#i think it makes much more sense when it's war-torn world

[jewishcissiekj]

Rattatak is a barren wasteland and a war world being destroyed by its own people and locked in eternal conflict with mostly temporary buildings and living places except for the warlords and people with power's houses which are more permanent but are still very not well built and look like they're on the verge of collapse idk what the fuck this was

[maybeiwasjustjade]

I’m sorry, but Feyre hypes the IC up so much as these badasses, when they’ve collectively defeated no one worth mentioning throughout the series is genuinely hilarious.

Tamlin killed Amarantha. Elain and Nesta killed Hybern. Nesta killed Bryallin.

Nesta was the one that fought death to bring Feyre back to life, simultaneously healing Nyx. Nesta was the one that helped Bryce with the Mask. Who found the Trove, and received Gwydion. With the rate this is going, Koschei will more than likely also be a non-IC kill.

I get it; Feyre’s young, but she’s also not that young. She acts more like a 15 year old YA heroine instead of an adult (but a young one) of 19 in Acotar. The IC are her family and she genuinely believes in their supposed badassery…except it falls flat because they ALL suck at their respective jobs. Rhysand can’t lead; Amren does squat. The Illyrians hate Cassian. Azriel is a spymaster that constantly gets caught by a not-so-ally. Mor doesn’t do her job as steward of the CoN. Well, it’s no wonder Feyre fits in so well—they’re all as qualified as she is!!!

And if this was all there is to Acotar then fine. But Nesta isn’t written like this. Or Lucien. Or Eris. Or even Tamlin. It’s just the IC, yet they’re the main characters.

It’s such a jarring shift from ToG, because at least there the fae and witches felt immortal to me. Gavriel, Lorchan, Fenrys, Rowan, Manon—it was obvious they weren’t young and inexperienced. But with Acotar, it’s like no matter how old they get they still have the maturity levels of a 15 year old. But most importantly, the trio of main characters in ToG were willing to go war for change.

Aelin, Dorian and Manon—they saw the broken world and decided to fuck shit up and fix it. It took time to change minds, yes, but it never stopped them from trying. To go to war, to die for that new world if they had to. But with Acotar, it’s repeatedly slammed in our faces that of course wing clipping still happens, of course Illyria is still a war-torn poverty ridden land, of course the CoN are depraved monsters, and no we can’t kill Keir yet because change takes time. It’s been fucking centuries and nothing to show for it.

Because while yes, it would take time, the IC has shown zero interest in actually doing their jobs. So duh nothing changes; they dream, and dream, but those dreams go nowhere because it’s like they think they could just dream enough for the stars to grant their wishes instead of actively working towards it. And it’s so frustrating because this narrative choice makes little sense except that the average reader doesn’t care.

[gazeofseer]

Direction of light to the browns of your life (;

Browns, what grounds you and what burns

You, deeply underneath too.

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Fatalist is term used for the one who confuses the go with the flow to become prone to act or intent and choosing not to play which will keep them under the fate, is a state of your fear, dear.

Instances of yours : You so badly wanted to take a decision about something quite recently but you step back and waited for the fate to decide for you, but you got more confused now that a week has passed because your fear covers non existential ideologies to appease your mind's guess.

You are a damsel but not in distress but in the capture of your mind's vivid imaginary and illusions that seems like a vision but is not, remember this is the world of manifestation whatever comes here is a by product of your state of being not of your state of reactions and idealism, it is birth out of your actual reality.

So there is a lot of confusions now, to clear which you need to seek your intentions do you really intent towards what your presume to be your purpose? Question that bloody dream does it dares to manifest when you will fail or will it vanish like a delusion you just had to gauge your mind off the bait?

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Overthinking is not a disease it is a power of your discipline that flow of thoughts you find a way out of your head quite smart right? Quite logical and prideful to feel right as always, but where do you hide those wrongs, those mistakes, that makes you feel like sinner to do so? You don't strive for perfection, you actually like one, great pretentious can be a great tool unless it becomes wavering, unsettling and making high while feeling the lowest in this moment right?

So much of right, I hear a feminine voice with chuckles shows how confident you are about everything you have, and the way you identify yourself with things, but when you endear it as an experience it's annoying, you start nitpicking, for your thoughts it found a flow in your mouth that you keep bickering, playing to some extent, what leaves bitter in this after all? Is the distance you feel within your authenticity and a convincing truth you lied around about.

You are not sad, not in pain, not in guilt or even regret you are disappointed in yourself, for the way you feel, for the way your head takes over all your heart like a devouring death you smile upon.

You need to really, really stop giving value attention, to your thoughts it's mere exertion of your senses let that go liar are those who say you become what you think, you become what you believe in, you become what you feel like is the mere intuition's guide.

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Shed many scales left my scars, even broken the light from the star I held so tightly underneath the sight of wars I had, battles I am fed with, all I could ever be is tired even with the best of the person, I had to feel sorrow and pitful, like an aftermath I stayed in people but with a different story to state of torns, I don't know anything, but I always told about everything, I lend hands and ears, and get rewarded with swords and screams.

Warrior, My champion how does it feel to be your very own thing? Great right then what is the guilt lying in there? There is a cobweb of perception you have crawled your mind through break that, your giving too much importance to the words of others getting absorbed in take your time alone and chose silence sometimes words must fail you so you can see what people mean was truly never about you but the way they feel, they want, they need about you. Do not get into the play of says and opinions they are void. Anyways you have strong instincts and intuition you either way don't need that.

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[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Getting some Berserk thoughts down, because the last time I was in my feelings about Griffith and the Golden Age arc, I’d promised at least one anon that I’d talk about it later and then I didn’t shfhff

But dam the Primrose Hall speech is such Wuthering Heights level miscommunication! It makes me ill!

Griffith positing that: a) having a dream is thee most important thing in the world and b) he cannot respect or consider a friend anyone who does not have their own dream (implicitly a dream different from his, so those two spheres never need interfere or threaten each other) or someone who is subordinate to him and therefore in danger of dying for his dream.

And then like five chapters later we get Casca’s flashbacks about Griffith and that immediately establishes that he is a lying liar who lies when it comes to his own emotions and guilt, but also that we can’t really know what he’s feeling in the present day, exactly, because he’s a different person now.

Contrary to what Griffith stan nation might say lol, I don’t think the dissonance between his two reactions to a child’s death directly resulting from him striving to achieve his goals is actually him just being a better liar by the Golden Age era.

He’s become indelibly crueler over the years and like, twenty is not fifteen.* He’s older and spent the entire time in between at war, killing other people, and commanding his own troops to die, for his dream. Age has hardened him. Meanwhile, him succumbing to that cruelty, to steel himself against personal grief, is literally the culmination of the Golden Age arc!

*caveat that the ages are messy, but he appears to be a teen and at least four to five years older by the Primrose Hall speech

But that flashback sequence is truly the key to Griffith’s character. It establishes both that he feels a general guilt over the blood on his hands, but also that he is motivated by a catastrophic level of sunk cost fallacy.

I also think him musing that the child must have really admired knights and wanted to be a knight himself, and that he always looked at Griffith like he was a hero out of a story is more indicative of Griffith and his initial perceptions of glory/his dream when he was younger, than simply an element of his guilt for leveraging the sense of hero worship he invokes in his followers (which is def an element at all)

It’s just very telling that this comes on the heels of Guts’ guilt over Adonis’ death and being reminded of his own younger self when seeing him.

Griffith’s own dream likely started out of naivety and simply wanting glory/to be a hero/to ascend when he started the Band of the Hawk as an adolescent. I think that child’s death represents him understanding the cost of being a mercenary, and leading people to their deaths for his own gain, when it’s far too late and he’s already sitting on a pile of corpses. And the only way to make it up is to keep grasping at his dream so that at least those deaths weren’t for nothing. I really don’t think he’s particularly torn up about Adonis’ death in the moment, but the larger abstract sense of guilt very much threatens to crush him if he ever falters.

And you know who has historically made him falter and put himself at risk, threatening his dream?

So, I think he’s very deliberately talking about Guts here actually, rather than the usual shipper line that he’s not even considering Guts when he says this.

And I think he’s very deliberately bringing up the key differences between himself and Guts (having a dream; Guts viewing himself as nothing but a tool to him despite!!! Griffith trying to convince him that they’re equals) and trying to convince himself that Guts shouldn’t mean much to him/that he cannot respect his life.

Because what’s one thing we know Griffith does? He pretends he doesn’t care while visibly caring very much.

And interestingly, what Griffith claims not to respect at all when speaking to Charlotte, seems to be what drew him to Guts in the first place. I’d argue, part of how Guts makes him falter, aside from an emotional connection, is potentially that he’s envious/tempted by the concept of being so uniquely unburdened with personal goals, considering Griffith himself is practically drowning in his own ambition.

Which, arguably, could simply be traits he values in any subordinate but not an equal. But we’re told several times by Casca that Guts is a unique case for him, that he’s never deliberately sought someone out to join him. And ostensibly, in that moment that observation is the only thing Griffith knows about him.

And it’s also worth noting that he initially simply asks Guts to join them. (More specifically he just says “I want you.” Super normal). The dual and its terms are something Guts sets, resulting in this moment.

But even after that point, he keeps trying to nudge their relationship into a more personal dynamic. Confiding in him, making it clear that he doesn’t tell anyone else these thoughts. And of course the famous scene where he insists that his own life isn’t worth more than Guts’ at all.

But Guts views himself as a sword to be wielded by Griffith (something we see Casca echo too) and keeps reinforcing the fact that he only does as Griffith demands.

And Griffith is very willing to leverage that and use Guys’ obedience to his benefit. At the heart of it, Griffith has always been mercenary even about this relationship. He’s very much trying to have his cake and eat it too, where his close personal friend and confidant is also his dog who he can bring to heel whenever it suits him.

It is very telling the way Griffith reacts when Guts tries to leave him. Where when he realizes he can’t talk him out of it, he decides to make him stay.

To me, this all ties back to the Primrose Hall speech, and how Griffith is trying to distance himself from his feelings for Guts, because he’s so much closer to his goals at that point. And ostensibly both the Princess’ favor and the attempt on his own life have made him really reevaluate how close he is to achieving something real and to not let something petty like feelings get in the way of that.

…and then Guts breaks up with him and everything falls to pieces.

[coloursflyaway]

Cry With Joy At The Depth Of My Love

Pairing: Edwin Payne/Charles Rowland

Rating: T

Word Count: 18.000

Read on AO3

“Edwin?”, Crystal asks, and Edwin would say something snarky, maybe even something mean, but Charles is wrapped around him like he’ll never let go again, and there are more important matters at hand.

“Crystal, what has happened here?”, he asks, and a few seconds later, their new psychic is standing in front of him, trousers splashed with the coffee she dropped, disbelief written across her face. “I was gone for a few hours and now Charles… and the whole building…”

He’s not quite sure how to put it, most likely because he still doesn’t understand, and Crystal looks at him like he come back from the Cat King’s lair with an additional head.

“Edwin”, she says, slowly, like she is still searching for the words, “what are you talking about? You’ve been gone for six weeks.” ____________ Edwin takes the Cat King up on his initial offer, so instead of a few hours, he is gone for six weeks. Charles isn't good at coping with it.

Tags for everyone who wanted one ♥: @that-ineffable-devil @mentally-unstable-fangirl @tipsyscone @butternutsquashthesenutz @makemeimmortalwithahug @mylu @imineffible @fabledshadow @asherxme @twopercentboy

„Now, I think this concludes our business“, Edwin says and fixes his bow-tie, the collar of his shirt. His lips feel strange, now that they have tasted their first kiss (and their second, and third, and fourth, and…, his treacherous mind corrects him), but this was a small price to pay for safe passage out of this godforsaken town. “So, could you please transport me back to my friend?”

The creature in question unfurls his body from the sofa they were lounging on for the transaction, and even if Edwin cannot find much that is good about this situation, the Cat King at least has been rather civil about it all, no matter his unconventional request for payment.

Even now, he walks closer and there is a smirk on his lips.

Lips, Edwin does not want to look at, because he knows how they feel and knows that they felt right in one, and terrifyingly wrong in all other ways.

“If you insist”, the Cat King drawls, and brushes two fingers across Edwin’s shoulders. “I can take you back to your little friend. But you’re also more than welcome to stay a little longer…”

“No, thank you”, Edwin cuts him off before he can continue, because he needs to get back to Charles, and as soon as possible, too. “As far as I can tell, you have been made quite happy, so I consider my debt repaid and would very much like to return where I belong.”

And the Cat King looks at him like he knows something he won’t tell Edwin yet, and snaps his fingers, and the world changes.

Edwin disappears in front of their eyes, and Charles forces down the spark of panic that comes with that.

The Cat King wanted to talk and Edwin can handle it, of course he can. Even if Charles would have liked it much better if he could have done it within his sight.

The warehouse looks different when it reappears.

Edwin needs a moment to make sense of it, but then his gaze gets stuck on the scratches on the walls, the splintered wood and bent metal, the wrecked throne and the hole in the floor that looks like someone dug it with their bare hands, blood streaked across the grey concrete.

It looks like a crime scene, like a war had been waged inside of it, and then Edwin’s eyes find Charles’ form in the middle of the broken up ground.

He’s sunken on the floor, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, his coat torn to shreds, his white socks stained, and his hair a matted mess of curls. Bits of concrete are stuck in there, but Charles doesn’t seem to notice, like he doesn’t seem to notice anything else around him, and it scares Edwin more than anything ever has before.

Before he knows it, he is moving, gasping out Charles’ name, and for a terrible, terrifying second, Charles does not react. He just sits there, motionless, like he is stuck in limbo; then he looks up, slowly, like he is moving through molasses, and somehow, it’s worse.

There is no life left in his eyes.

Usually, they shine brighter than the sun itself, sparkling with every emotion Charles is feeling, but now their light is dimmed until it has all but gone out, their brown not warm and inviting anymore, but flat.

A sound tumbles from Edwin’s lips, although he cannot quite make out what kind, something between a sob and a plea and a prayer, and Edwin is about to drop to his knees in front of him, when Charles propels himself upwards and flings himself into Edwin with a force that knocks them both to the ground.

If he was still breathing, the impact would force the air out of Edwin’s lungs, but he is certain that even then, he wouldn’t realise it, because Charles is holding him so tightly it compresses his non-existent ribs, like he has been hurt, like he had thought Edwin was.

And he’s crying.

It’s the kind of crying Edwin hasn’t experienced before, but something which he understands anyway; it’s the kind of crying he would hear in hell, seeping through the cracks of his doll house, the kind he would see much later when he was escaping.

It’s crying without any kind of restraint because there is no strength left to fight it, the kind of crying that comes from desperation so deep it captures your entire soul, and forces anything else into meaninglessness.

Edwin has never cried like this before, and he swears right then and there that he will find and butcher whoever did this to Charles.

Three hours have passed and Edwin isn’t yet back.

Charles is doing his very best to keep calm, but it is so, so difficult when the only thing those damned cats are willing to say is, sometimes the King likes to keep them for a while.

What is a while?, Charles had asked, but there had been nothing but a self-satisfied meow, which most likely just means that the cats know about as much as Charles does.

Which is not reassuring, but in the end, it will be fine.

Edwin might not know how to fight, but he’s clever and he’s brave and he would never leave Charles alone.

“Shh, it’s alright”, he is whispering into Charles’ curls, trying to soothe him even though it doesn’t seem to be working at all.

Charles is crying like the world has ended, his sobs so violent they make Edwin’s chest seize up, his fingers grabbing and pulling at Edwin’s clothes like he wants to sink into him and fuse their bodies together.

And Edwin might not know how to fix this, but he’ll damn himself to Hell if he lets go.

He’s about to try and change their position in hopes of making Charles more comfortable, when there is a thud and the sound of splashing liquid behind them.

“Edwin?”, Crystal asks, and Edwin would say something snarky, maybe even something mean, but Charles is wrapped around him like he’ll never let go again, and there’s more important matters at hand.

“Crystal, what has happened here?”, he asks, and a few seconds later, their new psychic is standing in front of him, trousers splashed with the coffee she dropped, disbelief written across her face. “I was gone for a few hours and now Charles… and the whole building…”

He’s not quite sure how to put it, most likely because he still doesn’t understand, and Crystal looks at him like he come back from the Cat King’s lair with an additional head.

“Edwin”, she says, slowly, like she is still searching for the words, “what are you talking about? You’ve been gone for six weeks.”

Edwin has been gone for a day and a half and Charles is going insane.

He knows he’s going insane, but that doesn’t change anything, because Edwin has been gone for a day and a half, and they have never been apart for this long since they met.

“I swear to God, if you don’t bring him back, like, this instant, I’m going to start breaking things”, he tells one of the cats that have come to watch them; it’s not an effective threat because Charles has been saying this for at least six hours, but he cannot stop himself, because he feels like breaking things.

He feels like he needs to break things, and that scares him, but what scares him much, much more is that Edwin isn’t here, and he has been gone for a day and a half, and Charles doesn’t know how to get him back.

“Sure thing, lover boy”, one of the cats replies, and Charles shouldn’t, but he screams.

Silence stretches between them, only interrupted by Charles’ sobs, his heaving breaths.

“What do you mean, I have been gone for six weeks?”, Edwin finally asks, dread of a previously unknown type and magnitude filling him with every tear Charles is crying into his suit.

“What do you think I mean? I mean, six weeks, you have been gone for six weeks, and we have been looking all over for you and this one”, she gestures to Charles, “has taken the entire town apart because he was so convinced that he would have to dig you out of Hell with his own bare hands. That’s what I mean with you have been gone for six weeks.”

And she looks down at Charles who is shaking in Edwin’s arms, and there is tenderness and true affection in her eyes, which vanishes as soon as her gaze returns to Edwin.

“So, like. Good to have you back, but also, what the fuck, how could you do this to him?”

It’s been two days since Edwin was whisked away by that absolute prick of a Cat King and Charles is losing his mind. Whatever he thought before about going insane was nothing, nothing at all, because this is so much worse.

Crystal, bless her, has been trying to calm him down, but there is only so much she can do, which is nothing at all, because Edwin is gone and no one will fucking talk to Charles and tell him what is going on.

So, he is pacing, because he cannot start smashing things up, even if he wants to.

Not because of any consideration Charles has for the Cat King or his kingdom or his subjects, but because Edwin will come back and he will have solved everything, and he will be so cross with him if Charles starts smashing things up.

So, instead, he paces, and thinks about how he’ll hug Edwin once he’s back, no matter if Edwin wants him to or not, and how he won’t let him out of his sight for the rest of eternity.

Six weeks.

The words shatter something within Edwin that he didn’t know existed, tear him down until he’s not sure if he’s still the same person as he was before.

Because Charles is crying in his arms like he watched the world end, and suddenly Edwin doesn’t just understand the emotion there, but feels it deeply, viscerally.

If Charles had been gone for six weeks, he would be tearing the world apart with his bare hands to get him back.

And suddenly, every one of Charles’ sobs is an open wound, every trembling grasping of his fingers a broken bone, every time he breathes in, wet and desperate and painful, is a death he dies, because Edwin is the one who caused this.

Edwin, who was gone for six weeks without knowing, who has left the most important person in his life to suffer without him; Edwin, who can’t do anything but hug Charles tighter, and pray to whatever god will hear him that Charles will be able to forgive him.

It’s been three days and Charles doesn’t care anymore.

He has told Crystal as much, after she had dragged him out on a coffee run, insisting that he cannot spend his entire time in that godforsaken warehouse. Which she is wrong about, he realises as soon as he has stepped outside, because Edwin could come back any second and Charles would not be there to take care of him after whatever this Cat King has been putting him through.

