head, confused and agitated and betraying her previous aloof words.

“Where the hell did you go?”

Ignoring her, Falco continues to try and catch his breath, barely punching out, “Can you come with me?” before looking down at the floor again, his shoulders rising and falling so quickly Reiner almost feels bad for him.

He frowns. “Right now?”

“You’ll be fine,” Zeke assures. The two look at the older man who glances at his watch. “It shouldn’t start for a few more minutes.”

Reiner debates it for a moment. Then again, it’s not like he’s the number one fan of this show. His presence is for appearance’s sake at this point, and if Falco insists, then it must be something important. Sighing, he nods and Falco takes off again. Telling Gabi to explain his absence to his mom should he not return in time, he walks after the sprinting boy, his mind a whirlwind on the possibilites of why he’s in such a hurry.

Falco stops past a blue curtain that’s near a residential building and points at the arch, smiling. His entire face is flushed and Reiner cocks an eyebrow, approaching closer before hearing a soft voice singing. It only grows as he passes by the blue partition, and his heart picks up as his eyes widen.

“…The Captain's mind was not on greed… But he belonged to the whaleman's creed… She took that ship in tow… Soon may the Wellerman come to bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin' is done, we’ll take our leave and go…”

He knows that tune. The sailors sang it in the port city after Fort Slava. It’s one of their sea shanties—it’s rare to hear them anywhere except by the water, and when he reaches Falco, searching for that voice, his eyes fix on a figure leaning against the archway underneath the building.

The woman in purple.

Falco runs up to her. A hand is on her bicep when she shifts to look at the boy, and Reiner’s throat swells as his legs move on their own accord. Time seems to slow as Falco turns around, mouth open in words that go in through one ear, and out the other. 

The woman says something, and Falco twists back, frowning a bit, but she only nods encouragingly, and off he goes, running on ahead, down to the end of the pathway out of Reiner’s sight.

A strangled noise leaves his mouth as the blond slips from his view.

The woman in purple’s head snaps up at the sound, and Reiner’s entire body locks when he finally recognizes the face that searches his impassively. The white armband is covered still by her fingers, but when she pushes off the wall, it’s almost as if she bewitches him to come even closer.

And he does, his hand lifting up to reach for her. Reach for what has to be a ghost. No…

No, it can’t be. No. No, I’m seeing things, I am, I—

You lift your hand off your armband, and when his fingers meet your palm, he feels your warmth, the way your skin slides against his as he interlaces their fingers, and he chokes, entire body burning from the inside out as you fold your fingers over his palm, yank him into the shadow with enough force to unbalance him. You side-step and fling his hand off, let him crash to his hands and knees. Pain shoots up his joints and his eyes widen when he realizes his skin has scraped off on the stone.

“Hello, Reiner,” you murmur. He draws himself up, and there’s a strange lifelessness as he looks up to a face barely illuminated by light. You unbutton your jacket and crouch before him, arms on your knees. His skin steams and stitches itself back together and he swallows through a dry throat as your eyes flutter to the white wisps. There’s a raw damage lingering on your face, haunting like ghosts that should be long dead, before you blink.

Your long coat brushing the floor covers black armour, harnesses criss-crossing your legs and body. Your expression is severe, lips pressed in an impassive line, dark shadows under your eyes. The armband around your bicep is slathered in dark red, staining the symbol.

So that’s what you were hiding from Falco.

Reiner half-wonders who’s blood it is. If it’s the owner of the clothes you wear, or someone else’s entirely.

You lift your head, staring at Reiner properly for the first time in years. Clenching your jaw, you only look. You do not speak, you do not move. It’s terrifying. It reminds Reiner eerily of Captain Levi, with the same chillingly placidity, and he remembers how you used to smile so wide you’d complain your cheeks ached, how you would lean against him, clutching your gut ‘cause he made you laugh, and he had never heard a sound so perfect—

The words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “What are you doing here? Are you insane?” 

You barely move. Only tilt your head mockingly. “Probably.” 

Four years has changed you into a taller, leaner, stronger soldier—and he can only soak that in. You’re…

His breath catches in his throat. 

You’re beautiful.

But you’re crouching right in front of him, and you’re in danger. If Marleyans were to approach now, he’s not sure if he could lie his way out and that blood. How can he explain the blood on your sleeve?

You’d be left for dead, hanged for the crows. 

