#for clarity: if you ever see her with fangs

[numinousmysteries]

23 for the sleep prompts!! (Couldn't choose between that and 25)

jeeez I’m getting all the sad ones. again, quick and dirty, no edits, just trying to warm up the writing muscles.

23. He/she cried himself/herself to sleep.

Earlier that day, she’d held his mother’s lifeless heart in her hands. She weighed the lungs that once breathed air for the man she loves. She examined the womb that nurtured and protected him. Scully didn’t know what to make of Teena Mulder during her life and she’s even more puzzled by this woman in her death. 

Autopsies are meant to bring clarity, to answer the questions the dead leave behind. But she closes up Teena’s chest cavity, left more baffled than before. How could a mother abandon her son like this? Even knowing the pain and disfigurement her disease would bring, how could she leave him alone at such a vulnerable moment? She doesn’t need to be a mother—and she never will be, she reminds herself—to know that this is wrong. Scully wants to shake the cold body on her steel table and scream at her, How could you do this to him? Don’t you know how fragile he is? She realizes she knows Mulder better than his own mother ever did. 

She circles the block around his apartment five times before finding the courage to park and tell him her findings. Like so many times before, he’s asked her to uncover the truth using the tools at her disposal and, like so many times before, she will disappoint him with her results. The victim choked on her own vomit, not ectoplasm. The puncture wounds came from hypodermic needles, not vampire fangs. Your mother died from suicide, not a nefarious conspiracy to conceal the truth.

She will do anything to bring him comfort except lie to him. Predictably, he does not take the news well. An explosion of anger followed by a descent into tears. All she can do is hold him and rock his body against her as his torso trembles with wails. His tears dampen the collar of her jacket and she feels the warmth of his breath on her neck. 

As she rubs his back through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, she feels his movements slowing and his breathing coming back under control. 

“I’m so sorry, Mulder,” she whispers into his hair. 

He pulls back from her grasp, takes a sharp inhale, then leans forward again so they are forehead to forehead. Looking into his eyes, she can see a lifetime of pain. She sees the boy who was traumatized, and then berated for failing to deal with his trauma. Samantha was the one who was taken, but in a way she was spared. Mulder was the one left behind, emotionally abandoned. In his bloodshot, tear-stung eyes, she sees the aftermath of decades of internalized guilt and self-loathing. She loves him fiercely and yet she fears she will never love him enough to heal his wounds.

“You need to rest,” she says. She means now, in this moment, he needs sleep to restore his body, but she also means more than that. This poor man has been living on the razor’s edge of adrenaline for more than two decades now. It’s too much for anyone to bear.

He answers with a laugh that catches in his throat and becomes a sob. They both know how ridiculous her request is; that he will never rest until he has the answers he’s been seeking for so long. And even then, she wonders, will that be enough?

But his physical exhaustion overwhelms him and he lets her help him off the floor and lead him to the bedroom. She strips down to her camisole and underwear and eases him out of his t-shirt and jeans. If he needed to lose himself in her body, she would let him, but tonight it’s just the crush of her skin against his that he craves. She has a toothbrush in his bathroom and a travel bottle of the facial cleanser she likes—they’ve been lovers for months now after all—but she refuses to let go of him for a second even if it means going to bed with a full face of makeup and unbrushed teeth. 

His tears come and go like waves through the night. He tires himself out from crying and drifts into a restless sleep, only to wake himself up with a coughing sob. Through it all, she doesn’t let him go. 

[tragedybunny]

Dance With Me Under the Diamonds, See Me Like Breath in the Cold Part 2- Astarion x F!Reader

Part 1 here

Hello lovelies! It's part two of the wedding fic I published some time back! I love these two and I'm excited to share the next steps on their journey.

Reader and Astarion have a conversation the morning after their wedding that lays bare some secrets of the past.

The unexpected scent of bacon wakes you, and you roll over to sit up. You cringe, feeling a bit of soreness, well everywhere, but especially between your legs from the activities between you and your new husband last night. 

Husband. That brings you back to bacon. Neither of you were all that competent in the kitchen, and you found your curiosity piqued. Your eyes spot a nightgown you'd left draped across a chair, as though you'd ever had any chance of wearing it last night. 

You're just slipping it over your head to go investigate when the bedroom door opens and your aforementioned husband enters, a tray of bacon, eggs, fruit, and warm tea in his hands, and warmth dancing in his crimson eyes.  

“So you can walk this morning,” he gives you a toothy grin, the tips of his fangs adorably peaking out from between his lips. 

“What a lewd way to greet your wife,” you feign irritation and settle back on the bed.

“My humblest apologies,” he delivers the tray to your waiting lap and makes himself comfortable at your side, “my love.”

“I suppose that's acceptable,” you turn and catch his lips in a quick kiss before setting your attention on the tray before you: perfectly crispy bacon, fried eggs with the yolk still slightly soft, buttered toast, your favorite red berries in a small bowl, and a warm mug of strong tea. It’s he perfect breakfast you'd order at any inn when the two of you traveled. “How did you manage all this?” You ask, bacon already halfway to your mouth. 

“What? Are my abilities in the kitchen in question?” He puffs and you stare him down, the playful rhythm you two know so well. “Fine. I have been listening when Gale goes on about cooking. And practicing when I get a chance here and there. The love of my life deserves the best.”

You take a sip of tea, the perfect amount of honey sweetens it. “I already have the best. I have you, Astarion. And I love you so very much.”

“I love you too, but do try not to make me cry again this morning, darling. I already did that enough in front of everyone last night.” 

Snuggled into your side, head resting on your shoulder, he doesn't make eating easy, but that hardly matters. Fingers idly trace your thighs, hip, and stomach, while you chat   about your wedding last night. You can tell there's a cloud hanging over you both now, though, and there are things that need to be brought out into the open. Finally, when you finish, you set the tray on the bedside table and let Astarion wrap himself around you, resting his head on your chest. “About what you were able to see last night,” no use delaying it. 

He makes a soft hum against your skin, a noise you know means he’s thinking about what exactly to say. Fingers stroke through his curls as you give him a moment, there’s no rush, Today is just for the two of you. “You know, Cazador used to pass us off as either servants or distant relatives, usually he’d wait a few years, then we would switch parts. It made it easy to spy on the other nobles. Of course, I usually got stuck playing servant as a punishment. He’d loan us out to other houses to assist with their large events. He sent me to spy on a girl, some noble's daughter, at her sister’s wedding. Lucky thing married the only cousin left of the Vanthampur’s. When the dear old Duke and her offspring met their end, she inherited everything, and her husband is more prisoner than spouse, they say.”

The night of your Samara’s wedding is burned into your mind, it was the night you first heard of your own nuptial fate, your sentence for the crime of being born into your family. You thought nearly every detail blazed with clarity, but the faces of the endless horde of temporary help elude you. A reply forms on your lips but Astarion continues on from where he lays, hand entwining with yours, lips idly brushing your neck. “She seemed ordinary, if a bit withdrawn. Pretty enough little thing, I might add.” 

That earns a weary laugh from you. “I didn’t expect to see her again, but I did, months later. The last party Cazador hosted before everything, she was there. By that time rumor had gone around that Cazador was going to take on some sort of consort as part of an alliance. I think Gortash’s rapid ascent was unsettling for some of the old families. The poor thing, she looked terrified, she knew something was wrong in that house. And…,” his voice breaks. Unconsciously, you pull him tighter, he’s not the only one reliving that night. 

Drowning in a dress of purple and black, you were hauled to Szarr manor on pain of death. Not that it mattered, nothing mattered with Ophelia gone. Your first love, the tiefling that tended the gardens of your home, the only place you were allowed to move around freely outside the house. She’d disappeared right after your sister’s wedding, your Mother’s work no doubt. At the time, you had no idea Cazador was a vampire, but the whole manor was full of an air of hungry malice, and fear sprouted in all the shadows. Even the servants had an unearthly quality to them. “...we laughed at her. Well, Petras, Violet, and I, the most. Because we knew what awaited her when she became the center of Cazador’s attention. And it would be a relief to have someone else around that he could torture. She was so scared, but we didn’t have any empathy left in us, so we mocked her future suffering. I’m so sorry, my love.” 

Since the first time he’d mentioned Cazador, you’d wanted to tell him, to empathize with him. But doing so would've broken your pact, taken away the shroud that hid you from your family. In your more introspective moments, you wondered if fate had somehow bound the two of you. You’d passed like ships in the night, you not even noticing him as a servant among the Szarr retinue, and reason would say you should have never met again. Yet he, of all the populace of Baldur’s Gate, was swept up by the Mindflayers, and lived to fall to that beach. You leave a comforting kiss on his forehead. “We left the past behind, remember, don’t worry yourself over it.” While it does sting to know there was a time he would’ve enjoyed your suffering, you know it will pass, inconsequential as the flower petals that used to litter the garden paths. 

Even if it wasn’t fate, your love had grown out of the most amazing circumstances and it had given you courage to keep traveling the new path you’d laid out for yourself, even when you’d nearly stumbled at the beginning. Astarion sits up and you find his eyes watery, but he cups your cheek and brushes a thumb over it tenderly. “If you say so. It’s not like anyone else was getting a better version of me at the time I suppose.” He studies you for a moment, thinking again, before speaking. “Can you tell me about yourself now? Is it safe?” 

Why Titania has granted you this reprieve, you’re not really sure, but you’re grateful that there’s no longer any forced secrets between you. “I believe so.” You try to gather your disparate thoughts, but a thousand little bits of darkness begin to tug at you, threatening to pull you down until ice water fills your lungs as you sink into a black ocean. “I…”

It’s not the pact that keeps you from talking, but years of entrenched dread. “You don’t have to, love, not if you’re not ready.” Astarion recognizes it too, hand now gently squeezing yours. 

Shaking your head, you dispel the ghosts of that dark house, your life is full of love and light now. “No, I want to try.” A thought strikes you, a fitting place to start. “Can I tell you about Ophelia? I-I loved her, and I haven’t been able to even say her name since.” 

Silence hangs between you and your breath is stilled, you hadn’t thought about how Astarion might feel, hearing about your first love. “I would be honored,” he presses his lips to yours. “And I can’t wait to learn everything else about my darling wife as well.” 

Tag List:

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[kingsandbastardz]

fic prompt: hair combing in the wedding chamber

01 li lianhua

the existence of a torture chamber beside the wedding bedroom and its contents shouldn’t be a surprise at this point. and yet… it’s the redundancy you find offensive. she has a multi-chamber dungeon. she has a water chamber in her own quarters. why must it extend here as well? you despise the sight of unmarked bottles sitting ominously on a small table beside a decorative chair. they’re placed in front of an x-shaped rack fitted with iron ankle and wrist cuffs. there are hooks freshly installed in the ceiling.

you hear rattling and di feisheng is beside you, his expression neither upset nor surprised. just blankly contemplative. he kicks lightly at a thick gauge iron chain on the floor comb in hand and his hair thrown over one shoulder. he looks around the room, eyes unfocused -- you’re not sure he’s actually seeing anything -- the snapping sounds as he rips the comb through a knot in his hair grates against your nerves.

you don’t want to be here anymore than you want him here – so you hold your hand out in front of his face and say, “give me that. i can’t stand watching you – do you want to go bald?”

it is a moment too long before he finally looks at you and the comb is deposited silently in your hand. you lead him to the table in the bedroom. on the way, you spot his hair ornament on a shelf and grab it.

at least while sitting, he’s tall enough that combing his hair is an intimacy that is easy on the arms. you’ve done this for a handful of others. your shiniang, your past lovers. your once-brother. now it is di feisheng’s still-damp hair you run your fingers and a comb through. silkier than zhan yunfei’s, more voluminous than qiao wanmian’s. its weight sits in your hand and tangles your fingers with the same tenacity of a spider’s web.

the knots cling, every bit as stubborn as their owner. was he born like this? or was this a learned trait? has he ever regretted a decision?

this man has followed you across the world – with or without his memories, every bit as dogged and loyal as fang duobing. ever single-minded in purpose. the affection he makes you feel has always been uncontrollable. you want to resent him as much as you feel fondness, but in the end, the fondness always wins out.

you tie his hair back and lock the familiar silver ornament in place, sliding the pin through the knot. (you bought this for him. with your own money, even, and not xiaobao’s.)

he twists around to look up at you – eyes open and clear in a way no one with his personal history should be able to. you’ve never once felt this unburdened. years ago, you and lao di were both in the middle of puberty, youths, barely old enough or tall enough to count as adults.  he looked up at you back then, in the same way, as you looked down from the trees. he never had to say or do anything to capture your attention. he just gazed straight into you, soft, open, and entirely receptive to anything you wanted to throw at him.

what else could you do?

you hit him with your very best.

xiaobao understands you like no one else. but this one – this one never cared about any of the things the world wanted from you. he didn’t see the future. he didn’t see potential. he didn’t see the power you wielded for the benefit of everyone. he saw only the you that stood in front of him. nothing more, nothing less.

and now? you know what he wants because you want it too. even now, there are moments you can hear the clang of sword, smell the burn of sparked sword oil, feel the heady rush of bloodlust. you crave the razor-sharp clarity that overtakes you as you take flight and know the man following you will be able to keep pace no matter where you go and what you do. you can let go. you don’t have to hold back anymore.

he sees you the way no one else does and you want him to see you that way again. you want to see him on the other side of your crossed blades and to find your steps again in the sky unburdened by lies or death. you want the life you could have had together.

there was a time, you could have dreamed of fighting together. eating together. watching as his hair turned white to match yours.

but you can’t. you only have memories left of that old you and the bitter flavor of passed time.

if only you had met again 10 years ago. or even 5 years ago, once your rage had burnt its way out of your heart and bones.

you can’t afford to want what di feisheng wants. (but you do. you want it. it burns worse than poison.)

tonight.

tonight, under the influence of good wine and the warmth of shared smiles, you will pretend you have the luxury of health and time.

tonight, you will pretend you are living the life you should have – a life free of shan gudao's shadow and without regrets.

