#he's already written burn butcher burn

[aladygrieve]

I know we all think of Burn Butcher Burn as THEE breakup song, but I’d like to turn everyone’s attention back to Her Sweet Kiss for a minute. It tends to get overlooked compared to the other in-universe songs, mostly because the final version was never technically diagetic. But it plays over the 1x06 credits, and we’re clearly supposed to understand it as having been written immediately post-mountain.

If you remember, Jaskier was working on this portion of the lyrics at the very beginning of the episode:

“I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting / If this is the path I must trudge / I’ll welcome my sentence / Give to you my penance / (Gorgeous) garotter, jury and judge.”

He wrote this before Geralt ever sent him away, and it becomes all the more heartbreaking in hindsight when you realize what it means in that context. This is Jaskier accepting that Geralt will never love him back. He’s too weak to do the harder thing and just leave, but he accepts that his feelings will never be returned because to him, being with Geralt in any capacity is worth the punishment of unrequited love. Supporting him in whatever way Geralt will accept is his penance.

And then Geralt blames Jaskier for all his problems and banishes him from his life. The lyrics are worked into a song all about Yennefer, a warning to Geralt about the dangers of being in a relationship with her. The original lines remain exactly the same (except that, tellingly, “Gorgeous” is removed), but the context shifts. The path Jaskier must trudge is now a lonely one, the punishment worse than ever. He feels he deserves to do penance for the crime of his unreturned feelings and sees himself as a burden and an annoyance for having them because Geralt just told him that’s what he is. He’s lost the one thing that made all that pain worth it, but now he’s too weak to do the harder thing and fight to stay with Geralt. Jaskier won’t protest Geralt’s cruel and unfair treatment of him because he knows (thinks) he’s already lost him to Yennefer forever. Burn Butcher Burn is full of rage, but in the immediate aftermath there’s no anger, only heartbreak.

Which only makes Jaskier’s relationship with Yennefer in Season 2 all the more interesting. This is the woman he thinks he lost his love to, and only months ago he wrote a whole song begging Geralt to stay the fuck away from her. There’s a deep bitterness when they first meet that is only slightly masked by Jaskier’s usual humour, but as soon as he realizes the danger she’s in, his first instinct is to help her and protect her. The camaraderie they find in their mutual fallings out with Geralt, and the softness initiated by Yennefer being a hugger, is really special to watch.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this other than that Jaskier is a gem and he doesn’t deserve to be shit on by the narrative the way he has been.

[franzkafkagf]

okay so i want to hear about your take on aegon i know you like him and all (so do i no matter how much i wish not to) but whyy

yess thanks for asking, I love being insane about him<3

I think Aegon is such a wildly tragic character– many asoiaf characters are but I'm so drawn specifically to him; he didn't want power or responsibility or the crown. It all was bestowed upon him against his will, and he shouldn't; putting on the crown is his definitive death sentence. The coronation scene has got to be one of my favorites in the season– he is quite literally walking up to be butchered like a sacrificial lamb, there are tears streaking his cheeks in the scene! I love the tragedy of it, the way it couldn't have been avoided anyways; his fate was sealed from the very start! He was quite literally dead from the very beginning.

I'm going off a mix from the book and the show but I actually love what they did with the character in the show? The book version does have some hard-hitting moments from him that are missing ("What sort of brother steals his sister's birthright?") but there wasn't that much there in terms of characterization and relationships. And wow, did they deliver on that in the show; I'm gonna give whoever came up with his mommy issues a forehead kiss.

Because YES! He and Alicent are reflections of one another– Alicent suffered under the heavy boot of Otto, turned into the perfect daughter, turned into the perfect queen for him. She recognizes that this was wrong and abusive of him, then she turns around and does the same thing to Aegon– the poison DOES drip through, the wheel is NOT broken!! It's BRILLIANT.

@atopvisenyashill put a GREAT tag under one of my posts–

#he looks like her and he’s weak like her so why can’t he get strong like her.

While Alicent persevered, Aegon crumbled under the pressure. He is miserable when we meet him– and he should be! He is unfit for the role of king, but it is his destiny nonetheless, everybody tells him so. It destroys him.

It's so sad too and I cannot help but to feel bad for him. No one knows where he is in ep 9, I don't think he has anyone to confide in; it must be lonely. Everybody seems to have written him off already– he is a drunk and a failure at being heir, being a son, being a father. He tries to prove them wrong later, and does in some aspects.

His loneliness plays into another aspect of him that I really love; his desperation to be loved. He will never be enough for anybody, he probably knows it deep down.

"[Aegon is] desperate to be loved but destined to be hated." – Tom Glynn-Carney

Obviously there is the carriage scene with Alicent that shows this. But I also really love the moment in his coronation, where he basks in the people's affection and cheers. He is poised to bleed out in front of the throne, he was crying and fighting for his life not to take the crown just minutes before. But now he's here and they love him and he can't help but love that.

He takes the crown to protect his family (the show does hint at that with Alicent telling him as much in ep. 6– in the book it's much more explicit with Criston pressuring him on the day of the coronation itself) and then his son DIES because of it! And he drinks and rages and drinks some more; he must've blamed himself. He goes to battle, flies too high (figuratively), and he FALLS; he burns and falls to the ground. He isn't made to be king. He knows. He does it anyways.

"You have already written yourself into legend, you survived dragonfire" – Larys Strong in season 2 (probably)

He survives, he is gone for over a year, unable to do anything but he SURVIVES. He escapes the capital, takes Dragonstone, he falls AGAIN, he loses most of his family; but he still goes on. Fueled by what? Maybe anger, or bitterness or just pure lust for revenge. It doesn't matter. He must've realized somewhere on the way that this was always meant to go this way, ever since he put the conqueror's crown on. It doesn't matter.

And then he dies and it's not grand or spectacular or anything like that. He drinks poisoned wine, nobody even sees him die, they only find him after. It's so uniquely lonely.

[purplink8]

Hate hate HATE what the anime did to the way Sayu's kidnapping was handled (specifically by Light). The anime just wants to show how utterly devoid of love anime!Light (coz no manga!Light would never seriously consider killing Sayu oh my god) is even towards his family at the face of his Kira goals.

Contrary to the manga (which i prefer who would've guessed) in which Light is shown very genuinely caring for his family! And you know just who wanted to save Sayu more? Or who was more active in saving her between Light & Soichiro?

It was Light (at least manga!Light coz idk what the hell was going on in anime!Light's mind during that episode). Yeah, I know. It might be surprising to those who haven't read the manga but this protective brother of Sayu's? Cares for her deeply.

And the anime just had to fuck that up, hadn't it? 🤦🏻‍♀️

I hate episode 28 (titled 'Impatience') of the anime with a burning passion. So much so that I'll compare it with how the plot ACTUALLY transpires in the Manga.

This post is...long: I've tried my hardest to not go overboard with my negative(?) rant against the anime but it was an impossible task imo /o\

If any of the points mentioned in this post are good, they are due to tumblr user casuistor's post which I read on a regular basis. (Go check it out!! It's much much better than anything I could've written in my whole life. Yes, I'm a fan :)

If there are any mistakes, it would be entirely correct to attribute them to me.

I admit I hadn't paid much attention to the manga the first time I had read it but holy shit even then I had picked up on how close the Yagami siblings were!

I couldn't make much sense of the plot of the 2nd arc (I wasn't completely over L's death so forgive me for being in a daze) and yet I was absolutely sure of the fact that Light had done everything in his power to save Sayu. Even if you were not following the plot closely, you'd still understand that fact (which the anime did much worse than deliberately ignoring it). Why?

Because Ryuk kindly summarizes the plot/points this out:

Honestly, I don't even need to go on at this point now, do I? Ryuk, who never fails to call out Light (for example, saying that Light will be the only bad guy left if he kills every 'bad' guy out there in chapter 1), has just confirmed what thoughtful manga readers already knew: Light has a soft spot for his sister.

I'm still petty at the anime so I won't stop at this point. I'll first explain how it goes in the manga, then how the anime butchered it. Let's gooo!

To understand the circumstances surrounding Sayu's kidnapping, we need to note that the NPA director Takimura is kidnapped by Mello first for the exchange of the notebook. Soichiro notifies every bureau of the NPA. And Light, of course, doesn't hesitate for a minute to kill Takimura (obviously, the priority of Death Note >>> the life of Takimura, to Light).

This is supposed to happen behind the scenes in the manga compared to the anime which makes Light killing Takimura much more obvious:

-episode 27: Abduction

Anyways, it's part of Light's plan to let the kidnappers take the fall for Takimura's death (so that Kira won't be blamed for his murder. And since only the kidnappers and the NPA know about the kidnapping: it won't be assumed that Kira has any link to the NPA).

Light seriously doubts that the kidnappers would just drop the issue due to Takimura's death and he's right. Sayu is kidnapped.

Mello is taking full responsibility for Takimura's death just like Light intended him to. However, this time, rather than any person whom Light could've easily disposed of (like Takimura) to avoid letting the notebook fall into the kidnappers' hands, Sayu- the sister for whom Light cares deeply- is kidnapped instead.

Not only that, Mello expects Soichiro to keep this a secret from the rest of the NPA personnel otherwise as he threatens, he'll kill Sayu. Now, we know that during Takimura's kidnapping, rest of the NPA were notified of the fact (Yes, the circumstances are quite different- there wasn't a threat to Takimura's life for letting the others know of his kidnapping), Ide points this out:

Ide is apparently okay with Sayu's death and appeals to (read: pressures) 'duty/justice above my family' side of Soichiro Yagami to send word to every NPA department even if that means Sayu will be killed. And you know what? Soichiro actually agrees to do so!

I would like you to see Light's reaction here, these panels come directly after the above one:

Light wastes no time to completely change his plan to have everyone assume that it was the kidnappers who killed Takimura to -> Kira did it. This was Light's previous plan before Sayu got involved:

"It's part of Light's plan to let the kidnappers take the fall for Takimura's death (so that Kira won't be blamed for his murder. And since only the kidnappers and the NPA know about the kidnapping: it won't be assumed that Kira has any link to the NPA)."

This changing of plans that Light does immediately is actively detrimental to Light's Kira's cause (in other words, disadvantageous to Kira's goals). Look at Light digging a hole for himself just to save his sister:

Light argues to not notify the other NPA departments otherwise Kira would know about the kidnapping and kill Sayu (and they wouldn't get a chance to investigate the kidnappers if Kira kills Sayu before they can negotiate with them). So their best bet is to keep quiet about it so that Kira doesn't know; meanwhile they can, as Ide says, try and catch the culprit while negotiating the exchange.

Back to how this is in no way an advantage to Light (as Kira):

Telling the task force that Kira was behind Takimura's murder whose kidnapping was known only to the NPA personnel suggests that Kira has a link to NPA info and may lead to doubt against those in NPA being Kira (the NPA that Light is now the part of) so obviously not a win for Kira/Light.

Light is in now a very bad position if he needs to kill Sayu in the future to avoid the Note falling to the kidnappers' hands. Because now he can't blame Kira for her death, can he? He is the one who stopped them from sending word to rest of the NPA so Kira has (according to Light) theoretically no way of knowing about the exchange with Sayu situation (unless if Kira were in the task force itself thus narrowing down the list of Kira suspects); ergo Kira won't kill her.

So why the hell is Light okay with these disadvantages instead of his previous, practically/pragmatically (for Kira's cause) better plan? Better yet, why not did he kill Sayu himself without a moment of hesitation like he did with Takimura when he had the chance to do so before suggesting that it was Kira who killed Takimura, the kidnappers could've been framed for Sayu's death? Or just allow notifying the NPA personnel so that they made a move and let the kidnappers do the dirty work?

Because, as Ryuk says, Light has a soft spot for his sister:

Note that: Light doesn't even try to deny it in his thoughts ("...that's not all" anyone?). We're talking about the guy who rationalizes his way out of his feelings, who views emotions as the reason 'why most idiots screw up' and he does NOT DENY THAT HE CARES FOR HIS SISTER.

Also worthy of note is how quickly he decides to tell the task force that Kira killed Takimura. Usually, we get a long wall of text of Light planning his every move. Not in this case. I believe it's because this decision was fueled by emotion rather than reason- the emotion being brotherly love ofc.

["A totally emotional decision is typically very fast. This is because it takes time (at least 0.1 seconds) for the rational cortex to get going. This is the reactive (and largely subconscious) decision-making that you encounter in heated arguments or when faced with immediate danger.

Common emotional decisions may use some logic, but the main driving force is emotion, which either overrides logic or uses a pseudo-logic to support emotional choices (this is extremely common)." (as a bonus have this research by Damasio)]

Once, Light has time to think, he goes 'well even if in the worst case scenario (the kidnappers get the note) I have Misa's eyes so I'm still at an advantage eh...?'

He is, instead of contemplating a way to kill Sayu so that the note is safe, thinking (however briefly) of how it won't be muuuuuuuch of a problem if Mello does gets his hands on the note. Idk about you guys but man that rlly gives us an idea of Light's priorities (Sayu>>>>>>Death Note).

Here's instance #2 demonstrating Light's priorities (when Soichiro asks Light to just save Sayu as the former doesn't care if he loses his life. And Light responds by saying don't be a fool etc etc):

#Sayu matters more than the Death Note

Now we come to the scene which the anime seems to have taken to heart to entirely without the context. When Soichiro goes underground for the exchange, we have Near taunting Light (as L number 2)

This is not Light seriously deciding to kill Sayu (remember when he had the time to think over his decision, killing Sayu was not even an option but handing over the note to Mello was, in the worst case (even if he has Misa's eyes, it doesn't mean the idea is any less ridiculous)).

This is him, so stressed that he's coming up with so rubbish ideas that even he goes 'wtf am i thinking??' Because at this point, killing Sayu would be announcing that Kira is among the task force as only they know of Sayu's kidnapping + her name & face, which is again bad for Kira's cause. And the one responsible for this predicament is Light himself as he was the one who told the task force not to alert the NPA personnel.

If Light really had been meaning to kill Sayu, he had plenty of time & opportunity to do so (without the suspicion falling on him) before suggesting that Kira killed Takimura. Light essentially ran in the opposite direction when he was faced with the perfect chance of killing Sayu (just let the others notify the departments of NPA -> kill Sayu -> Blame Kira for it, foolproof. but he did Not take this route as he Loves his sister) and now when it is absolutely NOT AN OPTION (for obvious reasons) he's thinking it since he's stressed to the point of irrationality.

Yes, he's seen thinking this:

...aaaand he can't bring himself to finish the thought because he knows that he did the opposite since he loves Sayu & Soichiro dearly and couldn't bring himself to kill them.

Also look how concerned Light is over the well-being of Sayu & Soichiro that he calls his dad to ask if they're okay:

I hope at this point you believe me when I say that manga!Light never seriously considers killing Sayu. He loves his sister too much for that.

______________________________________________________________

Now we move on to how the anime (fucked it all up) adapted this. I'm not particularly happy with it (understatement of the year) so I'm gonna rant about how inferior it is compared to the manga. Let's gooo!

The plot goes pretty similarly: Takimura is kidnapped ->Light kills him -> Sayu is kidnapped -> Mello demands them not to notify the NPA personnel lest they kill Sayu.

But the change in episode 27 is that they remove the discussion (mainly Ide pressuring Soichiro) around whether to notify the NPA personnel. Soichiro deciding to send word to all departments of NPA is cut so we don't get to see Light swooping in to protect Sayu.

