#i mentioned this picture many moons ago but here it finally is in the flesh

[aurosoul]

this is the 5 oreos Ewie - seeing this picture grants 5 years good luck

[gentlemancrow]

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

OK so I saw @hey-there-hunter ‘s JMart Wedding Challenge and I pretty much fan ficced immediately??  Like it was an instantaneous plot bunny that stabbed me in the brain and would not let me free until I made it exist.  SO HERE YOU GO!  Read it here or head on over to AO3 below!  And enjoy some unapologetically aggressive fluff with weddings!  Also subtitled someday Crow will stop abusing excessive astral imagery and symbolism for extended metaphors, but today is not that day.

Read on AO3 instead!

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

Jonathan Sims always thought of himself as a man with a deep appreciation for the great literature of the world.  A passionate turn of phrase, crystalline motes of clear imagery like snowflakes reflecting light in his mental scape, a devastating contemplation on the nature of good and evil in the hearts of all mankind, everything that could express the beauty and tragedy of the world in ways he never could.  Prose was a bright paintbrush on a ragged canvas of the universe he had known from an early age was swathed in shadow and pain and evil, and those words on those pages, for at least a moment, were another world he could hold in his hands, could cradle and protect, could mourn.  He liked the power of them as well, of the tinkling brightness of alliteration, the oaky sophistication of a well-aged metaphor, the evocativeness of the idiosyncrasy in a simple simile, laying bare truths in ways he never could have articulated for himself.

There was one thing he could not abide by in language, however, one cardinal sin liable to besmirch any piece of lush and sparkling verse or prose and taint it forever.  And that was idioms.

Jon loathed idioms and their dismally quirky cliches dressed in familiarity’s tacky clothing almost as much as he hated spiders.  Perhaps it was something about their reliance on common knowledge and repetition.  He couldn’t bear reading the same book twice, or even a book that felt too familiar, it only made sense that hearing a hackneyed phrase repeated in that awful singsong sardonic tone of someone who knows full well they’re saying something asinine that has been repeated ad nauseum for millennia would scrape at the back of his skull and down his spine.  They were too whimsical and blasé, crutch words for when one’s limited lexicon came up empty, or worse, for ill comedic effect.  They reinforced that staunchly English notion of skirting about the true depth and breadth of emotion for clipped niceties and unfeeling banalities.  Idioms to him were mere verbal window boxes, colorful and meaningless, dressings for untold disasters behind the shining windows they peacocked before.  

He hated them all with vaguely equal rancor, but there was one he could definitely single out as the one he hated the most, and that was the one about hanging the moon.  Such and such thinks you hung the moon, to me you hung the moon, and so on.  This particular rhetorical felony attracted his wrath only marginally because any moon symbolism never failed to feel outlandish and infantile, a mawkish image of love and care rampant in nursery rhymes and cheap commercialized slogans for t-shirts and wall art.  That was the least of it.  He hated the idea of hanging the moon mostly because once, another lifetime ago now it seemed, Tim Stoker had lobbed it in his face in a fit of smoldering rage and he had been completely, complacently, ignorant of its magnitude.  

Funny thing was, he couldn’t even remember what the actual fight had been about any longer.  Though he could remember exactly where he was standing, cornered next to the file cabinet for the year 1985, January through February, and the label had been peeling up on the upper left-hand corner.  He remembered he’d discovered a hole in the elbow of his jumper that morning and he had been obsessing over it all day, fussing with the dangling green thread and tugging at the knit as if it might magically close the wound.  He’d put his finger clean through it with his arms crossed haughtily over his chest without even realizing he’d been fiddling with it when something flippant about Martin came out of his mouth.  It hadn’t even been cruel, he couldn’t even remember how Martin had come up in the argument in the first place, he could only remember Tim’s mouth moving like he wanted to say something else, then him forcibly stopping himself before he snarled.

“Yeah well, god knows why, but he thinks you hung the moon, so you might try treating him at the very least like a human being once in a while.”

It was such a small thing.  Small words for a small feeling cloaked in a chintzy veneer of idiomatic dismissal.  A trembling little bird cupped in his scarred and battered hands and smothered.  Or so he thought.  Sometimes trembling little birds turn out to be phoenixes, and those who looked to someone else to hang the comfort of a wise, silvery moon in the sky already have the hammer and the picture wire at the ready.

As far as Jon was concerned, the moon only rose on their Somewhere Else because Martin deigned to pull the strings every night, not him.

It was Martin who brought him tea every morning, set it down on the breakfast table with that little flip of the tag and the deft, one-fingered turn of the handle toward him.  It was Martin who scolded him because whites are a separate load, Jon, were you raised in a barn?  Martin who talked him through every episode of the Doctor Who reruns that were the only thing their ancient aerial could pick up.  Martin who planted flowers in the garden and brought muffins from the sweet old lady at the grocers because they traded baking recipes.  Martin who still looked at him with diaphanous pools of ethereal moonlight in his eyes and his smile like he alone hung it in the sky over his head to wash him in its radiance.

Even after everything.

Even after it had been Martin who had to hold the knife buried in his chest as he lay gasping wetly for breath in an alleyway in Another Chelsea to keep the hemorrhaging at bay.  Martin who had cupped his face in his bloody hands with tears streaming down his and forced him to focus, furious love blazing in his sea mist eyes as they locked with his, screaming at him and him only, heedless of anything else.

“Look at me.  LOOK at me, Jon!  Stay with me!  Stay with me, DAMN YOU!”

Stay with me had not been a plea, it had been a command.  He had never once said please because it was never an option.  Shivering, breathing blood through his teeth, the streetlights a fading, star studded halo in Martin’s strawberry blond curls be damned, he was right.  Against every tangled thread of fate twisted deep into his flesh, or perhaps because they had been the only thing that held his torn innards together, he made it to the part where he awoke a few fractured times to nothingness, and then to fingers he knew every inch of inextricably bound up in his and a fierce whisper in his ear.

“I’m here, Jon.  I’m still here.  I’ve got you.  I’m going to fix this.  I’m going to get us out of here.  We’re going to be okay.”

It had been Martin who orchestrated their clandestine escape from the hospital the moment they both agreed he was well enough to survive under his rudimentary medical care and before the authorities got too invested in an urban ghost story of two men who didn’t exist.  Not to mention one of which should, by all medical and logical law, be dead.  It had been Martin who had stolen the necessary antibiotics, drugs, and wound care supplies, Martin who had picked enough pockets to buy passage on a midnight train to the only place they could think to go, and expressly told Jon not to ask where he learned how, even though he knew full well he would later.  Martin who had fought for everything and kept him hidden and safe while he lay in a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drifting in and out of consciousness between kisses, cold compresses, spoonfuls of whatever he could get him to swallow and keep down, and desperate ‘I love you’s.

Martin had been the one who hung the moon even on the nights Jon couldn’t see it, just so he knew it was there, that the light might finally guide him home.  Not him.  He could have never done something so selfless and simple and beautiful.  No not him.  Not The Archivist.  How could he have ever known that?  Stupid, myopic, pedantic, all-seeing and blind.  A blustering, sanctimonious Tiresias in a sweater vest and half-moon glasses.  And how important was the moon, anyway that he was expected to hang it too?  Would not night still come and the stars still shine?  The stupid, vapid saying should have been about the sun anyway.  Something that nourished and guided and warmed.  Not the moon.  Not the thing of night and hungry wolves and quiet loneliness.  Not a thing of the darkness they fought and still not won, not exactly, not in a way that mattered.  How could he have known the weight of such a thoughtless, frivolous, meaningless phrase and how far and how long Martin had borne it for him to protect he who hung his moon?  

He could see the weight of it so clearly now.  He could see it especially on the darkest days, which came, in grotesque mockery, the moment they found something like their safehouse and rest at last.  Jon had conned his way into a job at the village library with an ancient head librarian who didn’t care much for too many questions, or background or credit checks, and was more than happy to pay in cash.  With Martin’s help of course.  Martin himself had taken up stocking at the village grocers, and their life had teetered onto something so close to quaint and normal it suddenly laid bare the gravity of the depths of darkness they had escaped.

No longer did they have to run, no longer did they have to fight, they could finally lay down the chase and curl in upon each other to lick their wounds in quiet.  But without the driving, primal instinct to live, to survive, that ushered in the days where all the hurt came back to roost and brood and fester.  The days where he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, or the days Martin couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, or the days they shouted themselves hoarse, stormed apart for hours then came back, silent and broken, red-eyed and exhausted to hold each other and weep into the spaces between neck and shoulder where it still smelled like love and home.

He could see so painfully clearly the toll following him to the ends of the cosmos and back had etched its marks into his goodness, his body and soul, see how often he would walk down the road from their cabin, just a little ways, to stand on the heather spotted hills and gaze out into the frigid infinity of the gray sea.  Cold terror would grip him then, incite a desperate want to run after him, to throw his arms around him and bring him home, but also the fear it would only be to have him turn to mist and slip through his fingers forever.  He always had a cup of steaming tea waiting for him when he came back, just in case.

But again, and always.  It was Martin who would pick up Jon’s hands, kiss every slender, scarred finger through his tears and be the first one to utter ‘I’m sorry.’  Martin who told him with just a single scathing flash of stern blue eyes and not a single word uttered that he was certainly coming to bed and not banishing himself to the couch like an idiot.  Martin who wrapped him in his arms and warmth and boundless love and reminded him, “One way or another.  Together.  That was the deal, right?  You don’t get to back out now.  No returns, refunds, or exchanges, I’m afraid.”

And even through the deepest sobs he would find the laugh Jon didn’t think was in him.  Martin sifted through the mire and the muck and held fast to the tiny, shining things so easy to lose in the darkness.  Things Jon was certain were lost forever, only to be reignited and hung in the brightening sky of their story.  Even if they weren’t quite the moon yet.

It had also been Martin who, on a perfectly ordinary day, on a simple walk through the local farmers market, stopped to peruse one of the usual unremarkable stalls filled with crystals and oils and trinkets.  Jon had wandered off to procure the parsnips and the strawberries, unrelated recipes Martin swore, he had been tasked with finding.  When he returned he found him, a radiant monument tall among the faceless locals, rusty curls caressing his face in the salty breeze, carved of marble and rose quartz and gazing down at a pair of hematite rings on a velvet display box.  His eyes were distant, but not in the enthralled, disembodied way they were when he looked at the sea, or the broken way when they weren’t speaking, but in the contemplative, regarding of puzzle pieces way when he would look into the fire during their talks and turn his words in his mind over and over again like a rock tumbler until they were polished just right.

“Getting into crystals now, are we?” Jon had joked, “Surely I’m not so dull to be around that that’s becoming an attractive hobby.”

Martin snorted and shook his head.

“Supposed to mean healing, or grounding, or something.  Aligning your meridians, I think the lady said?  Whatever that means,” he elaborated, reaching out to touch.

They clinked weightily together, thick and glossy and the dark astral gray of a moonless night.  Martin turned over the card that went with them and read.

“’A grounding stone that belongs to the planet Mars.  It strengthens our connections to the earth and aids the warrior on their journey.  It is a stone of invincibility, but also fragility.  It balances yin and yang energies with its magnetic properties for the perfect reflection upon one’s own soul, astral, physical, and spiritual.’”

“Hematite, is it?” Jon asked, “Also more commonly called bloodstone.  You know if you scratch it, it leaves a red mark.  Like it’s bleeding.  Watch.”

He picked up one of the rings and firmly ran it down the corner of the card Martin had been reading from.  Sure enough, the black stone had left a faint, but starkly crimson mark on the yellowed paper.

“It BLEEDS?” Martin exclaimed in horror.

“It’s just a kind of iron oxide, so, rust, basically,” Jon explained with a chuckle, “Kind of weirdly romantic if you think about it?  This intimidating shiny black stone like armor, made of iron to boot, but with a bleeding heart at its core.”

“I just thought it was pretty, I didn’t know it bleeds,” Martin had laughed in that incredulous way he always did when Jon was telling him something he didn’t actually want to know, but appreciated anyway.

“I find that the strongest, prettiest things often do,” Jon had said in reply.  He remembered saying that particularly clearly, waxing poetic, feeling a swell of affection for the hugely beautiful man he leaned against and was adorably aghast at bleeding rocks.

“Yeah, I reckon they do,” Martin murmured back.

And then his cheeks had flushed bright red under his freckles and the stone steps of his shoulders crumbled a bit under the crushing ancientness and vastness of what he had originally been pondering.

“So, I mean, before you spoiled it with the blood thing.  I was thinking… Well, I was just having a browse and I saw these and I thought they were quite fetching, and then the lady told me they meant grounding and healing and a journey, like on the card.  A-And there were two of them, all by themselves, and everything else was so colorful and flashy these were just so… Um.  Maybe the blood and rusty iron thing makes it more poetic now, actually?  I don’t know.  Sorry I-  This sounded so much better in my head.”

It wasn’t his fault, Jon remembered thinking.  Martin couldn’t find the words because there weren’t any.  Not in this universe or any other.  Not for what they’d gone through, and especially not for what they meant to each other.

“I guess I was just thinking.  If… I bought one.  And wore it.  Sort of like.  Um.  You know.  Would… Would you-?” he had asked, his voice trembling.

Jon had never said yes, yes of course he would, faster or with more conviction in his life.  And there was that look again, rising from the ashes, that flooding of golden, unbound love and light, of eyes turned sky blue, of looking at the man who hung his moon in the sky come back to him.  He could still hang Martin’s moon all over again after so many nights of black clouds and darkness, even if it was only paper.  They’d paid for the rings in rumpled bills, exchanged them right then and there, and kissed each other as the crowd of oblivious people in a world they did not belong in flowed like a river around them.  Jon forgot the bag with the parsnips and strawberries.

But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t even matter that Martin’s fit nicely on his ring finger, but Jon had to wear his on his thumb, and even then sometimes on a chain around his neck for fear of losing it.  It didn’t matter that it was the closest thing they were ever going to get to a proposal and a wedding, consigned now forever to the shadows in a borrowed reality with only each other.  Because it was theirs, and they could begin to figure out how their broken pieces fit back together again.

But like most things that don’t matter, it didn’t until it did.

It began as simple things.  Seeing a wedding on some program they weren’t actually paying much attention to and Martin making a flippant, innocuous comment as he combed his fingers lovingly through Jon’s long and silvered chestnut hair in his lap about how he would have loved to have a cake that had a different flavor on every tier at their wedding.  Just so everyone could have something they liked.  And Jon woke up from his half catlike stupor and looked up at him with such aching regret as those words settled into the pit of his heart alongside ‘he thinks you hung the moon.’  

And soon they began to gather a collection of completely innocent remarks that ran the gamut from ‘would they have worn black or white?  Or one of each?  I don’t know… does it really matter?  And were these engagement rings or wedding rings?  I don’t know.  Neither?  both?  And do we say husband instead of boyfriend now?  Fiancé?  Whatever you want, Martin…’ To the heavier, cancerous weights that sank to the bottom of his gut, even below hanging the moon, like ‘I know Tim would have thrown the most amazing bachelor party for both of us, and his mum had always talked about him getting married someday like it was a farfetched pipe dream, but she would be happy for them, he thinks.’

He could never answer those questions.  There was too much at stake, too much finality and familiarity in them, a strange weightlessness in a world that weighed far too much.  The sun and moon continued their eternal dance of time, ignorant, unbothered, but Jon kept collecting those silent debts of normal life, secreting them away in a hidden singularity in his heart that only grew heavier and metastasized farther the more times Martin walked out at night, not him, beaming starlight from his eyes and his fingertips, to hang the moon again.  So soft, so full of wooly cows and pink heather and the smell of tea and sea salt and Martin’s shampoo on the pillow next to him did it become, that it was almost inevitable that one morning Jon awoke absolutely convinced none of it could be real.  

The moment he decided that, everything made so much more sense.  He could breathe again.  There was a reason he could never sit still, never just feel at ease or talk about the future like it was a real thing that could still happen.  He knew why the silence made his brain itch and why he still glanced around corners and glowered at anyone who dared let their gaze linger on his Martin too long.  Why Martin’s ring fit and his didn’t.  There was too much debt to the universe to be paid, too many broken promises, too many corpses in his wake, he had done nothing to deserve this idyllic life of love and peace and smallness and Martin.  It had to be Her doing, It’s doing, some carefully woven torture chamber that would lure them to the apex of their joy, the center of the web, where they would just be devoured over and over to empty husks and set up like chess pieces to fill with love and light just to knock down again.  He wasn’t free after all.

Jon had been halfway into his coat and halfway out the door to do, he didn’t know, something, anything, to go to the library to use their computer and research something he didn’t know he was looking for when Martin had seized his hand and whirled him around.

“Jon.  STOP.  It’s over.”

And he’d stopped.  He’d looked into those baleful blue eyes, fallen into their depths, landed on the precipice of madness, and broken.  It wasn’t over.  Not for him.  He finally understood.  It was still there.  The Eye.  It always had been.  Though not really, he understood slowly as he wept on his knees in their doorway into Martin’s chest, it had indeed closed forever on him, but it lingered as distant static, like a phantom limb, a metaphysical itch that could never be scratched.  Martin had cradled him close and listened, listened so patiently as he ripped the jagged black fear from the deepest, ugliest part of his heart, hauled it up bloody and messy from his throat and finally laid it bare for both of them to see.  And when it was done and he couldn’t cry anymore Martin had locked eyes with him in a way that made him forget any others could have ever existed outside of crystalline blue and filled with moonlight.

“Listen to me.  I know you think you have some cosmic burden to bear.  That you’re still wearing some… some fucked up crown and sitting on a throne of skulls and death and eyeballs or whatever image you want to put there, and that you have to sit and hurt and watch over everything so it doesn’t happen again, but...  Sorry, Jon, but that’s bullshit.  It’s just a scar now.  That’s all.  Just like the rest of them.  Ugly and beautiful and proof that you —Jonathan Sims— are still alive.  And you are not The Archivist anymore.  You’re just mine.  My Jon.”

He’d held his Jon’s stunned face in his hands and peppered kisses over the pock marks in his skin, over the slash on his throat, the burnt fingers that still couldn’t bend quite right, even the one on his chest, the one almost always hidden by fabric but the one he didn’t need to see to find.  His heart and fingers would always remember exactly where it was.  And he’d kept his lips there a moment, then turned his ear to his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist to listen to his heartbeat like a trembling little bird.

“If I can hear it and feel it.  So can you,” he whispered.

Unsteady fingers curled desperately into Martin’s silky locks, hematite loop cool against his scalp, “Thank you…”

Martin stayed for the kiss on top of his head he knew was coming and smiled.

“Okay, so it’s simple to fix if you think about it,” he murmured into Jon’s chest, “We just need that thing, you know?  The thing that makes you feel like you’re still doing the thing, but you’re not.  What was the word for it again?  A placeholder?  Like when you quit smoking and you hold a pencil or a straw or something that’s not actually a cigarette so you can wean yourself off the ritual?”

Jon blinked owlishly down at him as he dried his eyes.

“A… placebo?  Are you talking about a placebo?”

“Yeah!  That’s it!  We just need to find you a placebo for Knowing things!  That’s all.  Like… reality shows, or-or zoo cams or something!  We’ll figure it out together.  Alright, love?  I promise you.  It’ll be okay.”

Jon was skeptical, so very skeptical, but if Martin was determined to find a balm to soothe his jagged, ontological scars he would happily play the part of lab rat for him.  They’d tried a myriad things to replicate the feeling of Knowing and looking something deep within him still craved.  The zoo and animal livestreams were a bust, cute and entertaining as they were, but animals weren’t ever the purview of The Eye and the camera itself was barely a scrap.  Reality shows came closer, the more salacious the better, but even that temporary fix wore off when Jon’s disgust with the overall content and participants outweighed any benefit.  Martin was just happy to have finally converted him to Bake Off, at least.  They tried people watching in the square in the village, but it made Jon far too self-conscious and guilty.  He used the binoculars exactly once, and that was to look at the cows in the fields, and the choose-your-own-adventure books Martin had been certain would strike a sagacious chord wound up in the donation bin at the library.  But that was when he was struck with a bolt of genius.

Unbeknownst to Jon, which brought him no small measure of glee, Martin ordered, received, and then set up with a literal bow in their back garden the finest telescope he could afford on his meager savings.  He’d researched for days, asked on every amateur astronomer forum he could find, and had it delivered to the grocers so he could make it a proper surprise.  He’d even gone so far as to attack and blindfold a hapless Jon the moment he made it home from work on the day it was ready, and stood behind him giddily bouncing as he tore the tea towel away from his eyes.

“A… Telescope?” he’d blurted dumbly.

“Yes!  It’s perfect, right?  I asked around to find the one that had all the best features, and this one has the best overall magnification and the most lenses, but it doesn’t have the little satellite positioning thing?  I figured you wouldn’t want that anyway, you always like figuring things out and finding things on your own better.”

Martin had been positively radiant.  Jon had just stared at the gawping black tube and chewed the inside of his cheek as he processed what to say.

“I mean… thank you, Martin, really.  It was a sweet thought, but if the binoculars didn’t-“

“Screw the binoculars!  This is different!” Martin happily insisted, “You can look at so much more!  Stars and planets and galaxies and what have you, and it can maybe be sort of like you’re looking for other worlds?  Wormholes or whatever?  Or signs of The Fears and where they’ve gone?  Or even if the stars are the same here as they were back before?  Space literally has so many things to LOOK at we can’t even count them!  This has got to be it!”

Jon tried to smile and laugh and agree to try it out, at the very least, if only because Martin was beaming so sweetly with pride and hope.  Though that first night he didn’t, ushering them back in with promises of tomorrow, Martin, I promise tomorrow.  Tomorrow had been a lie.  As had been the next night.  In fact, it took Jon a full week to even remember they even had a telescope, and that was only after getting the smuggest, Cheshire grin out of Martin after casually mentioning there would be a visible, if partial, lunar eclipse that night.  He’d relented, only because he’d entrapped himself, and they’d both bundled up, looked in the manual for the best size lens to view the moon with, poured a few glasses of wine, and turned their eyes to the stars.

Martin had gone first, gripping the eyepiece and adjusting the focus all the while gasping in awe.  It was so beautiful he’d burst into poetry with a crooked grin.

“Art thou pale for weariness?  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth, and ever changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy?  Sounds a little familiar, eh?” he joked, casting a wry look over his shoulder.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly.

“Gross.  Keats again?”

“Nope, Shelley this time, and even he thinks you ought to have a look at the moon.  I think you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Jon had sighed obligingly and shuffled to the telescope, fully expecting to look at something bright and round with a bit of a shadow on it that was distinctly unremarkable, have another glass of wine, and then go back inside to snuggle by the fire.  What he saw in that tiny pinhole of light pierced straight through the hazel brown of his eye and plunged him into another world entirely.

The sands of the moon glowed the purest white in the refracted light of the distant sun with which it waltzed.  He could see in crisp, shadowy relief the innumerable scars she bore, the depth and breadth of Ptolemaeus, the boundless lonely flatness of the maria, named for the oceans they were once thought to be, an insult to the rock plains forged a millennia ago in birth by cataclysmic fire.  Every crater remained wrought in perfect, frozen detail with no erosion or foliage to slowly heal them over, and she beamed them proudly, ostentatiously in her heavenly light.  A hulking, ancient protectorate, hung by the hands of creation at the dawn of time for a fledgling planet, hundreds of thousands of miles away, and yet so crystal clear and unafraid as he perused her millions of years of cosmic sentinel through a lens.  It was dwarfing, humbling, viscerally awe inspiring in a way he dared not voice for fear of snuffing out the fragile glow of wonder and excitement welling in his chest he had been so certain was gone forever.