At first, the Cat King hadn’t seemed too bad, not dangerous, more annoying, but apparently Charles had been wrong because Edwin isn’t here, and there is no way Edwin would leave Charles alone for this long, especially because he must know how worried Charles is by now.

So, the only explanation is that the Cat King must be keeping Edwin from leaving somehow and Charles will not allow it.

He should have gone with him right away, shouldn’t have let Edwin out of his sight, will never do so again.

So, he lets Crystal get the coffee she wants, but ignores her looks when he brandishes his cricket bat even before they walk into the warehouse. Maybe he is overreacting, because it has only been three days, but at the same moment, Charles knows he isn’t, because maybe for other people, spending three days away from their best friend is just part of everyday life, but it isn’t for them.

Charles is used to looking up at any given time and finding Edwin within his sight and the fact that he isn’t terrifies Charles to the point where it is hard to think.

That’s why it doesn’t matter that Crystal is obviously uncomfortable when Charles twirls the bat around as he enters the warehouse, just like it doesn’t matter that the cats scatter, not even that Edwin would tut and tell Charles to use his head to solve this, not his muscles.

Because Edwin isn’t here, is he?

“Oi!”, he calls into the vast room and sends more cats running. “One of you little fuckers is going to tell me where your King has taken my friend or I’ll start smashing shit up around here, alright?”

Just to make sure they know he means business, Charles brings down his bat on the closest barrel and feels the metal dent under the impact.

It’s satisfying in a way that scares him, but everything scares him right now, so this doesn’t matter, either.

“Do you hear me?”, he shouts and knows that he doesn’t sound commanding, just desperate, because that’s what he is, desperate and scared and not even good enough to keep the most important person in the world safe. But maybe desperate is enough for this, because desperate people do desperate things and Charles is about to rip this place into bits and pieces until he finds Edwin again.

There is no answer, and Crystal reaches out to tug on his jacket, like she thinks he doesn’t mean it, but oh, that’s where she is wrong.

They have only spent a week and a half together so Charles doesn’t hold it against her, but he’ll show her, just like he’ll show the cats, how much he means it.

Edwin isn’t certain how long they stay like this, but it’s not like he cares either. His mind is still reeling from the revelation that he has been gone for six weeks, his heart caught in a cycle of ripping itself apart for leaving Charles alone and patching itself up once more because he cannot let Charles see how much he is hurting, not when Charles needs him to be strong now.

Despite having existed for over a hundred years, Edwin has never become comfortable with another person’s touch – Charles’ being the exception – but he knows that Charles needs it, so his hands have started running over Charles’ back, combing through his lovely curls, anything that will let Charles know that he is here and he is safe and he isn’t leaving ever again.

“For me, it was only a few hours”, Edwin whispers, a response that comes far too late, feels like far too little, because who cares what it was like for him if it has left Charles in such a state? “If I had known that time passed different there, I would have come back immediately. I wouldn’t have spent a second with that blasted man.”

His hand is cupping Charles’ head, trying to support him through sobs that seem to wreck through his body with the intensity of an earthquake, the tears they bring soaking through Edwin’s jacket and shirt. Even if his spectral skin cannot feel them, Edwin knows it anyway, just like he knows the desperate grip Charles has on his back, the shaking of his slender body in Edwin’s arms.

“Time passed differently-”, Crystal starts but then stops herself, almost like a decision Edwin can see her make, before she crouches down and puts a hand on Charles’ back, just below Edwin’s. Part of Edwin wants to push it away, because it should be him who touches Charles, no on else. “You know what, we can talk about that later. We have to get him out of here first, then we can figure the rest out.”

Metal bends and wood breaks and concrete doesn’t do much at all apart from sending shocks up Charles’ arms, especially if he does it again and again and again.

If he was still alive, his muscles would be screaming, he’d be covered in cuts and bruises, splinters embedded in his flesh and being driven deeper with every motion; like this, there is nothing, just Charles and the cricket bat and the violence he is unleashing.

The first hit had felt good, like a release, but by now it feels like nothing at all anymore, but in the end, he does not do it to feel better, but to get these goddamned cats to finally tell him where Edwin is.

It’s the only thing that matters, that has mattered, will matter, and Charles will take the whole fucking warehouse apart if that is what it takes.

His bat slams into the side of a barrel, denting it, and a cat flees; his bat hits a post and another one does.

“Just give him back!”, he screams and he sounds crazed, but that doesn’t matter either. “Tell me where he is!”

There is carnage around him, there’s bits of wood flying where Charles’ swing has toppled a palette over, and it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all.

It’s nearly impossible to get Charles to stand up and it breaks Edwin’s heart, because Charles should be light on his feet, a flurry of motion even if he is trying to stand still, but instead he stumbles when Crystal helps lift him up. His hands are still clutching to Edwin’s clothes, cramped to the point where Crystal can’t dislodge them, although she is whispering soft nothings, coaxing with even softer touches.

In the end, they shift his arms so that they are around Edwin’s neck, clinging to him when Edwin picks him up like one would a child.

Were they still alive, Edwin wouldn’t be able to carry him a step, but Charles’ astral body has no weight to it, so Charles’ head comes to rest somewhere between Edwin’s neck and shoulder, fresh tears spilling down to wet his collar.

His sobs have quieted somehow, but he is still crying, still mute to Crystal’s questions and Edwin’s attempts of encouragement.

In all the three decades Edwin has known him, he has never seen Charles like this, never this closed off or devastated; it hurts in ways Edwin didn’t know he could hurt.

Crystal doesn’t talk much to him, but for once, Edwin doesn’t blame her: if he had been here in her stead, watching Charles spiral from his usual self to this state, he also wouldn’t want to talk to the person responsible for it.

So, he just follows her to the room she is still renting, holding onto Charles’ trembling form and swearing to never let him go again.

Eventually it’s Crystal who stops him.

She screams his name over the sounds of destruction, an expression on her pretty face that Charles has no energy left to decipher.

“Charles, they are not telling you anything”, she says, and yes, that’s the problem. “Maybe they don’t know. Maybe Edwin is somewhere else entirely, maybe the Cat King has taken him somewhere else in town.”

It makes little sense, and Charles wants to go back and smash another barrel into pieces, just in case it’s this one that will make those fucking cats tell him where Edwin is, when Crystal puts a hand on his shoulder and adds, “Maybe he needs our help there.”

Suddenly, a barrage of images: Edwin kept prisoner, forced into iron shackles; Edwin, being tortured; Edwin, waiting for Charles to come free him.

Charles, who has sworn to protect him and failed once already.

Edwin puts Charles down on Crystal’s bed, but even then Charles doesn’t let go of him and Edwin is touched, Edwin is terrified.

He seems so small like this, curled up on Edwin’s lap, and Edwin’s heart aches with love and with devotion and with an unbearable amount of guilt.

Without thinking, he pushes a hand through Charles’ hair again, but this time, Charles shivers against him, either because of the touch or by chance, Edwin isn’t sure.

“What happened?”, he asks Crystal softly, as not to disturb Charles.

“What do you think?”, she asks instead of answering, “He thought you were gone. He thought you might be gone forever, or trapped in Hell, or another thousand things his poor brain came up with. Would have gotten himself wiped out of existence if I hadn’t stopped him. Or dragged down to hell. He was willing to do absolutely anything to find you.”

She looks down at Charles and Edwin watches her eyes soften, like she is watching something precious; she is right, of course, but part of his heart still screams for her to stop.

“I’m not sure you know how much he loves you”, she tells him, her expression still soft, and it’s preposterous, it’s uncalled for, and Edwin desperately wishes it not to be true.

They search the harbour and the lighthouse, the library and the abandoned houses scattered around town, the high school and the cemetery; Edwin is nowhere and Charles curses Port Townsend and its people, curses the two of them for ever setting foot in it and curses Crystal for bringing them here.

In the woods, they find something akin to a shrine, complete with ancient writing that Charles cannot read, but there is no sign of Edwin anywhere. Around it, skeletons are scattered across the grass, and Charles should care about it, should make this a case, but the thought of it feels so far removed he’s almost surprised when Crystal picks it up to bring with them.

That summons the skeletons and they run, and Charles forgets about it almost immediately afterwards because it doesn’t matter, nothing does.

As Crystal outlines the events in the past six weeks in broad strokes, Charles hardly stirs, even if his tears dry at some point.

He’s not asleep, because that is not a luxury granted to them, but Edwin notices this kind of exhaustion anyway; he’s felt it before, after he had crawled out of Hell, covered in soot and bile and blood, and had collapsed right there on the floor, finally safe, but unable to move for what felt like an eternity.

And he understands it, too: he’d rather go to Hell again than lose Charles.

“He just sat there?”, he asks when Crystal is nearing the end of her tale, because it seems impossible, should be that. Charles is movement, is a constant dance, and yet Crystal is telling him that prior to Edwin’s return, he hadn’t moved in a fortnight. And it should be inconceivable, but Edwin thinks of how he found Charles, sunken into himself like he had become part of the ground itself, and suddenly it is difficult to doubt her words.

Crystal nods, and again her gaze softens when it touches Charles; again something within Edwin twists and hisses.

“He said he wasn’t leaving until you came back”, she explains, and her voice is a caress not meant for him, but Charles, who cannot hear it. “And he said he would wait forever if he had to… and I believed him.”

“Oh, Charles.”

It’s a declaration of love, of sorrow, of everything in between, and for a second, Charles stirs in Edwin’s lap, before he settles back down; it’s for the best, even if Edwin craves to see Charles’ eyes with some semblance of life in them like a starving man might crave a meal.

He strokes his knuckles down Charles’ spine, wishing he could feel the bumps of every vertebra, and Charles presses closer, almost imperceptibly so.

“Thank you for taking care of him”, he tells Crystal and means it, even if the words feel like pulling barbed wire through his airways, because taking care of Charles isn’t Crystal’s duty, it’s Edwin’s. But she was there when Edwin wasn’t, and it comforts him at least a little to know that Charles hadn’t been alone.

“Of course”, Crystal says, and her eyes stay soft, stay on Charles, “but don’t you fucking do that again.”

The vase helps nothing at all, because Charles cannot read the words that were transcribed on it or the table, because he’s useless without Edwin at his side.

Edwin would be able to solve this, there is a reason why he’s the brains of the operation after all, but Charles? The best he can do is put the vase down on Crystal’s table and all but forget about it.

Until he comes back that night from another trip to the harbour, the magic shop, the warehouse, without Edwin, whose absence feels more like a gaping, oozing wound with every passing second, and there is a stranger in Crystal’s bed.

She’s petite and looks peaceful, but Charles doesn’t even get to ask what she is doing there before Crystal starts talking.

“I put some flowers into the weird vase we found”, she says, and it doesn’t explain anything at all, “Dandelions that I found when I went back to check if we had missed anything in the woods, you know, because of the skeletons. And I heard a thud from the hallway and Niko here had passed out right in the middle of it. Which, in itself, would have been concerning, but then...God, there is no way to say this without sounding insane, but there were little people? Crawling out of her mouth? Which are now asleep in the dandelions I put into the vase.”

She looks at Charles like she expects a response, but it’s really difficult to give one, when it’s… well. When it’s not about Edwin.

“That’s good?”, he tries and Crystal rolls her eyes, looking annoyed for a second.

“Charles, I know this isn’t-”, she starts, but then stops herself, her expression softening. “I know you are worried about Edwin, but I need your help with this, okay? It won’t take long, we just have to take those little creatures back to their little altar thing so they won’t crawl back into Niko once they wake up. Can you do that for me?”

It seems reasonable and Charles still wants to say no, because nothing matters as long as Edwin isn’t back where he should be, but then he remembers, dimly, through the pain and the confusion and the gaping hole that is Edwin’s absence, that this is what they set out to do.

Help people.

So, he nods, and Crystal smiles, and that might matter at least a little bit.

“I’ll take him back to London tomorrow”, Edwin says into the silence that has settled around them. “Through the mirror. Not because I don’t want you to come, just…”

He doesn’t quite know how to say it, but Crystal seems to understand it anyway.

“That’s a good idea”, she agrees easily, and reaches out to touch a hand to Charles’ back, just below Edwin’s hand once more. “I think he should be back home and you two… I think it might be good if you had some time to sort through things. I’ll join you later.”

In any other situation, Edwin would ask what she means by that, but right now, it really doesn’t seem to matter, so he just nods, settles back against the headboard, and lets his eyes slip shut.

Charles takes the vase back where they found it, and there should be some kind of satisfaction in it, something about the job being jobbed and the day being saved and the stranger, Niko, being out of danger, but there is nothing but the gaping hole in his chest where his heart is supposed to be, because Edwin isn’t there with him.

When the sun is rising, the first rays of light coming through the windows, Edwin tries to rouse Charles once more.

“Charles?”, he asks as softly as he possibly can, not yet pulling away. “I was thinking, we should go back to London.”

For a few moments, there is no answer, but then Charles slowly, ever so slowly, sits up, his arms still around Edwin’s neck, as if he couldn’t bear to lose their closeness.

And Edwin expects a reaction, but none as violent as he gets when he finally sees Charles’ face again.

It’s not like he has forgotten it; for him, not even a day has passed, and yet it feels like seeing him for the first time.

His eyes are the same brown Edwin has become so familiar with, but they are dull still, even if a hint of life has returned to them; they are rimmed with red, eyelashes clumped together as if Charles had just been crying. And he might have been, even if the thought that he didn’t notice hurts Edwin in completely new, unexpected ways.

“You’re really back”, Charles whispers and the words are a sob and a prayer and an exaltation, and Edwin’s heart breaks because he should never have been back, he should have just been there. “You’re really here.”

There are tears spilling down his face, making his gaze a little brighter and yet not worth it; Edwin reaches out to wipe them away without thinking and Charles trembles under his touch like he never has before.

“I never meant to be away that long”, he tells Charles, although he’s not sure it matters, because he was, and there is nothing he can say or do to make it better. “I never wanted to worry you.”

I never want to be away from you for more than a few seconds, he thinks, but doesn’t say, doesn’t recognise the thought but knows it to be true nonetheless.

“I know”, Charles says, and it’s still half a sob, more tears spilling down his cheeks for Edwin to wipe away. “I always knew that. And you came back and you’re safe and that’s all that matters and I just. I missed you so much.”

And it’s not all that matters, not by a long shot, but for now, Edwin just nods and wipes another tear from Charles’ skin.

Niko wakes up again and she’s lovely in a way Charles knows Edwin would have enjoyed, but if anything, that just makes the need to get Edwin back worse.

It’s been a week and Charles desperately wishes he could sleep, just so he wouldn’t have to feel this all the time.

At least Niko seems to be willing to help, which would be a relief if Charles had any hope left that looking through town would bring Edwin back. But they have been everywhere thrice, have looked at every single thing Tragic Mick has on sale, and Edwin is just gone, like the Cat King has made him vanish from existence.

The thought cuts into Charles’ flesh like iron would, burning hot and torturous and it’s been a week and maybe there’s no other way. Edwin must be hurt or captured or a thousand other things Charles won’t allow himself to think of, and Charles will bring him back, no matter what it takes.

“Could you girls go and check the lighthouse again? Maybe the beach?”, he asks and maybe Crystal is getting suspicious, but he cannot find it in himself to care. “I just, I don’t want him to get back and there not being anyone there to take care of him. Please?”

It’s enough to convince them; they won’t find anything, he knows it deep in his bones, but it gives him the time and the space to go back to the warehouse and do what is necessary.

It takes some convincing to get Charles to let go of Edwin enough to stand up, his hands sliding down Edwin’s arms like he doesn’t want to lose contact, and it’s then when Edwin’s gaze gets caught by something that should be impossible.

There’s red on Charles’ fingers.

Not the red Edwin associates with him, but the red of dried blood and fresh wounds and overwhelming pain; Charles’ fingers are stained with blood, his nails torn to the flesh, some missing ,his knuckles scraped and bruised.

A gasp escapes him, because they cannot get hurt, they are already dead. Wounds, even those from iron, are fleeting, fade within minutes. And yet, Charles’ hands are battered, bloodied, like he had just been punching a wall.

Without thinking, Edwin takes them in his, fingers delicately gripping Charles’ wrists as not to hurt his poor, wounded hands any further, as he raises them up for inspection.

“What happened?”, he asks and hears his voice breaking, feels his heart do the same.

Charles’ eyes flicker downwards and there’s a fleeting look of recognition there, but nothing more. No surprise, no confusion, not even pain.

“Oh, yeah”, he says distractedly, turning his hands within Edwin’s grasp. “It happened a few weeks ago, when I was trying to dig through the concrete. Started out with just a scrapes that healed again, no problem, but then at some point they just stayed. Don’t really know what they’re about.”

“Do they hurt?”

“Yeah”, Charles says easily, like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t send Edwin’s mind spiralling. “But you get used to it, don’t you?”

It’s the warehouse again because it’s always the warehouse because Edwin has gotten lost there, and Charles has to get him back, no matter what.

So he marches into there, cricket bat brandished, and sends the cats scattering. Their King has not yet returned, his throne empty and Charles’s non-existent, aching heart seizes in his chest, like it does every time he looks at that horrible pile of palettes.

For a moment, he wants to beat it into splinters even more than he already has, wants to reduce it to dust, but then he stops himself.

It’s not what he is there to do.

One of the cats is too slow; Charles catches it easily, even if it is scratching and screaming and twisting its little body in a futile attempt to break free.

Charles doesn’t want to hurt it, but if that is what is necessary, he will.

“Tell me where he took my friend”, he hisses at the creature, ignoring that the scratches sting like fire, ignoring that the cat is most likely terrified of him. “If you don’t I’m going to crush every bone in your body and I won’t even regret it.”

There is a moment of silence, and Charles sees his hands covered in blood, feels thin bones splinter in his grip, imagines a life going out because of him, and he doesn’t want to do it, but he will if he has to.

Its little legs kick out again, before they go still and then, with the most contempt Charles has ever heard in another being’s voice, it says, “There is a cave south of here where the King sometimes goes when he doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Is Edwin there?”, Charles asks, a hint of hope blooming in his chest, because it’s a direction at least, a possibility. Yet, he tightens his fingers just so, just enough to let the cat know he means it.

“If you will find him, it will be there”, the cat replies and Charles breathes a sigh of relief, and lets go.

Edwin tries not to watch Charles say goodbye to Crystal, but it’s impossible not to, because Charles won’t let go of his hand. And Edwin cannot feel it, but he knows that Charles’ knuckles are still raw and his nails torn down to the flesh, and it is impossible to think of anything else.

“You’ll take care of yourself, okay?”, Crystal says, and reaches out to hug Charles, who goes willingly, their joined hands dragging Edwin closer, too. Their joined hands, Charles’ bruised and bleeding because of Edwin.

“’Course I will”, Charles answers and buries his face in Crystal’s hair; Edwin wants to tear him away from her and keep him to himself for the rest of forever. “You, too, though. And take care of Niko.”

“I will. Maybe she wants to come with me to London. See the sights. The agency. The haunted vending machine.”

The words give Edwin a start; that case, the vending machine that used to be haunted until Charles and he convinced the ghost stuck in there to move on in 2002, is nothing Crystal should know about. It’s one of the cases Charles and he still refer to sometimes when they pass that particular machine, a little inside joke.

That Crystal knows about it, that this Niko does as well, is an almost physical blow to Edwin’s chest, and for a moment, he does not know why.

But then Charles pulls back, his bloodied hand in Edwin’s still, and says, “That’d be brills. And we can make a few new memories, too. Good ones, this time.”

