#column radiator with feet

[damn-stark]

Chapter 17 And now we are one

Chapter 17 of Moonlight

A/N- Peak soulmatism unlocked: Both having mommy issues

Warning- Swearing, talks of pregnancy, blood, violence, death, ANGST!!, FLUFF!!, SPOILERS, LONG CHAPTER.

Pairing- Aemond Targaryen x Velaryon!fem-reader, Cregan Stark x Velaryon!fem-reader

Episode- 2x08 & 2 scenes used from 1x07

(If you want to be tagged let me know)

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The truth lies behind that door. With her, the Red Priestess—or more so the fire is imbued with the wisdom of the past, the future, and every single second that lives around you.

You need to know if it’s true that Addam and Alyn are your grandfather's bastards, and you know he won’t tell you so you have to go to the one person who will. But…a part of you does not want to find out. You'll undoubtedly get the truth when you ask, and when you find out then you will be plagued with the fear that yet another title will be taken from your grasp.

Then again you also won’t rest easy if you don’t know, it will be like a splinter in a finger, you can’t get it out but you feel it embedded under your skin. It’ll be pestering, so you need to know. You must.

But you need to know alone.

“Stay here, Ser’s,” you order your sworn protectors, but as easy as it is for Ser Jason to listen, Ser Cane is not as obedient, in the sense that he’s overprotective.

“Really, I will be fine she will not hurt me,” you insist and step back towards the house with the red door, but Ser Cane still does not seem convinced in letting you enter that house alone.

Thus you try to ease that furrowed brow. “Give me ten minutes. If I am not out by then you can go in after me, hm?”

Ser Cane's pierced glare drifts to the red door and he hesitates before he groans and nods in comprehension, letting you let out a deep breath before you turn on your heels and approach the red door. Albeit when you’re standing in front of that door, you raise your hand and fist it, but don’t let your knuckles rap on the door.

You hesitate and nervously watch the door with deep breaths escaping from your lips. In that moment, focusing on a rather insignificant detail on the door to distract yourself from what’s to come, which is the chipped red paint unveiling white wood.

White wood like the one you find from Weirwood trees. It’s unmistakable.

Huh.

“How odd,” you muse and brush the tip of your finger on the softened wood.

You’ve never seen a door made of weirwood.

A sharp cry of a babe then breaks the silence behind the chipped red door and pulls you back to why you’re here, and it’s not to study this beautiful door. You’re here to see Kinvara, so you draw out a deep breath and announce your sudden visit with a knock.

A minute of silence passes before a familiar voice invites you inside. A voice you want to question, but it also captivates you right away so you let it lure you in, finding that Kinvara does not come to welcome you inside, you just mindlessly open the door.

Once you’re inside you’re not greeted by the cold abandonment, a cozy warmth radiating from two tall fire columns at either side of the red door welcomes you inside, not Kinvara, she’s nowhere in sight. Yet the cries of the babes still echo from a nearby room, and sniffles now accompany it, as if the person who invited you inside is crying with the baby. But who is it?

“Kinvara?” You call out and close the door behind you without looking back. You just close the red door behind you and your feet follow the cries of the babe until you walk past long red drapes, and reach a hall with a single white-wooded table in the center and on top of it a fire bowl with an intense fire dancing within.

“Kinvara?” You call out again and look around the hall, but darkness seeps out of every corridor you look at except for the corridor you just walked down, forcing you to stay put where you stand and wait?

She did call you in. Or someone did.

The babe is still crying, and sniffling and soft weeping make their way into your ears, but now it sounds louder. As if you’re in the same room, but where are they? There’s nothing here but the white-wooded table and the fire.

“Kinvara, where—”

“Laenor?”

Every muscle in your body paralyzes, and your breath catches in your throat.

Did you just hear right? Did someone call your father's name?

Your eyes frantically search the hall, but all you find are shadows and specks of dust that float within the light that reflects on every wall.

“Rhaenyra!”

That’s…your father’s voice. No matter how long you’ve lived without him you will always recognize his voice, it’s recorded in your memories forever, so you know right away that you hear your father call out for your mother from inside the flames.

There’s no mistaking where the voices come from, they don’t echo off the walls anymore. It comes from the flames and no amount of warnings that your mind throws at you keeps your eyes from flying to the fire.

You focus your gaze on the fire and right away you forget who you came in search of, you forget the reason you even came; the truth you seek, and entrap all your attention in the flames that paint a vivid image of your mothers old quarters of when she lived in the Red Keep. It’s unmistakable, you see every detail clearly, not misty, or blurred by some dreamy screen, it’s as if you’re actually standing inside, living in the moment that the fire conjures up for you.

But what moment is it? There are some items in the room that you no longer recognize. It’s decorated a bit differently since you last remember, and a cradle sits in the room. People are inside as well, one you recognize as Grand Maester Orwyle, and an armada of handmaidens and wet nurses frantically pacing all over the room, but mainly they gather around the bed, blocking the view of the one they’re tending to.

“A girl,” your father's voice travels out from the group around the bed and catches you by surprise again, but this time rather than being struck with disbelief, you’re completely captivated with relief and awe that you get to hear his voice again. It’s been so long since you’ve heard his sweet voice. You missed it so much.

All you want to do now is follow it, so you do as if entranced by his voice, and once you're past the sea of bodies you come to find your mother on the bed…

“Mama,” your voice trembles, but she does not hear. No one does, life is moving all around you. It’s like you’re a ghost watching over this moment in time when your mother is not the woman that you know now. This version of her is still her but she’s younger in appearance. A lot younger, but still very beautiful. She actually looks around your age.

She probably is…

Which means that the bundle she’s cradling in her arms is…you?

You notice specks of silver-white hair peeking out of the blanket, but that’s all, everything else is covered with the blanket. But you don’t really need to break your head to know it must be you, your mother was young when she had you.

“She,” your mother cries as she rocks you to try and calm you down. “She was not breathing when she came out. She-she…” she trails off and once again her weeping fills the room.

This time though she does not cry for long, she’s quickly cooed at. “She’s breathing now. Look at her, she's crying now. She's okay. She’s alive. Our girl is alive.”

It's your father, you see him now. You were so focused on the image of your mother that you did not notice him sitting on the edge of the bed until now. He’s here, and just like your mother, he’s younger too, but unlike before now tears slowly escape out of your eyes and roll down the curve of your cheeks, whilst a smile trembles on your lips.

“Father,” you whimper and walk closer to him.

Albeit just as you put your hand out a louder voice catches your attention. One you recognize right away as your mother's voice, but not the voice that greeted you inside, this one sounds more mature, like the voice that belongs to her now. “I need you, Uncle.”

Just like before you’re entranced to follow the voice with little control of your own body, finding yourself approaching the balcony of your mother's room.

“<I cannot face the greens alone. They are already sending my only daughter away from me,>” your mother's voice continues to travel out, but this time her words are in High Valyrian and full of desperation. “<Let us bind our blood, just as Aegon the Conqueror did with his sisters.>”

You want to stop approaching the balcony as the words she says push out that bliss you were just overcome with and instead start filling you with anxiety as you don’t know what you’re walking to exactly. Yet your feet keep moving towards the balcony.

“<With you as my husband and Prince consort, my claim would not be so easily challenged.>”

Your breathing punctures as her words hit your ears and your mind slowly finds the meaning behind them.

“<The Velaryons are of the sea, but you and I are made of fire.>”

No…no…please.

You finally reach the balcony doors and no matter how much you want to stop and stay inside secured by the safety of the unknown, you walk out and right away you’re transported to a vast scenery; one with open water stretching out for miles, a boat sailing away in the distance with three dragons accompanying it, while there before you stands your mother as you know her now, and Daemon Targaryen overlooking the beautiful sea.

“<We have always been meant to burn together>.”

“We could not marry unless Laenor were dead,” Daemon breaks his silence to remind your mother of a cruel wicked fact. A fact she’s not phased by. A fact that you see did not slip her mind.

“I know,” she mutters.

It seems that she had already thought about it herself before Daemon even spoke it out loud for her and the sea to hear.

“I will not be a tyrant and rule through terror,” your mother continues to say, and your mind continues to unravel what all this means. Your heart tries hard to keep you from taking it all in, but your mind is persistent in hurting you.

“A tyrant rules only through terror,” Daemon clarifies for her. “If the King isn’t feared he is powerless. If you are to be a strong Queen, you must cultivate love and respect, yes, but your subjects must fear you.”

“I do love Laenor. He gave me my daughter.” Your mother’s words now also tug at your aching heart, making it start to bleed.

“Then grant him this kindness. Set him free,” Daemon says, making you shake your head and back up with disbelief now also consuming your heart.

“This will cost Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys their only remaining child,” your mother keeps feeding into this evil idea.

She is the one who brought it up but you still want her to refuse it. She needs to. Please…

“And it will cost my daughter…her father,” she tears at your heart now, making streams of tears flow down your face.

“She will be away by then,” Daemon attempts to comfort your mother who has her head down to watch as she fiddles with her rings, and hides tears that are born for you and the pain that she knows his death would cause you.

“The realm will whisper that I was somehow responsible,” your mother brings up, and Daemon is quick to retort.

“Let them whisper.”

But she couldn’t have. She wasn’t the one who…who…killed your father. No. It was always just supposed to be Daemon out of selfish greed. It was always just supposed to be him.

“We will know the truth of it,” Daemon continues. “And our enemies won’t.”

“They will fear what else we might be capable of,” your mother adds and only reassures your bleeding heart that she—that she always had a hand in taking your father away from you. She worked with Daemon to get rid of your beloved father, she’s the reason you knew heartbreak, she’s the reason you mourned alone, why you hated singing for five years of your life, she…

And all to marry some old man! All just to be with him!

Yes, you heard her reasoning, but you can’t accept it. You can’t accept it over your sorrow and new coming grief. All you know now is that she killed your father just to be with Daemon. She…

Why are you seeing this?! Why?!

“Let me out!” You beg and plead with all your might, but you linger there in torture. “Let me out! Please,” you whimper and turn away to stop seeing the horrible sight, but rather than seeing some stone wall, suddenly the day is swallowed by the night and you’re no longer on a stone bridge. Now you’re standing on sand, covered in darkness, looking at a cloaked man loading a boat that’s waiting to reunite with the ship in the distance. It seems like it’s just you and the distant stranger, but only seconds later you’re proved wrong when hurried footsteps approach.

You don’t want to look back when you hear the running footsteps, you fear what you will see, but your head turns and a hooded person runs by not letting you see their face.

You try to quickly walk after them, however, when that hooded person jumps on the boat with the stranger, they rip their hood off and you’re left horrified as you see your father for a second before you’re pulled from the past and returned to reality, causing the once bleeding heart to shatter.

That untouchable, cherished, and glorified image of your father completely crumbles. Love turns to ash and from it rises hate and rage because now you know that your mother did not kill your father, but she did let you grieve for a living man for six years.

After all this time he was never gone, she did not actually kill him, nor did Daemon kill him, he was alive and she knew. She hid the truth to live a happy life with Daemon. And your father…you’re ever so beloved father that you loved with all your heart, that you grieved for, never died, he…

He…left on his own will. He was not forced, it does not seem that way from what you saw. He left because he agreed to. He left you…behind. He left you.

He left. She lied. And they both broke your heart. The people who were meant to protect your heart, who are never supposed to hurt you, betray you in the worst way possible. In a way that even tops what Aemond did.

They broke your heart and you’re left numb now staring at the flames still raging in the bowl.

You can’t feel a thing anymore. Not your heart shattering, not your world coming apart, and not your rage pumping through your blood. It’s all quiet and it’s all dark. You stand in the abyss with only the raw memories of pain surrounding you, belittling you, ripping you apart limb by limb until there’s nothing left. It’s what makes it easy to turn your body around and slowly make your way out.

Yet as you reach the door and before you can let your sworn protectors know peace by showing you’re alive and physically unharmed, you come to a sudden halt as agony and despair tackle you before you’re free from the house; weakening you as they come together, leaving you unable to catch a breath even if your jaw goes slack, silencing your sobs even as hot streams of tears rush down your face, and bringing with them, writhing pain.

It hurts. It all hurts so much. The memories and the faces of your mother and your father flash in your head and the pain intensifies. It grows louder, making the rushing blood throb in your ears and tipping the limit you can handle.

It all falls apart. You fall apart and the only way you can let it out is with a heartbroken cry of despair that hurts your throat and sends your body thrashing to one side to express your anger by swinging down the fire column on one side of the door before taking down the other.

You don’t stop there, you can’t stop there, you try to, you wander around to try and calm down, but it keeps throbbing and it keeps hurting, so when you end up at the hall with the bowl of fire, you hurl it off the table in a blinding rage.

It’s only after the fire hits the ground and bounces on the long drapes that the anger liberates you, but now your sorrow takes over, and like coming down from an adrenaline rush, you’re left trembling, out of breath, and weak. You think of leaving, but your misery pulls you down to your knees, and has you looking numbly at the rapid fire that does not hesitate eating away at everything in its path. Nor does it debate or wait to combine with the line of fire that the fallen columns created at the entrance.

The fires unite and entrap you in their beautiful destruction before they too begin to eat away at you.

It’s not like you care though, and it’s not like the fire hurts you. It just eats away at the gown you once loved because it was made from rich fabrics only found in Yi-Ti. You should care for the sworn protectors you forced to stay outside, but that worry does not cross your mind either even if all they can worry about is you.

Once you cried out Ser Jason and Ser Cane rushed to the door to try and go to your aid, but the fire you threw down forbade them from opening the door. And no matter how hard they pushed the door they could not get the column in the way to budge away from the door. They tried yelling at you, but those shouts hit a paralyzed husk of a body.

After a while of trying to get the door open, flames then began to consume the door, creating cracks, but that was not enough for them to take it down. Actually, the fire shoved them away, so they were left desperate, trying to frantically find another way in, but the fire grew quick and blocked any and every entrance they could’ve used, making them believe that they failed at their jobs to protect you.

Whereas Ser Cane stared at the burning house in horror and disbelief, Ser Jason fell to his knees feeling the same emotions but also riddled with terror over one single person; Daemon Targaryen. He would fear Aemond too, he looks at Ser Jason as if he wants to kill him with his glare alone, but in truth, Daemon is more terrifying than Aemond ever could be. Besides Daemon threatened Ser Jason, he demanded to keep you alive or it was head; and as he looks at the fire's rage intensifying and consuming more and more of the house before him, he knows that his death sentence is signed.

That’s why he then has the bright idea to escape though. He doesn’t want to die, not for your sake. No matter how captivating you are to him, he does not want to die because of something you did. Thus he makes sure that Ser Cane’s attention is still stolen by the burning house before he gets up from his knees and plans his escape through the gathering crowd watching the scene unfold.

Nevertheless, just before he can take his first step the door to the burning house is opened just a little before it crumbles, revealing none other than you emerging from the lively and rageful flames completely unscarred, with all your limbs intact, and with your silver-white hair untouched. You don’t even cry out for help, you stop under the blazing doorway with streams of tears marked on your soot-covered face, and a piercing glare that matches the fire's intensity.

At first, no one believed it was really you. Not Ser Jason, not Ser Cane, and not the smallfolk there being nosy. To them, you’re some divine apparition ready to join the gods in the heavens until the sound of a piercing roar breaks through the sky, and moves your eyes up to catch your grand purple dragon emerging from the thick smoke ascending from the burning house.

After that, as your dragon lands on a nearby house not crumbling down by flames, everyone watching knows it’s really you. You're unharmed. You’re unburnt and only gods are not burnt by fire; that’s what the smallfolk and Ser Jason think. That’s what they believe you are now as the fire burns around you without as much as marking your skin. A terrifying God. So what do you do when you see a god emerging from flames?

Fear them, while also getting on their knees to bow, fearing being damned if they don’t.

However, not everyone is riddled with fear, Ser Cane stills in front of the crowd. He sees the distress behind your piercing glare, he notes that you’re completely exposed to everyone watching, so he rips his cape from his back and runs towards you.

You notice his attempt and meet him halfway. When he covers your body that intimidation you just held falters and all he sees is a hurt girl yearning for comfort.

“Can we go home?” You ask hoarsely and avoid looking at everyone behind him trying to gawk at you. “I want to go see Aemond.”

Ser Cane is still baffled by what he saw, by you being alive in general, but he doesn’t fret nodding in agreement before he wraps his arm around your shoulders to protect you from the nearing crowd as he guides you back to your horse.

He is completely uncertain how your heart is still beating, how you escaped the fire nude but unburnt, but he does not question it as uncertain as he is. While you…well with all that transcended, after you were swallowed up by the fire, one thing is certain; fire killed the girl, and the dragon has awakened.

Right now it’s just balled up in a corner of yourself, writhing in an agonizing heartache, and unaware and unbothered of the life moving around you. People talk to you when you reach the Red Keep, but even the sweet voice of Vanessa does not penetrate the husk of the body you live in.

People tend to you, your limbs move but with no effort. It’s almost like you’re not even alive, there’s no light in your eyes. They’re dull like that of the dead, reflecting the darkness that drowns you from within and shoves you further and further down an abyss that doesn’t seem to have an escape.

What are you supposed to feel now that you know your father left you? Where do you belong now that you know your own mother lied to you for six years? What is life now that you learned the truth?

Do you go back as you were? Sending your mother secret letters of every plan the Greens make?

You think about it, think about her, and can’t imagine pretending like you aren’t affected by her treachery. But you also look at where you are and can’t imagine even supporting Aegon or what his faction stands for, so where do you belong now?

Do you stand in the middle of the parted line and wait for which arrow hits you first? Do you pretend like you learned nothing?

No, you can’t pretend you don’t know that your mother lied for six years. You can’t pretend you don’t know that your father actually abandoned you, because that truth is crueler than any other pain you have felt before; it’s agonizing, and it keeps drowning you in an abyss of hate.

You want to get out. You don’t want to hate, you don’t want the memory of your father to be tainted, but…it’s too late. You look back at every piece of memory you share with him and it’s polluted by betrayal…and hate. His face is no longer a comfort, his voice is no longer soothing, and that deep longing to see him again is abandoned.

His name is like poison in your mouth. The love, ash, and those damn colors that remind you of him; the colors of house Velaryon are a reminder of him and you can’t stand looking at the gowns you have made of them. You can’t look at the sigil proudly. You can’t stand it. It’s mocking you, reminding you that he left and you can’t stand it!

Thus in a flash of a second, you rip away from the seat Vanessa guided you toward to wipe the soot off your face and storm over to yank the silver, teal, and sea-green gowns from your trunks and hangers to throw them down the balcony. You take the jewelry with the Velaryon house sigil and throw it in the fire without care.

Every single thing that reminds you of your father is thrown in the fire or thrown off the balcony in a blinding rage and with thick angry tears attacking your eyes.

Vanessa tries to calm you down, she tries to stop you, but you shove past her without a care, as if you are a raging storm; electrifying, and dangerous by the minute as you feed off your rage.

You need salvation and Vanessa can only think of one person that will break the storm apart and bring you peace, but he’s miles away, so she tries to be that peace, but you don’t acknowledge her. You actually seem to get worse so it all starts to seem bleak.

That is until the doors are thrown open and in comes Aemond. Yet even when he walks in you fail to acknowledge him. He calls out for you again and again, but you don’t stop throwing things in the fire, or yelling what you have been yelling over and over again. “Traitor! Traitor!”

You spin around to grab something without batting an eye at him, so Aemond quickly rushes over to you and attempts to grab you.

“Leave me alone!” You bellow and try to push his hands off your arms, you try to break away from him fearing it’s your own father, but his grip turns firm before he yanks you towards him, causing you to break from your blinding rage and find him like a sunlight breaking through a storm.

“Aemond,” you gasp as if he’s your lost breath.

His blue eye searches you for any clue as to why you’re so distressed, finding grief and agony raging within your red and teary eyes.

“He,” your voice quivers but you can’t say more, your lips part but they start to tremble, while the body Aemond holds starts to give out, as if standing was extenuating to your withered heart.

Albeit Aemond holds you up, while you grab ahold of his arms. “Talk to me,” he whispers while your own sorrow begins to hurt him.

And you try, you part your lips to share what you learned, but looking at him now, feeling his comforting hands holding you up only works to make you break down. He is the salvation you cried for, he is the one who pulls you from the abyss that was drowning you, but it’s because he’s here, it’s because you’re under his worried gaze that you let your anger go and just cry.

“Aemond,” you whisper, and it’s the heartbreak in your voice that he can’t stand anymore so he pulls you in his embrace.

“<My love,>” he coos in High Valyrian and holds you tightly against him as you grip onto him as if he's life support. And in many ways he is. He’s the only one keeping you upright, keeping you from snapping again, and keeping you from feeling complete isolation. And you couldn’t be more grateful that he is here, that he’s holding you ever so tightly without a hint of wanting to let go.

You don’t want him to let go of your withered body abused by a cruel truth. You want to stay in the safety of his embrace forever, hearing his heart beating inside of his chest because he’s all you have now. He's all you want now that you feel betrayed by the people you loved the most in this world. And unknowingly he feels the same about you.

You’re all he has now as he feels abandoned by his own family. You’re all he wants because you don’t make him feel alone, you're his light, as he is yours.

You only have each other in this cruel world. You are each other's sanctuary. Your hearts tangle together becoming one, and sharing a beat now that his own family makes him feel like he’s fighting alone because they can’t muster the same will to fight like him, while you feel betrayed by your own family.

How romantic is that? Two broken souls finding solace in each other. Is it bad?

You don’t think so. You’re his solace like he is yours, and he hugs you like he’s trying to seep it all from you whilst also helping you calm down and find the will to share what you know so it doesn’t have to be weighing you down a moment longer.

“Aemond,” you whisper hoarsely and step away, but keep grabbing onto his arms since you still need him for support. “It’s my father…” you trail off and have the need to cry, but you can’t shed another tear so you continue with your voice quivering. “He…left six years ago. He did not die…I mean since Seasmoke has a new rider now, I'm sure he is dead now, but he did not die six years ago. He left…he left me.”

Aemond’s eye expresses his confusion over what you shared before it comes down and expresses his pity for you.

“And my mother knew,” you continue above a whisper and he can see every word is like a stab to your heart. “She knew for six years. She made me grieve my father for six years and all this time he actually just left…me,” you whimper and look at him now for help.

There’s nothing he can do to actually help you, this is all in the past, but you still look to him for desperate help.

“I-I loved him with all my heart and he left me. And she…knew.”

Tears roll down your face. You thought you could not muster a single one but more break out as you share what broke your heart. And what could he say in return? He knew how much you loved your father, how much you cherished his memory. How can he tell you that it will be okay when he knows that’s a pain that will never mend?

He could say that you do not need them, but it doesn’t seem like that will be any help. He can also say you have him and that’s all you need, but are those words enough?

Not at this instant, so instead he lets the silence mingle and wipes your tears away before pulling you back against him and wrapping his arms around you ever so tightly so you know he’s there for you. So you know with that embrace alone that yes, you have him and you need no one else but him.

He relishes in that thought, in your neediness, and takes advantage of it for his own needs.

“<Please,” you beg in High Valyrian. “Never leave me. Please, Aemond. I can’t do this without you. You’re all I have.>”

His breath catches in his throat, and just as he wants to assure you he stops as he’s reminded of what Helaena just told him on that balcony.

“…and you’ll be dead…you were swallowed up in the God’s Eye, and you were never seen again. Your children won’t even mourn you, they won’t cling onto your memory…”

Those words hit him like ice-cold water, and he doesn't want to believe them. He wants to refute what she said, but he fears that it will be true, and how can he promise something he will only break?

“…the only tears that will fall for you will be from your wife.”

“<I’m here,” he promises as that last sentence proceeds to echo in his head, assuring him once again that you are all he needs and all he will ever have. “I will always be with you.>”

You nod against his chest and just proceed to nuzzle your face against him to steal more of the comfort he provides.

After a while of being in each other's arms the doors open and Aerion’s wetnurse brings him in, but not asleep, he’s fussy and tired but awake.

“He kept waking up, so I thought putting him in his cradle would put him to sleep,” the wetnurse says as you walk over to meet her halfway.

“It's okay, I will take him,” you relieve her of her stress and take your child who happily lets you cradle him. “Goodnight.”

The wetnurse offers you a curtsy before she quickly strides out of the room, letting you turn to your babe who rubs his little eyes.

“<Giving your wetnurse a hard time?>” You whisper in High Valyrian as you tap his nose. “<You will have siblings soon, you’re going to have to listen. Be a good example.>”

He lets out a big yawn that crinkles his little nose before he nuzzles his head against you without bothering to care about what you’re talking about.

“Did you find what you needed?” Aemond finally finds the right moment to ask.

You shake your head before you turn and make your way back to him by the hearth with your child in your arms. “No,” you reveal. “I was welcomed with the knowledge of my father instead.”

He hums and turns away from you to watch the flames eat away the last fragments of the things you fed it.

“We cannot be sure about Alyn and Addam,” you add and fall by Aemond’s side. “But we also can’t deny that it might be true. And if it is, I'm sure the truth will be revealed sooner or later now that Addam claimed Seasmoke.”

Aemond nods in comprehension before he tilts his head to the side and drops his gaze on Aerion. He watches him not with a soft gaze like he usually does, but something else, like conflict that makes his eye watery.

You notice right away and nothing stops you from turning swiftly to cradle his jaw. “What is it?” You ask with concern.

He keeps his gaze focused on Aerion before a small shaky breath is drawn in. You notice that he hesitates to speak, but he then lets go of that captured breath and meets your worried gaze with a tear escaping down his cheek.

“They won’t fight,” he shares but not with anger or frustration, he sounds almost like you did moments ago. Hurt.

“Not with me. They won’t even try. After I tried so hard to fight for them and for our lives they don’t want to fight,” he sneers and leans his face against your touch. “Helaena won’t even come to Harrenhal. They don’t want to understand the peril we’re in. They don’t understand that they—that she can’t just sit and watch it all unfold around her. She needs to come to Harrenhal, she needs to fight with us on her dragon because it’s no longer just us against Rhaenyra, it’s us against those bastards she picked up to ride dragons.”

You slide your hand up to gently stroke his cheek as you offer him a sweet and loving look as you hear his desperation and worry for his sister and mother. “Oh, my sweet Aemond.”

His eyebrows pinch together for a flickering second before he reaches over and takes your hand in his. “Don't tell me you support their choice? There’s seven dragons. Seven against our three if you count Tessarion. You said it, Vhagar alone will not win against their army of dragons,” he hisses but not with much anger, he’s desperate to be understood.

“I understand that,” you give him that comfort, but you then pull your hand away and face the hearth again before you pull yourself down to the ground with Aerion sleeping in your arms. “But listen, Aemond.”

He hears his name and he knows you’re about to try and be wise to make him see things differently, but he doesn’t want to see things differently when their lives are in danger!

“There’s something you need to realize,” you continue to prove him right. “Not everyone’s ferocity is the same. Every person shows it differently. Whereas some people use a blade, others use their words. Whereas some people's passion to fight and protect is outwardly shown, others can’t express it as easily. And perhaps not fighting back is a weakness, but my love, not everyone is meant to fight like you or me. There’s strength in that too, their ferocity is different, but trust me it’s there. Do you understand?”

Aemond drops his hands on his hips and shakes his head, wanting badly to argue, but not finding anything strong enough to contest you. And he doesn’t want to sound foolish either so instead he keeps quiet even as upset as he is and just listens to you.

“And you’re not alone,” you assure him of something he did not outwardly need reassurance of, but you know him. You saw that fear of being alone in his eye. It screamed its need for comfort.

“Yes it may feel that way because you hold the power with Vhagar, the biggest dragon, and she is tough, she’s why you have this need to prove yourself, to prove you can be reliable, and to prove is a good effort,” you praise him and slowly look over at him, seeing him completely captivated by the words that leave your lips.

“But my love, this weight is not all yours to bear. You’re not alone, and she’s not alone. And so what that Helaena doesn’t want to fight? She may have a dragon, but if her spirit is not capable then neither is her dragon. That’s why you have armies of men, people you can trust leading them. You have Daeron, excellent minds at your council table, and me.”

