#brax is the ONLY person who never talks down to leela because of the language barrier/cultural differences

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

leela + brax as people who work in a library (can be either undercover or au, you decide :D)

oooh... I choose AU!! I LOVE writing platonic leelabrax asxhsksbdksn — this can also go along with a university teachers kind of AU, if you want 👀

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The university archivist is a strange man, with cutting eyes and the kind of look that says he knows far more than anyone around him. Leela is not sure how true that is, but she can tell that he believes it. She has never seen him soften the way he does when she approaches him with a question; at first, she becomes defensive, because she does not want him to see her as fragile — she does not want anyone to see her as fragile, or soft, but especially not someone she works with.

The library is a nice work environment, a place she can help people and learn more herself. She gets strange, disapproving looks, sometimes, when people hear her stumble over words in her second language or ask why she does not use contractions — she did not even know what a contraction was, until she looked it up in the dictionary. Where she comes from, combined words do not exist as they do in English.

Irving Braxiatel, known among university students as "The Icicle" — a funny name, considering that the school's headmistress is called "Ice Maiden," almost as if the two of them go together in some way — seems to become warmer when Leela works with him. She never asks why, and he never truly tells her anything outright, but she senses a connection. He does not point out her shortcomings, or the ways she differs from most; in turn, Leela does not pry into his constant secrecy.

There is something guarded about Brax, but then again, there is also something guarded about her. Perhaps in some quiet, unspoken way, they understand each other.

send me a character pairing + an AU and I'll write three sentences(ish)

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

i wish you would write a fic where leela and brax work in a library (no this isn't me asking for the full library au you wrote last time i was in your inbox i don't know what you're talking about :p)

gonna do this in a "5 headcanons" format bc that's easiest for AUs like this for some reason

1.

Leela's English may not be the best, but she is a quick learner. Organizing shelves, like a rhythm, like a ritual, and discovering hidden treasures. She can read more fluently than she can speak the language. The library is quiet, calm, unless there are many students inside, and even then it is an escape from the outside world. In here, she can be still. She can think. People do not cast judgement on her in here the way they do on the rest of the college grounds; the library makes everyone and anyone to be on the same level, the same type of person.

2.

The head librarian, a man with searching seafoam eyes and an attitude like he can see through shelves and paper and people, is named Irving Braxiatel. He is on the college counsel, Leela was told, but has not taught in several years. According to one of the many humanities professors Leela cannot remember the name of, he was a theatre professor for a number of years before taking over the library. Leela has only spoken to him once, when she was first hired, and she thinks he is somehow, strangely different from the rest who all think that she is lesser than them because she is not from here. She also thinks that he is a mystery.

3.

She is reshelving books at the end of a day, when hardly anyone is on campus and most of the lights are off. Any students in the library left hours ago. Leela pads silently through the halls made by the bookshelves, soaking in the quiet. Quiet, at least, until she hears voices. She recognizes them both: the college headmistress, Romana, and Braxiatel. It sounds like they are arguing, but Leela cannot make out their words. She stills, because she does not know how they will react if they realize she is here. She is not trying to eavesdrop, but it is difficult not to.

"Darkel is going to come for you, too, you know that," says Romana, her voice low but tense. Leela knows the Darkel they speak of, a chancellor who would like to make changes at the school. For the worse, Leela thinks.

A heavy sigh comes from where Braxiatel must be standing. "I'm more concerned with what she might do to get rid of you," he replies. "She's certainly not above ruthlessness."

Romana laughs dryly, the loudest sound Leela has heard in the library all day. "I do know that. Protect yourself, is all. I have to admit, I would be..." even from behind a half dozen shelves, the headmistress' hesitation is audible. "Disappointed," she finishes, "Were something to happen to you."

Footsteps recede. Leela stays still, hears Braxiatel muttering to himself. She knows that she may be risking her job, but she steps out.

"What is going on?"

4.

Leela has watched the head librarian for quite some time. She has never seen complete surprise on his face until she demands to know what treachery he and Romana were discussing. Darkel's smear campaign, increasingly dangerous attempts to depose Romana as headmistress and destroy the work she has spent years building. There is potential, Braxiatel admits, that it could destroy Romana herself, as well. The way he says it, composed and calm and cold, sends a chill down Leela's spine. She has never met Darkel personally, but the things she has heard whispered make her wonder if the woman is capable of violence.

The ease with which Braxiatel — Brax, he insists she call him, as anyone who knows him very well at all does — offers her this information is startling. Leela wonders, then and many times afterward, what she had done in her quiet, lingering work to make him trust her so implicitly. He does not hesitate to answer her questions, even the ones she has been told by others are silly, or meaningless. She still thinks of him as a mystery, but maybe also as a friend. Something in his eyes is familiar to her, some kind of recognition between them. In some ways, she thinks they might be the same.

5.

Leela's instincts, as always, are correct. She is not part of the conspiracy — which is what it is — except that she is outside of it. She watches, alongside Brax, as the school begins to implode on itself as Darkel takes control. She does not have the power to stop it, only to protect those she has access to — a few students, Romana, Brax. In the library, it is still safe. She and Brax make sure of that. When at last it is all over, when Darkel's rage and stubbornness has burnt her out and left the school a withered husk, the three of them and one other, a law enforcement agent named Narvin, who perhaps is not as bad as he had first seemed, are left standing. Left, in the quiet, to start again.