Still, anime!Light does reveal that it was Kira who killed Takimura. And advises the task force to keep Sayu's kidnapping a secret. However, anime!Ryuk doesn't call anime!Light out on him having a soft spot for his sister (coz as far as the anime is concerned, they really REALLY wanna sell the idea that Light doesn't care for Sayu).

It's a lot harder, therefore, to make sense of anime!Light's motivations in changing his plan from having the kidnappers framed for Takimura's murder to admitting that Kira did it. It appears that it happens just because ???

Like there is no reason in manga!Light doing this apart from saving his sister but anime!Light cannot have any redeeming qualities like loving his family, he needs to be a 100% evil villain!! ...So we have zero explanation for anime!Light's actions.

The exchange between Light & Soichiro re: the whole 'I don't care if I die but please save Sayu' + 'You can't die in front of Sayu no matter what...You must make the right decisions so that both you and Sayu live.' occurs without change. But due to the succeeding added anime-only scenes (which I'll talk about later), this conversation sounds fake from Light's side while it is completely genuine in the manga.

Then the infamous scene (which I hate to death) of anime!Light SERIOUSLY considering to kill Sayu comes:

And Misa overhears him saying that in the bathroom coz why not?? make it worse??? :) :) :)

And anime!Light comes as close as to killing Sayu that he even has his watch opened with the piece of the notebook

...wow such an awful brother being a piece of shit >:(

Wait! Can brotherly affection save the day? Has anime!Light finally realized the error of his ways?

Nope. Anime!Light chooses not to kill Sayu not because he loves her but because it would be self-incriminating to do so. Yeah...what. an. asshole.

Light calling his dad to check up on how him & Sayu are doing is cut from the anime. Instead, take a look at how displeased anime!Light is after Sayu is rescued by sacrificing the notebook.

Damn.

...yeah, this is Not the face of someone who's happy with the way things happened (namely losing the Death Note to Mello in exchange for Sayu's life). It's clear where anime!Light's priorities actually lie (Death Note>>>>Family) He's so angry that he takes out his anger on Misa by slapping the drink she offers, out of her hands:

Oh and these scenes are nowhere in the manga, they're just in the anime to emphasize just how big of a jerk brother anime!Light is.

In conclusion! Manga!Light (who's the only Light that matters really imo) loves his sister, would never seriously consider killing her in contrast to anime!Light who is very ready to say 'Sayonara Sayu Yagami' via murder and would've done so if it wasn't self-incriminating.

As you can see manga!Light is far superior to anime!Light. If you've stuck around to read this post to the end (a) I love you & (b) I hope you have a fantabulous day!! <333

[hypnoneghoul]

Crying in the Rain

WC: 1,3K

Relationship: Raindrop (but its not exactly relationship focused)

Tags: Angst with a happy ending, idk what else, character study?

After his elemental change, Dewdrop felt like he lost all control. He was robbed of himself, of his life and shoved into body and role someone else designed.

Notes: Written for @jazz-bazz's ask that my dumbass deleted by accident. Not as angsty as I wanted it to be and weirdly written so if you think I was high when writing this no I was not... this time. I also shoved a lot of guitar stuff in there because I am myself and this was a gear talk ask sooo...

Read under the cut or on AO3.

The guitar, the Fantomen, was… pretty. It was beautiful, even, Dewdrop has always thought so, when Ifrit played it. 

They made some changes for him, already, though. The pretty knobs with “H” engraved on them were changed to boring, plain silver ones, Dew didn’t know why. No one changed Aether’s knobs.

There was no space for questions, any questions, regarding all this change.

So much has changed. Has been changed.

Rest of the changes that had been inflicted on the instrument was more technical than visual. They probably just wanted Dewdrop’s playing to sound the best way possible, he doubted anyone cared about his comfort. He knew they didn’t, actually.

The strings were too thin, his fingers were shredded already. There were also too many of them, he was tumbling over the fretboard all days long not hitting the right strings, the right frets.

Ifrit was sweet, understanding and patient… not something fire ghouls were accused of being often. But even the sweetest, most understanding, those with the most patience can and will eventually run out of it.

“Droplet, it’s not that fucking hard,” he growled, slamming his hand down onto the strings of a guitar nestled in his lap. His raised voice and awful feedback the instrument let out made Dewdrop flinch.

“‘m sorry,” he whispered as he curled in on himself. As much as the big piece of lacquered wood in his own lap would allow, that is. His now dull and weirdly warm toned hair hid his face and the tears that were dangerously close to rolling down his burning cheeks.

“No, Dew, I’m sorry,” Ifrit sighed, putting a hand on the smaller ghoul’s back. Not so long ago he’d purr at the inhuman warmth but now he didn’t feel a difference. Just some additional weight. “I just, uhm… didn’t sleep well. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lashed out.”

“It’s fine, I know I suck,” Dewdrop mumbled, barely loud enough for the other to hear.

“Dew-”

“No, don’t,” he didn’t snap, he spoke softly quietly. He was no fire ghoul. “It’s fine.”

Ifrit sighed, ran his hands down his face and even opened his mouth to speak again. Dewdrop was no longer there, a hard case for his Fantomen left empty on the floor.

They made Dewdrop’s guitar even heavier.

A few simple modifications didn’t make much difference for him, he couldn’t lie and say they didn’t make it sound better.

But they made it heavier.

It originally weighted more than his bass already and they made it heavier.

Dew wanted to cry. He did cry. He was so out of control, he sucked at guitar and he sucked at being a ghoul and he hoped he sucked enough to get banished back to the Pit. Because there was no way he’d be able to do this.

To replace Ifrit, to play lead guitar, to be a fire ghoul.

To teach Rain bass.

He stumbled under the weight of the Fantomen again, his vision was clouded with tears, his shoulders were cramped and bruised.

Why was the strap so thin? It didn’t make sense.

But, again, why would anyone care about his comfort? He was just a tool and right now he was a faulty one.

At least he was alone in the practice room. 

No one heard the butchered solos and his sobs. No one saw the blood and his shaking form.

Dewdrop couldn’t touch the bass, even if it wasn’t his. It wasn’t even the same model.

Why was Rain given a choice where he had none?

But it wasn’t the new water ghoul’s fault, he didn’t even know of Dew’s life just before he was summoned. Dewdrop couldn’t be angry at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked him, seemingly out of nowhere. The fire ghoul snapped back to reality, realising Rain had asked a question and was waiting for an answer when Dew was busy staring into the distance at nothing in particular.

Are you okay? Rain has asked. How was he supposed to answer?

“Yeah, sorry, didn’t sleep well,” Dew grumbled. “What was that?”

Rain looked at him like he absolutely did not believe him. Dew wasn’t surprised, “I asked if there’s a slide the second time or just the sixth fret.”

“Just the sixth fret once more, but you can do as many slides as you want, no one will probably notice,” Dewdrop shrugged. Rain nodded and turned back to his bass.

Dew started zoning out again as the water ghoul was going over and over again on the same part of the song. His eyes were fixed on Rain’s strap. A solid piece of leather and he wondered…

“You should get a different strap,” Rain called out from the other side of the practice stage. What?

“What?” Dewdrop turned around and sized the water ghoul. Not in a hostile way, he was just… how did he know?

It was their first actual practice as a band, the rest already filtered out, only the two of them left. How did he know?

“This strap isn’t good for you,” Rain said matter-of-factly, like it was common knowledge. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t have been, he hid it so well, he wasn’t a pussy it was just a stupid strap. “Hurts your shoulder and back.”

“Oh, I- they… they gave me this one with the guitar I don’t-”

“You should take your control back, Dewdrop.”

How did he know?

He changed the strap.

Dewdrop basically broke into one of the storage rooms by the part of the Abbey dedicated to the Ghost project and stole all his old straps he could find. The wide, padded ones with grucifix pins he added himself. They were his.

Nobody but Rain seemed to notice the change on the next rehearsal. Maybe Aether or Mountain would, but they’d probably not realise the… the importance of such a small change.

Rain noticed, and warmth bloomed in Dewdrop’s chest when he smiled and nodded at him.

His shoulders weren’t bruised anymore and his back wasn’t strained.

But there was another thing that was pissing him off and… and Rain had told him to get back control, so…

Dewdrop stole a drilling machine.

He was pissed with the placement of his strap, he didn’t have that much accessibility to the highest frets which were important for lead, for playing solos.

So he stole a drilling machine.

He drilled the hole.

He moved the strap to the side, above the neck instead of where it had been nestled in the back, where the neck met the body. He shoved three toothpicks into the hole the screw left and put a few drops of white nail polish over it to make it as unnoticeable as possible.

Only Rain noticed the change, and warmth bloomed in Dewdrop’s chest when he smiled and nodded at him, again.

Dewdrop regained all control there was to regain when he first kissed Rain.

It was like something snapped inside of him, like a rope that was slowly being cut and burned until only one thread remained, and Rain was the one to snap it. He was who started cutting and burning it in the first place, after all.

One day, years later, Dewdrop crawled out of bed, Rain’s arms and went to the newly anointed Papa’s office. He asked him for a new guitar, a Stratocaster. A few different models, actually, each one with different modifications, customisations.

Because it was going to be his and his only, and no one was going to take away his control again. He let them rob him of years of his life on Earth and he was never going to give up control again. 

He accepted the past. 

Dewdrop was a fire ghoul now, but it was his life, he wasn’t going to waste any more of it and he was his own ghoul.

Well… maybe Rain’s too.

When he took Terzo’s grucifixes off of his straps it was his choice.

In the future, when he’d put stickers on the backs of the guitars, he wouldn’t hesitate.

Not again.

[espinosaurusrexex]

𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠'𝐬 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰

three - I trust you

BuckyBarnes x Female!Reader

summary: Bucky and Y/N talk about all the things that have happened so far. Seems like a serous heart-to-heart was just what she needed to feel at ease. Unfortunately, Westview doesn't work that way...

a/n: woooow two chapter in one week, what can I say I felt generous. I really like this chapter and I hope you do too. Please leave some feedback - reblogging and commenting really helps 💕 Repost because something was wrong with the old post.

!Divider is mine. Please give credit when using!

word count: 5.1k

chapter warnings: fake dating, pining, noisy neighbors, fluff, Bucky is just so sweet and soft, a little angst as well - you know me

✶ 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 | 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 | 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 ☾

When Y/N had woken up that morning, Bucky was already up and about, searching through the house, and to his delight, finding a Harley in the garage that needed a little tinkering. He must have gotten home after she went to bed again, and really, all that lingered on her mind that morning was the burning statement he had left unfinished the night before. She knew better than to bug him about it though. Bucky wasn’t that much of a talker, and he already spoke more with her than he did with strangers, so she didn't want to butcher his comfort. He would talk to her if he really needed to, at least that was what she had hoped as she watched him wash his hands over her bowl of cereal on the kitchen counter.

He didn’t tell her all that much about his late-night adventure and quickly changed the topic to his plans for the day. A lazy day is what he called it, but really, Bucky’s version of laziness was already suburbanized as he suggested exploring the city. Exploring... on a lazy day. That was not what Y/N had in mind when she imagined her housewife lifestyle a week ago. It was crazy to see, however, how easily Bucky adjusted to the newly chosen life in Westview and it didn’t fail to put a smile on Y/N’s face that it did. 

Sure enough, though, the pair had found themselves in the midst of the downtown square about an hour later, exploring as Bucky had suggested. They were walking past some stores, letting a comfortable silence wash over them as they watched the buildings and people passing their way. Y/N was deep in thought though. For some reason, the entire arrival had not gone as she had planned. Well, as much as one could plan something like breaking into a magical town, but as per her expectations, it was... weird. She had imagined this whole thing differently and at the same time not at all different from what it really was. And she knew, of course, that the fantasy of family and the hydrangeas were a farfetched dream - too good to be true almost. But then again, this also was too good to be true, magical in a way she had never expected. Because it felt real. The people made it real - Bucky made it real.

Bucky... that was another worry factor she had had in the back of her mind since the phone call in New York. He seemed okay, but ever since that arm incident, she just knew that he could not possibly be. Y/N knew Bucky was a strong soul. He could deal with change, or at least he could play pretend pretty damn well. That didn’t change the fact that she was worried about him. He was a friend. Who was she kidding? He was more than that, even if those perceptions were one-sided. And sure, Y/N had thought about what could possibly happen now that she had actually done the whole ordeal: she had dreamed about it, talked about it, and now she even had the opportunity to just do it. So what was keeping her from just taking it? Maybe she could just pretend for herself a little while longer. Play the housewives with the incredibly attractive husband, that could do for now.

“Would you like to look through this store?” Y/N stopped in front of a shop that had bold ‘M&B Hardware’ written over the door in bold red letters. as she noticed how Bucky’s gaze twitched at the sight of the store window.

“If you don’t mind.” He smiled shyly. 

An honest smile snuck onto her face as she shook her head no. “Not at all.” The slight tint on Bucky’s cheeks was too adorable to deny. 

When they stepped into the store, Bucky’s eyes lit up like a little kid in the candy store. Y/N was happy to have brought that joy to him. Bucky wasn’t the type to treat himself, ever. Maybe this little shopping spree would help him to see what he deserved: a normal and not troublesome life. He was allowed to engage in his hobbies without worrying about what people thought and here in Westview, he actually had the chance to start over. Nobody knew who he was or what he had done. Nobody cared any more than that nosy neighbor Agnes and maybe, just maybe, Bucky would see that that sense of normal could be found in a magical town with his former coworker. 

Y/N stood between two isles as she watched Bucky weigh some screwdrivers in his hands. His eyebrows creased with the way he carefully analyzed each item he picked from the shelf and when he looked up, he smiled at her. His eyes crinkled at the gesture and there was a sparkle in them Y/N had not seen in a long time. Bucky truly looked like he belonged here. With the way his eyes lit up at every item he spotted and with how visibly comfortable he felt between the motor oil and screws. And even if it was just for a couple minutes, Y/N could see him fitting into this town just right - just how she wished for it to be.

The rest of the trip was unexciting. Y/N had seen an adorable dog in the park and when she had talked to the owner about petting it, it ran away. That had been a little disappointing but it wasn’t half bad. Buck had held her hand when she started to look sad. He had squeezed it reassuringly as he had shot a short smile her way. The world seemed fine then. He didn’t let go until they had reached the house again, and the mere touch of his fingers had sent tingles up and down her spine. The stupid grin on her face did not fade.

They had decided to let the evening play out uneventfully. After supper, Bucky opened a couple beers and settled next to Y/N on the couch. She had her legs crossed on the soft cushions and when the laughter of an 80s sitcom played in the background, Y/N’s mind began to wander again. But she didn’t get far. Bucky nudged her knee with his leg, gaining her attention from the brim of her bottle.

“What are you thinking about, Y/N/N?” The smile on his face was sincere, the crinkles in his eyes fading into his skin when he turned his head toward her.

And after debating for a second, in which an unbearable silence overtook the air, Y/N decided to speak. “You’re okay, right?” She reassured herself. Though Bucky had gotten awfully quiet just then. He looked at his bottle as well, his jaw flexing and the muscles jumping beneath his skin. 

“Bucky, you’re okay, right?” His silence was making her nervous and the previous serenity of the moment gradually faded into the distance. 