He draws in a deep breath and his gaze once hardened with stress now eases as it holds relief and awe for you, while your kind words prove that he can count on you and that he has you. And that is enough to make his heart race madly, while also making it bold.

“I know…” he lets his heart take the lead since he knows it’s just you with him, but he does trail off to take a seat beside you on the ground. “…your ferocity.”

You can finally stop straining your neck by looking at your side instead of up at his towering figure.

“Do you?” You probe with a flattered smile slowly appearing on your lips.

“It’s your passion.” His words come easy but he still does not meet your gaze; he watches the fire with a soft adoration that is directed at you; that he holds in his growing smile, and in his eye as he thinks about you.

“You’re driven by your heart in every way. In every choice you make, like choosing what to wear. What to do with your day. In love and hate, and I imagine in battle too because your passion makes you brave and tactful with many things that a princess should not know,” he adds and finally glances at you, catching your captivated gaze and your parted lips caught in surprise.

“But it’s also what puts you in danger sometimes, and it’s gotten you in trouble.”

You giggle breathlessly and the corner of his lips slowly spread to a grin.

“But it’s your greatest strength. It keeps you grounded to who you are and I have always admired that because that’s what lets you push back those who have wanted and want to change you.”

You glance down at your sleeping babe that you cradle in your arm with a wobbly smile before you look over at Aemond and hold his gaze, passing your appreciation and a thousand I love you’s that are not spoken with words, but shared with your love struck eyes before you rest your head on his shoulder.

“I’m going with you to Harrenhal,” you say with no hesitation or deceit. There’s nothing to hide because he does have you now. All of you.

The troubles with your mother are conflicting, you don’t know what to do. You might still send her letters because you know right between wrong; that judgment is clouded but you’re not blinded. You see the right choice and it’s her. But you also know she lied and you can’t let it go, you can’t be okay with it, so yes you dedicate yourself to Aemond.

“We will fight together,” you add, making him press a kiss on the side of your head before he rests his chin against your head, and reaches his long fingers over to interlace them with yours to connect you more as one.

Now rather than walking down parallel lines that kept you just out of arm's reach, you both walk down the same path as one without being wary of any crossroads.

——

*THE NEXT DAY*

Now that feeling of not belonging is louder than ever before.

Why did they even try if your father was just going to discard you like a piece of trash? Why even fight so hard to keep you alive if they were going to stay with Jacaerys as heir?

Why, why, and why has been running over and over again in your head. It leaves you…lost in your own head, and unaware. So when Aemond places his fingers on your back you’re startled.

“What?” You ask for clarification and look at him through the tall mirror you had been in front of.

“Your gown,” he says while he drags his fingers around your waist and drops his gaze to study the beautiful blue winter roses embroidered on the bodice. “The flower, I do not recognize it.”

You follow his line of gaze and place your hand over his to trail his fingers along the marvelous design. “Blue Winter roses. They grow in the North.”

He hums and his eyes flip up to now study your face as you keep looking at the flower design also on the end of one of your skirts, noticing that your eyes aren’t as puffy as they were when you woke up, but a sadness still droops them.

“Like the flower crown that knight gave you in our engagement tourney,” Aemond recalls, pulling your eyes up and bringing a smile to your face.

“Exactly!” You grin and turn, making his hand drag around your waist as he does not lose touch. “They’re my favorite. They’re rare and very beautiful. And Helaena and I wanted to coordinate today, so she's wearing a gown with her favorite flowers on it like me.”

He hums and looks you up and down before letting a smile spread on his face and sealing your distance with a small kiss on your lips.

“<You look beautiful,>” he muses.

You flash him a grateful smile and bring your hand up to stroke his cheek before you fix his eyepatch against his hair and end up meeting his gaze with a deep sigh. “I thought maybe I should go talk to my mother,” you bring up an idea you have been pondering all night. “I mean I believe what I saw. There is no reason why those visions would be a lie, but maybe having her explain it will bring me some peace of mind.” You shrug unknowingly.

But as lost as you are and look, what you said scared Aemond because what if you don’t come back? What if they keep you there, or you decide to stay there after your mother traps you in her web of lies?

You already agreed to go to Harrenhal with him, he doesn’t want to end up going alone. He wants you there with him. He does not want you gone. He can’t risk it even if your mother could offer you that peace to your battling mind and heart.

“I think perhaps it’s best if you stay,” Aemond gives his opinion and brings his hand up to your shoulder, seeing your eyebrows slowly pinch together as he gives you the wrong answer—“What if she does not let you return?”

You shake your head lightly to try and refute him but his words keep swirling in your ears, and right now they’re easy to entice you.

“You know the truth,” he adds. “She won’t want it spread. And you have a dragon, Daemon will want to decrease our power by taking you captive because he knows you are my weakness and I will not attack her or any of them if they have you.”

That can be true about Daemon. It’s surprising he did not keep you under lock and key before he left for Harrenhal, but your mother?

She does want you back, she did not even want you to come here in the first place. But would she be as harsh as Aemond says?

You don’t think so, but maybe that’s because he did not really convince you to stay, unlike your mother when she convinced you to stay at Dragonstone before she got attacked. So unless something happens that will convince you to stay you don’t really take his words under consideration, you just let him think he was successful in making you stay, and continue to debate it in your head.

If you end up deciding to go talk to her then you’ll just sneak out and he’ll have no other choice but wait for you to return because you will. Nothing has changed. Not even after he told you what he did at Sharp Point and all those people who lived there and had nothing to do with this war.

Is it cruel? Perhaps, but there was no stopping his wrath. There’s nothing you can do now either, so it’s best to leave it be and continue to debate whether you should go talk to your mother or not.

“Can I ask you something about Helaena?” Aemond interjects as he finally pulls his hands off you and steps away to start your journey toward this morning's Small Council meeting.

“I won’t talk to her about joining this fight,” you throw out bluntly and glance over at him as he glances over at you in annoyance.

“No,” he deadpans and glances at the corridor ahead. “Something else. Has she,” he pauses and hums before he grabs the pommel of his sword and quietly continues. “Ever shared something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“Her dreams?” You query as your eyebrows knit in confusion.

“Mhm.”

“Yes,” you don’t find the need to lie. “She told me I would have twins before I found out. And it was true…why? Has she told you something?” You ask with a smile that vanishes as soon as it spreads on your face.

Aemond draws in a short breath and searches the ground you walk over, piquing your interest while also making you nervous.

“Aemond,” you call and grab his arm. “What did she tell you?”

Aemond blinks and peeks back at the guards tailing you before slowly drifting his eye over to take you in under a fluttering eye which is no consolation.

“Aemond—”

“<She said that Aegon has yet to see victory,” he shares in High Valyrian, making you draw in a deep breath, but not because that revelation scares you, but because you thought it was something much worse, like Aemond’s death or something. “…She said he will sit on a wooden throne.>”

You nod slowly as you take in what he shared while not losing touch of his arm.

“Do you trust her?” He fills your silence in the common tongue with a question to follow his comment.

“She was right about the twins,” you mumble and lose your gaze on your path ahead. “And to not believe her would be foolish considering our family is known to have dreamers, like Daenys and Aegon the Conqueror, but the readings of the future are fickle, it’s not set, so it must be taken with a grain of salt.” You share your thoughts and look back at him, catching him looking at you too.

“We’ll be pushed aside again,” he mutters.

You hold his gaze and nod softly, mirroring the realization and the flicker of sadness that glints in his eye at the mere thought.

“But,” you try to assure him. “We will still fight, that’s what matters. And as cheesy as it sounds we will have each other, we won’t know the secluded corner alone.” You laugh softly, while he looks at the ground and huffs lightheartedly.

“Has…” you drag out. “Has she told you something else?”

Aemond looks ahead and draws out a breath before he shakes his head and redirects the question at you. “Has she told you anything else?”

You sigh deeply and share one thing, but don’t share what she said about you wearing a crown the day you wear a black veil. “She told me I wouldn’t be alone. I,” you chuckle. “Don’t know what that means exactly, but she told me that, so.”

Aemond snaps his gaze to you and his eye lingers on you while the corner of his lips twitch to a frown, but doesn’t actually get to form. “Hm,” is all he communicates. No further interrogation, no digging for any more possible dreams. That’s it.

And even if there was more you do reach the Small Council hall so the conversation comes to an end there, and now you’re reminded of the war, of its cruelty, and that the meaning it once held is faltering under the weight of your troubled mind.

You were once set on having a seat around the table of men to pass their plans to your mother and help her rise to her rightful throne, now you don’t know if you should be around the table. In secret or not.

What do you want exactly?

You wanted to get your hands dirty for your Queen, for your mother, but now? With these lies should you let go and leave?

Should you be a target walking down the marked line between both sides? Should you take no sides?

You hear what they’re discussing, should you take note in your head to send what you heard to your mother later, or let go and let your stance with her falter?

“Just this morning a raven from Ser Tyland came in,” Grand Maester finally voices his news. “He made an alliance with the Triarchy. They will sail together.”

Aemond fiddles with the marble and scoffs before he retorts. “Their ships shall arrive in our waters in a few days then?”

The maester nods eagerly. “If the waters are in our favor.”

“Winds,” you correct the maester and drag your eyes to him. “The wind aids the ships.”

The maester gets flustered but he nods and corrects himself. “If the winds are in our favor the fleet shall arrive soon.”

“Well, at least we will finally be able to breathe with the blockade torn apart,” Aemond comments and you slowly sit back and think again about what you want.

The answer should be easy, shouldn’t it? It’s a lie. That’s all it is. To protect her stance…and to marry Daemon. A lie should not affect your stance that much should it?

But the weight is heavier than anyone can imagine, and it leaves you troubled about what to do and what you want.

Do you let that lie go and reaffirm your stance? Or do you let it spread its hate and take away your once firm stance right from under you?

Do you want to keep passing her letters? Or completely and wholeheartedly dedicate yourself to Aemond?

What do you want?

It’s hard to know. You can’t decide even if the answer should be easy. You can’t choose yet. You need to keep debating even if it’s torture.

Until then you let that part of your day pass even if you’re weighed down by uncertainty, and the words you heard at the Small Council meeting keep repeating in your mind over and over again as if waiting to be brushed aside or written down. You want to keep going on with your day and give your attention to Helaena when it comes to spending time with her, but your mind only distracts you with the agony of the truth. You’re torn apart, and at multiple places at once but the place you want to be; in the gardens with Helaena.

At least that is until she manages to steal your attention by shaking your shoulder.

“Huh?”

Helaena studies you and blinks in confusion before she interjects. “Will you go to Harrenhal with Aemond?”

You nod slowly before looking at the bushes you let your fingers graze over. “That’s the plan, but I have been debating if I should actually go or not. With Vhagar gone the city will be left defenseless. Astraea and I could protect the city while Aemond is gone.”

Besides perhaps you could tell your mother to come while Aemond is gone. You could be that key like you were meant to be—If you push your anger aside, that is.

“I doubt he will be gone long.” You finish.

Helaena then suddenly slaps her hands around your arm and digs her nails into your exposed skin to pull you to a sudden stop with her.

“Ow,” you laugh nervously and glance at her nails digging into your skin before looking over at her in confusion, catching at that moment fear in her eyes; fear that brings goosebumps to your skin.

“You must go to Harrenhal,” she insists with her eyes wide and her grip firm.

“But perhaps I will be better use here,” you try to explain, but she flat-out shakes her head and pulls you towards her, making your heart skip a beat in response to the fear that she’s spreading to you.

“No,” she hisses and lets her eyes flicker away before she continues in an ominous demeanor that makes you slowly stiffen.

“I saw you,” she continues. “I saw you fall. You fall with your dragon...”

Your lips part as your breath stills for a moment, whilst conflict and disbelief make your gaze narrow on her for a moment before your face eases as no part of you reacts as one should when one gets told a possible grim future.

“…An arrow hits Astraea and you both drown in a sea of blood,” she finishes foretelling her dream about you and it should scare you to your very core. You should be baffled, but as you take in her words the thought of death is…welcoming.

Your father left you behind and your mother lied to you about it for six years. They chose someone else over you as heir, and you don’t know if the babies you’re carrying are Aemond’s or Cregan’s, so death is almost tempting.

Helaena notices the fear you were just holding diminish, your body remains stiff, but the fear you should hold after learning something so grievous should affect you, but it does not.

“You’re not scared?” She asks with slight disbelief as she finally drops that death grip.

You let out a deep breath and mindlessly look ahead before you make your way toward the pond and plop yourself on the edge. Helaena follows you and sits down in front of you more slowly.

“As of late I have been given reasons why not to fear death,” you admit a bit too dramatically whilst you dip your fingers in the water and swirl the water. “It may be a comfort. I don’t know.” You shrug and glance at your reflection in the water. “It doesn’t scare me, I know it should, but it doesn’t. Are you?” You now direct at her as you slowly lift your eyes, seeing her draw out a deep breath before she shrugs.

“Everyone dies, don’t they? It’s life and there’s nothing we can do to prevent it. It will reach us eventually.”

A smile spreads on your lips and you nod slowly. “See,” you murmur. “Nothing to fear.”

“I suppose,” she agrees softly. “But I don’t want you to die.”

You stop twirling your fingers in the water and offer her a tender smile before you grab her knee and give it a gentle and grateful squeeze.

“Your hand is wet,” she points out and pulls her knee away.

You giggle and dip your hand in the water before you splash her, making her gasp and look at you with a deadpan face before a smile slowly takes over her face, and she ends up giggling.

You laugh harder and she proceeds to splash you much to her initial dislike, letting you feel like a weight lifted off your chest for that moment that you were ignorant of…well, everything.

It was nice.

——

*THE NEXT DAY*

It’s said that Alicent was not found in bed, she did not break fast with Helaena and has not been seen in any Sept. She’s gone, but does it surprise you? It’s not the first time she’s left without a word, she just recently had a rendezvous at the Kingswood all by herself. For what?

Only she and the Kingsguard that accompanied her know.

And now they’re both gone again so perhaps it’s just another rendezvous who knows, and you could hardly care. You’re just nosy.

Regardless, that's not your focus right now. You should focus on writing to your mother. You should send her what you have heard, that Ser Criston and Ser Gwayne are approaching Harrenhal by the day, and they will be upon Daemon soon.

You should tell her to take advantage of Aemond’s departure and take the throne since Aegon cannot raise even a finger about it, but alas, the ink drips and drips on the paper as you sit in thought and watch Astraea hunting for her next meal in the never-ending waters.

What do you want to do?

Ask for the truth on paper? Tell her what you know and warn her? Or do you go quiet and stop this transaction of secrets?

What do you want?

What do you want?

What do you want…

You let out a deep breath and drop your eyes from your dragon to try and focus on potential words that could mark the page, but as you’re shifting your eyes you catch your Sworn protector, Ser Jason smiling at Astraea with admiration. And thus your mind uses that as an excuse to avoid choosing.

“My friend Lord Stark,” your voice catches him off guard. “Had to bribe her to let him pet her. He would offer her fish which is her favorite, but it took many moons for her to warm up to him. So,” you scoff lightheartedly. “I’m surprised she went up to you.”

Ser Jason tears his eyes away from your dragon diving in the water. “Perhaps I smelled like fish,” he says and you try to think if it's real while also slowly knitting your eyebrows together.

Ser Jason sees that you did not understand it was a joke so he quickly counters. “I did not! I did not smell like fish, I don’t go on smelling like fish. It was just a…jest because she well, you know…”

You muster a forced giggle and nod slowly, while he parts his lips to continue on rambling.

“But I mean it’s not like I know why she would go up to me. My mother worked at a brothel, so it’s not like I have special blood from her, and my father, well, I don’t doubt being a bastard of Prince Daemon qualifies my blood in any way.”

You drop your quill and your jaw drops at the revelation he just threw at you so carelessly and with no warning.

“You,” you mouth and slowly stand up without looking away, as if the truth of what he is would vanish the moment you tore your eyes away from him. “Your father is Daemon?”

Ser Jason’s face goes pale and he gapes like a fish out of water.

“You,” you scoff and turn around to drop your things on the bench while your mind scrambles what you just got told.

It should not be surprising, even you know that Daemon would frequent brothels when he was young. He had a taste for lustful activities. But! To know, and to have his bastard son be your Sworn Protector is completely crazy!

Did he know?

“Does he know?” You spat out your question oozing with your shock.

“N-no,” Ser Jason shakes his head and approaches you with fear someone else will hear him. “I never told him. You are the only one who knows.”

The corner of your lips twitch up but your initial shock still doesn’t let you display how touched you are that you’re the only one who knows.

“You are the only one who will ever know,” he says seriously and doesn’t go sheepish, his cheeks don’t taint with a blush, his gaze is pointed at you, and his lips are pressed in a firm straight line.

“But,” you whisper as your shock and that rush slowly diminishes. “Why? He’s your father. And you’re so close to him. He might as well accept you as his son. You could—”

“I don’t want it,” he cuts you off and is lucky that Ser Cane is not here or else he would’ve been scolded for cutting you off as bluntly as he did. “All the riches, the acknowledgment, and the power that comes with being recognized by my father is not what I desire. I know what that all does to men, they get drunk off power and hurt the small folk in turn. Or give us their back to be with the perfumed lords. I…don’t crave it. I like what I am now. I’m content with my role.”

His words sink in your heart and you don’t have the will to argue against him to try and make him reach higher. You actually admire him for being so sure about himself, and what he wants and doesn’t want. You wish you could say the same in a time like now.

“Many would jump at the opportunity to gain a dragon, to be a Lord. A Targaryen,” you share, making him sigh and nod slowly.

“Once upon a time I entertained those feelings while I was upset at my mother for hiding the truth,” he reveals, only pulling you in deeper. “I could join him, I could be better than she ever was,” he trails off to his usual soft and careful voice. “I was horrible and then she died. I never got to tell her I forgave her. She died thinking I hated her, that she was not enough for me, and ever since then the thought of being recognized as a Targaryen bastard is like bile in my mouth. It doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I detest it.”

You swallow thickly and pity flickers in your gaze, while you also feel a certain spark of connection as you know that you’re battling with lies and forgiveness with your own mother.

“I admire you for it,” you admit, making him blink rapidly while a furious red blush attacks his cheeks—“to have that self-actualization. That self-control when many would let their desires for greater things drive them.”

“He was not there, why should I crave the attention of someone who did not care?” He says and glances at your dragon again before he continues. “It's true I worked under him, it was a coincidence, fate playing a game. And it turns out he's actually not bad of a man, and the stories are right, he is a great warrior. I want to be as talented as him, but that’s all. I am content with what I have, I do not want to complicate my life. It was complicated once. I don't wish for that anymore.”

You slowly follow his line of gaze and an idea starts to form in your mind.

“Did you appreciate that your mother told you?” You have to ask for your own sake. “Even if it was later in your life did you appreciate it? Did it…help you?”

Ser Jason’s Adam’s Apple slides up and then down slowly before he glances at you and lets his deep blue eyes fall on you. “I think I would have driven myself mad if she hadn’t. I confronted her about it, I wanted to know who my father was. I needed to know if it was true so I would not drown in the rushing flood that were my thoughts.”

You snap your gaze to the horizon and think about your own troubles and how you’re in a battle with yourself, how you can’t sleep, or stay focused for too long without being drawn back into the storm of your thoughts; of what you want, of overthinking, rage, hate, and insecurity.

You don’t want to be troubled in a time like now. You can’t afford to with so much on the line. And you don’t think you can live in this confusion or it will drive you mad.

So you know what you must do, and you do it even if Ser Jason protests your leave.

You won’t be gone long, you’ll be in and out, Aemond won’t know, he doesn’t even have to know, and if he does well, he can go after you or stay and wait because you will return with your mind made. Angry or in peace, you will return. You just need to hear the truth from her. It will give you peace of mind.

That’s all you want. You can’t stand these loud thoughts and emotions, you want silence again. You need it.

Then again what exactly do you walk into?

Aemond doesn't surprise you by coming after you, will he be mad when you return? Possibly, but oh well, you’ll make up, so that’s not why you now start to question your daring act.

You descend and land peacefully, you have no trouble walking in the keep, and the guards know you’re no threat because that’s what they were told, but as you’re in search of your mother you come across a reason why you think maybe this plan was…a bit overzealous.

It's the man who bonded with Silverwing, he has his feet on the table and a goblet in hand. Giving yet another reason why smallfolk as dragonriders is not a good idea.

“Y-You…”

Gods.

He swings his legs off the table and leaves his goblet behind to come after you. Much to your misfortune.

“You tried killing me,” he throws out boldly.

“If I wanted you dead you would have been dead,” you don’t attempt to be kind, or apologetic because you could not care. “You’re a terrible dragonrider,” you grumble and peer over at the horse guards that you pass by as you make your way to the royal apartments in search of your mother.

“Grab her! Throw her in the dungeon, she’s with the enemy,” the man tries to demand, but the guards don’t even move an inch, they stay put and you stop trying to entertain this bad-smelling man.

“If I were you I would get away from me, I’m your princess, not some whore or servant you can pester,” you threaten him, but you keep hearing the heels of his boots chase after you in an attempt to match your speed.

“Come back—”

“Get him away from me,” you smoothly give your demand to the pair of guards that you approach, and they actually listen to you. The moment you pass them, they lunge out of their spots and block the old man’s path with their swords.

You peer at him over your shoulder and shoot him a cocky smirk before you disappear around the corner and quicken your pace to reach the royal apartments even faster.

Albeit when you reach your mother's quarters she’s not there. There’s not even guards outside her quarters, so onto the next spot where she might be, but first your cat! You go into your quarters, but he’s not there either much to your luck. But he'll be much easier to find than your mother you assume, considering she hasn’t come to meet you.

Actually, in your search, you don’t come across anyone. You assumed either your brother or your mother would have found you after they saw your dragon or got told you arrived, but so far it’s been quiet and calm. So far.

After a while, you’re actually relieved to come across Baela of all people.

“Baela,” you breathe out and come to a quick halt.

Said woman’s brown eyes linger on your face before they slowly trail down to the white-silver gown you wear and glimmers under the sunlight capturing your figure, making it appear like you’re wearing a gown made of a thousand tiny diamonds, or thin chainmail, either or you twinkle in your flowy dreamy gown.

And when her eyes go back up to your face she notes that the silver diadem around your head with the thin chains dangling from it really pronounces your title as Princess Regent.

“I saw Astraea and I thought she carried a letter,” Baela finally breaks her silence. “It's you. You’re back.” She smiles faintly, but you’re quick to steal that joy.

“No,” you deadpan. “I came to talk to my mother. Sooner rather than later, hopefully.”

“What?” She scoffs. “You did not ask your husband's permission to go out?”

You sense her hostility toward Aemond, you understand it, but you still don’t like it. “I do not need it, I came against his will.”

You would defend him but there’s no reason to really waste your breath, she doesn’t like him so wouldn’t understand.

“Is my mother here?” You interrupt her before she comes up with another quip. “I need to talk to her. Urgently.”

Baela draws out a deep breath and answers kinder this time. “She’s not here. She left at first light for Harrenhal. She did not say why.”

Great.

“Alright,” you nod slowly. “I will wait for her then. And do not tell Jacaerys I am here if he doesn’t know. I’m returning to the Red Keep and he will only make it hard.”

A pointed glare flashes on her face before she sighs and her face softens. “He’s only worried about you. You don’t know how many times he’s wanted to go to the Red Keep to bring you back. He says your place is here now more that you’re expecting twins.”

Your mother told them. Of course. But they don’t know that you don’t know where your place is exactly. Not at the moment, you’re in a state of limbo. Neither here nor there.

“And that’s why he cannot know I’m here,” you insist even if what she says really does pull at your heartstrings and makes you want to stay for him. “Let my mother know I’ll be at the Great Hall,” you end the conversation short so you’re not hit with more guilt or pleas to stay with puppy eyes and sweet words.

You do attempt to offer her a smile so she knows this coldness in your demeanor is not directed at her, but your lips hardly tug up; what you need to speak about takes too much from you. And it’s a good thing she doesn’t see that trouble so you’re able to walk past her and disappear into the Great Hall where you expect to be on your lonesome, but lying on the stone throne is your cat, Wolf.

“Look at you,” you coo and rush to him. “So regal.”

Wolf hears your voice and his head shoots up before he lets out an almost huffed meow, letting you know he’s upset you left him behind.

“I know, I know,” you talk to the cat as you walk up the steps of the stone throne to pick him up. “Forgive me, we were in a rush, but this time you are coming home with me.”

You lift him in the air and tilt your head down just slightly to make sure he’s still wearing his pearl collar—and yes, he still has it on.

“Well it seems they have been feeding you well,” you comment on his blubber.

Wolf meows nonchalantly and you flash him a grin before you hug him against you whilst you walk down to sit on a cold stone step.

“Oh, I’ve missed you too,” you tell him and caress his side. “You’ll have to ride Astraea though, I know you’re scared, but it’s the only way you can come home, so just sleep or something”

Wolf purrs under your touch so you gladly continue to show him some affection while you wait for your mother and get pulled deeper and deeper into the angry storm of your thoughts.

Much like before time is irrelevant, your surroundings blur almost to the point it’s nonexistent, and you get so lost in your mind that you hardly exist which makes time move faster.

You don't know how much time passed between you waiting and your mother’s arrival, but by the time the grand doors open and your mother finally joins you, the sun is lower than it was before. Actually, when you let the cat go and stand up on the step you notice that the beam of sunlight is reflecting on the ground now.

“Mother,” you greet but don’t share the relief she does when she finds you secluded in the darkness of the grey stone room. You don’t smile as wide as she does even as hard as you try to show your joy over seeing her and being in the same room without having to pretend.

When she reaches you she doesn’t hesitate or ask you for an embrace. The moment you step down to the ground to let her reach you she wraps her arms around you and pulls you against her. But even if you return her embrace, you don’t hold her as tightly, your body doesn’t ease like hers does at the feeling of your arms secured around her.

You try, you really do try to forget and bask in the warmth and the comfort her mere presence usually brings, but right now the sight of her is enraging the storm within you.

She doesn’t notice though, not yet. And not when she pulls back to let her eyes take you in under the beam of sunlight dancing on your face.

“You look beautiful,” she offers you a compliment as she gently grabs your arms so you won’t go far, but drops one hand to gently press it against your belly. “I did not get to see you when you were expecting Aerion, I want to make the most of it now. How are you feeling? Do you want to talk to the maester?”

You blink and swallow back nervously before you shake your head stiffly and point your eyes at her Kingsguard a few feet behind her.

Your mother seems to understand what you mean so she looks over her shoulder and with a simple passing look sends them away from the hall. It’s only once they’re gone and it’s just you and your mother under the beaming light that you raise your hands and get rid of her touch. And it's at that moment that she realizes the emotions that ride on your face aren’t that of pleasure.

She looks at you now, she really takes you in and notes a long-forming frown painting on your face that's thinner than before due to the twins growing within you, taking what they can from you. She sees your eyebrows slowly creasing lines as they come together, and lastly, there’s flames of anger flickering in your eyes that she did not bother to notice before, but as she sees all of you now she's overcome with worry.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” She finally picks on the emotions becoming more prominent in your features.

You draw in a deep breath and slowly raise your chin as you gain the confidence to be bold in your anger. “I need you to be honest with me. If you lie I will know, so it’s best if you’re truthful…please,” that last word makes your voice falter.

“About what?” She probes and grows conflicted as well as more concerned.

You blink repeatedly as tears begin to sting your eyes, causing your mother's lips to part in confusion. “Did…did,” you strain to continue as the words hurt to even think about saying. “You send my father away to marry Daemon? Yes or no?”

A gasp escapes her parted lips, her lashes bat wildly, and her eyebrows crash in the middle for a second as she’s slammed with shock at the words that came out of your mouth. Words you should not know.

“Did he leave at his own accord or did you send him away?” You sneer emotionally and search her face for an answer. “Tell me,” you whisper softly but with desperation.