And suddenly, it is so clear: in the last three decades and some, there have been almost no memories they haven’t shared, and suddenly, there are six weeks of Charles’ existence that Edwin hasn’t been part of and the realisation of it feels like it’s ripping him to shreds.

“We should go”, he says, before he thinks of it, and it is unkind and cruel and selfish to ask Charles to cut his goodbyes short; yet Edwin cannot help but feel relief when Charles looks at him for a second and nods. “I’ll see you in two days, okay, Crys?”

And Crystal, who has a nickname too, nods, and Edwin breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

Charles drags the girls with him to the woods to the south, unsure where to find the cave and yet determined to do so.

Chances are that Crystal is just humouring him, but Charles doesn’t care. And it doesn’t matter, does it, because it’s her who finds it in the end.

“This doesn’t look very nice for a kitty”, Niko comments as they come closer; Charles still isn’t certain if she knows what and who they are looking for, but he doesn’t have the time stop and explain it, not if Edwin might be here, might be hurt, might be being tortured.

“I’m not sure if the Cat King would describe himself as a kitty”, Crystal replies as they get close enough to see into the cave, “But in general, I agree. I don’t think this looks nice for anyone in particular.”

She’s right; it looks damp and overgrown with weed, not a place fit for a king, but maybe for a prisoner.

“You wait outside”, Charles tells them, because he can’t die anymore, and because he isn’t sure if he wants his new friends to see what he’ll become if faced with the Cat King now. “If I need help, I’ll shout for you.”

Maybe Crystal answers, maybe she doesn’t; Charles doesn’t wait to hear it, just pulls out his bat and barges into the cave, ready to knock the whiskers off the damned creature that has taken his best friend, the best person in the world.

Inside, the cave is cosy, carpeted, a large bed and a bar crammed into a corner; it’s magic, quite obviously.

And it’s empty.

Being back in London feels right, even if the hand in Edwin’s still feels wrong.

Not because Edwin doesn’t want to hold Charles hand – he finds, although he never would have considered it before, that the weight of Charles’ hand in his is comforting, the pressure of his fingers grounding, that the occasional tug makes his heart skip a metaphorical beat – but because even without feeling, he is constantly reminded of the state of them, the blood caked under Charles’ fingernails.

Almost, he raises their joined hands again to see if maybe, some of the bruises have healed, but when Edwin turns around, Charles is looking at him with such wonder, such care, such lingering pain, that it takes his breath away.

That look alone is like a stab, a full-body blow, and Edwin hates himself for having caused it, for thinking about his petty jealousies when Charles has been through six weeks of what must have been Hell.

“Charles”, he says softly, because he doesn’t know what else to say, but he doesn’t even get to finish saying his name; before he does, Charles pulls him closer, into another hug, that feels almost as desperate as the one they shared back at the warehouse, kneeling on the ruined concrete floor.

“I thought I lost you”, Charles sobs into his shoulder, and the only thing Edwin can do is hold him. “I didn’t want to believe it for a second, but you were gone for so long and I thought- I didn’t think I’d ever be here again, I didn’t think I’d be here again with you, I didn’t-”

It makes Edwin think of what Crystal said an ocean away, that Charles didn’t want to leave the warehouse, not without Edwin, and there are tears in his eyes now, spilling over and impossible to stop, because Charles there on the warehouse floor, unmoving as the world changes around him, is the worst thing he has ever imagined.

He hugs him closer, and Charles buries his face in the crook of Edwin’s neck, hot tears spilling against Edwin’s skin and soaking into his blazer, changing the fabric in the most fundamental of fashions.

The girls find him eventually.

Charles isn’t certain how long he has been sitting there, but he isn’t sure he cares anymore, because Edwin isn’t here and Charles doesn’t know where he is, so he can’t save him, which means Edwin is somewhere out there, alone and lost and most likely hurt. And he must be waiting for Charles to come, because Charles has always come, Charles has promised him, again and again, that he would always come.

And now, Charles doesn’t know where to go.

He doesn’t know he’s crying until Crystal is crouching before him, dabbing at his cheeks with a crumpled tissue, and it’s like everything falls apart around him, beneath him, inside him, because Edwin isn’t here and Charles doesn’t know how to get him back.

They eventually part, although Edwin isn’t sure he likes it; he’s not used to this kind of closeness, and yet it feels good to hold Charles, to comfort him.

It’s not like Charles goes far either, he keeps one of his poor, battered hands on Edwin’s wrist and drags him to their sofa, pulls him down until Charles can rest his feet on Edwin’s lap, their fingers still intertwined.

At first, it’s difficult to find somewhere to put his other hand, the one that is so used to holding books when he sits here, but Charles looks at him hopefully as he fidgets, until Edwin puts it down on top of Charles’ thin ankle, fingers snaking around to hold it.

“Do you want to tell me about what happened?”, Edwin asks after a few moments of silence – not uncomfortable, but heavy still – but Charles shakes his head almost immediately, dark curls bouncing.

“I’d rather not”, he says, and it sounds prim, almost rehearsed; it hurts in a new, novel way to think that Charles feels like he has to prepare answers when talking to him. “It wasn’t… pleasant. Do you wanna tell me how the Cat King kept you there for so long?”

His immediate response is no, he doesn’t want to tell Charles just what he had to do to appease the Cat King. There is an explanation ready on his lips, one he has rehearsed, back when there were lips on his throat, leaving imperceptible marks, but then he thinks of Charles’ hands, of his eyelashes clumped together with tears, and Charles deserves the truth, especially because there is so little else Edwin can give him.

“He asked for a kiss. Or rather, several”, he explains, then, because he isn’t certain how much Charles understood back then, on the warehouse floor, “For me, it was only a few hours, but wherever he took me, time must have been stretched there. It is the only explanation I can come up with.”

And he expects a chuckle, a smile, anything at all, but Charles’ eyes go dim again, go dull, and Edwin hates himself with renewed passion for causing it.

Charles isn’t sure how they end up in Niko’s room; he cannot remember walking, cannot remember teleporting either. But they do, and he is still crying, surrounded by pink and purple and bright yellow, and there are two sets of arms around him and they still don’t make him feel better.

He can’t remember the last time he cried, and he doesn’t think he ever cried like this before, not even with his father’s belt raining pain down on him. This is worse, because this is Edwin, and this is forever, and this is all his fault.

“Maybe the cat just didn’t know”, Crystal says softly, rubbing a hand along his back; for a brief moment, Charles wishes he could at least feel this. “Maybe their King doesn’t tell them much, I don’t think kings usually do. We’ll just keep looking. We’ll find someone who does.”

It’s meant to soothe, but it doesn’t; if anything it makes Charles cry harder, because who is left? He could go through the cats, one by one, and he will if necessary,, but if this one didn’t know, why should the next one be any better?

He doesn’t know how to answer, because any sound that comes from his lips is coated and drowned and swallowed by sobs, but he doesn’t have to, because Niko kisses the top of his head, and says, “You did mention a witch, maybe she knows? Maybe she has one of those crystal balls to look inside and find your friend!”

And she’s wrong, because Esther would never help them; and she’s right, because Charles has questions for her anyway.

A bit of light returns to Charles’ eyes quickly, thank God. Edwin isn’t sure what snuffed it out in the first place, but he swears not to make the same mistake a second time; his soul would not be able to take it.

He tries to keep the conversation light, only that so much of it seems to be caught up in everything that has happened.

It’s unusual, having to tread lightly around Charles, and Edwin hates it with a passion that surprises even himself. But it just feels so wrong, even more so than watching Crystal’s hand on Charles’ back, hearing her mention anecdotes from a life she wasn’t part of.

So, when he again almost asks Charles just how Crystal could have known about the cursed vending machine, he instead picks up the book lying on their side table and holds it up without even looking at the title.

“Do you want me to read you something?”, he asks, because back when they first met they occasionally did this, especially on winter nights whose cold they couldn’t feel, when Charles still remembered dying.

For a second, there is silence, Charles’ thumb brushing warm across the back of Edwin’s hand, and Edwin could live in this moment for the rest of his existence.

“The Complete Encyclopedia of Uncommon and Rare Arachnids?”, Charles asks, and there is a hint of his usual smile curling around his lips, a ghost of his normal teasing.

“I could get another book”, Edwin counters, and gives Charles a smile in hopes of getting a real one in return, “but I would have to get up to get it.”

And Charles is shaking his head immediately, and the smile on his lips grows into something Edwin almost recognises.

He reads the Complete Encyclopedia of Uncommon and Rare Arachnids to Charles for hours.

They get to E.

“Don’t do this”, Crystal repeats for the dozenth time, but Charles doesn’t slow down his steps, doesn’t even think about it. “Charles! Don’t do this. You remember the last time, she’s dangerous.”

“I know”, he answers, and he does. It’s just that it doesn’t matter. “That’s why she might have Edwin. Because she’s dangerous. Or she might at least know where he is. I can’t, Crystal.”

And he does stop, just for a second, turns around to see her and Niko trailing after him, Crystal obviously distressed, Niko most likely just confused. And he wants to care so much, but he just can’t.

Not when it’s Edwin.

“You stay out of this, Crys, please. But I can’t, not when it’s him. If there is any chance that Esther knows what that goddamned Cat King has done to Edwin, then I have to try. I have to.” He doesn’t expect Crystal to understand; they don’t know each other for long, it’s a miracle she’s even here still. “He’s my best friend. He would do the same for me.”

For a moment, nothing.

Then Crystal’s expression softens, like she might understand after all, and she nods.

“Alright”, she says, “Niko and I will stay around the corner and I’ll try to read her mind. But be careful, Charles. You won’t be much help to Edwin if you join him wherever he is.”

Night falls and they are still wrapped up into their cocoon of warmth on the couch, Charles’ hand by now a familiar weight in Edwin’s.

“I know you want to ask”, Charles says into the comfortable silence, and Edwin rejoices just for the pleasure of hearing his voice. “And I’ll tell you everything you wanna know, just… not now, okay? I want to enjoy having you back before I have to think about all that again.”

“Of course”, Edwin answers and he means it, understands it, too. He looks down at Charles’ hand in his and that is enough for now. “Whenever you are ready. There is no rush, we have the rest of forever to figure it out.”

Charles’ fingers twitch in his and it must be the light, but the knuckles look slightly less raw, less torn. Without thinking, Edwin lifts their hands to his lips and presses a kiss on the wounds, hoping that it won’t cause more pain.

It gets a response, at least, a sharp intake of breath, Charles’ fingers clenching around his, but when Edwin looks up at Charles, allowing their hands to drop once more, his eyes are wide and warm and a little alive.

“Doesn’t hurt”, Charles answers the question Edwin has yet to ask, but his voice sounds a little strangled still. “It’s just that you don’t usually do… any of this. I thought the hand holding would be almost too much, I just couldn’t let go.”

Because I need to make sure you’re really back, he doesn’t say, but Edwin hears it anyway. And the sentiment hurts, the thought that Charles thinks physical touch is a burden to him to the point of trying to let go of Edwin’s hand for his sake.

“I do not mind it in the slightest”, he declares, making sure to tighten the grip he has on Charles’ hand. “Not if it’s you.”

And Charles’ eyes widen once more, a spark in them igniting, and Edwin kisses his knuckles, one by one, vowing that he won’t let go until Charles can look at him without fear in his eyes.

“Esther!”, he yells before he has even reached the door, ready to barge in without knocking, even if Crystal has implored him to at least stay outside of Esther’s house. “If you don’t come out, I swear to God, I will come and find you and-”

“What?”, the door swings open and Esther is standing there, pipe at her lips as she regards Charles with a put upon kind of disinterest. “I heard you boys were still in town, but oh my God, can’t you let a woman cook up her revenge in peace? You boys are so annoying.”

If he was still alive, his teeth would splinter from how hard Charles is clenching them; his fingers are itching to grab the bat and just try and mash her face in.

“Do you know where Edwin is?”, he asks instead, because that’s more important than feeling her skull split apart again.

“Who’s Edwin?”, she drawls, taking a drag from her pipe and blowing the smoke into Charles’ face. “Is that the other one? I can’t keep up with you kids and your stupid little names.”

“That’s him, yeah”, Charles answers and God, he wants to smash her kneecaps in, he wants to beg her to help, he wants to storm past her and tear her house apart until he finds Edwin. “Do you know where he is?”

“You seem desperate”, Esther says, smirking, taking another drag from her pipe. “I like it. What’s it worth to ya?”

“Everything”, he replies, although he shouldn’t, because in the end, it’s the only answer he can give.

“Love that. Not for you, but for me.” Esther is sizing him up, obviously considering something Charles won’t like the least, and yet he knows that he will do it, no matter what it is she asks, if she can only tell him where to find Edwin. “It’s gonna cost you, and I mean, like, a lot.”

“I’ll pay it”, Charles answers without a second of hesitation, and Esther smirks in a way that should make him regret his words; it doesn’t. “Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”

Sometimes, Edwin forgets how different they get to experience time; sometimes he's forcibly reminded of the fact. Because Crystal and Niko find them like this, wrapped up in each other.

Part of Edwin wants to tear himself away from Charles, although there is nothing untoward they are doing, but another, one he understands even less, wants to press closer, wants to kiss Charles' knuckles again and let the girls see.

"You made it!", Charles exclaims when he sees Crystal, voice sounding at least a fraction alive, and Edwin loves it, despises it at the same time. "How was the trip?"

They are dripping rain water on the floor, Edwin belatedly realises, but he decides against mentioning it anyway, less for their sake and more for Charles’.

“It was alright. Long, mostly”, Crystal answers, pushing a hand through her thick curls and sending a spray of water down onto their wooden floor. Edwin does his best not to notice it. “How are you? Is everything alright?”

The concern is palpable in her voice, almost a physical entity in the room, and Charles seems touched by it, his eyes softening and another sliver of a smile playing across his lips.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Edwin’s here”, he replies, like it explains everything, and Crystal nods, as if she agrees that it does.

Her gaze flickers over to Edwin for a second, then back to Charles, whose fingers clench around Edwin’s almost imperceptibly before he shakes his head, the motion so small Edwin almost misses it.

He’s about to ask what he is going on, but then Niko steps forward, spreading even more water on their floors, and Edwin is distracted by the bright teal of her coat, the white of her hair that wasn’t there before he was taken.

“You must be Edwin”, she says and holds out a hand that Edwin cannot take without letting go of Charles’. “Charles has told us so much about you.”

“That would be me, yes. I apologise, my hand is currently quite occupied”, Edwin answers, then raises their joined hands to help explain why he cannot shake Niko’s; an expression flits across Crystal’s face, too quick for Edwin to make sense of it, yet Charles seems to understand it easily.

It shouldn’t bother Edwin as much as it does.

“Ooh, that’s okay”, Niko says, and she sounds like she means it. Her eyes are wide and happy and suddenly, even without knowing much about her, Edwin is glad that she was with Charles when he was gone. “You should be holding Charles’ hand, that’s much more important. I completely understand.”

And silently, Edwin agrees.

Esther is grinning at him in a way that reminds Charles of the snake Edwin had found in her house, cold and dangerous and like he should be running from that smile.

Instead, he takes a step forward, and he would take another if Crystal wasn’t suddenly next to him, yanking him back.

“She doesn’t know a thing”, she half hisses, half shouts, her voice as deadly as Esther’s smile. “I read her thoughts and there is nothing in there. She just wants you to promise her that you’ll do what she asks, and then use you.”

Her grip is so strong Charles feels it through his clothes, through the barrier to physical touch that is death, and as she yanks him back, Charles feels the heart he doesn’t have break in his chest once more, because for a moment, he had had hope.

Esther cackles and Charles knows there are tears spilling down his cheeks, even if he cannot feel them.

“Well, it was worth a try”, she says, sounding like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t matter at all, and something in Charles just snaps.

Crystal’s hand on his shoulder still feels solid, but the cricket bat in his hand does even more so, especially when it connects with Esther’s still-smirking face.

While the girls go and dry off, Charles sinks back into the cushions, his eyes fluttering close. Almost, he could look relaxed, but Edwin can still see the tension in his body, like a spring curled tight and waiting for the lightest touch to set it off.

Edwin wants to soothe him, but he doesn’t know how to, especially not when there is still so much he doesn’t know about those six weeks.

He is trying to figure out a way how to ask, or at least hint at it, but then Charles opens his eyes again, and they are softer than they should be when Charles has been through so much.

“I think you’ll really like Niko”, he says, and he sounds wistful somehow; Edwin desperately wishes he knew why. “She’s pretty brills. Might have saved me once or twice.”

“Saved you? What from?”

Edwin imagines Esther and her giant snake and Hell and everything in between, but Charles’ eyes don’t change, neither does his voice.

“Myself, really.”

In the end, it takes both of the girls to pull him off Esther.

His whole body is aching from her iron cane in ways he had forgotten he could hurt, but the pain is distant, far away; the only thing that matters is that she had said she knew how to get Edwin back and she had given him a sliver of hope and then she had snuffed it out again.

Another thing that is far away: he is screaming, or crying, or both; two sets of hands drag him down the steps, and Charles knows he’s fighting them, because… because he doesn’t know what else to do.

And then he’s just crying.

Arms pull him close against a solid chest, fingers card through his hair, and there is nothing stopping the sobs wrecking through his body, so violently Charles feels them almost like he had felt the hits from Esther’s cane.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there, crouched on the ground, but it is a long, long time.

When they come back, Niko hops onto the sofa’s backrest and Charles looks up at her with obvious affection.

“Do you need some band-aids for your hands?”, she asks, placing a little box on her knee. “I brought the Hello Kitty ones.”

The words make no sense to Edwin, but Charles nods, and Edwin hates how much he doesn’t know, hates that they ever had to spend time apart.

Charles twists and turns until he can put one of his bruised hands into Niko’s lap, who inspects it, before a bright, bright smile spreads across her face, like a sunflower opening to greet the morning.

“It looks better!”, Niko tells him, and she’s right; the knuckles are still red, but have scabbed over, the cuts are a little less prominent against Charles’ warm skin.

“Does it?”, Charles asks, and sits up straighter to see for himself. “I guess your dad was right, then.”

“I told you.” Niko is pulling a pastel pink band-aid from her box, unwrapping it before placing it gently across one of the deeper scratches on the back of Charles’ hand. It covers only half of it, if even.

“Charles”, Edwin starts before he can stop himself, “what is the purpose of this? Those patches won’t make your wounds heal any faster.”

It takes a moment, but then Charles turns to look at him; it’s a silly thought, but it almost feels like Edwin has missed his eyes on him.

“They won’t”, Charles agrees, and his lips are curved into an almost-smile. “But it will make them heal better.”

Charles cannot remember how they get back to the butcher shop, but they do, because Charles ends up sitting on Niko’s bed, while she rummages through her night stand.

He isn’t certain what she is looking for, but she finds it with a little ah!, and returns to the bed with a box in her hand. It’s metal, dented and scratched in a way that shows it has been loved; she opens it and there are dozens of colourful band-aids inside, waiting to patch someone up again.

“Now, I don’t know Edwin”, she says in a strange cadence, like she is trying to figure out what to say while speaking.”But if you love him so much, then I don’t think he would like you to be hurt. And since he isn’t here to make it better, I will try.”

The words make Charles’ eyes sting with tears once more, because Niko is right, Edwin wouldn’t want him to hurt; because she is right, Edwin isn’t here.

“Ghosts don’t-”, he starts, because if he doesn’t talk, he’ll start crying again, “Our wounds heal differently. Those band-aids won’t make them heal faster.”

Niko stills for a moment, then takes one of his hands in hers, which is scratched from Esther’s cane. The wounds won’t last more than a day, Charles knows it, but Niko still touches his hand with so much care, as if she thinks she could hurt him.