The image flashes through his mind like cold dread, a trickling drip of an icicle hanging in his mind and freezing his spine.

No, he refuses to lose someone else. Not again, not you. Never fucking you.

It is why he demands again through a hissed breath,“What are you doing here?” Why he stands up quick enough that their heads nearly collide, and you straighten up as well, smoothly running your hands over your coat.

You only look at him deftly as if he is as inconsequential to you as a roach. You don’t even twitch as his hand reaches forward, fighting through the searing ache in his chest. “You need to leave. You shouldn’t be here. I can smuggle you back to the port and take you home, I—.”

Your stare paralyzes him and his hand falters. “I don’t take orders from you. You are not my commanding officer, and I do not need you to tell me what I need.” Your fingers dig into the bloody armband at your bicep and Reiner’s eyes widen as you tear it off, planting it on his chest hard enough his lungs spasm and he lets out a sharp breath. Your fingers spread out over his chest, you step closer. “I don’t need you to save me. Not from Marley. Not from myself. And not from you.”

His hand comes to cover yours, but you slip out before he can touch you, and he’s left with an armband in his palm. Clutching it in a tight fist, he stares down at it for a moment before shoving it in his pocket and turning around.

Your name comes out of him without even thinking as you walk past him, and it must still hold something because you pause, head turning slightly to look at him. “I want to explain myself,” he chokes out, and the corner of your mouth curls into a hollow smile. “Please.”

“Follow me, Reiner,” you order softly, and without question, he falls half a step behind you, eyes trained on the ground. His head is swimming at your presence, and his knees are gummy, stomach convulsing as he tries to come up with what to say. Or maybe, what to say first. He’s had four years to come up with a proper way to say it, and he reaches for his breast pocket, where the letters he’s folded away rest, with shaking hands.

“Please…”

“I don’t know what you think begging will get you.” Something stony falls upon your face. “I’ve had four years to get over the fact that you used me. Now, I think I just don’t care anymore. I’m sure you have your reasons, but I don’t know if it’ll be the truth. You’ve had no problem lying to me before in the past.”

“That’s not true.” He doesn’t know to which part of what you said he means. The last part, every part. “I never lied about how I felt about you.”

“Right. Like I wasn’t just some pawn on your chessboard. Some lonely girl you could use to entertain yourself.” Your pace doesn’t slow, but your tone is laced with anguish you try so hard to cover. “At least Bertholdt had the courage to look me in the face and tell me he was going to kill me.” You stop by a crate, labelled as supplies for the play. Maybe they contain masks, or costumes, and Reiner stops, his shoes skidding against the stone as you reach into your coat.

Pulling out a knife, you wedge it into the crate and pry the lid off and Reiner’s entire body numbs when ODM gear gleams in the straw. It looks refashioned, sleeker, and in two parts, and he catches your hand reaching for the harness. 

Weapons, here.

You aren’t stupid enough to take on Marley on your own, which can only mean—

Shit, shit, shit. 

Dread trickles through his body.

“What are you two doing—Oh, Vice Chief Braun!” You slam the lid shut and press your left arm flush against Reiner’s body, covering it up as someone on their right approaches. Your hand tightens around the knife still wedged between the lid, and Reiner sets a hand on your shoulder, dragging you so he can cover you up better and as a warning.

Don’t do it. You’re stiff against him despite the easy expression on your face, and he sets a harsh glare on the intruder. Let go of that blade. Your entire body is rigid with a hot energy he doesn’t recognize as your fingers only tighten around the hilt. Don’t do it—

“Sorry to interrupt, but those are one of the crates we need for the play. It contains some costumes—“

 The performer looks stricken as you flash him an easy smile and Reiner’s blood freezes when the stranger seems to blush, voice fading.

“I actually work with Lord Tybur,” you explain easily with a tiny laugh, betraying the strength in your fist. “He wants to inspect it briefly before I return it. I think it contains the Helos costume? Gotta make sure every detail’s to his liking!” Your tone, innocent and cheery, floats through the distant sound of the crowd, and Reiner only stares at the performer who seems to shrink in his skin. Your fingers twitch when he hesitates.

“Oh, of course.” He scratches the back of his head, and you give him a gracious nod before he’s walking away.

You watch him go, and Reiner feels the way the air shifts when your smile fades away as soon as it came. You step away from him, loosening the knife from the crate. His hands burn as he reaches for your shoulder again, but you jerk back.