Rather than answering right away your mother…steps away with tears glistening in her eyes, but it’s with that single action that you know the answer you wanted to refute, that you wanted to believe was a lie or some mind trick played by magic, but the answer is in her glistening eyes and it weighs your chest down while also pulling tears out of your eyes brought by anger and agony.

Yet even then you still want to hear her say the truth so you demand it. For the first time in your life, you shout at your mother and the agony in your voice echoes in the great hall. “Tell me!”

Your mother's eyebrows once again meet in the middle as she’s surprised by your burst of emotions, but she also knows there’s no more hiding from the truth, so after a deep breath she finally begins to give you what you seek.

“I needed a stronger force behind me in order to defend my claim. We knew it would be contested and it was, so we needed to send…Laenor away…”

“So you could marry Daemon,” you finish for her with more tears rushing down the curve of your cheeks.

“But my Sweet—” she tries to quickly comfort you by trying to grab your arms, but you shove her attempt away and slowly pierce a trembling glare at her, leaving her with no option but to see the tears that run down your face and shine like tiny sparkling diamonds the same way your gown twinkles under the sunlight.

“Don’t,” you bark and shake your head at her as it feels like someone pierced your chest. “Save whatever excuse you’re going to give me. I don’t want to hear it. You lied,” you throw at her. “For six years! You let me grieve him for six years! You let me long for his return for six years! Six years,” you sneer your words. “Do you know what it’s like grieving alone? Losing all your joy and having no one to comfort you because you’re being shipped across the country? No, but I do. And now to find out he left and you were behind it is like…like dying.”

“Don’t say that,” she whispers her own heartbreak. “He—it broke him to leave you and your brothers behind, but he also knew that I needed more than he could offer for our sake. He was selfless. He did it because he loved us, because he loved you.”

“That doesn’t matter,” you mutter as those words don’t work to mend your shattered heart or offer any sort of peace to your agony. “None of it matters because he left and you lied, and now where do I belong? All my life I have fought to prove myself, every step of the way, and now to find out you lied and that my father left makes me feel like nothing. I am nothing.” You sniffle and turn around to pick up your cat off the ground before you face her to utter your last words. “Thank you for making that perfectly clear.”

You storm past her and she calls out to you before managing to capture your arm and reel you to a stop.

“Don’t,” you quickly counter like your life depends on it. “Stop. I’m done…” you trail off and step back, having to purposely avert your gaze before you spin around and finish storming away.

This time she doesn’t come after you, the Great Hall is silent and you have a clear path to leave…or so you thought until you come across Jacaerys making his own way toward the Great Hall, but stopping as he sees you, the person he wanted to see.

Time seizes the moment your eyes meet. Every ounce of rage falters, and that sense of belonging is found there with him. With your little brother.

Looking at him makes you want to stay, to swallow back all the pain, and stay where you belong, but you can’t be so selfless. You choose to be selfish even if taking that route hurts more with him in front of you.

That’s why you didn’t want to see him, but here he is, and here you are with no strength to say goodbye. That's why you just take a deep breath and raise your chin before you try to walk away. But he steps in front of you to block your path.

“Where are you going? What's wrong?” He immediately asks as he sees your face pampered with tears.

“I’m going home,” you mutter bluntly and avert your eyes. “Back to my son, back to my husband.”

You try to leave again, but he grabs your arm and pulls you back to argue. “You cannot be serious? You don’t belong there! This is your home, this is where you belong, just bring Aerion and his dragon and come back home. We don’t need you in the Red Keep anymore, we have strength here.”

His words only work to hurt you deeper. It’s like being pierced in the chest again and again, and deeper with each sweet word.

“No,” your voice quivers. “I belong home. With my son, and Aemond. This is not my home, not anymore.”

He looks back at where you came from before looking back at you in confusion. You don’t need to see it to know that’s what he feels.

“What did mother say?” He wants to know more, but you don’t give him the context. You’ll let her do it.

“It doesn’t matter now, I’m leaving, Jace, let me go.”

Yet he doesn't, his grip only tightens and his gaze grows heavy on you.

“So what? You can go back to them?” He spats.

“To him,” you clarify. “To Aemond!”

Jacaerys tilts his head down and you let him find your gaze painted with it all; rage, agony, guilt, and a yearning for comfort.

“What of Rhaenys?” He hisses to you. “What of Lucerys?” His confrontation falters. “Or do you forget about them while you sleep with him?”

Your bottom lip trembles and your breath shudders, but as weak as you feel you bite back. “I will not stay. You cannot make me.”

“Watch me,” your brother sneers, so you rebuttal by rolling your shoulders back and narrowing your gaze to a glare.

“Do it,” you taunt him.

Jacaerys challenges your gaze waiting for you to falter, but no matter how much you want to give up your fight under his threatening gaze, you muster up your strength and fight back until he’s defeated.

When he lets you free you hug your cat tighter and linger in his presence for a moment longer, but never find the strength to utter that last goodbye. So even with tears welling in his eyes, you leave without saying another word.

Even after that, your mind can’t form a single thought. You fly back home in utter, deafening silence, with only the wind howling in your ears. When that too stops the moment you land in that cove behind the Red Keep, you expect to be bombarded with a wave of thoughts, but it’s like your mind stopped working. It’s quiet, you're quiet, and your cat keeps yelling at you, probably asking why you put him through that flight, but he grows relieved when he’s in the safety of the Red Keep, and then he also grows quiet on your way to your chambers.

The one time you can find the ability to speak words is when you reach your quarters and find Ser Cane outside your doors along with one of Aerion’s sworn protectors. Ser Jason must have taken his leave now that Ser Cane is here.

“Is my husband inside?” You have to ask to know if you should prepare yourself for a fight.

“No,” Ser Cane deadpans and finds your cat that he has not seen at all in his life until now. “That’s…yours?”

A tiny smile tugs on your face and you lift your fat cat to show him off. “Yes, it’s Wolf, don’t worry he’s nice.”

The cat meows, and you look at him and smile wider before you take a step forward, making the guards open your doors for you.

“Please stop wandering off,” Ser Cane says in a very serious voice, and you can’t help but flash him a smile since he figured out all by himself that you were not in the Red Keep, or King’s Landing at all considering you warned Ser Jason not to tell a soul.

“You will have to use a ball and chain for that Ser,” you retort, and for the first time since he’s been your sworn protector, he smiles. It’s faint, the corner of his lips twitch, but you still made him smile and it makes you giddy.

“You can relax for now I’ll be inside,” you assure him as you put Wolf down before you finally walk inside.

Once the doors are closed the smile on your face falls and still, the thoughts you have been expecting fail to come.

Not that you’re eager to fall into a deeper agony after hearing the truth, you just need the shock to pass. You need to admit the truth of what you want to yourself because you know it’s forming there, in your mind.

Albeit you can’t overcome your disbelief or the hurt you received in Dragonstone. Time started moving after your interaction with Jacaerys, but it moves slowly now and because of it your thoughts don’t come quick.

Then again you can’t rush your feelings, so you take a deep breath and head over to Aerion’s cradle to check on him since he should be taking his nap.

Which reminds you that his wetnurse has not come to meet you, odd, but alas you continue your path towards your child and before you can reach the curtains that lead to your bed, Wolf yowls before he suddenly comes sprinting away from that side of the room.

You quickly follow him with your eyes and your amused smile falls as you catch that he left behind bloody footprints.

“Maci?” You call out for Aerion’s wetnurse with your breaths growing heavy with panic, but there’s no answer so should you call out for the guards outside your door?

It might be something dangerous or it might be nothing.

The latter seems more plausible so you keep making your way forward with more caution now.

Aerion is not crying, so it can’t be anything terrible…right?

Unless—no, it’s not him, but you quicken your pace, and when you reach the curtains you slowly pull them back. When you peek one eye inside your heart drops to your stomach, your breath hitches, and every instinct inside you immediately yells at you to fight, so you do.

You’re not carrying any weapon with you to defend yourself, and any you have in your chambers are far compared to the distance this scrawny killer is to Aerion, so with nothing but your strength you rip the curtains open, and part your lips to bellow. “G—”

Yet just as your breath comes out with the first word, a dirty hand suddenly slaps over your mouth before the tip of a blade hovers over your throat, forbidding you from alerting any guard and threatening the cloaked killer approaching Aerion’s cradle with a bloody knife.

You try to push away the hand that’s covering your mouth to try and save your son with a threat, or with a sound ominous enough that the guards will burst through the doors, but the person who is holding you captive begins to drag you away from the bed area of your quarters not caring that you’re kicking, or clawing at his arm.

The other man reaches Aerion’s cradle and you ache to try and reach him, you try to scream, but the person who has you keeps dragging you away until he finally halts and pushes their lips by your ear.

“Long. Live. Queen Rhaenyra,” they whisper in a scratchy voice, and at the sound of those words it’s like a tight grasp wraps around your heart causing it to hurt worse than any other pain.

Yet what’s that ache right now compared to the threat uncovering Aerion’s cradle and revealing him to the killer? It’s nothing.

Your heart pounds and every muscle that makes who you are cries desperately in attempts to reach him, but you can’t challenge the person's strength holding you against them. All you can do is watch as the man finds your son in his cradle with tears rolling down your face and a horror that keeps worsening.

However, just as the man’s eyes land on Aerion, they then shift to something else, and terror strikes within them.

You stop moving to figure out what he saw, but then Shrykos, the answer to all your questions jumps out of the cradle and perches herself on the edge.

It’s Aerion’s dragon. She’s there, emitting low clicking sounds as she tilts her head and studies the man to figure out whether she’s seen him before or not.

Yet perhaps your relief comes too soon because the man swings his blade down at the hatchling. You try to scream out in defense of the hatchling, but much to your surprise Shrykos leaps off the edge of the cradle and flies on the man to claw her long and sharp nails in his throat, rendering him silent instantly before she climbs up his face to blast fire at the man’s eyes which causes him to fall back on the ground with a loud thud, and leaving the person behind you paralyzed.

Albeit not long enough because they pay no mind to the hatchling tearing the man's face to shreds. And maybe they have the right idea not to care, you’re not bonded to the hatchling, and unless given the direct command she won’t come to you to defend you like she did Aerion. You have to fight back yourself. Thus since you can’t bite the person and you can’t outmatch their strength, you kick your foot back as they’re pulling you back towards the balcony, and manage to hit their crotch.

They react with a groan and loosen their grip just enough for you to shove away their hand with the blade, and twist around. Once you’re facing him, you jab your knee in their arm as hard as you can, managing to break it and unarm him, but also causing him to shout in pain.

Is that enough though?

No, they ignore the pain and pretend they’re going for the blade, so you reach for it too, but then at the next second they actually swing their palm against your face so hard it stings, and the taste of iron trickles in your mouth through your parted lips, while more leaks down your chin.

Hurried footsteps then strike the ground and seem to be approaching where you are, so while you’re dazed the man grabs the blade and lunges at your belly, but even if your ears are ringing and your eyesight blurs because of that hard slap, you throw your hands down and manage to catch the blade before he could pierce it through your flesh.

In capturing the blade with your bare hands though, now sharp blinding pain spreads throughout your palms.

“Drop the blade!” You recognize Ser Cane shout at the top of his lungs while he and the other knight slowly stalk toward the man.

However, the man manages to slip his hand away from your bleeding grasp and redirects his threat at your belly, at your twins, leaving you paralyzed out of fear the blade will penetrate with a single move of any muscle.

“Ser,” you call out to your sworn protector between pants and your voice now trembles with fear.

“Not another step or I gut her,” the man sneers and steps toward you to get closer and make his threat that more dangerous, making Ser Cane put his arm out to stop the other knight from getting any closer.

“You will be able to go, just let the princess go,” Ser Cane makes empty promises whilst he steps back. And to the ears of a man’s life hanging by a thread, why would he not take the opportunity?

Yet as tempted as the man is, he hesitates and glances at you with panic in his green eyes. “Long live the Queen.”

The man pulls the blade away from your belly and starts to move it up in an attempt to stab your throat, but the moment he looked away from the knights, Ser Cane managed to slide out a dagger so when the man began to scale the blade up, Ser Cane hurled his dagger and with perfect aim hit the man’s throat. Now the threat the man held falls with his blade, and thick crimson blood squirts out from his gash and splashes all over your face, letting you know it’s all over, there’s no threat looming over you. It’s all done.

Yet your heart doesn’t stop drumming nor does your blood stop rushing with the terror still rattling your body.

“Come with me, Princess,” Ser Cane’s voice travels through your ears and you notice that it's softer than before, but it doesn’t make you do as he says, you look at the dead man bleeding out on the ground, and gasp sharply before you slowly sit on the ground with leg flat on the ground, and the other used to prop your arm on your knee.

“Go fetch Prince Aemond,” Ser Cane demands the other knight before sheathing his blade and rushing to check on Aerion.

“Is he…”

“Still asleep,” Ser Cane finishes for you, so you nod stiffly and let that worry go with a deep and shallow breath, but this new shock still leaves you trembling on the ground, trying to convince yourself that what just happened did happen. It was not a dream, it was real, people did try to kill you and Aerion.

Was it in some twisted act for your mother? Were they sent by someone else? Or was it your own mother and Daemon who sent them?

You don’t know. You don’t know a thing about them and you won’t know because they’re both dead. All that you know for sure is that you almost died. They were going to kill you!

Gods. Gods. Damn. Damn it!

“Let me see, let me see,” Ser Cane startles you as he crouches down beside you to look at the drops of blood coming from your belly since right now your mind is unraveling what happened and letting that shock go.

“He just nicked your skin, you’re okay, your children are okay,” he assures you as he meets your eyes.

And even if your gaze is miles away you nod stiffly in comprehension before you blink slowly and get your focus lost on the blood pooled around the dead man, but not with a blank stare now. This time a slow-growing fire is sparked in your eyes, causing your gaze to narrow just enough to spread a menacing look, while your parted lips letting out your shallow breaths still give your disbelief and fear away.

It’s like you were just hit with a realization because you were. You know what you feel now, and you know what you want. You see it reflected in the pool of blood reaching your foot.

Whether the killers were sent by your mother, by someone else, or they acted alone doesn’t matter. The killers dispersed the cloud that was fogging your mind since you left Dragonstone, and it’s all clear now. There’s no going back, there’s no sufficient apologies that can tear down your rage-fueled hate because that’s what you are. You’re angry at your mother for lying to you for six years, you hate that she lied, and you don’t want to help her anymore because of it.

You tried being good, the perfect princess, and the perfect daughter of a Queen. You risked your life to come here to send her letters of the Greens' plans. You strained yourself to prove something to your mother, to try and be what she needs in this war and as a daughter, but no more. You’re done trying to bend over backwards to prove something to her.

You’re done.

Does it mean you will fight for the Greens?

Well, you will get your hands dirty. You won’t hide who you can really be now and you won’t let them diminish you.

You will fight. She will see you fight. She will know your rage face to face. They will all know your rage.

“What—”

Aemond’s voice registers in your head, and as you follow where his voice comes from you see him stopped only a few paces away with his eye on the dead man.

“Aemond,” you gasp softly, feeling that fear break apart after being penetrated by the mere presence of your best friend and your beloved husband Aemond.

When his eye finds you it widens at the sight of the blood pampered on your face, staining and dulling the white-silver gown that no longer glimmers like shining diamonds. He then sees your hands leaking blood from wounds he can’t see, but knows are there due to the blood dripping on the ground, and his rage snaps to the knights meant to protect you, but you call out to him as you see that darkness spark in his eye.

“Aemond.”

Said man’s eye falls on your face and he debates still tormenting the knights, but as he sees how you plead for him with your eyes alone, he lets his anger go for now with a deep breath and then falls on his knees beside you.

“<Are you hurt?>” He asks in High Valyrian as he studies you to find his answer regardless of what you say.

“<Just cuts on my palms, but I’m, we’re okay.>”

Aemond’s eye drifts to the cradle a few feet away and his lips part as he sees Shrykos covered in blood returning to his spot by Aerion’s side.

“<He’s okay,” you assure Aemond. “He’s asleep. His dragon protected him.>”

Aemond looks back at you and you both share a soft and relieved breathy laugh at the fact that Aerion did not wake at all through the interaction, and that his little hatchling took down a grown man all by herself.

“<Are you okay?>” Aemond asks again and doesn’t hesitate cradling your face covered in blood.

“Aemond my face—”

“I don’t care,” he cuts you off and leans in closer to study you with his eye glossy with tears brought by worry. “Are you okay?” He asks, making your bottom lip tremble. You want to lie, but you can’t with him looking at you with that tender blue eye filled to the brim with concern over your life, so you shake your head lightly.

Aemond caresses your cheek with his thumb and presses his forehead against yours. “I’m here,” he reassures you before he embraces you against him, letting you sink into his warm and comforting embrace, and become one.

You don’t need to prove anything to each other. You don’t need to sweat blood to try and be something worthwhile for each other. You’re enough. You’re all each other needed when you were kids, and you’re all each other needs now.

Is your rage extinguished? No, it’s still very much alive and it blazes like wildfire as your fire becomes one with Aemond’s, because you both share a similar rage that you want everyone to see. That they will all see.

.

.

.

.

A/N- I’m afraid Cregan is the only one who can pull you out of this dark corner now.

Tagged- @namelesslosers @stargaryenx @chainsawsangel @lauftivy @winxschester @cloudroomblog @llarue @padsdarlg @sofietargaryen @gracielikegrapes @dreaming-of-the-reality @itzelpeyton @patdsinner33 @mrsdominickstark @elaena-aerrin @todoroki-slut @snh96 @urmomsgirlfriend1 @nifujiswhore @sweethoneyblossom1 @kaetastic @lightdragonrayne @squidscottjeans @oh-you-mean-me @wallacewillow0773638 @icefrye19 @thescottpack @fiction-fanfic-reader @crazymusicgirl104 @r-3dlips @strangersunghoon @just-pure-trash @ethereal-athalia @missyviolet123 @callsignwidow @xunquish-blog @tabathastan @weepingfashionwritingplaid

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Dirty Work 24

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as bullying, familial discord/abuse, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You start a new gig and find one of your clients to be hard to please.

Characters: Loki

Note: friday! coworkers last day!

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

You pass through the gate, cautious to close it without a noise. You trail past the hedges and around the side of the house. You enter through the back, as you did in those early days, only weeks ago, though it seems years.

You move slowly, leaving your shoes out of the way, disregarding the closet as you cling to the strap of your bag and venture warily onward. You pause before the kitchen door and peek around, finding it empty. You tiptoe on and climb the stairs one at a time, flinching at ever creak.

You reach the top and keep your eyes down. You go to the library and slip inside, like a ghost floating through your own existence. You set the bag by your feet and pull out the laptop to begin your day.

You don't think, not past the list of tasks. You boot the computer and wait for the screen to light up. You type in the pass code and open Excel. You lean your head in your hand, eyes glazing over as the glare sears your vision, stamping with endless columns and tiny numbers.

You feel yourself slumping, the strength whittling away by the second. Your eyes droop even as your ears prick at each noise. You shake your head, trying to ward off the needling fatigue. You yawn and sit up, rubbing your eyelids as you square your shoulders.

You let your head hang back and drop your arms into your lap. Your stomach wriggles as Mr. Laufeyson's looming presence creeps into your mind. He's here somewhere and surely, he already knows you are too. He's just waiting to pounce. 

Your fears furl into faded dreams. A fractured series of scenes, twisted reflections of reality rippling into each other until you dizzy. You can hear your own snores yet don't quite realise you're asleep.

You wake with a start as you feel yourself slipping. You barely catch yourself before you flop off the chair. You spasm and grip the arm rest as a shadow lurks behind your laptop screen. You gape up at Mr. Laufeyson as he watches you with arms folded.

"Hm," he tilts his head, "that shirt is... not very professional."

"Sir," you keep your face down as your cheek thrums, swollen and bruised, "I'm sorry, I... I didn't sleep very well."

"Oh yes, of course, I hadn't even mentioned you sleeping on the job," he growls and uncrosses his arms, bringing his hands down to the desk. He leans in so his head is just above the laptop. "Look at me."

"Mr. Laufeyson, I'm just sorting out the expenses--"

"Look at me," he commands more firmly.

You wince and rub your neck. An ache radiates in your shoulder, another remnant of your father's wrath. You slowly raise your chin as your lip twitches just slightly. His eyes narrow and his jaw ticks.

He's silent as he stares at you. Angry, you can tell. You pull your hands back and fold them against your chest.

"Please, Mr. Laufeyson, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep. It won't happen again--"

"What happened to your clothes?" He slithers darkly.

"Nothing, I... I wasn't paying attention this morning--"

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not," you squeak unconvincingly.

His nostrils flare and he slaps his palm on the desk. You sit back, pressing yourself to the chair as you whimper.

"I underestimated that... scum," he spits out.

"I don't know--"

"Go on and lie again. What is it this time? You took a tumble?" He reaches out and you shy away, expecting him to put another swell in your cheek. Instead, he touches the thrumming skin, stroking it, "I didn't think..." he takes a breath and withdraws his hand, standing stiffly, "I believed him a coward, but not that sort."

"It's not--"

"Hush. You make your excuse for him, I will not swallow them," he flicks his fingers at you dismissively.

He rolls his shoulders and pivots on his heel. He paces across the patterned rug and stops, just before the sofa. He turns back, making another line across the space. He brings his finger up to tap his chin.

"Yes, very well, I see I do have somewhere to be," he states as he drops his hand, his lips curving at the corners. 

"Mr. Laufeyson," you stand.

"Never you mind," he tuts, "you have your work, I have mine." He cracks his knuckles.

"Are you--"

"Ah ah," he points at you tersely, "since when is my itinerary your concern? Mind the house, that is your job." He huffs and checks his watch as a pinch lines his forehead, "you may receive the expected parcel and leave it on my desk for now..." he lowers his hand and grumbles, "and you will stay here."

"Mr. Laufeyson," you murmur.

Before you can protest further, he's at the door. You're frozen in disbelief. Surely he can't mean what you think.

It doesn't matter to him, does it? You are his house manager, just another below him he can torment, he wouldn't do anything like that. Certainly, he won't harm your father, right?

You rush after him as your doubts bubble over. As he enters the hallway, you grab his elbow, not thinking, not hesitating for once in your life. "Please, Mr. Laufeyson, whatever you're thinking of--"

He faces you and rips his arm free, "don't."

"Please, it's-- I--" you sputter helplessly and wring your hands, "I deserved it."

He squares his chin and blinks. "Deserve... so it was him?"

"Mr. Laufeyson, it isn't... isn't your problem. He's my dad, I'll deal with him."

"As you have so far?" He scoffs, "pet, I mean to defend you. To do you a favour. Another. And now you overstep and try to command me?"

"No, no, I'm not... not commanding. I'm begging," you clutch your hands tighter, putting them up to plead, "don't make it worse."

He dips his head and closes his eyes. He pinches his nose and gives a nod, rubbing his lips together. He raises his head and opens his eyes again. He shrugs and lets a grin break through.

"It isn't your choice," he grabs your wrists, locking them together in his grasp as he drags you forward.

Your socks slip on the floorboards as he tugs you down the hallway. You struggle, writhing and sliding against his force. The same panic that struck you last night swirls again, thumping in your chest. He turns and swings you through the door of his bedroom. You stagger as he lets you go and the door swiftly snaps shut behind you.

You turn to face it and throw yourself against it, twisting the handle as you try to pull it open. He holds it shut from the other side and you hear the lock grind into place. You hit the door with your fists and cry out.

"Mr. Laufeyson!"

"I will return shortly, pet, never you worry," he assures, "don't miss me too much."

You slap the wood again and press your ear to it. You listen as he struts away, whistling until it fades to silence. You hear the front door below, shortly followed by the car engine rolling to life. You rush over to the window and look at as he steers up to the gate.

You can hear his knuckles cracking and see that sinister smirk. His intentions cannot be good.

✨

Your exhaustion slakes away to panic. You pace the room, bounce up and down on your feet, fidget incessantly, murmuring senselessly. You just can't be still. What is Mr. Laufeyson doing?

Your fears twist your imagination to terror. Is he going to hurt your father? He should just leave him alone. He's the one who got him so worked up. That last thought makes you stop short.

It's his fault. It's all his fault. He heard everything on the phone, he knew your dad has anger issues, he walked into your home and he ruined it all. 

Your lashes flutter as you sway. You feel like you've been struck all over again. Mr. Laufeyson has done this all to you! He gave you this job, he took you away from your dad, he invaded your home, he made you wear those clothes. 

And now, you're mad. You feel that hot streak inside of you unlike anything before. Vivid and venomous. You run to the door, throwing yourself against it as you beat with your fists. 

He's locked you up here so you can't stop him from doing anymore. You're sleeping in a hotel because of him. You're not eating or sleeping, you can feel yourself going insane. Because of him.

You're dizzy and breathless. You lean on the door and try to calm yourself. Your head hurts.

You slide down and turn to put your back against the door. You hang your head, bending your legs to rest your arms over them. You heave and close your eyes.

You're just as helpless as you've ever been.

✨

The footsteps bring you out of your daze. You raise your head, wobbly on your neck, and blink several times before you get your bearings. You listen to Mr. Laufeyson's entry, his slow advance below, and his steady ascension up the staircase.

Your heart hitches but you don't move. Even if you had the strength, you refuse. You will not budge.

He comes down the staircase, a hum in the air. You tense and grit your teeth, eyes hot again with tears. Not sad but angry.

"Ah, pet, you will be happy to hear that I don't believe your father will have another cruel world reserved for you," he sings the handle shifts slightly above your head and the lock clicks. "How shall we celebrate your emancipati--"

The door jolts and you push back against it. You plant your feet and grunt as you force it shut. He lets out a noise and shoves back. You do it again.

"Pet," he evens his tone, "what are you up to?"

"Leave me alone!" You snarl, surprised by your own venom.

"Pet, now, let me in--"

"I said go away!"

He scoffs and stops pushing. He lets out his breath loudly.

"This isn't mature behaviour."

"I don't care, I don't want to see you."

He's quiet again. You hear his soles scuff and he gently taps on the door.

"Pet, please, we should talk. I think it's imperative that we do--"

"No, I don't want to talk. I don't want to see you. I want you to leave me alone!"

"You are being a child--"

"You ruined everything," you bark, "you ruined my life! You're a bad man and I hate you!"

You go weak as the last words escape you without a thought. You collapse onto your bottom and catch your head in your hands. You devolve into thick, choking sobs. Here you are, bawling like the child he calls you. He must be amused.

"Are you tendering your resignation?" He asks crisply, "because I believe you haven't anywhere else to go, my dear."

"I know! Because of you. I have nowhere, because you!" You shoot back through heaving breaths.

"Or... you could have somewhere, because of me," he says measuredly. "Pet, all you have to do is open the door and talk to me."

You fall onto your side and curl up. You cover your head, whimpering as tears trickle down. You sniffle and hide under your arm. Just like you did when dad wouldn't stop yelling. 

The floorboards shift and he sighs again, "I can wait." He taps the door lightly once more and his footfalls retreat.

You tremble in a heap, nearly delirious with emotion. Through the chaos, you can see the truth. You don't have anywhere or anything without him.

✨

The world shifts under you, your body chafing across the floor as the door moves you. Not harshly but inch by inch. Mr. Laufeyson bends over you as you open your eyes, groggy and glazed over. His silhouette is fuzzy and distant as he slides his arms under you.

He lifts you and carries you to the bed. You groan as he lays you down, piling pillows behind you to prop you up. He sits with his legs over the side and pushes his head back. You come to, little by little, pushing through the fog.

You hug yourself and wiggle in place. He reaches to still you, his hand on your thigh. You wince and stare at his fingers. He draws his knee up and shifts to face you. He removes his touch as his eyes cling thoughtfully to the wall behind you.

"I see you've calmed down," he begins and lets his gaze fall on you, "so we will talk. I'm sure you're aware that matters are urgent."

"No..." you utter, "I'll... go."

You try to sit up and he nudges you back. You hit the pillows and do not try again. You don't have anything left in you.