“My dad used to put band-aids on my knees when I fell from my bike”, she tells him as if it’s an answer to a question Charles hasn’t asked; maybe it is. “And he always said that even if that wouldn’t make the scrapes heal faster, it would make them heal better.”

And Niko looks up at him, her fingers cradling his hand like she thinks he can still feel it.

“Do you want a pink or a green one?”

“Pink”, Charles says, and doesn’t bother to blink the tears away this time.

Niko covers Charles’ hands in band-aids until she runs out of them, Charles’ wounds too numerous for what her little chest holds. They feel strange against Edwin’s palm when Charles switches the hand he is holding Edwin’s with halfway through, the plastic so different to Charles’ skin.

He watches the exchange and it tugs at his heart in ways he doesn’t understand; it hurts and it heals, because at least Charles had someone to put little plastic patches over his wounds, even if how familiar both of them are with the process means that there must have been far more wounds than Edwin was aware of.

At the very end of it, Niko places a kiss on Charles’ knuckles and Edwin’s lips ache in jealousy.

“Thank you”, Charles tells her, and she nods, bright and happy, before she starts sliding off the backrest.

She stops, though, and cocks her head as she looks at Edwin.

“The kiss makes the wounds heal even better”, she says, like imparting a secret, and then, she’s gone.

“You can’t keep doing this”, Crystal tells him the second they are alone, in a voice that allows no objections; Charles knows he will object anyway. “Charles, I know you cannot die a second time, but you cannot keep doing this. Esther hurt you and we had to watch and I just. I can’t do that again. I know he’s your best friend, but you’re running yourself into the ground with this and I don’t know if I can watch it happen.”

She looks like she means it and Charles wants to help, but if there is one thing he cannot give her, it’s this.

“I can’t”, he answers, and looks down onto his hands, peppered with brightly-coloured band-aids someone who cares about him put there, up at Crystal who saved him from being bound to a witch’s whim, and yet it all pales in comparison to the gaping hole in his chest where Edwin’s presence usually lingers. “I’m so sorry, but I just can’t stop, not as long as he’s still gone.”

He wants to tell her about how Edwin would do the same for him, about how he has saved Edwin from a hundred monsters and will save him from a thousand more, about how he isn’t sure if he can continue existing without Edwin at his side.

But he doesn’t get to, because Crystal takes a deep breath, and asks, “What if he’s not trying to come back?”

The question shocks Charles into silence, but Crystal continues talking anyway, words blurring into each other with how fast she is speaking.

“I didn’t want to say anything, because I know how much you care for him, but maybe he just left. Maybe that is why we can’t find him anywhere, why the cats couldn’t tell you anything either. Because he doesn’t want to be found.”

And it’s-

It’s the most ludicrous thing Charles has ever heard in the fifty-odd years he has spent on this Earth.

“No”, he tells Crystal, “No, you’re wrong. And not because I couldn’t bear it although I really, really couldn’t, but… that’s not how we are, Crystal. He wouldn’t leave. Never. If there is anything in the world I know for certain, it’s that Edwin wouldn’t leave. And that means he’s out there somewhere and he is hurt or captured, and he is waiting for me to come and get him. And I will, Crystal, no matter what happens, I will.”

There’s nowhere in the agency for the girls to sleep, so they set out to find a hotel, and Edwin breathes a sigh of relief, even if he hates himself for it only moments later.

He shouldn’t be so jealous of Charles’ attention, his affection, especially not when Crystal and Niko have stuck with him for six horrifying weeks, and Edwin should be nothing but grateful to them for taking care of the best, the most important person in existence instead of him.

But the door closes behind them, and it’s just Charles and him once more, and Edwin is weak, is possessive and greedy and looks down at Charles’s hand in his, and thinks that at least one thing is right in the world.

“Alright”, Charles says and turns to look at Edwin. “You can ask me. Not about everything all at once, maybe, but you can ask me.”

It should take him at least a second to understand what Charles is talking about, but it doesn’t; Charles says you can ask me, and there’s a thousand questions swarming through his head immediately, begging to be spoken aloud.

He nods, but before he can decide on any one thing to ask, he takes Charles back to the sofa and makes him sit down, their hands still loosely joined between them.

Touch is something Charles has always needed, but now, with Charles so hurt, so vulnerable, Edwin realises that he needs it almost as much.

There are so many things he wants to know that it feels impossible to settle on one thing, at least to start with, until suddenly, there’s a question that blazes through his mind so painfully that Edwin speaks it out-loud before he has a moment to reconsider.

“Did you ever doubt I would come back?”, he asks, then corrects himself, “No, did you ever doubt that I wanted to come back?”

He tells himself that he’ll accept any answer Charles will give him and it’s the truth; another truth: if Charles ever doubted that the only place Edwin wants to be is at his side, it will shatter his heart to pieces.

“Of course not”, Charles says, not missing a beat, and Edwin gets to keep his heart after all. His voice is soft and his eyes are, too, even if their light is still dimmed. “I’d never doubt that. It’s you and me against the world, isn’t it?”

Edwin nods, and there are tears in his eyes he does not deserve to cry.

“Thank you”, he says, unsure what he is thanking Charles for: for still being here, for believing in Edwin, in the strength of their friendship, for enduring all of it. “I know it must have been Hell, because that’s what it would have been had the roles been reversed, but something must have happened, because your hands…”

Without wanting to, he looks down at Charles’ fingers, wrapped in bright plastic, his own woven between them, pristine because he allowed the most important person in existence to go through this alone.

“I’m not really sure”, Charles replies, and when Edwin looks up again, it’s Charles who is staring at their joined hands. “To be honest, I didn’t really stop to think about it. We found out about this other dimension the Cat King uses to escape, and I just went mental, didn’t I? Started trashing the warehouse completely, and when my bat broke, well. I just used my hands. I guess they’re not as sturdy.”

He tries for a smile, and it rips Edwin’s heart to pieces.

“You-”, he starts, but doesn’t get the words out, because the thought is too much to bear, the images of Charles ripping his fingers to shreds to find him too vivid.

“Had to get you back somehow, didn’t I?”, Charles asks, answers, still smiling, and Edwin cannot take a second more, so instead, he pulls Charles against his chest and hugs him so tightly he knows that, if he had any bones left, he’d feel them creak.

Maybe he should be discouraged, maybe it should be difficult to go back out and start looking for Edwin all over again, but it isn’t.

What would be difficult is sitting down and waiting; what would be impossible is to let Edwin stay wherever he is being kept.

So, he walks.

Past meadows and across streams, up hillsides and then looks down into the valleys and still finds nothing, nothing at all. It’s maddening, it’s the worst thing he has ever felt, because the scenery is beautiful, the days long and the sun bright, and Charles feels like he is dragging himself through barbed wire and broken glass.

When he gets Edwin back, he’ll never let him out of his sight again, he swears when he walks up to the lighthouse once more, for the fifteenth or five hundredth time, sparing a look at the ghosts sitting there, watching the water. He’ll keep him close, keep him in his sight, keep one hand in Edwin’s, no matter if he likes it or not, for the rest of eternity, just to make sure he won’t stray too far.

It becomes a thing between them when they are alone.

Charles will look at him and say, one question, or three questions, and Edwin will go through his mental catalogue of them, realising how much he hates that there is anything about Charles he does not know all over again, every single time.

How long did you wait in the warehouse at first?, he asks, and Charles says, days. Crystal had to force me to leave it for the first time.

Why is Niko’s hair white now?, he asks another time when they sitting on the roof, the sounds of the city dulled down to a gentle buzz. Oh, that was mental, actually, Charles answers, and launches into a story about gnomes crawling from her mouth, and Edwin sits there and watches him, and wishes Charles would tell the story like he would have two months ago, animated and excited about it, instead of matter-of-factly.

How long would you have stayed on that floor?, he asks, and doesn’t know if he wants to hear the answer this time, only knows he has to. And Charles looks at him strangely, fondly, sadly, and says, forever, mate.

Crystal catches up with him at the warehouse again, where he is pacing on the horrible, hated concrete floor, thinking about battering it open and seeing if he can find Edwin between the pieces. She’s been looking at him more often now, so openly worried Charles sometimes finds it difficult to hold her gaze, but there is nothing to be done about it, is there?

It’s the same way she is looking at him now, forehead furrowed and her dark eyes on him feeling like they are taking Charles apart, piece for piece, thought for thought.

“What are you looking for?”, she asks like she doesn’t know it, like the answer has ever changed.

He doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t know how to say Edwin’s name without breaking into tears, because if he says his name, he might not stop anytime soon.

“Charles”, she tries again and it stops his feet mid-step, “Charles, what if you don’t find him? What if he never comes back?”

It’s words that never should be spoken, because they cannot be allowed to be true, and Charles closes his eyes, just to save himself from the look in Crystal’s eyes.

“I’ve been to Tragic Mick’s shop and I asked him about ghosts and their wandering, because you are scaring me”, she continues, “and he told me that the only ghosts who wander are those that killed themselves. And that scared me even more.”

And Charles wants to shake his head and tell her she’s wrong, but it feels like that somehow; like half of him died and he is doing everything he can to follow.

Niko comes to change Charles’ band-aids and Edwin doesn’t think about it much, just watches her take out the box and tell Charles about the characters depicted on them. The wounds themselves have healed slightly, and even if no one knows why, Edwin breathes a sigh of relief at the discovery.

He expects Niko to let Charles choose a colour again, like she has done before, but instead she turns to him, who is just there because Charles is still holding his hand like it’s a lifeline.

“I think you should choose the colour this time”, Niko tells him, holding out a hand with three different band-aids in it, three different colours, three different patterns.

“It’s not my hands, though”, Edwin protests, but Niko just shoves her hand closer.

“No”, she agrees, “but they’re your wounds, too.”

And Edwin glances at Charles, who, for once, isn’t looking back, takes in the sharp cut of his jaw and the dullness of his eyes, thinks of his bleeding knuckles and broken nails, and knows she is right.

“This one, then”, he says, and leaves the green one, covered with leaves, the yellow one, covered with stars, and picks up the red one, covered in hearts.

The thought doesn’t appear gradually, it rips through him one day when he is walking through the library, forgetting to avoid the bookcases and just phasing through them instead.

Two days before, Niko, in a futile hope to console him, had put a hand on his shoulder and given it a squeeze.

“If he has come back from Hell, then I’m sure he’ll come back from where he is now. Especially if he knows you are waiting for him”, she had said, and back then, Charles had just tried giving her a smile, not thinking anything of the comment.

But now, it’s like a bolt from the heavens, a thought so devastating it leaves him gasping in the middle of the room, clutching at his chest like he still had a heart to calm.

He knows little to nothing about the Cat King, because in the end, Edwin had always been the brains of their operation, the one with the encyclopedic knowledge of anything supernatural, but something he knows intimately are Edwin’s stories about Hell.

Most of them, he has heard at least a dozen times, and even if that is not enough to imagine the horrors there, it’s enough to know that the entities there use souls like bargaining chips.

Edwin had told him before that he had been traded from demon to demon, and back then, in the comfort of their agency, Charles had shivered and put a hand on Edwin’s shoulder in lieu of pulling him against his chest, tucking Edwin’s head under his chin and never letting him go again.

Now, a picture forms in his mind that is so terrifying Charles feels like screaming, and Edwin is not here, so Charles will claw him from the mouth of Hell itself this time.

“Charles, could I borrow Edwin for a second?”, Crystal asks one evening, and Charles’ fingers tense around his own.

It’s a strange phenomenon that has only increased with time; occasionally, Edwin thinks he can almost feel Charles’ touch, not as just resistance, but like he used to when he was still alive.

“It won’t be long and I’ll bring him back, I promise”, she adds, not even bothering to ask Edwin, just assuming he will follow her.

“Yeah, sure”, Charles eventually answers, even if a second too late, and slowly, ever so slowly, untangles their fingers from where their hands had been resting between them. It’s the first time since Edwin has come back that they are not touching, and Edwin feels the loss of it immediately, his fingers itching to find Charles’ once more.

For now, though, he only gives Charles a smile before he follows Crystal outside, where she stops immediately.

Her expression is one Edwin cannot decipher, anger lingering behind her eyes, but almost concealed by something much greater, much more important.

“Do you have any idea how much Charles loves you?”, she asks, and the anger is there in her voice, the other thing is, too. “I know I asked you before and you said yes, but I don’t think you do. And I think you need to.”

“I am perfectly aware-”, Edwin starts, but he doesn’t get far.

“You are not”, Crystal interrupts him and she sounds so certain that Edwin feels helpless hearing it, because even if he doesn’t believe her, there are things now that she knows about Charles and he doesn’t. “I watched that boy beat up a witch that almost took out all three of us, because she had lied about knowing where you were, and the only reason he didn’t bash her immortal head in was because Niko and I pulled him off of her. He was willing to sell his soul to her just to get you back. To a demon, too. He nearly ripped off his own fingers trying to reach you, because he couldn’t imagine a world without you in it.”

She pauses for a moment and Edwin can’t speak, can hardly think, his brain trying to sort through the information and failing, because it hurts too much.

“I thought he was going to die, Edwin. Cease existing. Whatever”, she continues, crossing her arms in front of her chest, and the anger is still there, and Edwin understands it now, deserves it. “I went to see him every day at that warehouse after he had just sat down and accepted his fate and every day I expected him to just not be there anymore. That’s how much he loves you, I thought he was going to disappear just because you had, too. He loves you more than I can even imagine loving anyone.”

“Crystal…”

“If you hurt him, I’m going to make you regret you were ever born”, she finishes, and Edwin believes her without reservations, “and the only reason I won’t kill you a second time is because I know it would kill Charles, too.”

It’s not easy to get Crystal to tell him where David is, but Charles manages anyway.

The roller-skating rink is dark and dirty, the concrete floor too close to the one in the warehouse for Charles not to shiver when seeing it for the first time. But it doesn’t matter, isn’t allowed to matter, because crouched in the corner is a human figure with shaggy hair and a too-large fur coat, and Charles wants to rip him apart for Crystal, wants to beg him to help for Edwin.

“Oi!”, he yells out and David scatters in a way that reminds Charles of a bug of some kind. “You remember me, yeah?”

“What do you want?”, David spits back, pressed against the wall and trying to look like he wouldn’t flee if Charles gave him an opportunity to do so. “Haven’t you ruined enough?”

“Didn’t ruin a thing”, Charles replies, but there’s no fire to it, because in the end, as much as he hates it, he needs the bastard’s help. “I need you to send me to Hell.”

If he wasn’t so desperate, if there wasn’t a constant loop of torture behind his eyes whenever he blinked, showing him thousands of ways that Edwin could be torn apart this second, he would try to find a better, a more subtle way of putting it, but there is, and Charles has long since stopped caring.

He hasn’t seen Edwin in more than three weeks and if his best friend in the world, the one person who never deserved to go to Hell, spent three weeks there because Charles was too stupid to put the pieces together, he will never forgive himself for it.

“What?”, David asks, and Charles has no time for this, for any of it.

“Hell. I need you to send me to Hell, because my friend might be there and I need to find him”, he repeats, and it takes a moment, but then David laughs, an ugly, rough sound.

“You want to go to Hell”, he repeats, like Charles hasn’t said so twice already. “Voluntarily.”

“Yes.” Charles closes his eyes for a second, wishing that the deep breaths he used to ask Edwin to take would still have the same effects on him as they did when he was still alive. “You don’t need to understand it, you just have to send me there. I’ll sell you my soul or whatever it is you do, I don’t care. I just need to get to Hell as quickly as possible.”

David still looks like he wants to laugh, but this time, he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a step forward, raising his hands as if he was trying to placate Charles, a smile on his lips that Charles wants to knock off.

“Alright, alright”, he says, and Charles hates him and hates the Cat King and hates himself for letting it come to this. But it will be worth it, anything would be worth it if it brought Edwin back. He’ll figure out what to do about his own soul later. “I’ll get you to Hell, absolutely. But it sounds like you’re desperate, so I might need a bit more than just your soul to make it happen.”

“No.” He thinks of Crystal and Niko and Jenny, all safe, all oblivious, hopes they’ll forgive him. “You’ll get my soul, and that’s it.”

David pretends to think about it, but Charles has dealt with enough demons to know he will accept; they are greedy creatures after all, and a soul is a soul is a soul.

“Okay”, he says at last, and still, Charles feels relief wash through him. Just hold on a little bit longer, Edwin. I’m coming. “I’ll take your soul. And I’ll send you to Hell. But I’ll choose the Circle.”

“Sure, whatever”, Charles replies and the smirk that David gives him should scare him, but he’s far past scaring. “I’ll find him no matter what.”

Crystal’s words echo in Edwin’s head when they return to the agency and Edwin slots back into the spot next to Charles, their fingers intertwining naturally.

He knows Charles loves him, of course he does. Has known it for thirty years and has it carved so deeply, so prominently into his heart that he’ll never forget it, yet something about Crystal’s words makes that knowledge scream in his chest when Charles looks at him, a little bit of his usual brightness returning to his eyes as soon as they touch.

It’s not frightening, that knowledge, but it’s not comforting either.

It’s just there, beating in his chest like a heart might, asking if Edwin feels the same.

And without a moment’s hesitation, Edwin answers.

Yes.

“Oh, you fucking won’t”, rings out Crystal’s voice just before Charles’ hand touches David’s, and for a moment, Charles hates her.

Then someone grips his shoulder and flings him backwards, and Crystal is standing there, breathing heavily, a cleaver in her hand, and for another moment, Charles loves her.

“You won’t fucking touch him”, she hisses, and David laughs, the sound just as rough, just as ugly.

“He came here by himself”, he tells her, grinning still. “He asked me to take his soul. He begged me to do it.”

“Well, the offer has been rescinded. And you better go wherever the fuck you came from, before I send you back there myself.”

“Crystal, I need him to-”, Charles starts, desperate, but he never gets to finish the sentence, because Crystal turns her head to look at him, and her eyes are blazing like fire, before they go white.

“No one needs him for anything”, she tells him and her voice is distant and emotionless and powerful, echoing in the empty space like it is made of a hundred women speaking.

And Crystal reaches out and puts a hand on the centre of David’s chest.

For a moment, nothing happens, then he is being flung back against the wall with an invisible force, kept there suspended.

“You won’t touch him again”, Crystal says and the other voices still echo within hers, leaving Charles breathless and awed and despondent. “And you won’t touch me either. Otherwise I’ll bury you so deep you’ll be begging me to send you back to Hell instead.”

And she lets him go; when she turns back to Charles, there’s a small pouch in her hand.

“Crystal said you almost sold your soul to a demon”, Edwin starts the next time Charles allows him a question.

Everything Crystal had told him has stuck with him, but this he had only realised much later, and it had scared him like hardly anything else had before.

Charles just nods, this time doesn’t even try for a smile, and Edwin is glad for it; he’s not sure if he could take it.

“I didn’t really think I had a choice”, he adds after a few moments, like it makes it better. “I thought the Cat King might have sold you to some kind of demon and that was why I couldn’t find you anywhere. And the idea of you, stuck down there… I couldn’t take it.”

“But there was no proof, there can’t even have been any indication that…”

“No, there wasn’t”, Charles replies and this time, he does smile, and the sight is as torturous as Edwin knew it was going to be. “But I had to make sure. No version of you getting dragged to Hell where I don’t come and get you, is there?”

His fingers, adorned with less band-aids than there were before, squeeze Edwin’s and for a moment, they almost feel warm, real.

And Edwin blinks back tears and thinks of Crystal saying, he loves you more than I can even imagine loving anyone, and squeezes back.