Astronomy had never been something that had particularly interested Jon, back when his entire reality from the moment his childish hands had touched a single book was spent peering into shadows and watching his own back.  There was no point in wondering what lay among the stars when danger and death lurked so close behind with slavering jaws ever poised at his throat on terra firma, but now.  Now, he had been living in an alternate world, dimension, reality, somewhere, he couldn’t even say for sure.  He’d been hurled potentially through the very stars that twinkled coquettishly above, flashed through their nebulous veils and curtains under their indifferent gaseous gazes, but seen nothing.  Here was a vast expanse of complete chaotic indefiniteness inviting him in to see what few had ever seen, to guess and hypothesize and gesture wildly at secrets only the stars could keep.  To Know.

Jon had jerked back so suddenly from the telescope to survey the entirety of the astral dome above them that Martin had choked on his wine.

“Jon?  Are you quite alright?”

“Yes, I…” he’d murmured, only even half hearing that Martin had said anything at all, stars reflected in his wondering dark eyes, “I’m fine, I just… How… How much more can this see?  How deep does it go?”

Jon hadn’t seen the victorious smirk on Martin’s face as he set down his wine glass and picked up the instruction manual and lens guide.  They’d watched the rest of the eclipse, of course, marveling through the lens at the inky trickle of shadow over craggy white, but then they’d changed the lens to the strongest one, according to the guide, and spent the rest of the evening triangulating their position beneath their slice of the universe and plotting out the various stars, planets, and constellations above.  Jon had even dashed inside to grab a mostly blank notebook and had filled several pages with notes and observations and things to research later, all while Martin held back tears watching him come so alive over a project he didn’t even know he needed.  Eventually though, sleepiness and cold claimed him, and he kissed his beloved goodnight and left him, more than gladly, to ride out the intellectual flare up until it burnt both him and itself out.  

Martin had no clue what time it was when he finally returned, and it didn’t even matter.  All that mattered was at some point, a practically frozen Jon had climbed into bed, snuggled up close behind and wrapped his arms around him to kiss the back of his neck so softly like the wings of a butterfly and whisper.

“Thank you.”

Another victorious smirk and a loving murmur.

“Told you so.”

Where there had been nothing but an Eye shaped hole in him, scarred around the edges and aching in its vacuum, Jon had filled it with the names of nebulas and quasars, of the myth of Andromeda, and Orion, and Castor and Pollux, or Hercules, and why they had all been hung in the stars for eternity.  The stories were much the same as he remembered, but he’d found slight eccentricities, tiny irregularities in the sky which fascinated him even more so.  Night after night he would look at a different astral body, chart it down in his notebook, then come bounding in with starlight beaming from his eyes and his fingertips with some cry of eureka.

“Martin!  Did you know here Polaris is in the south and Sirius is in the north?”

“Martin!  Did you know the Andromeda Galaxy is actually a little closer to the Milky Way here?”

“Martin, you have to come see this!  Oh, no it’s not weird this time, it’s just I finally got Saturn in the telescope and you can actually see the rings!”

His nightly herald would always be different, but Martin would always rise from the comfort of the couch, put his slippers on, and let Jon talk as long as he needed to about his latest discovery, watching him smile again while he, too, watched the matching smile it never failed to ignite illuminate Martin’s face and they lit each other up in the fused brilliance of a binary star.

Martin no longer hung the moon for Jon, he’d finally just up and quite literally given it to him, and there was no mortal way to repay him for that.  Or so he’d thought.  It came to him, as most flashes of brilliance do, on a night he hadn’t even been thinking about it at all.  All he had been doing was sitting in a lawn chair with his telescope long after Martin had gone to bed, chewing his pencil idly, vaguely missing a cigarette and pondering notes on Vega and Lyra between watching it through his lens.  He’d been stuck for days on Vega and its potentiality for another solar system and what that could imply for their new Earth and their new sun, as well as Lyra and the tragic tale of Orpheus and his doomed love.  Even in their new reality he still turned back at the end of the story, still could not contain the roiling, effusive adoration to his own downfall.

Bitterness had risen like bile in the back of Jon’s throat as he replayed the myth again in his head, unsure why it was vexing him and rewinding in his brain so torturously.  “Stupid, stupid man, if he’d only just…” he’d thought again and again, each time giving the star-crossed musician a different decision, a different choice, urging him down another path somewhere, anywhere along his journey, but in the end, he’d always looped back around to the original.  It was the point of the story, after all.  Not so much the love itself or even the loss of it, but the power of it over one man and the creation born from his mourning and eventual destruction.  Patently Greek.  But the chorus would always begin again in Jon’s head.  If he’d kept his Eurydice, if his songs had been happy, if he hadn’t spent the rest of his life mourning so intensely he was eventually destroyed for it, would he have become the paragon of healing he was, the oracle, the lynchpin of the fate of the world he had eventually become?  Which of them was the stupider man?

Jon was only mortal now, he was no longer all-seeing oracle and dark savior, he had no authority to say, but it was a trifle easier to ponder the hubris of Orpheus instead of his own.  He couldn’t help but think, achingly, sometimes the heroes just deserved to pull their beloved from the pit of Tartarus, promise to love them for eternity, and then simply get married, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after.  A story wasn’t a story if it didn’t write itself upon the very bones and sinews of its heroes, that was the law of the universe, but when the story was done and the cracks and fissures in their tissues had faded to myth and legend, what became of the heroes who did not die a tragic or heroic death and were not hung in the stars?  What happened to heroes left behind?  Twisting his bloodstone ring on his thumb idly as it caught the shivering fire of those stars in its dark mirrored surface, the musical arrow of the muses pierced his heart, wide-eyed in wonder.  He’d asked the universe, but he already knew the answer.  He’d always known.  He knew, and he knew it with such clarion joy as he had never known anything before.

He could no longer be the man who hung Martin’s moon, he hadn’t been for a long time.  That much was clear to him, but he could certainly do something else.  Perhaps they had grown past the need for moon hangings in the first place.  He knew how their story ended.

It took months of saving, secreting, preparation, and then finally just simply waiting for the perfect, clear night.  The moment it came, the moment he knew it was the night, Jon struck without hesitation.  Poor Martin wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the couch, into Jon, when he returned from a late shift at the grocers, but found himself instead stuffed right back into his coat with a picnic basket in hand and hauled out into the frigid night in a flurry of Jon with little time to protest.  He bounded up the hill behind their little cottage beneath a perfect blanket of stars flaming coldly overhead, trailing Martin’s hand in his behind with his breath coming in silvery puffs of clouds, and paying no heed to the whining.

“Jon, whatever it is, does it have to be NOW?” Martin panted, “I am absolutely knackered and it’s beyond freezing and wouldn’t it be nicer just to curl up with a cuppa and fall asleep in front of Star Wars or something?  Doesn’t that have enough stars and space in it?”

Dauntless, Jon only tugged harder.

“There’s tea in the basket, and I’ve seen Star Wars.  And yes, it has to be tonight, it’s really important, I promise.”

“Look.  I love you.  So much.  You know this, and please know it is with the utmost love and deepest affection in my heart that I point out that you say that every time, and you’ve still shown me Pluto like, a hundred separate times.  While I quite like it, and I still feel sorry for it being bumped out of the solar system and all, it’s just a dot?  How many times can you look at a dot?” Martin sighed.

His words finally threw a caltrop into Jon’s warpath, and he paused, turning over his shoulder woundedly.

“What?  No, it’s not Pluto, I swear just- Please, Martin?  I’ll never ask again if you don’t want to, but just for tonight, please?” he pleaded.

Martin winced, and immediately folded under the onslaught of doleful honeyed brown eyes under a nimbus of stars.

“Oh, lord there you go with the puppy dog eyes.  Okay, okay fine, but there better be a nip of whiskey in this,” he chided lovingly with a gesture at the thermos in the basket.

The smile flared back to life brightly on Jon’s face as he turned back up the craggy little footpath to the top of the hill.

“Of course, hot toddy with tea.”

“Ooh, lovely, you do know me.”

The rest of the way was trivially short to the small, flat hilltop surrounded by heather where Jon had already set up a blanket and the telescope over a pristine vista of the dark line where the stars sank into the sea.  He ushered Martin to sit down first, then perched on his hip beside him and poured him a generous helping of tea and whiskey from the thermos before pouring his own.

“Thanks, much.  Right then, what exactly are we up here to look at that we couldn’t see from our garden?” Martin asked, accepting his cup of potent hot toddy and sipping it gratefully around the lemony steam that billowed up.

Taken aback by the sudden logic lobbed into the center of his romantic posturing, Jon looked momentarily stunned, as if someone had slapped him upside the head.

“Oh!  Oh, um, well-!  Ahah, that is to say- Uh.  There is a reason for all this.  It’s not that we couldn’t see it from our garden, we very much could have.  B-But it’s so beautiful up here, and you can kind of hear the sea?  And it’s nice and peaceful, and the heather is still blooming a bit and um…” he trailed off, cheeks burning.

“Okay…?” Martin probed, frowning a little.

“Er, actually...  It’s less about the stars than it is- W-Well it is about the stars.  Let’s get that clear.  But to be completely honest I mostly just… I-I well.  There’s something I need to tell you?”

Jon was ill-prepared for the look of abject horror on Martin’s face as he went paler than the moon overhead.

“Shit, what is it?  Did you find something?  You saw something?  There’s been a sign of The Fears?  Oh god it’s not HER is it?” he asked frantically, nearly slopping hot toddy all over his lap.

“What?  No!  No, none of that!” Jon spluttered, aghast.

Martin regained a modicum of color in his face and breathed in measuredly.

“Okay, so then what is it?  Oh god, you’re not… Jon you’re not ill, or something, are you?  Please, you can just tell me if-“

“No, I am not ill either, damn it, Martin!  If you would just listen to me!  I-!” Jon moaned exasperatedly, “I just wanted to do something… nice.  Something nice for you.  And nicer than I normally would because I am apparently much worse at crafting romantic moments than I thought and-“

“Wait…” Martin cut in, eyes gleaming with realization, “Jonathan Sims… Are you grand gesturing?”

“Well I am certainly trying but you are making it exceedingly difficult!” he retorted, red in the face and breathless.

“Oh my god, you are!  I’m so sorry!” Martin laughed brightly, “Oh god Jon you poor thing I’m so sorry, I’m awful, I’m the absolute worst!  No please!  Don’t let me spoil it.  Please go on.”

Grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead, Jon tried to summon the words again, only for Martin’s strong, warm hands to take it from him and tip his chin up to gaze into his eyes.

“Hey.  Hey, Jon.  Look at me,” he breathed, looking into his eyes idolatrously, “I’m sorry.  I love you.  You can tell me.”

Taking the steadiness from those clear blue depths he needed, Jon focused on them, on the strawberry blond curls tossing in the icy breeze, of the kiss of chilled pink under his freckles, and that eternal, sunshine smile.

“Okay,” he finally answered, smiling softly.

With a deep, shuddering breath, and a long swig of whiskey laced tea for good measure, Jon drew himself up and fished deep in his soul for the words he had waited a millennium to say.

“Okay… So here it is.  Um… I’ve um, I’ve had a lot of time alone lately with my new hobby, as it were.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  A lot of it is overly complicated and ridiculous and doesn’t deserve to live outside of my head but… a lot of it has been about you, about us.  And I know we don’t need to-to put a label on us or put us into a… a box or anything like that.  But every time I look at this ring on my finger, I can’t help but remember we never actually talked about what they meant,” he began, holding out his left hand and fidgeting with the loose band around his thumb.

“Oh Jon, don’t worry about that.  It was just me being a big sappy, sentimental dork.  And if I recall correctly, we’d had a pretty awful row a night or two before, and I just wanted to feel close to you again, I guess?  We both know what they mean to us.  It doesn’t matter,” Martin assured him sweetly.

“Except that it does!” Jon insisted passionately, “That’s the point!  You are a big sappy, sentimental dork, Martin.  I bet you were the kid that had a dream wedding all planned in a notebook with pictures cut out of magazines and everything.  I adore that about you, but big sappy sentimental dorks should have big sappy, sentimental moments like huge, expensive seaside weddings with three-flavor cakes and all your friends and family and rose petals and dove releases and whatever else your heart could dream up.”

Martin snickered and shook his head, charmed at least by the mental image of kissing Jon on a seaside cliff at sunset while doves flew in glorious formation around them and everyone they had ever known and loved cheered.

“Pfft, I don’t need a grand wedding and all that, I just need-”

“Me.  I know,” Jon finished for him with a smirk, “I knew you’d say that.  Maybe not.  But you deserve one.  And I know I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s necessary in this case.  You deserve it.  All of it.  Me on one knee with a ring in a box, you deserve us picking out flowers and tuxedos and arguing over the font on the invitations.  You deserve Tim’s awful bachelor party and laughing at me at the altar because I had to read my vows off a card and they’re still so stiff and awkward and they pale in comparison to the beautiful poem you wrote about me.  You deserve smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and crying as we exchange rings.  All of it.”

Martin weighed his words carefully on his tongue with a sip of his boozy tea to chase away ghosts of things that never even were.

“I mean, sure, not going to say I never wanted that.  And I did have that stupid wedding notebook, by the way.  But all that became a pipe dream the minute we wound up here, right?  No use being upset about something that can never be.”

“That may be so, but the crux of it is… you also contented yourself with the idea of it never coming true not because we’re here, but because you didn’t think I wanted it,” Jon answered, his unspoken truth hanging heavy in the chill night air between them, “Every time you tried to tell me you wanted to be with me forever, I brushed it off and painted it gray and tucked it away and carried on the way we always were like nothing happened and it didn’t matter.  Because it was alright, really, you were just so happy to have what we have, that I didn’t die in your arms that night, that we were still together after everything.  That I at least kept that promise after I’d broken so many.  You were so grateful just for what you were gifted after we thought we would end with nothing you didn’t dare think to ask the universe for more and I am so, so sorry it took me so long to see that, Martin.  I’m so sorry.”

His voice broke.  The breath caught in Martin’s chest as he reached out to touch his wrist comfortingly.

“Jon, I-“

“No, please.  Please let me finish I… I can’t give you any of those things.  I can’t give you our friends back, I can’t give you cake and doves and the sunset and crying through vows in front of the vicar.  I can’t even give you an elopement at the register office because we still don’t legally exist.  And I guess for a long time I resented myself for that.  For all of it.  For stealing that from you, for dragging you through literal hell only to give you a shadow of a life stuck here with me because I betrayed you.  But- no stop, don’t say anything yet I’m not done.  B-But now I finally realize.  You’re right, Martin.  You were always right.  It doesn’t matter.  Those things are all just… things.  I said to you once, a long time ago, and I’m still not even sure if you really heard me, that I didn’t want to just survive.  It was true then, and maybe it wasn’t true for a while, but it’s certainly true again.  We did not fight tooth and nail to just survive.  We fought to live, and live together.  So what I’m saying is… I know now I don’t have to give you tuxedos and white roses as long as I give you something… Something to prove to you that you are my everything, my entire world, something to show you that I love you more than I have loved anything in my entire life.  That I want forever with you.  S-So I…” he trailed off, sucking in his breath to give his gesture of undying love the ardor and grandeur it deserved, “I bought us a star.”

The proclamation rang out like the toll of a bell, its gravity sonorous and quaking.  Martin blinked.

“You… I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

Jon set his empty thermos cup aside, flailed his hands in the air and shook his head frantically

“I-I know, I know it sounds mental just hear me out!” he protested, “Technically I didn’t buy the star, if we want to get picky about it.  I mean obviously no one can own a star.  Just the rights to name it?  It’s a thing you can do online.  I was a bit gobsmacked it was real to be honest.  I just had this silly idea when I was out looking at the stars.  I was looking at Lyra and thinking about you and Orpheus, and I… W-Well I just typed it in, ‘can you name a star?’ and it came right up.  Right then and there.  It um… comes with… hold on.”

Remembrance placed a gentle bookmark down on Jon’s fluttering thoughts, and he rummaged in the picnic basket for a moment before pulling out a navy-blue manila folder covered in stars and full of the paperwork and certificates that had come with registering theirs.  He handed it to Martin, who took it in place of his own empty cup, numb, muscles quivering under his jaw, and opened it to the glittering gold typeface that proclaimed ‘Congratulations!’.

“It comes with paperwork, too!  See?  So, it’s official, at least?  The Jon-Martin star.  Not a marriage license I know, but at least our names are together on something legal?  Our real names?  I figured even if we manage the fake identity thing we’d have to get married as not us.  Not really.  So…  I-It could be like our marriage certificate?” Jon explained, chewing his lower lip.

Martin said nothing as his hand turned the pages of the documentation, his eyes distant in a way Jon had never seen before.  Not disembodied and enthralled, not broken, not even regarding puzzle pieces.

“Oh!  Um, also I-I got us a binary star.  I forgot to mention that bit,” he went on, filling the sudden void, “It’s, ah- What a binary star is- It’s technically two?  But they’re caught up in each other’s gravity and they orbit each other so tightly they look like one star together, one that just shines a little brighter.  They’re bound together forever by the most powerful cosmic force in the universe.  Just like us.”

Only silence answered, punctuated by one last crisp whisper of paper, and then the folder closing with Martin’s spread fingers atop it, bloodstone gleaming in the vivid pale light of the night.  Jon’s heart pitched frantically in his chest, and desperate, stranded tears pricked at his eyes.

“I uh… I would have rather gotten us a whole constellation.  Heh, you know?  But they don’t do that, obviously,” he tried softly, his fingers barely brushing Martin’s knuckles, “They record heroes in constellations, after all.  Great deeds, doomed romances, lovers who can be together no other way… That would have been a better way to honor us, I think.  Our story.  A-And who knows?  Maybe back on our world there are a few new stars to remember what we did, to mark the place we left it, so that everyone we left behind can look up and remember us.  They don’t know how the story really ended, and they probably never will, but we do.  We do, and I want to end it right here, right now.  With our star shining above us ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”

Martin still said nothing, but his head bowed, casting a slice of shadow over his eyes, and his shoulders quivered as a thin, bright line of wet silver trickled down his cheek.  Jon felt the very sky shatter above and begin to crumble around him.

“Please… M-Make no mistake, Martin.  P-Perhaps the gesture is silly and meaningless, but it was all I could think to do to go with everything I’ve said tonight.  Martin… Martin, don’t you see?  These are my wedding vows to you.  This is me saying ‘I do’ and also ‘Martin K. Blackwood would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the universe?’  All at once.  This is me saying I swear to you I will be yours, through everything, until the end of time.  M-Maybe I wasn’t before.  Maybe I was still punishing myself, but I’m telling you, I’m ready now to have my happily ever after.  With you, Martin.  If you’ll have me.  If I haven’t-“

He would never finish.  In a dizzying blur of blue folder, flashing hematite, and a wreath of golden curls, Martin kissed the words off his lips.  He kissed him so hard and so fierce, through wracking sobs with his hands woven so raptly into his long, wavy locks he thought his lips would bruise and his fragile soul would finally shatter to pieces in Martin’s arms.  Undone, all Jon could do was surrender and kiss him back with equal passion, thumbing away the hot tears as they spilled freely down his cheeks and anointed them both with their cleansing, hoary heat.  Their lips parted and they panted softly against each other in the space between, each afraid to break the sacred, pulsing silence.

“You’re crying,” Jon whispered at length, “I’ve said something wrong. Martin, darling I’m so sorry.  I never meant to-”

Martin laughed, raspy with tears, but ethereal, sparkling, like stardust floating on the breeze.

“People are allowed to cry when they’re happy you stupid, silly man,” he murmured in between kissing him again, and again.

“Oh.  Oh.”

He kissed him one last time, that idiot man who always burnt the toast and always knew the facts but never knew what to say, who finally figured it out and bought him a star, and threw his arms around him, enveloping his slight, fragile form protectively in his embrace.

“I love you.  I love you so much.”

Jon sank into that warm, familiar comfort and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I love you, too, Martin.  I want to be yours for the rest of my life.  I want to be me, I want to be us.”

“I know.  I’ve always known.  Oh god, you do know that right?  I know that you love me, it’s written in everything you do and say.  I have never, ever once doubted you love me with everything you are.  Even in the moments I was afraid that… that maybe we just weren’t meant to be together, I still knew it wouldn’t be because you didn’t love me.  Never because you didn’t love me.  Just maybe that we didn’t fit together anymore,” Martin replied in a small voice through his tears as they spilled down his cheeks.

As much as he wanted to vehemently deny there was ever a chance they might have not fit back together again after they had both been so shattered, to kiss him and tell him not in a million years would there ever have been a future where they weren’t Jon and Martin against the world, Jon knew it to be inescapably true.

“I’m so sorry you ever had to be afraid of that,” he swore, digging his fingers into Martin’s back pointedly, “After everything.  After we fought so hard to escape fear itself.  That I almost let it truly win in the end.  That I couldn’t just let go… Because… Because this was never about The Eye, was it?”

A heave of breath and its shuddering exhale shook Martin’s body free of lifetimes of grief, and fear, of ugliness carried far beyond the borders of their souls.  His fingers curled tighter in unspoken reply.

“No Jon, no it wasn’t, but I’m so very glad you finally figured that out.”

“Me, too…” he whispered.

They held each other in the quiet wake of being a moment and let the astral plane wheel calmly overhead.  An impatient star twinkled.

“Wait… you never answered me,” Jon finally said as he pulled back, sliding his elegant fingers down Martin’s strong arms.

“Huh?” Martin blurted, scrubbing under his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

“About marrying me tonight.  You never actually said yes, so…”

A twinkle in his eye and a slight mischief to his grin, Jon dove back into the picnic basket and emerged with a velvet ring box.  Martin’s hands flew to his mouth.

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did!  Nothing fancy, but I thought it was high time to retire the blood rings,” he explained rising from his former perch on his hip to kneel properly.

The box cracked neatly open, and inside lay a simple, white gold band with a tiny circle of milky moonstone embedded in it on a midnight-blue satin cushion, blindingly bright against the dark.  Martin sobbed joyfully all over again.

“So, uh… I suppose if it had just been us, if we’d just been together, without everything, and we’d arrived at this moment.  I would have done much the same.  I would have brought you somewhere beautiful, somewhere I could teach you some inane fact you didn’t actually care about, but liked because it came from me.  Emulsifiers in ice cream and rum raisin…” they both snickered, “And I would have tried my best to make it into some sort of romantic metaphor but completely bunged it up and you would be laughing as I got down on one knee, just like this.  And it would have just been simple.  To the point.  Just… Will you marry me?  So…”

Jon assumed the traditional position, on one knee, arms outstretched, his every slender point a star in a perfect constellation of love.

“Will you marry me?”

Their eyes met, across a thousand different realities, across a thousand different worlds, carried on celestial winds to fall hopelessly, inexorably, into each other’s orbit.

“Yes, yes I do believe I will.”

With one last farewell kiss upon it for what it had meant for them both, Jon slipped the bloodstone ring from Martin’s finger and replaced it with the delicate band made of starlight.  It took its place radiantly, and shone as Martin drew his hand back to admire it with an equally radiant grin before it dimmed with concern.

“But what about you?” he asked worriedly as he watched the old ring entombed lovingly in the box.

Jon only smirked and produced a second box from the basket, which he offered on his open palm out to Martin.

“Naturally, I got one for myself.  Couldn’t pass up a chance to get a wedding ring that actually fits, could I?  It’s just… Don’t you think you deserve to give it to me the way you would want?” he urged.