"Where?" He challenges.

"I have a hotel room--"

"No," he shakes his head, "that won't do. What I'm offering, well, you can hardly deny it."

You drop your head and shrug.

"How many more nights can you afford? And without a job? I'm offering you both. Work, accommodation. I dare to say, I would offer you a home."

"No, you're my boss," you insist.

"Yes, I do expect you to shoulder some tasks," he assures, "but perhaps... we might remold this arrangement."

Your eyes stick blankly to your knees. You don't know what he wants or what he means. Just more. It's always more. Hasn't he taken enough?

"What more can you want from me?" You whisper.

He's quiet again. His fingers twiddle and he lifts his hand, touching your arm and slowly grasping it. He unwraps it from your torso and trails down to your hand, squeezing it.

"I made myself clear before," he pulls your hand closer, cradling it as he pets your knuckles, "but perhaps you still misunderstood me." He clasps your hand between both of his, "I want you. Entirely."

Your eyes flick up to meet his. Your mouth falls open as your heart tempos wildly. You still don't think you understand. Your search his face for the answer.

"I will grant you any wish. Clothes, jewellery, whatever you like. If you like to read, I will buy you books, if you like to draw, I will buy you paint. If you just want shiny things, I can get those too. All I ask is simple. For you. For your entire being. That you obey and serve my every need and you will have all you ever longed for. Things you never even dreamed of," he slips a hand away and lifts yours. He leans in and softly kisses your knuckles, "you say I am bad, but I needn't be.”

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: brittle stars

Some animals end up living in the shadows of others. Everyone knows about starfish, the famous branching echinoderms, and a lot of people know about brittle stars, but not as many people know that brittle stars aren't starfish, they're their own thing. But because they look similar, brittle stars are frequently mistaken for a type of starfish, rather than being recognized as their own animal. I aim to help these stars shine and be recognized as their own animal.

(Image ID: a green brittle star on a rock. It consists of a small, round central body with five long, slender arms arms emerging from it at equal distances from each other. Thea rams are lines on either side with small bristles. End ID)

Brittle stars are members of the class Ophiuroidea, which is closely related to Asteroidea, the true starfish. The name comes from the Greek "ophis", meaning "serpent", a reference to their long, skinny arms. Ophiuroidea is divided into two orders, Ophiurida (true brittle stars) and Euryalida (basket stars). As with all echinoderms, brittle stars are radially symmetrical, consisting of multiple body segments that radiate around a point, akin to the slices of a pizza. The majority of brittle star species have five segments, though a few have six or more. Similarly to starfish, brittle stars have their arms radiating out from a central disc. In brittle stars, all the organs are located in the disc and as long as the disc remains intact, the arms can be regrown. The mouth (which also functions as the anus) is located in the center of the disc and each body segment has a single jaw and tooth. Some starfish can regenerate into two animals if the disc is cut in half, but almost no brittle stars can survive being cut in half. That being said, some species can reproduce via fission, where the disc splits in half and each half regenerates into a fully-grown star. In brittle stars, the arms are narrower than the disc, making the disc much more visually distinct than in starfish, where it can be hard to tell where the disc ends and arm begins. The arms of a brittle star are slender and highly flexible. When in danger, a brittle star can sever one of its arms. This is usually done in response to predation, in hopes that a predator will opt to eat the arm while the star makes its escape. This is called autotomy and is the reason why the common name of these animals is brittle star. The arms are formed of multiple calcium carbonate plates called vertebral ossicles due to their resemblance to vertebrae. The ossicles are connected to each other by ball and socket joints, allowing for a great degree of flexibility. Most true brittle stars can flex their arms side to side, but not up and down, while basket stars can flex in all directions. In basket stars, the arms branch multiple times. Unlike starfish, brittle stars use their arms for locomotion. The arms move in a rowing motion to drag the star around. Some species can swim for short distances as well. By contrast, starfish (and urchins) move using tube feet. Tube feet are a common echinoderm trait and consist of small tubes with a sucker on one end that are inflated and moved with water pressure. Most echinoderms use their tube feet for movement and feeding. True brittle stars, by contrast, seem to use their tube feet primarily for sensory reception, though they are also used to help transport food to the mouth. Due to moving with their arms instead of tube feet, brittle stars are capable of much faster movement than starfish, though in short bursts. Like other echinoderms, brittle stars use a water vascular system, where water is drawn into the body and used to inflate and move the tube feet and as a substitute for blood. Brittle star reproduction is fairly standard for echinoderms. The males and females will release their gametes into the water column. Fertilized eggs develop into pluteus larvae, which swim using cilia. In the pluetus stage, echinoderms are bilaterally symmetrical. They become radially symmetrical during metamorphosis into the juvenile form.

(GIF ID. A pale white brittle star swimming by rapidly moving its legs. End ID).

(GIF ID: two white brittle stars (with a third in the background) moving across sand by using their legs to push and drag themselves along. One appears to be carrying a red object in its mouth. End ID)

(Image ID: a basket star on a rock. The central disc in brown and has a pair of arms emerging from each segment. Each arm branches repeatedly and those branches have their own branches, resulting in a vaguely bush-like appearance. End ID)

Brittle stars are eyeless, but can detect light. Most animals, and a lot of non-animals, have some ability to detect the presence or absence of light. True vision, the ability to form images, requires more complex systems than the might-sensing cells most animals have. More specifically, it requires an eye. Or at least that's what we thought until scientists found evidence that the brittle star Ophiomastix wendtii may be able to form imaged without an eye by using its whole body as one big eye (a sea urchin, Diadema africanum) also seems to have this ability). Brittle stars are covered with light-sensing structures called opsins that can detect the presence or absence of light, but vision-forming sight requires the ability to determine how much light is coming from what direction. O. wendtii uses chromatophores to alter its color and these packets of pigment-changing cells are arranged in such a way that they may provide that directionality. In tests, O. wendtii would travel to shelter when exposed to light with a greater than change likelihood while the closely-related O. pumila would move at random when exposed to light. O. pumila lacks the types of pigment that O. wendti has, which could prevent it from being able to form the directionality needed for vision-forming sight. This is reflected in the species' behavior. O. wendtii moved toward shelter when exposed while O. pumila prefers to bury itself. The possibility for vision to exist without eyes means that a lot of animals we previously thought of as blind may actually be able to see, though probably not as well as animals with eyes.

(Image ID: Ophiomastix wendtii, a red brittle star with larger bristles on its legs. Two legs are shorter and blunted, possibly having been damaged. End ID)

There are over 2,000 known species of brittle star that live all over the oceans, from shallow water to the deep sea. Most basket stars are seep-sea animals, though some shallow-water species are known. True brittle stars are mostly detritivores who crawl along sediment and eat bits of organic matter and tiny organisms. This behavior makes them seafloor engineers. Their feeding behavior stirs up the sediment, releasing nutrients and affecting the behavior of other species that rely on the sediment. Because of this, brittle stars are often highly important parts of their ecosystems. Some species follow different lifestyles. Some will target and eat sponges or coral polyps while others are active predators of small animals, filter feeders, or even omnivores that eat plant matter. Brittle stars often live in or on corals or sponges, which provide a source of protection. The relationship between star and coral or sponge may be symbiotic in some species, with the star eating parasites and pests that endanger its host. Basket stars are filter feeders that use their many branching arms to catch plankton. They need to live in places with a current as as such are often foudn on seamounts, where the underwater mountain directs the flow of water into currents. The star anchors itself to a rock, coral, or other surface and extends its arms into the current to make a net. The arms are lined with tiny hooks that catch plankton carried by the flowing water. Once caught, tube feet cover the plankton with mucus and transport it slowly to the mouth. The star will sometimes bring its arms to its mouth to speed up the process. When threatened, basket stars will bring in their legs and form a ball to protect the disc. Basket star arms are less muscular than those of true brittle stars and therefore they are not as fast. Basket stars generally get bigger than true brittle stars, with the largest species, Gorgonocephalus eucnemis, having a disc up to 14 cm (5.5 in) in diameter and an arm length of up to 70 cm (27.5 in).

(Image ID: a pale red brittle star with no bristles on its arms. It is climbing sea fan (type of coral with appearance similar to a fern), with its arms wrapped around the coral for stability. End ID)

(Image ID: a basket star in feeding posture. It is on a rock with some of its arms used to support it. The rest of the arms are extended into the water column, with every branch fully extended. It looks kind of like pale white ferns. End ID).

This basket star living in the St. Lucie County Aquarium in Ft. Pierce, Florida ripped itself in half shortly after being introduced to the exhibit. Esch half survived and regenerated into a full basket star. This is the only time this behavior has been seen in this species (Astrophytum muricatum). Of course, trying to rip yourself in half is a reasonable response to realizing you have to live in Florida.

(Image ID: a white basket star splitting into two halves, each with a portion of the arms. The only thing connecting the halves is a small strip of tissue. End ID)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

This huge brick 1900 Craftsman in New Castle, Indiana is a fixer upper, but it has such unique features, it's well worth the price. 5bds, 4ba, reduced $10.1K to $289,900.

Large entrance hall with original butternut wood.

The parlor has attractive turquoise tiles on the fireplace and it has beautiful built-in bookcases.

The living room also has a fireplace, plus look at those beautiful columns between the living and dining rooms. And, the owners left an organ, too.

The dining room has double doors to the hall, wainscoting, and a built-in cabinet. They also left a piano. I love the swinging door to the kitchen- it has a little window just like a restaurant door.

I like the table over the radiator here in the informal dining room and it also has a beautiful built-in cabinet.

The kitchen has original cabinets, but one thing confuses me. It looks like they replaced some of the door fronts with plywood. Other than that, it's a wonderful kitchen.

The pantry has this original big honkin' freezer. I wonder if it still works. Even if it doesn't, it's cool and could be used for storage.

Nice remodeled powder room has the original medicine cabinet and a nice pedestal sink.

The finished basement has a rec room with a bar. It needs a floor and I love the stained glass ceiling, but I wonder if it can be refurbished.

There's also a full kitchen down here.

On the landing to the 2nd level is a delicate stained glass window.

At the top of the stairs is a large sitting area with a fireplace. The roof must've leaked b/c all the ceilings on this floor need repair.

The principal bedroom has lovely fireplace with mint green tiles.

The ceiling is damaged in here and it's also affected the wall, but look at the little cubby. Love the doors, too.

This bathroom between 2 bedrooms is original. Look at how beautiful the tile is, and that little font with the faucet in the wall. How unique is that? It has the original sconces and etched mirror on the medicine cabinet.

The bedrooms are so full of light.

The smaller room was used as a child's room.

Look at this bath- love the tile around the sink and the original heater. It has a built-in cabinet, but whatever that wire is hanging down, should be fixed b/c it's not going to pass inspection.

This is nice- a large 2nd level deck.

The attic is a very large finished space but the ceiling is water damaged.

This area need to be finished.

The beautiful outdoor wood features need to be repainted.

There's a 2 car garage, but not much of a yard b/c most of the space was blacktopped. The lot is .25 acre.

[vagabond-umlaut]

Bronzen Glaze

Gojo Satoru x Fem!Reader; Arranged Marriage; Childhood Friendship To Complicated Feelings™️; Fluff & Angst; Implied Smut; Canon-Compliant; Contains Manga Spoilers, Gojo is High-Key Pathetic while Reader is Low-Key Pathetic Here— Author Loves The Dynamics Between Them So Much.

Oneshot From Series: One Day, Three Autumns

"Do we love each other, Satoru?"

The question isn't meant to be melancholic, nor is it meant to be one soaked in blame— the man knows, he really, really does— yet, he can do nothing to dodge the dagger your quiet curiosity plunges into him.

Breath stuttering and fingers slipping off the zip of the jacket, Satoru steals a look of you from the mirror before. Eyes blinking slowly, from the fatigue from yesterday's mission or from today's restless evening, he's not quite sure— but he reckons with every hypnotic flutter of the eyelashes against your cheeks, with every micron your mouth curves into that maddening musing pout, with every sliver of your skin open beyond your tank top and shorts– you may easily rival those Baroque and Rococo paintings you seem to admire so much.

And give them the most crushing defeat ever, while you're at it, too.

Carefully, Satoru offers your reflection a smile. "Is this you asking me if I love you or not, sweetness? I thought you were way more direct in your attacks, weren't you?"

"That I still am, Satoru," you respond without a moment missed. Feet kicking off the covers over them and landing on the cold floor with an audible 'tap', you stretch your arms overhead then shoot an absorbed look his way. If not for the way your eyes dance over him, he deems it would've been awfully difficult to know if you were here or not– apart from your alluring presence, both to his eyes and his Six Eyes, that is.

You sigh, cocking your head to one side. "My question isn't if you love me or not nor if I love you or not— it is if the two of us love each other or not. Tell me, Satoru," you say, inching towards him with small steps until you're near enough for your warmth to radiate off and reach him, reach the numb cold splits and rifts these years have gifted him– and inquire, in that silent voice strong enough to bring him, the strongest sorcerer ever, to his knees, "do you think we lo—"

"No."

You pause.

Satoru looks away from your image. Very painfully so.

For he does love you— oh, how much he does! Perhaps far more than those old tales like to drawl on for— except, he knows this isn't love—

For love must be scented with the cinnamon perfume you gifted him on his birthday, not with the pungent odour of blood and dark curses. For love must be walking home, exhausted yet cheek by jowl, not two meagre nods and murmured greeting in the living room before giving in to the fatigue. For love must be embracing you, beneath the gentle moonlight and tender sunlight, not hovering the skin of his palm over your sleeping form, one inch too away despite there being no Infinity.

For love must be letting go of you– the only one person the sorcerer's ever loved enough to bare himself before, literally and metaphorically, not keeping you confined by the ties you've always viewed as chains– in stark contrast to him deeming them to be threads linking you both together for this lifetime and many more to come.

Grim twisted feelings stream out from the man's brain into his blood, down to his poor pathetic heart– only to all but vanish from within on the brush of something soft against the column of his neck.

Satoru peers down to find your delicate fingers skim over the purple-red mark you've left on him, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed, as if you're wondering how you could have done this— Teasing comments threaten to erupt from him any time now; the sorcerer swallows them back– observing your far-too-careful touches, far-too-rigid shoulders, far-too-focused gaze— something tells Satoru, implores him even, to speak before he's too late.

Again.

Quashing his natural tendency to deflect, to escape, wearing a cloak of humor, the man clasps your wrist in his fingers and tugs you close to lift your eyes to lock with his. Then leans down towards you, every word escaping him in a flurry of fear, of love.

"No, we don't love each other— But we're together. And, in this shitty world we live in, that's enough— is it not, sweetness?"

You simply blink back. And, just when Satoru begins to wish he never opened his damned mouth in the first place, he never listened to that damned voice in the first place– he never allowed himself be damned by these feelings for you in the first place— the earth shifts on its axis before his icy-blue gaze.

You smile.

And, while it isn't as wide nor as bright as those which stretched your cheeks back when the times were much simpler; sure enough, it isn't anywhere close to the chillingly formal ones you wear too often these days— Your smile now is genuine.

Yes, the corners of your mouth tremble ever so lightly, Satoru can see that– the exact same way he sees– drinks in, basks in, revels in– your lips curving, your cheeks flushing, you growing closer to him, if not in a metaphorical sense, in the literal sense certainly. Resting a palm on his waist– so light yet heavy with undertones, the man knows you will never let see the light of the sun nor feel the caress of the breeze; you shift the other hand in his loose hold, moving to intertwine your small fingers with his– unintentionally carving yourself the deepest niche in the walls of his existence.

Not that he ever minds it, though.

Every atom inside him vibrating from the situation, from the position, from you, Satoru registers you say with that content hum of yours, he adores so much, "Give me five minutes and we can go on the mission together, 'kay? And don't worry," you add, the exact second the whole of your request clicks into place in his mind, and he moves to protest, you're way too exhausted to go on yet another mission!!— Squeezing his hip lightly, you continue, eyes growing a glint very familiar to him.

"Promise to buy me dinner from Ichiran, and I promise I'll stick to the fringes of the fight, letting you do all the dirty work— fair deal, isn't it, Satoru?"

Fair deal or not, the sorcerer finds himself nodding to your demand, smidgen too enamored with your scheming self, your gleaming self, your easily-eagerly-gladly-agreeing-you-and-he-are-together self–

He smiles. And carefully raising the silver chain from where it nestles on your skin, thumbs the band of sapphires hanging from it. A flicker of something terrifyingly similar to that fondness you showed him in your younger years, skitters across your face— Satoru honestly can't believe how he thought your curious question to be a dagger when it has led to this.

Satoru's smile widens into a grin.

"Hurry up, wifey. Nanamin said it's an emergency mission in Shibuya."

I do not own the characters used. Divider is by @cafekitsune. Please do not plagiarize or translate or repost this. Hope you enjoyed reading this! 😊

Please interact with This Post to be added to the series taglist! ❤️

Masterlist

[gingerbreadmonsters]

glass jaw

or: bruised, the apple of my black eye.

graphic blood, violence, and injury warnings, cutesy gory found vampire family shenanigans. i went to the haunted theme park in the middle of the woods at midnight, and all i got was this candy apple of temptation. what's up with that? alexis being the world’s best big sister in just over 8600 words.

warnings for gratuitous blood, violence and gore, graphic descriptions of injury and intent to grievously harm, and, like, one teeny tiny moment of cannibalism. i strongly encourage you to mind the warnings, and to stop reading at ANY point if you feel uncomfortable. reader discretion is advised. minors dni, 18+ only. please consider yourself warned. 

longtime readers may be aware of my sinophone!solaires hc, so ENGLISH SPEAKING READERS - for the love of GOD please check this pronunciation guide i made for the mandarin you're about to see. i PROMISE it'll help!! 💕💕💕

There’s blood everywhere.

It’s a shame. The room was quite tidy when they started – ugh, don’t say it’s got onto the upholstery again. Vampiric blood is impossible to get out of silk, and it costs a fortune to get it professionally cleaned. At least the wooden panelling in here is dark enough to hide most of the spatter.

(Thankfully, baba’s off entertaining the little ankle biters at the moment – and something about a meeting with an old friend, later on? He didn’t say when he was coming back, but it can’t be soon. Hopefully they’ll be able to deal with most of the mess before he gets back. Damned old man never wants them to have any fun.)

How long has it been? Seconds? Hours? It’s difficult to tell. She’d only come in here to sit down, feet hurting from her patrol at Wonderworld, wanting to just lie across the sofa and scroll mindlessly on her phone for an hour or two. She'd almost succeeded, too – until the furious pacing from the other side of the house had got closer and closer.

Vincent had spotted her through the doorway, carelessly cracked open, and… well. He must have had a pretty horrible day.

He’d surprised her, hurling the glass of water in his hands at her head with a sudden hiss. She’d only barely caught it in her peripheral vision, jerking back against the sofa just in time to let it whistle past her face and shatter against the far wall.

No words necessary. Vincent had snarled at her, slamming the door shut behind him, and she’d known exactly what he wanted.

It’s a habit of theirs. A bad one, maybe, but knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to break.

Heavy bodies hitting the floor, skin and spit and bone, this time it might be different. Her shin slamming into his ribs, his elbow smashing into her jaw. Blood clots underneath elegantly manicured nails, and the splinters of what used to be a wisdom tooth are spat onto the side table. It’ll grow back.

Gravity. The inescapable pull. Space bends and folds at the mercy of an impossibly strong grip, worlds and stars and planets collide, and the precious children of William Solaire once again destroy each other.

You might think that it’s madness. That it’s like some crazed, bloodthirsty, animal state that descends upon them, that it’s like they’re totally different people. You’d be wrong. Both of them are perfectly, boringly sane when it happens. There’s no madness here, no delusion – just a brother and a sister who hate and hate and hate.

She’s entirely rational when she tries to sever his spinal column with her teeth, he’s not confused about why he’s trying to rip her arm from its socket. It's never an accident. Tearing each other apart comes naturally.

Cruel spikes of broken glass glitter in Vincent's hair, the smashed mirror above the mantelpiece reflecting the thousand shallow cuts that now litter his scalp, leaking bright, scarlet blood down the back of his neck. Her forearm aches from the impact, the force of a vampiric skull smashing through the glass and into the bricks behind having radiating up through her hand, where her fingers were twisted into Vincent's hair – mostly for grip, but also to keep him from biting them off completely.

It hadn't quite worked, but whatever. She glances down at the ragged chunk of her wrist that isn't there any more, shredded fibres hanging loose, and glares at Vincent as he finishes chewing his mouthful of skin and veins and raw, twitching muscle.

He grins, wide and pretty, fangs slick and gums stained with her blood. “New perfume?”

Bastard. Like he didn't steal it off her vanity this morning, like she couldn’t fucking smell it on him when he came downstairs for breakfast.

“Depends,” she replies, and lets the fistful of dark, meticulously-conditioned and carefully-styled hair still in her hand fall to the floor. “New haircut?”

Vincent's eyes narrow, black and predatory, and, as always, she feels her mouth start to water. He's imagining what it’ll feel like to kick her through the picture window and watch her impact the paved surface of the driveway below, and she's imagining what it'll be like to dig her fingernails inside his stomach and claw out all of the softness she can find.

It’s so easy to get lost in it, the cleansing rage. Nothing but fury, white-hot and shameful as it roars alive under her skin, until she's scraped raw inside and out. The same manic look paints itself across their faces, the same sadistic glee that only comes with doing something you know you shouldn’t.

Well, they're both just as bad as each other. Perhaps it runs in the family.

She lunges, teeth bared, grabbing his shirt to try and slam him back into the brickwork – but like lightning, he lurches to the side and uses her momentum to grab her waist and hurl her bodily into the wall. Wood splinters and flecks of glass go flying as they claw at each other, blood spatter dripping down the window panes and soaking into the finely-patterned carpet.

Her ears ring when Vincent seizes the back of her head and slams her face-first into the doorframe, but she gets her own back as her broken nose puts itself back together, watching the side of Vincent’s chest collapse when she clubs him hard in the side with a metal candelabra. Sweet revenge.

Gasping for breath, he dodges out of the way of her fist and grabs her arm, pulling her painfully into the front of the heavy, wooden console table. She manages to catch his ankle with her foot as she goes, though, hooking it out from under him and shoving him down to the floor. His other hand is still locked around her wrist, so he yanks on her arm to twist himself around, landing heavily on his back instead of his front.

Luckily, she manages to keep her balance, but he can see it coming now – instead of the satisfying crunch she was hoping for, he barely manages to jerk his head out of the way so the sole of her slipper impacts the carpet instead of his eye socket. It sends a spike of pain up her shin, but she ignores it in favour of shielding her head, so the impact of him kicking her backwards into the bookcases doesn't stun her too much.

It’s kind of hilarious, when you think about it. Other families don’t cause thousands of dollars of property damage trying to violently maim and murder each other when they get bored, do they?

In hindsight, it seems almost inevitable they’d turn out like this. For a long time after Vincent’s turning, they’d fought almost constantly, and nobody had ever been able to quite understand why.

It used to be unbearable, having them in the same room together. Bitter glares and cutting remarks, sniping and biting at each other from across the table. Ba always complained about how they gave him headaches – the static whine of furious, mutual hatred, the pressure of all that blinding intensity in one place, with nowhere else to go but him.

He never took sides, and it stung every time. In her head, she knows he was right to. There aren’t the words to describe how much worse that would have made it. But deep inside, she couldn’t help the sick, dizzy feeling of her Maker abandoning her, leaving her – a necessary, instinctive fear of being cast out from the safety of his world and the shelter of his presence.

She’s his blood, she’s his, she’s his. They’re a family.

You can’t say that either of the two of them is entirely innocent. Alexis knows that there are parts of her that Vincent’s right to hate, and there are parts of him that she’s right to hate, too. They’ve both done terrible, awful things, too many to name, to other people and each other alike. Anyone else would say that one is just as awful as the other, and that with the way they’re carrying on, neither of them is making it any better whatsoever.

A boring answer, in short.

Because it’s not actually about that, is it? There’s something else too, something too tender and complicated for them to ever really unravel, the sugary decay of undeath that turns their spit to venom and their hunger to thirst. Vincent’s all the things she left behind, and she’s all the things he never had, and it’s all bundled up with the howling wasteland of the world that neither of them should ever have left.

Everyone regrets their Turning, whether they say so or not. Some regret it more than others, it’s true, but nobody gets away unscathed. The only reason it’s ever been a problem is because the House of Solaire tend to take their regrets out on each other.

(She rakes her nails across Vincent’s pretty face, deep, intentional gouges that would surely scar if he couldn’t sew himself back together so fast. He drives his foot into her knee in return, forcing the joint to fold in on itself the wrong way, and the world goes white with agony for the split second before it begins to heal.)

Sometimes, people wonder how they fixed it. How they get along so much better now, like a real brother and sister should. They never actually ask, and nobody will ever tell, but she isn’t stupid enough not to know what they’re thinking.

It shouldn’t be real. They bicker and pinch and steal each other’s clothes – she takes his keys from the drawer and drives his car instead of hers because it’s nicer, and she deliberately won’t leave him any money for petrol. He plays his music far too loudly in the room next door when he knows she’s got work to do, and eats her snacks out of the fridge without remorse, even if they’re labelled. Annoying, yes, but hardly the curse-yelling, death-threatening carnage their house used to be.

In fact, you could almost say they’re too well-behaved. They stay up late together in the living room, surrounded by every phone and laptop and tablet they can find, refreshing and refreshing the stupid ticket lottery website for the concert Vincent wants to go to of the band that she hates. They wear as many layers as they can stand and bring those UV umbrellas that block out the sunlight, so they can go out in the daytime and queue up for that pop-up event downtown that she’s been dying to go to.

Even the endless, complicated trappings of polite vampiric society are standard fare for them now. Vincent doesn’t complain when he has to stand by her vanity for twenty minutes passing her hairpin after hairpin, and Alexis waits by the front door to do his tie for him, because she’s better at doing the complicated knots that go in and out of fashion. They dress up nicely for every society ball, kissing each other on the cheek and fetching each other drinks and dancing the volta just like everybody else.

She lends him whatever jewellery he wants out of her jewellery box because it’s prettier than his. He pesters their father into letting them go to Disneyland in the evening when it’s dark and they won’t get sunburnt, three days in a row when they should be working because it’s her birthday and she wants to take pictures in front of the castle and eat the special coloured candyfloss they always have at this time of year. They proofread each other’s work documents and curl up under the same blanket on the sofa and leave their shoes next to each other by the door every day.

Shiny, red, and utterly forbidden – a devil’s deal is a wonderful thing. The apple seed of temptation took root in her sour, bloated stomach, and a shallow grave blossomed into a beautiful family tree.

It makes baba so happy that they get along now, and that makes them happy too. They’re never going to tell anyone how they do it. Isn’t there some saying about magic and secrets?

(Her arm isn’t quite back in its socket yet, shoulder screaming in pain, but it won’t stop her trying to choke Vincent unconscious against the bookcase. He spits a warm mouthful of blood and venom into her face in thanks, and knees her hard in the stomach.)

Vampiric houses are famously secretive, especially the older ones. It pretty much comes with the territory – the diet alone tends to be rather off-putting for outsiders, to say nothing of the other… well, the other habits that vampirism bestows. Generally, vampires prefer to keep the company of their own kind, and the intrinsic bond between maker and progeny is a rather powerful reason to stay.

Clans have always been compared to families in that way, and the House of Solaire takes it very seriously indeed. More so than most, although it’s not an uncommon thing. Turnings tend to isolate a person from their human friends and family. It would be remiss of their new clan, surely, not to step in and fill that void however they can?

As different as some things are, there’s no escaping human nature. If William’s taught them anything about surviving in this world, about protecting their family, it’s that nothing is off-limits. Whatever is necessary, they do without question. Knowledge, money, sex, power. Blood is blood, always. How else would the Solaire name have prospered for so long? How else will it continue?