--

02 di feisheng

you are tortured your whole life and for a moment, you actually die; but you are alive now and stronger than ever. you drink wine with a loved one and he smiles in shared understanding (finally, after all these years. you’ve waited for him.)

the suffering was worth it if that is what brings you both to this moment.

under the moon’s blessing, you smile back and for the first time in your life, you hope for the future.

[blackjackkent]

Broken Little Puppets

Pairing: Astarion & Karlach Characters: Astarion, Karlach Rating: Gen Content Tags: Dialogue-heavy, bonding, moving on, light angst Word Count: 1.8k Setting: Several days after Cazador boss fight, Lower City camp. Read on AO3 other bg3 one-shots | send me fic requests! Summary:  Karlach supports Astarion after a nightmare about Cazador’s ritual - and gets a little support herself in return.

“Hey. Psst. Astarion– hey, hey!”

Astarion hears Karlach’s voice as if at a great distance. He is at the bottom of a deep black pool of reverie, trapped, drowning while still breathing. The world is far away, and the memories infinitely close, crawling across his skin. 

Images flash through him with agonizing clarity. Some nights they are more indistinct, the accumulated recollections of years upon years of varying torments - but tonight it is almost as immediate as it was in life. The humming power holds him helpless on the edge of Cazador’s ritual circle, stripped of armor and weapons and friends and hope, feeling his master’s ascension starting to boil his blood with agonizing heat…

“No. No– please–” he whimpers, his head thrashing side to side. “Let me go–”

“Hey!”

The grip on his wrist enters the reverie and pulls. Another force trapping him, another surge of blazing heat. He jerks, lashes out blindly with his free hand, and his knuckles connect with a hard, solid jawline, sending a stab of pain through his wrist and up his arm.

“Ow! Fuck!” Karlach yelps. 

Her voice finally breaks through the reverie, shattering it apart around him. His eyes snap open and he finds himself half-sitting up in his bedroll, looking at Karlach crouched in the tent flap. She’s holding her cheek with one hand and looks distinctly startled. 

“What…?” Astarion mumbles, shaking his head to try and clear the lingering fog in his thoughts. “What happened?”

“Well, you punched me, for one thing,” Karlach says. Her usual grin, never far away, is already sliding back onto her face now that she sees him awake. “Didn’t know you had that kind of right hook, Fangs.”

“You never asked,” Astarion says, with a painfully transparent attempt at his usual cocky disdain. He sits up fully, rubbing absently at his stinging wrist. “What’s the idea, grabbing me like that?”

She shrugs, letting her hand fall. There’s a visible bruise already darkening along her jaw; he really did catch her perfectly square-on. “You were, uh, having a nightmare, I think,” she says cautiously. “Or whatever you call it when you’re an elf, doing your elf thing.”

“Elves don’t have nightmares,” he says curtly. It’s not entirely a lie - reverie is not sleep. It serves the same function, at least theoretically, but an elf in reverie is not unconscious and does not dream. He remembers, locked in meditative trance, everything that has ever happened to him, often in brilliant, visceral clarity. If only that truly meant there were no nightmares…

She shakes her head. “Well, whatever it was, you were - I dunno. You were… sort of whimpering, crying out. Sure didn’t seem like you were enjoying it.”

No. No, he most certainly wasn’t. It’s only been a few days since Cazador’s blood splattered over his knife and his hands and his face; those memories are still crisp and fresh, not yet melded in with the rest. “I’m fine.” He smiles thinly. “But thanks ever so much for your concern.”

“Uh huh.” She hunches forward, crouched on the balls of her feet, and rests her elbows across her knees. “You know that’s not at all convincing, right?”

He clicks his tongue and makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Oh, all right, fine, you’ve dragged it out of me,” he says. “It was a sex dream. Very intense, lots of… you know. Positions. Orgiastic debauchery. People hanging naked upside down from chandeliers. Good cause for whimpering, is what I’m trying to say. So unless you’d like to hear all the nasty details, maybe you could just see yourself out of–”

“Astarion.” She’s still smiling, but there’s no humor in it suddenly, just a sort of rueful sadness. “I’m pretty dumb sometimes, but I’m not stupid.”

His shoulders slump and he looks away from her, rubbing the heels of his hands to his temples. “Right. Of course.”

She settles forward into a more comfortable kneeling position. She’s so tall that her head still brushes the ceiling of the tent, her intact horn giving a gentle clink against the upper pole. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t make any move to leave the tent, and he doesn’t make any move to force her. They both just sit there, listening to the muted bustle of the city outside their alleyway camp.

After a while he speaks, low, almost inaudible. “I couldn’t possibly explain it,” he says, “in a way that would make you understand.”

“Try me.” She rolls her head to one side, then the other, stretching out the muscles in her neck. “Maybe I’d surprise you.”

“You’re young,” he says bitterly. “How could you possibly comprehend torments that operated on a scale of decades?”

She juts out her jaw thoughtfully. “I had one decade in the Hells. Feels like maybe that counts for something.” When he doesn’t respond, she goes on quietly, “I get nightmares too, y’know. Ten years in the Hells is no two hundred years in Caza-fuck’s dirty basement, but you still rack up a lot of bad memories. And Zariel was just as much of a cruel fucking prick…”

It’s pathetically obvious what she’s doing, of course. Talking first to get him to talk after. He’s not fooled. Sort of endearing, though, he supposes; how many people would actually bother to try?

“Woke up just last night absolutely convinced I was beating the shit out of a hezrou,” she goes on. “You ever see one of them? Nasty little brutes. Only I kept killing it and it kept coming back, and coming back, and coming back…” She stops abruptly, pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them. “Fucked up my pillow something good.”

He grunts noncommittally. Another long silence stretches between them. 

“How’d it feel, killing him?” she asks abruptly. And this time her voice is quieter; it’s lost some of the note of friendly assurance. 

He stiffens. “Surely you don’t need me to tell you what it’s like to kill someone,” he says sardonically. “I think we could both give a lecture on the subject that would put Gale to shame.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She frowns. “How’d it feel killing him?” The emphasis is clearer this time.

“Mm.” He gives her a keen look sidelong. “Rather the way it felt for you to kill Gortash, I imagine,” he says. “Though I think I managed it with more artistic flair. Really spattered the canvas, if you will.”

“Yeah.” She huffs out a breath, rattling her lips dramatically. “Watching you tear him up - it felt good. Wish I’d gone all-out like that, with Gortash. All I did was sink one good one right in his chest, but you left Cazzy just a piece of fucking meat. Shredded him. That’s the way it should be - for him, for Gortash, for Zariel, for all the fuckers who use people like that. Just a piece of fucking meat for some dog to chew on.” 

Her voice has dropped lower, and he can feel the way the temperature in the tent has ticked up a notch or two as her engine starts to rev with agitation. “And even so…” she mutters sourly, “it still doesn’t fucking fix anything, in the end. Their final little laugh at our expense.”

He wants to object, to snarl out, like the wounded animal that he is, that of course it fixed things. He won. He’s alive (in a manner of speaking) and Cazador’s gone. He will never have to follow that bastard’s direction ever again, never again let his body be used, or be compelled to press a hot poker into his own flesh, or sit in solitary confinement while hunger gnaws in his belly like a furious beast. That is all over now, it’s done. It’s gone.

Except it isn’t, not really. 

He is still a vampire. He will still never see his own face in a mirror again, or taste food as anything more than ash on his tongue. The scars on his back are still deep and harsh, spelling out an infernal message of ascension that has lost its only purpose. All the memories of two hundred years of abuse still linger in his mind, ready to be recalled in such clarity as if they happened yesterday.

And the hunger will never, ever, ever stop.

Nothing he did to Cazador changed that in the slightest, just the way nothing Karlach did to Gortash changed the inferno burning in her chest.

He shudders, his shoulders hunching up involuntarily as if recoiling from a blow. “No,” he mutters. “It doesn’t fix a damned thing.”

“Yeah.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “Shoulda seen the way I screamed in Hector’s face when I figured that one out. Still, at least they’re dead. And we’re free.”

“Free. Yes.” He laughs sharply. “Two broken little puppets with their strings cut.”

She grins - with no humor but with a sort of savage intensity. “And still managing to put on a pretty good show.”

“Are we?” For a moment the sardonic mask slips and he lifts his head to look at her. “I’m not putting on a good show - I'm lost. All of Cazador’s power was at my fingertips, and instead I’m sitting in a dirty alleyway listening to Minsc snoring from the other end of the camp. This is no good show. It’s a farce.”

She says nothing, just waits, and eventually he adds grudgingly, “But it's my farce.”

“Damn right it is.” Humor flashes back into Karlach’s face suddenly. “Besides, who doesn’t love a good farce? Mistaken identities, slapstick, dick jokes… the height of entertainment, if you ask me.”

Astarion can’t help a slight, crooked grin in return. Karlach’s indomitable energy is always infectious, even in the deepest depths of his brooding. “Darling, let me be the first to condemn you as incurably lowbrow,” he says airily, giving a dismissive wave with one hand.

“Listen, vampy, I don’t have the kind of time you do to worry about appearances.” She uncurls her legs slowly from her chest to a cross-legged position instead. “Funny thing, y'know. You’re gonna go on and on forever, and I’ve got a year left in me, tops. But we’re both fighting the same fight when it comes down to it. Staring down all that freedom, trying to force it into a shape that makes sense. Make something worthwhile out of it before it’s too late.”

Astarion draws his head back and looks at her suddenly as if seeing her clearly for the first time. His fingers fidget absently with the edge of his bedroll. “Well,” he finally says quietly, “I won’t give up the fight if you don’t, hm?”

Her eyes brighten and she laughs. “Got yourself a deal, Fangs.”

[bestworstcase]

I urgh, made a reblog earlier on your post about The Shallow Sea, asked a question there which you might have seen and then accidentally deleted it (oops!)

Anyway I wanted to ask do you think the fanus’s struggle for equality will be involved somehow in salem’s villian-to-hero arc? Because fanus and salem (and grimm) are just so heavily connected. She actually had a very great chance with sienna but unfortunately adam killed her.

And also if you could elaborate this salem being the god of animals thing, did she actually created fanus or it’s more about symbolic connection?

An additional note which’s just something I found very interesting. In the opening of v6, adam appears as the leader of white fang while the song goes ‘the river knows to reach the sea’. Besides the chronological order goes cinder-adam-the rest of salem’s force. (Added that rising is a salem song)

oh i. i think about salem and the faunus and grimm only a normal amount. there's more that i've written on the topic than that (among others, i have a relevant post about tyrian and his worship of salem somewhere but i cannot for the life of me find it) but tumblr, u know. 

not directly faunus related but the god of choice post is salient because rwby handles divinity in a very polytheist way, and while the recent alchemy post was just for fun it does also lay out the thematically essential death/resurrection element of salem's immortality with more clarity. 

(my other mythology tin hat is that salem was the original inspiration for 'the warrior in the woods') (<- tangent). 