Martin took the box eagerly, biting his lower lip in thought.

“Not sure you want to give me that freedom.  I had about five different ways of asking you in my head and all of them you would have hated so, so much.  But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t kind of the point,” he answered wryly.

Jon chortled.

“Sorry I, the unromantic one, sprung this on you, the romantic one.  But I did want to surprise you.  I-I mean you can still write me a vows poem later?  If you want to, of course.  I’d love to have it, even if I don’t actually get to hear it at our wedding.”

Martin’s face flushed immediate crimson and his eyes darted coyly away as he toyed with the wedding band box in his lap.

“Oh that?  A-Actually I… I have it memorized, i-if you really wanted to hear it.”

“You- WHAT?” gasped Jon, his cheeks flushing in tandem.

“Oh yeah, I wrote my vows poem for you ages ago and I’ve gone over it so many times I know it by heart.  It was comforting, okay?  I-I’d read it again when times were good and I thought maybe you’d actually- um… a-and when times were not so good, when you were gone, in your own head, when I was afraid we were broken for good, whenever I needed it.  I’ve read it over a thousand times and never changed a thing from the first time I penned it.  Never needed to.  I’m surprised I haven’t recited it in my sleep at this point,” Martin admitted sheepishly.

Jon’s entire body flushed with a solar heat that melted his joints and his heart into a swirling flare of adulation.

“I can think of no better way, then, to receive my ring,” he breathed, reaching out to cup Martin’s cheek in his hand, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

In mirror ballets of love exchanges, Martin cradled Jon’s hand against his cheek as he spoke the first lines of the vows etched ever on his being softly into his palm.

“Let he who, shadow dwelling, must In paper, pen, and book be bound Shake off the chains of dark and rust And chart his own bright fate unfound.

Let he with lifelong burdens borne Cut paper wings with thread of gold And hand in hand, the sky forsworn Flit clouds and sun in laughter bold.

Let he whose blood and soldier’s ken The world did shield from dark and fear Heal fast those wounds, be whole again And sleep at last, held close and dear.

Bring him to me with spirit free With stars in eyes and music sung From lips a joyful promise be One soul conjoined, one fate’s thread strung.

Two hearts rejoice in love renowned. We lift our heads, alive, uncrowned.”

He waited until the last couplet to pull the ring from the box and slide it onto Jon’s finger where it too, fit perfectly, like it had always been there, and shone defiantly bright in the moonlight.  Jon wept.  He had been weeping since the first words of verse left his beloved’s lips, but seeing that ring like a piece of his missing soul returned to him undammed the tears effusively.

“God that was… Martin, I don’t have words.  I-It was… so beautiful.  You’re so beautiful.  Thank you,” he cried fervently, “I wish I could tell you properly how much that meant, but I just-“

“Hey… That’s alright.  I’m the words guy.  You’re the emulsifiers guy.  Making you cry is all I need to see to know how you feel,” Martin assured him warmly, reaching out to brush his tears away as he chuckled.

“Yeah… add this one to the running tally.”

“Oh, I have,” Martin snickered, “Speaking of!  Now we’ve done the crying through vows bit.  Shouldn’t we say the ‘I do’ bit, as well?”

Jon pursed his lips with a shrug as he reached out with his left hand to take Martin’s left as well, twining their fingers together

“Yes, I suppose we should.  I don’t see why not.  Well then, Martin, do you?”

“I do.  And Jon, do you?”

“I do.”

“You may now soundly snog the groom.”

“Martin…”

The emphatic drawl of his name the way Jon only called it when he was frustratingly enamored of him perished gently against Martin’s velvet lips as they caressed his.  They kissed slowly and reverently, sealing a pact ordained by the heavens long before either of them had seen the stars in the other’s eyes, lighting with white flame the torch to guide them for the first time, forward.  They broke it only to punctuate it with two more featherlight kisses and a breathless laugh, bowing their foreheads together in deference to the forces of fate and the universe.

“I know this isn’t the wedding either of us ever dreamed of, but as far as I’m concerned, it was perfect,” Jon murmured, nuzzling closer into his husband, swaddling the new, fledgling and beautiful word in his heart.

“Well, hey, what is a wedding really other than just a formal declaration that this is it?  This is us, we’re forever, no matter what.  We did it.  And you did it for me, in the STARS, Jon… Can we just remember that again?  You put us in the actual stars.  I am so writing a ballad for our constellation later, you do know this.”

“Oh lord.  Of course you are.  But really, it was the least I could do, after you’ve done so much for me, sacrificed everything for me.  Waited for me for so long.”

“And you came back to me,” Martin reminded him passionately, “And I don’t just mean back to life, here, in this world.  I mean you came back, Jon, MY Jon, the Jon I was in love with the moment I laid eyes on him.  The fidgety and obstinate Jon who can’t make a decent cup of tea to save his life, who puts on two different socks in the morning because his nose is already in the paper or a book, who teaches me about bleeding rocks and binary stars and still reacts to the simplest acts of kindness like a warm cranberry orange scone without asking for one like they’re divine miracles he is undeserving of, who looks at me like I hung the moon or something every time.  Even when I thought I was a complete and total waste of a human being, you, Jonathan Sims, the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant man to ever walk the Earth, looked at me like I hung the moon.  And that was… Still is… everything to me.”

The heavens shifted, the stars wheeled, the last piece clicked smartly, smugly into place.

“W-What did you say…?” Jon asked with such urgency, grabbing his hands so fiercely, Martin startled.

“Wh-I-I don’t-?  Which part?  The moon hanging part?” he stuttered, rolling his eyes fondly as he realized mid-sentence, “Oh, right.  Ugh, Jon are you seriously going to get after me about your weird vendetta against idioms at our wedding?  Because if you are that would be annoyingly adorable and so intensely you and kind of perfect, but also can you not on THIS particular occasion?”

The laugh that tore from Jon’s throat was half mad, half euphoric as the weight of the moon lifted from his shoulders and became naught but an indifferent sentinel disc in the sky once more.

“No no no, it’s just… It’s funny, I had more than a few things very, very wrong for a very, very long time.  That’s all.  Don’t worry about it,” he explained, leaning in and pressing a delicate kiss to Martin’s forehead, “If you’re the one who hung the moon after all, then I suppose ‘written in the stars’ will have to do for me.”

Martin lit up with literary glee.

“Oh ho!  Two space related idioms in one go?  What a rare treat!  Maybe this is your gateway drug into puns…” he teased impishly.

“Absolutely no chance in hell.”

They both laughed, laughed with the billowing icy breath that reached with victorious fingers up to the heavens.  They laughed, messily sniffing back the pesky drip of tears and cold.  They laughed with lightness of the encumbrance of hematite armor shed, its bloody protections no longer needed to cage wounded hearts and keep them safe and close.  They laughed in breath and also in the dancing points of light in their eyes as they fell into one another free from gravity.

“So uh… Do I get to see my star tonight, or don’t I?” Martin finally remembered, relishing the utterly horrified yelp from Jon.

“Oh god I completely-!  Y-Yes!  Yes of course, it’s already set up at the proper coordinates!” he had already sprung to his feet, “Oh, though, hang on, it took longer to get to the star viewing part than I anticipated, so I might need to adjust it a bit.  Oh!  And I have a little strawberries and champagne, if you like?”

“I do like, please and thank you!”

Jon set to readjusting the telescope to the proper ascension and declination while Martin poured them two glasses of crisply bubbling champagne.  They twined their arms to drink a toast from each other’s glass, ‘to us’ or ‘to happily ever afters’, or to several other messily rambled toast worthy sentiments.  They couldn’t decide and toasted to all of it.  They ate plump red strawberries and licked the juice from each other’s fingers as they looked at their star, which was, after everything, just a dot, just like Pluto, but Martin had to admit that he rather liked looking at dots after all.  And that one was their dot.  The warm intoxication of love and champagne begged for music, and someone fumbled in the cold for a wedding playlist on some app, somewhere, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could join hands, gaze into each other’s eyes and dance inelegantly, stepping on each other’s toes, under the umbrella of stars in a gentle rain of moonlight.

“I don’t see your problem with cliches, idioms and all that, really…” Martin mused at length, laying his head on Jon’s shoulder as they slowly spun to the rhythm of a longing ballad and the song of the sea, “Like this stupid, great song.  They’re familiar and cozy and everyone knows them.  They’re like… like old friends.  Always there to rely on when we can’t come up with the words ourselves, because sometimes we can’t.  And if something trite and silly sums up the way you feel, why not just let it be?  Sometimes things are said over and over again because some truths are universal, you know?  They’re just… human.”

Jon pressed a kiss into the mop of curls that tickled his nose and smelled faintly of toasted sugar and lavender and mused on all of the romantic cliches that had just passed through his mind unbidden.  Who was he to deny he was but one star in the sky, a single gear in the grand mortal mechanism of the universe.  If he had handed himself over to the humanity of it all instead of rusting, stopping, looking outside where there was never anything to see, perhaps he could have had this dance much sooner.  It didn’t matter though, until it did, because that night Martin took his breath away, made his world go round, he was head over heels for his match made in heaven, and better than heaven, they were written in the stars.

“You know what, Martin?” Jon laughed in reply, “Tonight, being what it is, I am willing to concede.  You are absolutely right.”

“I’m glad…” came the tender acceptance, followed by a distinctly puckish beat of silence, “Then does this mean I can I start saying love you to the moon and back?”

“Don’t push your luck...”

[n-ecessity]

Things Change

Warnings: Unsub!Spencer Reid, UnsubFem!Reader, mention of violence, drugs, weapons, blood, SMUT(penetration, degradation/praise kink, fingering, pet names, etc.)

Word Count: 2.2k

A/N: Hey guys I was inspired by one of my favorite band’s song to write this one shot! I 100% recommend listening to the song “Consume” by Chase Atlantic while reading this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCdXuomafSU

Being a profiler to catch serial killers was easy, getting into the mind of one to see what their next move was became second nature to me, until I met her. We were currently stuck in an interrogation room, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. She had killed five people, men to be exact, but I was intrigued by her, possibly even infatuated. The way she was leaning into my questions, perked up with excitement from the thrill. The shine in her eyes while I interrogated her gave me feelings that I know I shouldn’t have, kind of like love at first sight. I’ve always played it safe with love; sometimes the love doesn't end in a safe way, but I was ready to give anything up just to be with her. As she was being walked out back to her jail cell waiting for her court trial she spoke the words to me, “call me when you break.” I never knew what she meant until months later. 

As time passed, I learned that she had been found not guilty due to lack of evidence and she got away with the murders, and I decided it was best not to call her. As months went on and I was framed and put into jail wrongfully, I was at my breaking point and that's when I knew what she meant by her vague words. I was falling apart, and she was the glue I was looking for to put me back together. Returning to the BAU after getting out of jail didn’t feel the same, and my frustration and anger grew as the days went on in this place. Every day I felt myself longing to find her information and call her, but I waited and waited, until one day I couldn’t. I searched for the information I needed and called her.

“I’ve been waiting for your call,” she said into the phone, I could picture her smirking from the other side of the line.

“I get it now, what you meant all those months ago.” I replied, getting straight to the point.

“Well, are you finally ready to leave the BAU and fulfill your true self with me? See Spencer, I’ve seen through you since the first time we locked eyes, I knew you were different from the specks of darkness in those beautiful eyes of yours. If you want to be with me, meet me at the Rosen Inn at 10:30 pm in room 23, if not, then lose this number,” and just like that she hung up on me, as mysterious as she was the last time we spoke. 

Time and frustration had made this decision easier for me, I wasn’t who I used to be, I’ve been abused for too long and I don’t want to be the one to get hurt anymore. As I got up from my desk from the BAU, I looked around one last time. I picked up the resignation papers that have been lingering on my desk since the day I returned back and I dropped them onto Emily’s desk and I left for good. I felt free. 

I took my flip phone from my pocket and threw it out in the garbage, not without taking the sim card first to make it harder to find me. I waited around for hours until it drew closer to 10:30 pm and I made my way over to the Rosen Inn, specifically room 23 to find her. I knocked on the door, and she opened abruptly, as if she was waiting for me since the phone call ended. 

“I knew you would come, I had a feeling about you,” she went over to the bed and I closed the door behind me, for the first time starting to get nervous about the choice I made. 

“Uhh yeah, here I am” I replied, playing with my hands as I do when I’m anxious.

Alright, alright, whoa

Why you pointing at me with that knife?

I've been cutting corners all my life, girl

The terror doesn't blossom overnight, no

She reached into her black bag that was placed on the bed and pulled out a knife and swung it around. 

“Woah! Take it easy with that!” I exclaimed. 

“Relax Doctor Reid, I’m not going to use it on you, unless you enjoy that,” she winked, that sent feelings all the way down to my crotch area, she has such a hold on me. 

“You know, I’m going to have lots of fun with you,” she dragged out the ‘lots’ for emphasis, making me question exactly what she had in store for us. I laughed, trying to suppress my nerves. 

“Spence, do I make you nervous?” The use of that nickname physically made me shiver, thinking about all the times at the BAU I was referred to as ‘Spence’, especially by JJ. 

“No” I swallowed harshly, knowing that I’ve been in more dangerous situations than the one I’m currently in. 

“Good, because we’re just beginning.”

She's crawling through the city in a rampage

Pressing on her fingers 'til the bones break

There's blood all in her nose from the propane

But a needle to the skin will make the pain fade

She reached back into the bag, pulling out a little bag of a white powder.

“Y/N that’s a very illegal substance, you could get arrested for having that!” 

“Are you going to have me arrested, Spencer?”  She didn’t need to ask, she knew the answer. I looked her in the eyes, shaking my head to confirm the thoughts swarming her mind. 

“Good boy,” She smirked as she took a bump, slight blood trickling from her nostril, wiping it away with her sleeve. 

“Now, are you ready to wreak havoc?” She pulled two ski masks out of her bag and a gun for me. Here goes nothing. 

She said, "Careful, or you'll lose it"

But, girl, I'm only human

And I know there's a blade where your heart is

And you know how to use it

And you can take my flesh if you want, girl

But, baby, don't abuse it

These voices in my head screaming, "Run, now"

I'm praying that they're human

“WOO! Spencer don’t you feel that rush! It’s AMAZING!” She screamed as we returned to the motel, holding all the cash in her hand. The rush I got was a sensation I’ve never felt before, I was smiling from ear to ear. 

She ran up to me and jumped into my arms, we stared into each other’s eyes for a second before our lips collided. The fervent kisses were due to pent-up sexual tension we’ve felt for each other the moment I handcuffed her outside of her apartment. She ran her fingers through my curls, slightly pulling on them causing me to groan. She took the opportunity to slip her tongue into my mouth allowing us to explore one another. I pushed her body up against the wall behind us and began roaming her body with my hands, grasping at any part that I could. Whenever our skin would touch, I could feel a burning sensation from the fire ignited from the two of us. I pulled away and continued kissing down her jawline to her neck, leaving marks along the way.

“Fuck,” she moaned.

“You like that babe?” I smirked as I kissed down to her collarbones. 

“Mmm yes babe, I need to feel you,” 

“Patience baby, I’m taking my time with you tonight,” I carried her to the bed and laid her down on her back. She took her shirt off and tossed it to the side and I kissed all the way down her body, reaching her pants. I slowly began to remove her pants.

“Ugh hurry up!” she groaned, as I chuckled lowly, eventually undoing her pants and throwing them behind me. I ran my fingers along the wet spot in her panties slowly.

“Spencer I swear if you don’t touch-” I swiftly moved her panties to the side and stuck a finger inside her. She gasped.

“Babe you’re so wet, is that all for me?” I said as I added another finger, curling them to hit the right spot.

“Fuck yes babe, oh my god you feel so good” she dragged out her words, I pressed my thumb to her clit, rubbing in sync with my fingers inside her. She brought her fingers up to my arm, scratching and leaving moon shaped indents along my bare skin. 

“Right there, i-i’m about to cum Spence,”

“Do it then, like a good girl,” She groaned so loud and came as I spoke those words. Heavy breathing was all that was audible in the room. I undid my pants and crawled up on the bed, enclosing our mouths.

Both of us took a minute to soak in each other’s presence, never wanting this moment to end. We continued to remove the rest of our clothing, heavy breathing was the only noises being made in the room. Her exposed chest basically begged me to touch it, my rough skin running along her smooth skin, I felt as if I was caressing the most beautiful piece of art. My mouth made its way to her hardened nipples, slipping one in my mouth and playing with the other. Her moans were like music to my ears. She spoke my name over and over like it was a prayer. After a bit, she pulled my head off her body and looked me in the eyes.

“I’ve been waiting for this for too long, Spencer Reid, fuck me already,” She said. Her pupils were dilated from lust, her breathing was erratic.

“Your wish is my command, princess.” I swiftly removed my boxers and lined my dick up with her wet entrance. I slowly entered her body, both of us letting out a groan of relief. After a few seconds I began to move. Her moans were my encouragement. I gripped one of her legs and threw it over my shoulder, thrusting in at a different angle and a faster pace.

“Fuck Spence, y-you feel so good,” she whispered into my ear, eliciting a groan from my lips. She was scratching at my back, leaving scars I hoped would never go away. 

“You like being fucked like a whore?” I spoke, earning a groan from her, I would never get tired of that sound. She didn’t even have to respond, I knew the answer. 

“Thought so” I breathed out. 

“Spence, I-i’m close.” She moaned out, I reached in between us and rubbed her clit while I snapped my hips faster. Our moans were sounding like a perfectly rehearsed melody.

“Be a good girl and come for me,” and just like that, she came all over my dick. I continued to thrust in her, being very close to my orgasm. After a few thrusts, I let out a string of curse words and came. Both of us were breathing heavily, covered in a layer of sweat. I stared at her, admiring how beautiful she looked in the state she’s in. This girl is dangerous in so many ways, and I think the most dangerous thing about her is how she makes me feel. She eventually rolled over and began to dress, as did I. 

“Just as amazing as I pictured it to be,” She said with a smirk.

“You’ve thought about it, huh?” I said with a low voice.

“More than that, I touched myself to the thought of it,” She winked, making me choke on air. She was going to be the death of me. 

------------

Time had went on, she and I continued to rob banks and have mind blowing sex, the high of it all made me feel what I’ve been craving my whole life. I’ve been studying unsubs for most of my life and I now understand just why they commit crimes, it feels so liberating. What I didn’t expect was to hear a loud banging coming from the door of the motel we were currently staying at. 

Please understand that I'm trying my hardest

My head's a mess, but I'm trying regardless

Anxiety is one hell of a problem

She's latching onto me, I can't resolve it

It's not right, it's not fair, it's not fair

It's not fair, it's no fair, it's no fair

Oh, no, no, no (Don't run)

Don't run, don't run

“FBI OPEN UP” I heard coming from the other side of the door. My eyes almost popped out of my head. I turned to my partner in crime, both of us unsure what to do.

“DON’T RUN!”

We didn’t have enough time to figure out a solution anyways, someone had busted down the door. I made eye contact with the same people I went out of my way to avoid. The disappointment In Emily Prentiss’ eyes is what killed me. This was the end for us, I ran to her and gave her one last kiss before we were taken away in handcuffs. The sirens and the flashing lights brought me some sort of comfort. I didn’t want to run anymore. At least now there is a reason for me to be in jail.

[j-amespotter]

★ epiphany – r. l.

"with you, i serve. with you, i fall down."

Pairing: Remus Lupin x Nymphadora Tonks (if you squint)

x. x.

Summary: Throughout his life, Remus fought many battles. Only once was he ever on the brink of victory.

Genre/Warnings: angst, war, death, torture, mentions of lycanthropy

Word Count: 1.7k

A/N: i'm officially on summer break, so expect more writing from me!! this one actually took a lot of time and effort so please share your feedback. not a reader insert, just some canon character insight. i think about remus's last moments a lot :( let me know if you'd like to be added to my taglist!

masterlist

1978 - With you, I serve.

The moon was bright but not quite full. It shone on two boys, both fresh out of school and on the precipice of becoming men. As much as they tried to deny it, there was an aura of naiveté surrounding them, one that would soon deteriorate beyond their imaginations.

“Come here,” said Remus Lupin, a tall, tired boy, tugging his companion’s sleeve. “Behind the bushes.”

“It’s child’s play, this job. What’s Dumbledore playing at?”

Remus was paired up with James Potter, who was growing more and more impatient by the second. “Prongs, we are trainees. We’re lucky to have an assignment at all.”

The two friends were seated on a small hill overlooking a large, dreary house. It belonged to the Travers family, a family notoriously pureblood, notoriously Slytherin. A family most likely in league with the greatest threat to the Wizarding World in several decades—Lord Voldemort.

The severity of the situation remained unspoken between them. If caught, James and Remus would be killed within seconds. Remus silently wished he shared James’s conviction regarding the ultimate invincibility of the right cause. But there was something inside of him that would remain unconvinced for a long time.

“There’s no way Travers isn’t a Death Eater,” said James. “I say we attack. They know we’re careful. They’ll never see it coming.”

“Perhaps,” said Remus. “Although, I doubt they are unprepared. Stealth is the only path to success.”

James snorted. “Okay, Professor Moony.” Years later, the same voice on a nearly-identical face would be addressing him in the same manner, with an amount of long-faced sincerity that would destroy him. But Remus did not know that yet.

After a while, Remus broke the comfortable silence between them simply because of a lingering curiosity manifesting within him. “Do you really think we can win this?”

James turned toward him. When he spoke, Remus thought he sounded a little scandalized. “Of course I do. And even if we don’t, there isn’t a single part of me that won’t die trying.”

Remus hummed, though he could feel the hesitation brewing inside of him, the same hesitation he found himself constantly suppressing around his friends. It was not as though he didn’t share the same sentiment; that wasn’t the case at all. It felt blasphemous to let his thoughts wander at times, but he couldn’t help himself. The truth was loud and clear. Remus was fighting this war for those who wouldn't do the same for him.

Something about the setting and the shape of the moon kept him lost in his muddled thoughts. “Why did you become an Animagus?”

James looked slightly taken aback, running a hand through his hair. “You know why.”

“Indulge me.”

“Because, Remus, we care about you. We wanted to help you,” said James. “We still want to help you.”

“You have done more than enough, James.” And it was true. James Potters didn’t exist in the real world, and that was a fact that was becoming blazingly clear the longer Remus spent in it.

There was nothing more to be said after that. James only sighed, staring out with a strangely thoughtful expression. “You know something?”

“What?”

“Think I’m going to ask Lily to marry me.”

Remus swallowed. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” said James. “I haven’t told anyone.”

Remus found that hard to believe. “Not even Sirius?”

“No, not even Sirius. Just thought of it, actually. Besides, something tells me Sirius would laugh in my face.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Remus, though it was always hard to tell with Sirius. The idea of James getting married sounded so far-fetched, and yet, made more sense to him than anything ever had in his entire life.

“So, what do you think?”

What did he think? Honestly, he felt a twinge of envy that James had someone to propose to, that he didn’t have to think twice about it, that in all likelihood, when this war ended, James would live a long, happy, healthy life with his wife and enough children to form his own Quidditch team. “I think that you definitely should.”

James’s face broke out into a wide grin, one that made Remus feel warm inside. One that told Remus that it wasn’t actually a whim, that James had been thinking about it for weeks, and that when it came to Lily, he always seemed to turn to Remus. It was a bittersweet sentiment, but one that he had come to appreciate.

“Guess I’ll need to figure out who my best man will be,” mused James.

Remus rolled his eyes. “She hasn’t even said yes yet, Prongs.”