Perhaps it’s cliche, but it’s true. Old blood means old money, and it doesn’t get much older than vampiric blood. Her world is a world of private invitations, expensive dresses, and strategic gossip – whatever you could imagine about the secretive lives of a shadowy vampiric aristocracy, it’s probably true. Champagne was made to be whispered over, after all. Long lives mean plenty of time to develop some rather particular tastes, and an instinctive thirst for blood does lend itself well to a certain nonchalance about the insides of a human body.

She’d been surprised at first, an uncomfortable revulsion that she’d had to unlearn, but she’d got used to it eventually. Vincent had too, and although it took him a little longer, he’s almost as good at playing this game as she is. Say what you will about the House of Solaire, but they are very, very good at what they do.

Nothing breeds rumours like success, and William Solaire is truly blessed. A golden name, a golden fortune, and two golden children to match.

There were always going to be rumours, certainly. Of what they might be doing behind closed doors, their ambitions for the future of their house, the secrets that lie at the heart of it. Of fresh scars in strange places, the truth of their allegiance to their father, of brothers and sisters doing things that brothers and sisters shouldn’t be doing.

You couldn’t prove any of it, obviously, and nobody ever says the words out loud. But she hears them all the same, ringing in her ears as she kisses her father on the cheek at breakfast, filling up her mind as she steals Vincent’s jacket out of his room to go shopping, and she smiles wider than ever before – because if they really knew what was happening behind the gates of Wonderworld, they’d have much more to talk about than wondering what William could possibly be holding over their heads to make them finally behave.

(In all honesty, it’s somehow more and less than you’d think. That’s not the point she’s trying to make right now, but it’s worth saying, all the same.)

They’re never, ever going to let it slip. Nobody’s ever going to know about the way she forces her brother back down onto the floor, driving her elbow into his face, feeling cartilage crack and splinter as he falls backwards in a spray of blood. He tries to scramble away, one hand reflexively covering his face, but he’s too slow - her foot comes down hard on his shin, and the scream he lets out isn’t quite loud enough to cover the sound of bone shattering under her slipper.

Vincent tries to drag himself away, fingernails tearing at the carpet, and she plants her foot on his chest to keep him in place. The break in his nose is almost fixed, crimson blood splattered all over his face, but it seems like his attention has… shifted.

That can’t be right.

He’s not that stupid, surely. What else could he be thinking of, when she could so easily crush his heart in a split second? He’s focusing on something else, but it doesn’t seem to be her – is it behind her? Is there something she can’t see? Why isn’t he paying attention?

And then, for some unknowable reason, apropos of apparently nothing… he smiles.

“What?” she spits, pressing down harder and feeling his ribs creak under the ball of her foot. “What is it?”

Infuriatingly, he chokes on a laugh, thick blood bubbling in his throat as it heals, and gestures weakly up at the wall behind her. His eyes are fixed on something there too – no, not the wall, it’s the—

“You little – fucking hell!”

She barely manages to dodge the chandelier as it comes crashing down on her head, feeling the room spin as Vincent yanks on the ceiling chain hard with a burst of psychokinesis. He manages to throw himself in the opposite direction, hand shielding his eyes as the metal hits the floor and the room fills with the deafening sound of shattering crystal.

Both of them hiss as they’re pelted with broken crystal, slicing tiny, stinging ribbons into their skin that seal up almost as soon as they appear. Shit, that hurts.

“Zhidi!”

She glares at her stupid little brother, half-crouched behind the arm of the sofa. “You’re fucking fixing that.”

“Why?” he snickers, pretending to pout, and she’s so tempted to just drag him out into the hallway by the hair and sling him down the stairs before he can finish the thought. “You’re so much better at magic than me, lili…”

“Yeah,” she grumbles, crossing her arms in the face of his unapologetic grin, “which means you need the practice more.”

Vincent groans, downcast. “But he’ll be so mad if I do it wrong!”

He huffs when she just sticks her tongue out at him in return, tossing his head to get his hair out of his eyes. “Can’t you just do half, and I’ll copy?”

Narrowing her eyes, she shakes the debris from her slippers and picks her way over to the window. It takes some concentration, but she runs a hand over the splintered mess of the frame, watching as it sews itself back together. “This is my half.”

“But it’s so hard!” he whines, little brat that he is, and she hates how the obvious manipulation still tugs at her heartstrings. He’s sitting cross-legged in front of the sofa now, hands extended over the sparkling rubble of the chandelier. “You make it look so easy, jiejie…”

Alexis sighs, and begrudgingly reaches down to ruffle his hair. Tiny flakes of mirrored glass fall onto the carpet around him as she does it, slicing little papercuts into the tips of her fingers.

“You do all the light fixtures and the mirror, and I’ll do the rest.”

He looks up at her, suspicious. “Half the mirror.”

“Two thirds.”

“Three fifths.”

“Two thirds, and I don’t tell ba you dropped the chandelier.”

“Deal,” he graciously concedes, and they pinkie promise.

She rolls her eyes and pretends she can’t see him grin, knowing full well she’s being far too soft on him. “If he blames it on me, I swear I’ll key your goddamn Volante and make you watch.”

“What? No!” Vincent gasps, looking betrayed. “Don’t you know how much that cost?”

“Yeah, I do,” she says sweetly, “which is why you’re not going to fuck it up, are you?”

He mutters something unflattering in French under his breath, and she snaps her fingers accusingly in his direction. “What was that, didi?”

“Nothing.”

She smiles winningly, before waving her hand and dragging all the books up off the floor and back into the bookcase. “That’s what I thought.”

They clean up in silence for a little while, their earlier animosity dissolving unnoticed into dust. It’s slow going – neither of them are especially gifted with magic, or have very much of it at their disposal, so they have to keep stopping every few minutes or so to recover.

Before long, they’re both out of breath and exhausted, smashed crystal still crunching beneath their feet and coughing up white plumes of plaster dust.

“When’s he even coming back, anyway?” Vincent asks, peering at the tall jade vase he’s trying to coax back together. “Tonight?”

She nods over her shoulder, trying to stitch the long gash in the sofa cushion closed and failing miserably at getting the complicated pattern to match up again. “He didn’t say when, but it can’t b—”

“Fuck.”

Vincent cuts her off, staring down at his phone as it buzzes, before looking up at her with a grimace and turning the screen to face her.

I’ll be home in ten minutes. I’m sure nothing will be broken or out of place when I get back.

Of course he’s coming home earlier than they thought. Of course. Why wouldn’t he?

“What should we do?”

Christ, he’ll be furious once he sees what they’ve done to this room. If they really, really hurry, they might be able to get away with at least a little bit of it, right?

With a huff of exertion, magic builds beneath her palms, and all the fragments of mirrored glass scattered across the room start to shiver as she prepares to sew them all back together. The mantelpiece needs to be fixed, and there’s a whole section of the doorframe that’s almost totally gone, and she doesn’t even want to think about the horrible, gaping wounds in the wooden panelling that need to be repaired and relacquered…

“Come here,” she mutters to Vincent, beckoning him over to her and pressing her palms flat to his chest. He closes his eyes and nods, resting the tips of his fingers at her temples, and they slowly, carefully, start to reach out to each other.

Her threads brush clumsily against his, once then twice then three times, the connection weak and fluttering as they try to concentrate. She stretches as far as she can, searching for that familiar feeling, anticipating the sickening lurch in her stomach that she knows is surely going to come any second, the momentary freefall as her core latches on to his.

When it happens, it takes her by surprise – her knees buckle for just a moment, and she sways slightly from side to side. Vincent rests his forehead against hers to try and keep upright, and she feels his wordless reassurance through the fledgling bond.

How does he do it? Vincent’s only a few inches taller than her, even less so when she’s in heels, and yet he always seems to tower over her – the looming shadow in the corner of her eye, the impossible weight of his gaze on her through the crowd.

The perfect height for dancing, their father had said, laughing gently as they stumbled through a clumsy waltz around the living room. She’d stepped on Vincent’s toes almost as many times as he’d tripped over the hem of her long dress, a poor stand-in for the real one she’d be wearing at the summer ball in a few months’ time. Elbows up, xiaozhi. They will not be so forgiving in Marseille as I am, you know.

Magic pools beneath her skin as she siphons it greedily through the bond, flooding her core with Vincent’s stolen power, and she luxuriates in the sensation for a long, languid moment. Then, she grits her teeth, and focuses.

With the extra rush of his magic, it’s almost laughable how fast she manages to race through most of the remaining cleanup – the blood dripping down the windowpane vanishes, the claw marks in the carpet disappear, and even the mirror above the mantelpiece clicks neatly back together as if it were never broken. The slashes across the back of Vincent’s shirt close up, and all the little chunks of bloody cartilage stuck in her hair vanish without a trace.

Her brother staggers in her arms as she keeps pulling on their bond, and she manages to ease them both down onto the sofa without too much fuss, still trying to get as much of the chandelier fixed as she can. About half of the crystal is back in place, but the chain just won’t – she can’t quite—

“Enough!”

Vincent breaks away from her with a sharp, sudden breath, slumping backwards onto the newly-repaired cushions and clutching weakly at his skull. “Too much, lijie, too much…”

He gestures vaguely towards the door with one hand in what she thinks might be thirst, and she runs out into the hallway and downstairs to the kitchen as fast as she can to get some blood out of the fridge. There’s already a glass on the counter that he must have got out earlier, so she fills it up with the half-empty bottle of O positive.

Sharing their magic always does this, but once he gets enough blood in him, he should be fine in about twenty minutes or so. It’s a lot like bridging, that way. Their cores will be synchronised for a little while, and they’ll be more keenly aware of each other’s magic, but that doesn’t really mean much when their senses are already so sharp.

A vampire’s core isn’t magically rich enough to do a huge amount all at once, so sharing magic like this is generally their best bet for doing things quickly. It lets them make the most of their limited reserves – rather than working individually, one of them can keep feeding the other magic as they concentrate on the whole picture.

Her steps are quiet but urgent as she runs back upstairs with the blood, slippered feet sliding a little on the kitchen tile. How much longer have they got until ba gets back, again?

When she pushes the door open, Vincent hasn’t moved, still sprawled across the sofa with a hand pressed over his eyes. Gently, she folds the fingers of his other hand around the glass, and he mumbles out a slurred thanks as he gulps the whole thing down in almost one swallow.

She’s just about to try the chandelier again, threads uncomfortably sore and stretched, when there’s a sudden sound from downstairs. The faintest jangling of keys, the scrape of tiny metal pins in the cylinder as the lock turns, and all of a sudden—

“Hui jia le.”

Downstairs in the foyer, he doesn’t have to shout. He already knows they can hear him.

Vincent curses silently, staggering up off the sofa and disappearing off to his room as she flings whatever magic she can at the chandelier chain. If she can just get it to stay together until he goes out again, they can probably recover enough magic between them to be able to fix it properly, right?

“Lili?” Ba’s voice is soft yet confused, the quiet sounds of him taking his shoes off and hanging up his overcoat, wondering why they’re not saying anything. “Xiaozhi, where are you?”

The question is entirely redundant – they all know that he can feel exactly where in the house they are. Vincent isn’t saying anything, so should she keep quiet as well…?

No, it’ll be too suspicious if neither of them goes and sees him, so she throws one last worried glance at the chandelier and hurries out of the room. When she gets to the top of the stairs, he’s just putting his slippers on, and she does her best to keep her heart slow and her smile easy when he looks up and notices her.

“There you are,” murmurs baba, and holds out his arms for her.

Is it embarrassing, how quickly she scrambles down the stairs and throws herself at him? He laughs, strong hands catching her waist and lifting her clear off the floor in a brief, joyful circle. “Ah, I have missed you, chérie.”

“Missed you too,” she says into his shirt, curling happily into his chest as he wraps his arms around her, fondly kissing the top of her head. The Maker’s bond between them sings at their closeness, warm and comforting as it bubbles in her chest, and she feels him smile even though she can’t see it.

“Vincent is upstairs?”

“He, um…”

The words freeze on her tongue as she tries to figure out a half-truth that she’ll actually be able to say – she can’t lie outright, but she can say something that’s technically true, even if it’s not the whole story.

“Headache,” she mumbles noncommittally, and crosses her fingers that he won’t push it.

Ba hums quietly in acknowledgement, seemingly in acceptance. “I see. Was the patrol alright?”

He smooths his hand over her back in wide, slow circles, just the right amount of pressure. “No trouble, I hope.”

She shakes her head, and tries her best to relax. “Just some unempowered kids, looking for somewhere to have a bonfire. It was easy.”

There’d been about six or seven of them piled into some beaten-up old thing, driving down the abandoned road that leads to the gates of Wonderworld, clearly not sure where they were going. Even if she hadn’t spotted the dim headlights through the trees, or heard that god-awful music from the speakers inside, she probably could have smelt them coming – whatever they were drinking, it seemed less like moonshine and more like rubbing alcohol. If they go blind, it’s not her fault.

They’d stopped just before the gates, about to get out when she’d suddenly appeared by the driver’s-side window. He’d been surprised to see her, tapping at the glass until he rolled it down, and she’d taken the opportunity to have a little fun with it before she’d have to trance them.

Mm, you boys are out late, she’d drawled, leaning forwards and resting her arms along the edge of the window. Can I… help you, with anything?

She’s not stupid – she knows exactly what she looks like, and she knows exactly what to do with it. There’s always college students from the nearby towns sneaking into the woods at night, and they fall for it every single time.

Ah, it really had been cute. She’d had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the way all of their eyes suddenly couldn’t stay on her face, conspicuously flicking back up to her eyes whenever she moved.

Just, uh…

The one driving had really, really tried, shifting awkwardly in his seat as she tilted her head to look down at him. Just lookin’ around, ma’am, nothin’ serious…

Nothing serious? She’d smirked at that, careful not to let them see the sharp tips of her fangs as she reached out to gently brush a stray lock of blonde hair out of his face. Honey, you’ll break my heart, with talk like that.

His friend in the passenger seat still hadn’t stopped staring, slack-jawed, and she’d pushed herself up on her tiptoes to stretch her arm out towards him, pressing the tip of her fingernail under his chin to snap his mouth shut. Oh, it was like something out of a movie! She’d always wanted to do that in real life.

I can think of somewhere you’ll like.

Foolishly, they’d all been very liberal with their eye contact – trancing them had been as easy as anything.

As soon as I stop talking, you’re going to turn this car around and drive all the way back to the freeway, and you’re going to drive all the way to the next city before looking for somewhere to have your little party. You won’t remember this conversation at all, you won’t remember ever meeting anyone here, and you won’t remember anything about me.

She’d smiled nice and wide, scarlet eyes burning into each of them in turn, listening to their terrified hearts race at the monstrous sight of her. Isn’t that right, hm?

They’d nodded in unison, the driver’s hands already back to the wheel, and she’d blown them a kiss as they drove away and disappeared back into the trees. Ah, humans.

“Well, that’s good.”

Ba’s voice shakes her from the memory, slowly guiding her away from the door and towards the kitchen. “That reminds me – you should have heard the little ones tonight, my goodness…”

“Really?” She’s curious, not having met them before. “What did they say?”

Deft fingers pull the carafe of A positive out of the fridge door, and he blinks down at the bare countertop for a second before reaching up and taking a glass out of the cupboard.

“The Aguilars are… they are unchanged, shall we say.”

It makes sense. He’d been over at the Aguilar estate tonight to meet their new blood informally, before the Summit in a few months’ time when they’ll be properly introduced. The family is always very friendly, and she gets on very well with the aunties there.

Poor Vincent doesn’t like them as much as she does, but that’s mostly to do with that god-awful girl – a cousin from one of the branching bloodlines, she’s fairly sure – who’s had a crush on him ever since he was Turned, and who follows him around incessantly whenever they’re at the same parties. It’s hilarious to watch him try to shake her off, and the look of relief on his face when she finally steps in and makes up some lie about how he promised to dance with her is well worth the hour of complaining he’ll do later in the car on the way home.

The only thing is that it’s a big family. Much bigger than theirs, and it can be rather overwhelming when it gets loud. Obviously, ba doesn’t like to say anything about it, but she can feel his headaches building in the back of her own skull – his stronger senses mean he’s a lot more sensitive to the noise than she and Vincent are.

Still, they’re far more pleasant company than the House of Bennett. The only one who can make that family bearable to be around is cousin Porter, and that’s only because he likes to add a little of his own blood to the drinks so that they actually feel like they’re alcoholic.

She nods, leaning back against the sink. “Chatty, I take it.”

“Little… ah, what is it?” Sipping his glass of blood as he leans against the kitchen table, he gestures vaguely in the air with one hand. “Little pitchers that have big ears.”

It really shouldn’t be a surprise. Big houses mean more gossip, and freshly Turned vampires do love to put their shiny new senses to use.

She shrugs. “As long as they’re not spilling state secrets yet, it’ll be fine.”

“If the state tells its secrets to the House of Aguilar, we are already doomed, mon ange.”

They both laugh, washed in the pale light streaming through the windows, and baba closes his eyes as he reaches up to gently pull the fa zan from his hair.

He likes to tie it back when he goes out, partly to stop the wind from tangling it, and partly because it’s the way he says gentlemen used to be when he was young. Over the years, he’s amassed an almost staggering collection of little clips and ribbons and pins – a not insignificant number as gifts from her and Vincent – that he likes, but he generally just wears it down when he’s at home and there aren’t guests.

The moonlight turns the edges of his black hair to silver as he shakes his head with a relieved sigh, running his fingers through it quickly to smooth it out before flicking it back behind him. He likes to keep it long, at least several inches below his shoulder, and she’s always been so jealous of how he seems to make every hairstyle he tries seem so effortlessly elegant.

“Still,” he continues with a wicked smile, “you will see for yourself when we see them next. I think they will have many things to discuss with you, perhaps.”

He tips his head languidly to the side as he pushes his phone across the table, the screen lit up with a photo of Vincent from last summer. If she remembers correctly, it’s from when they were taking a break at the summer house down by the coast – he’s shirtless, knee deep in the water, turning back to the camera with a rakish grin, dark hair already wet from the splash fight they’d been having and fangs glittering in the moonlight from above.

In short, he looks painfully, achingly handsome. Scandalised, she smacks her father in the shoulder and gasps theatrically, like she can’t believe what he’s done.

“You didn’t!”

“I certainly did.”

“He’ll die!” she whisper-shouts, trying desperately not to laugh too hard. “He’s already having trouble outrunning marriage proposals from one of them, and you’re setting the new blood on him too?”

Ba just shakes his head, imperious, looking down his nose at her like he’s imparting some grave wisdom. “They asked to see a picture of my progenies.”

“So it had to be that picture?”

“I showed your picture as well.”

Resigned, she buries her face in her hands. “I dread to think.”

“Oh, you are so dramatic, chérie,” he laments, and he even has the gall to click his tongue in faux-disapproval when she narrows her eyes at him. “See? The picture is nice!”

It takes him a second to find it, but it’s just as bad as she feared – it’s from the same holiday as Vincent’s photo, probably taken later that night. She’s wearing that nice floaty sundress she bought in Singapore, barefoot in the sand as she blows a kiss to the camera, lips still stained with blood from whatever scarlet cocktail she’s holding in her other hand.

This was exactly his plan, in other words, and she’s going to fucking murder him in his sleep. If any of those upstart little ankle biters tries to chat her up, it won’t be pretty – the last one got a cake fork stabbed straight through his hand and several inches into the table beneath it, and the one before that still visibly trembles at the sound of her stilettos clicking softly against the floor.

“If I kill an Aguilar new blood at the summer ball, it’s your fault,” she mutters threateningly, hissing and baring her fangs at him when he reaches out to take her face in his hands and draw her closer. “I mean it!”

“Of course you do, xiao gong zhu,” he murmurs indulgently, and kisses her forehead. “You are telling me, so it must be true.”

Upstairs, the sound of floorboards creaking, fabric rustling. Vincent.

“I meant what I said, by the way,” ba adds nonchalantly, “about broken things.”

Shit. She blinks, innocent as anything as she beats back the guilty urge inside her that yearns to spill the truth. “What’s broken?”

“Lili.”

He raises an eyebrow, discreetly tapping the shell of his ear, and she strains to figure out what he’s hearing. “I am old, baobei. Not stupid.”

If she listens, really listens, she can just about make something out. Another noise, something much quieter – a sort of stiff, metallic creaking from upstairs, on the other side of the house to Vincent’s bedroom…

Her smile wavers as ba swans serenely past her, disappearing out into the hallway, deft fingers picking up his fa zan from the table as he goes past. “It is nothing, surely. Perhaps you will bring Vincent something for his head while I am changing?”

God fucking damn it – she might be able to fix the chandelier without him noticing, but what are the odds? He’s meeting that friend tonight, and if he’s going to change now then it probably won't be long until he goes out, but there’s no way of knowing if it’ll hold until then.

Scowling, she pours another glass of blood for Vincent, and one more for herself, before reluctantly trudging upstairs.

It's a fact of life, or at least a fact of vampirism: you can’t really have any secrets from your Maker, and that’s even without the whole truth-compulsion thing. No matter what you do, your Maker is always aware of what you’re feeling, when you’re feeling it.

The emotional bond never goes away, though the strength of its effects ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s so faint as to be almost nonexistent, a tiny shiver down the spine – and sometimes it’s almost overwhelming in its intensity, foreign emotions bursting out of nowhere like fireworks, blindingly bright and terrifyingly loud.

For young vampires, it’s a lot to get used to. Some take years to become accustomed to the bond, while others are oddly comforted by it. New Makers are often surprised by the strength of as well – it goes both ways, but generally the Maker feels more of their progeny’s emotions than the other way around. Nobody's really sure why.

More complicated feelings don’t come through especially clearly, apparently a little bit difficult for the bond to transmit, or perhaps for the other body to decipher. But simpler, more basic emotions are very, very easy. You might even say they’re too easy, in fact. Things like fear, sadness, joy – and, well…

He must already know what they’ve been up to. That sort of anger, the instinctive viciousness that comes so easily to them. They all know from experience how quickly that can wash over the bond, twisting and curling as it spreads like dark ink through water. After a while, it stops being so intrusive – it’s just how it works, and it’s not as though they can stop it. It’s possible to tune it out, and before long it generally goes away.

But a Maker with two progenies, both of whom are busy winding each other up at the same time? Who never seem to know when to quit, chasing that addictive, acidic feedback loop of rage that only ever seems to push them higher?

Ba doesn’t mind what they get up to, per se, as long as they keep it discreet and clean up after themselves. But even so, it’s not difficult to see how it could be… distracting.

He definitely knows what they were doing, is the point. And he clearly knows that there’s something they broke that she hasn’t been able to fix yet. She just needs to make sure it’s all neat and tidy by the time he gets back later, and hopefully they can all pretend that it never happened.

“What.”

Vincent glares at her from under his duvet when she pushes the door open with her foot, crimson eyes staring out from the blackness as she gets closer and closer. The lights are off and the blackout curtains are closed, so it’s almost entirely dark, but she can make out the shape of the bed well enough.

“Blood.”

She holds out one of the glasses, not breaking eye contact until a single hand slithers out from under the duvet and takes it from her.

He doesn’t seem to have thought about how he’s going to drink it, lying flat on his stomach and sprawled sideways across the bed, and she snickers under her breath as he blinks stupidly at the glass. With a flourish, she takes the second straw out of her own glass and drops it into his, sticking her tongue out gleefully at him when he mumbles something unintelligible into the mattress beneath him.

She shrugs – it’s close enough. “You’re welcome.”

Perching herself on the edge of the bed, she watches in amusement as he drags himself forwards under the duvet so he can get the straw in his mouth without having to lift his head, occasionally poking the mound of blankets that claims to be her brother in the side to see if he can feel it or not.

(He can. She knows. It’s just funny.)

Because she’s very generous, she gets up to grab a few of the books off his desk, stacking them up by the side of the bed, level with where his face is. He complains when she takes the glass back out of his hand, but acquiesces as soon as she puts it back down on the books, army crawling towards the end of the straw that’s now level with the top of the mattress and haughtily sticking it in his mouth.

“Better?”

The Vincent-shaped duvet creature next to her slurps loudly at his glass of blood, and doesn’t say anything.

She’d use telepathy, but she needs to save all the magic she can get. Quickly, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, turning the brightness down all the way and typing a message in her notes app to show him.

He knows something’s broken, and the chandelier chain isn’t going to last long if I don’t go and fix it. Do you have enough magic to help yet?

“No,” Vincent grumbles, and coughs pointedly.

Great. How much longer?

He coughs again, baleful red eyes turning to look witheringly up at her from his blanket nest, and she doesn’t have to be able to see his hands to know the gesture he’s making at her.

Fine, she types, as sarcastically as it’s possible to be when you can’t say anything out loud, but if he hears, I’m blaming you. Distract him.

Obediently, he starts moving around again, making sure the sound of mattress springs and sheets rustling is loud enough for her to slip out of the door and towards the drawing room they ruined earlier. Luckily, it’s in the opposite direction to baba’s room, but she still holds her breath and tiptoes as quietly as she can in case he—

“Lili?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

She whips around, totally innocently, to see her father beckoning her down the stairs as several sets of cufflinks rattle in his palm. “Come and help me choose.”

Helpless to protest, she’s forced to follow him down into the foyer, umming and ahhing over which cufflinks she thinks will suit his outfit the best. In her head, though, she can’t stop worrying about that damned chandelier, the creaking sound from upstairs that she’s sure is getting louder, the increasing amount of magic she’ll need to fix it as it surely gets worse and worse…

“A good choice as always, mon ange.”

She startles slightly as baba nods approvingly, smoothly taking the silver pair she’d mindlessly chosen and putting them on, before leaving the rest in the dish on the low console table. “I won’t be back until the morning, so you will look after Vincent, won’t you?”

Hastily, she nods. “Yeah, I will, I will.”

“Alright.” He rests his hands gently on her upper arms as he kisses both her cheeks, before taking his car keys out of his pocket and heading out of the front door. “See you later, chérie. I love you very much.”

“Love you too!”

She waits the agonisingly long half-second it takes for the door to close behind him before racing back upstairs, and she hears Vincent, still clutching his half-empty glass, scrambling out of his room at the same time. They nearly crash face-first into each other in their haste, yanking the drawing room door open and tumbling through it as fast as they can.

“I thought your head still hurt?” she says quizzically to Vincent, watching his hands trembling faintly around his glass, but he just makes a face.

“The alternative’s worse,” he replies, and she nods. He’s right.

She reaches for her core, willing the magic to come – it’s slow and it’s weak, but she yanks on her threads as hard as she can to try and summon it to her fingertips. The chandelier sways ominously above them as she screws her eyes shut to concentrate, and she can feel Vincent’s aura flicker next to her as he does the same thing. Come on, come on…

She’s nearly there, power surging under her skin and ready to be channelled outwards, when there’s a sudden—

“Shit!”

The magic fizzles uselessly away as her eyes fly open to see Vincent, clutching his head in pain, cursing as the front of his shirt is drenched in blood. There’s shattered glass all over the floor from where he’s dropped his drink, and she chokes down the irritated vampiric growl that rises in her throat. “Fucking hell, xiaodi!”

“I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it!” he moans, slightly unsteady on his feet, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. “Look, at least it’s not the—”

Something moves, just at the very edge of her vision.

Above her head, the room plunges into blackout as something snaps.

“Move–!!”

She barely manages to shove Vincent away from her before the heavy metal body of the chandelier comes crashing down on her head. It’s not heavy enough to knock her out, but the surprise is enough that all she can do is stand there as 15 kilos of brass and crystal and electrics falls directly on top of her and shatters.

He skitters backwards, recoiling from the spray of tiny crystal shards that covers the floor for the second time today, nearly tripping over the leg of the side table as he goes. A thousand stinging papercuts split their skin, sealing themselves up and leaving tiny droplets of crimson blood dripping down their arms and faces.

Without even noticing, she instinctively catches one of the twisted metal arms of the chandelier that must have been sheared off when it impacted her skull, raw edge snagged painfully in her hair as it slides neatly down into her arms.

They’re so fucked.