“I’m not just talking about the...” She trailed off. Mentioning the arm would probably ruin everything right about now. Y/N took a deep breath to collect herself. Thinking back at the whole situation. It was silly, really, thinking about the issues she had to deal with. Other people had car accidents and debt. She just happened to be freaked out by the details of the perfect life she had entered willingly.

“You know what, forget it. I’m just a little freaked out by the whole situation.” Y/N took a swig from her bottle to fill the silence. Bucky just nodded. He didn’t talk, though. He waited, his hand clutched to the bottle and eyes solid on the screen. Y/N knew he listened for her every breath though. The noise of the TV had probably faded into the background for him just as much as it had for her. If she really thought about it, the life she had imagined wasn’t too different from what it was now. She just never thought further than the house and the family. She didn’t think about lazy movie nights and family crisis meetings. She had thought about hydrangeas and company cars. Superficial things, visible to neighbors who had to be impressed as the outsider viewers which Y/N just realized to be in her very own fantasy. 

“It’s weird because in a way it’s as if someone has crafted it out of my mind but at the same time, it’s not like it at all.”

“It’s the details,” Bucky whispered. And Y/N was so surprised by his decision to answer that she didn't comprehend his words.

“What?”

“It’s the people, the accents, the smells, the feelings...” He looked up at her. Y/N wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that but in a way, it made a whole lot more sense than what she had come up with. 

“The details...” She repeated before looking back at him.

“What was the first one you noticed?” Bucky’s eyebrow cocked in confusion. “The first weird thing, I mean.”

He nodded again. 

“The sign.”

“The sign.”

A slight chuckle escaped the pair at the unison. 

“Yeah, that should have been the first red flag.” Bucky wiped the beer from his lips as Y/N leaned back into the couch, relieved at the fading tension of the atmosphere. 

“It’s the house, too.” Her hand motioned around her. “It’s almost too pretty. As though it should not really exist.” 

Bucky agreed with a grumble. “I really like the blue.”

That was another thing. The blue, it was so pretty and Y/N couldn’t place what she connected it with. It was a calming color and along with the white window sills and picket fence it literally looked like a children’s toy, but there was a weird familiarity stuck between the paint particles. 

“What else?”

“Huh?”

“What else did you imagine?” He asked with intrigue, his body shifted a little so it was turned to hers.

The images of her daydream flashed in Y/N’s mind again: The husband, the hydrangeas, the gray company car, the kids. There weren’t a lot of things she could tell him without sounding creepy seeing as most of those things actually came true. And even though a majority of the fantasy had found reality in Westview, there was one thing her heart pulled towards. Y/N wasn’t sure if she should guide the conversation back to seriousness again, but something in Bucky’s presence pushed comfort and safety into the room. He was a safe space, and really, what Y/N needed right now was just that: somewhere to be comfortable.

“Oh, it’s stupid...” She waved off, still tampering with the decision of trading the happy atmosphere for an unknown reaction. 

“We’re living in a magical town. I doubt there’s anything that’s not possible.” His thigh nudged hers again.

She knew Bucky wouldn’t be mean about it. But he would be sorry. People always felt sorry, they couldn’t help it. Something had been taken from her without permission, and if Y/N were entirely honest, if she still had the thing that had been ripped from her, she probably wouldn’t necessarily want it.

“Kids. I imagined kids.” Yup. Kids. The only thing that made a woman useful in this shit-ass society she called hers. That’s why people felt sorry. Oh, you can’t have kids, you can’t be a mom, you can’t be a woman. But that wasn’t true. And Y/N knew that. She wouldn’t want kids now anyway. Her life had no space or safety for them. If it had started differently, then maybe. If she had grown up with a normal family, in a normal house, surrounded by normal people with normal jobs, she might have wanted kids. But that possibility had been taken from her when she was ten and left her with barely any recollection of that normal life she had longed for. It wasn’t a priority and it probably never would have been. She was happy where she was now - with the people she had now, and the life she lived.

“That’s not stupid,” Bucky reassured.

“It is. It’s a silly fantasy. I can’t have kids... the red room... it-” Her lung stopped breathing for a second, awaiting the impeding empathy and dreading it simultaneously.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Silence. That was all Bucky gave her. At least it was better than ‘I’m sorry.’ Because, really, what were people even sorry for? They didn’t have anything to do with the fact that it happened. They did, however, pushed the narrative that her worth depended on it. So ‘Oh’ was totally fine by Y/N - as long as it wasn’t an apology.

“I’m not disappointed. I’m actually quite glad that this is a worry factor we got spared.”

Bucky just nodded with furrowed brows. His foot tapped nervously on the carpet beneath the sofa as he awkwardly rubbed his hands over his thighs.

“What about you?” Y/N asked, semi hoping to not make him any more uncomfortable with that question. But it really intrigued her and if the topic was already laid out, why not pull through with it?

“What about me?”

“Do you want kids?” It suddenly felt really daring to ask that question. As though she was pushing him for an answer she wanted to hear. But Y/N didn’t want him to say ‘no’ to make her feel better, she wanted to get to know him better.

“Old me did.” A smile broke through his frozen features, his eyes staring at the ceiling as if remembering other times - better times. Then he shook his head, the smile never faltered, though. “But new me barely manages himself.”

His eyes met hers again and Y/N took that opportunity to reassure him. “You seem better though.” She smiled sadly, her mind wandering to a younger version of Bucky that ran through the backyard with a child on his shoulders, hanging on to his suspenders for deer life. Y/N always sulked in her own depression concerning her infertility and never considered that Bucky had been stripped off that opportunity as well. Not in the same way of course, but possibly a similarly horrible one. Just as much as Y/N’s body couldn’t promise children to her, Bucky’s mind had the same impact on him. And it pained her to have gained that knowledge.

“I am better.” His motions suggested that there was an explanation to follow, but his mouth stayed silent. 

There it was again: the silence. But it wasn’t awkward or tense this time. It was okay - right where it should be and actually welcome to stay. They both shifted their attention back to the TV screen which had just started showing an episode of ALF. Bucky probably had no clue what was going on, but Y/N quite enjoyed the way his expressions changed in heartfelt laughter at the theme sequence.

“Bucky?” She spoke silently, careful not to destroy the harmony that had settled between them again.

Bucky's eyes remained on the TV. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re here with me.” His gaze shifted back to her and after a second the smile found its way back to his face. 

“Me, too.” Y/N had to suppress the giddiness bubbling in her chest. She took another sip of her beer and let the distant dialogues consume her thoughts.

After about twenty minutes - the pair had finished dither drinks well before that - the end credits rolled across the screen and Y/N could hide the yawn waiting in her throat anymore.

“I think, I’m gonna go to bed.” She informed him and stood up. Bucky scrambled the bottles from the coffee table after he nodded in agreement. When she was about to head upstairs, he stopped her, though.

“Promise me something, Y/N?” A faint shock went through her fingers at his touch, and when her eyes met his after shifting from their connected hands, there was a sincerity settling within the exchange. 

“Anything,” she whispered back, hanging onto his words like a lifeline. This moment seemed far more intimate than it should have. But she’d never been this close to Bucky - holding hands, making promises that went beyond the instructions shouted over battlefields.

“Please talk to me the second you feel uneasy. I know this is all scary and weird, but I want you to know that we’re in this together.” A squeeze followed his words and the tremor in his voice almost made her eyes water. 

“Only if you’ll do the same.”

“Of course.” He paused. Then he laid his other hand on top of hers. “I trust you.”

Y/N copied his action. “And I trust you.”

A last short smile was exchanged between the two and when Bucky retracted his hands and let Y/N make her way to the bedroom he caught her eyes one last time, watching as she turned and looked back at him from the bottom of the staircase. 

When Y/N lay in bed that night, she just stared at the ceiling, her gaze shifting to the door from time to time, secretly hoping that Bucky would come in again. The situation she was in felt awful when she was alone. Westview wasn’t necessarily the problem, and the days seemed to mask the all-consuming thought that crept their way up to her head at night. Bucky made it better too. But the town seemed to point out everything she could actually never have and made it come true at the same time. As if it was mocking her. The conversation with Bucky that night just confirmed this feeling. Thinking about the situation, This story probably sounded like the beginning of a really bad joke: There are these two people that go to a magical place to have all their wishes come true. Something was ought to happen, right? Even if it was for a stupid punchline. And the dread of the shoe dropping made her heart tighten. 

Y/N tried to distract herself from the misery she slipped into. The evening had been so nice - serene and a glimpse of the life she had always wished for. Getting to experience it with Bucky just added to the pleasure of that fantasy. And with that, Y/N allowed herself to dream a little further. Just for a while, not too much to spoil her reality but enough to distract her for the night. 

She imagined buck getting out of that company car as the sun began to slowly set on the horizon. Or maybe he would be riding his motorcycle. He’d have a bag from her favorite bakery in his hand and he would walk across the lawn straight to her, where she would be planting hydrangeas. Blue, maybe. Just like his eyes. Those beautiful beautiful ocean eyes that consumed her with their magic every time she looked at them. Then he’d kiss her, deep and passionate and so so full of love.

A single tear slipped from her eyes as she closed them, her check buried in the soft pillow on her bed. Ocean blue like the house she was living in...

It was a bright and warm Sunday on Sherwood Drive. Kids were riding their bikes into silver trashcans, dogs barked in the yards of neighboring family homes and the smell of barbecue lingered in the air. Bucky had decided to clean the pool and as Y/N was standing outside by the living room window, watering the plants, she couldn’t help but stare at the overly eye-catching scene unfolding in front of her.

After her sad crying session a couple nights ago, Y/N had decided to focus on the things she could enjoy instead. And... well, that took an unexpected turn as Bucky was pretty much the closest thing she could enjoy that just happened to be incredibly enticing too. The striped shirt adorning his shoulders stretched with every move of his arms, where strong muscles rippled his skin, glistening in the sunlight from the thin sheen of sweat. Y/N had to stop herself from overwatering the flowers to her left every few minutes, and that job proved to be harder than it should have been. Another grunt rumbled from the man in her garden when a leaf slipped from his landing net again. Next flower, Y/N. 

Her focus shifted back to the greenery as she felt the need to shower in the hose water to cool down a bit. Jesus Christ.

“Sweetie, your husband is a sight for sore eyes. Where do I get one of these?” Agnes suddenly stood beside Y/N as if she had appeared through magic. A bright smile on her face - as always - and a humongous sun hat on her head.

Y/N was startled by her neighbor’s sudden appearance, but she tried to keep her face relaxed. “We uh... we met at work.” Focusing on the immensely ugly sunhat seemed like the best option for now.

“Now isn’t that just so lovely?!” Agnes sighed dramatically and then she held a glass of Lemonade up to Y/N with the accompanied question: “Lemonade?” 

Y/N took the refreshment gladly. Sipping on it, they watched as Bucky balanced around the pool, fishing through the water. He was wearing light blue swimming trunks and a short sleeve button-up that had been partly unbuttoned, showing his sweat-glistening chest through the opening as the sun reflected on his skin. He looked hot, with his sunglasses lazily hanging from the shirt pocket, revealing just that much more skin to leave about nothing to the imagination of what was hiding underneath the material.

“He really is a dream,” Y/N muttered against the sticky beverage as she scolded herself for letting her mind wander again. This here was just temporary until they had figured out what to do about their situation, she reminded herself. But Y/N’s heart stung at the thought of it. ‘Where was the harm in enjoying the little fairytale life of a lie that had established ever since stepping into Westview,’ it told her, even though it knew how bad she already had it in for Bucky.

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that. My Ralph wouldn’t even dare go near a gym.” She lowered her glasses and eyed Bucky with raised brows.

There was a strange feeling spreading in Y/N’s chest at that. Yes, Bucky was very nice to look at, but knowing that other people saw it that way too, had a wave of jealousy plash onto shore. Y/N had no right to feel that way, though. Bucky wasn’t hers, even if Agnes thought he was, and even if Y/N wished for it to be the same. 

“Oh well, anyways! I don’t wanna bother you I just wanted to ask how you keep your hydrangeas so healthy. Your garden is the most beautiful on the street.”

Y/N’s eyes wandered around to the fence, where a pretty array of bright blue flowers stood proud to the sun. Hydrangeas, holy shit. 

“Ha, wouldn’t you like to know...” She laughed nervously, “I guess I just have a green thumb.” Shaking her head smiling, Y/N watched as Agnes laughed with her.

“Okay then, keep your secrets,” she joked, “but you’re not leaving this town until I know what you’re doing.” 

Y/N gulped nervously. She was joking... right? 

“Have a nice day, Y/N.” Agnes walked backward and pushed her sunglasses up to her nose again. Then she adjusted her hat and it was a flirty ‘bye Bucky,’ she finally turned around and left the garden. Bucky had just waved with a bright smile and the accompanied nod. And even though he had looked incredibly attractive doing so, with his bicep flexing in the wave motion, Y/N couldn’t keep her focus on him.

She was staring at the flowers again. The bright blue spot in the beautiful green of the garden that mixed with red and orange marigolds. Y/N walked across the lawn, straight to the blue greenery placed by the fence in neat spacing. She watched them with her arms crossed before her chest. The hydrangeas were perfect: not one petal out of place, not one flower wilted, not even one leaf snacked on by a bug.

There was something unsettling about the flawlessness presented before her. And then the fact that it was portrayed in the form of hydrangeas seemed like an invasion of privacy. These damn flowers were part of her dream. Hers. And they were just sitting there, perfect, even if her situation seemed far from it.

“Whatcha looking at?” Bucky appeared next to her, taking the glass of Lemonade out of her hand and chugging it. He smelled of sunscreen and Y/N would have probably bitten back a smirk at the thought of the Winter Soldier wearing sun protect spray, but her mind was occupied by the deep blue flowers mocking her from beneath.

“Hydrangeas,” she said steadily, her gaze fixated on the plants.

His eyes wandered from her profile to the flowers as well. From afar they must have looked like two hyper-engaged gardeners who were discussing their next big project, and again, Y/N would have probably laughed about the people they portrayed, but there was no space for that. 

“They’re pretty.” He nodded.

“Yeah...” Too pretty. It was distressing how picture-perfect her yard was. She hadn’t even appreciated it properly when they 'moved in’. The grass was freshly cut, green without a spot of brown. The fence was white and even, the flowers placed with precision in neatly kept beds, and the butterflies landing on them were colorful. Everything added to the picturesque landscape and made the whole town look like a movie set. Agnes had beautiful purple flowers, too. She didn’t seem in need of help in the garden department and she had definitely come to the wrong person if it were that way. Even if ‘The Barnes’s garden didn’t look like it, Y/N had never kept a plant for longer than a month. They always died of too much water or too little sunlight. This here in front of her, was definitely Wanda.

Y/N wrung her hands beneath the dinner table as she sat across Bucky in the Tiffany lamplight. Her nerves ran a mile a minute as she watched Bucky eat the dinner she had prepared with the cookbook she had found in one of the kitchen cabinets.

“So when Agnes came by today...” Bucky watched carefully as he cut his steak on the blue-rimmed plate. “She kinda mentioned something that made me think...”

Y/N took a sip of her water as she struggled to disguise the sheepish smile spreading on her cheeks at the thought, her head grew hot when Bucky put his cutlery to the side, his head slightly tilted.

