#blaseball fans if this turns up in the tags- look away

[spiritunwilling]

Three moments in the lives of the Band of Exiles. (Except they play blaseball.)

Some author's notes:

This crossover has been my worst idea yet. I'm very happy with how this turned out tho.

Danie is the name I've decided to give Vassa's successor. I'm pretty sure Ada is the only character in this who is fully not in acotar

As a disclaimer. I wrote this on my phone and did not proofread.

I started this with a "haha what if these kidz paralleled real actual blaseball events" so that's why Jurian's part is Like That. But things went off the rails pretty quickly and I didn't have the heart to do a rewrite.

I wrote a very bad very not thought out very short post of what the history of the world in this au is probably like? You don't have to read it.

They pull him out of the Trench that election. (Which one, exactly? Someone must've told him, but everything in Jurian's head runs together like ruined ink.) Everything is too loud and too bright after years spent in the water. Jurian slowly adjusts his eyes to the newfound light, squinting through his eyelashes and trying to make out his teammate's face.

He'd hoped, in a retrospective way, that the hand that'd pulled him out of the waves had belonged to Miryam. Or Drakon. Any one of the faces that'd flashed across his mind before everything had been heat and flame and dust. As is usual with Jurian (and as is usual with blaseball), he is not so lucky. The person staring at him now is a fresh face, pale in every sense of word. Very definitely fae.

Jurian shuts his eyes again, then carefully opens his right one as wide as he can. He repeats the process with his left eye. Then his right again. The boat and it's occupants fade in and out like a camera lens. Beyond the windows, nothing but ocean stretches in every direction. Jurian grimaces, thinking of the salt still clinging to his skin, and tears his gaze away.

The sky is a sheet of grey, the blanket of clouds scattering light so evenly across that it's almost impossible to tell where the sun actually is. The moment is gone as quick as it comes: even through one eye and a foggy window, Jurian can see the shift. It's another one of those inconceivable things, but the sky goes wrong. Then Jurian blinks, and it's all just clouds. Nobody else seems to have noticed it.

A memory frees itself from the roiling tangle, the sight of umpires changing before his eyes. That same feeling of wrongness, right before he'd burned up. Oh, shit. Jurian scrambles for his wrist, his neck, wherever he can feel his pulse. He takes a breath, feeling the blood racing inside his limbs.

There's something beating inside his chest, something that thumps against his fingertips when Jurian presses them to the base of his skull. There's something in there making noise. He's just not so sure that it's a heart.

-

The first time Lucien feedbacks, it's a relief. General consensus in the league is that, although not an incineration, being torn from your team- your friends -has gotta hurt. Except his brothers were never much of either, so when Lucien feels the static running up his arms, all that he feels is hope.

One second he's here, the next he's across the field in an opposite dugout, twisting at the hem of a green and yellow shirt sleeve. Spring. That's who they were playing. A smaller team without anything particularly eye-catching. Tamlin, their captain, is Lucien's friend and a talented batter, but that's not enough to carry them to the playoffs. Which is fine. Lucien's not playing to win.

"Okay, okay, everyone calm down! Take a moment, I'll do a head count and then we can figure it out from there."

One of the players (Andras, Lucien remembers) raises his voice above the others. Hydrangeas bloom all over Andras' body, violet petals partially obscuring the number 10 on his uniform.

A dryad next to Lucien stands up, hauling him up as well with terrifying ease. "It's Jes! She's gone!"

Lucien tries his nicest smile. "Uh. Hi."

Andras grins back, holding out a hand. Lucien takes it. "Lucien Vanserra, right? Welcome to the Spring Canines."

There's a commotion out on the field as Tamlin gets tagged out. He heads immediately for the dugout, even ignoring Eris' sneer.

"Did something happen?"

"Jes got feedbacked." The dryad, whose iron grip is still around the back of Lucien's shirt, gives him a little shake. "We got this."

Tamlin laughs, hopping over the railing in a single fluid motion. "I think you can let go of him now, Ada. We still have a few games with the Cornucopias, that's probably enough time to put together a sending away for Jes."

Andras chimes in, "figure out what to send over, too, until she has time to come back to pack up during siesta."

"Yeah, yeah that." Tamlin pauses, turning towards Lucien. "Lucien, what do you want to do?"

Lucien almost answers that he's been ready to get out of Autumn for years, that there's a box containing all the things he wants to take with him tucked under his desk. "I can handle the stuff on my end. Don't worry about it."

Tamlin nods. "Let us know if you need anything."

Once, at a postseason party in the Dawn Court, Lucien had found himself capitalizing on the free alcohol with Tamlin, complaining to each other about their shitty families. He wonders what Tamlin thought when they'd all died. If he'd have preferred to feedback away instead. (Maybe not. Tamlin is tied to Spring in a way Lucien cannot fathom for himself.)

They're both out of it now. That thought lifts his heart up as he sinks down onto the bench, tentatively exchanging words with his new teammates. Through the feedback weather, rays of regular sunlight shine into the dugout. A seed takes root.

-

To their credit, at least the blessing had been an accident, a wimdy from way out of left field. Vassa doesn't know how she'd feel if people had been making a collective effort to turn her into.. this. Some fucking stat boost or another, at the small cost of never running the bases with human legs again. Supposedly flaming birds make better batters. ("Never" is an awfully strong assumption in blaseball. Never is for incinerated players, people sent to the shadows with no plans of reemergence. A permanent modification might be an never, but Vassa has no intention of staying like this. It's just going to be a shitty couple of seasons in the meantime.)

Their division had all gathered in their joint castle to watch the election results, like they always did. Vassa, tucked on a couch between Danie and Briallyn, had felt the change and jumped up moments before she burst into flames. At first she'd thought she was being incinerated, but then the flames kept burning. By the time the screaming had stopped- both hers and her friends -there were feathers where her arms had been.

At least she has the nights, Vassa thinks. She's wrapped in Danie's arms now, trying to commit to memory the feeling of being held. As a firebird she's literally untouchable, unless anyone would like to suffer severe burns in the process. Now she leans her head into Danie's chest and spares a glance at the clock.

"Danie. Dan. I think I have to go." Vassa stands, reaching for her jacket.

"Go where?" Danie's voice is spacey in the way it gets when their mind is elsewhere.

"Meeting. With the other division captains. I think it's about the recent blaseball events." Between Feyre's siphons, Jurian's resurrection, and the half a million other things that'd occurred last season, there would be a lot to discuss. "Come with me?"

"Of course." They grin. "Why would I pass up a chance to see Demetra rub that shutout in your face again?"

Vassa rolls her eyes. "Let her. Not like they'll get to do that again."

Danie takes her hand in theirs when they step out under the night sky. It's warm and solid and real, their fingers pressed into the grooves of her knuckles. There are worse ways to be, Vassa decides. And they're going to get rid of the blessing, then Vassa will hug every one of her team members under a clear blue sky. In the meantime, she has this.