James harrumphed. “Of course she’ll say yes to becoming Mrs. Arrogant Toerag.” He puffed out his chest dramatically, only to lose his balance and fall forward into the bushes. “Wow, we really suck at this whole ‘stealth’ thing, don’t we?”

“Shut it, will you?” whispered Remus, though if he had known how few moments he had left to share with James, he wouldn’t have reprimanded him at all.

Suddenly, a scream coming from the direction of the house interrupted them.

“What was that?” asked James. Both boys had their wands at the ready.

“They’re torturing someone,” said Remus, suppressing a shudder. He winced at the sound of another piercing scream, one that shredded his insides with every resounding decibel.

James began to rise. “We have to go in and help them.”

Instantly, Remus grabbed his arm and pulled him down. “James, we can’t. We will blow our cover, we’re likely completely outnumbered, and we were told to call reinforcements if anything got serious. We are trainees, remember?” When James begrudgingly slunk down next to him, Remus nudged him again. “Send a Patronus to the Prewetts.”

As James retreated several yards into the woods to conjure his great silvery stag, Remus turned his attention back to the house in front of them. After hearing another scream, he was beginning to lose his nerve. We can win this, Remus chanted to himself like a sacred mantra. We can win this. We can win this. We can win this.

Three years later, wizards all over Britain would celebrate their victory over the Dark Lord. But with three dead friends and one a murderous traitor, Remus Lupin would have nothing to celebrate. And he wouldn’t for a very long time, not until he stared into a pair of startlingly green eyes in a train compartment several years later.

1998 - With you, I fall down.

His heart raced as he watched the silver dome shatter around the castle. A swarm of dark, hooded figures made their way towards them. With one hand over the photograph in his pocket, Remus thought of Teddy—his vibrant, turquoise hair, his soft coos, and the sparkly eyes that looked just like his own.

We can win this. We can win this. We can win this.

It is different now, he thought to himself, I have Harry. A son. A wife. For the first time in his life, Remus Lupin had a proper family.

We can win this. We can win this. We can win this.

He was able to see his reflection on a window. Under all the worry pooling his features, Remus saw the ghost of a smile that looked so achingly familiar— the weary but indestructible smile of a new father, the one he last saw during his final moments with James many, many years ago.

He thought of Dora, who, despite his desperate pleas, followed him to Hogwarts to fight what was beginning to feel like the end. After he righteously begged her to return to safety, she scoffed teasingly. “Honestly, Remus. You should know better.”

She was right, and there was nothing more to say. She kissed him hard before they went their separate ways for the last time. Remus weaved through crowds of warriors, gaze wandering from time to time for a glimpse of either his wife or his young protege. Any sign that Dora and Harry were alright would ease his ever-growing nerves.

We can win this. We can win this. We can win this.

He thought of a late-night in his dormitory. It was the end of his seventh year. The four Marauders were sitting on each of their four-poster beds, picturing this moment, having no idea what was to come, just the confidence that it would and that they would win.

“I think it’ll be at the Ministry,” said Sirius.

“Or Diagon Alley,” said Remus thoughtfully.

“With Dumbledore leading the charge,” added James, a note of excitement in his voice. “I’d give anything to see the end of him.”

“Me too,” grumbled Sirius, struggling to hide the bitterness lacing every word. It had only struck Remus then that Sirius would be fighting his own flesh and blood on the other side. He knew better than to mention it.

“We could die,” said Peter quietly.

“We could,” affirmed James. “But I have a good feeling about it. It’ll be our moment, lads.”

Remus had only heard of Wormtail's death from Bill, who heard it from Harry. Peter, so afraid of death, so willing to do anything to avoid it, killed by his own hand. The last of his friends to go. In his wildest dreams, Remus would have never thought that he would be the last Marauder standing. Alone.

But he wasn’t alone. Not anymore. He had Dora, Teddy, and Harry. Harry, brilliant Harry, the Boy Who Lived, the boy who, unbeknownst to him, changed Remus’s life. The boy who would carry out his father's dream. The boy who would win this for them all.

We can win this. We can win this. We can win this.

Remus heaved a tired sigh. His legs felt as though they were about to give out. Despite his unique set of skills, Remus spent more time sickly than able. Especially now, nearing the age of forty. No longer did he have the agility or stamina of his youth.

He was in the center of the fighting in the courtyard. Suddenly, Remus felt a sinking, silencing feeling inside of him. Swallowing it away, he turned around, grip on his wand accidentally loosening for the quickest second.

The man in front of him was smirking, a forthcoming light blinding any identifying features. Remus's wand slipped from his fingers.

The last thing he saw was green, consuming his vision like a swarm of Dementors closing in on him. The spell hit him squarely in the chest.

He always wondered what death would feel like, often equating it with the debilitating pain of his monthly transformations. But it wasn't like that at all. Death was like falling. An eternal, endless fall into nothingness.

Moments away from victory, Remus Lupin fell down.

Mischief Managed.

Taglist: @iwritesiriusly @sheismadness @she-seeks-magic @amourtentiaa @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @queenofblacks @duckie-dunham

[slyttherins]

Unexpected flame (part 1) | Fred Weasley x Sirius Black’s daughter

December 1993

This year, Christmas fell on a full moon. Remus felt guilty about leaving Juliet for the holidays, but he had no other choice. Staying with her on a full moon was dangerous and endangering her was the last thing he - and Sirius - wanted.

''It's okay. You can't control the moon.''

''Wish I could.'' Remus flashed her a sad, apologetic smile. Although he had grown to accept his fate - or curse -, he still hated that part of himself. The wolf. ''Have you packed your bags yet? The train is leaving tomorrow morning, right?'' he asked, changing the subject.

''Yes.''

''Good.'' Remus nodded. ''I talked to Molly, she'll be picking you up at Kings Cross.''

In the red leather chair, Juliet sighed. Much like Remus, she didn't like when people made a big fuss or went out of their way for her. It made her very uncomfortable. ''I could've stayed at school, you know. Some students stay here for Christmas.''

Remus brushed her off with a whisk of his hand. ''Nonsense. Molly and Arthur promised it was no trouble. And, you and Ginny are good friends. You'll have great fun at the Weasleys','' he promised.

''I'll miss you.''

''Me too, darling.''

''Remus?''

''Yes?''

''If he returns-''

''I'll send an immediate owl to the Weasleys and let you know.''

.

Ginny by her side, Juliet joined the rest of the Weasleys after getting down the train. There were so many students at the station, but, lucky for her, their red hair were easy to spot in a crowd.

A round woman with a bright smile and ginger hair was waiting on the side. She greeted each of the kids with a tight hug, happy to see them after four months away from home.

''And you must be Juliet?'' she said, seeing familiar a pair of grey eyes. ''I haven't seen you in so long. It's crazy how you've grown!''

Juliet smiled politely, having very few memories of the woman. ''Thank you for having me, Mrs. Weasley.''

''It’s no problem. Remus is a friend of family and we’re always there for family. You can call me Molly.''

.

''You’ll be staying in Ginny’s room. It’s on the first floor,'' Mrs. Weasley announced when they crossed the Burrow's front door. She looked around, searching for her daughter who was a couple meters behind, struggling with her own bags. Why did she bring so much stuff? ''Ginny! Can you help Juliet set a bed? I've put extra blankets and everything you'll need on your desk.''

The younger Weasley nodded and grabbed Juliet's hand and led her up the stairs, excited to have a friend over and having a sleepover.

The room was small - not to say tiny - which was to be expected with such a huge family. The girls put their stuff away and set Juliet’s bed right by Ginny’s. It was a bit cramped, but it was only for a couple days.

Once everything was set, Juliet came back down and followed the yummy smell to the kitchen.

''Where's Ginny?'' Molly asked.

''Bathing. Neville wasn't sitting when the train took off and spilled pumpkin juice on her shirt,'' Juliet explained, shaking her head at Neville's mishaps. That boy was so clumsy!

''Well, come and sit. Dinner should be ready soon.''

Juliet pulled one of the many mismatched chairs and sat down. One of the twins was at the table, but she couldn’t tell if it was Fred or George. Hopefully by the end of the stay she’ll be able to tell them apart.

''So...you’re Black’s daughter?'' Fred asked as he subtly tried to steal some cookies that were cooling on the counter while his mother's back was turned.

Since Sirius' escape from Azkaban, it was difficult not to bring up her father every time Juliet mentioned her name. It didn't help that she looked so much like him. She had become well known over the past year despite Remus' attempt to hide her from the wizarding world. Not the magic, but people.

Although the Black family was part of the sacred twenty-eight and very high in the wizarding world's hierarchy, Sirius Black was considered a traitor. Therefore, as his daughter, Juliet was considered as so too. People could be so vile and quick to judge - even toward a fourteen years old girl.

Fred, though, didn't mean any harm.

''In the flesh,'' Juliet responded proudly.

''What does it feels to have a father on the run?''

''Fred! Don’t harass our guest,'' Molly warned, eyes on the cooking pot. ''And don't think I didn't see you stealing cookies.''

The two teenagers chuckled.

''It’s fine, Mrs- Molly. It doesn't bother me. I can handle the questions.''

''Well, you two can do that later. Dinner is ready.'' She turned to her son. ''Go get your father, he's in the yard studying another bizarre muggle invention he got his hands on.''

Fred left and she then proceeded to call out the rest of the kids, making Juliet jump. She had not expected Molly to have such a loud voice.

Seconds later, everyone stumbled in the kitchen, scurrying for seats. Ginny, freshly out of her bath, sat next to Juliet, telling her all about the delicious dish her mom had prepared tonight - and the desert. Ron arrived next, sitting on her other side and making a dash for the bread in the center of the table, taking a big bite and chewing like a cow. How charming.

''Apparently it's called a toaster. You put bread in it and it springs up when they are grilled and ready. It's bloody brilliant!'' Mr. Weasley explained as he walked in, Fred on his heels. He kissed his wife’s cheek and made his way to the table where all the kids were. ''Smells good in here.''

''I've never met him. Sirius. He was wrongly sent to Azkaban before I was old enough to remember him. I've only seen him in pictures,'' Juliet told Fred when he sat down beside his twin.

''Our father says he killed thirteen muggles and an old friend, Peter Pettigrew,'' Percy said, reaching for a piece of bread from the basket on the table.

''Percy...'' Mr. Weasley warned loosely.

''There is no proof. There was no body-'' the raven haired girl defended, only to be interrupted by Percy.

''Where is Pettigrew then?'' he asked with an eyebrow raised, scoffing when Juliet didn't respond. ''Sirius Black is a murderer. I hope the dementors find him very soon and put him back where he belongs. He deserves to rot in Azkaban for his crimes.''

Tears welled in Juliet's eyes at Percy's words and accusations, but she refused to let them spill. Was this what Percy really thought? Or was he repeating what he's heard from his father and other wizards?

''Percy!'' Molly scolded. ''That is no table talk.''

.

By 10pm, Ginny had already gone to bed, tired from the day. Juliet had been a bit bummed, but she stayed downstairs with the other Weasleys. Ron and George were disputing a game of chess in the living area, making the most of the time they had left before their bedtime. She had watched them for a few minutes, but then decided to get some fresh air.

She sat on the small wooden patio and raised her eyes to watch the stars, secretly hoping she could put her astronomy lessons to application. Since she was a kid, Juliet always loved looking at the starry night sky. It helped calm her mind. Maybe it was part of her bloodline? The Blacks had a penchant for astronomical names and took their names from stars or constellations. Even Juliet had carried on with the tradition. It was subtle, but Sirius had chosen the name very carefully.

''What are you doing out here?'' Fred asked, coming from behind. He had a thick sweater - most likely knitted by Molly -, shielding him from the late night air.

''Looking at the stars, although I can’t seem to find any stars I’m looking for tonight.'' Juliet frowned, disappointed and annoyed. ''I thought it'd be easy. I’m usually pretty fast at finding stars and even constellations in Astronomy class...''

''Ah! That’s because Professor Sinistra makes sure what you’re looking for can be seen from where you are. I'll help you.''

Fred took a seat beside her and looked up. He had never been an astronomy nerd, but he could recognize a few. Constellations were harder to find though.

The sky above the burrow was almost always clear which made it easy to see the stars. The view was even better from Ron's bedroom, being on the highest floor of the house.

Fred felt himself close having a crick in his neck when he finally found what he was looking for. A smirk curled on his lips. ''Can you see that one? Over the pond, right beside the Orion constellation.'' He pointed his index in the direction, helping the younger witch find her way in the night sky.

Juliet followed Fred's direction and nodded. ''The one that shines so bright it's almost blue?''

''Yeah. It's the Dog Star, also called-''

''Sirius,'' the raven haired girl finished with a smile, amazed by her new find. She had been trying to find her father's star for months, but Grimmauld Place wasn't ideal for stargazing and she didn't dare ask Professor Sinistra, worried she wouldn't help her because of the star's name.

''How did you know it was that one? Are you a secret nerd, Weasley?''

Fred shook his head, looking down with a small laugh. ''No. You should see my marks... But Bill, my older brother, had an astronomy phase a few years ago. He had a telescope in his room and all. From what I remember, the Sirius star is part of Canis Major which is a winter and spring star pattern. Sirius is the constellation's dog’s nose.''

''Thank you. For showing me this. It’s rare these days that when someone brings up my father’s name it doesn’t have murderer or criminal in the same sentence.''

''Sorry about what Percy said during dinner. He’s a git sometimes. Don’t listen to him.'' Fred didn’t have to apologize on his brother’s behalf, but wanted to, knowing Percy was stubborn and would never. Whether he believed Sirius was guilty or not, he didn’t have to be so cold and crude.

''Perhaps he’s right.'' Juliet sighed, putting her head in her hands in despair. ''I don’t know who or what to believe anymore.''

''It’s okay to be confused. The whole situation feels like it’s missing pieces of the puzzle,'' Fred admitted, platonically putting a hand on her thigh, trying to bring her comfort.

Juliet raised her head and stared ahead. ''If he didn’t kill Pettigrew, where is he? No one has seen him since that night at London. All that was left was his finger.'' The frustration and desperation were clear in her voice.

Fred wished he had answers for her, but he was just as in the dark as everybody else. ''What does Remus think of this?''

''That he’s innocent.''

When she turned old enough to understand what Azkaban was, Remus had revealed her father's whereabouts. He had insisted to be the one to break the news to her, not wanting untrusty wizards or loud mouths - or worse, students - to twist the truth. He told her about the Potters, about...Voldemort, and the wizarding war. Nothing was very jolly, but Remus insisted that she knew. Most importantly, that she knew her father had been accused of crimes he didn't commit.  

Fred thought for a moment, putting his words together. ''Want to know what I think?'' She nodded, turning to look at him with her grey irises. ''I think Remus is the only person alive that knows Sirius well enough to judge your father's intentions and what he's capable of. I also think there a hidden part to every story.''

Juliet frowned, confused. ''I don't get what you're trying to say...''

''I don't think Remus would feed you lies solely to make your father look like a good man to your eyes. If Sirius really did kill those people, he would've warned you about him being the dangerous murderer the Ministry claim him to be.''

[katsukikitten]

camera?

ANON BB I SUMMON YOU. It's not really BNHA related but the sharp teeth and red eyes were inspired by Kiri. Let me know if it spooped ya!

I'm never without my camera, the sleek black box and shiny lens dangle from my neck like rare gems. 

Why you may ask? 

 Well as an artist and photographer I'm honestly afraid of missing the perfect shot. You know the one that can take hundreds of tries to get and yet it can be taken by pure chance. By pure luck. Although I hardly have much of that.

And to be honest I've viewed the world through a lens more so than I have my own eyes, at least ever since my grandfather gave me my first Polaroid camera. The vintage kind too, he had found the old thing hidden away in his closet. The exact same one he used to document my childhood with. 

So I used it to document my teenage years, grainy pictures of the moon and my friends in the middle of fields with an inky black sky. Their bodies illuminated more so by the bright flash than the quarter moon. Of parties I shouldn't have been at, of boyfriends and girlfriends I regret having. Still my walls were filled with memories like a picture diary and there were too many to take with me to college or to my new apartment but I always had my favorite with me, tucked into my camera bag that acted more as a purse. 

It was taken with older film, the type you had to develop in a black room and it was one of those lucky shots I was telling you about earlier. I had just received this particular camera for my birthday a week prior, something my aunt found while thrifting. To my delight it worked and beautifully at that. I had spent countless hours researching on how to get an "overexposed" shot, leaving the lens open to take in  just enough light that something in the dark could develop but not so much the film was obliterated. 

And it was the harvest moon that provided the lighting for my shot. Hanging low and wide on the horizon, a golden orb painting the field in silvery shadows. The trees a lovely contrast with their charcoal grey silhouettes as the field seemed to glow with an otherworldly worldly haze as the fog rolled in through the wheat.

There was an affinity to it, something that drew you in and yet caused your heart to pound in your chest. 

It would be years later that I would find out that the dark figure tucked into the tree line was not one of my friends wandering into the shot. 

But all in all my favorite picture won me a contest when I was 16 and it's the reason my parents took my passion more seriously. My parents and my grandfather pitched in to buy me my first digital camera from then on I, impossibly, documented things even more. Put myself in odd places for the best possible photo. Opportunities arrived in coffee shops, libraries and parks. Of people doing mundane tasks and yet all I saw was beauty in the way that they moved. In how the light from the sun could transfer deep brown eyes to molten honey or how an overhead light could cast menacing shadows across even the sweetest person's face. How it could keep the essence of nature so pure, of a wild deer just barely there in the fog, while a predator peers from the tree line. 

Not to mention the things film can capture, burn into paper to be forever kept, that the human mind so easily forgets. Trying so hard to remember that thing you promised yourself you'd never forget that the image comes out harsh, grainy, overexposed. 

So it shouldn't be a surprise that an overheard rumor has me standing in the cold in the middle of nowhere waiting for a wild wolf to be seen. 

A stupid idea I know but honestly I wanted the shot. Needed that photo of two golden moon eyes suspended in the darkness glaring at me from the brush. Or hell even its silhouette craned towards the sky in a never ending howl. And not for my portfolio or resume either. I just wanted it for me.  Besides the field the wolf was last spotted in was more like a second home than anything else. This was where I took my favorite photo after all.  

My phone buzzes from my pocket but I ignore it. Probably the group chat roasting me for looking for an "obvious Halloween hoax" and that I should be shit faced with them instead. I just want to see this damn wolf. 

Hours pass as I take photos here and there. I have one camera doing a time lapse of the night sky, as I do every Halloween while I flip through the images of my other. They all seem the same, missing that something, that feeling that makes the image awe inspiring. So I delete the majority of them until my camera freezes a little. Most likely due to the cold and its age. In my impatience I press the next button three times and once the camera begins to react again it flips through three photos much too quickly. 

It is only in my going back does the movement catch my eye. Something recedes, a dark something. I go back three photos and slowly watch the blurb that moves as I progress right. 

It isn't until twenty photos in does ice rush through my veins as my feet burn with instinct to move. To run.  

A black figure in the outline of man seems to be getting closer in every picture. 

Closer to me. But I didn't see him in the lens, I always see everything in the lens. 

My heart jumps into my throat. 

The last time stamp on the picture was only five minutes ago. 

Even if it were some random ass man why couldn't I see him now? According to the picture he was about fifty feet from me and yet my eyes saw nothing. 

Nothing but hazy whips floating about, moths fluttering towards their celestial deity and surely no God damn wolf. 

A...a smudge it had to be a smudge. To calm my nerves I wipe at the lens and tell myself to take another photo. I bring the view finder to my eye, closing them both as I take in a sharp breath. I hold it before opening my one eye. I peer into the small box and am relieved to see nothing. 

I should have stopped there, I know I should have stopped there. 

But I didn't, I don't.

The inky blank man is ever closer. There is a strange feeling that comes with staring at this broad shouldered man, his face obscured by the dim lighting and the casting of the shadows. 

An odd affinity. 

Ripping through my camera bag I find it, the old photo creased from age and slightly discolored from overexposure. It is then that you see the figure, clear as day standing at the fringes of the field, just barely in the forest. 

My breathing becomes hitched as I stare dumbfounded at the photo. That wasn't any of my friends standing there in that photo. It was….it was whatever was approaching me now. 

The hair stands up on the nape of my neck as my skin breaks out into goose flesh, I turn violently back around to face where a man should stand. 

I take another photo, somehow I thought it couldn't get any worse than what it was. 

But it did. 

He was close enough now that his features could be made out. The color of his eyes burn into my retinas, the iris are red, deep blood red. And his teeth, fuck, his teeth. Each tooth filed to a point that gleams in the moonlight as his lips stretch far too wide. I can almost feel them sinking into the tender flesh of my throat.

I let out an audible whimper as I stare at the photo, I cannot stop myself as I take another and another. 

Each of his hauntingly handsome features become clearer and clearer as comes towards the camera. His wolfish grin growing wider with each step, his eyes half mast as lust keeps his gaze fixated on me. 

One more photo, one more fucking photo and he will be right on top of me. But there was no one, nothing. Not through the viewfinder, not with my own two eyes, only in the small LCD screen in my hands. 

From what the screen says he should be within arms reach.

Honestly this, this is the real moment I should have stopped, should have listened to my racing mind and aching heart to quit while I was ahead. 

But there is always that hunger to get the perfect shot.

With shaking hands, I lift the camera, looking through the viewfinder. Irrational tears burn in my eyes and slip down my half frozen cheeks in liquid fear. A sob racks through my body, my finger hesitant to snap the final photo. 

The Earth slows on its axis as I watch through the little box, the shutter slowly falls across the lens, and his figure becomes seen in those quick milliseconds.

It should disappear as quickly as it came but it doesn't. 

"I've been waiting for you, doll." I feel his breath fan across my face, it smells oddly like cinnamon.

His velvet voice petrifies me as his large and clawed hand grabs onto my camera. He crushes it with ease, as if it were merely an empty soda can. 

"NO!" I scream, loud and drawn out as he grabs for me. His claws rip at my shirt as I fall onto my ass. Trying my damnedest to kick him anywhere but especially where it should hurt. 

But he acts annoyed as if I were a gnat to be swatted away. 

I try crawling away but he grabs onto my ankle, desperately I kick at his hand. Tears, rage and fear burning through my body as my gut fills the brim with butterflies. 

My mouth runs dry from screaming as I finally kick away his iron grip, swinging my arms in an attempt to flip over so I can right myself to go into a full sprint. He steps onto the small of my back, a sickening snap echoes around us. Amplified by the silence, I can feel the weight of his gaze, the smile that hangs from his lips. Pain blooms from by back all the way into the base of my skull, still I try to flail from beneath his boot. 

The struggle knocks over my tripod causing my camera to fall over. I hold the dead stare of the lens as I faintly see the horror painted on my face. The realization that this will be the last anyone will ever see of me. 

To confirm my fears he sinks his claws deep into my calves causing me to cry out. 

He begins to drag me towards the woods at an ungodly speed. I pull at weeds, branches, dirt, anything, as the camera documents what is possibly my final

moments. 

After a while I can only hope that I'm far enough away that the camera cannot see my bloody nails ripping away from my fingers in a pitiful attempt to save myself. 

It only took a matter of seconds to be swallowed whole by the pitch black forest. I don't remember what happened after that or at least I try to forget.

A week passes before a dog finally sniffs out my location. The officer looks solemn, his mouth set into a harsh line as his eyes bore holes into my items. It tells him all he needs to know. He hears a branch snap in the woods nearby, his dog whimpers, pulling his eyes to the tree line for a moment. When he sees nothing he places on gloves to sort through my items. I didn't bring much with me, just my usual that I always, always had on my person.