“She... uhm... Are we-” It seemed foolish to be this embarrassed about a lie like that. A lie she hadn’t even invented herself. She had simply played along to uphold her cover - their cover. She didn’t know how to tell him, because she had no way of knowing how Bucky would react. So she attempted another sentence that she in turn struggled to find the words for again. Bucky just listened to her, his focus completely on her, which didn’t really make it easier. Why could he not just tell her that she should spill it already? That would’ve helped.

“Agnes thinks that...” His head tipped forward as though he was trying to understand her better, but there were no words to hear. His blue eyes twinkled in the warm dining room light as he blinked slowly. “She thinks we’re married.” 

It took all of Y/N’s power to finally say it, and after she took a deep breath and opened her eyes again, she found Bucky smiling over the table. His hands had retread beneath the glass surface and she could see him tapping on his fingers beneath the table set.

“Say something,” she whispered, unable to pin his reaction.

A beat of silence filled the room until he looked up, a slight undertone in his voice. “Is that a bad thing?” 

Was this a test? Of course, it wasn’t a bad thing. Y/N had literally thought about it since before they even came here but hearing it from Agnes had made that dream tangible - like an actual thing that could be broken other than a dream that no one could touch.

“I didn’t want to make it weird.” Y/N cringed at that. Because by not denying the relationship she had made it weird. Bucky just chuckled and Y/N couldn’t believe how little panic was placed on his face. She knew this was an unusual situation: When were you ever able to choose the way you would be perceived? But really, Bucky didn’t seem as though his entire image would be dependent on this decision.

“I think it’s smart to align our stories...”

A hush of pink tainted his cheeks. “Are you sure?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean do you really want to treat this as an undercover mission? This is supposed to be an escape. Real life, not another job.”

“But-“

“I really don’t think that’s necessary, Y/N.” She looked at him in disbelief. “Because I feel like people don’t see that there is a bunch of weird shit happening in this town.” That was true. Agnes had not so much as mentioned the magical sign on the lawn and she had treated Y/N’s flowers as if she had been the one planting them.

“Let’s just be married for now,” he said and picked up his fork again. “We’ll figure out the rest along the way.” A weird sense of excitement arose in Y/N’s chest. 

“We met at work.”

“What?”

“I said we met at work.” 

Bucky just smiled at her and then his gaze retreated to his plate. He didn’t eat, though. He just stared down at the food as he seemed to contemplate what had just been said. He almost looked nervous, though that was a rare thing to connect to Bucky, and Y/N almost scolded herself for thinking it. Maybe this was a stupid idea after all. Or maybe Bucky just needed a little more time to figure out what he wanted. Y/N would give it to him. She’d give it all just to hold on to that sliver of a dream in the back of her mind.

𝒏𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓

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[solcorvidae]

Dear Fellow Traveller (But Tonight, I Still Dream Of You)

-3,022 words-

Warnings: Major Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence Other Tags/Warnings: Blood and Torture, Burns, Vomiting, Delirium, Asphyxiation, Hallucinations, Post-Mountain Fic, Burn Butcher Burn And Its Consequences, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort

Time and time again, Jaskier cried out for Geralt, begging the universe to tell him he needed help, dreaming about how the witcher would tear down the door and kill the mage that did this to him, how Geralt would cradle Jaskier's limp body and look down on him with sorrow, his golden eyes stinging as Jaskier's distant gaze met his own; maybe he would finally get an apology. Maybe Jaskier would forgive him. Hell, there's nothing in this damned world that would stop Jaskier from crawling his way back to the man who he, oh so, burdened with his presence. Some nights, Jaskier wondered if it was destiny. Maybe he was born to be broken. Maybe Jaskier's life's purpose was to relentlessly forgive everyone who had ever wronged him, no matter how horrendous the deed. Most of all, perhaps, he was destined to become a travelling troubadour in all versions of himself, all lifetimes converging into this single rotten truth. Of all lives he could have led, the only oneness between them was that he would meet Geralt of Rivia, the Butcher of Blaviken... his White Wolf. Truth be told, if it wasn't for Geralt, Jaskier wouldn't have ever endured such pain. If it wasn't for Geralt, Jaskier would be some nobody performer playing at backwater inns, making less than his worth in crowns and peddling for coin with his esteemed education, refusing to return to the courts of Lettenhove. If it wasn't for Geralt, Jaskier wouldn't know what trust and companionship are. If it wasn't for Geralt, Jaskier wouldn't be Jaskier; he wouldn't have written Toss a Coin, he wouldn't have travelled the Path, and Jaskier wouldn't have ever met half the people he presently knew and loved. But Jaskier would always forgive him, always run back to him, and always allow him an indefinite number of chances because Geralt was the defining feature in Jaskier's life; Geralt was his constant, his consistency. For all of Jaskier's adult life, it has always been Geralt. Jaskier's eyes were glassy and distant, almost indifferent to the crunch of bone and the searing pain in his head as his neck once again whipped to the side. He could no longer make out the words the mage had been saying. His head spun, and a rush filled his ears. Blood poured from his nose, filling his sinuses with the acrid stench of his own blood. It dribbled over his open lips and down his chin, spattering onto his already filth-ridden clothes as he panted labourously. With every intake of breath, Jaskier could feel his chest and throat gurgle and bubble. Where was he?

Continue Reading on AO3...

[hale-of-stiles-heart]

very short but i had some Thoughts and essentially used this ficlet to hate on the song from season 2 (which I still have yet to actually watch) tagging @roughentumble ​ of course! also on ao3 here!

Jaskier calls him Butcher now.

Geralt learns it sitting in a shitty overcrowded tavern on the outskirts of southern Kaedwen, a usurped princess sat across from him, picking at a rabbit pie with her hood drawn up. She has no explanation for the way Geralt suddenly stiffens at the sound of the word. He hasn’t heard it in years, over a decade. Not like this, anyhow. Not directed at him like the most hateful of curses.

It’s not Jaskier singing in the tavern. A small mercy, Geralt supposes, not entirely certain he could withstand it if it was. But the bard performing is singing words Jaskier had written. Geralt had traveled with him long enough to immediately recognize his work even when performed by another. The meter, the diction, the rhythm, all of it the style of Jaskier the Bard. Geralt's stomach turns.

Gone are all the other words Jaskier had once called him. White Wolf. Witcher dear. Darling. Friend.

Gone in a moment, now a year passed, like smoke from a puff of dragon fire, whisked away by the wind.

Once, Jaskier had singlehandedly rebuilt Geralt’s reputation from naught but ash and blood. He had woven a tapestry with his songs, transforming Geralt from a boogieman to an almost mythic figure, besting nigh unbeatable foes in his service as a friend to humanity. Striga and kikimore and hordes of griffins, vanquished and slain, always with a grain of truth at the core of his tales despite the poetic license he used for the details.

His songs, epics and ballads and odes, had earned Geralt coin and acknowledgment where there had only been blind scorn and cruel whispers that haunted him like the ghosts of Blaviken. And now with one song, one damned word, it was gone. The pedestal Jaskier had built him was now a funeral pyre, set alight with his words.

It doesn’t take long for him to feel the flames licking at him. From the suddenly spiteful look the waitress casts his way to the innkeeper charging double the previously agreed upon price for a room and the alderman only paying half the promised reward for a contract.

The trek north will be even more arduous now. For both him and Ciri. Contracts are already growing fewer and far between with winter approaching, already a  bone-deep chill lingering in the air. Even his brothers might be less welcoming once the song reaches their ears. All because of a single word.

Jaskier calls him Butcher now. All Geralt can do is ache. It feels quite a lot like burning.

[my-jokes-are-my-armour]

No word that I've written will ring quite as true as "burn!"

Burn Butcher Burn is in my top list of favorite songs from The Witcher, because of the meaning, the passion, and the storytelling. 

When I first watched that scene, I was like 😃🥰 because Jaskier was back and then 😳🥺 because this was a goddamn heartbreak song. And then, there is the alternate scene of the song with Rience's point of view before he kidnapped our dear bard and… burned him. And I was like : "wait a second".

Apart from the scene itself (that still makes my heart ache, months later), I was shocked by the level of storytelling it holds. I mean, on screen, the song scene is just 1min20 long, and it gave us: the emotional state of Jaskier, his current fame in comparison of his first introduction in season 1, and foreshadowing. 

Yeah yeah, foreshadowing.

We don't have the alternative Burn Butcher Burn scene with Rience for nothing. Yes it was to make us understand he was in the room but that was way too long for just giving us that information. We have the entire last verse and in the end, the camera focuses on Rience when Jaskier finishes with all the "burns" and the sad "watch me burn all the memories of you".

The version in the former verse is even more accurate: "watch me laugh as I burn all the memories of you"

Because this is what happens… quite literally. It applies so well to Rience and what he is going to do.

Because Rience wants to know what Jaskier knows about Geralt, his memories in a way. And Jaskier gave us the key to understand what was going to happen because all the song is about burn -  so many burns. 

And...

No word that I've written will ring quite as true as "burn!"...

The song hurts even more when you think about it.

Jaskier is heartbroken because of Geralt. He wants to forget him in response to that. But he is famous because he sang the White Wolf for so long and presumably he continues to sing about him. He has a 22 years repertoire on the subject. He can't forget him because it's his life and his heart is beating for him. 

And then, there is this psychotic fire mage torturing him especially to know about the thing that is already hurting him the most. Trying to burn out his knowledge about Geralt.

His look when he says that Geralt has no friend... For 22 years he tried… and was never acknowledged as such. It's hurting him so bad just to say it out loud. He is burning for him, figuratively and literally.

Oh god everything hurts now… 🥺😭

[samspenandsword]

Kinktober 2022/23 Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Summary: Kinktober Day 12 — Hate/Angry Sex with Maul Pairing: Maul/Reader; fem!reader with no mentions of her appearance. Rating: Explicit, 18+ (Younglings, foundlings, and cadets BEGONE!) Warnings: Explicit sexual content, smut; hate/angry sex, unprotected PIV (PRACTICE SAFE SEX), rough sex, cockwarming, inappropriate use of the Force, breathplay, pain kink, biting kink, mild blood kink, Mandalorian!reader, spy!reader, toxic relationship, I have never written angry/hate sex before so do with that knowledge what you will, language. Word Count: 2.2k

Sam's Pen and Sword Kinktober 2023 Taglist Form

Maker, you hated him. A shabuir of the absolute worst kind, he was unforgiving, murderous, singular-minded, self-serving, obsessive, angry, scary. He was a murderer, and you could not wait to help drag him to the pits where he fucking belonged. 

He’d stolen your sovereignty. Alienated your people. Butchered your honor and Creed. Assassinated your noble, albeit misguided, but still well-meaning duchess. Plunged your world into the worst kind of occupation and war. 

This hadn’t been what you’d wanted. You’d joined the Death Watch to restore the ancient ways to your people. To try and get the duchess to see that the two ways — pacifist and warrior — could coincide. The people who wanted to swear the Creed and wear the armor could, and help fight for and protect those who wished to live in peace. Pre Vizsla had seemed to share that vision. At first. But as time stretched, you began to see him for what he was. 

A madman. 

But you were in too deep to back out, lest you lose your people and your Creed.

So you decided to observe. To watch. To bide your time. Your people would realize the truth.

But then the unthinkable happened. Maul had murdered Vizsla and taken the Darksaber. And your people, so blinded by their need to reinstate the ancient ways, followed it. Despite it falling into the hands of someone who never swore the Creed and wore no beskar. 

The death of Satine Kryze had been the final straw for you, watching with stunned fury as she fell dead at the murderer’s feet. You hadn’t agreed with the woman and her way of rule, but all she had wanted was to do right by your people.

You had never wished for her death.

When an opportunity arose to infiltrate Maul’s regime from the inside, you took it. Everything you learned was relayed back to Bo-Katan, and you became a spy against the most dangerous being you’d ever met.

You hated Maul. You hated everything he stood for — power, control, domination. You were angry at how he continued to let your people suffer and lorded over your planet like he had a right to it. You were incensed at how your people had so lost their way that they willingly followed him. 

He sensed your anger.

“A fire burns in you,” he’d said. It was the first time he’d spoken to you directly. His golden gaze had fire in them as well.

“A fire burns in all who would call themselves Mandalorian,” you’d said.

“You don’t like me,” he’d observed.

Your heart pounded, but you’d prepared for this. Forcer-users had an infuriating habit of invading the thoughts of those surrounding them. Sith and Jedi alike. 

“I don’t have to agree with you, or even like you, to serve you, my Lord.”

He hummed. 

“And what is it that you don’t agree with?”

His eyes pierced into you, his posture as languid and lean as a cat. It was a dangerous posture, and you knew Maul was a capable warrior. He had to be to do the things he’d done. But you got the impression he was genuinely curious.

“Killing the duchess made her a martyr to the ones who would support her, including the Jedi. Not to mention it alienated Bo-Katan and her followers, splitting our numbers more than they already were. Mandalorians have always been stronger together.”

He studied you, the gleam in his lava eyes unreadable. “Why not join Kryze, if you disagree with my killing the duchess?”

You’d prepared for this too. And you spat your answer with a very real anger.

“Because she would’ve killed her sister had you not done it first. And I would never follow a hut’uun who would kill her own, Mandalore-born blood. I would follow you before I ever followed her.”

Maul’s eyes shone with something, again, you could not quite identify. His hands, clasped behind his back, remained there as he turned slightly to face you more fully.

“I think we’ll work well together.”

His voice was a purr. And you hated how it made your thighs clench. And you hated how your eyes watched him as he walked away, unfairly graceful and fucking hot.

It made your blood boil from more than anger.

You suddenly found yourself as one of Maul’s advisors, an ear to his monologues of grandeur and power, long and poetic. He spoke of the dark side of the Force, and his old master, his desire for revenge and how your people would help him achieve it.

You listened. You responded when necessary. Your blood still boiled in his presence.

He smirked every time he sensed it. Because he knew what it meant.

He sensed the clenching of your core, and the heat in your veins. He saw the tension in your posture as he circled you like prey, and took amusement in seeing how far he could push before you bit back. He relished the way you tried not to shiver as he leaned to whisper witty commentary in your ear the rare times you removed your helmet. He delighted in sensing the conflicted fire in you, and pushing you until you snapped.

And you did, snarling at his antics and games until he pinned you and took you roughly against the floor of the throne room. 

Your beskar covered the bites and bruises he left. It guarded you when his gaze grew heated and knowing. But despite that, it bore his colors, and your skin tingled at the mere thought of his touch. 

Maker, you hated him, and yet you couldn’t shake him.

He’d clawed into your armor and sat in your kar’ta beskar like it was his throne. 

You were impaled upon him, him lounging on his stolen throne like a smug, satisfied loth cat. The smirk on his face infuriated you, and made you disgustingly wet. You dug your nails into the muscles of his back, hot and rippling under your touch.

Your hips were pinned to his, an unseen pressure quite literally keeping you from moving and it was all you could do to not beg, twitch, or even react. It would only give him the satisfaction of knowing he had an effect on you.

Not that he already didn’t know, but still.

Another invisible, firm, searing pressure pressed to your clit, devastatingly precise. You choked on your gasp, nails digging painfully into Maul’s back.

His smirk widened. 

“I can feel your need.”

His voice was a purr that wreaked havoc on you, and he suddenly, powerfully, yanked you even tighter to his front. You couldn’t swallow your moan this time, and he nibbled on your jaw.

You brought your hand to his scalp, fingers curling around his horns in a way you’d discovered made him lose a bit of that irritating smugness.