TL;DR: i think she is the literal, though possibly indirect, creator of the faunus (through her combination of human + grimm into own being; the faunus descend from this harmony of opposites in some way) and that at some point in history, she belonged to faunus civilization and the mythical figure of the 'god of animals' arose through a combination of worship of salem herself + stories she told about the brothers in relation to her transformations.

(notice that the god of animals in 'the shallow sea' resembles darkness in character, and the one in 'the judgment of faunus' resembles light, but both versions are also unrecognizable as the brothers because they interact with their chosen people in a reciprocal manner—faunus choose to be changed in both stories. where ozma uses myth to guide humans toward what his god wants them to be, salem used myth to uphold her idea of what the brothers should have been and what kind of gods deserve reverence.)

the narrative has not ever been shy about making symbolic connections between the faunus and the grimm—like, blake reveals her ears for the first time whilst gazing at and identifying herself with the beowolf trampled underfoot by human huntsmen in beacon's statue. the white fang wear grimm masks because "humans wanted to make monsters of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters." qrow in the faunus WOR episode more or less explicitly describes faunus as in-between humans and grimm.  

(<- which is not necessarily accurate because qrow's narration is chock full of obvious subconscious bias—to the point of straight up saying "honestly, it's not too hard to sympathize" with the perspectives of humans who hunted down the faunus like animals because "seeing something that looks like you and acts like you walk out of a forest and reveal a pair of fangs can be… upsetting" and in no way are we meant to take that as an objective statement; in V1 weiss is unambiguously portrayed as the one in the wrong for hating faunus on the grounds that the white fang is at war with her family's company, a reason that is a lot less shaky than "fangs are upsetting" and yet is (properly) framed as irrational and bigoted.

but qrow's perspective is meant to reveal cultural attitudes, not objective facts, and his overt placement of faunus between humans and grimm is interesting in the context of everything else the narrative does to draw a connection between faunus and grimm)

salem is "your grace" to her followers and ghira is "your grace" as the chieftain of kuo kuana, implying that salem might outright self-identify as a faunus. she wants to secure  sienna khan's alliance (<- a genuine activist) and drops adam (<- a terrorist) like a hot potato after he murders her, she explicitly has no plans to attack menagerie, and menagerie doesn't… seem to have a grimm problem… like at all. zero grimm attacks in kuo kuana across two volumes there and not a single character in menagerie mentions them as a problem.

so rwby is not exactly being subtle. 

generally, i do not think the heavy emphasis put on the white fang arc was solely being overambitious about doing a Racism Subplot; i don't think it's coincidental that the narrative completed the white fang arc and then immediately launched the "salem backstory" arc with the lost fable. the white fang arc sets up for the lost fable and salem's arc is inextricable from the faunus-persecution narrative because she, in every way that matters, IS a faunus herself.

and i think that is very much going to eventuate in V10+ yeah. it's already beginning to—the affirmation of jabber's personhood and overt sympathy afforded to neo and the cat, in tandem with blake's arc in V9 being toward vocally embracing and taking pride in being a faunus as the culmination of her journey out of shame in V1-6 and quiet figuring-herself-out in V7-8, points strongly in that direction. 

[breathlessheartbeat]

Succubus pt. 2

The aforepromised more resus-focused part 2 of the story inspired by @deliciousbeats89 | You can read part 1 HERE

TW: blood, dark cardiophilia

Alright, let’s review: I was dead. 

I was killed by the prettiest woman I have ever seen in my life. The only reason I was able to even know that was the case, was because she consumed my soul, but not all the way. And now she was standing over my dead body, trying to bring me back. 

Not that it looked much like that. 

It was clear she was too strong for my feeble human body. When her voluptuous arms pushed down on my chest, they crushed it all the way. My belly violently bulged, my head tilted back, my feet moving side to side. The little air trapped inside my lungs came out in forceful huffs and barely had any time to replenish before it was squeezed out again by a strong compression. 

She leaned down, closed my nose, and blew air into my throat. Somehow, I felt it burn, hot as sulfur. Even so, my chest rose and fell. Once, two times, three. A wave of clarity hit me, but I was still floating above myself, too far from life. 

The succubus went back to my chest, compressing it again and again and again. The bed shook under her, the beams pushed to their limit, about to break. She didn’t look fazed in the least that a large bruise was starting to form under her hands, just between my jiggling breasts. It was not the first one she had given me, it will not be the last. 

She gave me breath, tilting my head back, holding both sides of my face. I didn’t know if that was the proper way to do it, but damn it looked hot to see her fight for my life. She was clearly not made for comfort, for curing and yet, she tried. 

Her hands assaulted my chest again. She growled low in her throat and showed her fangs. 

“Hurry up and breathe already!” She commanded. I wanted to. I would do whatever she asked me, but I had no choice on the matter. My lungs were as still as they were before. My heart was pounding, but just as long as she was pressing on it, again and again and again. 

Her next breath was more aggressive. She took me into her arms, held my limp head as if she wanted to make me look at her. My bluish lips were agape, my eyes tearful and leaking, staring at nothing. Pupils dilated in the dark of the room. She forced warm air into me, stronger and for longer. The air rushed back out to meet her as she pushed my bulged abdomen down. She didn’t look happy. 

The succubus threw my body back down on the floor. I fell like a rag doll. My legs to one side, my arms to the other, my neck in a weird angle. 

She fell on me again. Her hands joined on my chest. I counted to pass the time, one, two, three… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Breathe. Still, it felt like I was dissolving. My vision started to get foggy, as if I was being pulled away. That was it then. She had fed, I was gone. Digested. Whatever was left wasn’t enough. 

“AAAARGH!” She yelled, putting her hands to fists and pounding both on my chest. I jumped on the floor, the sound of cracking evident even for my crumbling spirit. She grabbed my shoulders, rose me off the floor and bit me out of frustration: my neck, my chest, my left breast all leaving red, bloody bite marks… then she sniffed. Her eyes glowed in the dark, watching. A bit of bone was poking out of my chest. A rib bone. 

She pulled on it, lightly. The little whole it had made went a little wider. She smiled, poking one of her talons into it, carving it a little bigger. Even from afar I could feel it and I was at least glad to be dissolving. It would have hurt like a motherfucker. Her talons grew like snakes, like her tongue had as it came inside of me. They grew inside of me, going around my ribs, cutting through my muscles, going around my failing organs. 

Finally, they found my still heart. And grabbed. 

“Live, human.” She ordered and squeezed. 

And squeezed and squeezed. She kissed my barely open chest, all the way back to my lips and breathed for me. She was squeezing and breathing, squeezing and breathing, a dance my body used to know how to do on its own until she showed up. She kept it up, I don’t know for how long. I thought she would be able to do it, my consciousness was almost gone… 

And then, I was pulled back. Sucked inside myself. All I could hear was my heart, pounding on my ears. Then, I felt the pain. It was the worst thing I had ever felt. I felt like I was turned inside out. I wanted to puke, I wanted to die. 

Her hand was still around my heart. I could feel her talons almost puncturing it when she squeezed it and let it go, 100 times a minute. Each beat was another unbearable wave of pain. Her warm breaths that kept being pushed down to my lungs were no relief. But at some point, I heard myself gag and gasp. I heaved the most unhealthy breath I had ever breathed and immediately choked with the pain. She gave me more air and I tried to fight it, but she squeezed my heart harder until I yielded. This happened a couple more times. 

Finally, she must have been satisfied because she slipped her fingers out of me, leaving only the pain of her presence and a hole in my chest. 

I could feel her around me. She kissed my neck where my artery was, sucking on it until I whimpered in pain. She giggled, kissing my face, my closed eyes. She licked my tears right out of my face. 

“I’ll bring you home, with me.” She murmured and, even as broken and battered as I was, the prospect made my heart race. She was keeping me with her? 

Her strong arms lifted my suffering body off of the floor. My limp head fell back, but she carefully nestled it on her shoulder and kissed my forehead. She climbed on the bed, then the window, then we were gone, I’m not sure where. 

And it didn’t even matter anyway. 

[mekanikaltrifle]

hi! (monster) and (wound) for juniper and/or dani?

Oh these are good choices and you're so right. Lemme just get my tunes on for these two powerful women (of varying friendliness quotients). Of course, when given two OCs I am gonna write for two OCs so watch out for a big ol' long post below lads :D

monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

Dani doesn't want to accept it. Objectively, she is monstrous; vampires are rarely considered human, after all, and she's already done horrific things even before she cut her fangs. Tearing a living, screaming human being into bloody viscera in a frenzy was something she wishes she could forget-- and she often lies and says she doesn't remember her 'first' frenzy at all let alone with enough clarity to recall butchering that man, but it's just that. A lie.

Dr Reyes doesn't kill people. The monster does. Dr Reyes is a good person. The monster isn't. But both are her. She's under no illusions that the thing riding her body when she's angry is her, part of her, and irredeemably so. She just wishes she could be dumb enough to play pretend like so many of the fucking Sabbat, acting like freedom will cure them of their guilt.

No Path will cure this, and no Road means anything. Freedom isn't throwing yourself away to play at being a monster just because it makes you nto want to tear your own fangs out of your head and run into a sunrise.

So, she works. She hasn't told her family what's happened yet and probably never will. They'll see her one last time and then she's keeping her distance forever. Her mortal friends died for some stupid Sabbat war, and she cured the vampires' plague when she could have just let them all die. But it'd have killed humanity too. She's going to work for however long she's got now to find the root of how vampires work, where their curses come from... and then she's going to try to alleviate the monster, one step at a time. Dani's going to kill this Beast with kindness, because it's hard, and it's the only way for her.

--

Juniper isn't a monster, as far as she knows. She thought she was for a while, lied to and misled by the Catholicism still in her head as a child during her very early days as a hunter. The Society of Leopold, and its Inquisitors, weren't sure what she was either.

Mortal, sure, with a heartbeat and breath and all the mortal concerns like needing to eat and sleep and other animal needs.

But mortals can't usually See, not with a burlap sack over their head and struggling to breathe properly through the layers of tape-- and yet, she can. She can see anywhere, in clear crystal clarity and she's sure as hell she's not one of those 'witches' the Inquisitors kept trying hunt. Monsters freeze in her gaze, and voices from beyond tell her what to do, and she's sure she's not a monster at all. She can speak a curse and deprive them of power, and stay awake for days on end, pushing the bounds of 'mortal' needs so clearly...

But how's a body supposed to reconcile with the fact that she's been through things that should kill a soul and come back swinging. Lived this long without stopping? Fought this hard, even when the world that was supposed to end didn't and there's still things out there killing people every night?

But there's no monsters out there, she thinks. Only people.

--

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?

Dr Reyes, up until her Embrace, had not suffered huge injuries. Working on a digsite is often dangerous, even with all the best practice and safety procedures. She could lose track recounting all the times she'd hit a limb off rocks or slipped in mud and sand, caught her fingers on pieces of metal or tools she was using, and on one memorable occasion her best friend rolled over her foot with a pickup truck back home in Guadalajara when she was visiting her parents. And she's in good spirits about it all, telling you the story with her still-sunwarmed cheeks creased in laughter and her calloused hands gesturing all over the shop.

Since her Embrace though? She can count two worst ones so far, one physical and one mental.

The first, the physical, came during the scramble to end the blood plague. She and the other two were fighting vampires-- really strange, augmented vampires-- and one of them had arms that looked like scorpion-tails. Being unprepared to face something like this as a literal day-old fledgling Tremere, she fumbled the shot with her shotgun (something she's no good at using; she's not a firearms person), and subsequently took a blow full force to the centre of her chest.

This being a sharp barb propelled by inhuman strength, the whole thing went clean through her ribcage, and then pulled back out the way it came. Now, Dani is a survivor despite it all. But that was... startling, because if it had happened a mere two days before, she'd have died outright. It's have hurt, but she'd have simply died. But as a vampire she had to endure it, and not being able to speak let alone draw breath to cope with the pain of having a lung almost cleaved in two was not okay. She's grateful that the thing didn't pierce her heart, because that probably would have killed her, but she was not in the best fucking mood that day.

The mental? Now, that's a story.

Her Embrace was a brutal thing, a voyeuristic Tremere lab setup in which her friends couldn't do anything to help her other than watch through layers of sterile glass as her domitor-turned-sire drained her on order of their boss.