“How am I supposed to get Edwin back now, Crystal?”, Charles sobs, the words coming out drowned in tears and desolation. “What if he’s in Hell and I can’t get him back?”

He’s on the floor of the roller-skating rink, David’s collapsed form just metres away, and Charles should move in case he wakes up again, but he can’t. His limbs are not moving, his thoughts spiralling, because the only thing that counts is that Edwin might be trapped in some kind of torture chamber in the one place Charles cannot reach.

Two familiar hands pull him up and into a hug that Charles cannot reciprocate, shaking too violently with the intensity of his sobs.

“Jesus Christ, Charles”, Crystal mutters into his shoulder, and she sounds shaken, sounds almost in tears. “Have you ever stopped for a second and thought what would happen if Edwin came back and you were in Hell?”

“Now that we’re all back, do you guys want to get back into detecting?”, Crystal asks them, and Charles flinches almost imperceptibly, before forcing a smile onto his pretty lips.

This time, at least, looking at it is a little less painful.

“Yeah, of course”, Charles says, “but maybe not right away. Unless Edwin…”

“No, I think a bit of a break would do us some good”, Edwin tells him before Charles can even finish the sentence. “Maybe once Charles’ hands have healed. We have no reason to rush it, do we?”

And watches as a little bit of light returns to Charles’ eyes.

It’s later, although Charles cannot tell exactly how much.

Crystal had to half-carry him out of the roller-skating rink, where they had both collapsed on the ground, unable or unwilling to move.

With time, Charles’ sobs had dried up, even though it feels like he has an ocean of them still stored inside his chest, lapping at his unbeating heart like waves. But Crystal had been right, he doesn’t know if Edwin is in Hell, just fears it more than anything else in this world.

“Charles?”, Crystal asks into the night air, sounding pensive, drained.

“Yeah?”

“I know you and Edwin are best friends, but that can’t be all that there is to it. Not with how you’ve been in the past weeks. What’s going on?”

It’s not the question he expected, it’s not even one he has ever asked himself before, but there is exhaustion so deep in his bones, paired with despair he didn’t know he could even feel, and Charles knows that Crystal deserves an answer.

So, he looks inside, pictures Edwin, his little smug smile when he wins at Clue and the elegance of his gestures and the way his voice softens when he knows Charles needs reassurance.

He thinks of Edwin, bathed in the light of the morning sun, and illuminated by the stars, thinks of Edwin’s wit and his brilliance and how easily he gets annoyed at period dramas on TV when their costumes aren’t historically accurate. Thinks of Edwin reading him to sleep when he was dying and reading him poetry afterwards when he found out that Charles had never truly liked a poem, and how Edwin’s voice had almost made him cry when he had recited Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale.

Thinks about how when he’s sad, it’s Edwin he wants to talk to, and when he’s happy, it’s the same thing, the same intensity.

Thinks about how no one has ever known him like this, inside and out, with all his flaws and imperfections and silly little quirks, and how Edwin does and still wants to keep him; how Charles knows just as much about him and feels the same.

Thinks about how it’s impossible to imagine a world without him in it, and how Charles never even wants to try doing so.

Thinks of Edwin and how he is the best, the brightest, the most important part of his existence.

“I love him”, he finally answers, and he’s choking on the words because they are true and yet he hasn’t known until a second ago. “Crystal, I love him. I love him so much and I never even got to tell him.”

And he’s crying again, just as hard as before, and Crystal reaches out and holds him until it’s morning again.

“Crystal and I found the vending machine”, Niko tells them the next day when the girls arrive around noon. She’s skipping, obviously excited as she sits down between them, completely ignoring that it means they have to rearrange their intertwined hands. “The one that was haunted. It was so cool, I got an orange soda out of it.”

She’s unpacking her band-aids, although nowadays, Charles doesn’t need many of them anymore, setting them out as a surgeon would their instruments, and no matter how charming Edwin finds her, the reminder that the girls know of the vending machine still makes something in Edwin’s chest clench uncomfortably.

“That’s great”, Charles says and maybe there is a little bit more light in his eyes than there was yesterday. He plucks a band-aid from Niko’s lap and hands it to her. “This one today, please.”

And it really isn’t great at all, but Edwin doesn’t know how to formulate the fact into a sentence that doesn’t sound like complete lunacy.

“And this one”, he says instead, and grabs a random band-aid too, just so he won’t make a fool of himself.

It’s the first time he has participated in the little ritual by his own volition and Niko smiles at him, almost a reward, before taking a look at the plaster he picked.

“That’s nice”, she tells him, and puts it down next to Charles’ choice for later use. “And really fitting. They’re in love in the anime.”

Charles’ hand twitches, but he doesn’t say anything else until Niko is finished.

“There is one more thing”, Crystal tells him as they are walking back to the butcher shop, after she has explained the power of her ancestors she has just discovered to him, or at least tried to. “When I was in David’s mind, I could see… something in the warehouse. Somewhere he thought about escaping to. I think it’s something like a little pocket dimension, if that makes sense. Maybe Edwin is in there.”

That night, Charles gives him another question, and Edwin knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself.

“When did you tell Crystal and Niko about the Case of the Haunted Vending Machine of 2002?”

Charles looks surprised, and Edwin cannot blame him; it is such an inconsequential thing to ask when is so much else Edwin doesn’t know yet, but then his eyes soften a little, and there is a spark in his eyes that Edwin has missed dearly.

“I’m not entirely sure”, he says, and it makes Edwin feel a little better to know that: at least to Charles, it wasn’t an occasion that mattered. “But they asked about you sometime, especially Niko, after she could see me. About why I wanted to find you so badly, about how our life was like before we came to Port Townsend. And I thought the easiest thing was to just tell them about cases. And you were brilliant in the vending machine one.”

He smiles and for the first time since he got back, Edwin doesn’t have to suppress a flinch; it almost looks like the smile he is used to.

“So were you”, Edwin replies without thinking, and means it, too. His fingers tighten a little around Charles’ and he could swear he can feel skin against skin, flesh against flesh.

“We were pretty brilliant together.”

“We were”, Edwin replies and wants to pull Charles closer, wants to never let him go again, “And we still are.”

This time, Crystal doesn’t even try to stop him.

Charles walks into the warehouse, cricket bat in hand, vowing then and there that he won’t leave until he has found this pocket dimension, no matter what or where it is.

He starts with whatever is left of the furniture, smashing it to pieces and ripping those apart until they’re nothing more than splinters. The palettes strewn about are next, nails flying as Charles pulls the boards apart and leaves them scattered on the ground.

Then, the walls, tearing down the panelling, until the metal is bare and covered in dents and scratches and holes where his bat bust through the rust. He rips out the light fixtures and grinds them to dust under his loafers, shreds the nets hanging between the beams and leaves their tattered remains wherever he happens to be standing.

Finally, the floor itself, because if he has to dig down to Hell with his nails and teeth, he will.

The concrete cracks under the barrage of hits he rains down onto it, magic putting more force into the blows than his spectral muscles could, until the ground looks like a meteor hit.

It turns out to be too much for his bat, which splinters just like the palettes, the pillars, the concrete did, so Charles throws it away and uses his hands instead, shovelling away gravel and debris and chipped wood, digging deep into the ground until it, and Edwin, are the only things he can still think about.

Somewhere in between, his hands start bleeding, his nails cracking and ripping down to the flesh, but Charles pays them no mind, even as pain radiates up his arms with every punch, every blow, every cut.

It feels like the scratch of a cat’s claw, just a hundredfold, and it hurts, but it doesn’t matter.

Nothing does.

“Why is this so important to you? All the questions, I mean. I know Crystal told you the gist of what happened during that time”, Charles asks after he has answered another one of Edwin’s queries. He looks relaxed, his head pillowed on Edwin’s lap, and when he looks up at him, Edwin knows he could count the lashes around his deep, dark eyes.

They’re less dull nowadays, but still don’t hold that one spark that Edwin misses the most of all.

“It’s silly”, he confesses, not because he wants to, but because Charles has shared so much with him that he deserves to have at least one question of his own answered truthfully. “It’s just that for decades, all of your memories were mine as well. And those six weeks… I wish I could change them, I wish you didn’t have to endure them, I wish I could take all of it away, so please, don’t think that this matters more to me than that.”

He takes a deep breath, something that he had forgotten about in Hell, something that Charles had showed him once more after they had met, something that now will always be Charles to him.

“Suddenly, there are six weeks in the middle of your existence, and I wasn’t part of a second of them. And I hate that, much more than I should.”

For a few, long moments, there is no answer, just Charles’ eyes on him, just his fingers brushing across Edwin’s knuckles.

“Edwin, you were there for every second of it”, Charles finally answers, and his eyes are still not as bright as they used to be, but they’re bright anyway. “You were at the heart of everything. I missed you in every single moment.”

His hands are bruised and bloody, some of his nails missing, the others torn down until they are little more than gaping wounds, as Charles tears another piece of concrete from the floor.

He has looked everywhere and Edwin isn’t here and it is a constant refrain in his head; he’s not here he’s not here he’s not here.

Occasionally, there’s tears mixing with the blood, but Charles doesn’t pay them any mind either.

On the third day, Crystal finds him, covered in dust and grime and blood and splinter of what might be wood or bone or whatever is left of his ruined heart.

She breathes out his name and it’s a sob; when he looks up at her, it takes a second until he recognises her.

“You can’t continue like this”, she says, and there are tears in his eyes, on her cheeks, dripping down her chin. “Edwin wouldn’t want you to torture yourself like this and I can’t watch it any longer. It’s been almost a month, Charles, you won’t find him like this.”

It takes a moment or two until he finds the words, remembers how to speak, and when he does, he knows he’s crying, too.

“But what else is there left I can do?”, he asks, and Crystal chokes on her tears, before she reaches out and pulls him into a hug.

“I don’t know, Charles. I wish I did.”

“Your hands are almost fine again”, Edwin remarks and lifts the one he is holding up to inspect it. There are just two band-aids left, one around his ring finger, one on the back of Charles’ hand, green and yellow respectively.

“I know”, Charles answers, lifting the other one, a single frog-themed plaster around his thumb. “It’s a miracle, innit?”

And Edwin looks at him, his almost-perfect smile, the slope of his nose and the dark brown of his eyes; he loves you more than I can even imagine loving anyone, Crystal says in his mind.

“Yes”, he replies, “it really is.”

“Come with me”, Crystal pleads, trying to pull him up from where he is sitting on the ground, between broken pieces of concrete and wood.

“I can’t”, Charles says, and knows it is true. His limbs won’t move, his body refusing Crystal’s attempt to lift him up; he won’t leave without Edwin at his side.

“You have to”, Crystal replies, and Charles wishes he could reach up and brush the tears from her cheeks. “You can’t stay here. Not like this.”

“You don’t understand, Crystal”, he says, and maybe he is crying, maybe he has forgotten how to do even that. “I can’t leave. If he isn’t here, then nothing matters. I cannot pass on, because there’s no Heaven if Edwin’s not in it. And I could stop existing, maybe, but if I do and he comes back, then he’ll be alone. So, if I can’t find him, if I can’t bring him back, then I’ll just… stay. And I’ll wait. Forever if I have to.”

Even though Charles, who used to flit between places like breathing, seems most content inside the agency these days, Edwin drags him up to the roof, because the weather is lovely and Edwin wants to see the sun on Charles’ skin, reflected in his eyes.

He seems different today, distracted, but he gives Edwin a small, almost-right smile when they sit down on the ledge, looking down over the city.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to ask a question today”, Charles says after a few seconds, but he sounds far away, almost distracted. “I know you like them. It’s just. There is one thing that I don’t think you how to ask about and that you should know. So I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”

Something about his words makes Edwin’s metaphorical heart beat faster, makes him look at Charles and notice everything at once: the way he clenches his jaw, the slight furrow of his brows, how his tongue darts out to wet lips that don’t get dry any longer.

He looks nervous, and Edwin hates it, because there is nothing Charles could say that would make Edwin care for him any less.

“You can tell me anything, Charles.”

“I know”, Charles replies and gives Edwin the smallest of smiles. “That’s what makes this so hard.”

For a long time, there is nothing, then Charles shakes his head slightly, a tick Edwin knows so intimately it almost pains him.

“You see”, he starts, “when you were gone, I found something out about myself. About you, too. I’m not sure if I would have otherwise, at least not now. And I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t, and now that you’re back it’s suddenly so difficult, because you’re here and I know it won’t change anything, not between us, but it will change something for me, anyway.”

He lifts their joined hands, the single band-aid stark against his skin, and smiles; for a moment, Edwin forgets that he doesn’t understand what Charles is talking about, because there is something so fond, so sweet, so devastating about the look in his eyes.

“I love you”, he says, and Edwin’s metaphorical heart stops, speeds up, swells until it is straining against his ribs, “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m in love with you, Edwin. And I thought I might never be able to tell you, so I’m doing it now.”

And he looks over at Edwin and for the first time since he had launched himself into his side in that godforsaken warehouse, Charles smiles at him and it’s the smile Edwin missed the entire time, every bit of sunlight in the universe bundled into his eyes, into the curve of his lips.

“You don’t have to feel the same. I don’t expect you to”, Charles says, and his voice is trembling, but he sounds happy nonetheless, sounds content. “I just needed you to know that you’re loved in every way there is.”

A beat, a second, another one, and Edwin looks at Charles and it’s like he is seeing him for the very first time, at the same time like he has never seen anything else in his entire existence.

He loves you more than I can even imagine loving anyone, Crystal’s words echo in his mind, and she was right all along, and Edwin…

“I love you, too”, he says without thinking about it, because he doesn’t have to, he has known this for years, decades, maybe forever.

“I know”, Charles replies and he’s still smiling; he’s so beautiful Edwin wants to break down and thank the fates that he was sacrificed, that he was dragged to Hell and escaped it, that he is allowed to be here, holding hands with the best, the most important, the most beautiful boy in the world.

“No, Charles. I’m in love with you.”

And another beat, another second, and Charles’ eyes go wide, the sun behind them goes supernova, and Edwin can’t believe he ever looked at him and didn’t know he wanted to kiss those lips.

“Oh”, Charles breathes out and he sounds overwhelmed, sounds almost bashful. “That’s… that’s brills, innit?”

“Yes. It is.”

There is a pause, because something shifts between them; it doesn’t change, because it was always there, even without them knowing, so instead, it blossoms and blooms and grows into something so delicate, so resilient, so beautiful that Edwin finds himself smiling, almost laughing, almost crying.

“Can you just kiss me, please?”, he asks, love and happiness and devotion woven into every syllable.

And Charles nods, eyes brighter than Edwin has ever seen them before, and there is a second of hesitation, but then he leans in and kisses Edwin, and this time, there’s no mistaking it; there’s lips pressed against his, warm and soft and sweet, and Edwin can feel them just as if he was alive.

“I love you”, he whispers against Charles lips, and Charles laughs, before pressing closer still, kissing him again and again until Edwin’s head is swimming with it, his lips wet and swollen and his cheeks wet with the happiest tears he has ever cried.

“I love you”, Charles whispers back, and he’s smiling.

And he kisses him again.

[bless-my-demons]

Redamancy: Chapter Twelve

Series Summary: What happens when your soulmate is a vampire that struggles to maintain a diet of trying not to kill you? Common sense says run for the hills, nothing is worth your life - but my heart is whispering why not, what’s there to lose?

Warnings: None

Notes: I’m thinking one more chapter and then we dive into New Moon? Lordy, prepare yourselves for the angst in the stuff I’ve prepped lol

Word Count: 1400

Series Masterlist

• March 19th, 2005 • Hospital - Phoenix, AZ •

Jasper

Pulling into a parking spot in the Hospital’s adjoined parking garage, I let out the breath I’d been holding since dropping Y/n’s mom off at the airport and let my head fall back on the headrest. In the last week I’ve never been more scared, worried, keyed up than I have ever been in my immortal life.

Y/n and Isabella managed to slip past Alice and I at the hotel on some half-assed rescue mission… I promised Edward I’d protect Bella and I didn’t, now she has a broken leg and was almost on her way to turning into one of us. With as much experience as I have in war, keeping an eye on two teenage girls is a challenge? I nearly crush the keys to Carlisle’s car in my hand, the plastic groaning in protest.

I could’ve lost her.

The realization hurts and angers me all at the same time. Not only do I need to watch myself around humans, but I also have a singer, someone I’m falling hopelessly in love with and I feel so-so out of control. I can’t protect her at every twist and turn and it’s eating me alive. She’s human and frail, not meant for my world and yet she’s been sucked into it because of me.

I exit the car and find my way back to Y/n’s room before visitation hours end. My thoughts are a mess until I step in her room and her scent washes over me, scorching - but soothing. Soothing because she’s still here, she’s breathing and her monitor is still beeping.

I take up my post in the chair in the corner even though I know she’d prefer me at her side. From here I can still watch her while I get a grip on my raging emotions and the thirst licking flames down my throat.

She has less wires and tubes today, preparing for discharge in a day or two. After finally waking this morning, she managed to convince her mom she was fine enough to leave her here under Carlisle and I’s watchful eye with the promise to constantly keep her updated. I could feel her mother’s torn emotions - sadness with a twinge of anguish because she had to get back to work, but strangely enough - relief when she assessed me before making her decision to go home. Nevertheless, I reassured her that I would drive her daughter back carefully while using my ability to ease the anxiety that bubbled up.

Y/n’s breathing sped up slightly signaling that she was waking from her nap, so I sat up straight in my chair.

“Jaz?” Her quiet voice croaked out.

“Still here, darlin’. I just dropped your mom off at the airport.” Standing, I quietly roll her bedside table closer that has her cup of water.

“Jasper?” She asks again after a sip.

“Yes, sweetheart?” I respond, pulling my chair closer to the bed while keeping my eyes down.

“Look at me, please?” The soft plea almost tears my heart in two and my eyes snap to her bruised face. “Talk to me?”

“We can talk once you’re discharged-“

“No, this clearly needs to happen now.” So demanding, even lying in a hospital bed.

“You could’ve died-“

“But I didn’t-“

“Don’t even start with that.” My tone comes out a little harsher than I intended and I squeeze my eyes shut as I sit, pushing my hands through my hair as my elbows rest on my knees. “If Alice wasn’t watching, if I didn’t have a clue as to where you and Bella went…” My eyes scan the room for something to focus on, but I settle on her face, “If I was a fraction too slow getting to you, you could be dead - both of you.”

“I knew you’d come for me, Jasper.”

“You don’t get to make decisions like that when I’m supposed to be protecting you, Y/n. You don’t get it.” I stress, grabbing the hand not hooked up to an IV and cradling it in mine. “We’re in a hospital right now and you have broken bones. You were in a coma.” I want to yell my frustration suddenly.

“What don’t I get?” She asks.

“What?”

“You said I don’t get it, what don’t I get?”

“You… you’re everything to me.” I whisper as I run a finger gently down her bruised cheek, the swelling around her eye having gone down slightly.

Reader

I’m not entirely sure I heard him correctly. You’re everything to me. He said it like it was obvious, inevitable, easy.

“You-you can’t mean that.” I glance to my lap and pick at the coarse hospital blanket as my nerves get the better of me.

“Darlin’, I wouldn’t be here worried out of my mind if I didn’t.” His icy fingers tilt my chin up to meet his dark eyes. “You… you test me in every conceivable way and I can’t get enough.”

My throat closes up and I fumble for a response, “Jasper-”

“Don’t do that to me again, don’t run away from me like you can’t ask me for anything. Your safety is paramount and I don’t ever want to feel that helpless again.” His hand cradles the back of my head like it’s the finest piece of glass and my heart is ready to burst.