But instead he leaned into the rough touch, and it made your heart skip, your cheeks flush, your breath hitch.

He nipped the plush of your lips. 

And invisible hands raised you up, sliding your slick and squeezing walls to the very tip of his cock, and slammed you back down.

With each slam of his cock into you, you choked around moans and screams. His length was impressive, if artificial, and everything about him felt so hot and real. You could practically feel him in your throat, heavy and bulging and thick. 

Or perhaps that was the force pressing against your windpipe, constricting your air just enough to make your head spin.

“Sublime,” came Maul’s voice, velvet in your roaring ears. 

You felt his hands seize you, bruisingly, slamming you down onto him even harder than before.

You could feel the heat, the tightening inside you, having been plateaued for what felt like hours upon him. And now as you fucked yourself upon him, clawed and fought and snarled on top of him, you felt yourself cresting. 

“You’re close,” came his voice. Arrogant and smug.

You squeezed your cunt around him and yanked at his horns. His teeth bared and a guttural growl escaped him. 

“So are you,” you growled back.

You found yourself beneath him in a blink, back pulsing with the pain of slamming into the throne and his cock punching into you. 

You had bruises on the backs of your thighs from the metal of his legs and hips unforgivingly slamming into you, and you hated how good they looked on your skin. Your shoulders had scars of his teeth, skin permanently bearing his mark. You hated how you shivered when he traced them teasingly. Your pussy squeezed and throbbed with pleasure and pain, the feeling lasting well into the days following each tryst. You hated how it made your gait change and widen, and how it became your new norm. You hated the open-chested tunics he wore, showing the intricate, beautiful ink of his heritage. You hated how good your nails left scratches in him. You hated his grin when you yanked his horns, hated how he pushed you to give as good as you got. 

And you hated how he fucked you — painfully, roughly, carnally, exquisitely, completely, ferally. 

Exactly how you liked it.

And he did it in a way no other had. 

The heat of your hate and your anger and your orgasm came to a boil, and as another invisible force once again enclosed around your windpipe, something erupted inside you.

Screaming loud enough to be heard through the palace as you came painfully hard, Maul continued to slam into your convulsing, clenching walls, forcing you open as he claimed your heat and slick and chased his own end. 

He seized it, and bit down on your shoulder as he came. 

He never softened inside you, not really, and him retreating from your abused cunt was always something that made you hiss. Sometimes it made your core tighten with discomfort. Other times, like now, it prolonged the fluttering in your cunt.

You gulped in air, chest heaving, thighs trembling, and your shoulder throbbing and pebbling with blood. It didn’t bother you, and you knew Maul liked the sight. And indeed, his molten eyes were fixed upon your shoulder, looking quite proud of your new mark. 

You quietly huffed with begrudging amusement, closing your eyes and leaning back to catch your breath.

“You look a vision upon my throne,” he said. You popped an eye open, still trying to will strength back into your legs and normalize your breathing.

“Hmm,” you said, “especially when I can’t quite walk right?”

Maul smirked. After all, you’d said it, not him. 

You pushed yourself up, tremors fading as you forced your muscles to engage again. You leaned down to where your beskar had been discarded and began to pull your armor back on.

“I had thought you Mandalorians were always fighting for the throne,” Maul suddenly continued. 

You frowned mildly over at him, confused at the sudden direction of this conversation. He usually dismissed you after your escapades. 

“Part of being a good Mandalorian is thinking of the people as a whole. Knowing what would be best for us. We’d never have survived as long as we have if we were constantly fighting each other for the Darksaber. And we’ve almost lost ourselves to that before.”

Maul draped himself over the throne as you continued to methodically and habitually armor yourself. As you did, you grew more and more comfortable. 

“So you wouldn’t want to rule, despite how good you look on the throne?”

You tossed him a little smile, amused despite yourself. 

“I’ll leave the desire for power to you. You embody it so well.”

He smirked. You returned to your armor. 

“You would really never want to be Mand’alor?”

This made you pause again, and you sent him a searching look. “And challenge you for the Darksaber? Not a chance.”

He smirked again, eyes never leaving your form as you continued to redon your beskar and weapons. 

“I thought you Mandalorians loved a good fight.”

You barked a laugh. “A fight, yes. But I’m not stupid enough to try and beat you in a lightsaber duel. So no, I will not be challenging you for the rule of Mandalore.”

The flattery, which usually amused Maul more than anything, did not garner his usual response of a smirk and tilt of his head. Instead, as you picked up your helmet and looked back at him, you found him looking at you, his face and eyes unreadable. 

Again.

“I wasn’t offering a challenge.”

There was something there. A hidden meaning to his words. A meaning that scared you.

You straightened. “Will there be anything else, my Lord?”

He looked disappointed, but not surprised. He was patient. He would wring a response from you one day. “No.”

You sealed your helmet over your head, strode from the hall, and allowed your expression to contort.

Gritting your teeth and jaw and marching through the palace, your hand drifted to your blaster, twitchy and eager. Target practice would help you relax. It always did.

But as you found yourself in the training halls, your mood and anger darkened.

You hated him. You hated him! You hated how you were attracted to him. You hated that you liked him. 

And you hated that he knew it.

You knew that one day, Maul’s own darkness and evil deeds would lead to his downfall. And when it happened, your kar’ta beskar would once again be yours.

The day could not come soon enough.

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[booknerd28]

Comfort: Part One Azriel x Elain

A/n: Hi!! This is the first fanfic I’ve written and I’ve been reading so damn much of it I was very inspired to write some of my own so here we go! Be nice to me please!! I want to write more of this (and include the most smut and fluff) so its a series now because I got carried away lol

Includes: soft!Azriel discussions of feeling invisible and like nobody knows the real you. mostly fluff and a little bit of Elain angst. Mentions of grief and slight ACOWAR spoilers. He calls her sweetheart and comforts her and it warms my cold dead heart 💃 also I didn’t proof read this so I can guarantee nothing is misspelled but I can’t guarantee the grammar is perfect 🤪 ENJOY!!!

Azriel

Holy shit

I stop dead as I spot Elain standing on the bridge that runs over the Sidra staring down at the river like shes looking for answers she can only find in the sparkling waters. No one is usually up as late as me so when I decided to walk through Velaris I didn’t expect to find anyone especially Elain in the streets. I was walking to stand in the exact spot Elain is standing to be alone and think and was so absorbed by my thoughts I didn’t even notice her standing there until one of my shadows screamed it at me. I debate just turning around and leaving but she looks so sad I can’t bear to turn away and leave her alone.

So I walk up to the bridge and stand next to her trying to think of something to say when she startles at my presence. “Oh! Hello Azriel” she says seeming to snap out of a trance.

I wonder what had her looking so solemn a moment ago what was running through her mind and I debate asking when she again says “I didn’t expect anyone to find me here” she says subdued as if shes saying it more to herself than to me.

I scramble for something to say. Damn it I should’ve walked away I cant comfort her anymore than I can comfort myself which isn’t at all. So I settle on something simple because it was too late to walk away. “Hi Elain, I didn’t either” I stumbled over the words like an absolute idiot.

She looked at me with that shining hair and those gorgeous eyes which were alarmingly red as if she’d been crying rendering me even more speechless than I already was. I open and close my mouth like a dying fish and then quickly look to the lake so hide the flush of embarrassment I could feel rising to my cheeks.

We’re quiet for a long moment after that until she quietly asks “Do you ever feel invisible?” I turn my head to her surprised at the question and I think on it. My entire life I wanted to be invisible welcomed it even because it meant that I was safe but nowadays it felt more like a prison than a comfort so I nodded.

I notice her eyes burning holes into my cheek so I turn my head to look at her to see tears in her eyes. I instinctively opened my arms to her hoping to offer any sort of comfort I could even if I didn’t exactly know what was bothering her so much. She walks into them burying her face in the crook of my neck while I stroke her hair savoring her warm soft skin against me.

I had had a crush on Elain for months but never acted on it because she had enough going on and I didn’t want to push her among other things. Her body starts vibrating with quiet muffled sobs and my heart breaks. I would hunt down whatever or whoever caused her such pain and take my sweet sweet time butchering them/destroying it.

Softly I ask, “Sweetheart, whats wrong?” she doesn’t respond simply tightening her arms around me. “Who do I need to kill?” I asked lightly trying to get her to laugh. Im rewarded with a small huff of breath and then a couple second later she pulls away just enough to look up at me with those gorgeous brown eyes and sighs, resting her head on my chest.

I continue stroking her hair waiting until shes ready to share whats bothering her. “I-I sometimes feel as if…”she shakes her head “never mind” she says pulling away farther. “I don’t want to dump anything onto you” I shake my head pulling her back in needing to hold her for as long as I can “No, please tell me” I plead softly.

She closes her eyes takes a deep breath then says “I sometimes feel like im not really alive, like im floating along and just surviving. Today I went to visit my dads grave and it just hit me that I’ll never be able to talk to him again and that im all alone in this world now” I frown “you’re not alone. You have Feyre and Nesta and me and Rhys and Cassian would do anything to protect you too” I refute. She shakes her head “I feel like Feyre and Nesta don’t really see me though. They see this meek quiet kind girl when I don’t feel like thats who I am anymore. I love my sisters but I don’t think they know the real me. I don’t think anyone does”

I frown even deeper I worried she felt like this ever since I noticed her hands tighten into fists when Feyre and Nesta said her powers we’re not to be used unless it was the last resort. “What do you want to do about it?” I asked diplomatically. If she needs help letting them know how she feels I will gladly take that weight of her shoulders.

“I think… I think I want to let them know I don’t appreciate being treated like im fragile” she says determination coloring her voice. I nod and pull her closer kissing her head. “Do you want my help telling them that?” I tentatively question. She shakes her head strongly in my arms. I release her so I can see her face, wipe away her tears and say “Thats my girl”. The prettiest smile blooms on her face and I grin, kissing her forehead. I swing my arm around her shoulders and start walking off the bridge kissing the side of her head. “Lets go get some sleep and then you can put them in their place sweetheart” I joke, she punches my arm and chuckles her face lightening like the sun thats just starting to crest the horizon.

[songcfmuses]

continued with @sunfyred​

it wouldn’t be his first time waking up on the cold floor, limbs aching, hair damp with sweat & dirt. sometimes it happened because he fell off his bed and didn’t bother to get back up, and sometimes it was because he never managed to reach the bed in the first place .. just collapsing in a drunken stupor, feeling PROUD OF HIMSELF that he at least found his chambers !

BEHOLD — the protector of the realm, unable to protect himself from his own decay.

PANIC was written all over his ironically delicate, almost girlish features when he woke up to the sight of his mother towering over him. “mother ! i— i’m sorry,” he drawled as he struggled to sit up, an instinctive response, unsure of what he even apologized for. when he took a good look at her he realized that she was— SHE WAS SMILING. he swallowed nervously, fear all too evident in perpetually wet eyes as he wondered if he’d finally done it. had she finally gone MAD WITH ANGER ? nothing else could justify the way she was giggling and telling him nonsensical things in a familiarly slurred speech that could only be attributed to too much wine. it was a side to his mother he’d never seen before, one that made her look softer .. younger, even. and yet it somehow frightened him more than the disappointed, scowling face he knew & loved all the same.

a slight flinch at the hand in his hair, a lone tear escaping his wide, unblinking eyes. “mother,” he whispered, PLEADING. “i’m not .. i don’t understand, w—what happened to you ?”

Sorry, he’s sorry - Frustrated laughter leave her lips, and she near wants to tear her hair out. Much too late to go wandering to find Talya for more wine - not when Aegon undoubtedly has some stashed within his chambers! It is her face that stares back at her, fear wide in his wet eyes, and she wonders if she makes that expression herself...”Don’t look at me like that. How dare you have my face and look at me like that.” Her laughter has ceased, and her hand pulls back as if burned when he flinches at her touch. They all flinched from her, all of them cept Aemond. Did her children hate her? Had she not done her best to be the parent she loved most, tried to be her father for her own children? Her breathing shudders.

“What happened to me?” Her own eyes wet with tears as she looks at her hands. “Shall I start at the beginning? You are a man grown now, perhaps I do not need to hide things from you anymore.” 

Alicent pushes herself to stand, already rummaging through his things. “Where is the wine, Aegon? I need it- I know you have-” She finds it with an elated gasp, her cheeks so warm, her eyes so wet, as she pulls it from under his desk. It is still sealed, fucking Pentosi wine. Her hands unwrap the covering, staring at the cork, unsure her hands will steady enough to open it. “When I was your age - no I think I was younger... I cannot remember any numbers right now ... Your father’s first wife died. He had her butchered in search of a son. Baelon. The babe died, and I remember,” A frustrated noise leaves her as she cannot tug at the cork well enough. “I remember the blood stained sheets, and I remember one of the midwives telling me of her screams. How can he have loved her when he did that to her?” Alicent remembers then, her own fear at the very idea a man might do that to his wife. How she had wondered if that was the cause of her mother’s demise, and not the fever from the babe. 

“I was a fucking idiot then. Go to him, my father said, and I made myself pretty, and I wanted to replace her, wear a pretty crown and make my father proud and - FUCKS SAKE!” She cannot get the cork out, frustrated sob coming from her lips as she shakes the bottle, near throwing it before composing herself with such deep breaths, instead crossing the room in strides to deposit the bottle in her son’s lap. “Open it. Please. I cannot find the maester to wake him and make me...” Make her a poultice. Something to make her sleep. 

“And then we were married, and I didn’t know it felt like that when... Oh I do not wish to discuss that to you.” She sits herself on the bed instead, staring at the embers of the dying flames. “I never told anyone how afraid I was when you were in my belly. Because I struggled, I laboured, and you were not coming, and I was afraid...” Her eyes wetten further, remembering the fear she had looked at her father with. “I begged him to send the Maester away. But it didn’t matter what I wanted, and I was so afraid I climbed from the bed and I forced you out before you desired to be so. I have always rushed you, needed you to be stronger than me. MY son, and yet as I recovered, you were presented to the realm, and I just wanted to hold you-” He is taking too long to give the wine back and she near snatches it, glad for it to be opened as she takes a long scull. She chokes, and more comes out of her mouth onto the floor than she wishes for. “If you had been a girl, they might have let me keep you. It is a cruel jape from the gods to give you my mine own face and twist it so unhappily. I was not sure my face could ever look so unhappy, and I do not know how to help you Aegon.” Her voice comes as a whisper, lips wrapping around the bottle once more, face screwing up at the sudden potent taste. “And then your father wanted another child. Then another. And another. I do not enjoy being with child … It is why I asked you to let Helaena breathe. You let her breathe, yes?” Her hand reaches for his head again, like when he was a babe, just petting the greasy locks gently. Too gently. 

“I wanted you to be better than me. I felt love for a man not your father and the gods punished me for it. The gods punish you for it.” Oh how her face screws up then, hand retreating from his head to cover her face. “I am sorry, little one. Is it my fault you SUFFER?” 

[marypsue]

RB 2 Electric Boogaloo!! And also (if it’s not cheating ) why can’t be ourselves like we were yesterday!! ( I may have butchered the second title,sadly my brain is a colander and titles are pasta water 😔)

Thank you! And hey, titles are more like suggestions than actual rules. ;) It's only recently that I've started even being able to think of titles for things before I'm finished writing them, instead of having to scramble to come up with something to call it when it hits AO3, so most of my fics just have a stupid nickname in my head anyway.