“You know,” you begin quietly, staring at the lid, “all this time, I thought I had actually found people again, you know. I thought you actually cared about me, but really, I realized all you’ve ever done is lie. Even after everything. Even after Marco died, and I told you how I felt about you, you just kept lying. Lying and painting yourself to be a knight in shining armour.”

“I tried—I tried to stop myself from caring about you,” he whispers raggedly, hands rolling into fists tight enough that his nails dig into his flesh, “but it happened anyway. That part of who I was was never a lie.”

“So you never saw me as someone you needed to protect? As this poor, lonely girl who loved you? Who fed your ego and—”

“Of course I wanted to protect you! I loved you, too!” he snaps and distantly, he recognizes this is the first time they’ve ever confessed that what they had… that it was somehow real and too good for him. It nearly makes him shatter. “How could I—“ He closes his eyes, teeth gritting as the flames inside him roar, consuming his heart. “How could I just stand back and watch you get hurt by the consequences of my actions? It’s because of me you were forced to leave the farm, leave that girl. Because of me you knew Marco and Mina and Thomas. You could have been so much happier if you never met any of us—I knew that—I just thought I could somehow—”

“Happier if I never met you,” you echo blankly before nodding to yourself. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right.” He flinches but you continue on, “In the end, it doesn’t matter, though. I’ve learned to not let the what ifs haunt me, because my time with you… it still means everything to me.” You shake your head. “That’s the truth. You dropped a building on me and broke my bones. Truth. You left me alone in those walls with Bertholdt dead and Annie comatose, and you did so knowing you are the last damn person I’ve got that I’d kill for. Truth.”

Reiner’s eyes widen as your words sink into his skin like a vicious poison.

So that’s it then. Bertholdt is dead and Annie… Annie’s still alive?

You don’t give him a moment’s breath to ask as you take a step forward. On reflex, he steps back, hands raising, and your eyes flash to his palms. One wrong move, and a Titan will overtake the square. He’s sure he can read the thought in your eyes, but when you look at him again, he only sees cold indifference.

“You nearly killed me, Reiner. So tell me…”

Metal flashes and a breath stalls in his throat as a cold knifepoint digs into the bump along his throat. It bobs when he swallows, lips parted, and you meet his eyes, every inch of agony he’s forced upon you glaring back at him reforged.

“Why shouldn’t I repay the favour?”

His breath stalls, and he looks down at your fingers, wrapped tight around the hilt, nearly shaking. He doesn’t know if it’s because you hold the weapon that tightly, or if you’re just as afraid as he is.

Either way, it doesn’t matter.

“Do it, then,” he whispers. “I’m the reason this all happened.”

Your eyes, wide, search his beseechingly and his heart crumbles to dust. Even after all this time, you still hesitate. Why? Because you think he’ll come back? That he’s… redeemable somehow? 

Reiner envies that—he wants to believe that there is still good. But there isn’t. He knows it.

“I have a thousand questions,” you murmur achingly, as if the words are wrenched from your throat. “Over the years, I’ve tried to come up with some incomprehensible list. I couldn’t decide which was the one I wanted answered the most, but I thought why did it matter? After all, it wasn’t like I’d ever see you again. But here I am, now.”

As you lower the knife, the tip of the blade scratches his skin, light enough only to leave a white trail until it falls away, just like when he held you at blade-point four years ago, the tip of a sword digging into your sternum. 

How poetic that he finds himself here, his life in your hands. This is your retribution, he supposes, and your mercy, fighting for control of your arm, but you sheathe your knife again with a sharp, smooth thrust at your hip. There’s a soft scrape before you set your hands atop the lid, sighing softly.

A terrifying glint lives in your eyes as you smile at him faintly, and hoist the crate into your arms. 

“So, Reiner.” You tilt your head, gesturing for him to follow you down the pathway to a set of stairs that must lead to a deeper cellar. Somewhere he can’t transform in. Smart. You always were, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell you he’d never hurt you again, especially when he’s already done so much to prove that his words are empty. Yet, nothing is more important than protecting you, and Gabi, and Falco, but— “What do you say to a game of twenty questions?”

.

You flip a page. The day’s labour has you sweating into your harness, but all you want to do is just finish this damn chapter. Pulling carts out of mud like a damn mule wasn’t fun, but at least it had you busy. But, God, did you just want to relax for an eternity now.