But right before it, the thing that brought her down, was a simple magical circle. Later she'd look it up in Tremere magical tomes and find it was a variant of the 'Ward Against Ghouls' sigil, built around her as she stood talking to her then-domitor Atlas. As Atlas struggled to tell her what they were about to do to her, she backed up, begging them not to. To reconsider. And then, she broke the outer line of the sigil on the floor and agony shot through her, strong enough that she can't even describe it.

In mechanical terms the sigil shattered through four of her seven health points in one second, dealing lethal damage, and if she'd not fallen to her knees in front of Atlas, it probably would have killed her from pain alone.

She still struggles to even comprehend what it was that happened. She's looked up the rituals and whatever else she can find, and now being part of the Tremere but not part of the Pyramid, it's not easy. But she just can't touch the memory of that second of agony without feeling like she's going to pass out.

--

Wounds are part and parcel of the job. Juniper takes them in stride as best she can, unless they damage her legs and then she does what she can sitting down.

She's been put to death's door a few times. Took minor scrapes. Come out of fights better or worse, sometimes with more her own blood than someone else's on her and vice versa. Usually they don't bother her more than the time it takes to patch the thing up and recover just long enough to get moving again. Does this mean she's scarred? Oh very much so.

The worst one, however? June has been through enough wounds by this point-- 17 years at the hunt and counting (as of roughly 2020-ish)-- that it'd be hard to truly quantify.

That said, the one wound she truly believes was going to kill her and still gives her pause to this day came during a team hunt back in 2007. She was called Junie then, or sometimes Bluebird, because she had all the grace and air of a newly fledged chick and bright blue dyed hair. A crew picked her up out of a truckstop in the middle of nowhere and she was grateful for the company. Ten-strong hunter squad, and confident for what they had going on. With nothing else to do, she offered to help and given most of them were Imbued like her, it was nice to be in likeminded company for a change.

What should have been a normal patrol became a bloodbath, one regular night. She's still not sure what happened, but the thing this crew were tracking wasn't a vampire, or a ghost or anything she was used to. It was... nastier. It could take minds and jump bodies and it managed to kill five hunters in two and a half minutes. The chaos had its benefits though; where the hunter next to her had her skull blown open at the eye socket, spraying everything with all that suddenly-wasted promise, Junie simply took a crossbow bolt to the ribs and collapsed.

The remainder of the crew, now only three people, came to the scene too late to save anyone but her, and she was not in good health. Junie of the time was not a huge bulk of a butch-- she was skinny, and still recovering from a bout of severe undernutriton during a stint homeless in Los Angeles. Put simply, her health was already poor. When the crew realised that the crossbow the monster had used was one of theirs, and therefore poisoned, they knew this was not a matter of 'if' it killed her, but 'when'.

She doesn't recall any of this point in her life with any clarity whatsoever, but knows she was deeply afraid, and very sure this was it. A pathetic death from being caught unprepared, for a young failure of a hunter. She wasn't ready for it. Something about the fear, which stuck even after they'd got a Redeemer with healing abilities to put enough life back into her she survived the worst... well, she suddenly had a very powerful motivator to get so big and untouchable that nothing would make her that afraid again.

So Juniper coped with it the only way she knew how: by getting meaner.

[fairytale-poll]

STATS FOR ROUND 1

Since both Round 1A and 1B are completed, I thought it would be fun to write up a list of statistics and facts about the results! Will be linking the match-ups as I mention them.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I am bad at math and bad with numbers, so if decide to check my math and realize I've mad an error, feel free to correct me.

For clarity: my method for making averages and medians was just to do it by hand on a piece of paper. For the more specific statistics later on in the post, I calculated how many votes each person got by 1) picking one person in a match-up 2) multiplying their percentage by the total amount of votes + rounding that to the nearest whole number 3) subtracting that amount of votes from the total amount of votes to see how much the other person in the match-up got. I then listed out how much every person in each match-up got and compared them.

With that out of the way:

The average amount of votes for Round 1A was 238, with the median being 239. The average amount of votes for Round 1B was 244.75, with the median being 162.5. The average for Round 1 overall (combining both 1A and 1B) is 241.375, with the median being 196.

The most popular poll with the most votes in Round 1A was Match 7: Cerise Hood (Ever After High) vs. Little Dead Riding Hood (Clawdeen Wolf) (Monster High), with a total of 409 votes. The most popular in Round 1B was Match 3: Ylfa Snorgelsson (Dimension 20: Neverafter) vs. Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary (Lobotomy Corporation), with a total of 685 votes. The most popular overall was the aforementioned Ylfa Snorgelsson vs. Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary.

The least popular poll with the least votes in Round 1A was Match 5: Akazukin (TAISHO x Alice) vs. Red Riding Hood (SINoALICE) with a total of 87 votes. The least popular in Round 1B was Match 8: Lisette (Ludwig Revolution) vs. Scarlet (The Red Hood), with a total of 99 votes. The least popular overall was the aforementioned Akazukin vs. Red Riding Hood.

The closest match-up in Round 1A was Match 6: Queen Red Riding Hood (The Land of Stories) vs. Red Riding Hood (The Sisters Grimm), with Queen Red Riding Hood winning with 50.5% of the vote. This roughly means that she won by 3 votes, with her having 140 votes vs. Red Riding Hood having 137. The closest match-up in Round 1B was Match 6: Akazukin (Otogi-Jushi Akazukin) vs. Elvira & Arabella (Guardian Tales), with Akazukin winning with 54.5% of the vote. This roughly means that she won by 14 votes, with her having 84 votes vs. Elvira & Arabella having 70 . The Round 1A one closer than the Round 1B one, meaning it is the closest in the entirety of Round 1!

Now, for my favorite part...

The winner who had the most amount of votes (i.e., the biggest winner) in Round 1A was Scarlet Benoit (The Lunar Chronicles), who had 280 votes. The loser who had the least amount of votes (i.e., the biggest loser; no hate) in Round 1A was from the same match: Valerie (Red Riding Hood) only had 35 votes. The winner who had the least amount of votes (i.e., the least popular winner; no hate) in Round 1A was Red Riding Hood (SINoALICE) who won with only 51 votes. The loser who had the most amount of votes (i.e., the most popular loser) in Round 1A was Red Riding Hood (The Sisters Grimm) who had a total of 137 votes. (This is unsurprising if you consider she was also in the closest matchup.)

The winner who had the most amount of votes (i.e., the biggest winner) in Round 1B was Ylfa Snorgelsson (Dimension 20: Neverafter), who had 374 votes. The loser who had the least amount of votes (i.e., the biggest loser; no hate) in Round 1B was Jenny (In the Forest, She Grew Fangs), who only received 34 votes. The winner who had the least amount of votes (i.e., the least popular winner; no hate) in Round 1B was Scarlet (The Red Hood) who only received 62 votes. The loser who had the most amount of votes (i.e., the most popular loser) was Red Riding Hooded Mercenary (Lobotomy Corporation), which I think is pretty cool because this was the same match-up that had the 1B's biggest winner, but it also makes sense when you remember that this match-up had the most amount of votes.

The overall biggest winner in all of Round 1 was Ylfa Snorgelsson. The overall biggest loser in all of Round 1 was Jenny. The overall least popular winner in all of Round 1 was SINoALICE's Red Riding Hood. The overall most popular loser was Red Riding Hooded Mercenary.

Okay, now onto something easier (i.e., I didn't have to do any math myself.)

The match-up in Round 1A with the most amount of notes was Match 6: Queen Red Riding Hood (The Land of Stories) vs. Red Riding Hood (The Sisters Grimm) with 71 notes. It also was the match-up with the most amount of likes (36) and reblogs (34) in 1A as well; though for likes it is actually tied with Match 4: Amy Lee (Evanescence MV for "Call Me When You're Sober") vs. Red Hood (Once Upon a Time in Space).

The match-up in Round 1B with the most amount of notes was (to no one's surprise) Match 3: Ylfa Snorgelsson (Dimension 20: Neverafter) vs. Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary (Lobotomy Corporation), with it also having the most likes (55) and reblogs (50) as well. Again, to no one's surprise. This also means it had the most notes, likes, and reblogs in Round 1 overall!

[mamamittens]

As a distraction to Sad Thoughts™, yesterday I drew a concept design for Little Helper.

For context it's a shiny Chandelure for a pokemon story I'm crafting as a pick me up. Just scroll on if you aren't interested in me rambling about that and world building lol

Light and dark background for clarity. They're supposed to look like they have little fangs both above and below the lip... Thingy, but it didn't translate well in the end I suppose.

I like the overall design even though I'm not the biggest fan of shiny chandlure's color scheme. Went for 'expensive chandelier your grandmother paid a professional to clean instead of getting a Swiffer'. Don't get me wrong, I see what they were going for, but I think it could have been a bit more interesting. Like silver metal as well as the flame and body color? Idk, it IS better than Lucario's shiny though.

Why the hell they chose yellow I'll never understand. I'll die a hater for that one.

Anyway! I figured it would make sense that a professional breeder, breeding their own pokemon to assist in their business, would go out of their way to 'create' a stunning specimen. A sort of flex. And I liked the idea of stained glass. Might redraw this to lean more into that and maybe play with the colors more. But I wanted a basic design first, which I did! Hopefully it's cohesive before I start playing with the colors lol

Since I don't have such plebian concerns like budget or complicated pixel designs to translate into workable 3D art or whatever, I can just... Make it a Thing™ that Pokemon actually have some damn variety. I mean, we get that every so often in the anime, but it's a notable exception to the norm. And I get why, don't come at me, I promise I'm not bullying the 90s anime for not handcrafting hundreds of subtly unique designs for every instance of a species we ever see.

The point is that I don't have that problem. So if I want minccino to have different fur colors aside from Normal and Shiny, I can do that. Easily. Same with everything else. I doubt I'll go so deep into the weeds it's stuff like, this is a mixed breed Squirtle with lovedisc or magikarp in there. They'll generally still follow Pokemon logic of favoring a specific parent with maybe moves or abilities passed down if they're different species. Common, out in the wild Pokemon will look pretty typical usually. But once you get into domesticated Pokemon, they tend to look notably different. You can always tell if a pokemon was wild caught instead of carefully bred.

Just different color or fur/scale/claw shape. Minor adjustments depending on how bred they are for traits. IV bred pokemon will likely have unique traits that make it easy to spot deliberate breeding. Even if it's not that big of a difference. Like Sneasel having tufted ear... Feather things instead of a smooth leaf shape. Or spots in their fur. Stuff like that.

It seems like a fun detail.

Also decided where Edna, the main OC is from as well as some little details like being really used to having Pokemon groom her from a young age. Her parents have minccinos that are pair bonded and groomed her every morning. So Yolky, and eventually the rest of her team, tend to play with her hair.

Gets a little dangerous with Toxitricity, Danny (short for Cadenza), cause he puts down poison in her hair but she gets a bit immune after a while as well as the rest of the team lol. It was either poison braids or static frizz everywhere. Gotta compromise somehow!

It'll be fun to play around with established designs for a more unique look!

[zorkaya-moved]

❛  you didn't hear a word of what i just said, did you?  ❜ from kaveh !

@avaere

"An incorrect assessment. I heard your words loud and clear, Kaveh. I always do," she answers right away, words spoken with clarity and volume high enough to prove she was paying attention. "I understand your frustration with my silence, but give me a moment. I'm thinking."

Did she hear him? Of course, she did, but it doesn't erase her genuine confusion over his words. Did she hear him? Yes. Did she listen to him? She is trying. The difference between hearing and listening is too vast when the past puts walls between worldviews.

Kaveh is someone - from her point of view - too good for this world. It's not a joke or belittling of the architect, but a simple factual deduction based on the company she kept behind the curtains. There isn't anyone who shines as brightly as him, but there is also no one more human than he is. At the very least, in her biased gaze of ichor as she studies him without wishing to interrupt his words.

If she is a fool when it comes to his worldview, she is welcoming this dichotomy with open arms solely because it is him. Once again, biased views come into the prospect as she wouldn't have given anyone else the time of the day to try and change her approach to certain situations.

The issue is... she may hear him, but does she listen to him?

There are still stubborn notes in her mind, thorns laced with poison that dig too deeply into her flesh. A reminder that this world is not kind. Just because Kaveh is doesn't mean that everyone outside would be as well. Her cynicism is a cruel sharp sword that cuts deeper than anything else, not allowing the brightness of colors to seep into her being. The architect may call her out on that far more often than others do, seeing behind the curtain calls and actions by now. The deductions, the calculations, the way she sits on the windowsill with a smoke pipe and a stack of documents to read as one leg hangs down. Kaveh knows the cold and sharp looks she can give behind the scenes, judgement obvious to him as the light of the Sun shines upon the beast's nature, exposing its fangs under radiant golden light.