RB 2 Electric Boogaloo is, obviously, Something Borrowed, Something Blues, the sequel to Reincarnation Blues, which I pinkie promise I still intend to finish! I wrote down a whole pile of notes about how the fic was supposed to end, but foolishly, I did not outline the climax of the fic, and I'm still struggling to figure out my order of events and how to get from where I'm at to where I need to go. But I'm still plugging away at it! (Perhaps now that outlining is my new best friend, I will be able to sit down and sort out those notes and look back at what I've written and figure out how to bridge this last gap? Perhaps...)

why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday (which you did remember correctly!) hasn't been posted anywhere yet, because I'm still trying to whip it into some semblance of a shape, but it's a Jonathan/Steve/Nancy bodyswap fic set post-season 3. It's supposed to be all about the three of them confronting and overcoming their misconceptions and assumptions about each other, so they can kiss. Plotwise, unfortunately, I'm still in the 'confronting' stage. This was supposed to be a short one-shot but I think, like most short one-shots I've attempted recently, it's ballooned. The title comes from a lyric from New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triangle', which I will stop applying to Stranger Things OT3s when it stops being applicable.

Samples below the cut!

From the (maybe penultimate?) chapter of Something Borrowed, Something Blues:

...

The grove burned.

Lightning stabbed wildly down, like a masked killer with a butcher’s knife going to town on a pretty co-ed. What it lacked in precision, it more than made up for in enthusiasm. The dryads’ screams had turned to one long, horrible wail.

“He’s letting you die to protect that tree,” Mabel pointed out, as three dryads descended on her and her attempt to free the woman she’d first thought was Grenda. “Serious question, do you really still want to do his dirty work? Because no pressure, but this would be a great time to unionise.”

The dryads paused, looking between Mabel and the woman in the tree. Mabel didn’t think she was imagining that the looks that darted toward the woman in the tree were considerably more considering than the ones coming in her direction. She decided not to worry about it. None of her business what consenting dryads got up to in their free time.

After a moment of apparent deliberation, one of the dryads gestured, and the branch Mabel had been trying to pull away from the woman’s face suddenly slithered away. The rest of the vegetation webbed around her started, creakily and in lurching, jerking movements like old stop-motion animation, to retreat into the soil.

Two of the dryads had already gone to join their sisters trying to battle the flames. The third paused only long enough to catch Mabel’s eye and give her a long, hard stare, before hurrying off to join them.

The second she was free, the woman Mabel had taken for Grenda gasped in a breath and then asked, almost demanded, “Mira?” She was looking right at Mabel.

“No, sorry,” Mabel said. “Hey, how’d you get inside a tree?”

The woman gave her a stare almost as hard and as pointed as the dryad’s had been.

“Three guesses,” she said, her heavy accent surprising Mabel. There was only one person in Gravity Falls she knew with that kind of a twang, and it was even odds whether or not she’d try to rescue him if she found him stuck inside a tree. “Listen, whoever y’are, that body belongs to my friend. Mira. So if you wouldn’t mind vacatin’ the premises -”

“Yeah, uh, that one’s going to be…a little difficult,” Mabel admitted, squinting one eye all the way shut and putting her head – well, okay, apparently somebody named Mira’s head – to one side. “Because I don’t actually know how I got in here. I kinda hoped you could help me out with that.”

The woman who had recently been inside the tree didn’t stop giving Mabel that hard look. But it softened quickly when there was another flash of gold and another ear-shattering crackle of thunder.

“We ain’t got much time,” the woman said, kicking off the last few strips of bark still hampering her feet. “Tell me who y’all are, and who the heck Henry is, and maybe I can tell ya what happened.”

...

And from why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday:

...

In his defense, Steve does immediately realise that something’s wrong when he wakes up in Nancy’s pastel-purple bedroom.

He’s just a little foggy on the what.

‘A little foggy’ pretty accurately describes how he’s been feeling about everything for a while now, though. People are probably not supposed to get hit in the head more than three or four times in a row and then get shot full of truth serum or laughing gas or whateverthefuck within twenty-four hours. Or, like…at all. Honestly, when he thinks about it, it’s kind of a miracle he and Robin both survived. And that Steve’s still got all his teeth.

Thinking about it tends to make his head hurt, though, so he usually doesn’t for long.

This morning, thankfully, seems to be an exception to that rule so far. Thankfully, because Steve doesn’t have to remember how or why he got here to know that he’s absolutely not supposed to be here, and he’s going to need all his dubious ability to focus if he’s going to get out again without making things worse.

Joel Goodson’s looking down at him from Nancy’s Risky Business poster with what Steve can’t help thinking is a winking accusation in his eye, and Steve wants nothing more than to pull the covers over his head and disappear. Even when they were dating, they never did it at Nancy’s place, her mom was always so nosy, it was just too much of a risk. Not that Steve thinks anything happened, that’s absurd, they’ve been broken up for nearly nine months now and there’s no sound or warmth or weight of anybody else in this bed. And Nancy seems happily joined at the hip with Jonathan Byers these days, and Steve can’t even drink on these painkillers, and he wouldn’t do something like this to Nancy and Jonathan if he was sober.

But it’s still early, and Steve’s just woken up, and he is drawing a total blank on any more-realistic reason why he’d be lying under this pretty floral comforter that smells sweetly of Benetton perfume and strawberry shampoo and Nance –

Steve shifts, and freezes.

And, okay, yeah. He can think of one other reason why he might find himself inexplicably tucked into Nancy’s bed with a big black hole where his memory of how he got there should be. One other reason why his whole body might be feeling weird and wrong.

He got hurt again, didn’t he? Some more goddamn Upside Down bullshit came out of nowhere despite it barely having been a month and a half since they closed the last Gate, and it hit him in the head, again, and that’s why he’s got this weird almost-detached limbs-on-wrong feeling and can’t remember any of it. That’s why he’s curled up in Nancy’s bed all alone. Her house was probably closest. She’s probably waiting right outside the door with a first aid kit, ready to pounce.

The thought might almost be reassuring. Except that it doesn’t quite add up. For one thing, Steve’s actually not hurting. For once. He just feels kind of…there really is no other word for it than weird. And whatever this thing did to him, if it knocked him out and it was bad enough that Nancy got Jonathan to help haul Steve back to her house instead of just taking him home to sleep it off, but they didn’t take him to the hospital…it must’ve been something that would’ve been too hard to explain to a regular doctor.

And that thought makes Steve feel a little like he’s just stepped into the gym showers before they’ve had a chance to warm up.

But he’s gotta see. He’s gotta know what the damage is. Know just how big the lie he’s going to have to spin for his parents this time is gonna have to be. Steve takes a deep breath, bracing himself, and then, fast, like pulling off a bandaid, sits up straight in Nancy’s bed and throws off the covers.

Nancy’s mom bangs the door open before Steve’s even stopped screaming. “Nancy? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Steve looks Karen Wheeler dead in the eye, and thinks faster than he’s maybe ever thought before. “I – nightmare. I was – at the mall, and Barbara -”

Thankfully, Nancy’s mom hurries over to pull Steve into a hug before he has to come up with anything more to say. His cheek, though, is now mashed firmly against her chest, which is more than a little awkward.

Well. Not his cheek, exactly.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Nancy’s mom mutters into the top of Steve’s head – at least, it feels like his head, right now. “Oh, Nancy.”

Steve manages to shift enough to get a look down, at the pretty blue pyjamas he’s wearing, over the pretty little legs and the pretty little curves he’d admired in the school hallways long before he ever took a chance on asking their owner out. The pretty little hands he used to watch tapping pencils against frustrating chemistry problems, the pretty little hands he’d squeezed under the table during that one disastrous dinner with his parents. The pretty little hands that once held a gun in his face, while the pretty little voice that just lied to Nancy’s mom had told him to get lost.

Nancy’s hands. Nancy’s voice. Nancy’s legs, moving when Steve shifts. Nancy’s hair, tickling Steve’s nose.

Nancy’s body.

Oh, Nancy is right.

There’s one tiny bright spot, though, Steve thinks, as Nancy’s mom starts rocking gently from side to side and stroking a hand over his hair and he tries not to drop dead from mortification on the spot. If he’s here – somehow – then at least he knows Nancy must be there. At his house. Waking up in his body. With his permanent headache. And – oh, shit. And with his brand-new, hard-won job to get to.

Steve’s got to get over there. He’ll talk to Nancy, and she’ll – she’ll probably talk to Jonathan, honestly, but that’ll be okay so long as it means Jonathan knows what’s going on and doesn’t try to kiss Nancy’s body hello with Steve in it. And then Nancy and Jonathan will figure it out the way they always do. And they’ll drag Steve along for the ride via their weird network of siblings and mutual monster-fighting acquaintances, the way they always do. And everything will be fine.

Everything’s going to be fine.

...

[ask me about a WIP!]

[darkhymns-fic]

Ask the seeds to bloom, the trees to grow

Colette had a love for sweet things, for the fruits that grew on trees - those same trees that would wither and die so quickly, in a world where the mana ran dry.

Lloyd was never one for sweet things. But not all that he cooked had to be for himself.

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters/Pairing: Lloyd Irving/Colette Brunel, Genis Sage, Dirk Rating: G Word Count: 3058 Mirror Link: AO3 Notes: Written for Colloyd Week 2022, Day 4: Cooking! Lloyd going out of his way to make Colette her favorite dishes, and find her favorite fruits, is a favorite headcanon of mine that I won’t let go of. Also, he makes cute apple art. 

--

Lloyd had been resistant to learning how to cook.

“Ugh, it’s so boring!” he would complain, even as Dirk had laid out all the ingredients on the kitchen table, the pot over the wood-burning stove boiling with water. Mainly vegetables, such as carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, and so on from their garden. As well as a tomato. The 8-year-old boy stuck out his tongue at the dreaded red sphere, refusing to be anywhere near it.

“Lad, unless ya want to hang around your old man forever, you’re going to need to learn the basics.” The dwarf gently guided Lloyd to the stove. “Dwarven potluck surprise is a secret art. Don’t you want to be the first human to learn it?”

“But cooking takes so loooong,” he whined. He crossed his arms, barely able to see what was in the pot until Dirk gestured for him to stand on a small, creaking stool. “I just want to eat right now! Can’t I just have that-” He pointed to the onion, “-and that?” He then pointed to the carrots – which was way too close to that tomato! “But not that!”

“Don’t try to get out of eating your red veggies. And ya won’t like eating these raw.” Dirk patted the boy’s head, mussing up his already tousled hair. “Besides, ya can learn how to season the meat. Fresh from the butcher’s.”

Lloyd blinked. “Is it chicken?” He gazed up at Dirk in excitement. “Or beef?!”

His dwarven father gestured to the pot. “The sooner we cook this, the sooner you’ll find out.”

Not all things could catch Lloyd’s attention for long, even if he expressed interest at first. Anything to do with too much sitting still, or reading, or studying in general – such endeavors were nearly doomed to fail.

However, maybe Dirk had always known how Lloyd liked to learn – with his hands, shaping and creating. This stretched from his first attempts at whittling, his wood block now resembling a sharp-edged version of Noishe, or gardening, digging through the soil help grow the flowers for his mother’s grave.

Lloyd was given a dull knife, mimicking how Dirk chopped the onions over a wooden board. Sweep the pieces onto the knife, then pour it into the pot. Crush the spices in a bowl, careful to not get the powder in one’s eyes, and rub it into the meat that had been tenderized. Lloyd had been given the first chance to do so, despite nearly dropping the cooking utensil onto the floor.

The pot simmered, and even with the waiting he was forced to endure, Lloyd couldn’t help but look, watching all the food coalesce into a stew that his stomach hungered for.

“There are other things you can cook.” Dirk placed a stone lid onto the pot, locking away the steam, but only making Lloyd’s stomach growls louder. “Brew up some oatmeal, or curry. You can even make some desserts.”

Lloyd tilted his head. “That’s a lot of things. I just want to eat meat all day!”

Dirk chuckled. “But what if you’re cooking for someone else? Don’t you want to cook their favorite food?”

Lloyd had been too hungry, too impatient to wait for the stew to heat up, and once such a meal was poured into a bowl, Dirk’s words flew away into the wind.

But in the end, he had learned to cook.

--

Sometimes, food was scarce.

Sylvarant had been on a decline for years. Even as Dirk tended to the vegetable garden with care, some food didn’t fully grow. It was the same for the flowers, some blooming as bright as the sun, but then withering so quickly, that no amount of water or sunshine could revive it.

“It’s the low mana,” Dirk had told Lloyd when they had less to eat one night. “That’s why we need the Chosen.”

On the journey, Lloyd saw for himself the toll such mana depletion took on the land. Even from the usual plentiful farmer’s market stalls in Palmacosta, the fish would always be sold out before the end of morning, or the fruits and vegetables would quickly rot away if not bought in time – if they had enough at all.

Lloyd and Colette had gone to the markets once in the early morning hours, the sun barely peeking over the horizon. An orange, with minimal white markings on its skin, caught her eye. She clutched it in both hands when they left, humming a happy tune.

“You really like sweet things, huh?” he asked. He had mainly wanted the fish, holding onto a wrapped salmon that he’d try to simmer in butter, and then season with some parsley and salt for their lunch.

“Yeah! I usually like apples more, but they didn’t have any.” Colette began to carefully peel away the thick skin, somehow getting as little juice as possible on her clothes. “I like the reddest ones the most. They match your jacket!”

Lloyd cleared his throat, shaking his head at the comment. “I’m not an apple though…”

Colette giggled, then took the inner slide of the orange to pop into her mouth. Lloyd could have sworn the color in her face brightened, just from the taste. “Our apple tree back at home didn’t make it through that one summer, remember? We didn’t get enough rain. So, I haven’t had any in a long time.”

“Oh right. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried climbing it so much.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t hurt it, Lloyd. It was…always bound to happen.” Colette looked back at her orange. The sea-salt air lifted her hair, the morning sunshine glinted off the gold wrapped around her neck. “Once we regenerate the world, then everything will be okay again.”

Lloyd noted her quiet voice, even if he couldn’t fully understand it yet. He had only assumed because the journey will be hard, and they will have to see more dying trees, more barren fields that were no longer green, and know how with each passing day, less and less food were being captured, or grown.

When they had gone out on the roads again, Lloyd caught sight of something so important that he ran to it, despite some protests. Genis called after him, Raine was already starting to lecture, and Kratos – he could feel the mercenary shake his head at his action. But this was too vital to ignore!

“Look, Colette!” Lloyd shouted back, waving his arms to her. “It’s an apple tree!”

It was a scraggly thing, but even with its thin body, its leaves were plentiful, its boughs weighed down by the fruit it bore. Lloyd didn’t even have to climb it, reaching out for one apple to grab, plucking it from its stem. The sun painted it in rays of gold, making its skin shine.

“Hm, perhaps this would be good to stock up on for our supplies,” Kratos commented as the party caught up with him. And while Lloyd was surprised at the approval, that wasn’t what he was seeking just yet.

He handed the apple to Colette. “Here. They’re your favorite, you said. And I got one as red as me!”

Colette stared, and then laughed, reaching for the fruit in both hands. Her fingers brushed over his own. “Do you wanna share this with me?”

“Uh, how do we share this?” he asked genuinely.

“We can take turns eating it. Like when we were kids.”