Just when I feel on the verge of a heart attack from his words, my nurse barges through my door.

“Is everything-“ but she stops short and smiles knowingly at Jasper perched on the edge of my bed, “Try to keep her heart rate down? You had me worried it was something much worse.”

I finally notice the quick beeping of my heart rate monitor and I swear, I could pass away right here from embarrassment. And if that weren’t enough, my nurse winks at Jasper as he replies “Yes ma’am.” with a sneaky grin to her on her way out.

I’m tempted to smack his arm for teasing me, but decide against it since it’s still tender from being sprained.

“You’re worse than my mom.” I grumble, trying to fold my arms while still attached to wires and an IV line.

“Oh sweetheart, don’t go comparing me to your mother.” Smiling to himself, he settles back into his chair as we wait for my evening round of medication.

He’ll be the death of me, my new mantra.

• March 20th, 2005 • Hospital - Phoenix, AZ •

Reader

Discharge papers are signed, I’m dressed in new clothes Alice left for me, and I’m currently being wheeled to the exit by a nurse who adamantly refused to just let me walk out of here on my own. Thankfully Jasper isn’t here to witness this and is instead pulling the car around to the door with an overhang, conveniently providing him cover from the rising desert sun.

The heat is a dry blast to the face once the automatic doors slide open as I’m wheeled to the curb and I’m thankful Alice picked a light sundress. The thoughtfulness in her supernatural ability is just another reason to love her.

My nurse helps me stand as Jasper parks in front of us and jogs to my side. I catch him doing a double take as I turn to thank my nurse and grab the last of my things from her. I feel his eyes roam over me as I climb in the car and sure enough, once I sit and turn to him, I can tell he has thoughts he’s hesitating with.

Gently shutting my door, he returns to the driver’s seat and steers the car through the crowded parking lot.

“You look nice, darlin’.” He says, glancing at me momentarily.

“For someone this banged up?” I’m still sporting a bruise under my eye and a wrap on my injured wrist. My ribs have been protesting all the movement I’ve done since getting out of bed this morning.

“Even banged up you’re still gorgeous.” His compliment is quiet, but the words are echoing in my head and ratcheting my heart rate up yet again.

And I swear I hear him mutter through his teeth as I watch his fingers tighten on the steering wheel, “This is going to be a long car ride.”

Next

[zukosdualdao]

the moon will sing a song for me (i loved you like the sun)

zutara month, day seven: divine intervention, @zutaramonth.

summary: when zuko takes the lightning aimed for katara, it takes a little more than her usual healing to get him back from the brink. feat. yue's words of encouragement and empowering influence on katara, medically necessary bloodbending, and a zuko who is too out of it to understand much of what is going on, but that's okay. katara has him.

content warnings: general references to violence and wounds, nothing more explicit than the show.

notes: title is from "the moon will sing" by the crane wives. yes i do too many lyric titles. no i will not stop <3. idk when sozin's comet officially ended but for fic purposes we are imagining the timing makes sense for the moon to be out after the agni kai. two pieces of dialogue were taken from the show.

Zuko groans as he's being turned over. His bones feel like liquid, his skin set alight, his heart like a crater in his chest.

Katara, he thinks, he tries to say, he doesn't know.

Katara looks at him with a worried expression, her lips turned in a frown, her eyes wide with fear and sadness as she presses a watery hand to his crumpled, prone form.

She is worried but alive. She is alive, and if she is here, then she must have defeated Azula.

Katara is alive. That is what counts. This was his destiny, then. To save her.

It wasn't a bad note to end on.

Zuko closes his eyes. There's a hammering thud in his chest. He is so tired. Normally, he'd associate the feel of it with exertion, or else desperation, and he would feel frantic. But he is so tired. He has been so tired.

"No," he thinks he hears Katara say. It sounds like she's underwater, or perhaps he is. "No, Zuko, don't you dare."

He struggles to open his eyes again because he doesn't want her to sound so angry with him and doesn't want her to be sad. It only feels like a moment has passed, or maybe it has been hours.

She is looking up. Pale, yellow light shadows her.

Katara is speaking with the moon.

The moon is also a girl.

Someone told him a story like that once.

A spirit, he thinks a little redundantly, with white tresses of hair and a glowy form and a gentle smile. The moon spirit?

Zuko jerks, a spasm of his body as he lights up again with the pain, and Katara looks back to him, alarmed.

"—but you know another way," the moon-girl insists softly to Katara, whom Zuko looks at as her mouth sets in a thin, determined line. Unless he's imagining it all, which is possible. "And I am here with you now."

After a moment's hesitation, Katara nods and sets her left, water-encased hand against his chest again and raises her other in a motion he faintly recognizes.

"This is going to hurt," she says warningly, sadly. "But it will help. I think. It has to." She shakes her head, torn.

Zuko doesn't know what's going on, but if Katara says it will help, that's all that really matters.

"I trust you," he slurs. Is that him? Does he sound like that?

Katara blinks. Zuko watches tears slip from her cheeks.

And then, it starts. She did not lie about it hurting. Despite himself, Zuko feels his body rising from the ground in pain and panic, and Katara has to keep him pressed down. His blood is boiling, his chest swelling. This must be what dying feels like. But then, he's pretty sure he was dying before. He supposes it's a process.

"—sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry—" Zuko makes out the words, faint in his ears, though Katara sobs them out.

Eventually, though, the beat of his heart evens. His blood begins to simmer down. The pain melts.

He watches as Katara pulls back, resting on her knees. The moon-girl smiles down on them before fading back into being just the moon, high in their war-torn sky again.

Nothing that just happened makes any sense, Zuko decides dazedly. But it was Katara who saved him, and that made all the sense in the world.

"Thank you, Katara," he rasps, looking up at her through heavy eyes. Looking at her made everything in the world seem alright again.

She looks down at him with a soft expression and a watery smile.

"I think I'm the one who should be thanking you."

[accio-victuuri]

excerpts from this article/interview with WoF director related to Wang Yibo ( “"War of Faith" director Yao Xiaofeng: I took the energy from Wang Yibo and transferred it to Wei Ruolai”) :

From 2018 to 2024, "War of Faith" took a full 6 years from preparation to release. During the period, it went through shelving, postponement, and repeated adjustments after the filming started. It was not until the joining of Wang Yibo, Li Qin, and Wang Yang that this project, a project years in the making came to life.

The turning point of things happened in November 2022. At that time, a friend recommended Wang Yibo to Yao Xiaofeng, and the two teams made an appointment to meet together.

Previously, Yao Xiaofeng only knew that Wang Yibo was a very popular artist. He had also doubted whether such a young actor without professional training could sustain his performance? Will you be unable to calm down? Can there be a common language?

But when I saw Wang Yibo for the first time, all these worries were shattered.

He found that although the young man opposite had gained huge popularity, he did not feel any elation. He just sat quietly in the corner of the sofa in the office, rarely speaking actively and spending most of his time listening. When asked about his preferences, Wang Yibo simply said: "I like speed." In his eyes and words, in addition to being humble and sincere, there is also an urge to become better.

So Yao Xiaofeng asked Wang Yibo: "I have a young man here who is performing a Republican drama in Shanghai. Are you interested?" Wang Yibo also expressed interest on the spot.

This originally planned simple meeting lasted from noon to dark. After the meeting, Yao Xiaofeng said firmly to producer Zhang Shuwei: "This is him. This is the actor I want."

The original version of the small house that Wei Ruolai rented was relatively spacious and cozy, but Yao Xiaofeng insisted on making the space even more cramped. Only in this way can we present the living beings at the bottom of the class who had difficulty transcending classes at that time, and form a sharp contrast with the ten-mile foreign market of Shanghai.

Wang Yibo and Wei Ruolai

In Yao Xiaofeng's view, Wei Ruolai is a clean, young and passionate young man with great "tenacity". Wang Yibo's innate temperament made Yao Xiaofeng see the perfect fit between him and Wei Ruolai, and made Yao Xiaofeng interested in the role of Wei Ruolai. The inspiration for the second creation.

He had previously learned that Wang Yibo relied on his talent and energy to make his way from Henan to the world step by step. In order to allow the audience to be more involved, he wrote Wang Yibo's enthusiasm on Wei Ruolai, strengthening the contrast between the two worlds of Qibao Street and Shili Foreign Market, as well as the workplace environment of the Central Bank.

In the story of "War of Faith", there is not only the feelings of family and country, but also the story of how an ordinary young man hesitates and chooses between two forces and finally finds his self-worth after working hard.

"I like children who have goals, struggles, ideals, and pursuits. These are the qualities that young people should possess. So I admire Wang Yibo very much. He has been working hard to transform. I hope that young people can also see from Wei Ruolai — When you see your own shadow, you can gain some enlightenment." Yao Xiaofeng said.

Yao Xiaofeng once said that the drama "War of Faith" incorporates modern people's way of thinking, making the characters in the drama more three-dimensional and giving the audience a greater sense of involvement. Therefore, during filming, Yao Xiaofeng never "teaches" actors how to act. Instead, he talks to Wang Yibo about the background and context of each scene. What kind of environment is Wei Ruolai in? This inspires Wang Yibo's truest feelings and makes the character closer to the actor himself.

"For example, when he saw himself wearing a pair of torn socks, how can children today have such an experience? But I let the props cut the socks, and after he put them on himself, he immediately caught the most realistic reaction."

After giving his true reaction, Yao Xiaofeng will discuss with Wang Yibo again. What different emotional levels does Wei Ruolai have at this time? This is also his rigid requirement for all young actors, that is, the feelings and reactions given in each scene must be different.

"When we work with actors, we don't have an unchanging performance template, because I think that is a guilty conscience and a lack of confidence. I don't know when to express myself, so I will act in a comfort zone way. Secondly, All accomplished actors must conquer the audience with their charm. Only when the audience believes in the character and likes the character can they be infected by his charm. In this play, as the chief producer Dai Ying said, Wang Yibo — is young but not raw, I hope Wang Yibo can express it truly and let everyone see a simple, simple and immature boy." Yao Xiaofeng said.

During the filming, Wang Yibo's role was very important. Not only did he have a lot of professional lines, but he also had to shoot from the first scene to the last scene every day. But Yao Xiaofeng discovered that Wang Yibo had never read a script on set, said he missed lines, and could reproduce his true feelings in different situations with sufficient preparation.

The scene where Wei Ruolai gets up to prepare for the interview in a rental house on Qibao Street was filmed less than a week after filming started. After the filming, Yao Xiaofeng cut out some clips. After the two of them watched it together, they both felt very satisfied and built up their confidence. Less than a month into filming, Wang Yibo had his first major scene. Yao Xiaofeng still remembers that after filming this scene, all the staff present applauded Wang Yibo.

Yao Xiaofeng always believes that as long as the candidate is right, more than half of the work will be completed.

"Confidence is built on each other. I gave him confidence and he gave me confidence, so it did not affect the shooting. In Yibo, I saw his most sincere pursuit of performance, just like he became a stage actor from a child — the king of movies, so I also believe that he can become a very good actor in terms of acting. If there is a suitable subject in the future, I hope to cooperate with Wang Yibo, Wang Yang and Li Qin again."

Detail control and self-expression

In addition to "realistic control", Yao Xiaofeng is also an extremely detail-oriented person.

In the Qibao Street interview scene, there were only a few lines in the script that read: "Wei Ruolai hurriedly put on clothes to take the exam in the morning." But Yao Xiaofeng was stunned and shot more than 20 scenes, tearing up the calendar, brushing teeth, and talking to Aunt Zhou The dialogues are all added temporarily.

The coat that Aunt Zhou gave to Wei Ruolai, Yao Xiaofeng insisted on replacing it with one that obviously didn't fit. This is because Aunt Zhou runs a laundry and handles clothes for various people, so she found a coat for Wei Ruolai to wear to give him some face. It is this ill-fitting coat that has been accompanying Wei Ruolai to explore the world.

Wei Ruolai's leather shoes must be worn until they are unbearably worn; the brush under the bed must not be used all year round; the tooth powder must be squeezed into a box; after Wei Ruolai washed up, Yao Xiaofeng even messed up Wang Yibo's hair, and the cotton-padded jacket also Wear it wrapped up. It is these details that can highlight the sadness of a lower-class people.

In the end, this scene, which lasted less than two minutes, took three full days to shoot. According to the original announcement, the shooting time for the opening of Qibao Street was one week, but it actually took two weeks. "Everyone was crushed, but everyone was very excited after watching the film. The actors were also excited. Wang Yibo performed very well. I think it was worth it." Yao Xiaofeng said.

[llondonfog]

let's make no mistake about it, i genuinely find lilia one of the most fascinating characters in twst— a 700 yr old fae who spent centuries as the most revered general of briar valley, confidant to the royal family, did an about-turn to fatherhood immediately upon finding an abandoned baby and now romps around a school campus with said son and the heir apparent to the draconia family pretending to be 680 years younger than he actually is???? fucking insane.

we know absolutely nothing about his own personal life; no immediate family to speak of (besides his adopted son), and we can safely assume they're no longer among the living. we have no idea what his own childhood was like, but i think we can extrapolate by the way that he initially raised silver that it wasn't conventional. were tensions always so high between fae and humans, did lilia simply grow up in a time where war was a common occurrence, that to serve in the briar valley army was the obvious path to take? we can only gather bits and pieces about his previous lifestyle from his card lines, and it would seem that his life prior to silver was a harsh one, with little to no time for personal amusement or exploration of interests.

and one doesn't just become a renown general fitting for the history books by simply leading an army for so many years— it's clear that he was so very good at it. did he too share the fae consensus that humans were not to be trusted, and if so, at what point did that begin to change? was it truly raising silver that altered his perspective? and more to that point, can we assume that he was truly looking for the boy as his new card title suggests? and if so, why? was it for silver's unique magic, did he really come from royalty, was he considered a threat to the draconias? does any of this have to do with the disappearance of malleus' parents so many centuries prior??

i'm so torn between the idea of lilia being instructed to find and raise silver for some greater purpose and over time, realizing how much he's grown to care and love the child, versus the idea of somehow this little baby being enough to give the fierce general pause, to take him in as his own. i also wonder if lilia even proclaimed himself as silver's father to begin with, or if that's simply a title silver gave him on his own and only then did the ramifications of what he meant to the boy truly sink in. it must have been such a shock, the realization that a human could look up at him with such pure love and think of him as a father— for what does he know of rearing a child, and a human one at that? lilia himself even admits this at countless points, and the more we learn of silver's childhood, the more clear it becomes that while the mutual affection is truly there, the understanding of how to properly care for another being of any kind is clearly lacking.

which is understandable when we think of lilia's past experiences— he was simply a guardian, a 'bodyguard' to an extent to malleus, and someone who intervened to provide the kind of life lessons and guidance that an absent father figure could no longer give. but he did not raise the prince, nor was he responsible for caring for him daily. if what we know so far is to be believed, there was little to no time of lilia's role as a general to his departure and caring for silver. for once in his life, he gets to taste the unfettered freedom of no longer shouldering the weight of a nation's protection, and to be frank, goes a little mad with it. it makes sense why he was cavorting around the world while leaving silver at home, he simply never got to enjoy these freedoms before and perhaps selfishly took advantage of that fact while neglecting the ramifications of leaving a child to care for itself (especially one with a narcoleptic condition).

(and even now he kind of seeks that familiar comfort of warfare— we see him gaming as a kind of warlord with idia, which makes sense that he was unable to fully part with that portion of his identity if it truly made up his entire persona for nearly 600 years.)

anyways all this to say that i have no doubt that lilia truly cares for silver. but i think there's something to be said for fae emotional differences, and that he massively underestimates or doesn't know how to acknowledge that silver loves him before even himself. that the things he does to his family (re halloween, his departure party) are ignorantly cruel at best. at the same time, how could you blame him? as a general and being accustomed to loss of life, what is the use of a long, drawn out goodbye? and to have spent the majority of his life in such a mindset, it's understandable, even if reprehensible, to apply this logic to silver, malleus, and sebek. on the flip side, how utterly fascinating how lilia seems to be fooling himself with these forced and abrupt goodbyes— he admits it himself that he fears becoming weak before his family, that vulnerability so at odds with the kind of power and strength he wielded for years.

i have absolutely no idea what the next part of ch7 will bring us, but i really cannot wait to explore more of lilia in his general years, at the height of his glory. and i really do hope that we get the truth of what we all know— his happiest dream, his sweetest memory, being that of when he found silver at last. how fitting would that be, especially for silver who had wept miserably to malleus about his failures to lilia as his son. how fitting to know that lilia does not see him in that way, that his happiest moment that he would choose to relive and dream is the one where he gathers up silver in his arms, and inevitably sets in motion his course to become his father.

[effervescentdragon]

The ending of The Penumbra Podcast's The Second Citadel is the most disappointing ending to me since Avengers Endgame. I'd probably compare it to Game of Thrones, if I'd watched that.

I got some things to say. Heavy spoilers ahead.

I genuinely haven't been this disappointed in writing in a long time. I don't know what happened - from season 3 or 4 or so onward both Second Citadel and Juno Steel seemed to change, and althought I haven't really been suoer excited about the path Juno's story has taken, I was actually pretty invested in the Second Citadel. I thought the whole war with the offworlders plotline was good. Even more, in the world we live in right now, seeing the way human-monster conflict was done was very inspiring. Humans finding out their legends of great victories are just massacres of monsters commited in the names of Saints who were actually standing for the exact opposite of what they've been made into, the way propaganda works, it was very dear to me ans it was something I was convinced was important to say. So many characters and their developments were written so well that I was enjoying the fifth and final season immensely. And then, that finale.

Despicable. Hollow. So badly written. Not honest for a moment. Underwhelming. Lazy. Nonsensical.

When you have a magic world in which anything can happen, you cannot use the excuse of "I wrote myself into a corner". When you make the Universe a deus ex machina capable of making a half human-half monster child, you do not have an excuse of not resolving the story in a way that's satisfactory and that makes sense for the characters. Whet the writers have done is lazy, and cheap, and so unsatisfying that for a whole day, I have been reeling from how much disappointment I feel.

Let me go one by one character and try to put my thoughts in order and explain why this finale falls short of everything I expected and everything that could have been done.

So the Universe needs more magic to defend itself, and it's spending too much on keeping Olala alive. Alright. You have a thirteen year old kid whose first home was torn apart by a warmongering zealot, who is the only one in the world of her kind, who is the Chosen One. Sometimes, the Chosen One needs to die for the story to make sense. But to have a thirteen year old commit suicide in sacrifice to save the world, after ripping her from one home, then giving her another (Silvershore), only to raze that one to the ground too with zero payoff, after giving her a parental father figure who promised her a life where she would be taken care of in the future (Sir Lamorak) and then killing him in front of her, which directly follows her parental (mother-ish but not rly, more of a mentor) figure of Caroline also dying in front of her, which drives Olala into despair of knowing both her caretakers are gone and then having the Saints Relics destroyed not be enough... the emotional toll of that has no payoff. The cheap card of "maybe someday Olala will come back" is unsatisfying and callous in a most horrifying way.

And since I already mentioned Lam and Caroline, let's delve into that. Lam's death was very neatly set up and it's the only one that makes sense, somewhat. He was a Knight of the Citadel who did horrible things, fell in love woth a mermaid and changed his ways. The conditions of his duel with the Tengu (not to pick up a weapon again lest the Tengu comes back and devours him) are a piece of very good writing, because how could a Knight with a child not pick up a weapon in the middle of the war to defend that child? That, I understand. (A deus ex machina of Universe asking him of he wanted to come back would not go amiss, and as his wife once said, she is your child, and you have responsibilities. But maybe that's just my wishful thinking.)