"I hear you, Kaveh," she says again, sighing softly. She does, she really does, but she cannot understand. It's a road to learning, a journey to understand him and his words, feelings, and reasons. She doesn't understand this selfless kindness nor does she understand more of his being, but that begets the wish to learn. But the study of Kaveh is a far more tumultuous study that she'd ever wishes to dive into. Not unwanted, oh no, most wanted but still thorny in its newfound confusion. "I hear you but I don't understand. It's easier to pretend that I do, but I don't want to lie to you."

How can one know warmth of someone outside her family when the world had never been kind? How can one believe in kindness when it was always used as a weakness within the dense forests of snowy Snezhnaya? How can she not doubt everyone but Kaveh in their approaches? She chose him, she will always choose him, but it means she won't truly believe anyone else outside of the chosen ones. Perhaps, this is why she isn't truly willing to bend the knee to trust other people and listen to Kaveh's words. It's all about business when it's not touching him, her family, and her small circle of friends.

I hear you, but is it truly enough?

[reginarubie]

Wolf, kiss

For the prompt Wolf, and since I was there why not for the prompt Kiss? by @jonsaprompts, a bit late but better late than ever!

Also, perhaps a bit longer than it should be, but what can I say...I was inspired. And it is a bit dark and healing all together Jonsa, so be advised, if that is not what you were searching for. It's post s8.

Wolf kiss, You cried wolf and I came running. Am I the wolf or the savior?

[QUESTION: Is she the wolf? Is her smile hiding fangs? Is her song an howl?

ANSWER: Come closer, if you dare. Hunter, or prey or wolf, whatever you are, wouldn't you want to find out?]

Jon observes her. The Queen in the North. Sansa Stark. Ned Stark's daughter. Catelyn Stark's daughter.

He had promised himself, never again.

When they had said farewell he had promised himself. Never again. And he had known it had been a lie.

He had known all along. From the moment Sansa had rode through the gates of Castle Black, shivering and trembling from the cold, but giving all of her warmth. His soft, elegant, sensible, soft-spoken sister.

It had taken less than a day for Jon to understand that her smile hid sharp teeth and her clear tongue wielded even sharper words. Words pretty enough, powerful enough to make his will crumble to dust.

And her tears...Gods, Jon would've let the entire world freeze, burn or crumble to dust, just to never see her tears again.

Her softness if rightly wielded, and Jon does not believe there is one thing of herself that Sansa doesn't wield right, doesn't carry right, can be as lethal as any blade; he has found.

And that day, on the docks in Kings Landing, Jon had known with stark clarity. Sansa was an enemy better not be trifled with. Jon had deluded himself that his sister had remained the same, perhaps hardened by what had happened to her, but that had not irrevocably changed her nature.

She's not the same girl you grew up with, words spoken what felt like an age ago, bittersweet and acrid, putrid even, not after what she's seen, not after what they've done to her.

And yet, Sansa shines. It hurts. It hurts so much because the price for her to shine was his honor. No, he thinks darkly. It was his soul. He had no honor, or the stirring he felt deep in his insides and lower still would not be caused by her.

Still. He watches her, unable to look away. Every man, a few women too, they are all completely smitten with her. They hang from her lips as if from therein shall spill the nectar of truth, the nectar of life. Jon feels no pity for them. Jon feels no remorse for the way it's going to claw at them later, when they're going to do something against their own morals for her.

You had no morals to begin with, the darkness whispers into his ear as her supple smile renders everyone in her near vicinity speechless.

No. Jon doesn't pity them, just like he didn't pity the way Edd had tried every way to get Sansa's validation when she had staid at Castle Black that time. He doesn't even pity himself.

He's gone beyond that. He's seen the ugly truth behind the thinly veiled lie. He knows her softness true, her smile as pliant as it looks is forged in steel. Her steel.

She's not a willowy princess in a tower, held hostage and at the mercy of a dragon.

No. Jon knows better now. She's the wolf relentlessly stalking the woods, hunting for her pack. Howling for the Gods, the moon, the sky to answer her prayers.

She's terrible, in her beauty. In the way her beauty can be crueler than the world's darkest pit. Because of that beauty wars come be fought and won, because of that beauty empire crumbled to the dust.

He feels it still, the pungent smell of burned and rotten flesh and bones. The ashes falling from the sky as snow, filling his nostrils and his lungs, puncturing and fracturing his own will.

He had been powerless. Powerless against such a cruelty, such a terrible, wicked sense of power. He had been even more powerless against the pureness that Sansa exuded. The truth nagging at him, clawing in him deeply.

Oh, they could say he had loved his dragon queen all that they liked. He alone would know the truth.

He alone would carry that burden. Of how he had cloaked himself in deceit and mercilessly maneuvered, all to make sure they were safe. That she was safe.

Sansa's laugh breaks him from his reverie and he looks at her once again, seeing her. She is sitting with the men, his men. Ghost, his direwolf, is draped all around her, his massive body curled around her lithe form, his head — almost twice as big as hers — nestled against her shoulder, on par with hers. Woman and wolf moving as one, one and the same.

Jon works at his jaw, his teeth grit together. She exudes light. She's equal part darkness and light.

She has come to him. A dark part of himself reminds him, she has been the one swallowing her pride and coming to him. He nurses his ale, observing her darkly, as she makes a chuckling mess of his men. Men who are supposed to be made of sterner stuff.

Men who sworn to never take wife or sire children.

There is some pungent, wicked sense of satisfaction in that, she caved in first. She came to him. Not the other way around.

He feels a surge of possessiveness when one of the new recruits, a young man who has not yet sworn the oath, rests his hand in the crook of Sansa's elbow as he makes her laugh. Her eyes brimming with mirth.

Can you forgive me?, her voice swirls around him. And yet Jon cannot recall why he was mad at her to begin with, not whilst the boy — he doesn't even recall who he is, though he knows all of his men by heart if not by name — the boy's hand is still against Sansa's skin...nor that he can touch beneath the fabric, but still...

... he remembers how tingling Sansa's touch can be, how encompassing.

And then, next he blinks, Sansa is before him. Jon studies her, he tells her nothing. He has told her nothing since he has welcomed her, somewhat formally and apersonally inside of Castle Black.

Sansa never breaks eye-contact as she takes his cup of ale from his hand, Jon would like to resist, but he does not, not when her fingers trace along the skin of his, before she raises it to toast to the men of the Nights Watch and to the men and women they lost in the Great War.

Jon sneaks out from the side as she's distracted. Returning to the darkness which welcomes him. Still he cannot tear his gaze from her, from the way her face fell and a grimace settled into her jaw and a frown between her red eyebrows, her light eyelashes fluttering close and for a moment she looks as if close to tears.

He knows what she's come to ask. Only a fool would not know.

He wants to say no. He will say no. His place is here, at Castle Black.

“I wish to dance!” Sansa declares at one point. They have no menestrels at the Wall, but Pyp starts to sing a tune anyway and soon enough the others are clapping along to the tune and smashing their fists to the table to drum along it.

Jon grits his teeth and sees red as Sansa dances with those brave enough to ask a dance from the queen in the North.

He knows what she hopes to achieve.

He won't yield.

[He has already yielded]

“I won't do it,” he tells her. He doesn't turn around. He looks away, his sight settled to the far north.

We should never have left that cave.

Still, he doesn't wish he was back there, not for all the sweetness on his tongue. Not even as her presence hurt him so, and heals him all along.

Sansa is silent for a long moment, then she steps next to him.

He has not slept tonight, he cannot do this. Not now, but Sansa knows to choose her battle well, and to fight them when the odds are in her favor.

The sun is just peeking from beyond the land, tinting the ice and snow in all kind of pink, lilac and frost blue. As lovely as the shades of blue in her eyes.

He sets his jaw.

Sansa says nothing still, but he feels the rustling of the fabric of her gown. She sighs ���It looks like an enchantment,” she breathes out and Jon shudders.

He's done for.

Sansa turns around and Jon stiffens, she walks a step closer to him, and slowly, ever so slowly — so slow it seems like an eternity — rises her hands to cup his cheeks and Jon closes his eyes, letting out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

Her vicinity is a balm for his wounded soul, a healing brand for his broken pride.

She turns gently his head and Jon's body twists, as a flower twists to follow the sun, to face her.

“Come back to Winterfell with me,” she pleads and Jon feels his own heart skip a beat, undead thing that it is, Sansa still manages to make it feel alive.

“I cannot,” his voice sounds little and unsure even to his ears, a lie “I cannot,” he tells her again a bit more sternly. There is silence from her, and that spooks him to open his eyes “My place is here,” he tells her.

Sansa cocks her head to the side, like a wolf would do “Your place is in Winterfell,” Sansa tells him “by my side”

The whimper he lets out is inhuman at that “I am a brother of the Nights Watch, Sansa...I—”

Her grip on his face turns soft, and Jon misses it immediately “Tell me,” Sansa begs of him “tell me you want to stay here, really want to, and I will go” she promises him.

Jon opens his eyes again, looks into hers. Her pools of night sky and ocean, eyes he'd gladly drown in.

“You chose my fate, Sansa” he tells her, perhaps cruelly “When you decided to tell the truth about my—”

“I had chosen a crown on your head,” Sansa interjects and Jon feels speechless, her voice is devoid of bite, but still as soft as it is wields the power to spark the flame in him “I chose your life, over my honor. She would've killed you, you know this”

“No I don't,” Jon bites back, claws back “neither do you”

Sansa does not let his bite scare her, “Perhaps I don't,” she snaps “but I wasn't willing to take the risk, not with you” she says “everything pointed to her snapping, as she did, I couldn't be sure that her flame would be directed to you, but I wasn't willing to risk you, even if that meant loosing you”

“It was not your choice to make!”

“So you are entitled to come and go as you please, give away my birthright, Bran's birthright, and Arya's. You are entitled to choose for me, aren't you?!” she whispers to him, and her whisper is louder than the entire world warring against itself.

Strident.

“I was protecting you!” Jon accuses “everything I did since I fucking died, was To. Protect. You!” he punctuates every word with a shake of her shoulders “You're so smart how could you not see it?!”

“How can you be so thick not to think I was protecting you right back?!” Sansa's voice holds more steel than Long Claw in that moment as she doesn't even raise her voice to match his.

Two wolves snarling at each other and Jon feels speechless.

“I have as much right to protect you as you have to protect me!” Sansa tells him “I did all I did to protect you and the North” she says “our family. Our people. Our kingdom” her smile is all teeth “and you can spit that back in my face all you want, but it doesn't change the truth of it”

“You weren't going to protect yourself, so I stepped in!”

Jon feels breathless. Sansa is panting as well.

And he loves her. And he wants her.

Sansa lets go of him and walks a couple of steps to the side, she turns to observe the world from the Wall, he feels her shiver. He doesn't know why she's shivering, until he feels the sobs.

It wasn't a choice to begin in, in the end. He thinks.

He chose her. Every time. Every day. Since returning from death he has chosen her. Even before.

She's wolf. And so is he.

He moves to her, gently unclasps the cloak from his shoulders and sweeps it across hers, making sure it keeps her safe and warm. His hands lingering at her waist.

A kiss is such a simple thing.

And yet the moment Jon's lips press against her temple he feels the world freeze and tilt on its axis, to come alive again, one day.

Sansa turns to look at him, her hands grasped around the seam of his cloak around her shoulders “I want you by my side,” she tells him “I think there is where you belong, at my side as I belong at yours. But I won't force you” she tells him.

Her softspokeness will be his end. Jon knows this.

“The Queen in the North would want a traitor back in her midst?” he mostly jests.

Sansa takes his hand then “You're not a traitor.”

“She would take another Targaryen in her court? After everything”

Sansa grimaces “You aren't a Targaryen,” she says, and this time there is bite in her voice, there is steel. Naked and powerful “Not to me”

Jon wants to kiss her then.

“To everyone else, though...”

“Then I would make of you a Stark” she tells him, her voice sure and even “Marry me,” she tells him “beneath the Godswood fronds, before the Heart Tree and our Gods.” she says “or let me legitimize you as a Stark. You choose.” she offers.

Her grip is warm “If you want to stay then stay. But if you want to be with me as much as I—”

A kiss is a simple thing, he thinks.

And still a kiss can enclose the entire of the world in a breath. It's tongue and lips and fangs and teeth, it's theirs.