“Oh, well, sure then!”

“You guys do know there’s more than one apple on this tree, right?” asked Genis, but his question wasn’t heard, Colette already biting into the fruit and handing it to Lloyd.

I’m not usually into sweets, he couldn’t help but think as he took a bite right next to Colette’s own. The sweetness burst to life on his tongue. He would have almost taken another if Colette hadn’t been there. She was smiling so wide, happy to share a special treat. Their hands had gotten sticky from the mess, but Lloyd remembered to pluck the seeds from the core, storing it safely in a small place within his satchel for later.

Maybe once they finally went back home, once the mana was restored and the world was saved, he could plant Colette a new fruit tree.

--

Though he was supposed to help Genis with making dinner, his friend noticed a particular slack in kitchen duties, then peeked over his shoulder. Meanwhile, flames licked the bottom of the cooking pot on the campfire, the rice within it boiling. “Lloyd, are you…carving?”

“Shh.” He waved away the boy, hunched over a stump, intent on the object in his hand. “I’m busy.”

“Busy? You’re supposed to be chopping up the carrots.” Genis groaned, sliding the lid over the pot as he did so.

“I’ll get to it! I just…wanna get this done first.”

Genis’ boots crunched against the dirt, then peered down to see his work. “So, what’s that supposed to be?”

Lloyd flinched, sparing a glance to his friend before he went back to his handiwork. “It’s- it’s a dog. I mean…can you really not tell?”

Genis leaned over, and Lloyd couldn’t help but show it to him clearer in the light. The apple was sliced thinly, a pair on top for its floppy ears, and some for its muzzle. He had also cut a bit of the core, so that the black seeds could serve as eyes.

“It’s pretty good,” Genis commented. “Though, it kinda looks more like a bird.”

Lloyd shoved the boy away. “You never get these things!”

With a laugh, Genis walked back to his pot. “Well, you better hurry and get that done. Apples don’t look good for very long once they’re cut.”

“I-I know!” Lloyd kept carving the apple, the shade of its skin so bright. “I know.”

He felt Genis’ eyes on his back. When he spoke, it lost its teasing nature. “Colette will love it. Even if she can’t…” A pause. “Sorry.”

Lloyd said nothing, still intent on making the face, using the rest of the slices for the body and tail.

She wouldn’t taste how sweet it was anymore, or even keep it down, like with so many other foods lately. But at the very least, he could make it look nice for her.

At the very least, he could do that.

--

Everyone always had a favorite food; one that Lloyd began to realize whenever he took over cooking duty for the night. At first, he’d always used the excuse to put in as much meat as he could. Rice and curry, topped over with chicken, or beef stew, with thickly-sliced carrots and onions, seasoned with parsley.

Then the journey continued, and the meals changed, bit by bit, without himself even knowing.

Genis liked anything with milk, and brightened when Lloyd learned to make the cream stew to his liking. The gratin was another favorite, having a lot of cheese that even Lloyd found irresistible to eat.

Sheena’s tastes were interesting, and from her, Lloyd learned how to make rice balls, the seaweed packing it together for an easy snack.

Presea liked curry just as much as he did, but with even more spice than he could handle, always making him reach for the water once finished.

Raine’s were simple but more strange than interesting, and he would cut the lemons with trepidation for her sandwich that she’d take with a smile.

Tofu was a new thing to Lloyd, but Regal was always pleased with it, and it didn’t taste bad when served with the right sauce.

Zelos took more effort, demanding his tuna be grilled to perfection, and to have a side of melon to go with it. Many times, Lloyd was tempted to just lob a whole melon at Zelos’ head and be done with it. (Oddly, Kratos liked the tuna too).

But Colette, she always liked fruit. From strawberries topped over shortcake, to even the small parfaits he had begun learning.

In a kitchen he asked to use at an inn, Lloyd was gathering the fruit he had purchased that day, (more plentiful in Tethe’alla), chopping them all together to make the cocktail he had been working on perfecting.

The door opened. He could recognize her footsteps, careful and perhaps a little doubtful. He turned before she could sneak back out again. “Hey! It’s not just ready yet, but give me a few.”

“Oh, sorry. I was just hoping to help.” Colette was walking over to him, the lamplight falling over her cheeks. No hint of red in her irises, and she looked upon the table of chopped fruit with eagerness. Never had one appreciated their sense of taste returning more than her.

“Well… I was making your food right now.” Lloyd smiled with some embarrassment. “You said you liked the fruit cocktails.”

“Yeah! You put so much fruit in them.” Colette giggled, seeming to remember the last time she had eaten one, not too long ago.

“Genis keeps saying I put way too much… but, we gotta use up what we can, right? Before it goes bad!”

Colette nodded. “It’s good to try and not be wasteful. Besides, I eat it all anyway.”

“Hehe…you’re, uh, not just making yourself eat it?” he asked. “If they’re not great, you can tell me.”

Colette shook her head. “Of course I like them, Lloyd. Why do you ask that?”

Maybe it had been a silly question, but the worry had nagged at him. He faced her, fruit juices still on his bare hands. “I just…want to make you what you want. If you want anything else, you should tell me. Just name anything you’d like!”

Colette blinked. It was almost new, to see the blue of her eyes, to see her move and express, when before, it had been so little at all. “Ah? What are you talking about?”

“Well… because you finally got your sense of taste back! And I want to make something really delicious for you. Anything at all!” Lloyd put his hands on his hips, puffing out his chest with confidence. “Dad said I should always make people’s favorite foods!”

“Hehe…thank you, Lloyd.” Colette’s smile matched his, and he thought he could see the hint of a tear at the corner of her eye. “I always like everything you make. Although…”

Her pause made him stand up straight. So there was something she wanted. “Yeah? I’ll start making it tonight. With the fruit cocktail too.”

“Hmm…” Colette, as she thought, had moved closer to him. Her smile was still on her lips when she raised her head. “What if I just want to share an apple with you?”

A pause. “Really? That’s not exactly cooking…”

“I know, just…I like the idea of it.” She grinned a little. “If not apples, maybe strawberries? Or cherries too!”

It didn’t take him long to notice the pattern. “Those are all red.”

“Yep!” She smiled at him fully, the happiness in it making the blood rush to his ears. “I really like red. And…”

Just a long enough pause before she winked at him. “Or a tomato. Those are red too.”

Lloyd flinched. “What?! No way. Those aren’t even fruit!”

“Hm, are you sure?” A laugh. “Professor Sage says they are.”

“Let’s go back to apples! I got those right here!”

But he was insistent on carving them for her, on making doggy faces in the skin of the fruit, on adding blackberries to its mix. She had laughed, and she had tasted, and she had even reached out to pick at a spare blueberry that had fallen into his hair somehow.

Once she was close, Lloyd took a moment, handing her that apple slice, feeding her before she could take it with her hand. “How’s it taste?”

A blush around her cheeks, and now the tears left her eyes fully. “It tastes so sweet.”

Yeah, he liked the sweetness, too.

--

Once they could go back to Sylvarant, Lloyd had gone home, quickly heading for the backyard as Dirk worked the forge. He had apple seeds, plus more, in hand.

It didn’t take too long to plant them, to turn up the soil to where it was richest. The spacing was clear enough, even with the vegetable garden to account for. A quick pat of the dirt, and he sat back on his knees, imagining what it could become. But only if the world was saved.

So he left again, hoping for it to grow.

--

The fruit salad was already finished when Colette came in through the front door.

“Oh, that looks wonderful,” she had commented. Her hair was ruffled from her flight from Iselia, but her eyes lit up at the bowls he held in both hands.

“Hey, let’s eat outside,” he told her, handing her share. Cantaloupe, pineapple, strawberries, banana, and apple. And even more with what he could gather, like mango and honeydew, and peaches and lemon. It was topped with honey and walnuts, giving it a shine like gold. And for her bowl, he had made especially sure that the blueberries were arranged just right.

“Is that a bird?” she asked him, happily taking her bowl. The crickets chirped around them, and the several apple trees cut through the shadows, lit up by fireflies.

“I figure I should change it up a little, since I always make dogs.” He scratched the back of his head. “I think my apple art is better when it’s birds.”

Her small laughter only warmed him, even as they sat by the foot of the tree that had first grown, even as the fruit it bore weighed down the leaves. It hadn’t struggled for a season since it was first planted.

But as Lloyd took his bites, the walnuts adding some crunch to the soft fruit, and the honey sliding down his throat, he noticed Colette still hadn’t eaten hers.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. Maybe the fruit had been arranged badly…

She shook her head. “No, it’s just…” She then reached out to take his hand, to grip it so, so tightly. “It’s really beautiful…what you make…”

And he held her hand back, teasing her with a poke and smile. “Would it be easier if I feed you?”

Colette hadn’t refused.

Lloyd never knew that he would grow to have a sweet tooth.

[one-winged-dreams]

ship: burn everything you love (ifrit x a’driel) words: 1174

ONCE AGAIN, LET’S PLAY “Adri butchers middle english despite googling the shit out of how it works”

Oh, and a vent fic which is more like a ‘god i wish that were me’ fic because ow.

idfk, i can communicate with a vestige of ifrit through his egi or something, don’t ask how that works

La Noscea was a peculiar place when it came to weather, perhaps, at least, from an outside standpoint. The random storms or bouts of rain that buffeted its landscape were commonplace, and one tended to get used to that fact after a while.

A'driel was not one of those people.

The weather always started out agreeable when he visited. Started out, at least. He could feel it, quite literally, in his bones as the storm clouds began gathering over the aetherite plaza. It had taken about all of the journey back to his inn room before the pain began to set in, pushing the door open with a stumble. Kicking off his boots and de-robing seemed endless as the sharp aching wracked his frame, and he let out a frustrated grunt as his garments finally hit the floor. Left only in his small clothes, he was finally able to collapse onto his bed, face-first as intended. He lingered there for a moment as the pain throbbed, a groan escaped but was muffled by his pillow.

Woe.

When it became evident the pain wasn't going to cease anytime soon, he flopped over onto his side with all the grace of gyuki, curling in on himself with another groan of frustration.

He hated this. He hated it with all of his being and cursed the fact that there was nothing that could be done to ease this burden. It was simply a fact of his anatomy - no cure could alleviate the sharp aching that he was so prone to.

So he had learned that he needed to live with it. One tends to get used to the pain after experiencing it for so long, but this... This was different. Not only had he needed to learn to endure it, but was also supposed to be prepared for the random bouts and their varying intensities. How was anybody supposed to carry all of that? It was maddening and, quite frankly, utterly unfair.

His eyes were clenched shut in such a manner that he couldn't see the raindrops pelting the window, but gods, he sure could feel them. The falling of the rain, the blustering wind, all of it.

He lay there for a bit, doing his best to endure but growing more frustrated by the minute. Finally, his eyes cracked open with a whimper, and desperation gave way to enlightenment as an idea sprung to mind.

His gaze slowly traveled up to the nightstand where his index had been haphazardly thrown. Sighing, he decided trading temporary pain for potential relief was worth the gesture and stretched his arm as far as he could to obtain the damn thing. He grit his teeth as sharp pains besieged him, his fingers scraping across the cover of the tome before making purchase in just a manner that he could grapple it over.

Index in hand, he held it in front of his face, flipping through it but hesitating for a moment. Suddenly he was second-guessing himself, biting his lip as he considered what he was doing. Was he really about to do this just because of a bout of pain?

The agonized gasp that followed answered that quickly enough. He began to calculate the arcane geometries in his head from what was written in the index, manipulating the aether into a familiar shape. The shape became more stable until the calculations were completed, and before him, an egi of Ifrit all but exploded into existence.

He couldn't help but smile at the roar that was only a fraction comparable to the ferocity of the Eikon whose power it was drawn from. He gave a weary wave to the entity, who acknowledged his presence in return.

"Ah, beloved summoner. Why dost thy call upon me in such a state?" he had already seemed to gather that this was not a usual scenario for being summoned. They were far from the field of combat, and seeing A'driel in such a weary state was curious indeed.

"Ah... I'm sorry. I know this is a bit unconventional, but..." the miqo'te was quiet for a moment, his ears flattened shyly.

"Speaketh thy request, dear summoner. I am not wont to judgment for thee. Entirely," a deep rumbling chuckle from the egi made A'driel blush.

"It's just... Well..." he looked down at the pattern of the quilt beneath him, hearing Ifrit make an inquisitive sound and continuing, "You know my... condition."

"I am indeed well acquainted with it, yes," Ifrit pressed.

A'driel swallowed a nervous lump in his throat. Even in egi form, Ifrit was still Ifrit. Speaking with an Eikon was intimidating, regardless of how fond he was of him.

"I was- was wondering if, well... You wouldn't mind... Keeping me warm for a bit... Ah! No, that's stupid, I'm sorry," he covered his face, immediately regretting the request.

But the egi responded only with a hearty, yet still quite monstrous, laugh of all things. "My dearest summoner, beloved mortal. Thou knowest mine affections for thee are boundless. Thy request is most amusing, but kindles my fondness in any regard. Prithee, feeleth not shame for thy plea. I will indulgeth thee most readily."

A'driel's ears perked. "R-Really? It's not a bother?" he still seemed self-conscious about the whole matter.

"Thou thinketh too much, dear summoner. Allow me to dispel thine uneasiness," Ifrit would hear no more doubtful protests as he moved to hover over the laying miqo'te, ultimately settling behind him and leaning over his form.

The heat he radiated was otherworldly. Scorching, burning intensely but not harming A'driel, or the furniture, in the slightest. The relief was moderate, but any amount of it at all compared to how he was feeling before was more than enough. And so instantaneous, too. A'driel couldn't control the sigh of contentment that escaped him, closing his eyes and shifting slightly into the warmth.

Ifrit seemed pleased by this, a rumbling hum emanating from his form. "Thou looketh pleased, dear summoner. Dost I dare to assume mine warmth bringeth thee an onze of relief? I must admit, it is far from what these flames of mine were intended for, but to thee I bid thee comfort."

A'driel couldn't tell if it was the heat or the primal's words, but his face was suddenly flushed deeply. Ifrit seemed to take his flustered silence for what it was and chuckled softly.

"Thy silence is telling, but rewarding enough in itself. I am pleased to assist one as beloved to me as thee. Consider it a reward for such a loyal and doting subject," the egi continued teasingly.

The miqo'te's face was buried in the pillow now, too embarrassed to face his Eikon directly. Another hearty laugh filled the room.

"Thou dost not needest speak, my beloved. Rest thy weary form. I will stay with thee for as long as thou needest."

A'driel peeked out from the pillow, his ears pinned back to match his small, sheepish smile.

"Thank you..." he managed to bring himself to speak softly.

"Always, dearest summoner."

[arrowpunk]

Ok so I finished BG3 yesterday..... Vague thoughts and spoilers beneath the cut

So like!! Act 1!!! Really well done and great!! Loved it!!

Act 2 was also good! It felt kinda lacking in some ways I think mostly because you can get a lot of really good cutscenes at camp in Act 1 and then it just kinda drops off drastically in Act 2, which was kinda sad but like it's a huge game so I understand. Dame Aylin and Isobel felt... Kinda. Bland. And like look I'm sorry ok. I'm a lesbian and they just... Didn't do it for me. I'm happy for all the people that enjoyed them! Their character designs are really neat! I think Aylin 100% should have been butcher though. Like she did not need to have long hair. And their storyline just felt really bland and like it had very little thought put into it. Like you have all these other really neat well written romances in the game and then you give the canon lesbian couple "it was love at first sight, I know that sounds sus but just trust me it was True Love at first sight" Like babe no wonder your dad didn't like her??? I could've written something more compelling than that at 14.