My camera bag, my other that was camera lying dead on its side and my prized possession. 

My favorite photo. The officer stares down at it, the fog blanketing the field, the moon washing the landscape in dim, eerie light. He squints at the image, it seems familiar. He thinks he recalls seeing it in the paper once years ago, except something seems off, although he can't quite place his finger on it. 

But I can. 

Instead of seeing one figure standing on the fringe of the trees, he sees two. 

[hawksmagnolia]

Never falter, Never fail

Drunk Drapple Prompt for @the-ss-horniest-book-club​ by @findingasimplepleasure​ / @nano--raptor​

Summary: Destroyer!Chris comes looking for the commander of his special ops team and finds far more than he expected.

Warnings: Mentions of violence (nothing major), tattoos

Word count: 1,844 (oops?)

“Can you tell me where I can find the Lieutenant?”

Behind you, several men snicker until they realize you’re glaring at them and they drop their eyes to the gear as they mumble apologies. 

The former undercover agent, Chris something, is standing there. His beard is still cut into the goatee but you notice it’s starting to fill out into a full beard. He’s no longer wearing persona that he’s been living but the tattoos haven’t quite faded yet and they peek out the bottoms of his polo shirt sleeve. You also think you spy the shadows of leftover ink on his wrist as well. 

Shit.

“Depends. Why do you want to know?” False bravado and snarling attitude to hide the shock.

He frowns at you, at your defensive tone and body language. “I just need to make sure he is clear on the details of this op.” 

He hasn’t recognized you yet. 

Thank fuck.

You shoot him a dark look before you look over your gun, checking the chamber and sliding it smoothly into the holster at the small of your back. He watches you, appraises you really. You’re dressed in your usual tactical uniform. Black boot, black pants and an olive green moisture wicking undershirt under a long sleeve button up. Your hair is hidden under a black baseball cap. 

You know he’s wondering what you’re doing on this team. Not many women willingly join a special ops team like this but not only are you on it, you lead it. You are the damned Lieutenant and you’ll deal with him later. Sticking your fingers in your mouth, you give a sharp whistle that his him wincing and your team snapping to attention.

“Team Three. I need you here, here and here. Split into pairs and do not let each other out of your sight. Period.” There is a crude but effective map drawn out on the white board. Pictures of certain areas are taped next their marker counterpart. Your nails are short, unpainted and your hands are scarred and calloused. You slide the button down off and toss it onto your gear bag.

You see his impossibly blue eyes focus on your arm, ignoring the armed men hustling out of the room. More likely, is that he’s staring at swaths of black ink that vanishes under your sleeve where it begins at the top of your shoulder and ends in the middle of your forearm. The Queen of Swords in all her glory adorns your flesh. Below that is Eagle, Anchor and Globe of the USMC but the globe has been turned into the crosshairs of a rifle. There is more ink under the black fingerless gloves. Gloves that your team bought you as a joke when you were elected their leader. Black leather but with fine, almost delicate stitching that forms the outline of every bone in the hand, ones that you wear every single time you get the call. The rest of the tattoos are hidden beneath your clothing except the three small black swallows at the bottom of your hairline.

There are questions on his face that you can’t be bothered to answer right now. You shrug into the heavy ballistics vest and pull the velcro tight.

“Team Two. I want you stacked up tight in this corridor between shipping containers. Nuts to butts gentlemen, hope you showered.”

The next six men peel off from the pack and are gone.

Only two men are left, so you point to the smaller one on the left. “I want you to cover the back doors from the sky.” You point to the man on the right. “I want you on the west exits. Trench it if you can. There are no windows on that side, just two big industrial doors. I’ll make sure spikes are out in case of vehicles.”

They nod and are out the back doors of the mobile command and vanish into the rapidly forming darkness. You’re about six miles east of the compound, far enough that any light is barely visible. You shut down the lights and start to exit when the agent grabs your arm.

“I asked you where the Lt is.” He says it as “Ell-tee”. You wonder briefly if he’s a veteran too.

You grab your night vision goggles and strap them to your head, leaving them on your forehead. You yank your arm from his grip and grab your rifle case.

“I am the fucking Lt. And I’m very clear on our goals, Agent.”

You nod your head at him and spin on your heel but not before you hear his voice. 

“You and I will talk after this.”

Well, fuck.

===============================

Sixteen hours later and you’re laying on flat on your back on top of a shipping container. You’d climb down yourself but you don’t want to risk any damage to your precious ‘Vera’, a Barrett M107 sniper rifle. You hadn’t thought to bring up the case because your mission’s timeline changed suddenly and you hadn’t bothered, focused on scrambling up four shipping containers for a better sightline. Things had gone sideways but in the end the good guys won and the bad guys went to prison.

There is a heavy thunk of metal on metal and you roll to your side to see Agent Chris kneeling in the ladder bucket of a fire truck. “Ready to come down or are you working on your tan?”

You flip him off as you crawl to your feet, cradling your rifle and make your way down.

“Transport will take you back to base.” He slides to the side to give you a chance to stagger onto the platform.

You nod, too tired and spent to form words. Your legs are like lead, too many hours spent on your belly first in the chill of the night which turned into a sweltering day. He catches your arm first and then your rifle. He lowers you to the ground and starts yelling for a medic.

When you open your eyes, the first thing you realize is that you’re soaked and so disoriented that briefly you think it’s raining. 

And then you realize you’re not alone and your back is pressed against a person. A person whose denim clad legs are on either side of your legs. Your vest is gone. Your weapon is gone.

A little stab of panic cracks your chest as you realize you’ve been stripped to underwear and undershirt. The shower is one of those overlarge ones, enough for you both to sprawl.

You groan and try to sit up and strong arms pull you back.

“Slow down trigger. You’re in my room.”

Him.

Agent Chris Something. 

“Your internal body temp was too high. Technically too high for life function according to the medics. Apparently you’re too goddamn stubborn to die. We had to cool you down.”

“Report.” You rasp.

He hands you a Gatorade. “Drink. Slowly.”

You force yourself not to gulp as he continues. “Zero casualties from your team. Couple of minor scrapes. You run a tight ship there Lt.”

“Thanks…I think. Who stripped me?”

“I did. How’s your head?”

You tilt your head side to side to test your equilibrium and then you feel his palm as he twists your hair off your neck and secures it with a band.

“Swallows?” He asks as his fingers linger there for just heartbeat too long. 

“Yeah.”

“How many do you have?”

“What? Tattoos?”

He shifts you long enough to adjust the water temp up a little bit.

“I..I’m not sure anymore.”

“A full sleeve and also your hip, strong ink work, bold designs. And then you have these little tiny swallows.” His lips barely graze the delicate flesh on your neck as his hand clamps down on your right hip.

“You know I know where all your ink is sweetheart. Why didn’t you tell me that night you were a Fed?”

“Same question could be said for you.”

“Why were you in my local bar nine days ago?” He runs a hand over your side, knowing full well  where he knows the words scrawl across your skin. 

“Intel.” You squirm and his thighs lock your hips. 

“You had my reports.”

“I prefer to have a first person view of the shitshow I send my team into.” You pull away and turn on him, kneeling on the tiled floor. “Sorry I’m not a super special agent but I’m damn good at what I do. And to be honest, I didn’t know who the hell you were and I didn’t trust you. Obviously, I was right, since I distracted the fuck out of you.”

He looks as exhausted as you feel, he’s soaked but still fully dressed. He holds up his hands in surrender. “I would have done the same thing. Just so you know? You’re the only thing that distracted me. Still are distracting me.”

You stare at each other for a couple of heartbeats before you jump into his lap. Your mouths clash together, opening to the other while your hands cup his face. 

“Wait.” He gasps which you promptly ignore, your mouth on his jaw, his neck.

“Sweetheart, no. Not until you’re completely recovered.” He grabs your face in his hands. “I’m not fucking you in a bathroom again. Tell me the story behind the ink.”

“Which one?” You struggle not to kiss him again. Must be the adrenaline dump. Must have been delayed because of your heat stroke. 

You’re a damn liar.

“All of them.”

“The swallows were first. Got them after my first deployment. To remind me.”

“There are three.” 

“We lost three.”

He nods, doesn’t push. He knows you’re not ready for that conversation. Still sitting on his legs, you peel your soaked shirt off and toss it aside.

“Ribs was right before my second deployment. I wanted to have that reminder.” You press his hand against the words.  “I will never falter and I will not fail.”  “Hurt like a bitch too.”

“Got back from deployment and I was fucked up in the head. Too young to have seen what I saw. So I got my spine done.”

He doesn’t have to look, he knows what it says. 

“Scars show us where we have been, they do not dictate where we are going.”

Moving his hand to your right hip, you leave it to linger over the stone tower and crescent moon that stain your skin. “Tarot card. The Tower. Represents everything I felt when I got out.” He doesn’t comment on the two puckered scars at two of the corners. 

You twist your arm so he gets a better look. “Queen of Swords. When I finally found myself again, I wanted to be independent, strong. It helped me patch myself back up and apply for the agency. I got this before my expert firearms test at Quantico. Eagle, Globe, Anchor…with my rifle sight in the globe to show how both of those pieces of me make one.”

“And your hands?” He asks softly. 

He takes both of your hands in his and kisses the ink across your skin at the base of your thumbs.

“Breathe.” Says the left.

“Hold.” Says the right.

“Just a reminder when I line up the shot.”

“How about you give me a shot?”

“What?”

“You’re incredible for reasons not related to a bathroom in a bar. I want a chance to lick every single one of those tattoos.”

“If that’s the case, wait until you see my piercings.”

Chris groans as you smile into his kiss.

@nano--raptor @cchellacat @eurynome827 @jobean12-blog @book-dragon-13 @aesthetical-bucky @marvelgirl7 @sallycanwait68 @buckys-broody-muffin @softpeachbarnes @godofplumsandthunder @azurika-writes @ikaris-whore @this-kitten-is-smitten @randomfandompenguin @littleredstarfish

Want to be on the tag list? Send me a message!

[worldguardian]

it’s finally done! this has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but kept procrastinating on for various reasons.

may I present: a mixed canon-and-headcanon (mostly headcanon) family tree for some of my favourite mahjarrat! full-view the picture here, because it’s way too big for tumblr.

now for the important stuff - backstory, explanations and headcanons under the cut! I hope you’ve got a drink, because this is going to get lengthy.

General:

gendered terms such as “mother”, “father”, “daughter” and “son” are used here for the sake of shorthand. mahjarrat are a monosex species in my headcanon and as such had no concept of separating parents (or anyone) into such categories until after the move to gielinor.

you can assume that almost everyone on this chart has more relatives than are pictured, but they were excluded because they weren’t directly relevant (or haven’t been fleshed out and designed yet). notables will be mentioned in everyone’s individual sections.

mahjarrat children are born far more developed than human children; they can walk, talk, and cast magic (though not effectively) much sooner than you could expect of other races.

I really wanted to design outfits for Nabor and Trindine but it wasn’t to be. that’ll have to wait for the fullbody art.

Azzanadra:

azzanadra, as the oldest mahjarrat alive, was born an extremely long time ago. I don’t have a specific headcanon age for him, but it’s in the ballpark of two hundred thousand years. he’s old as balls. he was the middle of three children born to two tribe leaders who were very powerful, befitting their position in the tribe. their first child was temekel. there was a reasonable span of time between temekel’s birth and azzanadra’s - by human reckoning, temekel would have been in his late teens or early twenties when his brother arrived.

(not that human time even remotely means anything to a mahjarrat.)

temekel was in all senses a prodigy. he inherited his parents’ incredible strength and was deeply respected throughout the tribe. he quickly rose to a leadership position alongside his parents. while he was alive, his strength eclipsed even azzy’s.

temekel was thought to have died in tumeken’s deathbomb, but as we later found out, he persisted for some time afterward before being ended.

alotor was the youngest brother in azzanadra’s family, and his birth came with the loss of their mother. he was born during a downturn in mah’s dreams - she was too comatose in this period to sustain many mahjarrat births, and as such, the strain was too much and killed their mother shortly after she gave birth to alotor.

not long into alotor’s childhood, their father was lost to a chelon-mah raid; he was in fact killed by the chelon-mah tribe leader of the time. this left temekel and azzanadra to raise alotor alone, and the clan missing two valued protectors.

alotor was murdered by sliske long before he was even of ritual age. to a human’s grasp of time, he would have been about eight years old.

the brothers all had distinctive blue eyes and gems; their skintone varied but all shared the faint yellow tint. azzanadra’s eyes and gems did not become violet until he formed his bond with zaros.

akthanakos is azzanadra’s son. akthanakos was born during a particularly difficult time for the tribe; their numbers were dangerously low and mah’s dreams had been violent for some time, causing constant muspah onslaughts and catastrophes from freneskae’s environment. akthanakos was born out of a desire to bolster the tribe’s numbers; his mother was not someone azzanadra was personally invested in, but they needed children badly.

azzanadra named his son “undying” with a twofold meaning: as an expression of hope for akthanakos to live through such a harsh time, and in honour of alotor. alotor’s death was some time before akthanakos’ birth. this was all he had to do with akthanakos’ upbringing aside from the tribe’s semi-communal child-rearing methods; the arrangement with akthanakos’ mother was that azzanadra would make no claim to him.

azzanadra has had a total of five children over his life: one died on freneskae, and the remaining three died in tumeken’s deathbomb. akthanakos was the only survivor, and he spent the entire empire unaware of his true parentage. by this point azzy felt it had been too long to reconnect, and was also aware that making his connection to akthanakos public would only put his son in undue danger (political or otherwise). unfortunately, before he could change his mind, the betrayal happened and he was sealed. fortunately, after being released six thousand years later in the fifth age, he finally realised it was time to tell his son.

Wahisietel and Sliske

wahisietel and sliske are half-brothers, born to the same mother. they were both born into the chelon-mah tribe. wahisietel is the elder brother and is “pureblood” chelon-mah: his father and mother were both chelon-mah - in fact, wahi’s father is the one who lead the raid that killed azzanadra’s father. neither of them realised this until far, far down the line.

sliske was born not long after wahisietel, when wahi was more-or-less a toddler. in an extremely rare turn of events, he’s a hybrid: his father was a mahjarrat. how his mother and father met and why they didn’t just opt to kill each other on sight is a mystery for the ages, but both of them had a talent for shadow magic, which was a huge contributing factor to sliske being a savant in it.

sliske’s father left the picture pretty much immediately - he either returned to the mahjarrat or was caught by the chelon-mah. sliske was left to be raised by his mother alongside wahisietel.

unfortunately, it was never a safe situation for either of them. the chelon-mah are far more volatile than the mahjarrat, and culls were frequent. the boys were both safer and more at risk because of their position: their mother was partnered with the tribe leader, the strongest chelon-mah in the clan. in that way, they were safest from the others, but in the most danger from him.

sliske’s mother couldn’t dare claim him. there was no way he could ever pass as being the chief’s son; there was no family resemblance between them at all. so while their mother did her absolute best with him, he was largely left to what group child-rearing the chelon-mah had (not much).

it couldn’t last. suspicions rose higher and higher over time and their mother knew that she’d be found out sooner or later. not only would the chelon-mah kill her for crossbreeding, but they’d kill the children too.

it’s almost unheard of for a chelon-mah to care that much about the wellbeing of their children. chelon-mah children are only looked after in the most barebones manner necessary to keep them alive until they reach the age of independence - which essentially means “old enough that killing you won’t be a waste of resources”.

wahisietel and sliske’s mother cared enough. she cared enough, when the boys were still very young, to send them across freneskae and to find the mahjarrat tribe. they were dead men walking with the chelon-mah, and with the mahjarrat she at least had the sliver of hope that they’d be taken in - after all, the tribes did occasionally snipe children (and adults, in Hazeel’s case) from each other.

the boys made the gruelling trip across freneskae’s wastelands, and eventually they stumbled on the mahjarrat camp. it was a rocky transition, as wahisietel was visibly chelon-mah, and sliske was an anomaly - an aberration, frankly, to most of the mahjarrat present. but children are valued much more by the mahjarrat than they are by the chelon-mah, so the decision was made to bring the boys in.

their raising was a joint tribe effort, left in the hands of the leaders for the most part. at this point in time, that included temekel and azzanadra. both of the boys latched onto these two out of sheer terror and a desire not to be killed. thankfully, they both found their niches in the tribe - wahisietel for his level head and great all-around approach to magic, and sliske for his incredible prowess in shadow magic and the fact that even if you wanted to sacrifice him, you could just never fucking catch the bastard.

Nabor and Trindine

nabor and trindine are two of sliske’s children, born to the same mother. sliske had a number of children over the course of his life, most of which he chose to have nothing to do with. nabor and trindine are two rare exceptions, as they both inherited enough of his power to be interesting to him. they were both relatively young; born on freneskae not too long before the move to gielinor. the transition to the empire served to further cement their father’s favouritism: trindine joined the ranks of the praetorians with him and nabor was appointed to a high position in the church.

(even though sliske found his psychiatry work horrifically boring.)

nabor met his end at azzanadra’s hands and trindine was killed in the god wars.

What in the fuck is Khazard doing there?

this is a headcanon from aaaages ago, but lucky for me I’ve explained it already! see this post.

tl;dr: turns out you can’t breed with gods, so palkeera was left in the very awkward position of having promised a child to zamorak and being unable to conceive. wahisietel stepped forward in return for palkeera promising to vouch for his zamorakian faith, as he’d made the fake switch by this point.

(worked out pretty well.)

Miscellaneous:

azzanadra and wahisietel are partners. wahi’s had a crush the size of the moon on dear old azzy for a very long time. (sliske did as well, and in fact he and azzanadra had a short-lived fling during the empire, which was completely casual until sliske caught feelings like an idiot. it sputtered out pretty quickly after that for mostly-unrelated reasons.)

HOO WOAH thank you so much for reading all that!! this project has been in the works for a while, like I said, and this is basically just the outline of it all. I have so much headcanon for the alien space wizards... I love them... I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!

all headcanon here is a joint effort between my partner and myself. I absolutely did not come up with all of this myself.

[ghostladyofwinterfell]

Phases of the Moon

A Jonsa Buffy The Vampire Slayer AU/inspiration

Summary: For some reason unbeknown to Sansa, the old gods had chosen her to be the next girl to have the power to stop the Wights and the Long Night. 

But they shouldn’t have. Not this Stark girl at least. 

No, Sansa just wanted to be on the cheer squad and get into a good college far from the North. This hadn’t come into the equation. 

But neither had Robb’s best friend Jon, whose absentee father had shown up out of blue just shy of his eighteenth birthday and taken off with him. Now he was back and changed. He had come back wrong. 

Chapter One: Changes

It shouldn't be Sansa. He had said that she was the chosen one, the man who was to be her watcher. She was the who would stand alone against the forces of darkness, to keep the long night at bay.

Yer right. They had clearly gotten it wrong somewhere. For she was not who anybody would have picked for this. She was the pampered princess, lips glossed, short skirt smoothed down and not a single curled hair out of place.

She certainly shouldn't be the only one in this generation that was for sure.  Mankind was doomed. 

She was not a fighter. If it had to have been a Stark girl, then it should have been Arya. She feels guilty about how many times she had prayed before going to bed, which was somewhere around three in the morning now, for wanting it to be Arya. 

Let it be her. Not this Stark. Let her be the chosen one and not me. You have it all wrong. 

Sansa was only just seventeen, graveyard patrols, musty books on white walkers, grass stained jeans and hidden scratch marks should not be her life right now.

But then again, Arya was only fourteen years old and Sansa felt the shame burn in her every time she sent a whispered prayer to the old gods in her mind. Let it be her.

Arya was a fighter though, she told herself to provide some comfort. Just looking at her Sansa could tell she was a down in the mud, claws out, snarl on her face, fight to her last breath kind of girl.

Not like her, whose first instinct when she was told she had the power now to kill this creature had wanted to run. She took one look at its vacant ice eyes, to its chomping teeth that kept trying to sink into the flesh of her arm, to its grasping hands that wanted to rip her skin open and had thought about throwing this watcher into its jaws so she could run.

Even now, after doing this for a whole moons turn she had still not taken to it. She felt the power in her, but it felt disjointed, she was not connected to it. Maybe it knew she wasn't worthy.

Davos Seathworth, her watcher, was a firm but gentle man. He reminded her of her father, he was a just man but he also a realist. He said he understood how she must be feeling, she scoff in reply, how in the seven hells could he.

Every time he spoke of her new found powers and that she should be grateful of this gift she wanted to hit him. That would be wrong though, he was quiet old, ten years younger and she might have been tempted. But she likes to picture it though, like now as he babbles on about the origins of the long night and the many mystical mumbo jumbo forces connecting the Wights together to act as one entity, she wanted to sock him in the face.

The way she saw it was that her being the chosen one wasn't a gift, it was an early death.

She who was so full of life before and now she was just a shadow barely keeping it together. Nearly dying on weekly bases, flunking in school and seeing her friends was not something to celebrate and send thanks to the old gods for choosing her.

It was Friday, the last day of school before Christmas break and Davos was getting her prepared for a Wight hunt. For some reason once the dead were laid to rest in the dirt, they rose again to roam as mindless animals.

It was five-thirty and she was still at school in the library, she didn't even know this place existed until she had to report here to meet Davos. What a trainwreck her life was now.

Sansa had already managed to cram in a school day, a quick cheer practice on the field, all before she had head to the library and started her assignments set for the holidays.

The sun was just starting to set early now in fall just before six, when they were finishing their training session, she was about to duck out before she mentioned it.

"I need another weapon", she mumbled quietly hoping he wouldn't hear, but he did. He always did. His head shot around to her from where he was packing away exercise equipment and she cursed at him in her mind, for an old guy his hearing was exceptionally good.

And now five minutes later she was watching a currently red in the face Davos as he armed her with another dragon glass knife and kept repeating the importance of stowing away weapons safely and effectively. Its not her fault she had accidently misplaced her previous one somewhere, she was sure she would find it again.  

"Uh-huh, thanks D. Definitely gonna take on board all those things about taking care of things. Bye." She made a break for it as soon as the black dagger was in her palm.

Just as the door was swinging shut she heard him mumble under his breath. "Gods, the world is in trouble."

Her senses had kicked into overdrive when it all happened. Her enhanced slayer hearing had helped her eavesdrop on many gossiping groups.

Sometimes she wished she couldn't hear everything. Davos could say what he liked she snivelled to herself. He wasn't the one who risked his life.

At the end of the night she bet he climbed into his cosy bed and slept like a baby. He was safe, all he did was tell her which cemetery had any recent burials in the city and sent her on her way. He didn't have to try at not falling behind in school, or keeping up with studying and homework, staying committed to cheer practice and make time for friends and family. He just had to watch.

And then there was him. Somebody who had grown up beside her her whole life, but who she had kept at a distant. Robbs best friend. Aryas hero. Bran and Rickons idol.

He never used to mean anything to her, the lack of any kind of relationship compared to her other Stark siblings had been a constant in her, she guessed even that had changed to.  

Just like her position in the cheerleading team that Arya still scoffed at whenever she said she was going. They were going to drop her soon she was sure of it, she should have been taking over as captain in her senior year.

I mean sure her body had gotten stronger, she could now move it in ways she couldn't before, but she was distracted, turning up late and forgetting routines.  

But back to one of the other thorns in her side. Jon bloody snow.

All she knew was,  in the summer at the end of his senior year of high school, around about the same time this whole destiny crap had happened to her,  his absentee father had shown up out the blue.

Jon had disappeared with him the day before his eighteenth birthday and Robb had been devastated that all their summer plans were ruined. It was as he called it there last hurrah before they went off to college.