Caroline need not have died. Nor did Quanyii. Quanyii absorbed the Universe's magic, yes, but a sacrifice for her would be to live without magic anymore. One whole moment in the story was Quanyii lamenting how bad she is at healing magic. She could have given all the magic to heal Caroline, and they both could have lived, fundamentally changed by the experience. No, instead, they died. Pointlessly, pathetically, with some cheap reassurances that were supposed to sound deep and meaningful. All of Olala's caretakers taken away right before she goes to the heart of the Universe to kill herself.

The rest.. I don't even know where to start. Ale spouting some reassurances to a grieving Angelo felt completely dishonest after he spent years chasing his own revenge, whose unsstisfying conclusion he is now suddenly alright with. All the floscules about building a new future fall flat in the knowledge of what the sudden end of the war means. Queen Mira being absolved of all her incompetence and not being Queen but urging democracy now, as if she didn't hold as much responsibility as the bloodthirsty knights she enabled, ignoring all advice to the contrary. What a cop-out. Much like with Sir Mark, who actively participated in genocide and who has been miraculously absolved by his brother (without even properly apologizing, because Talfrin does it for him) and they ride off into sunset together. Despicable.

And Rilla... goddamn it. The worst piece of writing I've seen in a long time. A magical ot3 child for a woman who is, above all, a scientist. That line, "I don't even have time to go through my notes of the knowledge I lost because there is so much new magic", and then they use that magic to make a child, although Rilla has never indicated wanting one. What to do with a female character when you don't know how to handle her? Why, give her a child, of course! So disappointing, so cheap, so out of character.

The Universe in this story is a deus ex machina in itself. It could have brought Olala, this child everyone claims to care so much about, back. This story could have gone a million other ways. The characters could have stayed true to themselves and the message of the story could have been poignant and memorable. There are ways of writing a story rife with logical, necessary sacrifice while still giving the audience adequate payoff and giving them hope and belief in good things. While still completing the journey and staying true to your characters and your message.

This story did none of that. It relied on cliches, empty sayings and hollow moralising to justify a sacrifice of a child for some bigger cause. It betrayed all its female characters and either turned them into caricatures of themselves, or killed them. It absolved everyone of responsibility and closed its eyes from the gruesomness of its actions and pretended it cannot see, because look, the war is over and all is well! It disappointed so heavily with its hollowness that it soured everything, the whole story for me, and I won't ever relisten to it.

The most important thing to ask yourself when you're writing is "what story do I want to tell". And given that this was the story the writers chose to tell... well. That says enough, I think.

I shudder to think what Juno Steel finale is like. I don't think I want to listen to any it anymore, to be honest. And isn't that the most disappointing thing of all?

[sunevial]

Reasons Why You Should Move To The Torn Veil

It's a night market

It's a giant, sprawling, night market full of people from a million worlds who have come to trade and to live and to rest and to find themselves

There's boats with people on them and the people on the boats in the river can sell you things

GOOD

PUBLIC

TRANSIT

A dragon runs the city

Specifically, an undead dragon, who turned her body into ice and now possesses both a giant dragon-sized suit of armor and a smaller humanoid shaped construct, runs the city guard

She gives paladins sworn to the city cool dragon weapons

And she's very excitable

YOU DON'T NEED A CAR. THE STREETCARS MIGHT BE HAUNTED, BUT YOU DON'T NEED TO PAY FOR CAR INSURANCE

There's good liches

Well, morally complex and slightly scary liches, but good liches

One of them runs a library. My friends think the lich that runs the library is hot (not wrong)

Vampire blood bars

Or blood in juice boxes if you prefer that

And art deco vampire speakeasies

These posts about the wildest oneshot I've ever ran will make more sense because I ran that oneshot in the Torn Veil

(i said more sense, not complete sense, the math my friends did still breaks my brain)

STREETCARS, NARROW ROADS THAT DON'T REALLY FIT HUGE CARS, GONDOLAS, FLYING CARRIAGES DRIVEN BY LICENSED PROFESSIONALS

Corner stores and restaurants from every culture, real or otherwise, serving foods that have existed forever and do not exist anymore

Memory river that lets you travel to a million different afterlives

Fishing in the memory river for memories

Slime Carriage Driver

ACCESSIBLE

DENSE

URBAN

HOUSING

I'm queer and mixed SEAsian and this is what happens when I'm allowed to be incredibly self indulgant

The answer is Haunted Spooky Less Fucked Up Sigil, apparently

The massive park full of nature spirits born from plants left at people's gravesites

Necrodancer rave clubs with ghosts playing EDM and power metal

Specifically made constructs that can house ghosts and other spirits, giving them back a semblance of agency after being violently separated from their bodies

Or cause they want a ghost mech

Pop off

CATACOMBS HOUSING SKELETONS FOR THE SKELETON WAR

THE CITY IS FIRMLY ON THE SIDE OF THE SKELETONS

BY THE WAY

IF THAT WASN'T ABUNDANTLY CLEAR

They're used for the defense of the city and are largely controlled by said necrodancers playing the EDM and power metal

It's always dusk

And a little chilly but in a nice way

Well, sometimes it's warmer, the dragon in charge of the city guard can also control the weather

She does that so the farmers can get rain

The skeletons also pick fruit on the farms btw

There's many uses for a skeleton and sometimes those uses are animating it so the skeleton can pick delicate fruit that has to be harvested by hand

A friend of mine loved this place so much that there was a real timeline where he ran a oneshot in the setting before I was able to run a oneshot in the setting

The oneshot took place in a place called the Dead n' Breakfast

It's run by a skeleton who's also a vampire

Her name is Constance

I love her

NO RENT

WHY IS THERE NO RENT YOU MAY ASK

WELL BECAUSE THE CITY JUST MAKES BUILDINGS AND NEW FLOORS TO APARTMENT BUILDINGS APPEAR OUT OF THIN AIR

(you do need to pay a little bit of tax though)

(because while the city has figured out how to make modern buildings, it has not figured out electricity or plumbing or streetcar rails)

btw the city is alive

kinda

sorta

hard to explain

Street Food

Every Street Food Ever

Like if you want some, it's there, and it's real nice and real cheap and sometimes people will just give you food for free

Sometimes a nice ghost makes it for you

Sometimes it's a skeleton babushka

The knowledge that there's other people caught between life and death, that there is a place for the lost and the wandering, that there is a place where life and death have different meanings and that complicated relationships with life and death can be a little less so, that families can reunite long, long after they were supposed to, that there is a place that calls the lost and calls them home and calls them somewhere that is safe, it is a place you can be finally safe

Ghost Macy's

[ilynpilled]

i like overthinking this sorry ok so what’s interesting about the whole jaime sitting on the throne “just to sit down” bc it is just a chair bit is that yes, jaime has a particular disillusioned relationship with that symbol of power, and the thing is that that chair is like a gazillion meters up in the air or whatever so i do think it is a bit more complicated than just him having to sit down after #allthat, he could have very well just sat on the stairs lol. there was a more conscious decision being made on his part.

and this whole exchange is more about parallax, about an outside interpretation rather than what is canonically going on in jaime’s head. and i get that a lot of people think it is mostly “a remnant from the original outline”, but i do not think that means george wrote it with the intention for it to lock on a specific trajectory, i think it is a seed that can be gardened however he pleases, especially because of some heavy foreshadowing with him in agot already for many things that i think are pretty incompatible with that original outline. i do think there is a reframing happening in asos with that action and we can still make sense of it. but neither ned or robert were correct.

jaime’s experience leaves him with a very interesting mindset when it comes to “right” to absolute power like the throne. the image of a king figure gets torn down in every way: aerys obviously becomes a destructive person who was still born with right to that power, and him having that power has devastating consequences, but what also sticks with jaime is that contradiction in his death. how he dies in such an ugly human way. there really is nothing differentiating him from the lowborn rossart, in fact, rossart seems to have died with more dignity. the whole “equal in death/not equal in life” thing. the vulnerability of a king. i do find the “sword across the knee” bit interesting, bc it does mean denying guest right in the north. i wonder if that is just meant to play into a ned/jaime conflict and misunderstanding, or if george is insinuating with that imagery that jaime is guarding the seat in a more abstract way, and sending a message with his existence (especially considering what his role and the whole wildfire plot in the story being stopped and a king being murdered by a kg means on a less personal scale: the whole analysis of ‘what is power and who holds it?’ that permeates this series), almost like a warning, considering what goes through his head before he climbs up there. anyway, i do read it as an act of conscious ‘defiance’ of some kind though. if we go beyond what a 17 year old jaime can fully grasp at that point, he did break the social order by murdering his king as a kingsguard and that has implications in their world. that is an interesting precedent. and then jaime is so disillusioned by social contracts of this sort that he sees no difference between his act and the act of robert, ned & co, which is why he is so particularly frustrated by what he views as hypocrisy, ntm that robert tore the realm apart with his war in his mind and he rues him too. and then ofc with ned’s commentary of “he had no right to that throne”, like this is just the mindset of society, it is built on these constructs of rights and oaths etc, and they all serve a purpose in reinforcing a status quo. jaime all throughout the present text shows no concern for, or even an active rejection of, this construct of ‘right’ to that throne. like he does seem to view the whole thing like: “you can win that power with swords, power resides where people think it does, what does the rest matter?” (as per his targ romance with cersei delusion passage) so many of his thoughts and actions imply this rejection of the construct of inherent right to that power, especially through birth. he also does not view it as something with that much ‘worth’ in terms of what it means for the individual. it gets as overt as it can with “how much can a crown be worth, if a crow can dine upon a king?” etc. i do not doubt all this also bleeds into his continued rejection of his role as heir to some extent. and it all feels like the effect the aerys experience/robert’s rebellion would have on him and his relationship to power. though i do think in some way he does still crave an “aerys anti-thesis”, a “good king” he does not rue, and he can acknowledge this desire more when hope is rekindled in him. anyway, i do think him sitting on that throne is a symbolic gesture, maybe even a form of taking back control through diminishing its value, even more hard-hitting considering he does not want the throne himself, and then belittles it even more with his words afterwards.

and what is also cool to me is that there is a motif with jaime’s golden sword: ned especially is so fixated on it being tainted by blood, especially of his king, it is an image that he and others keep conjuring, it exists in the collective consciousness. 

and then what that passage reveals is that jaime’s golden sword does something very different than become tainted with blood in his nightmares. it is not killing a king, it is cutting down an endless stream of burning corpses. it also reveals that jaime is still haunted by something that never happened. i find it interesting that his conscious often goes to ned, even in the fever dream he expects him to come out, but he is wrong there too, just like how he is not the one that haunts his dreams in general. he even acknowledges it: “The moss covered it so thickly he had not noticed before, but now he saw that the wood was white. It made him think of Winterfell, and Ned Stark’s heart tree. It was not him, he thought. It was never him.” things are still much deeper than just that palpable and damning judgement he received for his finest act from that man, who in many ways embodied the ‘hypocrisy of honor’ in jaime’s mind.

[chickensarentcheap]

Sneak Peek :)

@tragiclyhip @thebejeweledwatercat @youflickedtooharddamnit @secretaryunpaid @munstysmind

@themaradwrites @ninjasawakenedmystar @asirensrage @mrsmungus @residentdormouse

@alisbackalleybbq @karimac @kmc1989

“I hadn’t even turned eighteen yet. I was desperate to escape;  I wanted to be as far away from my dad as possible and being in the army made the most sense.  But I was young and dumb; I never stopped to think that ‘seeing the world’ really meant going into war-torn places;  displacing people even more,  killing them, even.”

“That’s not ALL you did.  You helped more people than you hurt.  That’s something I’m sure of.” 

“Isn’t helping what hurts them most of the time?”

“It’s easy to see it that way, I guess.  Sometimes the road to helping others isn’t a pretty one.  And war is ugly; you and I have seen that firsthand.  But isn’t it sometimes beautiful, too? When the means lead to an incredible end?  When you see just how much you’ve helped someone? How better their life becomes simply because you showed up in it?”

“I don’t know how you do it.  See things…people…the way you do.”

“I learned a long time ago that if I didn’t find the good in everything and everyone, I wasn’t going to survive.  Not mentally, anyway.  I was there too; in the Middle East.  And we may not have had the same job and the same responsibilities, but I saw just how awful things were.  I heard the horror stories.”

“You of all people didn’t deserve to be there. Going through all that.”

“But I chose it.   The poor people that lived there didn’t.  And you know what? it’s so much easier to remember the bad stuff.  One horrible thing can wipe out a hundred good things.”

“Every so often, that psychology degree of yours comes out to play.”

“It’s less what I learned in school and more I learned OUT of it.  Not to mention PTSD is a monster.  Sometimes it makes it pretty hard to see the good in anything.”

“Is there you start psychoanalyzing me?  Do you charge by the hour or…?”

“It’s just the truth, unfortunately.   And you DO have PTSD.”

“I’m not the only one in this room…this bed…that does.”

“Maybe…”  She trails a nail along the length of his jaw, then over the scar that mars the bottom of his chin.  “...but you’re the only one officially diagnosed, so…”

  “What about you?” A hand moves through her hair;  dark, silky tresses slipping easily through his fingers, his palm coming to rest in the middle of her back.

“What about me?”

“What were you like? When you were a little girl? Not that you ever grew… physically…past twelve.”  He grins and presses a kiss to her forehead when she laughs. “What did a young Esme dream about? What did she want to be?”

[xoxo-surfergirl]

wash my sins away

VI. hold their communion there;

aemond targaryen x fem!lucerys velaryon

abstract: lucera and aemond awake on a beach in storm's end, with no recollection of how they got there. they sense the brewing war, but amnesia has ripped away the memory of visery's passing.

themes: very GOT/HOTD-esque in the darkness, minor character deaths, mentions of potential non-con (not Aemond), dark aemond

lucy's notes: a dark chapter, yay! lol

word count: 6.0k

The forest makes little sounds at night. Frogs muttering amongst themselves. Crickets whistling above them. Water thrushing against polished rocks in the creek beds. Lucera was stuck between these sounds, between the heaviness hanging between her and her existence, small and silent in the Storm Lands. Arrax at the bottom of the sea. The hollowness in her chest. The pain she couldn’t really feel right now. 

She could just hear the sounds. ribbit ribbit. chirp chirp. Thrush thrush. 

Aemond lay across from her, back against a tree, twirling the knife in his hands. He had one knee up, supporting his knife hand, and sat flat on the ground. His legs were slightly spread. Lucera wished he didn’t sit with such utter lack of concern. Why didn’t he sit so closed and small like her? Had the world not taught him that he was nothing too? 

Aemond had made a fire for the two of them, and while she was grateful for the warmth, there was nothing for her to do besides avoid his gaze. He looked at her unabashedly now, as if the reveal of memory had ripped away a cloak of modesty too. Aemond moved his gaze around every now and then to the fire, or the wood, but it always returned to her. 

The fire burned hotly under his stare, face alight from the reflection of flames, each hard line on his face deepened by shadow and heat. 

“Do you think they know? About Arrax.” Lucera stared blankly ahead, a void in her eyes.

Aemond was slow to respond. Lucera hoped it was because he was sick with guilt. 

“If his body were to be found washed up on the shores, perhaps they do.” Aemond took a sharp inhale. “Maybe he sank.” 

“They would think I was gone too.” She turned to face him directly. “I know my mother. I know Daemon. They would retaliate. What would happen then? What would you do?” 

Aemond did not reply.

“I need to get back to Dragonstone. I need them to know I am alive.” Lucera said, mostly to herself. 

Aemond turned to her, his voice much sharper than before. “And then what? What are you going to do?” 

Lucera's voice tensed. “I don’t know Aemond. All I do know is that I have to support my mother. I will do what I can.” 

“Come to King’s Landing. You will be safe there.” He replied. 

“From what? You? As you torch Dragonstone?” 

It still hung thickly between them. 

“I follow my brother, dear niece.” Aemond sneered. “You would do well to remember the power we hold. The power I hold as we speak.” 

Aemond walked over to crouch in front of her, causing Lucera to flinch. He slid his hand through the hair on the top of her head, lightly bouncing it into the trunk of the tree as he did so. He held her hair so she was forced to look up at him. 

“You’re still at my mercy, Lucera. You are free to go to Dragonstone because I allow it. If I wanted to force you to King’s Landing, it is well within my ability to do so.” He cocked his head. “I offer you the comforts of the Red Keep. You would be safer there than at Dragonstone.” 

She knew what he wanted to say. I can not promise you anything if you are not within the red brick walls.

Lucera nodded as best she could with his hand in her hair. “I understand, uncle.” 

After that, their evening had been spent with little words. Lucera couldn’t find it in her throat to speak, and Aemond approached her only when was necessary, such as placing torn up moss where she sat so it would be more comfortable, and said drink, Lucie when he offered her water from his jug. 

Perhaps he did say another thing, though she didn’t want to dwell on it at this moment.

I would protect you if you let me, Lucie. 

It was nearly disturbing to her to hear him bow to her in such a way. She never, in a million years, believed that Aemond could ever utter such a sentence in her favor. It was so vulnerable for him, so raw. His act of love is his loyalty, something he rarely affords openly, and she knew that for him to use his power to assist her meant something to him. But maybe it was his guilt talking. He values having a dragon more than anything else in the world, and therefore he must sympathize with her having hers torn away. This thought alone meant that he was capable of empathy, but how far did his empathy go? 

As much as she wanted to be angry, her heart softened at this side of him. Lucera supposed that all she wanted out of any romantic connection in her life was comfort and excitement. He had given her that, for a time. If it could even be called a proper “romantic” connection. And parts of the feeling in her heart before the memory fog had burned away were still there. As much as she wished that the warmth wasn’t there anymore, she couldn’t help herself. 

But it didn’t matter how she felt. She did not feel safe with him, and she was too hurt to think about anything beyond the moment she was in. She didn’t want to go back to the Red Keep with him and see the strange faces of the court. She didn’t even want to go to Dragonstone. She didn’t want her mother and Daemon to know she had lost her dragon and feel even less Targaryen or Velaryon than she already felt. She wasn’t ready to face any of it. Did her parents know what happened? Most likely not, but they surely thought she was dead, or could be dead. That would be enough for a war, Lucera knew. But Aemond was also missing, therefore both the Red Keep and Dragonstone were most likely plunged in confusion. 

She hoped that Dragonstone knew that she wasn’t actually dead, at the very least. They surely would have inquired with the Baratheon’s on her whereabouts, and by now, they must have responded. They must know that her and Aemond both left at the same time.

Dragonstone, where her mother was Queen Rhaenyra now. 

And Aegon—and Storm’s End—

Traitor Baratheons. Willing to forgo a sworn oath to the King for a marriage pact with a large dragon on the side. Lucera tensed. Aemond was to be married. To Floris Baratheon. 

Fucking. Floris. She probably swooned at how great his dragon was. She probably knew nothing about dragons and had never had to fight for anything in her life.  

Aemond’s back against the tree had slumped more than it had before, and his eye was closed. It had been for some time now. The fire was sinking deeper into the dirt, leaving little warmth left. The hand that loosely held the dagger on his lap.  That fucking hand with those long fingers and—

She had to leave. Fuck that . He can’t run back to Aegon and get married.  Right now, after Arrax was killed, he had something to do with it and almost killed her in the process, after everything they’ve been through. She moreso blamed Vhagar at this point, even then she still isn’t quite sure who to attribute it to because apparently he just lost control, but the lines are muddy and painful. Not that she wanted to marry him either, which she felt the need to clarify to herself within this fit of fretting over his marriage. 