Even after four years, you’d think your body would grow accustom, but every day, something new tests you.

“Hello?” a voice by your door calls and you look up from your book, smiling automatically at the kid peering into your room. He’s one of the younger orphans who didn’t come from the immediate wreckage of the fall of Trost but rather just a few months ago, you had found him in the woods, walking away from one of the smaller settlements.

You don’t ask, let him come and tell you more, and although you know his name, you know it’s hard for him to talk about anything else.

What you do know is that he is one that still climbs into your bed when there’s a thunderstorm, and that he’s a sweet, yet studious child with a knack for trouble when the girls invite him to hang out with them. 

That doesn’t mean he’s any less attached. He’s probably the one who clings to you the most, and you get up, closing your book. Setting it down on the nightstand, you crouch in front of him and pat his head. 

“Hi,” he says again.

“What’s going on, Xavier?” His red hair is still damp. He must’ve just taken his bath and he shrinks under your hand, probably to protect the clean smell clinging to his skin and locks. Lifting your hand amusedly, you tap his nose. He breaks out into a gap smile. 

He lost his tooth just three days ago, and you remember how proud he was, bursting into the fields during study period to show you as you untied the horses from the plow.

“There’s a man who wants to see you.”

“A man?” You frown, looking over his shoulder. Placing a heavy hand on his shoulder, you pull him into your room, out of the way of the door. “Did he say what his name was? Or if he was military?” The kids know the military insignias. Praying silently to yourself, you glance uneasily at your nightstand where a gun is hidden in the drawer. You could probably arm yourself in time. Xavier tugs at your ear. You look back at him, eyebrows creasing as you glance over his shoulder. 

“He said his name was Jean and that you would know who he was. He’s waiting outside.”

“Jean?” you repeat sharply, standing. Xavier flinches, looking up at you, and you scoop him up before heading to the nightstand, yanking open the drawer and grabbing the gun. Arms worm around your neck, and you squeeze the child closer to yourself as you quietly slip out into the hallway, towards where the other kids’ room is.

“Girls, close the door and lock it,” you order quietly, as you walk into the . The two sisters—Alina and Anya who share the room—look up from whatever they’re doing, and Anya gets up from her bed, but you merely send her a warning look as you  “Everything’s okay. Anya’s in charge until I get back.”

She nods, and you set Xavier down but he doesn’t let go of your neck, hugging you tight to him. Letting out a strangled sigh, you slowly pull him away, cupping his face. Your heart is slow, steady, and you take a measured breath as Alina glances out the window that is right over their desk.

“I’ll be okay. I want to make sure we’re safe.” His eyes flicker over your face and you nod reassuringly.  “You know what to do. Listen to Anya, alright? Try to get some sleep.” The redheaded boy nods and you stroke his cheek with a thumb before he scampers towards Anya’s bed. You stand.

You leave the room, shut it behind you as Alina draws the curtains shut, and your mind is thrumming with ideas of who it could be.

Entering the kitchen, you head to the porch with a quick glance at the window. There’s a figure leaning against the fence, back to you, and your fingers around your gun tighten. Draped in dark fabric and ash-brown hair shining in the oil lamps hanging on the porch, you can’t make out a face as you step into the bracing night.

“What do you want?” 

The figure jolts to his feet, turning around. Edges dulled by the night, you can barely make out his features until he steps into the light, and your finger pad taps the trigger when brown eyes meet yours. Heart lurching, everything rushes back to you and you manage to control the sharp inhale, tempering it into a slow and steady breath that swells up in your lungs.

“It’s been a while,” he comments idly, and you swallow through the hard knot in your throat. Eyes flicking to the gun in your hand, the small smile that had been curving his lips drops away. “You’re a hard person to track.”

“How’d you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy, but Captain Levi saw that some of us were getting desperate.”

Four years.

Four years since you’ve seen any of them except Captain Levi, who only visits to make sure you haven’t been raided by bandits and killed in the months between his check-ins.

In that time, seasons have changed, you’ve sprained your shoulder, it healed; you’ve been thrown off a horse, and gotten back up. You had a period where you would write letters every waking second you were left alone in your room, debating whether or not you should destroy them or send them just for the sake of feeling like you had someone again.

All those letters are still wedged in a box under your bed, so there’s that answer.

Jean stands at the bottom of your porch and you nod, gesturing for him to come in. Your heart plummets as you do so. You don’t know why Jean even bothered.