Robb was just being dramatic of course, because they were both going to Castle College together up North, that was not even a two hour drive from Winterfell.

Jon had started the semester late and he returned back to Winterfell with Robb a few days ago ready for Christmas, and he had come back changed.

He had gotten taller, had a dark and troubled glint in his eyes now, but the main thing that had caught her attention was the muscles that now wrapped around his body. The other night when she had seen him she had stared a little too hard at his arms and how his t-shirt stretched around them too tightly. And he was, in shock to Sansa as she didn't think it could be possible, even more brooding.

She often daydreamed about that physique and those that penetrating  stare being aimed at her in the middle of calculus class. It wasn't like she was needed to know any of this stuff anymore.  

Whenever he was in the house hanging around with Robb during  the past couple of days, the hairs on the back of her neck would rise and she knew he had walked into the room.

She should have know that it wasn't because she had finally noticed he was now hot and on her radar.

She had arrived home just in time for tea. Which as Stark tradition demands had to be eaten at the family dining table with no phones.

She felt like even in her home she was trying to play catch up, listening to all her siblings stories over their starter on how their days were and trying to give noises as her reply and ask appropriate questions at the end.

She feigned how excited she was at breaking up from school. She tried to pretend to be her old self, who had loved having lazy mornings and meeting friends for coffee and shopping as her only schedule. They would spend hours in the mall wandering aimlessly with not a care in the world.

Now she would have to play catch up on school work she was too tired to pay attention to in class, practice her cheer routines so she wouldn't be to far behind, train more with Davos who demanded more of her time now there was no school and still meet with friends for trips to the mall.

The air shifted when the door opened. Robb and Jon joining them for the main course after just getting back from a movie. At least Robb had thankfully dominated all the conversation to discuss the film, college, football and girls.

Her mind was either on her patrol tonight or how the stubble Jon had grown out suited that sharp jaw of his. She didn't know which thought worried her more.

They were getting to the end of their meal when she knew she had to make her excuses.

"Can I go over to Beth's tonight for a sleepover, so we can practice our new cheer routine?" She tried to make sure her voice was sugary sweet.

Arya laughs cruelly before butting in. Doesn't she know Sansa doesn't care for her opinion. "Its not the routine you all need help with, its the spelling. How hard is it to shout out names?"

That utter horse face, she seethed.

Robb and Jon both chuckle. She feels herself get embarrassed, her face heating up. She never used to be bothered with what Jon thought of her.

Her father, ever the mediator steps in. "You've been spending a lot of nights studying late or having sleepovers at friends lately, is everything okay".

That's funny, Sansa didn't think he even noticed. He of course had gone to several of her cheer performances, but she knew deep down he thought it was silly.

"I've always gone to sleepovers." And it was true. She was a social butterfly like her mother, people were drawn to her and she sometimes craved a crowd of people who hung on her every word. Or at least she used to.

"Not this many". Great her mum and dad were doing that back up thing again, were they ganged up on you.

Great, she was probably going to have to try to quietly sneak out. It was much easier to head straight out after dinner when the sun had set. Otherwise she would have to get her pyjamas on, get under the covers and snuggled down before her mother and father popped their head round the door to say goodnight.

She often nearly dozed off she was that comfy and tired. She often nearly started crying when she had to get of her silk pj's and back into clothes.

Her mother must take pity on her desperate expression and gives a curt agreement that she can go, but she is to be back in the morning early for family breakfast at 10.

She happily nods in reply before dashing off upstairs to fill a bag with what she calls a slayer survival kit. Extra thick jumper and socks, drinks, snacks, magazines and her dagger.

Jon's gaze follows her from the room and she has to try really hard to keep her head focused on getting up the stairs.

She might have taken a little longer to climb the stairs so Jon could get a good look at her long longs, even if she was in a rush to hit two separate cemeteries tonight for the two different burial sites.

She sighs heavily for the sixth time this hour alone. She checks her phone again, 1 o'clock. 1 o'clock in the bloody morning and this stupid corpse hasn't risen up yet. The other body at the grave site nearer the centre of town had risen at 10 sharp.

Obviously some Wights were more concerned with time management than others.

"Hurry up." She says tartly down at the freshly planted grave as though she can command it to rise. Doesn't it know she has better things to do like sleep and dream of a certain boy.

She rises from her squatted position, shoving the magazine she had read from front to back thoroughly two time already back in her bag.

She begins her warm up again, stretching her muscles repeatedly every fifteen minutes to keep herself ready, to help her remain awake and to warm her frozen limbs back up.

Tonight sucked. She left home at seven, instead of heading out she could have suggested a film night and slyly made sure her seat on the sofa was next to Jon's.

Well it was no use pouting over now.

She felt a nervous thrum in her chest. That same sort of hair raising, stomach sinking feeling that was usually an alarm bell sounding from within. Danger. She reached in her bag for the dragon glass because this Wight was sure to rise now.

The light smattering of snow on the ground made everything in here eerily silent. 

As if it absorbed all the noise into it. It wasn't thick enough were it would crunch beneath her boots. Which is why she didn't hear the impact of foot falls behind her. 

It confused her at first, why was the ground coming up to meet her face, it clicked a second later when she felt its ice blocks for arms weighing her down. Its foul and cold breath gave a weird sensation in her ear, as though when it snarled, outpoured snowflakes right into the shell of it and into her head making it heavy.

She hit the floor hard, harder with its body on top of her and an exasperated sound falls from her lips as her weapon tumbles a few feet in front of her. Her arms were trapped. All she could do was try to buck its body off of her as it tried to attack at her neck.

She dislodged it enough that she could use the strength in her thighs to launch it away with her feet. She threw it hard enough to hear a crack as it landed up against a tombstone.

She turned around crawling towards her weapon, but the thing had righted itself and grabbed a hold of her ankle pulling her away.

She cries out as if the world is truly against her as a hand breaks through the soil of the grave and out into the world.

Two of them in one cemetery, she had only ever gone one on one before. She felt a slight betrayal, Davos had only said two would rise tonight but at different sites. She had already taken care of the first one across town.  

The other rose in the same amount of time it took for her to nearly grab at the dagger. They were freakishly fast for dead folk.

Kicking out her feet at the first so it couldn't grab hold of her leg again and pinning it up against the gravestone, leaves her a small chance to deal with the second as it launches itself at her.  She quickly finds purchase gripping a hold of its neck, her muscles begin to feel as though they are on fire at holding back the sheer strength the Wights posses.

But her other arm is free to grab her dagger. Which might be trickier than she first thought as it was still a little out of reach and she couldn't drag herself closer as the snow around them melts in the scuffle and makes the ground slippy.

She feels a tingle in her gut, a tell tale sign of alert for her and see's a shadow approaching them in her peripheral.

Oh gods, its another one. Three of them, I'll surely die.

All three would surround and pin her down, taking turns to bite chunks of her flesh.

Would she turn into one of these things after. Would her family have to go to the morgue to see her mangled, chewed up body. Gods, her family. Her mum, her dad.

Her heart pounded quickly but this thing approached slowly, crouching down just in front of her. What the hell.

Her heart is in her throat as she peels her eyes away from the monsters to stare into blue eyes. Not the ice blue of Wights but a deep, chocolate brown. Jon bloody Snows brown eyes, as they smirk down at her.

"Do you need some help sweet girl?"

Her eyebrows furrowed, was this a trick. Was Jon a bad guy all this time and she didn't know it. Her mind flashed to all the times he had come into a room and she had that feeling in her gut. She was sure it was a nervous flutter because of her huge crush.

She was so stupid. Her senses had been warning her this whole time and she was too distracted by him to realise.  

It was surprising how good he obviously was at hiding this dark part of himself, he was someone who Sansa thought could be read like a book.

But he made no move to kill her though. And she really didn't know how long she could keep these two at bay. Was he really waiting for her to give an answer.

"Erm. Yes... please?".

He smiled down at her, she was courteous even as she was trying to keep deaths jaws pried open to stop it from swallowing her.

He rises up, finally stepping out of the shadows and into the light of moon. He looked less scary bathed in the moons glow.

Maybe he just happened to be in the neighbourhood? Even though he was sleeping at her house and it was 1 o'clock in the morning.

She tried to read his face but it remained blank, she truly didn't know what he was going to do. She had spent years around this man and in this moment she felt like she didn't know him.

He used his foot to nudge the dagger closer to her free arm, she sent a quick prayer to the gods.

Before she could even look to grab it, Wight number two had slipped from her grasp.

She grabs the weapon and tackles it to the floor, as she goes to slam the dagger in its chest a body flies through the air beside her.

The Wight she has a hold of shrieks as it breaks down, as if it was entirely made of ice, she then turns to face the one beside her.

The one that's probably killed Jon. It was all her fault, she was sure if Arya was the slayer she could take on five whole Wights at once. She wanted to lay down at cry. He was dead.

Only, it was brown eyes not blue eyes she looked upon beside her.

"Oh- you're not dead". Well done Sansa, great deduction there. He probably already thinks you're some dumb cheerleader.

His lips quip up in a half smile, but before she can say anything to him again they both turn to the Wight that's screeching a  few graves away. It almost sounded as if it was in pain, and she reprimands herself for being sloppy in forgetting about the thing for even a second.

How did it even get a few gravestones over? She recalls it, a body being flung in the air. She thought it was Jon's though, what with the Wights inhuman strength.

"How did you throw it off that far?" She's swallows nervously, back to being worried about him.

He merely shrugs. She was sure he used to talk more than this, even if it was rarely to her.

She cautiously approaches the Wight, looking as though it was writhing on the ground. She brings her dagger up ready to embed it in its chest, it was grasping at a bite mark on its own neck, screeching out before it turned to ice flakes blowing in the wind.

Why did it have a bite mark on its neck? How did it die without being killed by dragonglass? What was Jon doing here?

She held the pointy end of the dagger towards him. He knew something. Nobody who had just witnessed all this would be okay right now. He clearly knew Wights existed. He wasn't afraid. Sansa even thinks he just killed that one somehow.

She knew that there were other bad things in the world. Other monsters. And maybe he was one. How else could he have thrown that Wight so far.

Was she going to have to kill Robbs best friend?

"What. Are. You". There was no time for niceties, she had too many questions swirling around in her mind.

"I could ask you the same thing. What's Robbs little sister doing in a cemetery fighting monsters in the middle of the night". He takes a step closer to her then, she feels the heat coming off him in waves. Did he always run this hot? Was he sick?

He takes another step towards her approaching her as though she were a skittish doe. She wants to take one back because they're nearly touching, she feels the ghost of his touch brush her arms.

He's too close, he'll muddle her head up because all she know see's is him, all she hears is his heart beating fast, too fast. His scent floods all around her and she can only focus on him.

He puts a finger to her chin and tilts her head up to the sky.

He leans down and whispers in her ear, "Its almost a full moon".

Was that a fact or a warning. She didn't know, he was hard to understand. Boys were hard to understand at the best of times.

She stares at the moon, she never notices its phases, why would she ever need to bother. Looking at it now she could see it was almost there. On the cusp of being round and full.

She looks to him as he takes a step back, his pupils are wide as they gaze up at the sky.

He cuts down to her quick and sharp. The he grins. A wide one showing off pointed teeth that gleam in reflection of the light.

And she just knows again, that her whole world has shifted for a second time in her life, everything she knew would change once more.

[mysticsparklewings]

Nightlights in the Deep

At last, I can finally show you guys what's been with the tree fever in my last couple of posts (Terrarium Nova and WIP Wednesday: Oops all Trees)

So the art supply company Arteza madea post on their Instagram a few days ago where they announced a contest to make art featuring trees and post it on Instagram with all the appropriate tags, open until September 26th (with prizes of course) and I thought it would be fun, especially since one of their suggestions was to design a tree.

And I also decided to add a little extra challenge to myself to stick primarily to the Arteza supplies that I have, since it's their contest. That meant I had their watercolors, colored pencils, and woodless watercolor pencils to pick from and play with. Although I did end up using quite a bit of gel pen (Sakura gelly rolls and a little of my white Uni-ball Signo) to get the bright pops of color I just couldn't get with the other supplies. The gel pens felt fairer to supplement with since I usually accent pretty much all my work with gel pen in some form or another.

Naturally, after I gave myself a few minutes to ponder how to stand out among a crowd of trees but also fit right in, my imagination ran wild with my own fictional tree species.

I pretty immediately landed on the idea of an underwater/deep-sea/bottom-of-the-ocean tree and also something with bioluminescence (things that naturally glow in the dark) and from there I starting searching for various tree and water-themed things on Pinterest to flesh out my ideas. From that, I very quickly arrived at the idea of a winding, twisting trunk like you might find on a bonsai tree. And while originally I really liked the idea of having wispy drooping petals and/or leaves like Wisteria or willow trees, after a few tests that didn't turn out as nicely as I wanted (as seen on the WIP Wednesday mentioned above) I decided maybe it would be best to go without this time around.

So the final concept I've ended up with for my trees here goes roughly as follows, although I'm no botanist or marine biologist so there's a good chance a lot of this doesn't check out scientifically:

The Nightlight tree, named for its bioluminescent fruits--called "moon fruits" for their whiteish glow, pale bluish color, and spherical shape--is a species of aquatic tree that is found growing anchored to rock formations and cave systems in the greatest depths of the ocean. As these trees exist in oceanic depths with minimal or no sunlight, they perform chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis to make their own food until they reach maturity and can produce their own artificial light as a food supplement. Nightlight trees root systems can reinforce and stabilize the rock formations they anchor to in order to grow, which provides a more sound home and environment for the species of fish that will eat the "moon fruits," attracted by their bright glow, produced by the tree and aid in the tree's reproduction. Because of this, nightlight trees may grow in clustered groups or may grow so closely together that multiple trees twist and wind around each other, which can put strain on the trees' root systems and may cause development problems and may cause the younger of the trees to die. The bark of mature nightlight trees may also have a faint glow where the tree is thickest, as the bark is stretched more thinly around the nutrient carry "veins" found within the trunk of the tree, where the chemical process that causes the tree's fruit to glow begins. Nightlight trees attract and feed a variety of deep sea creatures and other bottom-dwelling vegetation, many of which feature bright flourescent colors or bioluminescent traits and may camoflodge with the moon fruits or the few brightly colored flower-like leaves that the moon fruits emerge from four times a year, peak season typically being in the spring. This provides these other species with a largely safe place to settle and reproduce while the tree is at its most forthgiving. Moon Fruits once detached from the tree will retain their glowing properties for approximately 7-10 days. Fruits that in that time find themselves on or around suitable growing conditions may then begin to take root and grow. Fruits that are not in suitable growing conditions within the time frame will then begin to decay and detoriate. Certain deviations or subspecies of nightlight trees may also be found in the depths of brackish or freshwater, but the most common sigular variety is the "White Light" variety found in oceanic saltwater.

Excuse me if that's a little all-over-the-place for a faux "knowledgable source about trees" article, but I think I managed to get the bulk of my ideas for how these trees work in there.

For a while, I also had the idea that if one of the trees ever did grow tall enough to reach the water with plenty of sunlight and/or poke out of the water that the exposed parts of the tree would die and/or become sicker with more sunlight exposure, so you'd have this really tall tree that's dead at the top but as you follow it down becomes progressively healthier until you reach the bottom and find this beautiful natural undersea garden with all these neon plants and animals it's supporting in its ecosystem. And while I do still like that idea, I don't think it's terribly realistic and I definitely couldn't fit all that would entail into this one artwork.

That said, I think you can probably see my reasoning for a lot of the artistic decisions I made here, so hopefully, I won't have to stop every five seconds to explain how the tree works while I go through what my artistic process was.

After some sketching to think through my ideas of the tree structure and possible fruit/foliage things and the practice/failed attempt pieces, I decided my best bet for the pseudo-vision I had in my head would be to make lines from the sketches I'd done as a base (as in my practice pieces where I attempted to free-hand everything things really got away from me pretty easily), and so I lifted the lines for the two trees, the caves, and some of the ground/sand from my sketches and transferred them to a piece of Canson XL watercolor paper, since I knew I wanted to work primarily with the Arteza watercolors and maybe (at the time but this ended up not being the case) the woodless watercolor pencils too.

And if I may, I'd like to take a moment here to say that while on some levels I do understand why some more versed in watercolor than I absolutely loathe the Canson XL watercolor paper, to me, it much like the premise of cheaper watercolors is not strictly terrible--it's a matter of what you're used to and what you learn to work with. If you can learn to work with what you've got, and that's what you get used to, then to a point it the quality almost doesn't matter. This paper does work differently from the more expensive/nicer watercolor papers I've tried, but it's so much more accessible that I have more of it, so I use it more, and by now I've learned a lot about how to work with it to get the results I want, so I'm less likely to encounter some of the problems other people seem to have with it. It all just depends on you, your taste, and how you work.

But enough of my paper mini-rant. Back to the artwork:

I knew from my practice pieces that part of the mistakes I kept making was not laying down layers further in the background first so that I wouldn't have to attempt to paint around/right up to them later, as well as layering up more would help me better achieve the darker, moodier undersea look I was aiming for. So after taking a picture of my lines and very quickly and sloppily doing a color mockup in one of the few drawing apps that still work with a Gen 4 iPad to figure out which paint colors to squirt onto a palette, I went in with an all-over layer of a darker blue for the background first, and I layered that up 2 or 3 more times to get it to a darker intensity.

It's still a little bit brighter than I was originally hoping for, but it still came out pretty nicely. Though I couldn't tell you how much of the ocean-ish texture is just textural properties of the particular paint color and how much of it was how I laid down the paint between all the strokes I did to even out the coverage and the additional layers.

After that was dry, I made a faux-pas (in that I would have to paint around them a little later) and moved on the stars of the show; the trees themselves.

The trees were probably the slowest and most methodical part of this piece. I very carefully went in and would do lines and then blend them out slightly when possible, trying to use the transparent nature of watercolors to my advantage. This was a slower process, especially as I would work my way up the trees and get to smaller branches (especially with the smaller tree) and had to switch to a smaller brush just to make sure I was staying within my lines. But I and my dark, moody purple did eventually get through it, and even with only the trees the background painted, I was really pleased with how they turned out.

Then I moved on to my little rock-cave things and the ground. The caves started out as a lighter ultramarine color, but it looked kinda weird so I did even up going back and adding a couple of additional layers and shading to try and add more depth, as well as I tried to stick with a dark blue only for the insides of the caves, but they ended up really seeming to need the addition of some black. The end result is a little too close in value between the trees, the caves, and the caves' insides, but there wasn't really a better way to remedy that beyond starting over, and after everything I'd been through to get to this point, I did not want to do that. So it stays as is.

The ground was actually relatively simple. Since I already had a blue background and I had decided a greenish color would be the best route to go, I just layered some yellow paint in the areas I wanted to look more like sand/ground and did the same kind of semi-blending as I did on the cave rocks and trees. And it worked just as well when I added the sand/ground moving towards the back that I hadn't pre-drawn in.

Now, I was trying to hold off doing the little moon fruits (which at this point were just bioluminescent orbs to me, I did all the naming after I finished the piece so I would know exactly what I was trying to name) until I had all the painting done, since the plan was to do them with the colored pencils, and I just kinda wanted to be able to say I was done and put all the painting stuff away before I moved on to that. That's how I usually work with my mixed media projects; I prefer to have a plan and get the majority of one medium or section done before moving on to something else. (Usually to have more desk space available but it also helps me keep things organized.)

And it was at this point that I realized my plans didn't look very under-water-ish. It kinda just looked like a moody dry-land landscape painting. Which is fine, but that's not what I wanted/was going for.

To remedy this, I started by adding some seaweed/kelp like plants to the ground. Which still looked largely just like funny grass or weeds.

It was at this point that I deviated from the actual artwork and moved back to my watercolor sketchbook to do some toying around. The main thing I did was practice trying to make coral or coral-like plants since I figured that might help with the whole ocean thing. And on the page where I ended up doing a lot of the practicing, I actually ended up taking a little extra time, later on, to make into kind of a bonus art piece, which I'll be posting by itself at some point in the future.

But I also practiced making bubbles and some other details we'll get to in a moment.

I tried doing the coral a few different ways but ultimately went with the way I see coral in my mind when I think of the word; this rounded cartoony kinda thing, even though that's not what real coral usually looks like. (I looked up pictures during the process out of curiosity) I don't know where this very specific imagery got implanted into my brain other than maybe Spongebob, but that still doesn't seem quite right, so I don't know.

And I have to say that the Neon Pink Arteza watercolor continues to be a favorite of mine, while we're here. It held up over the dark colors and compared to the gel pens infinitely better than I thought it would. Arteza, if you see this by chance, this is my plea--please make more neon watercolors if you can make them as good as this pink one!

*Ahem* Anyway...

After all that, I did step back from the watercolor and come in with the colored pencils. I didn't think I was almost done, but at the moment I didn't have much else in mind for the watercolors and figured it would be best to move to the pencils and then I could come back to the watercolors if I felt like I needed to.

I'm not sure if the Arteza colored pencils just don't like watercolor paper or something, but I had kind of a hard time applying the pencils and getting them to pop the way I wanted to, particularly in areas that had thinner paint coverage. This was the most notable in the bare ocean areas where I was trying to do the moon fruits, as the pencils worked a little better when I hit those darker patches of blue, and they liked working over the truck bark a lot better. To be fair, I know some of this is because most colored pencils have a hard time going over darker colors, as even my Prismacolor and Polychromos can have a hard time over my toned gray paper sometimes, but it still seemed like these were falling more flatly on that front than I had anticipated.

Either way, by this point it was late and I was exhausted, so I finished up what I wanted to do with the pencils--finally coloring the moon fruits, adding some additional texture to the sand, caves/rocks, coral, and trees--and decided to leave it until morning.

As I was cleaning up for the night, I was looking at that bonus art piece/practice page I talked about earlier, and I noticed a spot where the paint had done a kind of texture thing again (this time definitely more from how I applied it and less from the paint itself) and the shape, combined with me thinking of things I could do to continue to play up the "ocean" imagery and make my seascape look more lived in, made me think of sting or manta rays. More specifically that one would look really good in that spot, and about the time I completed that thought was when it dawned on me the key component I had been missing the whole time:

It's an ocean life scene. Where's the life part?? Do you know what lives in the ocean? FISH!

And I still couldn't tell why that just hadn't occurred to me until then.

So I went to bed knowing exactly what I was going to be looking up and practicing the next day to add to and hopefully complete my tree painting.

The next day, after many minutes spent prowling Pinterest for marine life silhouettes and having added a few rays to my practice piece, (and some nonspecific fish to the other couple of failed attempts since the practice-piece-turned-art was getting a bit crowded) I was off and added a manta ray, a small school of fish, and two other fishes just hanging out. Then I couldn't help myself and added a smaller ray in the leftover space that was just kind of begging for a little something more behind the other ray.

And I could have very well stopped there, but it was bothering me in the fresh daylight just how much the colored pencils had seemingly sunk back into the artwork. My bubbles I added the night before were so hard to notice! And the moon fruits...they just weren't popping at all the way I wanted them to.

I tried not to; I really did. I wanted to stick to just using the Arteza supplies that I had and maybe some white gel pen. But I had to do something to get the color to pop more, and the alternative was to pull out the white and neons from my Prismacolor pencils and between the two options, pulling out my Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight pens, as I said earlier, felt less like I was deviating from the challenge. And for all I know, the Prismacolor pencils might not have popped as much as I wanted either, even if they popped more than the Arteza pencils. So gel pens it was!