So, when Sansa leaves Castle Black she does it with a husband at her side, a husband she chose and who chose her. A wolf stalking at her side, the mate to her own wolf.

He never knew who he was. A wolf or a dragon, a crow or a wildling. A traitor or a man capable of anything to uphold his duty.

He knows now. She's a wolf and he is hers. All the rest doesn't matter. They are just words.

Only her kisses and her claws hold any sense.

And when the trumpets of Winterfell sound, they sound because the wolves have returned.

[blackjackkent]

>:3 I've come from A03 and see Requests

I humbly suggest camp shinanagins while Tav/Hec™ is away

(including Karlach?:D)

Or - if more serious

I think it's pretty neat alot of the companions literally reflect the same themes of abuse at the hands of people in charge

I'd love to see Astarion and Karlach or Karlach and Shadowheart or Karlach and-

Jokes aside, honestly any pair realize/talk that out a bit

Hey anon! TYSM for the requests. <3 You sent these a while back so I have no idea if you'll see this but I hope you will. c: I went with the serious prompt first but I will be coming back to the more light-hearted prompt very soon!

Broken Little Puppets

Pairing: Astarion & Karlach Characters: Astarion, Karlach Rating: Gen Content Tags: Dialogue-heavy, bonding, moving on, light angst Word Count: 1.8k Setting: Several days after Cazador boss fight, Lower City camp. Read on AO3 other bg3 one-shots | send me fic requests! Summary:  Karlach supports Astarion after a nightmare about Cazador's ritual - and gets a little support herself in return.

“Hey. Psst. Astarion-- hey, hey!”

Astarion hears Karlach’s voice as if at a great distance. He is at the bottom of a deep black pool of reverie, trapped, drowning while still breathing. The world is far away, and the memories infinitely close, crawling across his skin. 

Images flash through him with agonizing clarity. Some nights they are more indistinct, the accumulated recollections of years upon years of varying torments - but tonight it is almost as immediate as it was in life. The humming power holds him helpless on the edge of Cazador’s ritual circle, stripped of armor and weapons and friends and hope, feeling his master’s ascension starting to boil his blood with agonizing heat…

“No. No-- please--” he whimpers, his head thrashing side to side. “Let me go--”

“Hey!”

The grip on his wrist enters the reverie and pulls. Another force trapping him, another surge of blazing heat. He jerks, lashes out blindly with his free hand, and his knuckles connect with a hard, solid jawline, sending a stab of pain through his wrist and up his arm.

“Ow! Fuck!” Karlach yelps. 

Her voice finally breaks through the reverie, shattering it apart around him. His eyes snap open and he finds himself half-sitting up in his bedroll, looking at Karlach crouched in the tent flap. She's holding her cheek with one hand and looks distinctly startled. 

“What…?” Astarion mumbles, shaking his head to try and clear the lingering fog in his thoughts. “What happened?”

“Well, you punched me, for one thing,” Karlach says. Her usual grin, never far away, is already sliding back onto her face now that she sees him awake. “Didn’t know you had that kind of right hook, Fangs.”

“You never asked,” Astarion says, with a painfully transparent attempt at his usual cocky disdain. He sits up fully, rubbing absently at his stinging wrist. “What’s the idea, grabbing me like that?”

She shrugs, letting her hand fall. There’s a visible bruise already darkening along her jaw; he really did catch her perfectly square-on. “You were, uh, having a nightmare, I think,” she says cautiously. “Or whatever you call it when you’re an elf, doing your elf thing.”

“Elves don’t have nightmares,” he says curtly. It’s not entirely a lie - reverie is not sleep. It serves the same function, at least theoretically, but an elf in reverie is not unconscious and does not dream. He remembers, locked in meditative trance, everything that has ever happened to him, often in brilliant, visceral clarity. If only that truly meant there were no nightmares…

She shakes her head. “Well, whatever it was, you were - I dunno. You were… sort of whimpering, crying out. Sure didn’t seem like you were enjoying it.”

No. No, he most certainly wasn’t. It’s only been a few days since Cazador’s blood splattered over his knife and his hands and his face; those memories are still crisp and fresh, not yet melded in with the rest. “I’m fine.” He smiles thinly. “But thanks ever so much for your concern.”

“Uh huh.” She hunches forward, crouched on the balls of her feet, and rests her elbows across her knees. “You know that’s not at all convincing, right?”

He clicks his tongue and makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Oh, all right, fine, you’ve dragged it out of me,” he says. “It was a sex dream. Very intense, lots of… you know. Positions. Orgiastic debauchery. People hanging naked upside down from chandeliers. Good cause for whimpering, is what I'm trying to say. So unless you’d like to hear all the nasty details, maybe you could just see yourself out of--”

“Astarion.” She’s still smiling, but there's no humor in it suddenly, just a sort of rueful sadness. “I’m pretty dumb sometimes, but I’m not stupid.”

His shoulders slump and he looks away from her, rubbing the heels of his hands to his temples. “Right. Of course.”

She settles forward into a more comfortable kneeling position. She’s so tall that her head still brushes the ceiling of the tent, her intact horn giving a gentle clink against the upper pole. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t make any move to leave the tent, and he doesn’t make any move to force her. They both just sit there, listening to the muted bustle of the city outside their alleyway camp.

After a while he speaks, low, almost inaudible. “I couldn’t possibly explain it,” he says, “in a way that would make you understand.”

“Try me.” She rolls her head to one side, then the other, stretching out the muscles in her neck. “Maybe I’d surprise you.”

“You’re young,” he says bitterly. “How could you possibly comprehend torments that operated on a scale of decades?”

She juts out her jaw thoughtfully. “I had one decade in the Hells. Feels like maybe that counts for something.” When he doesn’t respond, she goes on quietly, “I get nightmares too, y’know. Ten years in the Hells is no two hundred years in Caza-fuck’s dirty basement, but you still rack up a lot of bad memories. And Zariel was just as much of a cruel fucking prick…”

It’s pathetically obvious what she’s doing, of course. Talking first to get him to talk after. He’s not fooled. Sort of endearing, though, he supposes; how many people would actually bother to try?

“Woke up just last night absolutely convinced I was beating the shit out of a hezrou,” she goes on. “You ever see one of them? Nasty little brutes. Only I kept killing it and it kept coming back, and coming back, and coming back…” She stops abruptly, pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them. “Fucked up my pillow something good.”

He grunts noncommittally. Another long silence stretches between them. 

“How’d it feel, killing him?” she asks abruptly. And this time her voice is quieter; it’s lost some of the note of friendly assurance. 

He stiffens. “Surely you don’t need me to tell you what it’s like to kill someone,” he says sardonically. “I think we could both give a lecture on the subject that would put Gale to shame.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She frowns. “How’d it feel killing him?” The emphasis is clearer this time.

“Mm.” He gives her a keen look sidelong. “Rather the way it felt for you to kill Gortash, I imagine,” he says. “Though I think I managed it with more artistic flair. Really spattered the canvas, if you will.”

“Yeah.” She huffs out a breath, rattling her lips dramatically. “Watching you tear him up - it felt good. Wish I'd gone all-out like that, with Gortash. All I did was sink one good one right in his chest, but you left Cazzy just a piece of fucking meat. Shredded him. That’s the way it should be - for him, for Gortash, for Zariel, for all the fuckers who use people like that. Just a piece of fucking meat for some dog to chew on.” 

Her voice has dropped lower, and he can feel the way the temperature in the tent has ticked up a notch or two as her engine starts to rev with agitation. “And even so…” she mutters sourly, “it still doesn’t fucking fix anything, in the end. Their final little laugh at our expense.”

He wants to object, to snarl out, like the wounded animal that he is, that of course it fixed things. He won. He’s alive (in a manner of speaking) and Cazador’s gone. He will never have to follow that bastard’s direction ever again, never again let his body be used, or be compelled to press a hot poker into his own flesh, or sit in solitary confinement while hunger gnaws in his belly like a furious beast. That is all over now, it’s done. It’s gone.

Except it isn’t, not really. 

He is still a vampire. He will still never see his own face in a mirror again, or taste food as anything more than ash on his tongue. The scars on his back are still deep and harsh, spelling out an infernal message of ascension that has lost its only purpose. All the memories of two hundred years of abuse still linger in his mind, ready to be recalled in such clarity as if they happened yesterday.

And the hunger will never, ever, ever stop.

Nothing he did to Cazador changed that in the slightest, just the way nothing Karlach did to Gortash changed the inferno burning in her chest.

He shudders, his shoulders hunching up involuntarily as if recoiling from a blow. “No,” he mutters. “It doesn’t fix a damned thing.”

“Yeah.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “Shoulda seen the way I screamed in Hector’s face when I figured that one out. Still, at least they're dead. And we're free.”

“Free. Yes.” He laughs sharply. “Two broken little puppets with their strings cut.”

She grins - with no humor but with a sort of savage intensity. “And still managing to put on a pretty good show.”

“Are we?” For a moment the sardonic mask slips and he lifts his head to look at her. “I'm not putting on a good show - I'm lost. All of Cazador's power was at my fingertips, and instead I'm sitting in a dirty alleyway listening to Minsc snoring from the other end of the camp. This is no good show. It's a farce.”

She says nothing, just waits, and eventually he adds grudgingly, “But it's my farce.”

“Damn right it is.” Humor flashes back into Karlach's face suddenly. “Besides, who doesn't love a good farce? Mistaken identities, slapstick, dick jokes… the height of entertainment, if you ask me.”

Astarion can't help a slight, crooked grin in return. Karlach's indomitable energy is always infectious, even in the deepest depths of his brooding. “Darling, let me be the first to condemn you as incurably lowbrow,” he says airily, giving a dismissive wave with one hand.

“Listen, vampy, I don't have the kind of time you do to worry about appearances.” She uncurls her legs slowly from her chest to a cross-legged position instead. “Funny thing, y'know. You're gonna go on and on forever, and I've got a year left in me, tops. But we're both fighting the same fight when it comes down to it. Staring down all that freedom, trying to force it into a shape that makes sense. Make something worthwhile out of it before it’s too late.”

Astarion draws his head back and looks at her suddenly as if seeing her clearly for the first time. His fingers fidget absently with the edge of his bedroll. “Well,” he finally says quietly, “I won't give up the fight if you don't, hm?”

Her eyes brighten and she laughs. “Got yourself a deal, Fangs.”

[missywritesfor7]

🌙Moon’s Light | JJK🌙

Synopsis: Luna is a young paralegal trying to maintain her new found independence and enjoy life. Too bad her job sucks and her boss is the worst. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she encounters a vampire named Jungkook who changes her life in more ways than one.

Jungkook is a shield and protector of the vampire kingdom of Korealis. He’s trained his entire life to block out any and all distractions and focus solely on becoming the strongest. While investigating a potential threat to the kingdom, he encounters Luna who turns out to be more than he could have ever imagined. It becomes his job to protect her, but he can’t tell if what he’s feeling is his devotion to the job or perhaps something deeper.

Secrets are uncovered. Lives are on the line. Hearts are tested.

Pairing: Vampire!Jungkook x Fem!OC

Warnings: Violence, character death, eventual smut, tragedy, some angst, strong language, MINORS DNI

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|| Ch. 21: Mom’s Dumplings ||

Luna was out for a couple of hours. The entire time Jungkook kept his arms around her. He didn’t move unless she moved. He made sure her breathing returned to normal and her heartbeat remained stable. He also peppered her shoulder with kisses every few minutes when he thought about how amazing he feels right now.

Luna wakes up to the feeling of Jungkook holding on to her tightly. When she opens her eyes she can already feel the difference of being a full vampire. Her left eye that had been practically useless while she was here is now able to see just as clear as her right eye. With immaculate sight in both eyes she can see the pattern detail of the brushstrokes in the paint on the wall. She can’t believe the level of clarity she has.

Once she adjusts her vision, she focuses her attention to the arm clutching her torso. She turns over and is greeted by Jungkook’s soft smile.

“How are you feeling?” He asks.

“I don’t know, I feel a little weak,” she says.

“That’ll happen,” he says. “It could last up to a week while your body adjusts. Since you were already half vampire maybe it won’t be as long for you.”

“Did I like…die and come back?”

“What all do you remember?” He asks curiously.

“Well…” she thinks back to the way her entire body was aching with so much pain, until it wasn’t. It turned to pure bliss and she remained on the ride until his sharp fangs brought the pain back, but at that point she was already riding out her high and in no way wanted to stop. “After you bit me everything just went black and that was it.”

“Are you still in pain?” He asks pushing her hair to the side to take a look at the bite mark he left on her neck.