They both freeze guiltily as a floorboard creaks outside in the hallway, far too close to be a coincidence, and she winces as there’s a polite knock, knock, knock at the door.

“We—” She chokes, breathing in a hacking lungful of debris, voice cracking slightly from her dry throat. “We’re in so much trouble.”

Vincent stares wide-eyed at her through the sudden dark, blood dripping slowly from his chin and soaking into the carpet..

“Yeah,” he mumbles distantly, “probably.”

The drawing room door swings open, and both their heads snap towards the open doorway so fast it would give a human whiplash. There, silhouetted against the light, car keys still jangling in his palm and running an exasperated hand through his long hair—

“What,” hisses William Solaire, raising an irate eyebrow at his children, covered in glittering crystal dust and leaking blood into a very expensive carpet, “did I say about breaking things again?”

The clan always sticks together. Family comes first – nothing and nobody could make them betray each other, and they’d rather die than leave one of their own behind. It’s the central tenet of their existence, the core fact of their messy, gory lives.

Some things are just… true. The earth is round, the sky is blue, and there is no power known to men or gods that could turn the House of Solaire against itself.

Baba shifts his weight slightly, eyes narrowing accusingly.

And very, very slowly, Alexis and Vincent both point at each other.

link to the glass jaw pronunciation guide

main masterlist

this is an original fanwork by @gingerbreadmonsters - please do not repost or misattribute

[chroniclesofbts]

Break my Walls P. 4

Genre: A/B/O, Poly BTS and Reader

Warnings: angst, omegaspace, eventual smut, slow burn, angst, fluff, polyamorous relationship, sexual themes, implied sexual interactions.

If you’re not 18+ please, do not interact.

As always, my works do not represent BTS in any way, this is purely a work of fiction.

Part 3

Y/N's POV

Waking up, I am met with a feeling I haven't had in a long time. Happiness. I wonder if the pack sleeping just downstairs knows the impact they had on the useless omega for the Kang pack. Around me, the other omegas sleep soundly. That will be me soon, sleeping unless called on by the alpha I am assigned to. For now, I must prepare breakfast with the other omega caretakers. Quietly getting out of bed, I am met with the brisk chill of the attic air. Winter is close, which means the alphas will start to hit their Ruts. The winter Ruts are the worst, the alphas are almost fully aligned in the pack. All of the omegas that are of age are put on standby, as a backup option for any alphas who push their regular omegas past their limits. Thinking about becoming a primary or even a secondary omega for an alpha fills me with dread. Sometimes, secondary omegas become the primary omega for an alpha, if they show that they can handle their ruts. Once, Alpha Dae's father went through five omegas when he was Pack Alpha. That was four years ago, and his last year as Pack Alpha.

I continue my path down the guest hallway, when the opening of a door startles me. I am suddenly pulled into a dark room, bombarded with multiple sets of arms wrapping around me.

"Y/N! I missed you" Jimin's angelic voice came from behind.

"We all missed you, did you miss us?" Taehyung shared, pulling me closer by my hips, my face sitting just inches from his. His eyes shinning in the dark room, lit by moonlight. Standing this close, his mesmerizing almond eyes look like they're glowing. I begin to get lost in his gaze, feeling myself slipping. My sense of reality growing hazy.

"Your Pack Alpha allowed us to have you last night, meaning you're ours for as long as we like this morning." Jungkook's voice floated into my head, as I struggled not to fall into the haze.

"God, you smell so good" Jimin whispered, his nose running along the column of my neck. His lips brushed my scent gland, causing a whine to be pulled out of me. His lips curved into a smile, pleased with himself for being the cause of my sweetening scent. The door slamming open had me jerking away from the three, scent souring from fear.

"Hyung, why?" Jimin whined, looking at Namjoon who was slamming the door closed behind him.

"I can smell her from outside Jimin, now is not the time to be creating such a sweet smelling omega to fall into omegaspace." He chided, walking over and pulling me into his arms.

"Morning Y/N, I hope you slept well."

"I did, thank you." I responded, soaking in the warmth the alpha radiated before pulling away, uncomfortable with all of the touching that has happened in the span of 10 minutes.

"I need to go help prepare breakfast" I say, beginning to panic. "I am late, I need to go" before I am punished, I finished in my head.

"Woah, we just said you're ours for as long as we want this morning" Jungkook soothed, pulling me back against his chest. He began nosing at my scent gland, desperate to make the panic go away. Jimin began guiding us to the bed, my feet beginning to feel sluggish with all of the emotions I have been experiencing this morning.

The view of his breathtaking nest had me freezing in my steps. My body feeling like it was doused in ice water.

"What is it little one?" Namjoon's voice came, full of concern at my frozen state bordering panic.

"You... nest" I stutter, brokenly, confusing the pack. Jin, who just entered with the rest of the Kim pack, sucks in a sharp breath at the statement, beginning to piece together how omegas are truly treated in the Kang pack.

"Omegas are meant to nest, baby" Jin said carefully, "Omegas are supposed to nest."

Namjoon begins to understand what his Pack Omega is doing, stepping back to allow Jin to come closer. He pulls Jungkook away, letting his omegas coddle you.

"Jimin made his nest special last night, just for you. It has the nicest sheets and blankets from the Omega Store" Jin begins, "Do you want to try it? Our Alphas will stand guard, nothing can hurt you"

As tempting as it sounds, you know a trap when you see one. Alpha Dae must have planned this whole thing, including the food, which you were sure you would pay for today. You knew it was too good to be true, the pack was testing you to see if you were a good Omega. You back away, body beginning to tremble. With a hand over your mouth, you flee, willing the tears not to fall. How could you be so stupid, you chastize yourself, ignoring the pleas from the Kim pack. You rush back up to the attic, feeling last nights dinner coming back up. The attic is empty when you arrive, breakfast must be ready. You run into the bathroom, not stopping to close and lock the door, barely making it to the toilet in time. Overwhelmed, you don't hear the door closing behind you, or the footsteps coming closer. Only realizing you are not alone when a cool, wet cloth is placed against your neck. You heart beating fast, you glance over your shoulder with tears in your eyes. Jin had followed you. Why can't they just leave you alone, you think as a lone tear falls down your cheek.

"No omega should have to live how you do, ever" He whispered, tears gathering in his own eyes. Jimin appeared behind him, carrying a water bottle and package of cinnamon bread. Jin helped me stand, flushing the toilet. I brushed my teeth and met them in the room.

“Which, uh, bed is yours?” Jimin asked, glancing around at all of the mattresses on the ground with small clothes chests in front.

“The one in the corner, I um, I don’t like being in the open.” I walk towards it and sit down, looking up at them standing at the edge of the bare mattress as if they were waiting for something. “You have to invite us into your nest sweet girl” Jin said.

“It’s not a nest” I reply instantly, without thinking.

“Okay, invite us into your not nest, baby” Jimin spoke with ease.

“Why?”

“Why what, baby?”

“Why do I have to invite you in? Is it because you’re from another pack?”

“You have to invite us into your nest, uh, not nest, because it’s your space baby. No one should ever enter your space, especially your nest, um not nest, without you allowing it. That’s means you in your right mind, not under the influence of anyone else’s pheromones, okay?” Jin spoke softly.

“Okay, um, come in?” I say in question.

“No baby, you have to mean it” Jimin responded, “be a good girl for us, yeah? Say what you want”

“Please come sit down on the bed with me”

They didn’t need to be told twice, instantly entering the bed and sitting so close they were touching.

“Good girl” Jimin hummed, holding the water to my lips.

“I can do it, Jimin” I insisted, but the omega just shook his head with a smile, waiting until I gave in.

“A very good omega” Jin agreed, making my omega preen for the first time. Jimin continued to feed me, his fingers consistently grazing my lips and sometimes tongue. Each time his mischievous smile would grace his face.

“Come to my nest, let us show you what you’re missing. I promise you won’t be in trouble, your pack alpha will not find out. Joonie has requested you for our entire stay, you don’t even have to leave our nest.” Jimin begged, leaning close and pulling puppy dog eyes.

“The minute you are uncomfortable you can leave, or you can go to my nest in the next room” Jin promised.

“Okay,” I agreed, “but I can’t make any promises about staying”

Jimin smiled so big his eyes disappeared, my heart began to race just looking at him.

“I don’t think you’ll want to leave, and I can’t guarantee the rest of the maknae line will let you leave easy. They haven’t stopped talking since we told them you agreed” Jin said.

“Told them? How, I just agreed?” I questioned, unknowingly giving them the final piece they have been searching for.

Taglist Open:

@braveangel777

[writers-potion]

💀🪦Methods of Death & How They Feel

01. 🌊Drowning.

When victims eventually submerged, they hold their breath for as long as possible, typically 30 to 90 seconds. After that, they inhale some water, splutter, cough and inhale more. Survivors say there is a feeling of tearing and a burning sensation in the chest as water goes down into the airway. Then that sort of slips into a feelings of calmness and tranquility. That calmness represents the beginnings of the loss of consciousness from oxygen deprivation, which eventually results in the heart stopping and brain death.

02. 🫀Heart Attack:

The most common symptom is chest pain. A tightness, pressure or squeezing, often described as an “elephant on my chest”, which may be lasting or come and go. This is the heart muscle struggling and dying from oxygen deprivation. Pain can radiate to the jaw, throat, back, belly and arms. Other signs and symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea and cold sweats. 

03. 🩸Bleeding to Death:

Anyone losing 1.5 liters - either through an external wound or internal bleeding - feels weak, thirsty and anxious and would be breathing fast. By 2 liters, people experience dizziness, confusion and then eventual unconsciousness

04. 🔥Fire:

Burns inflict immediate and intense pain through stimulation of the pain nerves in the skin. To make matters worse, burns also trigger a rapid inflammatory response, which boosts sensitivity to pain in the injured tissues and surrounding areas. As burn intensities progress, some feeling is lost but not much. 3rd degree burns don’t hurt as much as 2nd degree burns. 

05. 🔪Decapitation:

Very quick death

Consciousness may continue for a few seconds after execution

Separation of the spinal cord and brain cause severe pain

06. ⚡Electrocution

Higher currents can produce nearly immediate unconsciousness The electric chair was designed to produce instant loss of consciousness and painless death, but that’s debatable. It’s been proposed that prisoners could instead be dying from heating of the brain, or perhaps from suffocation due to paralysis of the breathing muscles instead of electrocution itself because the skulls of the wall are a thick and powerful insulator.

07. ⛰ Falling from a Height

Another instantaneous death (given that the height is enough, of course!)

Feeling like time has slowed down

Struggling to maintain a feet-first landing, leading to leg bone fractures, lower spinal column and broken pelvises

The impact travelling through the body can burst the aorta and heart chambers.

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

🖱️References

[mrsaltieri-real]

The Switch Up (Forced!Sub!Mickey Altieri X Dom!Reader)

Words: 2.4k

Warnings: 18+, language, reader is fem and afab, pure smut, dub-con, edging, teasing, orgasm denial, threats, forced sub!mickey (yes, that’s a warning) ruined orgasm, mickeys gagged and bound, insults, oral (Fem receiving), handjob, mentions of blowjobs, riding, forced submission, fingering, degrading, dacryphilia,face sitting, etc.

A/N: @darklylucid YOU. THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND I ABSOLUTELY ADORE YOU FOR IT! I haven’t had this much fun writing a fic in a very, VERY long time and I didn’t know how much I needed Mickey to be a forced sub until you sent that damn ask in. So thank you, a million times thank you! And thank you @bisexual-horror-fan for going over this for me. Love you to bits! Now strap in because holy fuck did I get wet writing this!

Mickey groaned behind the gag that had been forced into his mouth, his head falling back against the headboard as his arms thrashed around in their restraints. He felt your hand trailing across his chest, though unable to see from behind the blindfold covering his eyes.

He mumbled something unintelligible from behind the gag, flinching away from your cool fingers.

Mickey was angry. Absolutely livid that you had managed to get the drop on him. You’d tied him up after he had fallen asleep studying and had been edging him with your hands and mouth for the last hour.

Every so often, the blindfold would be lifted, the gag removed, and he’d beg like a man possessed, wide-eyed with a strange innocence you’d never thought you would see in a million years. The begging would commence, begging for him to be allowed to touch you, begging for you to touch him, you were not moved and chose to ignore him. He’d switch up to hurling insults and threats at you instead, which were just met with a scoff and an eye roll and an uttering of “What the fuck are you going to do when you’re tied up like a fucking bitch?”

You’d of course, touch yourself whilst he watched, his swollen cock leaking pre-cum from his tip as he watched your fingers dance across your clit and plunge into your hole whilst he’d watch helplessly, sweat trickling down the column of his throat.

“Fucking… Bitch.” He grunted between grit teeth, still unable to glance away for even a second.

You tutted softly, a small shake of your head and a light gasp escaping your throat as you continued to touch yourself before him. “Doesn’t sound like the words of a man who wants to stop pathetically leaking all over himself.”

His brown eyes were still flat and cold, his knuckles white from his grip on the ropes as he glared at you. If looks could kill, you’d be six feet under.

Mickey said your name before his eyes narrowed, boring until yours and clearly still trying his best to gain a sense of control in a circumstance he had absolutely none. “You’re going to regret this. I swear to fucking God, when I’m out of these, I’m gonna treat you so much fucking worse than I did before.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes at him. His threats of retaliation only riled you up more, gave you more of an initiative to drag this out as long as you could. You dipped a finger into yourself, curling it upward to graze the spongy tissue, and you groaned, head tipping back and back arching as you thought of all the shit you were going to put Mickey through.

He said something under his breath, and you stopped touching yourself reluctantly, leaning forward with your hand hovering so close to his weeping cock, you could feel the heat radiating off of him. “Hm? What was that, sweetheart?”

His brown eyes snapped toward you sharply before they fluttered closed, and he let out a small breath before he repeated, “Please?” and breathed out your name, agonized.

“Please what?” Your tone was sweet and cloying, the smile on your lips coy as fuck.

His expression shifts, gritting out, “Stop being such a fucking cunt-“

He was cut off by the gag being forced back into his mouth and he groaned again, shouts muffled as his back arched from the bed, and he thrashed pointlessly as he shouted something that sounded like, “I fucking hate you,” from behind the gag.

“Yeah, sure you do, honey. That’s why you’ve been begging for me to make you cum for the past hour like a sad little bitch.”

His entire body was slick with sweat, his chest heaving as your fingers settled the blindfold back into place.

Your fingers trailed down his chest, down his torso, and you smiled as you felt his body begin to shake under the gentle touch. Your hand slowly took his cock again, pumping slowly, agonizingly slowly and pulling something akin to a whimper from behind the gag.

You needed to hear it.

Your other hand pulled down the gag, and you heard the delicious rambling of, “Please, baby, please.” Uttered over and over again, almost relentless, as he tried to buck up his hips to thrust himself in your hand. The switch up from his threats turning into begs and pleads never failed to amuse you.

“No, Mickey.” You chided, about to release him before he begged, “No, please don’t stop, please!”

Hearing him beg you, the man who had done a lot worse than this time and time again simply because he could, because he enjoyed having power over you, sent an aching clench to your cunt. Your leg propped up on the bed beside him as you sat in the chair beside him, your hand moved back to your pussy, sliding your hand up and down his length as you touched yourself, eyes fluttering closed as you heard his pleading.

He twitched in your hand, aching, swollen, messy. His quivering breaths turned into loud groans as you finally allowed him to be dragged closer and closer to the edge he craved more than anything.

“Mm… Fuck, dont’t stop, don’t fucking stop!” His hands gripped the ropes holding him to the bed, his head tipping back and his cock throbbing so deliciously, you were almost inclined to allow him to cum all over himself.

Almost.

The sight was enough to make you cum on your own fingers, snatching your hand away from him as you gasped and moaned, grinding yourself down on the pads of your fingers. You were well aware of the broken half whimpers Mickey panted out, his cock so hard you had zero doubt he was in pain.

Good.

You laughed, both at your own pleasure and his obvious unease. You couldn’t see his eyes, but you had no doubt they were fucking blazing behind his blindfold

He whispered something, one little word that he prayed would put an end to this, even if it meant you wouldn’t touch him, and he’d have to get himself off.

“What was that, baby?” You asked him, tone condescending and sickly sweet.

He puffed out a sigh, struggling in his restraints again. Your hand pulled down the blindfold, and you took his whole face in properly.

Mickey was nothing short of a mess. His usually bright and cocky brown eyes were welled up with tears, his cheeks and chest flushed a deep crimson. He looked into your eyes and uttered the word again.

“Passion fruit.”

His voice was strained, almost as if he was holding back tears.

Fuck, you had really fucked him up.

“Remind me, baby. Do you ever listen to me when I say my safe word?” Your hand threaded through his thick, dark hair as you spoke, twisting the strands between your fingers and tugging sharply. He let out a hiss, visibly flinching at the action, but didn’t respond.

“Don’t like it when the roles are reversed, do you?” Your other hand edged back toward his leaking cock, and he watched, eyes desperate and needy. “Beg.”

Any other day, any other circumstance he would have laughed in your face, sent a slap to your cheek or denied you from release even further. But not today, today he wanted nothing more than to just finally fucking let go.

“Fuck, please? I can’t fuc- fucking take this anymore. I’m sorry, o- okay? I’m sorry. Let me touch you, please let me cum, baby, please?”

The begging sent the fire through your core once again, your clit throbbing as you saw the tears threatening to spill. His eyes kept flickering from your face, to your bare tits, to your leaking cunt and to his painfully hard cock.

“Wanna get me off, hm?” You asked him, fingers dragging across his toned stomach.

He nodded his head quickly, flinching again when his hair was tugged by your fingers.

You smiled, standing up from the chair and pulling yourself up onto the bed so you were standing over him.

Mickey looked up at you, a flicker of confusion flashing over his features till you straddled his face, your pussy inches away from his mouth.

That was all the prompting he needed.

His lips attached themselves to your clit hungrily, a groan falling from his lips as he finally tasted you. Your hands firmly pressed palms down against the wall to steady yourself as he lapped and sucked your bundle of nerves as if it were the most delicious thing.

You didn’t want to give him much time to enjoy it. Besides, this wasn’t for him, it was for you to get revenge for the past year of him relentlessly teasing you, degrading you, edging you and denying you.

Biting back a moan and twisting it into a laugh and taking him by surprise, you scoffed, “Really, Mickey? Have you forgotten how to eat a pussy? Do it like you fucking mean it.”

He muttered something against you, pressing the tip of his tongue against your clit firmly, the pressure almost making your knees buckle as he began to gently but messily flick his tongue over you. You could feel your juices leaking out of you and dribbling down his chin. Hear the pained, desperate groans almost drowned out by your satisfied ones as you came on his face in seconds.

Once you were done with him, you settled yourself onto your knees, straddling his lap. The hardness of his cock settled between the two of you, and you smiled at him, dragging your fingers across his face, smearing your own cum across his cheeks.

Instead of the angry growls, he’d resorted to gentle whimpers that just made you all the more turned on. Fuck, you’d just about broken him. The tears must’ve begun to fall as you forced him to eat your cunt, his red rimmed eyes were wide and his cheeks wet as he begged you once again, your name babbling from his lips.

“What? I already gave you one of the things you wanted, to touch me, right? Look who's getting greedy.” Your fingers splayed across his stomach as you spoke, again inching closer to his cock. “Besides, you look so pretty when you cry.”

“I-I’m not fucking crying.” You knew the words were supposed to come out in an angry snap, but they cracked around the edges helplessly, and he sniffed once.

Maybe you could ease up on him a little.

“You want me to fuck you?” You asked him gently, hand wrapping around him so softly you may as well have not been touching him at all. But he was so pent-up that even the slightest pressure made him throb and leak uncontrollably. Fuck, he felt pathetic.

“Please.” He mumbled, only to be met with a sharp slap to the face that made him jolt, eyes widening as your fingers curled around his jaw and he was forced to look at you.

“Please what, Mickey?”

“Don’t make me beg again, I can’t, I fucking can’t take this shit.” He practically whined, beginning to tug on the restraints again. “Ple- please just make me cum, baby.”

“Does it hurt?” You asked, eyeing his angry red cock. So swollen, so full of cum, you desperately craved to paint your insides white.

“Yes, it fucking hurts, Jesus.” He said quietly. He caught on fast that when he snapped at you, he was going to get absolutely nothing. For a second, the thought flitted through his mind that maybe he needed to ease up when doing this shit to you because fuck, he couldn’t take this for much longer.

“Hmm.” You hummed softly, edging forward with your hand still pumping his cock, so your face was close to his. His brown eyes, so needy, looked back at you desperately.

Your lips crashed against his hungrily, and he eagerly reciprocated. The kiss was nothing but a messy thrashing of tongues and lips, but it’s just what he and he needed. And now you fucking needed him.

It didn’t take long before you’d shoved his cock inside of you and began to ride him, chest splayed out across his chest and your tits bouncing in his face. He looked like a man possessed, staring at you desperately as you used him for all he was worth, whilst he listened to the filth he didn’t even know you were capable of saying fall from your lips.

Every time he tried to thrust up into you, you’d stop. Every time he would speak, try and praise you, you’d stop.

He knew you knew his tells, so he tried his best to hold them back. He needed this, needed you to just let him fucking cum already.

“Fuck, your cunt feels so-“ your hand slapped across his mouth, your nails cutting into his chest and leaving small crescent shaped slices in his skin. He was close, whimpering and whining behind your hand, By the time he realized what you were doing it was too late.

“Fuck, no, no, please don’t-“ he begged again, eyes flashing down as your cunt strangled him as you came on his cock, not giving yourself any time to relish in how good you felt before climbing off of him. “No!” He shouted at you as he felt himself dribble across his own stomach, the orgasm completely ruined by you.

His head fell back against the headboard in defeat, his eyes closing as he fought back the tears. He really did feel like a fucking mess. You chuckled at his reaction gently, still a little out of breath as you asked him, “What? Was that not good for you?”

“Y-you ruined it. You kn- knew you were gonna.” His eyes screwed up tightly, feeling completely wrecked. How much more of this shit was he going to have to take? Could he take anymore?

Your hand grasped his chin, telling him to open his eyes. He decided not to argue with you on that, looking back at you hesitantly as he bit into the insides of his cheeks to hold back the profanities and built up anger he wanted to shout out at you with.

“But baby, we’re just getting started.” You told him, unable to stop the smug smirk spreading across your face when you saw his face fall.

[ranticore]

As the wyrms grow and dig more tunnels, do they ever create a cave-in/collapse situation? Would that cause part of the city above them to collapse in on them? Doesn't their torso grow and need more space as well? As the torso is mainly stationary, would the legs on their torso atrophy from no use? Thank you, I love all your work

yep i think i went into it for another anon but towns which house a very large wyrm would have to reinforce some of the tunnels directly under street level, otherwise collapse is a danger. in some cases they would send down workers to build support struts, pillars, bracing, etc. these tunnels are used by the wyrm heads which go above the surface at times so they are no longer hunting tunnels, therefore it's cool to brick the walls up, or even expand them into large cisterns to allow the wyrm some freedom of movement at that level

their torso does grow along with the necks and that's why their legs are needed & stay relatively strong. they use their feet to dig the burrow for the torso, and as they grow, they tend to dig straight down using those big claws. younger and smaller wyrms live closer to the surface, and then over centuries they dig down to create the massive central column of the burrow, with them at the bottom and the radiating tunnels for the heads opening out into the column itself. the torso has a lot of thick armoured scales (usually) specifically because it's pretty defenceless otherwise, and the legs are usually not long enough to hit back at a potential attack from the side or even below. so they defend themselves mostly by being huge and very tough to bite into

[fandomsnstuff]

This is based off a post i saw truly forever ago about a concept pertaining to magic and spell slots.

@taznovembercelebration

Day 5: ow!/meow

Lup and Magnus are in a bind. He's hurt, she's out of spell slots, it's time for something drastic.

Read it on AO3

In hindsight, they probably should've left the cave as soon as they heard the heavy breathing. Then they should've left when they saw the massive sleeping creature. But if there's one thing Lup and Magnus are going to be, it's dumb and brave. Now, they're getting chased deeper into the cave by a goddamn building-sized tiger.

They tried to stand their ground and fight it, but it got some really good hits on Magnus, and Lup's only got so many hit points. So they ran. They're hoping for a way out, or a wide spot where they can loop around back to the entrance, but the cave only seems to get deeper and darker.

She's used all her slots shooting spells behind her as she ran, and the creature's definitely slowed down, but not enough. She can hear Magnus's laboured breathing beside her, and she knows he's slowing down too. The beast swiped him right in the chest earlier, knocking the wind out of him and at least bruising a few ribs. This needs to end, ideally without them dying.

She has an idea. A really stupid idea that she's not even sure will work and for sure guarantee her immediate capture and death if it doesn't work, thereby guaranteeing Magnus's death because he'd never leave a friend behind. But she's read the books, heard the testimonies, it is possible.

She tries to level her breathing as best she can, and wills forward as much magic as possible. It makes her skin tingle and her vision swim. She can feel it collecting at her fingertips, but she doesn't let it go yet. This needs to be big. She takes another deep breath and ignores the heat she can feel radiating off of her. Her hands feel like there's countless needles pricking her palms. The heat grows, and she knows it's now or never. She plants her feet and whirls around to face the beast, her hands outstretched. A column of white hot flame bursts from her palms and engulfs it. Lup screams with the roar of the flames, and the beast yowls as it's reduced to ash.

When the flames die down, Lup collapses to her hands and knees. She feels like there's live wires running through her blood vessels. She's trembling, she feels sick, and black spots float through her vision. She squeezes her eyes shut to try and counteract the pounding in her head.

"-ly shit, Lup!" Magnus's voice comes into focus. "I thought you were out of slots."

"I was," she chokes out.

"Then how-"

"Magnus," she pleads.

"Right, let's get you out of here. Can you walk?"

She reaches an arm out for him to help her up, and she struggles slowly to her feet. She leans heavily against him and begins her stumble back towards the cave entrance, but her head is spinning in fifteen different directions, and her skin is tingling all over. It feels like it's been an eternity when Magnus says, "um, maybe it'd be better if I carried you back to the ship. We'll get there faster."

"You're injured."

"Not as badly as you are. I'll be fine."

She lets him scoop her up into his arms, and he takes off in a jog through the cave. When they emerge back in the wilderness, the sun is blinding. It turns the dull pounding behind her eyes into a searing headache. She groans and buries her face in Magnus's neck to try and block it out.

Her ears are ringing by the time they make it back to the ship. Magnus explains what happened, and after some incredulity from Taako, they get her set up in bed with all the lights off and a cool cloth over her eyes. "You're stupid," Taako says as he tucks her in, "you could've died."

"But I didn't."

"But you could have."

"Um," Magnus says from somewhere farther back, "I'm still confused about what even happened."

Taako tuts. "You channel magic through yourself. The whole point of levels and spell slots is to make sure you don't burn yourself up. A higher level spell takes more magic to cast, so a brand new wizard would probably destroy themselves trying to cast it, and a more experienced one can do it once or twice and be fine. You can still cast a leveled spell when you're out of slots, but you're going to fucking pay for it because you're channeling more magic than your body can handle. Isn't that right, Lup?"

"I love you too, Taako," she deadpans.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Have you ever seen a house trimmed in primary colors? I think that it would make a good day care business. The house, built in 1913 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has 5bds, 4ba, and was reduced $50K to $849K.

I don't know, this is an older home and they chose to give it a very odd trim.

The center hall entrance has that great checkered floor, beautiful columns, a bright red door, matching radiator, sunshine yellow stairs, and hand painted cow markings. This could look very classy.

The sitting room wood trim was painted over in white, along with the brick fireplace. I've never seen fireside chairs with their backs facing the fireplace.

Attractive dining room wood is all painted over white, with deep navy blue walls and yellow and white chairs with nautical print fabric.

The sizeable kitchen is redone in white and has a yellow ceiling accent.

The kitchen has a large dining area with a lovely original built-in. Outside is the patio.

Nice neat powder room. By the look of the wall, it appears that they made this room.