He closes the door behind you, and you set the gun on the dining table before moving towards the stove, and you ask him if he wants any tea, gracious host that you are. He shrugs and you begin to boil some water. It’ll give you time to look him over as he sits down.

He’s grown the beginnings of a beard since you last saw him. And he’s taller. Way taller than you remember. He’s gotten more muscle, holds himself differently, he’s… still Jean, in all respects, but he’s…

Tired.

You’re sure that’s one word you’re looking for. 

Migrating to the hearth, you wonder if he’s doing the same to you. Studying you like you’re a stranger. 

You start a fire, feeding it freshly chopped firewood from the day before and stoking it before letting it feast.

You never liked doing that before. Swinging an axe down on wood, watching it split. Now, it’s the only time you get alone to your thoughts. You don’t have to focus on chopping wood. All you have to do is swing an axe until it’s nothing more than muscle memory. You can just… be. 

Maybe it isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s why Reiner liked doing it.

You sigh, and grab the iron poker, keeping an eye on the stove. You don’t know if Jean wants to skip the small talk. You do, but mostly because you don’t like it when your old life comes into your new one. You can make yourself believe you can’t go back when no one’s here to remind you, and that the guilt won’t gnaw you until you’re only bones. 

Absently, you remember Bertholdt used to like small talk—Jean seems less so.

“I have news. I don’t know if you want to hear it, but you’re still military.”

“Not labelled a deserter, yet?” you inquire dryly. Everything is moving so slowly around you, yet so quickly. It’s a terrible sensation. “I feel honoured.”

“Let’s cut the shit, alright. What the hell are you doing here?”

“No idea.”

“You disappeared! No one had seen you in weeks—we thought you were dead until the captain came back with strict orders not to look for you, but do you know how ominous that sounds?” Something bites at your gut as you stare into the flames, and Jean shoots to his feet, chair scraping against the wooden floor. “You were our friend!”

His words sink into your shoulders, but you only blink, staring into the growing hearth.

“Don’t you care? You left!”

“I don’t regret it. It’s not like I’m begging to become a Scout again,” you murmur, looking over your shoulder at him. A sort of tiredness pulls at your eyes, and you stand up again, walking around the table. “I don’t know what you want from me, Jean. You came to me first.”

“I want you to care. I want you to come back and fight. Aren’t you remotely interested in what’s going on?”

“I know we have a train, now.” The pot begins to boil and you move towards it, taking out a tin and small metal spoon. “Historia is doing well as queen. At least, that’s what people are saying. She’s expecting. If you ever see her, tell her I’m happy for her.” Scooping leaves into the teapot, you pour the boiling water into the porcelain and let it steep. 

Turning back around, your eyebrows rise when you see Jean has walked around the table. There’s not even a metre between them as he tosses something at you. Catching it, you realize it’s a rolled up newspaper and your heart drops. At his nod, you pry it open and read the contents, fingertips brushing over two rectangular slips of paper within stating a time and terminal.

“What is this?”

“Eren’s gone to Marley by himself. Probably to do something stupid. I have two tickets to go and rescue his scrawny ass.”

“And?” Dread knots at your stomach as Jean closes his eyes, exhaling softly. Pleading, then: “Jean, don’t.”

“You’re the least compromised out of all of us. None of the volunteers would recognize you or would have been able to relay information about you if they have allies back in Marley, and despite everything, I still trust you. Which is more than I can say for Yelena and the others.” You snap the paper shut and toss it onto the table. Shaking your head to yourself, you walk away from him, but Jean only grabs your arm. “You still have a duty to our nation.”

“Don’t try to plead to my sense of national pride,” you shoot back coolly. “I have other responsibilities.”

“What, like tending to wheat?”

“Everyone wants to kill us, so yes, tending to wheat.”

“If we don’t find Eren, they will kill us. He’s our one chance of getting out of this mess alive. As crazy as he is, he’s our one ticket to freedom and we need to find him.”

Turning around to face him, you pull your arm free of his grasp. The lantern hanging is glaringly bright, and something knots in your throat at Jean’s somber expression.

“I fought for our freedom and you know what I realized? There will always be more people out there who want to take that away from us.” You wish you could sound passionate, but you just sound rough and tired. The bite tastes different. “First, it was Titans, then, it was the people we called our friends. Do you think that we’ll ever be free? That we’ll be able to live without a sword above our necks. Levi told me we’re devils in everyone else’s eyes. What’s it matter?”