“A little. I don’t know if it came from you or the portal though.”

“Maybe both, but that’s why I wanted to make sure I could give you as much pleasure as possible so you wouldn’t focus so much on the pain. Did it work?” He smirks.

“Of course it did,” she smiles, involuntarily clinching at the thought of how good he made her feel.

“Good,” he smiles pulling her closer and burying his head in her chest.

She runs her fingers through his hair wishing she wasn’t feeling so weak right now so she could take him for another ride. He felt so good inside of her.

A knock at the door startles Jungkook right out of the bed. He throws Luna her clothes and begins putting his own clothes on.

“Jungkook?” Hoseok’s voice comes ringing through the door.

“Yeah,” Jungkook says while stumbling to help Luna get her clothes on. “One second.”

He runs over to the door and looks back one more time to make sure Luna is ready. Then he opens the door to see not just Hoseok, but all 6 guys at his door looking worried.

“How is she?” Jin asks.

“She’ll be fine,” Jungkook says letting them all in.

“You did it?” Jimin asks sitting next to Luna. “You converted?”

“Yeah,” Luna says. “I really had no other choice.”

“I’m glad you were able to do it before it was too late,” Taehyung says.

“I hope I didn’t ruin the interrogation,” she says looking at Yoongi and Namjoon.

“It’s ok, you didn’t,” Namjoon says. “We had no idea what happened until we were done.”

“What happened with Mr. Choi?”

“I know he didn’t tell us everything, but we got enough from him to help us,” Yoongi says. “You just worry about your recovery. Converting can do a lot of damage so you just need to rest.”

“I know,” she says. “But what about the other guy? Who was he?”

“Just another goon,” Yoongi says. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

“Get some rest,” Jimin says brushing her hair with his fingers, eliciting a less than subtle side eye from Jungkook.

“Yes,” Jungkook says grabbing Jimin’s arm and pulling him from the bed. “Let her get some rest.”

He begins ushering everyone out the door but Hoseok stops at the doorway and looks Jungkook over.

“Do better,” Hoseok says.

“What?” Jungkook asks confused.

“Your shirt is on backwards,” Hoseok whispers patting Jungkook’s chest.

“Let her rest,” Jin whispers with a smirk.

The two head down the hall catching up with the rest of the group. Jungkook shuts the door trying to hide his embarrassment. He looks down at his shirt and sighs. He takes it off and puts it on correctly then looks up to see Luna giggling.

“Something funny?” He asks crawling back in the bed next to her.

“No,” she says still giggling. “So much for being discreet.”

“Who said I wanted to be discreet?” He asks getting an inch in front of her face. “If I wanted to be discreet I wouldn’t have had you making so much noise,” he smirks.

“You little shit,” she says pushing his face away, but doing a terrible job at hiding her smile.

“Little? I’m like 100 times your age!”

“Ew, you’re ancient!” She teases.

“Don’t make me bite you again.”

“I’ll bite you back! I have fangs now too,” she says feeling her teeth. “Why don’t I have fangs??”

“It doesn’t happen instantly,” he laughs. “That’s why you’re supposed to rest and recover so all of the vampire characteristics can manifest. Right now you’re still a little weakling.”

“You want a weakling?” She slaps him across his chest which only makes him laugh more.

“That’s cute,” he laughs. “Try again, maybe I’ll feel it this time.”

“Ugh! You’re such a dick!” She says punching his arm.

“Take it easy,” he says touching the bite mark still prominent on her neck which sends a wave of pain through her body.

“Ow what the fuck?!” She shouts slapping his hand away. “That fucking hurts!”

“I know,” he giggles. “I left a nice mark on you.”

“You left a mark??”

“Of course, it was a bite. Don’t worry though, the pain will go away after a while and it will just look like a beauty mark or something.”

“A beauty mark?” She asks rubbing her sore neck. “You mean it’s not going to go away?”

“Nope. It’s how we tell the difference between people like you and natural born vampires.”

“You marked me? Forever?!” She shouts hitting him again.

“I was saving your life! You’re welcome!”

“I’m going to have a permanent scar!”

“Better than permanent death! Again, you’re welcome, you ungrateful freak!”

“I’ll show you a freak,” she grumbles.

“You already did,” she smirks kissing the tip of her nose.

“I don’t like you,” she says looking away.

“But I like you,” he giggles wrapping his arms around her torso.

She wants to maintain her stubborn act, but when he holds her she completely melts. She feels more comfortable in his arms than she has ever felt at any other time in her life. She gives in and leans her head on his shoulder.

“You should eat something,” he says kissing her forehead.

“What are you going to cook me?”

“Pffft,” he scoffs. “I’m not cooking anything. I’ll order you something.”

“Such a gentleman,” she jokes. “Fine, what will you order me?”

“Whatever you want.”

Whatever she wants turns into a trip to a restaurant for pasta. Rather than standard tomato sauce, the pasta is made with a blood sauce, which seems odd to Luna, but when she tries it she’s in love. She also had a glass of blood that she realizes tastes different than before. Now that she’s a full vampire, the taste of blood is a bit sweeter and less repulsive. It’s actually refreshing as a cold glass of water on a hot day would be.

After their meal, Jungkook shows Luna around some more. He shows her that it’s not much different from the human world. He even takes her by some of Korealis’ law firms where she could apply for a job. It’s still a big scary world to her, but she’s glad she has him by her side.

The next day Luna tags along with Jungkook while he works out in the sparring room. She’s anxious to see more of the kingdom, but he wants her to take it easy since she’s still fairly weak. She decided to go to the sparring room with him so she’s not left staring at the walls in his room as she’s done way too much by now. No one else is in the room so she wanders around as he bench presses what seems like a ridiculous amount of weight to Luna.

“Do you need me to be your spotter?” Luna asks standing over Jungkook.

“You can’t be my spotter,” he laughs.

“Why not?”

“You’re way too weak to be my spotter.”

“Fine,” she huffs. “I’ll just lift some weights myself then I’ll show you who’s weak.”

She goes to the rack of weights and picks one up that happens to be much heavier than she thought it would be. Jungkook sets his weights down and watches Luna struggle for a moment before getting up to help her.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he says taking the weight from her and putting it back on the rack. “I know you’re a restless little puppy so just give me a minute to finish my workout and I’ll take you somewhere more fun.”

“Really?” She asks perking up. “Where?”

“Anywhere you want,” he smiles feeling a warmth overcome him at the sight of how bright she lit up at the mention of doing something fun. “There’s a bowling alley with an arcade that I used to go to a lot when I was younger.”

“Ooh that sounds fun! Let’s go!” She says grabbing his arm.

“I said after I finish my workout,” he laughs placing a hand around her waist to stop her from running out the door.

“How long is that going to take?” She pouts.

“Not long, you big baby,” he laughs. “Stop getting into stuff and I could finish quicker.”

“Fine. Hurry up.”

Jungkook leans down and steals a kiss from her soft lips and smiles. “Yes ma’am,” he smirks.

As he turns back to finish his workout a loud boom comes through the door that startles them both.

“JUNGKOOK!!” The fiercely angry voice of Jungkook’s father comes echoing through the room as he barrels towards them. “This is the last time you’ll disobey me!!”

Jungkook tries to step between Luna and his father, but Minseok binds him tightly within a forcefield and moves him off to the side. Luna looks up at the menacing man breathing fire down her nose frozen in fear.

“Get the fuck away from her!” Jungkook shouts.

“I told you what would happen if I caught you with her again!” Minseok shouts suspending Jungkook 5 feet in the air.

“Seokjin told you-“

“I know what lie you had him tell me! His father will deal with him. Right now I’m going to deal with both of you!”

Minseok looks back at Luna who’s slowly trying to back away from him. She’s afraid but also filled with great anger at the way he’s treating Jungkook. She wants to fight for him but there’s nothing she can do except take whatever his father throws her way.

“Why is this harlot spending so much time on royal grounds?!”

“Harlot?!” Luna shouts getting angrier.

“I told you to stay away from my son!” Minseok shouts stepping closer to her.

“I didn’t do anything!” Luna shouts.

“You’ve been keeping him from his training and causing him to lose focus! I warned you before! There’s no place here for whores trying to sneak their way into my family!”

“WHORE?!” Luna shouts feeling a raging fire build up inside of her.

“Don’t you fucking talk to her like that!” Jungkook rages still trying to break out of the forcefield. “You don’t even care about your family enough to say that!”

“What type of bullshit are you feeding his mind?!” His father roars at Luna.

“Nothing!” Luna defends. “Maybe if you actually treated him like your son and not some puppet to clean up your mess, he would respect you more!”

“You know NOTHING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP I HAVE WITH MY SON!!”

Minseok’s eyes are piercing right through Luna, but she’s not backing down now. She’s pissed. He takes a close look at Luna and notices the bite mark on her neck.

“A convert?!” He shouts. “You’re trying to throw your entire life and career away for a fucking convert?!” He tosses Jungkook across the room sending him into the wall where he falls to the floor.

“STOP!!” Luna yells. “Leave us the fuck alone!!” She unleashes a powerful force, one more powerful than she’s ever unleashed. It sends Minseok flying into the same wall he threw Jungkook into and causing his prosthetic leg to shatter on impact.

Jungkook jumps up and runs to Luna who’s fallen to the floor. She’s still weak from the conversion so the wave she unleashed was much too powerful for her. She can’t stand and she can barely see. She feels lightheaded and her entire body is in pain.

“I’ll take you away,” Jungkook whispers picking her up and running out of the room leaving his father on the floor.

Jungkook can’t keep her at the palace. He needs to find somewhere that she can rest and recover without the danger of his father looming. He doesn’t know what else to do, so despite his concerns he puts Luna in his car and drives her to his mother’s house.

He carries Luna in his arms and runs into the house, right past his mom who’s in the kitchen, and into the spare room. He lays Luna on the bed and inspects her from head to toe.

“Are you ok?” He asks frantically as she fades in and out of consciousness. “Say something.”

“Tokki?” His mom is standing at the door looking confused and worried. “Is everything ok?”

“We need blood,” he says not taking his eyes off of Luna.

His mom runs to the kitchen and returns with a bottle. She’s still unsure of what’s going on but she watches as Jungkook tries getting Luna to sit up so she can take a drink.

“Don’t do this to me again,” he says trying to maintain his composure. “Please say something.”

Luna groans trying to see through the dizziness and pain. She can’t get words out so all she can do is groan at Jungkook to let him know that she’s at least still alive.

“Drink,” he says putting the bottle of blood in her hand and guiding it to her mouth. “Don’t try to do anything, just drink right now.”

She takes a few small sips with tears falling down her face. Everything in her hurts so bad. Jungkook sets the bottle aside and lays her back down on the pillow. He wipes the tears from her face and tries to control his own.

“What happened?” His mom asks softly.

“Dad fucking happened!” Jungkook huffs. “She’s still weak. She could have died, but he kept pushing her until she used too much power to hit him back. Why can’t he leave me alone?!”

“Give her some space,” she says softly stepping up to Luna. She places a hand on Luna’s arm and looks her over. “You can rest here as long as you need to, dear.” She then takes Jungkook’s arm and guides him out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

She takes him to the kitchen where she was finishing up lunch. Jungkook throws himself down in a chair at the table still seething in anger.

“You’re just in time for dumplings,” his mom says bringing two plates over and sitting next to him. “Take your time, and explain to me what’s going on.”

He takes a bite of the dumplings and savors the flavor of his mom’s home cooking that he misses so much. He takes a deep breath then begins to explain everything that happened today. How his father pushed Luna to the edge and caused her to lose her temper. Though he’s still afraid of anyone knowing that he brought Luna here before she was fully converted, he trusts his mom and tells her about having to convert her to save her life and that’s why she’s weak right now. His mother nods along taking everything he’s telling her. She knows that Jungkook and his father haven’t gotten along much since he was a child and it only breaks her heart to see him so upset. It breaks her heart even more because she can sense how deeply he feels for Luna. Deeper than she’s ever seen him feel for anyone else before. Luna is the one he’ll risk everything for. It’s the type of care and devotion she had been wanting from Minseok for many years before she finally chose to leave.

“You care a whole lot about her, don’t you?” She asks already knowing the answer.

“I do,” he confesses. “More than I thought I did at first. The thought of losing her strikes me in a way I’ve never experienced before. I just don’t know what to do. He won’t back down easily, but I swear I’ll do anything to protect her, even if it means…”

“Tokki, don’t say anything that you may regret later,” she interrupts knowing he’s about to say something out of anger.