I used my white Uni-ball Signo for the actual moon fruits themselves, and the gelly rolls for their little leaf-petals and some extra dots/texture on the coral. I also used the white gelly roll to add some additional "glow" to the tree bark and to revive the poor bubbles that had gotten so lost before. And then I went back later at different points to add the two moon fruits that fell, partly to fill in space and partly because it just made more sense to my brain to have at least some that weren't still on the trees.

Also, I'm not sure how well it reads, but I did go back and try to add more of a proper "glow" effect to the moon fruits with the white colored pencil, but I feel like I lost a lot of the minimal pigment I was getting by the time I used a blending stump to soften the edges.

It's funny to me; this was one of those pieces where I spent so much time with it and meticulously going over the details that at first I actually wasn't sure it was finished. It's one of those where I had to step back and let it settle in that I had seen my vision through to the end before I could properly "accept" it.

And you know, for as many challenges as I had with trying to invent my own tree species and the problem-solving I had to do throughout the process, I am really proud and happy with how the final piece turned out.

It's different; it's out of my comfort zone because I don't do landscape type things, and it challenged my creativity in a different way. And I feel like I was able to achieve what I set out to do with the piece.

And thanks to my hesitance to dive right into the final piece without testing, I also got a bonus art piece out of it, so yay two birds with one stone?

This may have started out as just another contest entry, but in the end, I'm really glad for the mini art journey this piece took me on, and even if I don't win anything in the giveaway (which realistically I probably won't), I'm happy just to have made the artwork. And that's kinda the most important thing, right?

Now, I have some commission work to do, but I also have a certain supply that's been sitting on my desk all week just begging to be used, and some other pieces in the works, so stayed tuned for that and that bonus art piece I keep talking about that came out of this piece.

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Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

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Where to find me & my artwork: 

My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[rins-rambles]

Callum’s Sealed Letter

    You’d think after all my VLD theories I’d learn to not ramble on and on about possible future story plots for cartoon shows, right? Wrong. Here’s another TDP theory, focusing more on Callum and Harrow. Also, there will be reaches, and this is all my personal opinion. 

  So what’s on my mind today? Callum’s letter from Harrow that he drops and never retrieves. Prepare yourselves, this theory is long. 

 There was a lot of tension built around that letter Harrow gave to Callum in the first couple of episodes, wasn’t there? I can see it being a red herring to add onto the “Harrow is in the bird theory”, since he technically did die, but now lives inside something else. However, that’s been discussed to death, and not what I’m planning on doing.   Like the twin-headed cobra’s, they’re introduced, and when the plot mentions it again, they’re then suspiciously omitted. Why put so much emphasis on that letter if Callum was just going to accidentally drop it as a clue for Claudia to find, causing her to investigate until she ran into them with the dragon egg? One thing it could mention is the identity of Callum’s biological father. 

 While this isn’t a new theory, many have speculated that Callum’s biological father was an elf, but which race they are is up in the air at the moment *badum-tss*. Although another hint is when Callum seemed to quickly take up magic like fish to water, and his first spell is the wind spell Aspiro. You can argue that Callum is perfectly human, since Viren and Claudia are definitely humans just with a higher aptitude for magic, and Callum just happens to be one of those people. But now that Callum got rid of his Primal Stone, he needs to learn more from someone. I hope we get to see more human mages later on in the story for Callum to either learn more magic from to show how “normal magic” is studied instead of through the shortcuts that black magic has. Or if we’re lucky, we get to see elves train him in their ways of magic. 

{Think of this like FMA, where alchemists have to go through intensive training to learn alchemy. A skilled alchemist on their own is powerful, while an alchemist with a philosopher stone can bypass the laws of equivalent exchange. Since Callum’s destroyed his “philosophers stone”, he needs more hands on training.}

 Now, to try and steer this horse back on topic, this leads to what Harrow may have written for Callum in his final letter, also make note that this one was specifically for Callum, so let’s assume that Harrow didn’t write anything for Ezran. 

A) Harrow’s Message

  I feel that Harrow didn’t say all that he wanted when bidding Callum farewell and having him promise to look after Ezran. When writing something akin to a will, you’d tell whoever the person you’re writing to a lot of dark/important secrets you probably wouldn’t have told if you didn’t think death would be knocking at your door soon. One thing shown in Callum and Harrow’s relationship (mostly on Callum’s part), was that while Callum does think of Harrow like his father and he does love him, with all of the reminders that he’s just his step-son, he puts a rift between them as subject and king. In one ending credit card, Harrow was the one to give Callum his trademark sketchbook, and definitely wanted Callum to see him as his father and for most of their interactions, is open to Callum about their situations while he lies when Ezran is around. Yet, if there’s something Harrow seems to be keeping from Callum, it could be about his biological father. 

  This feels like something he would want to write down to Callum, knowing that he will not be able to speak to his son again, and we’ve suspiciously heard very little about Callum’s biological father. Even though the information we get on Sarai is almost as bare as he is, it’s still a bit suspicious. No one mentions anything about Sarai’s first husband before marrying Harrow, and I wonder if she disclosed this information to Harrow before her mysterious death. 

  Harrow loved Sarai, as I’m speculating that the picture he looks at before putting it away on Viren’s arrival was a portrait of him and Sarai (or possibly Harrow with a younger Callum and baby Ezran since he knew he wouldn’t be able to see his sons ever again). If she loved Harrow enough to marry him and have Ezran with him, she’d probably tell him about her first husband, and with a mixture of love and guilt (since he blames himself for the supposed death of the Dragon Prince), Harrow would keep this secret for Sarai until Callum was old enough to know, or when he was about to die, depending on how Sarai would wish for Callum to know. 

  While Harrow certainly had enough time to write a letter out for his son, it still feels odd that he chose Callum specifically of his two sons. I understand that Ezran is still very young, but he has proven to be more mature than he lets on. If Harrow’s letter would just be him writing about how much he loved Callum and Ezran, that final goodbye scene they had would have sufficed. Then, the only letter they’d get to read/open was when Amaya found them out the lodge on Harrow’s orders. However, there is one other theory I have on the letter, and it involves Sarai. 

B) Sarai’s Secret

  We’ve seen nothing of Callum’s letter after Claudia picked it up, and it remains sealed. But, what if this isn’t a letter that Harrow himself personally wrote? What if it was a letter that Sarai wrote a long time ago and gave it to Harrow either after they were married, or again, before she mysteriously died?

  All of the above that I wrote still applies: Sarai’s first husband was an elf, thus leading to Callum and him never being mentioned, but now it’s in a different light since it’s in Sarai’s perspective. 

  We don’t get a whole lot about queen Sarai as a character. One being, she’s dead, and two, she’s fondly remembered with Amaya even calling her sister her hero. Callum’s small moment of reminiscing when Rayala sees him sketching his mother in his sketchbook has him saying that she was amazing. Still, if we’re to learn something about the characters in The Dragon Prince, not everyone’s pasts and motivations are purely black and white. 

  Sarai has a wealth of potential to be explored not only to help flesh things out in the current plot, but also with our characters. Who was she before she met and married Harrow? Why was she so revered? Why did she decide to have Callum with her first husband? Why does no one, not even her sister Amaya talk about her past more? Amaya you can argue was probably busy at the border patrolling, therefore wasn’t around her sister often besides maybe communicating through letters. But still, Callum knows ASL, something Sarai likely taught him to communicate with his aunt, and Amaya had to have asked her sister how in Ka-tallest mountain of Katolis she got pregnant with a kid. 

  Normally, dead mothers to the heroes have small flashbacks of their lives to highlight a certain event going on, or a moment with a character whom they shared a connection with, usually a close friend, relative, their children, or their spouse. So with the skirmish between human and elves, Sarai’s past could be explored through flashbacks of some kind, and bonus points if it involves Callum. If Callum’s father was an elf, this could also hint at how Ezran got his ability to speak to animals. Perhaps some of that elf gene carried on into him so he inherited this skill? If there’s something that highlights the elves abilities, it’s magic and communicating/being associated with animals (ex: Lujanne and her bird). Speaking of Lujanne, thanks to her, and the Shadow-Moon elves, we know that while elves hate humans, they’re not against crossing the border for personal matters, so Sarai meeting Callum’s father this way instead of having to be near the border is more plausible in how their story pans out.

  This revelation of Callum being half-elf could lead to the revelation that humans and elves, “We’re not so different after all!” Although that’s highly unlikely, and they’ll have a better shot at just returning the Dragon Prince over this, since it seems like it will just be another move for character development for Callum as a person. 

  So while Sarai’s letter could have been her telling Callum all about his real heritage, and how she couldn’t tell him because everything about it would be taboo, there could be other ways this is explored, or exploited. 

  Whoo, I kept getting new ideas and editing halfway through, so I’m going to make a part two of this theory to highlight that last part. I am incredibly sorry for the long rant, but since I don’t make videos, writing is all I can really do to get my thoughts out. HMU if you have had similar theories, or a different idea of what Callum’s letter might have been about. 

[kitanoko]

Can I request a fanfic involving Todoroki listening to Momo's heartbeat and/or performing CPR on her?

         Note: thanks for the prompt, I finally had inspiration ‘cas of a comment on reddit this week and yesssssss this is just part one! Leave me a comment, I love reading those and thanks for everyone’s support as always! :D

      In which the doctor meets his match Part 1/3

       Yaoyorozuwoke up to the sound of ocean waves that reverberated from her phone. With alimp touch of a finger, she slid the ‘turn off’ indication that popped out onthe alarm screen and wiped a bead of sweat off her heated forehead. Herhalf-lidded eyes fixed on the notifications that revealed itself one by one onher phone and she could only swallow the knot that seemed to have lodged in herthroat.

       23 emailssince last night at 11pm.

       Seriously?

       Thedark-haired girl pressed a palm against her aching chest. She was having that feelingagain. That hallow yet painful rhythm of her heart that wasn’t like usual.Since a week ago her stomach had been twisting and her heart had been hammeringat every turn of her boss’ demands; sometimes her legs would feel weak withprickly skin like needles to flesh.

Maybe Jirou was right—she was having a nervous breakdownfrom work.

      Without skimming through those blasted emailsthat surely came from her secretary and bosses, Yaoyorozu made up her mind witha sigh. One day of missed work is nothing, she tried to convince herself.

      She tapped aquick email of her own addressed to Mr.Aizawa, who’d been her favourite, andbriefly mentioned that she needed a day off to get a checkup. Her best friendsadvised her before to see her family doctor in case something was really wrongbut Yaoyorozu kept brushing it off.

   “Oh its nothing!”Yaoyorozu would say to Mina and Jirou, “I probably just need more sleep. Youknow those houses won’t design themselves!”

    But surelyenough, the girl would get home and lift open her laptop with a warm mug ofassam tea next to her, letting her fingers work away at the blueprints. Her ‘babies’she started calling it (clearly picking that up from Hatsume who had been hergreatest partner) were Yaoyorozu’s greatest passion and she had never taken aday off since last year.

    Everything had tohave a ‘first’ though, and Yaoyorozu figured if she wanted to get back to herlatest project, she’s going to have to fix herself up before anything else. Shehad no one to blame but herself for overworking her gears and wearing themaway.

   The girl threw onthe brick-coloured fleece sweater hanging on her chair, slipped into hermust-have Levi’s and hurried out the door, her purse dangling on her elbow.

~~~~

    “Closed on Fridays?!”Yaoyorozu gasped, mouth agape in frustration. The working hours of the usualclinic that she visited had flew off her mind and she had completely forgottenthat her doctor wouldn’t be here today.

         She pressedlittle half-moons against her palm with her nails—a habit she had when she wasin need of comfort, and fished out her phone to make a few searches. Seemedlike the closest clinic that was open with the highest rating on Google was ‘Dr.TodorokiShouto’, just a street away.

       Curiosity gotthe better of her and she flicked down the screen to see the reviews. Yaoyorozuscowled.

     “He is sodreamy!!!!” a user named pokemon3094 stated.

      “not onlyclever but also pretty” another comment read.

      Seemed like theonly comment that didn’t leave a five star review was someone named nejideservedbetter239who said “I swear my girlfrd broke up with me ‘caz of this doctor.”

      Her eyebrowsscrunched together and was unconvinced these superficial feedbacks were a goodsign but there must be a reason why this ‘Dr.Todoroki’ had such a following. Shegiggled slightly at the thought if it was her friend Mina who had been calledto go to this doctor since Mina would definitely be shrieking with enthusiasmwith eyes sparkling at the opportunity. She remembered last time when she wascaught going through some of her latest designs with a well-suited young man namedShinsou who came to poach talent from every interior design company over tohis. Mina was freaking out about how handsome he was and Yaoyorozu could onlyroll her eyes in disbelief. She respected Shinsou’s company but she had strictloyalty at hers and if he thought that a mere 5-figure deal could entice then hewas wrong. But she digressed.

If it wasn’t for Yaoyorozu’s love of interior design (andwork), she would’ve stayed at home and waited till her doctor was back; Aizawawould’ve let her go without a doctor’s note anyway since she was his self-proclaimedfavourite mentee but the girl was one to follow company policy and so she hadto head over there despite her worries over this ‘other doctor’.

~~~~

      The black-haired girl arrived at thedoorsteps after a quick 5 minute trek. Shoulders slumping, a contrast to herusual confident poise, Yaoyorozu walked into the tidy, pristinely white-walledclinic. Even the marble tiles under her navy blue Repetto flats screamedelegance, and she internally complimented whoever decided to place two pots ofpurple orchids at the diagonal corners of the room. Very eye-catching indeedand well-placed. She also noticed a few people, young and old, flipping throughcooking magazines, most likely awaiting their turn.

    “Miss could Ihelp you?” A sweet orange-haired girl spoke nudging Yaoyorozu to come forward.Her name tag said ‘Kendou Itsuka’ and Yaoyorozu greeted her with a small grin.

   “I’m here as awalk-in,” the girl answered, digging through her purse for her ID cards, “wouldthere be space?”

   “Ah yes, ofcourse,” Kendou nodded, eyes scanning the monitor in front of her, “Perhapsabout a 20 minute wait? What are you here for?”

    Yaoyorozu thoughtfor a moment, sliding her medical card across the grey counter, “I think I’mhaving some issues dealing with stress, I’m not sure. But 20 minutes is goodwith me.”

   Kendou eyed hermedical card for a brief second and clicked a few times on the mouse. Yaoyorozucouldn’t help but notice how her eyes had that modelesque iridescent sparkle. “Perfect,thank you and please take a seat.”

   “Okay,” the latteranswered and popped over on an empty soft-cushioned bench. She thumbed a fewissues of Vogue, crossed her legs and found herself looking up at the girl thatjust sat directly across from her. Was it just Yaoyorozu or was the girl infront of her fiddling a little bit too much with makeup for a doctor’s visit?She watched her retie and untie her hair, load on mascara and now pushing lipstickshard on her plump lips. Yaoyorozu decided whatever, it wasn’t her position tojudge; perhaps that girl had a really important date after, who knows.

    The girl feltherself sinking further into her seat, comfortable at the zen environment andcontemplated when was the last time she was actually relaxed at a clinic. After a few more recipesthat Yaoyorozu took note of, it was already her turn.

   “Yaoyorozu Momo,” Kendoustood up and called. The girl closed the magazine in her hand and pushed herselfup noticing yet again Kendou’s lovely and welcoming smile. Yaoyorozu strolledpast the reception and into the corridor, thinking what she should say to thedoctor if he were to ask what was wrong with her, and found herself knocking afew times before twisting the knob and pushing through the door.

   The first thingshe saw when she came in was a man, probably around her age, with distinct redand white hair almost split perfectly in the middle. His chiseled jaw andserious eyes didn’t go unnoticed and Yaoyorozu swallowed hard at the way helooked at her.

  Charming was anunderstatement.

   “Hello,” she said,gulping right after, and the doctor gestured for her to sit down on the leatherchair. Yaoyorozu felt herself clam up, heart beating harder as if she was goingto have an anxiety attack, and practically stumbled into her seat.

   She wanted to openher mouth and ask what happened to his DNA, what kind of scientific marvel washe, but figured there was no answer to such meaningless questions anyway. Shewas here for her heart problems, nothing else.

   Though it wouldn’thurt to recommend him for Mina’s next doctor checkup.

   “So what can I dofor you today?” Dr.Todoroki spoke. His voice was deep, almost too sensual forher conscience, and wondered how many hearts had been stolen from his gazealone.

 “My heart.”Yaoyorozu answered immediately, straightening herself. She saw the doctor slide hischair over closer, arms reaching to his stethoscope.

  “Your heart. Okaywhat’s wrong with your heart. Can you be more specific?”

 Yaoyorozu’s lipspursed at his blasé nature and reckoned not all doctors could be like herformer one, cheery and positive.

 “I’ve beenoverworking myself I think, that’s why sometimes I’d feel an ache in my chest.My heart’s been beating really fast and I have a hard time sleeping.”

 “Mmm,” he only saidand motioned for her to turn around, “I’ll check your breathing first.”

 The girl leaned abit to the side and faced the ‘Know your STDs’ poster right behind her and feltthe end of the stethoscope rest on several parts on her back. Her eyes skimmedthe grotesque cartoon pictures of viruses and bacteria on the seeminglycolourful poster and heard the doctor move back. The otherwise quiet roomfilled with a bit of his monotonous humming.

“Can you turn back around, I need to hear your heartbeat,”his indifferent voice came. Yaoyorozu did as she was told and tensed at what was tocome. She knew she was a very well-endowed woman, growing up she had problemswith sneers and leers of those who either envied or wanted her for her assets.Yaoyorozu tried to steer her thoughts elsewhere when Dr.Todoroki leaned forwardto press the end of his instrument on the top of her left breast.

She felt her heartbeat suddenly accelerating, fistsclenching as her cheeks turned apple-red. She noticed his eyes trying to fix onsomething else also, perhaps slightly embarrassed at how his fingers had justbrushed against her breast as indicated by the reddened tips of his ears. 

Get it together, Yaoyorozu!! She told herself, It’s not like you haven’t a good-looking guy get close to you before!

 Sheswore he froze for a second like deer in headlights as well, and quickly retracted.

He was a doctor though, he must have experienced thousandsof such situations. Why was he embarrassed?

The girl bit inside her cheek and watched as the doctor rana hand through his hair, revealing more of the dark scar around his left eyethat she had noticed earlier.

“Palpitations,” he said, sounding confident in hisdiagnosis, and cleared his throat. He grabbed the pen lying on top of his keyboardand let it dance in scribbles on the memo pad in front of him. “Most likelyfrom stress, I’d advise you stay at home for two days for some rest.”

“Two days?!” She uttered in disbelief and quickly coveredher mouth at the sudden outburst. Hopefully no one outside heard.

“Yes, two whole days.” He said sternly and gave hissignature at the bottom before pushing it towards her, “Here’s your doctor’snote.”

Yaoyorozu scowled. “Are there any pills I could take thatcould maybe allow me to head back to work after a day?” She knew her questionwas in vain but she had to ask anyway.

Dr.Todoroki spun the pen on his fingers playfully. “No.There’s no medication I could prescribe for now. If it gets worse then comeback and I’ll send you over to a specialist.” He gave her one last look ofconcern while she pouted with a grimace like a child denied of candy.

“Your health should be your priority, like how it is mine.”

Yaoyorozu was taken aback by the sudden thoughtful messagefrom the otherwise apathetic doctor in front of her and she could only nod inresponse. Uncrossing her legs, she stashed the note in her pocket after foldingit in half and grinned.

“Thank you, I’ll make sure to come back if it worsens.”