“Because we aren’t what they say we are. If you lay down and show your belly, why did you become a soldier in the first place?” You jerk back and Jean leans against the table, crossing his arms. “I thought you fought for a dream. Something. Anything.”

“I thought I did, too. I’m just…” A hissing breath, and you pinch the bridge of your nose, turning away. Images of the lake back from their cadet years flash in your head. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

“Tired?” he repeats icily. “You think the rest of us aren’t tired? We all haven’t had the luxury to sit down on a farm and escape all our responsibilities.” 

Head snapping up, your eyes find cold brown chips staring back. Bitterly, you grit out, “Excuse me?”

“Do you think there’s a day that goes by where I think about Marco and how I wasn’t there for him? We all lost someone. You’re not the only person who’s had to go through it. We’re all guilty of something, but at least, I didn’t give up! At least, some of us decided to do something about it!”

“Shut up!” A hand flies through the air but he catches your wrist and twists, pinning you down to the table. Another hand slams your other hand into the wood and you grunt as Jean wedges himself between your legs to stop you from kicking him. Eyes burning, you stare up into the face of your friend and in that moment, the sorrow overflowing spills into your chest as if you are a well and he is the flood. 

He sinks, elbows clacking against the table as he bows his head. His breath is rushed, cool against your face, and you search his features before uttering out a quiet, “Why did you really come here, Jean?”

His eyes widening, his hands loosen. You try to suck your tears back in, but your eyes are burning so intensely you have to let them fall anyway just as there’s a sharp gasp. Jean looks up before he jerks back as if you’ve really slapped him. Sitting up, you twist to look at the doorframe, and your heart drops into your gut when you see a redheaded boy, eyes shining with tears.

“What are you doing?” he cries, and you immediately launch yourself off the table, crossing the distance towards him as Anya appears over his shoulder, helpless. The brunette girl’s guilt punches through you and you lift Xavier up into your arms, hugging him tight before wrapping another arm around the girl and poking your head into the hall. 

Alina’s figure is a mere shadow at the end of the hall, and you sigh, gesturing for her to come. Taking off at a sprint, she charges down the hall and you bury your nose in Anya’s hair just as another body slams into you, latching onto your waist. You close your eyes as Xavier tries to snuggle even deeper into your neck.

“I’m okay,” you keep repeating. “Just a heat of the moment thing. I promise, he’s not here to hurt us. I promise.”

“Are you okay?” Anya murmurs, and you look down. The eldest girl’s pulled her head back to look at you. Her eyes are narrowed, perceptive as always, and her lips are upturned into a faint scowl. You smile faintly, running a hand over her head. 

“I will be. Why don’t you take them back to your room?” you advise, and her eyes wander from you to Jean again. Catching it, you brush your thumb along her temple soothingly. “Go.” Reluctantly, she lets go of you and turns to Alina who still latches onto you like a parasite, but you rest a palm atop her head. “Alina.”

A sniff, and then she steps back, rubbing at her face. Her older sister takes her shoulders, easing her away and you crouch down as Xavier silently grabs onto your shirt tighter in his tiny fists. 

“Xavier,” you soothe. “I’ll be back in just a moment, okay?” You tilt your head. “I promise.” Wiping at his tears, you wait for him to let go of your shirt on his own accord, and when he does, you brush his hair back from his brow and plant a kiss on his forehead. Anya calls his name softly down the hall, and he lingers for a moment more before walking away, head still over his shoulder so he can watch.

You stay crouched until he’s gone and then you let out a soft exhale, head dropping, eyes closing.

“We need you more than you probably need us,” Jean acknowledges quietly, and your eyes open again to look at him. He’s straightened himself up, watching you with softer eyes. He visibly swallows, and you wonder if it’s pity or jealousy in his eyes. “But, we’re outnumbered in trusted senior officers in the Survey Corps. You’re one of them.”

Quietly: “I shouldn’t be.”

He falters for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose not.” He grabs the newspaper again. “But somehow, you are. If Captain Levi trusts you, then so do I. Bertholdt is dead. Annie’s a frozen log in a basement somewhere, and Reiner’s still alive. So are you.” He extends the paper to you. “This is what guilt got us. So what are you going to do about it?”