“What am I supposed to do?” He asks with his big glassy eyes ripping her heart to shreds.

“You need to focus on the investigation you guys are working on,” she says in her calming tone. “I’ll keep an eye on her. I’ll make sure she recovers, and once she’s back to full health you two can do whatever you want. But you have too much going on at once and it’s clearly got you overwhelmed.”

“I know,” he sighs. “But I can’t just leave her here. That’s not fair to you. You didn’t sign up to look after her.”

“Don’t worry about me, sweetie,” she says stroking his hair. “If you care that much about her then I’ll show her the same care. Anyone that has my Tokki head over heels like this must be a good person. I’ll keep her safe here. Plus it will be nice to have company for once.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to burden you.”

“You’re not, baby. I know how your father can get, here would be the best place for her right now anyway. He certainly won’t come knocking on my door.”

“I know,” he sighs. “Why does he have to be like this? Why can’t I make decisions for myself?”

“I asked the same thing. Your father’s inability to give me an answer is part of why I couldn’t stay any longer. He has his mind made up and it’s nearly impossible to get him to see things differently.”

“Can I stay here with you instead of living in the palace?” He pouts.

“You know I want nothing more than to have you stay with me, but you and I both know you can’t. You still need to be there to do your job.”

“A few nights then? At least until I’m satisfied with how LuLu is recovering?”

“You don’t think I’d be able to look after her myself?” She jokes. “After all of these years taking care of you and your brother anytime you got sick.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he smiles shaking his head. “I just want to stay with her a bit more. I don’t know, I have no idea what I want.”

“Don’t fight what’s in your heart, sweetie. You can stay a few days, but don’t let it interfere with your work or I’ll send you back.”

“Thanks,” he says feeling a little brighter.

“Go check on her. Let me know if you need anything.” She gets up from the table clearing their now empty plates.

“I love you,” he says getting up and pulling her into a tight hug. “You’re the best mom ever.”

“I’m your only mom,” she laughs. “I love you too, Tokki.”

He goes back into the bedroom where Luna is still laying. She hasn’t moved much but she’s managed to maintain consciousness for a while now. She’s drank half the bottle of blood by now, but her body is still in a lot of pain.

“How are you feeling?” Jungkook asks crawling in the bed next to her.

“Like shit,” she groans. “Why does everything hurt?”

“It’ll go away soon,” he says wiping a stray tear from the corner of her eye. “The good news is you get to stay here and enjoy my mom’s home cooking.”

“Your mom? Is she ok with me being here?”

“Don’t worry it’s fine. I’m sure she’s just happy to have someone over for a while. I’ll be here too, but only for a few days.”

“A few days? Then what?”

“I’m not sure,” he says sadly. “I can’t stay away from the palace for too long, but I can’t take you back there now. Not until I know you’ll be safe from my father.”

“Are you safe from him?”

“Probably not,” he shrugs. “But I can take him.”

“You mean the way you did as you struggled to get out of his forcefield?”

“Do you want some dumplings? My mom made some, they’re really good.”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“Worry about getting your strength back.”

“You can’t deny the truth.”

“Go to sleep,” he says putting his hand over her eyes.

She grabs his wrist and catches a glimpse of his memory from earlier. The way he struggled to breakout and come to Luna’s aid. Suddenly the image changes and Luna is seeing a replay of the sex they had just before he bit her. A replay of that blissful moment that sent her to another world and back.

She’s still unaware that Jungkook knows she can see his memories when she touches him, but Jungkook decided he’d play a little game with her until she comes clean. Anytime she touches him his mind will go back to that moment. It’s partially to protect the memories he doesn’t want her to see, but also as payback for her trying to sneakily get into his mind. From now on he’ll make sure all she sees is the way she dug her nails into his back while moaning for more.

Luna looks dead at him not knowing what to say. He smirks back at her and tilts his head.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

“Nothing,” she says letting his hand go.

“You look like something just hit you,” he says still smirking.

“No, it’s nothing. I’m just trying to get through the pain,” she lies.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

Luna looks at him unsure of how to answer. As much as she wants to knock the cheeky smirk off his face, she can’t help but grab his hand again where the same memory comes flooding back.

“I’ll let you know,” she smiles.

His smile grows larger. He’s got her hooked and he knows it.

[gardenofbookworms]

may's monthly: from bee and rose

The Obsession by Jesse Q. Sutanto 

▪ thriller/suspense novel ▪

you all know the questions in a relationship. who plans the dates? who combs the other’s hair? who yaps, who listens? who hides the most secrets? who stalks the other? and, most importantly, who ends up dead first?

logan (who has no last name, interpret that as you will) is convinced that he’s destined for delilah, his gift from the crush of junior year—the glamorous sophie. she looks just like sophie, and they used to be perfect for each other, right? right…up until sophie died. 

now, logan spends his time scrolling through every one of delilah’s socials, sneaking into her house uninvited, checking footage from the camera he’s put near her place, and finding excuses to walk by and talk to her. it’s just so obvious they’re meant to be together; he knows nearly all of her darkest secrets and loves her all the more for them. and no one, no one, could ever possibly know her better than he does. 

sweet, shy delilah wong is fucking sick of controlling men. she’s all her mom’s got left after pa and brandon, her terrible ex-boyfriend. her mom’s been through enough, so shouldn’t delilah be strong enough to protect the both of them? falling for logan proves to be her worst mistake, and she’s blackmailed into dancing to a tune she knows all too well—but it’s only a matter of time until she gets to lead. and she’ll paint the ballroom floor with blood if that’s what it takes to live freely.

it's been months since the two started dating, and logan feels like he’s going insane. delilah has become more compliant, yes, but her constant worrying about the video is getting to him. he’ll have to do something about it—make her happy and keep her happy, forever. it’s all out of love, so it’s fine, right?

wrong. the roles have been switched, and delilah is starting to bare her fangs. but is that enough to escape the cage logan’s carved around her?

▪

from bee

this book has, well, a history. i first gave it to rose for her birthday last year (and with a note she’ll never let me forget). and actually, it’s got stuff we both like. romance and murder fit hand and hand. and of course—because there’s always an “of course”—you’ve got drug dealers, giant pancakes, concerned bestie josh, dead ex nightmares, and a serious case of erotomania. 

after rereading this book recently, there was one thing in particular i really liked. delilah’s transforming from the prey to predator, yes, but she’s still wavering. she can do all these bad things but she’s still scared. she’s still just a high schooler who’s desperate to escape her life, not some hero who gains all the confidence in the world after her Big Realization. i think that’s a little more realistic than delilah going on a rampage. besides that, i also noticed how logan took to calling her “dee” really quickly…quite devoted for someone who’s only known her a few weeks.

from rose

as bee just said, the two of us have quite a history with this book. this year, i gave her the prequel, the new girl, for her birthday, with a note very similar to the one she gave me. and yes, romance and murder fit together very well here. but, as bee so brilliantly put it a while back, here’s the thing: you gotta think of this book less like a sketchy romance, and more like a spiral towards insanity. 

logan feels like he’s slowly losing his mind—everything comes back to delilah, and everything (and i mean everything) seems like a threat to their relationship. in my opinion, this is a wonderful way to set up a romance called the obsession; it enables the author to justify the anger and worry and “love” logan feels when exposed to anything to do with delilah, while still letting the reader see in perfect clarity how utterly wrong he is. and delilah is going to make him pay, even if it all doesn’t turn out quite how she hoped it would.

▪

bonus: spotify playlist!

[floripire]

META + death

meta time // @viikingwitch

until the death of her parents at the hands of triad industries (and, so she believes, herself), her own death at the hands of derek machado and sue's death at her own hands (or, rather, fangs), floribeth's understanding of death was purely theoretical: you're born, you live, you die. some sooner than others, it's not always fair - if it ever is - and most of the time, it's hard on the people who are left behind.

but now that she's come out on the other side of it, floribeth knows that death leaves a mark. whether or not one comes back as a vampire afterwards.

some days, she wishes she hadn't worked through it all with the school's therapist, emma tig, nor talked about it in detail with emma's replacement, amber bradley.

because at first, she didn't have any memories of her death beyond waking up in a shallow grave and having to dig herself out of it.

but now it's crystal clear: she can recall the look in derek's eyes. she can recall the way he lunged. she can recall the feeling of her neck getting snapped and dying with blood in her system.

there is so much clarity now and she doesn't know what to do with it.

is it better to shroud awful memories in darkness, in the deepest depths of the night or is it better to illuminate them, to see them clearly in the light of day as they are?

to this day, floribeth is still unsure.

[paintedscales]

WoLstinien Week Day Three -> Blood

Written for today's prompt, Blood, this year's WoLstinien Week.

Word Count: 750

Dull. Achey. Throbbing.

A heart’s beat rhythm. Thrumming. Thrumming. Thrumming. Painfully so.

Biting cold. So very, very cold.

It seeped into her ever-so-flawed scales, into her dark-azure skin, into the marrow of her bones. What did not sting due to the site of the pierced flesh, stung thanks to the powdered ice that surrounded her. Enveloped her.

White, glittering snow all around, stains of red splashed in dark splotches upon its otherwise pristine visage.

Chattering teeth and whines of pain. Tears pricked and stung at the corners of her eyes, threatening to break a dam and let loose wet, hot streams of anguish.

It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

Gods did it hurt.

‘But she rises again. Again and again and again. It matters not the fight she was in – she gets up again.’

But it still hurts. It always hurts.

‘She can stand toe to toe with even Gods and beings beyond our understanding.’

That did not mean it did not still hurt.

Shaky hands slowly lifted from their indentation pressed upon the snow. Rising, rising – feeling both weightless and like lead pipes at the same time. A contradiction of being, and yet those hands found purchase at the wound that gaped upon her abdomen. As her hands shook, they pressed into the wound, staunching blood flow – damming the scarlet river.

Cool, crisp air was sucked in between her teeth. A cold reminder that despite the chill, despite the ache, despite the mere desire, she could not afford to fall asleep. She could not close her eyes. She could not. She would not. Not unless she wanted the snow around and the snow that fell to become her grave.

The battle had been hard fought in the worst clime she could imagine. A person who proved themselves a beast. Fang and claw bared against fang and claw. Someone who desired revenge against her. Someone who saw her as a villain rather than a hero.

‘It’s only fair…’ she thought to herself. ‘I can’t be a hero to everyone…’

“You’ve gone and made a mess of yourself again…” came a soothing voice that quelled the pain, quelled the ache.

His voice. His.

Her mind was foggy, just was her vision as she struggled to stay conscious.

But who?

Through blurred vision thanks to the tears that had welled, the sight of someone looming over her was apparent. The silhouette of someone there.

Who? Who? Who?

The voice was familiar, it was warm, it was welcome. But who…? Who was it?

Gently, oh so gently, was she lifted, dustings of powdery snow falling from her body and appendages. Her unbound hair unwillingly clinging to the ground, her eyes still gleaning a bastardized mosaic of the world around. A brief moment was all it took – a second of clarity for her to see familiar horns, a familiar smile, the familiar ruby red that dazzled upon the inky black of his lustrous scales.

“... A…Arik… Arik, it hurts…” she whispered, her voice cracking.

“...” The individual who carried her remained silent for a time. He had only heard that name once or twice. Perhaps even three if he had been paying more close attention. For it was not his name – though it was an important one to her all the same. That much he remembered.

He would not fight this, for what would that do but to deliver more pain?

A soft sigh came from him, gently adjusting her before he spoke again. “Aye, I know. Let’s get you somewhere safe, Nomin… I’ll get you cleaned up.”

Whining and whimpering, Nomin nodded, blinking the tears out of her eyes with some modicum of desperation. And as she blinked away the tears, blinked away her delirium, what false lie of clarity she had prior had given way to the truth that surrounded her.

“‘St-… Est… Estinien, I…” Nomin started in pained surprise, her fingers curling and gripping into the flesh around her wound as it throbbed with another shock of pain. “I-I’m sorry….”

“‘Tis fine. Hush now,” Estinien replied, walking forward while making sure the auri woman in his hold was secure. “What’s important is that you’re here. You’re alive. You triumphed. And we are all okay. By the Fury we’re okay thanks to you yet again.”

‘Yet again.’

It always ended that way, didn’t it…

Recklessly throwing herself into problem after problem.

“... N-no…” Nomin uttered. “I…I wanted days of peace with you. Our family. Not…not more blood and pain.”

“... Aye… I know…” Estinien gently replied.