Cinderblock sunroom is interesting. I don't know what it was before, but you can't sit and see out of the windows. There are also steps by the door and a new heater, so it was recently added.

This bedroom is a good size.

The main bd. is the largest and has an en-suite that looks like it may be a 1/2 bath.

This bedroom was made from a sunporch.

Nice refreshed bath.

The attic is newly finished.

This rear entrance to the house is now a mudroom area.

This room in the basement has a rubber playroom floor covering.

And, this looks like it was a bath decorated for children.

In the back is a nice patio and yard.

[joequinnisgod]

The madness of law (Requested)

Pairing: Joseph Quinn x gn!law student!reader

Request: hello love, i saw you requests are open. could you do a fluff where joe is dating a normal girl. like reader is in late college years (like for a longer degree or something) and is feeling super overwhelmed by schooling and he comforts her and kinda brings her back to reality and let’s her know she’s doing great and he’s proud of her?

Warnings: reader being stressed / anxious / overwhelmed, it’s pure fluff tho :)

Word count: 1,6k

A/N: Thank you for the request once again <3 Even though it’s not Valentine’s Day in this little story, this is my little gift for y'all :) i wish you besties a very happy and lovely Valentine’s Day!! <33333 (Before posting I rewrote a few lines so it’s gender neutral, I hope I didn’t miss anything!)

Ordinance. A law set forth by a governmental authority.

Legislation. A matter of business for or under consideration by a legislative body.

Constitution. The basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group that determine the powers and duties of the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it.

Your eyes scanned the very same lines over and over again. The page you've been staring at for the last fifteen minutes slowly started to become your enemy. The letters began blurring together, the words suddenly lost their meanings and the harsh contrast of black and white columns started to hurt your eyes. You lifted your head and let it fall back against the soft seat cushions of the couch behind your back as you closed your eyes.

The endless hours of studying started to catch up with you and just like a snap of a finger, suddenly everything became irritating. The floor became too hard to sit on, the couch pushed into your back uncomfortably, Joseph's sweatshirt you were wearing became too hot and itchy, your socks needed adjustment as the seam tickled your feet, the tag in your sweatpants pierced into your lower back mockingly, your palms turned sweaty and your eyes and mouth felt dry.

Your exam was just a little over two weeks away and no matter how much you studied, it felt like you were losing knowledge with every learnt line and definition. It felt like your thoughts were having a constant fight with each other, making your head pound in pain.

You glanced at the clock on the wall and a frown set on your face as it was smiling at you. 22:13. The sun has sat a long time ago but the curtains still weren't drawn, even though the lights were on in the room. Placing the heavy – and evil – book on the floor, you stood and stretched, feeling your back relaxing and the blood slowly flowing back into your legs. The streets of London were almost empty, most people getting ready for bed on the Tuesday night.

Your ears didn't miss the soft, socks-covered footsteps approaching the living room.

"When are you coming to bed?"

You turned around to face him. His untamed curls along with his slightly puffy lips and eyes gave it away how he had already fallen asleep while he was watching TV, waiting for you to join him. His glasses were sitting on his nose lazily, his wrinkly T-shirt was hanging on his torso loosely and his sweatpants were sitting low on his hips. He looked so soft and warm as comfort radiated from him.

You felt tears welling up in your eyes as something in you snapped. When Joe saw the first tear roll down your cheek, sleep vanished from his eyes right away. He walked over to you with a concerned, worried look on his face as he opened his arms and wrapped them around you tightly. You laid your head on his warm chest and let it all out. Weeks of stress, pressure, worry and fear came tumbling down on you. His hands stroked your back lovingly as your tears left dark spots on his shirt.

"It's okay, it's okay. Let it out, love. Just cry it out, alright? I'm here." He pressed kisses on your head as he assured you he wasn't going anywhere. You didn't need to tell him what your were crying for. Joe could see just how stressed and frustrated you've been for the past few weeks, so he had tried his best to help you with whatever he could and to show you how proud he was of you.

Just a few nights ago, he decided he had had enough of seeing you barely get any sleep, so he made you go to bed early, though, you couldn't fall asleep and just kept tossing around next to him, so he made you talk it all out. Therefore, he knew exactly how you were feeling.

When your tears become less and less frequent, you slightly pulled away from him.

"There you are." He smiled as he wiped your cheeks with his thumbs and pressed a kiss onto your forehead, letting his lips linger there for a few seconds. "I love you. Very much. You hear that?"

You only nodded as a few more tears started blurring your vision. A somewhat panicked expression sat on Joseph's face as he didn't exactly understand whether you were still crying because of the stress or because he did something wrong.

"No, no, no, no! Don't cry! Did I say something bad?"

"No." A laugh left your lips as you tried blinking your tears away. "I'm just glad to have you in my life, Joe. I love you so much." You pressed your lips against his.

"Let's go to bed, eh? Wanna put your books away?"

"No, I don't even wanna look at them now." You pouted as your eyes wondered at the notebooks and that heavy book you had rested in your lap for hours. "Look at that. She's mocking me."

"Who's mocking you?" Joe's eyebrows knitted together.

"That bitch on the cover of the book. She definitely didn't read it or else she wouldn't be smiling like that."

"Okay, I think you've had enough for today." He laughed as he pushed you in front of him towards the bedroom, turning the lights off on the way. He closed the door behind himself as you walked to the en-suite bathroom to brush your teeth, ready to end the day. You couldn't help but repeat a few definitions in your head silently, just to make sure you still remembered them. The toothbrush stilled in your hand as you tried to recall the four types of crime. Felonies, misdemeanours, felony-misdemeanours and...

"Felonies, misdemeanours, felony-misdemeanours and.." You repeated out loud.

"Hm?"

The feeling of a hand resting on your waist from behind snapped you out of your mumbling. You lifted your gaze to look at Joseph through the mirror. With his free hand he took his toothbrush from the cabinet as he looked back at you.

"Classification of crimes, the four types. What's the fourth?" You looked at Joe with a panicked expression, whose eyebrows furrowed at you. "I gotta check it, hold on." You took a step towards the bathroom door to go to the living room and check the answer but Joseph's fingers wrapped around your wrist before you could walk too far.

"No. You've studied enough for today. Let your mind rest a little, you'll check it tomorrow. The letters won't run away from your books overnight. Alright?"

"But–"

"No buts. You need to rest. Your body needs to rest. Your brain, too. Tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay." You sighed, slightly frustrated as tiredness ran through your bones.

"Listen, baby." He put his brush on the side of the sink and turned to you, placing both his palms on your cheeks. "You'll ace that exam. I know you, I know just how smart you are. You've already learnt over half the book in just a week. And for the other half, you still have two and a half weeks. You can do it, just like you've done it before. Not once I've seen you study less for a test and what happened, still? You passed all of them. It's nothing for you. Stop stressing yourself out over it, it's doing more damage than good. 'Kay?"

"Mm-hmm," You nodded, with the toothbrush still hanging from your mouth, toothpaste slightly smeared around your lips.

"Good." He pressed a soft kiss onto your forehead.

You lifted the blanket and slid under it, sitting, taking some lotion from its bottle. The question was still floating around in your head, unanswered, as you spread the lotion on your hands. You took a look at the half-closed bathroom door, seeing Joe's silhouette through the gap as he was standing in front of the mirror, wiping off the leftover shaving cream from his face. Without a thought you rose from the bed and walked to the bedroom door.

"Where you goin'?" He walked out of the bathroom and turned its lights off.

"To the kitchen...just wanna get a glass of water."

"Mm-hmm." He squinted his eyes at you.

"What?"

"Nothing." He shook his head with a soft sigh.

It was obvious he knew you were actually going to the living room, to take a look at your notes. You opened the door and walked down the hallway. As your hands found the light switch on the wall, you remembered before you could even turn the lights on.

Infractions.

An annoyed sigh left your lips as you simply turned around and walked back to the bedroom.

"That was fast."

"Infractions. It's fucking infractions."

"See? You know it. Now come to bed with me before I bring you over here myself."

You slid under the covers, snuggling up right next to Joseph, letting the warmth and scent radiating from his body relax you.

"Thank you for being here for me. And for caring about me." You pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand.

"That's what I'm here for, my darling. I'm very proud of you." He kissed the top of your head. "Lord, what a future lawyer do I have."

Thank you for reading, all feedbacks are appreciated!! Have a lovely Valentine’s Day :)

[headcanonsandmore]

'Nightmare Of The Black Spot'

Summary: The Doctor lands the TARDIS on a certain flat planet. Cue shenanigans and Yaz getting flirted with by a certain blonde werewolf lady.

~~~~~~~~ Read on AO3.

~~~~~~~~

‘A flat planet?’

‘I know, little bit unusual,’ the Doctor said, their blond hair swinging as they dashed around the central console. ‘But it exists! There’s a part of the universe where the usual laws of physics don’t really apply.’

Yaz stared at the time lord in bemusement, watching their friend as they worked the controls.

‘So it’s magic?’ Dan asked. The Scouser was stood off to the side, holding onto one of the yellow columns sticking out of the floor.

‘Debatable,’ the Doctor said, shooting him an irritated look. ‘Anyway, I’ll just land us, and we can have a look around.’

Yaz stared into the monitor.

‘Doctor, why are we flying in instead of just materialising?’

‘Because…’ the Doctor said, suddenly looking a little frustrated. ‘There’s a type of… background radiation that could interfere.’

‘So it is magic,’ Yaz chuckled, catching hold of the central console. ‘Just don’t land us in the sea, okay?’

The Doctor caught Yaz’s eye, and Yaz could have sworn that the time lord’s cheeks pinkened slightly as they returned her smile.

Eventually, the TARDIS stopped shaking, and the Doctor -followed by Yaz and Dan- headed out of the blue doors.

‘Ankh-Morpork!’ The Doctor said, grinning excitedly and standing with their arms raised around them. ‘The greatest city of the Discworld. The city of culture, history. The city of a million people!’

The TARDIS had landed on the edge of a bustling square. Everywhere around them were the shouts of people running stalls, chasing wayward children, and the occasional angry bark of a dog that had just had their tale trodden on.

‘Million smells, more like,’ Dan said, retching. ‘Why does it stink so much?’

‘Considering the time of year, that’s probably the river Ankh.’*

Yaz wrinkled her nose. It was pretty pungent, she had to admit. The air seemed to be filled with a weird sulphuric odour, like a student flat after too many egg sandwiches. The streets themselves didn’t help; there was a thin layer of grime covering the flagstones beneath Yaz’s feet, and she was glad of her boots. The buildings surrounding the square were packed tightly together, with the upper stories leaning out slightly into the street, giving the whole place a feel of London during the Renaissance.

Which, given that the three of them had just narrowly escaped from the great fire, was a topic of history Yaz could spot easily.

However, this thought was momentarily thrown from her mind, as her eyes widened. What looked like a dwarf from “Lord of The Rings” had just walked past, carrying an axe on their back. Their long beard was a deep red, and a thick moustache matched it.

Yaz walked to stand next to the Doctor, and whispered into the time lord’s ear. Without thinking, she also intertwined her fingers with those of the blonde.

‘Doctor… is this… like, a fantasy world?’

‘Sort-of,’ the Doctor replied. ‘It’s in a part of the universe where reality is just weak enough for unusual things to happen.’

‘Un…unusual?’

‘Yaz, if you think dwarfs are unusual, wait until you hear about the Nac Mac Feegle.’

Yaz stared at the blonde for a second. Dan seemed to have wandered off into the crowd, so there wasn’t anyone else nearby them.

‘Sometimes,’ Yaz said. ‘I get the sense you make up stuff to impress me.’

‘Do not!’

‘Next you’ll be telling me this place has tooth fairies running around.’

‘Well, technically, they tend to fly around, but their guild generally recommends that they avoid using that too much-’

Yaz let out a snicker.

‘Doctor… you are trying to impress me, just admit it.’

‘I…’ the Doctor suddenly looked bashful. ‘Well, I suppose I am. You’re my friend, Yaz; I… I want you to enjoy yourself.’

Yaz looked down at their intertwined hands. She squeezed the Doctor’s fingers softly with her own.

‘Yeah… friends.’  

‘Like Tegan and Nyssa,’ the Doctor elaborated. ‘Y’ remember me telling you about them? I used to travel with them, back in the eighties.’

‘You mean the two women who shared the bedroom.’

‘Yeah!’

‘In the potentially infinite TARDIS?’

‘Come off it,’ the Doctor said, waving their free hand absentmindedly. ‘You saw their shared bedroom last week when we were trying to find the wardrobe.’

‘Yes,’ said Yaz, slowly. ‘I remember seeing that their two beds were pushed together.’

The Doctor blinked hurriedly, suddenly looking very embarrassed.

‘Oh.’

Yaz chuckled.

‘You are so oblivious at times, Doctor.’

‘I… I just thought they were friends.’

Yaz let out a sigh.

‘Yeah… why doesn’t that surprise me?’

Yaz let go of the Doctor’s hand and walked away.

Across the square, Dan was stood by a street-seller carrying a tray. Yaz could already smell cooking sausages, but declined Dan offering her one.

‘You lot from abroad?’ asked the vender, a cheerful grin on his face. ‘Welcome to Ankh-Morpork, home of the Disc’s finest food and beverages, such as those put up for purchase by myself. One sausage-inna-bun for you, miss? One dollar, and that’s cuttin’ me own throat.’

‘No, thanks,’ Yaz said. She had experience dealing with these sorts of “entrepreneurs” back home; she’d spent a considerable portion of her probation chasing these jokers around Sheffield’s city centre.

‘Shame,’ Dan said, already chomping down on his own. ‘Tastes good; cheers, mate.’

The vender doffed his cap to Dan.

‘Mr Dibbler, at your service-’ the vender stopped, suddenly packing up his tray. ‘Awfully sorry, have to run…’

With surprising speed, the man raced away down a back alley. Yaz turned to Dan, who was staring back across the square.

‘Is that the local biddies?’

Dan pointed towards the TARDIS. Two people were stood next to the box. One was a rounded man with a large, red face. The other was about half a foot shorter, and… Yaz wasn’t sure they were human or not. A elephants graveyard of cigarette butts seemed to stick out from behind their ear.

The Doctor was stood in front of them, looking very annoyed.

‘Eh, is this your craft?’

‘Yes!’ exclaimed the Doctor, gesticulating wildly with their arms. ‘Why is there a clamp on it?’

‘Illegally parked.**’

The Doctor’s face turned red, and they drew themselves up to their full height. Given they were barely five-and-a-half-feet tall, this wasn’t much. But the sergeant wasn’t much taller.

Deciding that it would probably be best to stop the Doctor making the situation worse, Yaz put a calming hand on her friends arm.

‘Doctor, let me handle this.’

She then turned to the sergeant.

‘We’d need to negotiate this,’ Yaz said, calmly. ‘After all, we are tourists and therefore unaware of the parking regulations here.’

‘Well, I dunno about that,’ said the sergeant, rubbing his chin.

‘Who’s your commanding officer?’ Yaz asked. ‘I’m sure we can resolve this with them.’

‘In that case, you best come with us,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Never heard of someone deliberately tryin’ to speak to Mister Vimes…’

*

* The river Ankh was one of the longest rivers on the Disc. Unfortunately, this also meant it was also one of the longest combined public latrine and sewage systems on the Disc. It wasn’t dead, as such. There were creatures living somewhere under the thick crust that covered the river but, unfortunately, they happened to be creatures that even the famously iron-stomached Morporkians didn’t want to eat.

** The laws and ordinances of Ankh-Morpork were old and complicated, in the annoying way that meant you only caught breaking them when you were busy trying to do other things. Or were trying to find your way home after a few too many drinks at 3am. Sometimes both.

*

Vimes was definitely not was Yaz was expecting.

A short, scruffy man with armour that looked like it hadn’t seen polish in a number of years, Vimes gave the impression of being worn by his uniform, rather than vice-versa. He looked more like an old sergeant than the commander of a peace-keeping force; Yaz had stopped men like this from falling over in parks around Sheffield. 

He was also smoking a foul-smelling cigar.

Yaz waved her hand in front of her face. She was starting to wonder if everyone on this world smelled badly***.

Actually, that was unfair. There had been a captain downstairs with short, red hair that seemed to have scrubbed himself with soap to within an inch of the soaps life. The man, well over six feet tall and almost as broad across the shoulders, had skin that was almost tinged pink as a result.

By the sounds of it, his name was Carrot? This place was weird.

A woman stepped into the woman. Vimes nodded at her.

‘Thanks for coming, Angua.’

Angua, if that was her name, was tall, with long blonde hair and a figure that Yaz would have killed for barely a few years prior.

She was also rather attractive.

Bollocks, Yaz thought, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. That was all she needed right now.

‘Listen, how can you illegally park a box?’ she said, directing her argument at Commander Vimes and not the attractive blonde woman stood nearby. ‘To park something implies that it can move.’

Vimes stared at her, taking a long and deliberate draw on his cigar.

‘You’re a copper, aren’t you, young lady?’

Yaz glared at him.

‘Former copper.’****

‘Thought so,’ Vimes replied, with a shrug. ‘You can always tell. Something about the way of thinking…’

The blond woman called Angua gave Yaz a quick wink.

Oh.

Yaz felt heat rise in her cheeks, and looked away. It wasn’t fair.*****

‘Anyway,’ Vimes said, ignoring all this. ‘Head downstairs and Angua will get the matter cleared up with-’

There was a knock at the door, and Vimes grunted in an affirmative sort of way.

A figure wearing a long beard and moustache entered the room. They were wearing a leather skirt and high-heeled work boots.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the dwarf, politely. ‘Got an update on the Monkey Street murder from last week.’

‘Thanks, Cheery,’ said Vimes, with a nod. ‘Just leave the paperwork here and I’ll follow through with it later.’

‘Actually,’ Cheery -if that was her name- added. ‘It’s a bit urgent; best you come along now.’

‘I’ll come along,’ Yaz said.

‘Thought you said you weren’t a copper.’

‘I’m not. But I know how these things work; our enquiry gets forced down the list of priorities. Next thing we know, my friends stuck in your cell for three days because your sergeant left the paperwork under his coffee mug.’

Vimes, Angua and Cheery shared a look.

‘Fred Colon would do that, to be fair,’ Angua said.

‘Alright, fine,’ Vimes said, with a roll of his eyes as he got to his feet. ‘But your blonde friend better not wander off.’

‘I best come along as well,’ Dan said, to Yaz. ‘Don’t worry, Sheffield; I’ll keep an eye on the Doctor while you do your investigator thing.’

Yaz chuckled.

‘She’s not that bad.’

‘Speak for yourself; I remember that business with the flux.’

*

*** It wasn’t true, of course. But in Ankh-Morpork, dirt and grime tended to fester almost by osmosis. There was a department at the university researching the topic, to limited interest or success. Which made sense, given that most wizards liked long leisurely baths at least twice a day if they could get them.

**** Yaz liked to make this distinction very clear. She had entered the police force to do some good. The reality had unfortunately been very different although, compared to things she had read online, her experience had mercifully been dull as opposed to alarming.

***** Yaz was starting to suspect that she had a thing about blonde woman with a rebellious streak. She had taken the majority vote on this matter, but wished she hadn’t; her life was chaotic enough as it was without certain women appearing in her dreams in such a way that she was hoping against hope that the Doctor wasn’t telepathic.

*

Well, this place had clearly seen better days. A couple of pokey rooms on the third floor of a building. It stunk of old coats, and Yaz could have sworn that one wall had water leaking down it.

‘What do we reckon?’ Vimes asked.

‘Clearly hasn’t been lived in for a while,’ Yaz said. ‘Probably some sort of bolt-hold or hideout. You say there was a murder here?’

‘Looks like it.’

Dan was staring at one of the walls, where the wallpaper was peeling slightly. Yaz ambled over.

‘Something up, Scouse?’

‘I used to be a plasterer,’ Dan said, with a nod. ‘That’s been done way too quickly; whoever did this section was definitely trying to cover something up.’

Yaz grabbed one part of the paper, and pulled. Sure enough, a large black mark was visible on the wall behind.

Cheery gave a sigh.

‘Ah, geez******,’ said the dwarf, pulling out several vials. ‘I’ll take a sample of the wall lining behind the paper.’

Angua gave a small lop-sided smile, leaning against the wall.

‘You’re good at this, Ms Khan.’

‘Well, I try.’

Angua gave a slow nod, crossing her arms across her chest. Not that Yaz was looking, of course. No matter how attractive it looked.

‘More than just trying, by the looks of it.’

The Doctor let out a splutter, and grabbed Yaz’s hand, pulling her away from Angua.

‘If you don’t mind, me and Yaz have got things to do!’ the Time Lord exclaimed, stomping towards the door and dragging Yaz along with her. ‘Thank you!’

Dan snickered, covering his mouth with his hand.

*

****** ‘Geez’ being a shortening of the phrase ‘Cheesy minks’, itself a rough translation of the Dwarfish phrase ‘may giant cats give you their milk’. Contrary to popular belief, dwarfs do have a sense of humour; it just doesn’t make any sense to anyone else.

*

‘Well, thanks for helping us,’ Vimes said. He was stood in front of the TARDIS, with Yaz, Dan and the Doctor next to him. ‘Just make sure you don’t park here again. Come to think about it…’

He turned, staring at the Doctor quizzically.

‘How did you park this thing here? No wheels on it. This better not be magic, we have enough trouble with the wizards at the university…

‘No, no,’ the Doctor said, with a shake of their head. ‘But I’ll take your warning. Thanks for holding up your end of the bargain.’

Vimes shrugged. He looked at Yaz.

‘If you ever want a job, we’re recruiting all the time.’

Yaz shook her head.

‘Thanks but no thanks.’

Nodding as if in understanding, Vimes unlocked the clamp around the TARDIS, shook Yaz and Dan’s hands and walked off, leaving a smell of old cigar and… was that burnt toast? Strange bloke.

Yaz looked out over the city, staring up at the small sun inching its way rimwards.

‘The fate of existence is for us to decide,’ she said, softly.

‘Yaz? Did you say something?’

Yaz chuckled, and reached out, giving the blonde’s hand a squeeze and nudging them with her shoulder.

‘Just thinking to myself,’ she said. ‘C’mon, trouble; let’s get you some cocoa.’

Dan smiled as his two friends stepped into the TARDIS, before stepping in after them and closing the doors.

~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading, everyone; hope you enjoyed this fic! This is my first Doctor Who/Discworld crossover, so I hope I got the characterisations right (and hopefully my footnote game is good XD).

[notmuchtoconceal]

The Mandrake, Pt. 1 of None

The girl’s skin is green with the softness of battered flesh.

If she were brown, her innards would be tart and firm, but she’s mostly tasteless mush. What remains of her face is a wrinkled depression implying the outline of eyes and nose. A slanting molar column mars the slope where her body tapers from stem to base.

A faint gurgle bubbles from her insides. The skin beside the teeth flaps in and out, spewing what sounds like “kill me.”

Bulges of necrotic tissue, still shaped like breasts, shoulder blades and fingers, slicken against the latex suit of her dermis. The name she had as a human is classified. Lost among an avalanche of file folders in a mountainous region of dusty filing cabinets.

She sits in a field outside a plastic pseudo-suburb and smog’s gushing from the mortar lungs of cutout factories mid in the near-distance. With midday resurging, the black veil recedes and decaying radiation shines in a vast tanning bed of yellow dawn. Crows gather on the tops of power lines and radio towers, hunger gleaming in pebbles black and shining with acid rain. Within minutes, the flock could descend as a hurricane of feather and sinew and pick apart the girl to a slimy pit of black bone.

The birds are set dressing placed here to inform me that this is a wet operation. Or, due to the impairment of the target, a thankless execution.

Sickle Cell’s dressed all in white, looking a bit like a barn owl resting on top of a ceramic mall mannequin. Under a wide umbrella, in a beach chair, she’s lounging in a matching sundress and hat with oversized circular sunglasses, the rims of which gleam impeccably. She crosses her legs, squeaking leather boots that she can’t possibly afford, and enters into a staring contest with the girl’s eyeless visage. It is one not one which is unfamiliar to the eye which trains itself on remaining untrained. The subtle curvature of her apricot lips and the tautness of her cheeks display mutual sadness and repulsion. She gives this look to herself in the mirror after coming home from dinner. Behind those opacified lenses, her eyes are running down the curvature of the girl and she’s laying that impression like tracing paper over the memory of her own body.

“Do you pity it?” Sickle asks.

Sweat’s soaking through my new shirt. My jeans are shit, but my back’s held up rigidly straight to draw attention to my upper body.

Certain details are not clear to me. As the hot sun beats down on my head and the long walk simmers in my legs, it’s best to put-off dwelling on them until the last possible second.

“Can’t feel much of anything, sorry. Slept through breakfast and skipped lunch.”

“I know; I’m a bit peckish, too. I still can’t help but feel something for her. It, I mean.”

Kneeling down next to her, my fingers run through her expertly mussed hair.

“Are you planning to meet somebody later?”

Her shoulders retract as she looks at the horizon. She slips off her sunglasses and sunlight strikes her eyes in a golden censor bar as she lingers with a dignified melancholy—a look that you can’t help but dismiss as a display of holier-than-thou mock-sentiment.

With a deep breath and the smells of ash, burning fat and dry dirt fill my lungs. Plastic glove on my hand, my legs swagger toward the girl.

“What’re you doing?” Sickle asks.

“We were tasked with this case for a reason, love.”

The scarecrow standing ten feet away is a hanged-man with a noose made of straw intestine. A burning hot pole enters his rectum and pierces the cap of his skull. This tells me the girl committed a crime worthy of two deaths. The fingers of his right hand cover his lips while the fingers of his left hand cross behind his back. This outs the girl as an informant or snitch. The cosmetics caked on his face tell me the girl had an active nightlife, possibly moonlighting as a hair metal singer or party clown.

I linger on the scarecrow’s bright yellow sundress and the string of doll-heads hanging from fishhooks in the straw rope.

Kneeling beside the girl, dry grass scratches my knees through frayed denim knotholes. My fingers run delicately over her exposed teeth, which have the soft smoothness of porcelain. The textures of her flesh alternate between the weave of canvas and the chunky ripples of papier-mâché. Living animal warmth radiates from her skin. Her body muffles the audible machinery of digestion and blood circulation.

She reeks of lilac perfume and red wine. The latter could be either a leftover from her last night as a human, or the onset of fermentation. On her back is an unspoiled patch of milky white skin emblazoned with a tramp-stamp depicting two worms wrapped around an oar.

I snap my fingers and weakly mumble “totally called it” and it’s only a few seconds later, after a few crows caw like they’re congratulating me, that I wish I’d made more of a show of things.

“Did you check for STDs?” Sickle asks.

“Hell no. I’m not reaching into those fetid depths unless my life depends on it. I bet she has more crabs than a Red Lobster.”

She moans softly to herself. “I could go for some crabs right now.”

“This bitch has the mark, dearest. She was definitely one of CHERRIE’s. From the detail in the tattoo, I’m going to say she was classy enough to be more than a fuck-toy, but from the location, too slutty to be in his harem of silk-clad vampire wives.”

“You think he ever wined and dined it? Candles, violins, clam chowder. Everything.”

“He’s totally the kind of asshole who deludes himself into thinking he’s sophisticated. We’re going to interrogate the vegetable to our heart’s content before commencing with the execution.”

“Are you positive that it’s no longer a person? I mean, it still has teeth!”

“Flytraps have teeth.”

“Not human teeth, dear.”

“What differences does it really make?” I shrug my shoulders and only realize now how heavy my upper body really feels. “We’ve got calcified husks specialized for tearing and grinding. They’ve got thin sensory prongs. It’s the difference between a meat-grinder and a steak knife.”

“Is feeling up an empty bra as fun as groping a full breast?”

“That depends on how lacy it is, now stop changing the subject. This woman, dear Sickle, is going to die because she deserves to die. That decision was made by people smarter than you, who are more willing to assess reality by hoisting their responsibilities on me, a capable agent.”