“Then, how about we go back to my hometown? There’s water nearby. We can go in the afternoons, eat all this food you’ve never had before.”

You haven’t seen a lake in who knows how long. Not since your cadet years, it feels like. Your heart yearns for the blue expanses, to plunge into the cold depths and gasp at how cold it is. You thought you’d given that up, but just there mere thought of it sends your mind spiralling into the images you’ve dreamed of since you were a child. 

“Regret begets regret—don’t have any when you go, and maybe you’ll live a life happier than most.”

You know you’ll never forgive yourself if you never take the chance to see him again. Heart peeling in your chest, you grab the newspaper from him.

“They call it the sea, don’t they?” you finally ask. Jean nods. “A lot of water and there’s… there’s animals in there.”

“Yeah. They live in this salty water and… they eat seafood a lot in Marley. I don’t know if you know.”

“Reiner might’ve mentioned it before,” you say. You look down at the newspaper in your tight fist and swallow. All at once, one door closes and another opens, and you look at Jean, the date and time of the ship already burned into your memory. “He said he thought I’d like it. I guess I’ll keep that in mind when we go.”

Jean’s eyes widen as you hand the paper back to him, your palm scalding as you shove the ticket into your pocket. He says your name softly, but you only hold your hand up, eyes fixed on the floor.

“I’ll meet you there, I promise.” You turn towards the shadows of the hall. In the silence of the night, you hear the hushed whispers of the children you’ve dedicated your life to and your heart disintegrates in your chest. “I just… I need some time to figure everything out.”

“Of course. Whatever you need.” Jean’s feet shift along the floor. You look over your shoulder for a moment to find his eyes on you. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” you reply. “Feel free to stay the night. It’s already late.” He nods, and you flash him the weakest smile. 

Then, you walk down the hall to your children. You have a lot of explaining to do.

.

You stubbornly try to ignore the tears tracing down your face as you reach into the compartment on your pants containing the letters. Reaching for it, you pull it out and crack it open, wondering if it’s even possible to bring yourself to read it.

“It’s not your last question,” Reiner had noted warily as they stood at the top of the stairs.

“Yeah. I guess we have to put a rain check this time.” You had set the box down, looking at him. You couldn’t recall feeling so warm, so empty. So convinced that there was something wrong with how much you still felt for him. “One more question, then?”

A nod, almost hungry for it. “Please.”

“Did you really, really love me?”

The gentlest of sighs, his warm yellow eyes. He had reached out for you, then second guessed, and reached for his breast pocket instead, extending the tin to you. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you.”

The entire cabin is quiet as you stare at the ring nestled at the bottom, atop the stack of letters that are wrinkled and must’ve been refolded so many times it’s begun to permanently crease in multiple lines. 

No one’s dared to speak since Sasha died and you look up at the others before back down at the ring again before pinching it between your fingers and lifting it to eye level. You’re not sure what it means to hold it, but you gently close the tin with your other hand, feeling it click shut, and slide it back into your pocket.

The band is silver, rather simple, but it’s pretty, too, in a refined sort of way. There aren’t any gems, but there are simple engravings, lines that curve the metal, causing ripples along the surface and, without thinking, you stretch out your left hand in front of you, trying to gauge which one it’ll fit the best.

Sombrely, you slide it down your ring finger, and let it sit there, lowering your hands and curling them into fists and raising your shoulder, hearing a bone crack. 

You’re exhausted. 

The ODM gear feels strange on your body. It’d been a crash course to get you familiarized with the updates, and you hook a thumb on the strap on your rib cage before glancing at the others. Connie sits with Mikasa and Armin, and Jean is at the back by himself, rubbing at his face hard enough that his skin is beginning to turn red.

You don’t know what to say.

What is there to say? Four years have left you strangely numb.

Jean’s lips pull back into a vicious snarl and his head snaps up to find you looking. Then, everything seems to soften, and he looks away sharply, almost as if to hide his tears.

So you don’t say a thing. Instead, you walk on to the back of the ship, past him, where the prisoners are being held, and you open the door without a noise, first noticing the blond boy. Falco. He looks up at your entrance, eyes wide, and you give him a slight smile as you close the door.

You wish you could hate children for the part they played in killing your friend, but in this moment, you just feel nothing. Not even sadness. You had seen what Marley’s done in the friends you’ve lost.

“Hello, Falco.”