I really enjoyed what we got of Act 3! But it definitely... Felt rushed and incomplete. Like it was maybe half done. I knew Karlach's ending was gonna disappoint so I was already prepared for that. What I didn't realize was that like... Almost Every characters ending was gonna disappoint or just. Not Be There. Like wtf was that??? You spend over 100 hours playing this game investing in every companion character and their personal quest. And you just! Don't get much of anything after the final battle! A little scene on the dock where some of them talk to you some don't say basically anything and then Karlach dies or goes back to Avernus with Wyll, Astarion runs away because he starts burning in the sunlight and some other character makes a depressing comment about how that's probably the last you'll see of him??? Which??? Wtf???? You only get any closure on that if you romanced him. Which!!! WTF???? And then you get like short ending dialog with whoever you romanced and the credits roll. And the only thing post credits is a short scene of Withers mocking the dead 3. Like. No epilogue. No closure for the characters you spent so much time with. Nothing. You don't get anything with half of them unless you romanced them! Nothing with Shadowheart! You don't get to find out how things turned out for Gale with whatever choice he made regarding the crown! Nothing for Halsin, Jaheira, or Minsc! Like... Fuck man you don't even get to see the dog one last time or anything : ( or Yenna!

Like Karlach's whole everything felt really unfinished and kinda ridiculous because it sure seemed like there was so much there set up for you to be able to continue her quest line and fix her engine that the game/NPCs/companions/you just don't acknowledge which is frustrating.

But like over all I enjoyed the game, I had a lot of fun playing it! It just mostly felt unfinished and rushed in the end and so for a game as big as it was the actual ending felt incredibly lackluster which was disappointing. I still enjoyed the game and don't think I wasted my time playing it. But yeah. That's all

[yunessa]

Zealots and Priests, Part 2

(Parts for my stories are written bits that contribute nothing but I wanted to writ nontheless. Feel free to skip as this is mostly Ramien's pov.)

“A word of advice. Never refer to yourself as scrawny. Lithe, slender as a sapling, or slender.” Daeran advised Woljif. “No woman will want a man who calls himself scrawny.” It was a surprise to hear Daeran’s voice, enough so that Ramien had to chckAs difficult to read as he ever was, Ramien had no clue why Daeran was really with the group. Perhaps he was genuinely upset that Deskari had interrupted his party or maybe he wasn’t and they were a momentary diversion. 

“Cut them off. Then you won’t need to trim them.” The Librarian’s mood was sour. Aravashinal was curled as close to the brazier’s warmth as he could be. Despite his foul mood, his dirty clothes told the story of how he’d fared before he’d accompanied the group. Dirty, torn, burnt and bloodied with his eyes carefully bandaged by several cut strips of cloth. Ramien had offered to heal him but Daeran had waved him off. He would heal Aravashinal, he said, Ramien should go and rest.

“You can’t just cut them off, they won’t just stop trying to grow” The mongrel -Lann- shook his head. “They’ll always grow back. So cutting them off just means it’ll hurt worse while it’s growing back.”

Ember sat by the fire, feeding a raven at her side. The bird was a familiar, Ramien was certain, though he had no idea who the child’s patron was. The elven child had laughed when he offered to heal her, and declined it. You should heal other people that need it more.  She had said and something in her eyes unnerved him. “You can’t have more Soot or you’ll get fat.”  Ember giggled as the crow protested, flapping its wings. 

Yunessa was resting, but one hand still reverently held the stone and flower as the other gestured to their head. “Is it hard to find a hat?” They asked. “Cutting a hole in one doesn’t sound like the answer to the problem.”

Woljif and Lann spoke at the same time.

“Yes.”

“Boy, is it ever.”

“They don’t make hats for people with horns? The market for it would be there. Have you seen hats for that, Daeran?” Yunessa looked over to Daeran. “You probably know what’s around most of the markets.”  

Daeran cocked his head as if he was thinking about it, eyes distant as he considered the question. “There could potentially be a market for them and I’m sure I would have seen hats for that if they had not been appropriated by theiflings already.”

The conversation about a market for hats for people with horns continued with surprising enthusiasm as the group rested.

There was something about seeing the room set aside for children. Tossed, ruined, damaged, and the profane symbols on the wall written in rancid waste. Ramien had stared at a symbol of Baphomet for the longest time. 

“What happened to the children?” He breathed as his mind absorbed the horror. The hospital… The hospital had been boarded up from the outside and burned to the ground. “Every safe place, every zone set up for the citizenry.” In the yard where Ramien so often performed weddings lay the brutally butchered corpses of  those that had fled to the safety of Desna’s temple, only to be murdered. Every horror he had seen flashed through his mind. He was not unaware of the horrors of war or demons. But this was so deliberate, so planned. He could not comprehend what it took to plan such atrocities or to enact them on the innocent. Nausea hit Ramien, strong enough he put his hand to his mouth, unwilling to vomit in the children’s playroom.

“There are children at Defender’s Heart.” Daeran’s voice came from the doorway as his fellow Aasimar watched Ramien. “Yunessa saw them- running in circles with sticks or something like that.” He came right behind Ramien and Ramien could catch the smell of his cologne. Rich, deep, and exotic. It distracted his mind from the torrent of horrors and he latched onto it, turning to Daeran.

“Do not joke with me. I will not tolerate this humour, not for that one summer’s eve, not for you.” Daeran smiled at him.

“Dear Ramien, while I envy those golden curls. I would never allow such envy to cloud my emotions.” He reached out to gently tug Ramien’s hood down to let his long hair spill out. “You’ll see when we take you there.” He pulled out a silken handkerchief to dab at Ramien’s face and with a start Ramien realized he’d been crying.

“It only just- it only just hit me when I stopped.” He said weakly. “I have been moving or trying to help until I found the Prelate.”

“He’s always been a zealot. You can’t help that Ramien. He’d burn me alive for my parties alone if I wasn’t careful to have them outside of his jurisdiction.” Daern’s lips pulled upwards in a lazy smile and he allowed Ramien to take the handkerchief to wipe at his own face.

“I bear no hate towards him but it  will do me no good to put my focus on that. It isn’t worth the time when there’s more I could do.” His eyes turned, unwillingly towards the symbol but Daeran reached out to tug at his hair. 

“If you’ll let me.” He began. “I will finish searching the temple for you. I have rested and even after healing Aravashinal I’m still itching to take a walk. What else do you need, Ramien?” He brushed his fingers over Ramien’s hair,tugging just hard enough Ramien was briefly reminded of that one summer’s eve.

He swatted at Daeran’s hand, an action he wouldn’t have considered with anyone else, but it made Daeran amused. “The kitchens, the basement, my room I’ve already checked, they-” His throat tightened. “They took effort into ruining everything I had, down to my personal items.”

“I’ll go back and search again.” Daeran promised. “And grab whatever is useful and clean.” He gently guided Ramien until Ramien went in the direction where Daeran’s group had taken camp and then Ramien heard him walking away with careful feet.

Daeran’s smile lasted until he was certain Ramien had left. Then he closed his eyes slowly as if he was listening. Slowly he shivered as if he was cold. When his eyes opened the asimar looked nauseated but otherwise checked his belt for his weapon before turning to walk in the direction of the basement. 

“I heard a bug.” He murmured to the shadows on the walls. “If you can't take care of pests then they become problems. One bug in the evening is a swarm of them in the morning.” Nobody would notice. Not his new group, nor the bug he had spotted rummaging in the depths of the basement.

And by the time that bug noticed Daeran there wouldn’t be anything either of them could do about it..

Everyone had settled down to rest for a while. Yunessa kept watch with Aravashinal. Lann was resting with his bow held lightly in his hands, but his fingers twitched at every unfamiliar noise. Ember slept behind the safety of an overturned pew.  Even Woljif had fallen asleep, the tiefling reclining leisurely in the lap of Desna’s statue. Ramien had come by to rest, saying Daeran was checking the temple for anything that remained. 

Yunessa and Aravashinal remained awake with him. Ramien reclined by the braier, even that small bit of warmth enough to help him relax, wrapped in his cloak.

“-be leaving in a few hours Aravashinal. This conversation can wait until we’re all at the inn, can’t it?” Yunessa made a gesture and the cantrip saw the fire burn a bit more warmly. Yunessa looked far more awake and lively than when Ramien first saw them. “We’ve already discussed that you aren’t the leader of this group.”

“I’m aware.” Aravashinal said sourly. Ramien closed his eyes as he listened to the two. “You were perfectly clear on that.”

“Then at least let me get everyone to the inn before we discuss my curse or the sword. It won’t do either of us any good if all we’re doing is getting too distracted to notice the enemy sneaking up. You can sleep if you’d like- I’m too full of energy to even try and sleep right now.”

“What about the Prelate then? What will you do about him?”

“I’ll talk to him. If he wants to fuss and cry over Ramien then he can go talk to Irabeth. Ramien hasn’t done anything wrong, and his adepts tried to protect the world stone, not damage it.” Yunessa’s voice has a soothing note to it and Ramien felt himself relaxing. 

“I’ll bet you coin he won’t listen.” Aravashinal shook his head to the sound of his robes rustling. “The Prelate was never a man to listen when his mind was already set on something he thought was wrong- which is anything that fails to fit his perfect version of a Inquisitor’s paradise.”

“It doesn’t matter. What will he do- jump into the hole? No, he’ll seethe and cry and fuss against Irabeth until the army arrives and then Ramien will be gone.” Yunessa paused. “I plan to take him with me if Hulrun is going to keep tryng. There’s someone who promised to get me out of Kenabres if I helped out here.”

Aravashinal responded softly but Ramien no longer paid the conversation any attention. If he was to leave with them he needed focus, to meditate and rest. With care he began to watch his breathing, reciting his prayers in his mind.

He was dreaming, that much he was certain of. He stood in a city he’d never seen before beneath the tainted sky of the World Wound. The wind whistled a sharp cold tune“Where am i?” He asked but the people around him paid Ramien no heed. “It looks like standard Mednevian structure.” The wall he was facing was damaged, combat, it was easy to guess. Arrows, melted stone, and other signs of a heavy fight were there. Snow lightly fell , covering everything with a fine white powder,  though it made the gap in the all all the more obvious.“This is real then?” Ramien asked. “Where is this?”

“-fortify the walls like you suggested Regil. What else were you recommending?” Yunessa’s voice broke through his thoughts. In Ramien’s dreams the most notable things in the visions Desna gave him had her touch and Yunessa had several butterflies of Her design around them.

Heedless of the cold the blessed butterflies flew idly around, bearing the obvious touch of Desna’s magic, even when they landed on Yunessa to imitate resting. Moving slowly through the snow and looking at the walls, Yunessa looked quite different, more weathered and worn, moving stiffly in the cold, but unlike Ramien they were wearing a heavy cloak to protect against the cold.

The hellknight next to Yunessa wore the standard intimidating black armour so common to hell knights. It surprised Ramien more that he was a gnome. The gnomes pale yellow eyes moved from the wall to Yunessa and then gave a nod. “After this wall is repaired we will have to receive Cheliax’s delegation. The Royal Council’s advisor will tell us to refuse them however, and to send them to Nerosyan to meet with them.”

Yunessa snorted. “She’d tell us to shit in our hands and clap if it made the royal council happy.”

“Crude phrasing but not entirely inaccurate, Commander.” The gnome agreed. “Politcs are part of crusades, especially one that has dragged on for over a century like this one has.”

Yunessa and the gnome hellknight stopped next to Ramien, surveying the damage done. “I hate to admit it- well not hate to. But the walls did hold up this time Regil.”

Regil’s polite yellow gaze moved from the wall to Yunessa. “My choice to reinforce the walls was for a tactical reason. We cannot hold Drezen if we are constantly forced to rebuild.”

“I know, i know. I just find it all frustrating at times. We got Drezen back in three months. We’re making ground and pushing back but  there’s so many people trying to push politics and other matters that have no place here.” Yunessa ran their hand through their hair. “There’s nobody in Nerosyan to help us.”

“Queen Gallifrey sends us tokens of her… approval.” Regil’s tone grew derisive. “You would not complain if you did not want to ask for my advice in your usual roundabout manner. What do you need from me?”

“Maybe I just wanted to spend time with you. I enjoy your company Regill. You’ve grown on me in the last few decades.” Yunessa spoke lightly. “This two hour conversation was enjoyable.”

“We’ve known each other for two years, not decades.” Regil stated sternly.. “Have you been indulging at the tavern? It’s unsightly for a commander to be drunk- as much as you might be immune to the rules, it does not change that rules exist for a reason.”

Yunessa opened their mouth to speak but whatever Yunessa said, Ramien didn’t hear it. One of the ballista on the nearby wall fired and far too quickly, Ramien watched the bolt tear a path through Yunessa’s corpse. 

 As he moved to help on impulse, it all faded to black and he heard a heavy sigh in the darkness. A long-suffering whisper reached Ramien, speaking in Yunessa’s voice.

“Lost again…. How far this time? ….how far.”

Ramien bolted to the waking with a start to the sound of loud laughter.  Quickly, his eyes searched the temple. The fire had gone to flickering embers and Yunessa’s group moved around the temple. Active and awake. 

“Seelah, you woke Ramien up.” 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Prior.” Seelah held her hands up, her good mood unhindered. “I thought it was a funny joke.” Ramien had seen this paladin somewhere before, he was certain. Seelah smiled at him. “I’m glad to see you’re alive Prior- I went to one of your events before the festival started.”

“The stargazing?” Ramien asked, he pinched his nose as he pulled himself upright. 

“The one with the butterflies! It was great seeing the kids so excited.” She smiled and Ramien found it drawing a smile from him. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

“Ah, that one. The children always love releasing the butterflies they’ve grown. It’s an exciting event for them.” Yunessa offered Ramien a bag which he took, opening it up.  “Daeran said he found all he could. He’s watching the rain, says he’s gotten bored and is ready to go whenever you were awake.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Two hours.” Yunessa answered. That explained the grogginess that he felt. HE wishes dearly for a cup of coffee or tea but pushed the desire away. “We were going to wake you up at three however.” 

Ember had tied a red velvet curtain around her neck, talking happily to the crow resting on her shoulder as she walked past. 

“Ember are you ready to go?” Yunssa asked. “Where’s Woljif?”

“I found him knocking on the walls, he’s coming back now- I told him doorways to fairies aren’t real.” The tone was so child-like in its innocence that Ramien could forget Ember wasn’t normal. “But he kept knocking on the bricks.”

“I wasn’t knocking on the bricks! I was uh, checking to see how stable they were. So the roof didn’t fall on us while Ramien was sleeping.” Woljif’s excuse fooled nobody so he hastily changed the subject. “Hey Chief, it’s like, five or something. You were gonna help me out, right? Not leave me out to dry?”

“I said we would before we returned to the inn to rest- by your word it’s not far from the library either so we’re still planning on it. Once Ramien is ready then we’ll go and head out.” 

“I’m ready to go once I’ve spoken to my acolytes.” Ramien spoke up, sliding the backpack on.

“I’ll make sure my group is ready then. We’ll leave when you are Ramien.”