“What reality is that?” She slides her sunglasses back on. “That all life is equally worthless, but the law carries weight to a degree that it’s pointless to question it, though you'll question everything else?”

“Sickle, you need to lose that tone. It’s simple pragmatism, come now. If we wanted to determine if she was more human or vegetable, we’d need to perform a dissection, so she’s fucked either way. We could kill her, leave her here, rip out her guts and throw them at geese. It’s all going to accomplish the same amount of nothing, so it’s sensible to drain the last remnants of her miserable life pursuing information.”

That shuts Sickle up for a bit.

The crows caw like they’re laughing at her. Now that she’s drained her capacity for rational argument, she attempts to implore my emotions in a passive-aggressive manner without seeming at all obvious about it.

“It’s different, you know. Wishing harm on something and witnessing it. I knew it a bit. We weren’t friends or anything. In fact I frequently found it irritable on good days and obnoxious on bad days, but I’d never wish this on anything, not even my worst enemy or my best friend.”

I’m not paying much attention to her.

My body stinks of sweat and rotting fruit salad. My hands finger the cap of a bottle of cologne in my pocket and I’m pretending to stretch and yawn so I can discreetly spritz myself.

“Dearest, you wouldn’t have the imagination to wish this on her.”

She’s rummaging through a white leather purse. “I used to think it was a convenience to hang out with someone who felt so little. It was nice to not be expected to fake tears when I had none to shed.”

“Always a pain, isn’t it, love?” I ask. “Doesn’t it diminish the worth of empathy to falsify it so regularly? They blow soldiers to bits in deserts, cork children with assault weapons, and I’m expected to fake tears for a fruitcup like a thunderous orgasm in the great porno theater of life.”

Sickle opens an eggshell compact from her purse. She can’t see her own eyes. “Cruelty is understandable when it’s either anonymous or personal. I weep for the dead children. Really, I do. I’m only human after all. They’re so young, so unsure of everything. The girls I watch after look at me with such warm smiles that it crushes my heart whenever they so much as frown. I suppose there’s a sort of lull in the spectrum of human empathy. I simply cannot be bothered to care for someone I barely know. Nothing needs to be said about the raw nerve of a loved one in pain, but with strangers, there’s a sort of purity in aimless victimization.”

Crouching over Sickle’s lap, the prongs of the umbrella poke my scalp. My hands fall upon her shoulders and my face slides inches from her nose. She has to smell the cologne. In the reflection of her sunglasses is the first haircut I’ve had in months.

I lick my lips and whisper in her ear. “What I’m taking from that stirring oratory is that I’ve got carte blanche to torture the veggie.”

Her lacquered gaze glides along the barren earth. She pushes me off, takes two steps toward the girl and stops as if lost in thought.

I smell my forearm and spritz myself some more.

The crows look like they’re nudging and shushing each other. When I walk up beside her, she’s giggling.

“Maybe instead of an interrogation,” she says, “we can perform a firsthand investigation of certain, uh… dineries in the area to see if we can find any… um, physical evidence of occupation by hostile forces. You said yourself that this mystery man might take his prospects out for dinner.”

“Why do I bring you out on field work? You’re a useless combination of hungry, lazy and female.”

She whines so suddenly her glasses fall off.

“I want crab legs.”

“Crab legs do sound nice.”

“Fried shrimp.”

“Oh fuck, fried shrimp…”

“Lobster.”

My stomach rumbles. “Maybe we can just nibble on the vegetable?”

“You’re not even sure if it’s still human. That could be cannibalism.”

“Jesus Christ, can you go five seconds without pointing out another ethical ambiguity?”

“Why? I was planning to make a game of it.”

“I bet she would taste good with applesauce.”

I had anticipated she would moan the word “applesauce” in the throes of muted orgasm, but her mind is elsewhere else and she’s probing the girl with squinting eyes and not a hint of appetite.

“Can it hear us?” she asks.

“Does she have ears?”

“I don’t think so? What’s that thing on its side?”

“The beginnings of an asexual budding?”

“Throw a rock at it.”

I hoist a chunk of broken granite from the base of a pile of stones. The edges scratch my naked palms. I whirl and toss it through the air and watch it rip through the soft flesh of her growth. A glistening bright red wound, like overripe watermelon in the harsh sunlight gushes a rivulet of blood and fluorescent mucus with the viscosity of corn syrup.

The girl lets out a horrible shriek that rips through my ears and forces the perched crows to take off and block out the sun.

I can’t even hear my own obscenity over the ringing in my ears.

‘I’m going to fucking kick that thing, I swear!” yells Sickle.

“She’ll scream again, you bimbo! Don’t fucking touch her!”

Sickle reaches up to her ears and watches blood run down her palm.

“I won’t,” she says, “but only because I’m thinking of the glop it’ll get on my new boots”

“Can you repeat that darling, I fear I’m a wee bit deaf in one ear.”

“Huh? What did you just say? Try talking into the ear that isn’t bleeding.”

“She’s developed the perfect defense mechanism to endure any interrogation. How could she have started evolving so soon after transmogrification?”

“Nope, still can’t hear you,” shouts Sickle.

“No method of polite coercion will get her to talk if she can scream that fucking loud.”

“I’m still trying to figure out how you expect it to talk when it doesn’t have a mouth.”

“Our only hope is to forsake the threat of pain and force upon her the fear of an instant death.”

“I like that you’re not answering my questions.”

“She’ll talk if we drag her up someplace high and suspend her on the edge of vertigo. There’s no way she’ll be stupid enough to scream and risk us letting her go, as that will set into motion her rapid descent to a delectable splat on the pavement.”

“It really is the only way,” she’s twirling her sunglasses on her finger. “There’s no way it would talk if I sat down and tried to ask it questions. We are, of course, one-hundred percent positive that it wants to withhold information. Poor dear would never think to buy protection.”

I reach under my shirt and spritz my chest. “You really need to learn how to mix business with pleasure, you know that?”

The girl mumbles something again. It sounds like “For fuck’s sake, will you shut up and kill me already!”

Sickle walks up to the girl. “Hey sweetie, how are you feeling?”

The girl screams something unflattering about Sickle’s figure.

“Oh fuck you, fat ass!” she says. “You’re one to talk. That’s not an apple bottom, it’s a bean-bag bottom, bitch!”

“Sickle, stop while you’re ahead,” I implore lucidly, so sick of saying. “The interrogation is a delicate art and frankly I’m Bosch at a triptych and you’re a kindergartener with finger-paints.” I walk up to the girl and calmly ask, “Well, fat ass, what’s your relationship with CHERRIE?”

She says, “Eat a dick, faggot.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” I rub my chin. “Sickle, darling, cover your ears.”

Yanking the penknife I always carry in my pocket, I stab her with dozens of vigorous jerks until she screams so loudly, my blind furor slows to a wobbly stutter. White circles flash against my collapsed eyelids and I fall back into the sun-drenched dirt. Red sticky heat fills my ears and runs down my cheeks. When I open my eyes, Sickle’s face is hovering over me, out of focus, her mouth flapping with hysteric jaw contortions, but no words are coming out. When I push her aside and try to stand up, my head throbs with a pulsating buzz and a static whine fills the silent vacuum of the world. My arm is numb and my elbow is on fire with a peroxide burn. The girl’s twitching like she’s in the onset of an epileptic fit. An assortment of fluids, all some shade of green, red or brown, pours down her corkboard flesh as it succumbs to black splotches of rot.

I sit down on the dirt completely of my own volition. I don’t stumble backwards and land on my ass. Sickle pulls a cluster of movie theater napkins from her purse and clutches two wads to my ears. The cheap pulp scratches at the swollen cartilage and bloats with blood so quickly that after a minute it’s not soaking in anything.

Ten minutes later, after standing hunched over a particularly eroded bit of soil sutured by railroad spikes, blood pouring ontp the ground and not my clothes, my hearing comes back.

Sickle’s mumbling to herself about how I either don’ t think things through or over-think everything for so long that I end up not doing anything and that I should really pick one or the other already.

I turn to her and say “I can hear you clearly now.”

She smiles and says, “Well, thanks for that brilliant display of your interrogation skills.”

“Do you have any bright ideas, love? I’m ready to chuck this bitch off a building regardless of how much she talks.”

She puts her sunglasses back on. “I propose we retire the old phrase ‘draining blood from a stone’ and from now on use the far more topical ‘stabbing information out of a vegetable’.”

‘You were a fool for ever questioning my blood-lust, dearest” I turn to the girl, and with the solemn voice of an executioner ask “What say you, veggie? If you speak now, we will grant you entrance to immortality on your own terms. If not, we, who are now death incarnate, will make you suffer to your last breath.”

The girl does not answer.

She continues to twitch and bleed and I can’t tell if she’s purposefully biting her tongue or vocally impaired due to the severing of a vital nerve.

Frankly, I don’t care much and mournfully intone, “Then suffering you shall have.”

Sickle pauses. “You should light it on fire,” she says. “It might explode.”

“I’d rather crush it under something heavy,” I say. “There’s something immensely satisfying about the splatter of cracking bones.”

“These are all pie-in-the-sky ideas, dear. You don’t have anything that can burn or crush. You’ll need to be more down to earth and I don’t think you can do that on an empty stomach.”

There’s a gnawing rumble in my guts. I say, “Let’s leave her on the train tracks and call it a day.”

“Who knows how long we’ll be waiting for a train to pass by? It could take hours. I don’t want to sit here all day. I’m hungry now.”

“You’re right. Who wants to be a passive observer when it comes to murder? I want blood on my hands, goddamn it.”

“Did you ever think about witnesses,” Sickle says, “who’s to say whether or not this is murder?”

“Darling, you can’t expect the common man to decide for themselves what deaths are justified. Their sense of right and wrong are as shapeless as puddings left out overnight. There’s no objective measurement for the value of a human life. When a soldier is shot, we mourn. When a gangbanger is shot, we sing praises and thank Christ that thug is off the streets. Really, though, they’re both thugs; but time and money goes into a soldier, while a gangbanger becomes what he is because he comes from a home with neither, but some people even the government don't fuckin wanna buy, praise the fuckin secondhand market!”

She flutters her eyelashes. “It’s like when I was five and you let Gabrielle eat the neighbor woman’s cockatoo and the old lady spanked you with a cane. Then you cried because nobody cared that I let her tear a bunch of ‘filthy, disease-ridden’ pigeons to bits of pillow stuffing?”

I stop talking for a while. She’s smiling. How can she be smiling? I stare at Sickle’s face and see only obsidian self-portraits. My own eyes stare back at me; eyes that see my own slumped shoulders and wonder how someone who loves me can be so cruel and why, as time keeps moving and I don’t say anything, the smile settles into practiced apathy. Her cheeks slacken into silk bed sheets unruffled by sleeping bodies and my teeth are pressing together so hard that my jaw aches, and she’s about to speak, but I open my mouth and talk like nothing happened.

“It’s polite to say that human beings are irreplaceable,” there’s a tension on my vocal cords, “but they’re an infinitely renewable resource. The only value inherent in a human life lies in the whole of their collective experiences. Why do you think we take pity when celebrities or geniuses are on death row? The problem is we extend that sympathy to those who don’t deserve it. It’s all right to kill a senile old man because his brain has atrophied into a viscous mixture of dust and mucus liable to confused with aforementioned overnight pudding, left out on the same counter as the catfood, not at all east to conflate at two in the Am. It’s all right to kill a child in the womb because they have worthless brains made of undifferentiated jelly, and hardly have much flavor without the fear of death. There is always a correct amount of drama to indulge, my dear”

Sickle stands in silence. What I can see of her face shows the collision of guilt with composure. I raise my hands and invite her to stumble into my arms where I’ll coo her and tell her that she’s not guilty; that she’s not a predatory hawk, but a sweet canary whose love warms the frozen cockles of my heart like some kind of nasty microwaveable meal.

She doesn’t move.

She says, “I’ve seen septic tanks less full of shit than you.”

I move forward. “But none have smelled so nice, have they? Did you notice my new cologne? I got it yesterday. Here, come smell me. I used like half the bottle.”

“The only things I’ve done today are smell you and listen to you, and frankly, I’m a bit tired of both. Let’s get this thing out of here. If you’re gonna kill it, stop talking about it and do it already, because it won’t be daytime forever.”

“Do you think she’s going to be heavy?”

“I never imagined you carrying it, dear. I assumed you’d have no qualms about kicking it on its side and rolling it.”

“Hey, I’m sorry.”

“I know. You’re always sorry.”

“You’re not the only one who can dress up like a high-class whore, you know,” I spritz myself until the skin on my neck is irritated. “This shit cost me like five dollars.”

The girl screams when I push her onto the hot pavement.

She rolls a few feet before she seems to jump and wobble back onto her base. A leathery punching bag is sweating olive oil. With my still gloved hand attached to my still numb arm, I inspect her stab wounds to find the landmine field of punctures exploding into lumpy clusters of fluid-filled sacks. I continue to push and roll the girl. When the weight of her body pushes down on the growths, they act like a spring.

It takes careful diligence to hear the watery boing sound, as each one’s eclipsed by a perfectly timed scream. By the end of the block, she’s either exhausted or too overwhelmed with pain to let out anything more than a tired yelp and frankly, I’m tired of pushing her.

I collapse on the curb and languish in the oppressive sun. The concrete grain’s cutting into the thin layer of flesh around my pelvic bone.

“All right, Sickle,” I say, “I’ve done my part, now you kick her the rest of the way.”

“You’re kidding, right?” she asks, panting as if walking beside me was already too much work for her. She fans herself diligently. Looking around, as if it must be here. “You don’t even know where you’re going!”

“Then it’s hopeless. I guess I’m going to sit here all day and stare at your massive thunder-thighs.”

She takes the bait and gives me a look that says, “It’s on now, bitch.”

Her eyes run up and down the girl’s body. There’s two dents in her flesh: a footprint on the left bottom and a handprint on the right top. Sickle rips off her sunglasses in a way that I think she thinks is dramatic.

Practiced shit-talk is running through her mind. Inches away, she folds her arms and gives the girl a look that says, “What you gonna do, bitch?” Both hands on the girl now, she’s straining for a powerful shove, but dry-heaves, slips down the slope and rubs the pavement with her cheeks.

I’m too embarrassed to laugh.

She starts to cry. “I got dirt on my new dress!”

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I ask, “I regained my breath. I can take back over if you like.”

“No,” she wails. “I’m not being bested by a vegetable.”

I watch until my body aches through osmosis.

She pushes, slips, gets back up. Over and over. Can’t hardly move. The glucose engine that’s my brain’s runnin’ on empty. My bones and fibers rotate the useless analogue coil.

A Coke machine’s beyond a factory gate.

My autonomous body shuffles that way. Can’t read the sign, pull quarters from my pocket, probably enough. Click, click, click, beep, buzz, plop. Oh, it’s cold. Blood’s pouring back into my brain. My throat’s massaged internally with a glycerin clam.

I walk back over to Sickle and ask, “Making progress?”

“Of course,” she says, “I’d managed to shove it at least two inches this way.”

“Good work. Now how many inches in a city block? At this incredible momentum, it’ll only take us however many minutes that is.”

Sickle dashes at the girl with her elbow as hard as a battering ram. There’s a wet plop and warm droplets of sticky gunk splash my face.

I back away, but she keeps charging and charging. Sickle stares at a massive brown stain seeping into her dress. It soaks through to the skin, making the material cling to the outline of her tits. Chunks of mushy flesh stick to the dimples in her chest and melt to yogurt between her cleavage.

I wave at her while discreetly rubbing my nipples. She yanks on her neckline, and the dress turns from shrink-wrap to garbage bag.

I ask, “Do you want to find a sprinkler or something?”

She screams and tugs at her hair. Pointing at the girl, she yells “Die, bitch, die!” Sprinting in place with her squat legs, she’s throwing out all the weight her little body has, but the growths swell up into speed bumps.

Now Sickle’s barely standing, hunched over with her hands on her knees and sucking in air harder than a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. Throttling my hands around her waist, I lift her up, give the girl a good kick and we’re halfway down the block before I dry-heave and fall over.

We lie in the grass, our lungs contracting and Sickle lets out a cry with the staccato vibration of a cough.

“Why are we so out of shape!” she cries. “You said you were going to start lifting weights!”

“I did start,” I say. “The hard part was continuing.”

The girl’s toppled over in the shade beneath a tree. She’s laughing and rolling from side to side. Laughing really isn’t the most accurate word to describe it, but I think it’s what she’s going for. It’s a sort of guttural bubbling from the intestines buzzing through pussy lips.

A sound that makes your asshole clench.

Sickle sits up. “If I was that ugly, I don’t think I’d find much of anything funny.”

“I’m sure she meant to cry. She’s so stupid, she screwed up a reflex.”

With each laugh, the flap of skin on her mouth balloons out, sucks in and clings to her throat lining.

“Shove it, fish tits!” I kick her teeth and what starts as a scream breaks down into dry hacking.

“Hey, move aside!” Sickle runs up and spin-kicks the girl’s soft flank. “You ruined my outfit, fatty!”

Juice splashes my pant legs and Sickle’s white boots. My foot breaks through the girl’s skin, into some kind of warm pothole and with a loud shlorp I’m sucked in up to the ankle. Burning petroleum jelly seeps between my toes. Pricks crawl up and down my foot. The hole clenches tighter around my ankle as white plumes of steam whisk from the girl’s pores. Sickle runs to my back and gives me the Heimlich as the tendons in my jerking leg tighten into a hemp rope. I plop loose and fall on top of Sickle. The scorched wrinkles of my red foot are tender in the sun.

My shoe is still inside.

I wiggle my toes, peel off the other shoe and shove it in the hole.

Sickle stares at me with wide eyes and flat eyebrows.

“Really?”

“This makes it even,” I say.

An old woman no doubt owns the house we’re squatting in front of. White siding sags and grey shingles on the roof thin into the gutters and walkway, exposing patches of rotted plywood. Angel statues swallowed up by shrubbery, flowerpots shaped like nesting fawns asphyxiated by vines, plywood dogs clawed by twisting branches.

Sickle heaves a stone garden gnome holding a sign saying “Welcome” and drops it on the girl’s teeth. My shoe shoots out of the hole with a wet plop and the other inches out in slow contractions. They’re both coated with yellow mucus and reek of burning rubber.

“Thanks,” I say, and drop the shoes down an open sewer drain.

“Listen,” she says. “I am very, very hungry.”

“Are you still on that? Now that fish tits isn’t screaming, we can probably take another stab at interrogating her.”

She slides her sunglasses back on. With a breathy giggle that comes off more like a bitter sigh she says, “Listen, I’ve got a dinner date. I need to be leaving soon. Do you understand?”

I scratch my neck.

“Well, you look like shit now, so you might as well ditch it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option. You’re going to have to find some way of getting me there, or find someone else to help you move this thing.”

My fists clench.

“I should have left your ass at home and forced Key Lime out here instead,” I say. “He’d whine a fraction as much, then do twice the work, and he’s the laziest guy I know.”

“Oh, but I work so hard at being lazy!”

“He can help you push the damn thing and I can stroll behind and whack your ass with a newspaper. Tell him he owes you for staying over in your room the last few days.”

“He hasn’t been staying in my room; I haven’t seen him since last week.”

At this, I sit up. “What do you mean you haven’t seen him? I haven’t seen him.”

“Why would he be with me?”

“He’s your best gal-pal. Why wouldn’t he be with you?”

“I have a life outside of him.”

“Does he have a life outside of you?”

Her pleading eyes tell me she knows I’m right, but she’s going to pretend I’m not.

“I don’t have any idea where he could be,” she says.

She dials his number, I crouch down beside her, and we press our ears together into two funnels of cartilage tuned into the digitized ring of the dial tone. “Hey…” comes a groggy voice.

I say, “Key Lime, where the fuck—”

“I’m not here right now. But if you’d like, you can leave a message and I can get back to you… Except, I probably won’t, so don’t be angry next time I see you and ask why I didn’t call back. I don’t understand phones, okay? Now how do I get out of here? … Push what button? Hurry up, I think it’s still recording…No. No, I think it’s still on … Don’t yell at me. Okay, fine, if you know how to do it just take it!”

She sighs. “My poor boy,” and the beep flares out. “Hello Key Lime, it’s me. We’re near the train tracks down by 69th and K—”

“He doesn’t understand streets.”

“We’re across the street from the Baskin Robbins! We’re trying to move something. Come help us.”

“You couldn’t mention a different landmark?”

She glares at me. “If you come we’ll get you a smoothie, you don’t have to ask. Good-bye.”

“Ask him where he’s been for the last few days.”

“We’ll ask him when he calls back.”

“He’s not going to call back, we’re wasting our time.”

“It was your idea to call him!”

“What, you do everything I say now? Flash the next car that drives by.”

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that with a dry t-shirt.”

I pat her on the head. We somehow roll the girl out to a busy street and this is where we need to make things count if we want anyone to help us haul the fat skank away. I collapse against her rough, leathery hide and the smell of fermentation is so strong my first instinct is to pull away, but I think I’m getting drunk just sniffing her, so I lay still in a stupor.

My shirt’s soaked through with sweat and my eyes fall straight across the street. Sickle steps up to the corner, pointing at the girl, and then waving at passing cars. A guy stops, asks if she’s a hooker and drives off.

Her face puffs up in a cantankerous balloon and I laugh for a good minute before realizing I’m part of the punch line.

I turn to Sickle. “We can run with the hooker thing.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sickle and I stand on the side of the road, my jeans rolled up to my knee and my long, pretty legs nestled between her thighs, sticking out through her dress, her two legs wrapped around my hips and joining into a stump wiggling behind my ass. My back hunches into an arch under her linen dinner jacket and the effect was that we look like a single woman with a lumpy hunchback, two disproportionately long legs and a mysterious fifth limb that could be a tail or the gaster of a giant ant. We are an entity that nobody but the vilest degenerate would find doable. It’s at this moment that a thin Chinese man in his fifties, whose eyes flutter with a pronounced effeminacy, gilded and regal as a celluloid closet star, pokes his head out of one of those organ-harvesting execution buses that go from prison to prison, then out to the cobbler fields.

“Hello pretty girl,” he says. “Do you need lift?”

Sickle flaps her mouth in such a manner that nothing matches the high-pitched whine squealing half-muffled from beneath her jacket.

“Oh kind sir! I am but a lowly street performer who seeks fame and fortune in Las Vegas or Fown, but I’m so, so hungry. I would do anything and I mean anything for a quick bite to eat.”

“How hung are you?” he asks.

“Not too young for you, stud.”

“What do you do in act?”

“I give this here vegetable a lap dance. I get as nude as indecent exposure laws will permit me. And then some.”

“Oooh. I like and then some. You get naked as duck in butcher window?”

“Honey, please, I make duck in window look like virginal school-girl.”

“I am intrigued and perhaps possibly aroused. All right. You get in back of van now.”

“You are simply too kind, sir. I have always benefited tremendously from the sexual neediness of strangers.”

“Do you need help with vegetable?” asks the Chinese man as he opens the driver side door.

I grab Sickle’s arm and pull it back against her head and we fall back so the only thing keeping the two of us upright is my other arm planted against the warm pavement, and Sickle now looks like a melodramatic plantation whore in some life-threatening woe, like perhaps she dropped a handkerchief, or will perhaps be encroached upon by a solar body.

“Oh please sir!” I moan. “This sun has become intolerable! I’m hotter’n a cross at a Klan rally!”

The Chinese man lets out a prolapsed evil laugh as he sashays contemptuously from the driver’s seat.

The doors at the back of the bus fly open and out walks a cute girl, probably about nineteen, flashing a toothy smile with both her mouth and her long necklace of human teeth. The driver hauls the girl in both arms and throws her to the girl. She stumbles backwards into darkness.

The driver turns to us and says, “Please get in.”

[sschmendrick]

So what's a line array ?

(Reminder that I am literally just finishing school therefore I still have a lot to learn and what I may be saying might be erroneous at times from a misunderstanding of some audio notions)

Well before we get in the nitty gritty of things, let's visualise what we're talking about. You see the big column (line) of speakers on the left of the stage ? That's a line array : (picture by me of Bons Sons Festival)

They are a solution to the need for louder systems (and more problems). As concerts got bigger, the concert halls became bigger and bigger as well, however there's a terrible thing in audio called attenuation and that's when the sound level diminishes because of the air resistance. The further a soundwave goes, the less powerful it becomes and the less you hear it. There's a very simple equation for that : number of dB (sound level) lost = 20log(distance). It means you would lose 32 dB in 40m, that's a lot !

There's a real need for louder system. And at first we had the Wall of Sound. A monster made of speakers, stacked on top of each other, up to 10m (32 feet) tall. This is the grandpa of line arrays.

There is a problem however. If the simple solution to "one speaker alone cannot produce enough sound for a whole crowd" seems to be "well just put more on top of it", this doesn't take into account the fact that the soundwaves produced by one speaker will interact with the soundwaves produced by another speaker and this will result in overlapping zones where it either adds the two (bigger sound), or substract one from the other (holes in the spectrum). This leads to using more speakers than necessary to cover those holes.

If these speakers could create a cohesive line front then you wouldn't need as much speakers. This means you want them to act as ONE speaker : as one SOURCE. What you need is for your line array to act like a line source.

In the early 90s Christian Hail (founder of L-Acoustics) determined the physical conditions needed for a line array to have a coherent wavefront. There are 5 criterias to the WST (Wavefront Structure Technology). If a line array conforms to all 5 then it will behave like a line source and be of great help for large concert halls and open air events. Nowadays a lot of softwares have been developped (usually one per manufacturer) to help with all the calculations : you only need to create a model of the venue in the software, select what speakers you are using and then give a maximum height (and other information that you have) and you can visualize how each speaker will behave, where will their energy be focalized, how they will interact with heat map and a lot of cool stuff.

(yes I know ArrayCalc is for d&b but it's the one I used the most at school)

Anyway the 5 criterias :

First we have the ARF, the Active Radiating Factor. This says that the wavefront created needs to be bigger or at least 80% equal to the total length of the line.

Then you have the STEP. The Step is the distance between two sources's acoustic centers. It should not be bigger than half of the wavelength of the highest frequency producessed. For example if the higher frequency produced is 100Hz (3.4m), then the distance between two speakers should not exceed 1.7m. However this becomes 0.17m for 1kHz and 0.01m for 16kHz. It becomes apparent that for higher frequencies it is almost physicaly impossible to have the correct step.

The third criteria treats of the wavefront's curve. It can be accepted, as it will natureally be when created by a speaker. The wavefront being curved there will be a slight difference in the distance needed to get to the audience between the top of the curve (the highest point) and the sides who are curved. However there is a limitation on how curved it can be. It can be calculated and it must be inferior to 1/4th of the highest wavelength. Waveguides were created to help "sculpt" that wavefront.

The last two criterias focus on keeping the line source's angle variable without losing the coherence of the wavefront.

The fourth criteria takes into account the sound level attenuation according to the distance. To keep the attenuation at 3dB per doubling of the distance, the angle between each speaker must be inversely proportional to the distance to the adience. This means the further away the audience member is, the more closed the angles between the speakers are.

And finally the last criteria determines the maximum angle between each element of the line array. This is to avoid the holes in the audio spectrum. It is an equation that I'm not going to try and write on tumblr.

Taken right from my thesis haha.

If the line array agrees to all these criterias it can be considered a line source. Line arrays usually take care of the audience further away on the ground and also in the balconies/stories/heights. There is a real need to understand how far your stage speakers will produce good sound (especially with all the fills you have on the front of the stage) and adapt the placement of your line arrays (or its general curvature).

Its line aspect also influences the shape of the hot spot. For a lone speaker the hot spot is going to be near it, at it's acoustic center, then attenuated in a spherical manner. For a line array, it will produce a hot spot in a line. This transforms the heat map. That's how you can have big concert halls with a general sound level that is very homogenous (the people in the front still have the most sound level/sound pressure). Understanding how they work allows you to create blind spots voluntarily (for example because of architecture).

Line arrays are almost present at every concerts now. But be careful with the fingers when setting them up !!