“You lied to me,” he whispers. “You and Mister Kruger—Eren,” he corrects himself. “You used me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” you tell him, looking at the walls. It seems like a supply area, and you grab the bucket and rag that’s been left by whoever checked in on them last. There’s a few clean rags and you walk up to them, crouching before the blond first. He seems to flinch back and the brown-haired girl lunges at you.

You have no problem pushing her aside and pinning her down.

“Don’t touch him!” she yells. “You don’t get to touch him!”

“Calm down,” you tell her calmly. “I’m not going to hurt him, and you are in no position to be making demands at me after you killed my friend.”

Her eyes widen. “You’re a devil. So was she!” she spits as you slowly wet the rag and dab at the blood cracking underneath Falco’s nose. It’s clear whoever was here before only used the bucket and rag as a taunt. Probably telling them they could piss in here if they wanted. A coy coil of disgust wraps around your gut. “Don’t touch him. You’re tainted! You give all of us a bad name!”

Your nose wrinkles as the girl squirms under your hand and you let go of her. Cupping Falco’s face, you continue to wipe at his cheek. The water is cold. You hope it soothes what must be a flaring face.

“I don’t understand,” he murmurs dully. Exhausted eyes find yours. “Why?”

“I’m sorry. I have no idea why kids are suddenly soldiers in an adult’s war.” You reach to rinse the rag. Dipping it in water, you begin to wring it out when suddenly, there’s a sharp gasp, and you turn to look at the other child—Gabi. She stares at your hands, eyes wide enough a ring of white is around her irises and you frown. “What?”

“Where did you get that ring?” she asks, voice shaking, and you look down at your hands. “That’s… that’s Reiner’s ring. Where did you get it?” You don’t answer, simply stare at her for a moment, and her breath comes out quivering. “He doesn’t let anyone know he has it. It’s for someone special. That’s—he wouldn’t even tell me. He doesn’t know I saw him with it. He… he —it’s supposed to be for someone!”

“Gabi—“ Falco grabs her arms as you regard her softly, and you have just an idea of what’s going in her head as she points at you. “Gabi, calm down—“

“Why do you have it?” she demands ferociously. “It’s not yours! Give it back!” You drop the rag back into the water, and sit back, drawing your knees up to your chest and resting your arms atop of them lazily as tears begin to trace down the child’s face. “It didn’t even cost that much! You won’t be able to sell it to, you know! Give it!”

“Gabi!”

“You have no idea what that means to him!“

“Stop—“

“You spawn! You devil woman!”

“Are you done?” you ask her quietly, fingers twisting the ring and Gabi inhales raggedly as you look at her flatly. Her eyes widen even more if possible, and she allows Falco to pull her back. Her wet gasps fill the silence and you swallow, tilting your head at your hands. “If you really want to know, I don’t really have an idea why I’m wearing it.” You sigh, dropping your hands and letting your head fall forward. “As for how I got it, if you ever see Reiner again, why don’t you ask him?”

Falco’s eyes widen as you look up and finding him staring at you with a strange scrutiny, and your eyebrows furrow as he lets go of Gabi and straightens up from where he’s sitting.

“Mister Braun didn’t even hear what I said when he saw you,” he murmurs, brow furrowing. “Like he’d just seen a ghost. You and…” He struggles for words, voice unsteady. “Eren said you guys were all old friends. But… but, if he gave you the ring—“

“Shut up, Falco!” Gabi beseeches, grabbing his arm, but Falco only stares at you. “Are you even hearing what you’re saying? You’re accusing my cousin of treason! He wouldn’t!”

“He stayed with you for so long,” he continues, as if in a trance. “Even Eren wondered what was taking so long. He… called it a lover’s quarrel. You…”

“I think you two should get some rest,” you interrupt, pushing yourself to your feet and ignoring the smokey feeling clogging up your chest as tears slip down Gabi’s face and Falco’s face pales at your blatant dismissal. “It’s going to be a few hours until we land, roughly. You’ll want to get used to being somewhere warm before they transfer you to some sort of prison. It’ll be a lot colder there.”

Taking the bucket and the rag, you return it back to its spot before walking out the room and closing the door shut behind you. 

You find the spot you once were standing at now occupied with Floch and his comrades, and then you turn your head to see Jean still leaning against the wall, arms crossed, expression burning the metal floor.

You amble over to him without a word and lean in beside him, sinking to the floor.