“Sure.”

~~~~

“You went to who again?!”

Mina’s voice was thunderous, as if she was directly insidethe phone. Yaoyorozu had to pull back at how much it hurt her ear as she stoodin line for her daily latte, fresh roast waking her senses.

“Dr.Todoroki.”

“OH MY GOD, he was on TV last week! The total hottie whograduated from Tokyo Med. UGH I’ve been hoping I’d be sick so I could go to hisclinic. I bet there were so many people waiting!”

Yaoyorozu sighed. “You’re ridiculous Mina. You want to besick just to see a doctor? Yes, I agree, he’s quite easy on the eyes butseriously, he’s not going to be what you expect.”

She could hear Mina making tsk noises on the other side. “Yaomomo,you just have too high of a standard.”

“No I do not—“

“Remember when the son of Hitoshi Architect Ltd. came andyou said he was ‘normal looking’.”

“That was totally different Mina, I swear, Dr.Todoroki hasthe voice of morse code.”

“What’s that mean? Like he’s cryptic?”

“No, it means he sounds boring.”

“Psh, you’re just saying that. So many girls squealed onlineabout him. I don’t believe you one bit Yaomomo. I bet you had palpitations not ‘causeof work but ‘cause you saw his handsome face.”

Yaoyorozu rolled her eyes before mouthing ‘one latte’ to thecashier who already knew her usual order since she came here every day beforework.

“Mina, I gotta go,” Yaoyorozu uttered, slipping her slimfingers in her wallet to fish out a five-dollar bill, “Don’t worry about me eventhough I bet you aren’t really and tell Jirou I’ll be seeing you guys still tomorrownight.”

“Okay Yaomomo, take care and don’t you dare see this doctorwithout me next time!” With that Mina clicked to hang up and the black-hairedgirl could only smirk at how silly her friend is. There were times when she wasfrustrated at them but also mainly because they were such foils to herpersonality. Mina was able to brighten up her day, Jirou grounded her, andUraraka and Hagakure knows how to put anyone at ease with their bubbliness.

She slipped a sleeve onto the latte that had just been made,paying attention still on the messages she had been receiving through the groupchat and sucked in a bit of the delicious milk foam that hadspilled over on her finger. Yaoyorozu had been grinning ear to ear when she hadturned around unsuspecting, bumping straight onto someone who had stood behindher causing her freshly made drink to pour horrendously on his white Henley.

“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry!” Yaoyorozu said, astonished at thedisaster and she grabbed a handful of tissues to wipe the drink off his shirt,perhaps further pushing the stain into the fabric. She tilted her head up tosee her victim and fell silent.

There stood Todoroki, the doctor that she had just discussedabout with Mina, looking quite peeved, and she still had her palm up againsthis thinly draped chest.

Talk about heartwarming.

[2pcontinued]

A Silent Symphony

Standing at the edge of a ballroom, the beautiful golden chandelier holding many bright candles that illuminated the entire room, you watched longingly at the dance floor. How you wished to be there, waltzing the night away with a handsome stranger. Of course, you could, but lord knows you would be in a load of trouble for doing so. So for now, you simply watched. At least your uniform was cute, even if it was a but uncomfortable. A pair of black mary-janes were shown on your feet, while on your actual body you wore a black frilly dress that stopped at just below your knees, with a white band going around and cinching your waist, and short puffy sleeves that connected to the more modest version of a sweetheart neckline that was also decorated with frills. A pair of plain white stockings covered your legs. Your hair was pulled into a low bun, tied with a white ribbon, and you wore white gloves over your usual rough hands, due to the labor the master of the estate required you to do. Little did you know, a pair of eyes were watching you from afar, staring intently at your simplistic figure, with a look of interest.

Some time later, while you were escorting a guest to their designated room in the estate due to them drinking a little too much of the selection of refreshments you served during the ball, you had walked up to the third floor of the mansion to drop them off. Once you had left them in their room a drunken mess, you started to begin to go back to the party to finish the rest of your job. As you were walking back down the stone staircase, a small melody filled your ears. It was very quiet, almost nonexistent, but still prevalent enough for you to be able to hear it clearly. You stopped in your tracks for a moment, unable to choose your next course of action, yet settled on a decision mere seconds later. Nodding your head, you decided to follow the sound. You knew this land like the back of your hand, so nothing you discovered would be new to you, not to mention, you were always doing the same thing all the time every day, so a change of pace would be inviting. Your shoes clacked against the stone pavement of the stairs you were walking up, currently leading you to the second to last floor, floor five. Once you had arrived at your destination, you opened the brown wooden door at the top of the flight of stairs, and walked down the corridor slowly, making every step you made as silent as possible. The music only got louder. The wallpaper decorating the hallway was a lovely blush pink, with a small off-white stripe marking every every six inches or so of the wallpaper. The floor now had baby blue carpeting, a color you had always found to be joyous and quite adorable, the color itself expressing youth and innocence without even using a picture. Passing every door, you noticed that the music was coming from the very last door at the end of the hallway. It didn’t exactly make sense, since that room had always been vacant every time you had cleaned it, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. It’s not like you got a bad feeling from the situation anyway, because if it had, you would have stopped a long time ago. You trust your instinct with every fiber of your being, as it has never steered you wrong before.

Reaching the final door, pure white with small pink roses decorating the edges, you grabbed the brass knob, and turned it in your hand gently. Pushing the door open, a beautiful scene filled your sight. The usually ugly fading avocado green wallpaper had been replaced with a pristine white wallpaper instead, as the moon lit up every dark crevice of the room. Gold trimmings decorated the connecting area of the floor and wall, and a large white and gold rug covered part of the floor, as a shiny dark brown hardwood floor peeked from underneath the item. On the left side of the room, trays upon trays of pastries and the most delicious smelling sweets sat on top of a table with a white tablecloth, and pink roses occasionally decorated the table, completely snipped from their stems and the flowers left untouched and oddly  perfect. The finest wines and drinks stood next to the sweets on the table, along with a chocolate fountain, what you may say is arguably the best addition to any dessert table. A large window removed of it’s glass with a curved top allowed the full moon to show, it’s holy light shining upon the magnificent display before you. A man stood near this window, not very tall in height, only reaching about 5’6 at most. His back was facing you, however you could see his strawberry blonde hair glisten in the moonlight.

“Excuse me sir, I don’t think you’re allowed to be here.” You spoke, a little unease in your voice, due to the stranger standing across the room from you. He turned around, and you were able to fully take in his features.

What he lacked in height, he made up for in pure and absolute beauty. Extremely fair skin, slightly littered with freckles, as well as deep and sensitive eyes that resembled the color of sapphires when the sunlight hit them, filled your view. Thin, yet plump pink lips with a slight cupid’s bow as their shape, and a button nose that looked almost too tempting to touch with the tip of your finger. His eyebrows, slightly bushy yet well groomed, and long eyelashes framed those mesmerizing eyes of his. His face was slightly rounded, with his chin coming to a small point, his body looking a bit plump and more on the well-fed side, showing his status in society, and providing an explanation for his adorable somewhat chubby cheeks. He was wearing a soft pink waistcoat with a matching pink tailcoat, and a baby blue bow tie. A white wing-collared dress shirt was tucked into neatly pressed cream-colored pants, and he was wearing white gloves, while on his feet were white dress shoes. My god, was he gorgeous. And he was staring directly at you.

A smile graced his perfect lips, yet he didn’t expose his teeth. The music continued to play in the background.

“I’m terribly sorry, my dear, but I was hoping that I could stay a bit longer in here, if you don’t mind.” His voice had an English accent, something that charmed you further about this man.

“Actually, I don’t mind at all.’ You had no idea what you were saying, of course you minded, you could get punished for this, but something about the air around you made you change your mind. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Excuse me for interrupting.”

As you were about to grab the doorknob to leave again, a sharp wind passed you and you felt your freehand being grasped in another’s.

“I would actually enjoy it, if you stayed for a little while with me. I don’t like to be alone.” His hand was freezing cold, as if you were holding a cube of ice instead of the hand of another person. His voice was genuine and softened, showing that he wasn’t lying. At least you hoped he wasn’t.

Nodding your head, he didn’t let go of your hand, but instead turned you around to face him, palm touching palm, fingers intertwined. Your face burned up like the Sahara during the day.

He smiled at you, teeth barely exposed, but enough to show off some of his pearly whites. Even his teeth were perfect.

“Shall we dance?” He asked, and due to the close proximity, you could smell the faint scent of strawberry coming off of the man. You were so close, you could nearly count every single one of his individual freckles on his face. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad way to spend a lazy early morning.

“Yes, we may.” He gave you a reassuring look, then the song began to change. Wait, there was no piano or record player, so who was playing the music? You had no time to think, as he pulled you closer to him, you started to shift and turn in synchronization, one-two, one-two, feet moving together gracefully. Your dress swished all around you, and you could feel the air blowing past your face as you two moved together swiftly. It seemed as though he had you under a trance, your movements completely mimicking his, following his lead completely, not even thinking about anything else but the dance and keeping up with him. As the song began to end, he dipped you down, and you could feel his face nearing the left side of your neck, at a steady pace, slowly but surely making it’s way to the tender meat that was your flesh. Your eyes were closed softly, your head falling back, somewhat sleepy in your state, not fully conscious in a way.

Once he had gotten close enough, he began to open his mouth, and sink his teeth into your delicate skin. Close, so close he could almost taste it, which he could. Almost. Just as his fangs were about to pierce your skin, your eyes pushed themselves open, a look of anger written on your face, and you glared at him. You snapped your neck and head back up while he maneuvered his away from yours to avoid your head impacting his, and messily pushed him away from your body. The blonde looked surprised, and a little amused, to say the least. 

You lifted your leg up and attempted to kick him, yet in a flash, he was gone again, in front of the window you had found him in when you first walked through the door. Raising your fists up to protect yourself, your gaze hardened and eyebrows furrowed, as a hard frown set itself upon your features.

“Who are you, and what did you do to me, you sick man.” Your voice held no hesitation and no fear. You were ready to kick someone’s ass if need be.

The man simply giggled, and grinned at you, revealing his full set of teeth.

“My god..” You whispered to yourself, as you saw rows of fangs lined up on the sides of his mouth, the sharpness of them terrifying you to no end.

“What’s wrong, poppet? Are you surprised?’ His voice came out like velvet, yet held a dark undertone that you despised. He continued. ‘Let me introduce myself, then, to the pretty lady.”

As he said that, he jumped backwards into the window and landed slowly, floating like a feather onto the ledge, and bowed his head down to reach his waist, then lifted his head back upright. His tailcoat swished dramatically behind him. What a show-off.

“I am Oliver Kirkland, a powerful vampire! And you were supposed to be my next meal, my dear.” This part caused your eyebrows to rise and your shoulders to tense, but you stood your ground. No way in hell you were backing down now. Even if his voice got oddly high-pitched during this moment, and it aroused worry in your body.

“However, you, my love, resisted my charms at the last minute. How fun!’ He paused for effect, and lifted his right hand to his chin, stroking it thoughtfully, before he begun again. ‘I have a feeling we will meet again, dearest (Y/n), so, until then! Toodle-loo!” And with the wave of his hand, he was completely gone, as if he vanished in mid-air.

When he left, the entire room changed once more. The walls returned to it’s previous deteriorated state, the floors dusty and rickety, creaking under your body weight, and the treats gone. The room was completely silent.

“How did he know my… Where was the music coming from…” You questioned yourself aloud, knowing that you would probably never find the answers if he didn’t give you the answer. Well, this was beginning to get a bit too personal for you. Collapsing against the aforementioned nasty green wallpaper-covered wall, you sat on the floor, your knees pressed against your chest, the moonlight seeping inside from the window barely hitting the tips of of your shoes. A chill ran down your spine. You might need a drink or two to finally begin to process what had just happened.

(This is for anon! My first ever halloween event request fulfilled, so thank you for allowing me to fulfill your request, and have a lovely day!)

[typewriterprince]

Original Fic Fest: Day One

Hello yes, Kody here. Day one of the Original Fic Fest is to introduce your characters! I’m a day late because of work related issues, but I’m quite excited to share my dudes with you. A lot of my characters aren’t terribly fleshed out, as I only just started working on Robot Soul a few weeks ago. I’ll go through my main characters in Robot Soul, but I’ll also mention a couple characters from my second WIP, Jar of Hearts. Thank you all for taking the time to read this!! It means so much to me! (also, since my characters are so un-realized, I don’t have any reference pictures! Many apologies! I only have reference pictures for my two characters in Jar of Hearts.) @originalficfest

Robot Soul

Reahven Navratil is my main character in Robot Soul. She lives in the suburbs of the capital city of Allowen, tauntingly named after the realm of the Old Gods, a place that one might call ‘heaven’ in our terms. She lives on her own as a 25 year old woman, and works a menial job in a robot factory assembly line. She is diagnosed with stage four cancer and is thus hospitalized. She doesn’t have the money for fancy treatments that the rich might use to extend their life, so she essentially has to accept her fate and sit in the hospital until she finally goes. She hates that she’s so powerless in her situation, as she’s someone who must be in control of her situation. When her soul is transferred to the robot body against her will, she is angry. She’d rather be dead than forced to serve under the reign of President Faber. Despite her strong personality, she is unable to defeat the slaving protocols that the government have installed in her robotic body. It is only when a group of rogue mages come to break her out and release her of her slaving protocols that she finally finds a semblance of peace in her existence. Not wanting to risk being caught and enslaved by the government again, Astrid decides that she would rather let her soul be released from its cage and sent to the realm of Allowen that she had always believed in. The story captures the quest to find the mage powerful enough to manipulate souls. 

Alabeth Vedevea is the main supporting character in the story Robot Soul. She is a spunky 20 year old who hasn’t quite outgrown her teenage goth years. She has black hair haphazardly cut, with blue streaks in it. She lives in one of the reservations far from Allowen, where mages and outcasts live. She was born into a rich family, but suffers from severe bipolar disorder, and her family simply drugged her up in hopes of keeping her from acting in a way they didn’t like. The medicines made her so she wasn’t too sad but also not too happy. She was stuck in a limbo of ‘meh’ and she didn’t like living life that way. So she ran away. She was alone for a long while before she stumbled across one of the reservations she had heard about. She’s been there for a few years now. Unmedicated, she has trouble dealing with her mental illness, and struggles with this throughout the book. She becomes Reahven’s closest friend in this ordeal. 

Ra’dair Ansah is a mage in the same reservation that Odette lives in. He is one of the three archmages on the reservation and becomes a sort of overseer to the group that goes to find the soul mage. He is black, tall, and clumsy as a newborn kitten. He may look intimidating, but he’s about as kind a guy as you can be. He’s an ice mage, but with great practice and a large amount of energy, he also has the ability to pause time for a limited amount of time and can teleport at will. I don’t have a huge backstory for him. It’ll be something I’ll work on.

(I have four more main characters in Robot Soul, but to keep the post at a decent size, I’ll just name the rest with a basic description and info about them. I don’t have big backstories for anyone else. It’s something that I have yet to develop.)

Vildira Alinara is age fifteen. She has dark tan skin and black hair with brown eyes. Tall like her teacher, Ra’dair. She’s a fire mage with an explosive temper. Goes along with the group to find the soul mage. 

Duvasis Volt is age 38. He’s white, with brown hair and green eyes. Also tall, but thin. The leading archmage on the reservation, a member of the Council. (the Council being representatives from each reservation that convene to discuss matters between them.) Often travels to other reservations. He’s extremely rule abiding and loves history. He is one of the few mages who knows necromancy, and is otherwise a magician that utilizes electricity. People wonder if that’s why his last name is Volt, or if he decided to learn shock magic because of his name. Nobody really knows because he mostly keeps to himself. Despite this, he does take the time to care for each one of the reservation members, and truly loves them like a sweet little outcast family. Stays back on the reservation while the others go to find the soul mage.

Lauzio Liang is age 18. He looks Chinese, with light tan skin, brown eyes, and black hair. He is a spirit magician under the teachings of Duvasis. He’s as rule abiding as Duvasis, and is constantly engrossed in his studies. He’s asexual and hasn’t really thought of the idea of having a partner, as it is not important to him at the moment. Later on in the book, he finds feelings for Ruslexi. (I’m asexual and I hate the trope where the asexual falls in love and is magically “cured,” so my goal for this romance is to make it so Lauzio remains the same as he always is. I want to normalize the idea that asexuals can still be in relationships and still feel love for people--just not sexual attraction.) Goes with the group to find the soul mage.

Ruslexi Caviano-Desjardins is age 22. He’s white, with white-blonde hair and blue eyes. Tall and willowy. He was not born a magic user, but is trying to learn under the teachings of Ra’dair. He was originally cast out from society because he is a transgender man. I have some ideas for his backstory, but nothing is solidified yet. He’s super gay for Lauzio. Goes along to find the soul mage.

Jar of Hearts

Tatsuo Takahiro (Pictured left. Commission done by the lovely @emoryssketchbook. An old design of Sylvie is pictured on the right.)

Tatuo Takahiro is a young noble in the country of Mircas. Originally born in Dafeld, a place up in the mountains, a place in which is mother and father own, he lives in the lap of luxury his whole life. That is, until the year he turned eighteen. Angry townspeople take out a contract on his parent’s lives and the assassin’s guild comes and kills his parents. His eldest sister Yoko is a part of this plot and she kills the rest of his eight siblings. The only reason he is not killed is because of the quick thinking of his head servant, Nobu. He moves to the Southern Reach, far from the mountains. There he buys a section of Hebury from a bankrupt Lord and he takes control of the elven district of the city. Meanwhile, he ruminates in his desire for revenge on his sister, who had destroyed his whole family and livelihood. When Yoko is sighted in Hebury, he goes to question the innkeeper of the inn she was seen in and comes across Sylvestr Grewenys, someone who had seen Yoko. He recruits the elf’s help, and the two go across the country in search for his sister and to get his revenge. Tatsuo is a pessimist and sees the worst in every situation. He is often very sour, and has a distaste for elves, especially Sylvie. He uses his influence to get around, and tries his hardest to make sure people don’t know about his past. 

Sylvestr Grewenys (commission done by the lovely @illuminest)

Sylvestr (”Sylvie”) is half wood elf that lives in the country of Mircas. He was born Sylvia, and is a ka’shem-al’sen. In our words, he is transgender. He comes from a poor village along the road to Hebury, the capital of the Southern Reach. Many other wood elves live there, as well as some humans. His father was an abusive human who essentially kept Sylvie’s mother as a slave. Also being sexually abusive to Sylvie, he saw Sylvie and his mother as nothing more than animals for him to do his own bidding. Catching a bit of bad luck in their farming, Sylvie’s father sells him to a known prostitution ring that operated in the undercity of Hebury. There, Sylvie is forced to live as a prostitute, unable to get out of that life without risking his own life. That is, until a prickly young Lord by the name of Tatsuo Takahiro infiltrates that prostitution ring and breaks it up, therefore saving Sylvie’s life. It isn’t until later that Sylvie is able to thank him, when he is questioned by Tatsuo on the whereabouts of his sister, who had been seen at the inn that Sylvestr stayed in. He joins Tatsuo in his search for his sister (for the money, of course. Though he also felt he owed Tatsuo for saving his life.) Sylvestr seems overconfident of himself, and is very flirtatious, not caring to use his body to get what he wants. He has a shitload of trauma that he’s forced to get through during the course of  this novel, and seems to find the unlikeliest of friends along their journey across country. 

Other characters in Jar of Hearts: 

Declina, Nadir, and Zenith: Three siblings that join Tatsuo and Sylvie on their trip to find Yoko. 

Haerel: A beautiful androgynous Moon Elf castaway who joins the group while running from a group of hunters, hunting him for his blood, which is said to have healing properties. 

Sorry this went so long, I just get so excited talking about my characters that I tend to ramble. If you made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read this. If you have any interest in my characters or any suggestions on development, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks again!

[sarkastically]

Abounding

(This was meant to be pure fluff, but it got a little heavy at parts. It’s also slightly nsfw but not by much.)

The cold feet on his bare back wake him up, jarring him from a dream wherein birds filled the sky, swooping, crying, singing, beats of wings, feathers, all filling the air, and all the birds had bright white wings like kyber light, pure and unmarred by the ruddy sand of the Jedhan desert. All the birds were laughing, their voices as known to him as the feet pressed against him and just as beloved. “Chirrut,” he sighs, groans, swipes an arm out without even opening his eyes, fingers brushing over well-known flesh. Cold. Chirrut is cold. Like the drafts that get in through the cracks in the temple walls and send everyone scuttling to bed as soon as possible because no one enjoys being out in the wind that blows from the sands through NiJedha. 

Except for Chirrut. Who has always enjoyed sneaking out onto the roof or the gardens or into the training halls, the classrooms, the archives to enjoy the steady stillness of night or look at the stars or watch the blossoms that only bloom in the darkness, too shy for sunlight, radiant in the moonlight like Chirrut himself. It is not uncommon for Chirrut to go walking, layered in many robes, typically his own and then a set of Baze’s over them, a sight that would be comical if it wasn’t so dear, but he normally pulls and prods until the other joins him.  Chirrut is a great many things, but solitary is typically not one of them. If either of them is bound to go shuffling off into the night alone, to go anywhere alone, it is Baze. 

The feet slip higher up his back until Baze turns away from them, rolls to face where Chirrut lies, traps his legs between his own even as he loops an arm about his waist to pull him close, press them bodily together to drive the chill away. Chirrut tucks his face against his neck and kisses, nips, sucks until the air is full of Baze’s throaty, sleepy moans, until his body feels like a string pulled taught and vibrating. His fingers splayed across Chirrut’s back move lower to cup his ass, knead into the yielding flesh, pull him closer, and Chirrut simply chuckles against his throat, that sound igniting yet more sparks that flutter through his body, gather in his groin, pull him slowly, slowly from sleep intoxication to another sort altogether, one that fills all his waking hours, the delirious joy of being in love with this chimerical man who always seems to be changing, moving, quick of mind and fleet of foot and lovely in body, illuminated and funny. It used to make Baze feel eclipsed, lost, stuck in the shadows and completely unseen because how could he ever expect the sun to find him when it was so bright, but the sun had seen him. Chirrut had seen him. Down to the quick of him and beyond, seen something lovely and wonderful, fell in love with him quietly and slowly and completely, he said, in a way that was altogether not like Chirrut himself. These days Baze does not feel overshadowed, easily ignored. He feels warm, bathed in the light of a sun that he can touch whenever he wants, kiss until Chirrut is panting and desperate against him, lovely, giggles like the bird cries in his dream.

Chirrut’s fingers, still slightly cool but warming quickly, dance down his arms, across his thigh, into his hair. Chirrut can somehow seem to touch everywhere at once, and Baze thinks, wonders, dreams sometimes that his love has many arms, many hands, all of them delightedly touching him, stroking him, caressing him in the darkness as if he is some thinly carved stone easily broken instead of rough hewn from rock, thick and sturdy, an immovable object. While Chirrut knows he will not break, knows that pressure and bites and tugs on his hair all make him hard and greedy, it always seems that Chirrut touches like feathers, as if he is touching Baze’s gentle, easily bruised heart instead of his thick, well-worn skin. Each tap of his fingers, every kiss, and cant of his hips against him wakes Baze more, drags him from succumbing to slumber to succumb to Chirrut instead, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Sleep is for later. One day it will be for always. He will enjoy Chirrut as much as he can before that comes, hopefully very far in the future, hopefully not near at all. If he could stop time, he would pause it here, in the middle of the night, when Chirrut is slightly chilled and threaded around him as though they are just yarn in a tapestry, woven together to form a picture, to tell a story of a love that is abounding and true, strong enough to withstand anything because they are together. If he could stop time, Baze would never leave the circle of these arms.

“Where did you go, love?” he asks and then curses as Chirrut’s teeth find the rise of his collarbone to worry. No part of Chirrut’s body seems cold now, but that might just be because of the fire that his ministrations have woken under Baze’s skin. He cannot tell, cannot focus very well with all the delicious sensations filling his head, making him breathe faster. He cups the back of Chirrut’s head with one hand while the other remains on his bare ass, gripping in a way that is slightly possessive, something that Chirrut long ago told him he liked, hissing, “Harder” into his ear almost demandingly when Baze had first dared try it.

There is not much moonlight that makes it into their room, but there is enough for Baze to catch a glimpse of Chirrut’s eyes as he pulls back to look at him, and Baze marks the way his eyesight diminishes the way someone else might count days in a prison cell. One day, the master healers had said, all the sights of the world would be stolen from him. Then there would probably only be a soft haze, a sense of light and darkness and all the differences existing therein. They both mourn this knowledge in their separate ways, and if Chirrut looks at him more often, fondly stares all through meals and study and prayers, Baze never mentions it, tries not to bristle at the unwavering attention. He also tries not to fret over him because Chirrut has never taken well to coddling.

“Just the moon,” is Chirrut’s answer, the words as soft as his fingertips trailing down Baze’s chest, lower, lower, likely prepared to tease until he gasps his pleasure out in hitching breaths.

More and more often it is the moon that Chirrut seeks as the months tick down to the final slamming of the cell door. Baze does not understand this much. The stars, the flowers, the quiet in the rooms, the glow of the kyber, all of this he would understand more than the moon, who seems silent and hovering, distant and cold, wavering sometimes in devotion, lost to the night. A million little flaws. There are better things to see in the world. Like the sun. Like Chirrut. He presses a kiss to Chirrut’s forehead, and the man looks up at him with his smile full and bright, gums showing. 

“Why the moon so often?” Baze has asked this before and only got a hum as an answer because sometimes Chirrut enjoys being the silent one, likes to tease instead of answer, wants Baze to cajole information out of him, which Baze is not always willing to do.

Tonight, though, is different. Tonight when the slight edging in Chirrut’s eyes seems bigger than before, makes his gaze flit a little to the side until it settles, he seems more inclined to talk. “I’ll tell you but first a question.”

Baze arches an eyebrow but nods, running a finger over Chirrut’s lips, untangling their legs a little in anticipation but staying close because he can never be anywhere but next to him when given the chance. If he had his way, Baze would never let go of him, would cling to a hand or a shoulder or an elbow or lock their lips together always, breathe him in like the scent of cardamom in the kitchens, infuse him into his lungs and heart and blood the way that he has sunk into his soul.

“What did it feel like for you, falling in love with me?”

Baze has answered this before, but he never tires of talking about it because it is as close as he can come to poetry. “It was all at once. A burning. Like falling into the sun, like touching kyber, like swallowing fire.”

Chirrut smiles, and Baze wants to kiss him, kiss that serene spark of joy and wonder and awe until it dances on his tongue, but he holds back because he would like to see where this is going. Kissing Chirrut can change his mind, rocket him onto one course when he had been keen on another. “And I fell in love with you slowly, patiently, in turns.” 

Baze nods because he knows this part, too, though it is still a wonder to him that Chirrut fell in love with him at all.

Chirrut’s mouth is right there, pressed so close to his own that their lips brush and send shockwaves through his body when he speaks. “Like the moon.”

When he chuckles, soft, low, a rumble, Chirrut steals it, steals his breath, slides his tongue into his mouth even as his hands grip and clench and pull them even closer together. And then Baze can think of nothing at all except the gasping and the kissing and chasing pleasure through the darkness. 

He does not think about the meaning of Chirrut’s words until later. How Chirrut is drinking in the moon, savoring it, trapping it in his mind, because it reminds him of Baze. Much the same way that he drinks in the sight of him during the day. The night next when Chirrut slips from their bed, Baze follows him, and they sit on the roof together, wrapped in blankets, watching the moon, and if Chirrut looks at him more than the moon, he never comments on it.