Lucera didn’t know what she wanted. But she could not be here, not by him. She couldn’t find peace in her thoughts, or anything within her. Not when he was betrothed to one of the plain Baratheon girls that had witnessed Lucera rain soaked and threatened in the Round Hall. That was not right. Didn’t they see them interact? Clearly there was more between her and Aemond than between any of those Baratheon girls (even if at that point all it had been was mutual anger and disgust with some hidden attraction worked in there somewhere). 

She needed to get away from Aemond. She needed to get away from everything. He was a criminal. And mad—he was absolutely mad. Lucera flexed her limp legs, and crawled to her feet. She kept her footsteps as quiet as her body would allow, avoiding every stick and dried leaf illuminated by the fire. 

The firelight faded as she crept deeper into the woods. It wasn’t frigid, but it wasn’t exactly warm without the fire either. The stars above them poked through the holes in the cloak of the night, and Lucera became lost in the trance of the forest. She didn’t know where she was anymore, and even though a small part of her was sounding in alarm of having lost her travel partner, the greater part of her didn’t have the energy to care. It was all too much . 

But being lost on both the inside and outside was deeply comforting, in its own sort of way. Forget all of those other things. Lucera’s life was hers, and no one elses, and she just needed to get her mind straight so she could focus on what she could focus on. 

Getting back to Dragonstone. Letting her family know that no , she was not dead. She was very much alive, and even though she was perhaps a bit traumatized, she was breathing. That was good enough. She’d hug her mother tight and she’d smell the the deep amber in her clothes. Daemon would probably come around after watching them two and settle his hands on top of Lucera’s shoulders and jest with her about how no one even noticed she left, and then lower his voice to whisper iksan biare ao sagon kesīr, dōna run---I am happy you are here, sweet thing, so only she may hear it. Running up to Jaceara and hugging her so hard that they both almost fall over and neither could breathe. All of these thoughts trailed in her mind, a hopeful balm soothing her aches. 

She was calming down smoothly. Thoughts of her family tended to do that. That is, until she heard branches breaking off between the trees. 

Her first reaction blamed it on an animal. There were plenty, right? It could be a wild boar or a buck.  But then Lucera noticed the steady beat of footsteps crunching leaves and snapping ground-laden twigs. At the realization that it was a person, her heart nearly jumped through her chest. She spun around, looking for the source of the sound. Whatever it was, the sound broke her of her thoughts. 

Her eyes hardened their focus in the darkness, looking carefully between the trees. Off in the shadowed distance, there was a man, clad in hardy clothes, with his hands out in front of him. 

“Aye, I mean no harm. I’m just gathering wood for my fire.” His voice was thick, but soft. He was most certainly aware that his presence had been noticed and caused alarm. 

Lucera was still tense, and took a step back. She knew the woods were not typically a safe place for any maiden. 

“What’s your name? I won’t hurt you.” The man said. He was walking forwards slowly. In the sliver of the crescent moonlight, she could make out his pale face and dark hair. If it had been a fuller moon, she may have been able to see him a bit more clearly. 

Lucera was silent for a moment, thinking fast. “Jeyne.” 

“Well Jeyne, I don’t know what you’re doing out this late in the wood, but come join my family and I by the fire. It’s cold.” 

He was right. The temperature kept dropping as the night got deeper, and she was beginning to really feel it. As much as she knew it was dangerous to follow any stranger, the fire sounded too tempting to dismiss. And he seemed somewhat nice. He wasn’t an animal trying to eat her, at least. 

“How do I know I can trust you?” Lucera asked cautiously. 

“If you want to get warm, you don’t really have a choice.” The man sighed, and smiled. “Come. I’ve been gone for a while, and they’re probably wondering where I am too.” 

He gestured her forwards with his hand, and she followed his lead. Lucera had never had such interaction with the smallfolk before, let alone lie about who she was directly. Sure, she had been undercover with Aemond lately, but here she was with a fake name. It felt exciting. 

In her exhilaration, she asked, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Theos. Where are you from?” 

Quickly with ease, she responded, “I’m from Spicetown originally. Just here visiting some family.” She figured it would be a safe town to say, since she was very familiar with the area if he turned out to know about it. 

“Ah. Spicetown. Lots of exotic things over there, aye?” So he did know about it. Lucera pondered if he was an off season fisherman, or perhaps a merchant. There were plenty of those in Spicetown.

“So many. It’s an exciting place to be.” She paused, wary of the man still. Spicetown was exciting, but it didn’t always attract the right people, so to speak. Lucera knew it was a hot spot for rowdy pirates. “What about you?” 

Lucera kept up with him at a steady, calm pace. He seemed to be confident in his direction through the forest. 

“My family and I are travelers. We don’t like to stay in one place very long.” 

Ah. Travelers . A canned response to something more akin to adventuring, like the wealthy families in Pentos often do. This intrigued Lucera, and she wanted to ask more questions. If it had been anyone else in any other situation, she would have done just so. However, she was nervous that any more questioning and discussion might put her in uneven and unsure territory with her identity. She knew she needed to be careful. Even if he seemed friendly, it was too great a risk to reveal  herself. 

Lucera didn’t respond, and followed him quietly through the trees. It took much longer to reach the campfire than she expected, but her legs propelled her forward. The cold was sinking deeper and deeper into her skin, and that fire was all she could spin her thoughts around.

At last, the glow was in the distance. She could smell something cooking on the fire, and the orange light was taunting her with its heat. As they got closer, she saw the rock cavern that nestled the fire. It looked extra warm inside. 

Theos smiled to her largely, and stepped into the half-cave. There were four other people inside, and Lucera noticed immediately that they were all men. 

It set her on guard. If she wasn’t nervous before, she definitely was now. 

“Brothers, this is Jeyne.” He walked over and set the large sticks he was carrying on the ground next to the fire. “I found her out there. She looked cold and I told her we could share our fire.” 

Lucera noticed they were of all slightly varying ages. The two oldest men had to be reaching their middle-age, with faces in between being worn and bright. Their cheeks were long and hollow, and their shoulders were large.

The one with longer hair spoke first. “I’m Barden.” He clapped the other oldest man on the back. “This is my younger brother Gunthor. And these are my sons. You’ve met Theos, and that’s my oldest, Myles, and my youngest, Tion. Please, have a seat.” He gestured for her to sit down in the cave, and she felt obligated to do so. 

The younger ones had the same large shoulders and slightly less hollow cheeks, though much more vitality. The very youngest, Tion, looked at her with wide eyes. He couldn’t have been much older than she was. Theos and the oldest, Myles, were most certainly older than her, but not by a wild amount. 

The fire was thawing her skin and joints. The wool of her cloak was finally allowing for her to capture more of the warmth she had lost. Now that she was comfortable, Lucera was acutely aware of the men surrounding her. 

Gunthor, the brother of who appeared to be the leader of the group, was pulling the kettle off of the fire. He had five cups, and pulled out an extra for her. The water was steaming and fragrant. Lucera imagined how the cup would melt her frozen fingers in her hands. 

“It’s a classic Storm Land blend. Black honeysuckle, dragon well, mint, and sea sage.”

He handed out everyone their respective cups. The clay was hot to the touch, the water still just off of a boil, but Lucera couldn’t help but put her lips on the edge of the cup. The hot water on her tongue warmed her immediately, and she was grateful to feel heat again. 

The oldest son sauntered over to her. “So, Jeyne, where are you from?” 

He sat down next to her. His eyes were bright and blue, a deep contrast to his black hair. It was piercing. She noticed his smile too—it was mischievous, and made her uneasy. 

“I’m from Spicetown.” Her voice sounded small, but she didn’t have the energy to wake it up. 

His lips quirked up towards his eyes, causing the corners to wrinkle. “And what are you doing over here?” 

“Just visiting family in the area.” She was hoping he wouldn’t ask more questions. Lucera knew she needed to come up with more answers, and do it fast. 

He leaned in on his elbows. “Which village? There are lots around here.” 

“Just a small fishing village near Shipwreck Beach. Not many people have heard of it.” 

It felt like he was trying to sit closer to her, and she sat back slightly to create more space. “Ahhh yes. Some people call it Shipwreck Village, but it doesn’t have a name to many.” 

Lucera breathed a silent sigh of relief that she got that out of the way. “It’s a beautiful village. The celebration of the Stranger a few nights ago was enjoyable.” Her voice sounded more confident when she spoke this time. 

“Still doesn’t explain what you were doing alone in the woods this time of night.” He leaned in closer, softing grabbing a lock of her hair and twisting it in his finger. His voice dropped lower and quieter. “A beautiful girl like you could get into some trouble if she’s not careful.” 

Luceras heart pounced to her throat. She froze, unsure of how to proceed. 

Barden waved his hand. “Myles, leave the poor girl alone. It’s her business.” 

Myles chuckled deep in his chest, looking Lucera deep in her eyes. “I just wanted to see what she would say, is all.”

No. She did not feel safe here, she decided. Collecting her thoughts, she figured it was best if they thought she wasn’t completely alone. Even if it wasn’t entirely true. 

Lucera put on her best gentle smile and waved her hand. “It’s alright. I’m with my uncle. We were hunting later than expected and decided to set up camp. I got restless and went on a walk. Theos was kind enough to invite me back to your fire since I was getting a little cold.” Lucera paused, unsure if it was working, but powered through nonetheless. “Thank you for the tea. I should be heading back to him now, I’m sure he’s getting worried.” 

She inwardly cringed as she said it, for she knew Aemond was most likely still sleeping. And if he was awake, perhaps he’d be so angry he would leave her to die. Or he’d kill her as soon as he found her. 

Lucera shifted in her seat, moving to stand, until Barden spoke up. “Oh, please. There is plenty of room around this fire for all of us. Stay awhile.” It was forceful.

All eyes were locked on her. She was weighing her options. No weapons, yet one look at the men’s belts and she saw varying daggers, swords, and hammers. Run and she wouldn’t make it very far if the whole band decided to give chase. Did they really want her so badly they’d chase her? Did they even want her in the first place? Was it all in her head? 

Theos cocked his head. “You know, we quite enjoy our little trips to Spicetown. Lots of imports and exports from the Free Cities.” He smirked, looking into his tea cup, before meeting Lucera’s eyes. “They like pretty things across the Narrow Sea. Silks, wines, jewelry and trinkets.” 

Lucera the inkling in her gut that told her to leave was singing. She didn’t like their eyes, and was uneasy by their words. 

Her breath had wound tight in her chest as she stood to her feet. “I really appreciate your kindness, but my uncle is probably looking for me. I should go.” 

Two firm hands grabbed her by her shoulders and pushed her back down harshly. Lucera couldn’t help herself. Even though she didn’t know Theos, she felt a little betrayed. She had trusted him, and though nothing had been explicitly stated, she felt their malicious intentions. Whoever it was kept his hands locked to her collarbones after she stumbled. He smelled like musk and forest. She knew it was Myles when he spoke. 

He laughed behind her. “You just got here lassie, where’s the fun in that?” 

It seemed that the niceties were over. Lucera’s pulse began to beat in her ears. She wondered what would happen if she told them who she really was. Would they let her go? Most likely not—she figured men such as this would not be very kind to women of high birth anyway. 

She closed her eyes and squeezed them shut. Lucera wanted to be brave, but she didn’t feel very strong right now. She had never been this alone, perhaps besides in the skies above Storms End. Even then, she at least knew her enemy. Now she had no one, not even familiarity to grasp onto. 

Aemond. Aemond. She wished she had asked Borros to stay at Storm’s End through the night and left with better weather. She wished Aemond wasn’t so angry. She wished she still had Arrax, who would burn these men and take her home. 

No—not even trying to evade Aemond in the skies had been this lonely. At least then, she still had her dragon. Lucera resisted the urge to cry. She needed to be clear headed right now. 

Myles and Theos were looking at each other, as if speaking through their minds to decide what their next move was going to be. Lucera noticed that the youngest had yet to say a word. He seemed a bit bewildered by the whole thing. The two oldest men sat studying her patiently, as if they had all the time in the world. 

Theos nodded to Myles, and Myles stepped away from behind her. “There have been funny rumors lately,” he started, “Of a Targaryen prince and princess in Shipwreck Village.” 

Lucera’s heart dropped. They knew. Had they been tracking her and Aemond? This added a whole new layer to her predicament. 

Barden tsked. “The One-Eyed Prince is easy to spot. Even with the cloak. You may not have white hair, but being by his side was enough. Besides, no low born girl carries herself the way you do.” 

So they had been followed. Aemond was right. 

Myles squeezed her cheek, rubbing his thumb across her face. “As a low born girl, you’d fetch a fine price on your own. Plump skin, pretty face.” He let go and took another step so he was on the other side of her. “But as a p rincess ? You’ll be some slaver’s favorite toy.” 

Lucera’s blood was pounding, but she forced the words out. “But I am not just any princess. I am a Velaryon and Targaryen Princess. My mother, the Queen, will rain dragonfire upon you shall you bring me harm. She will find me. It’s not too late to let me go.” 

She noticed the youngest, Tion, looked frantically at his father. At least one person had some sense in this family. 

Barden scoffed. “You think we’re stupid princess? We’re smugglers. We do all kinds of things we shouldn’t, and we never get caught. If anyone could pull this off, it’s us. And, we already know which of our clients would be interested.” 

“You’ll be nothing but a whore in two days time.” Theos laughed loudly, and turned to Myles. “And we’ll have enough gold dragons to buy a manse in across the Narrow Sea!” 

She couldn’t help the tears now. They were dripping out of her eyes as she held them closed tight.

“Don’t cry, princess. You’ll still live in a palace of some sort, you’ll still eat nice food and wear nice silks. You’ll just have to spread your legs, that's all.” Theos said jokingly. 

There was nothing for her to say. It felt hopeless. 

“Besides. We put some extra valerian and milk of the poppy in your tea. Should feel it any moment now. It will make the journey easier,” Theos continued. 

Lucera’s eyes shot open. No. No no no. She can’t lose consciousness—she can’t. Not around them and not with so little time to react. It was all happening so fast. She didn’t feel it yet, or at least she didn’t think so. 

Not that it mattered. There was nothing she could do anyways. The most she could do was intimidate them even through her own fear and tears. 

“Spicetown, aye? Where’d you get that?” Myles cracked at her. 

“I’m a Velaryon Princess and the heiress of Hightide. I know Spicetown from traveling to and from Driftmark.” Her voice cracked light enough that she hoped they didn’t hear. 

“A woman as the heir, hm?” Myles looked down at her. “Well, it won’t matter. Things are going to look very different for you very soon.” 

“If you’re planning on smuggling me out of Spicetown, you best be very careful none of the dragons are around. They would recognize me and my stress from leagues away.” Lucera bit back. It wasn’t entirely true, but it’s not like they knew that. 

For a brief moment, the brothers looked between each other uneasily. She had struck a chord, and she couldn’t miss this opportunity to make them hesitate. “My father’s dragon Seasmoke loves patrolling the Narrow Sea. It would be a shame if he sensed me in danger. I’m afraid the entire ship would be at risk.” 

Barden looked to his sons in apprehension, put off by her suggestion. Lucera knew that Seasmoke was probably not too concerned in actuality, but she said what she could. If she could get them to avoid Spicetown, it would take extra time to leave Westeros. Any time she could buy herself was all she needed. 

Barden changed the subject, breaking her stride. “Your uncle, huh? The one who’s apparently looking for you?” He scoffed. “Doubt he’d care enough, with the rumors having that you were the one who cut out his eye and all that. Is it true?” 

Lucera couldn’t respond. She knew he was trying to make her feel weaker and smaller. It was a mental game. And she was afraid. She didn’t want to shirk her confidence so quickly, but hiding the regrets of every decision that had gotten her to this point was difficult. Besides, perhaps they were right; even if Aemond woke up and noticed her absence, he wouldn’t look for her after all. 

He leaned forward. “So it is true. No matter what, the prince is outnumbered. He couldn’t take all of us at once. Not with one eye. I don’t trust a word you say. ” 

Lucera turn her head up to look at him. She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but she couldn’t. Especially when he probably wouldn’t come looking for her, the bastard princess he’d been looking to be rid of all his life. Even if he had told her he wanted to protect her, she couldn't fully trust him to go out of his way to do so. She didn’t have the energy to trust that something bad wouldn't happen to her anymore. Her throat was holding tight every time she tried to speak. Her eyes—her eyes wanted to close too. She clenched her hands around the log she was sitting on and felt the ridges beneath her palm and finger tips. 

She couldn’t see much, not without fog around the edges of her vision. The men had all turned away from her. There were voices. Tense voices, and—

Desperately trying to hold onto reality and fighting her body’s reaction to the tea, she forces her eyes open, willing her consciousness awake. Lucera was falling down in euphoria, and she could see Aemond was there too, and she wanted to grab onto him and plead for his forgiveness for running away from him, even if he was nothing but haze. She wanted to tell him that she promises she’ll rever run away again. She won’t have to become a whore who will die without saying goodbye to her family. She saw Rhaenyra and Daemon reaching for her. Jacaera dancing with Baela and Rhaena. She promises to no one that she’ll do anything to save herself from the whore’s fate. 

Please, please please. Anything but this.  

The wood log had become her anchor to reality. Lucera wanted to see the open sky in the forest one last time before she was never allowed anything again. She pried her eyes up and open. 

Aemond was there. Even in her altered state, she knew she had never seen Aemond so cold. His face was hard line after hard line. His one eye only served to make him more menacing. He looked at her. Was it real? Was he really there? 

Lucera didn’t trust herself at first. It was all hitting her so fast. The men were standing abruptly, and they were speaking. 

“Let the princess go, or I’ll have to take her from you.” Aemond’s voice was oddly soothing.

“Bet you could barely take on one of us, let alone all of us.” Gunthor spouted, reaching for his hammer. He spit on the ground. “One-eye.” 

It had been so long since she’d heard anyone try to disempower Aemond. The last who had done it was most certainly Aegon. None of the other noble children who visited the Red Keep were brave enough to do so. 

Aemond did nothing. There was a heavy pause, as each of the other men were waiting for his reaction. The only movement was a whisper of a breeze that plucked up the loose cloth from a shirt here and there. Lucera was holding onto her sight, not letting it go black. Surely, these men understood the depth and disrespect of the comment they had just made. She wondered to herself what was going on inside of Aemond’s head. 

Aemond laughed, breaking the silence. From the surrounding men’s reactions, it seemed like it was the last thing they had expected. In their moment of confusion, Aemond slung his steel out of the sheath on his belt, wasting no time to swing it firmly at the Theos, the closest to him. His right hand was cut clean off in an instant. 

“Let’s find out.” Aemond replied, twirling his freshly bloodied sword with his wrist and a wild glint in his eye. He was no doubt amused, and potentially even excited at the prospect of proving them wrong in their assumption. Lucera caught a glimpse of Theos’ severed hand on the ground and had to turn away. She was not a fan of grisly sights. They made her uneasy. The crimson dirt did not help her in her efforts to fight for her consciousness. 

A cacophony of steel sang in response to the severed hand and retort, but Aemond was ready, reflexively parrying their clumsy but forceful blows. The men were decent, and there was strength in numbers—that much was true. But Aemond was objectively better. His challenge, Lucera noted, would be evading their numerous brute strength. 

Within her, the tea was most certainly making her feel warm and woozy. It was, in some ways, a blessing to be taken in and out of awareness of the violence that was being carried out in front of her, or rather, behind her as she began to attempt to crawl away from the camp. She could feel the milk of the poppy in her blood stream, making her muscles thick and heavy. 

Tion, the youngest, was holding onto his sword with white knuckles. Fighting looked like the last thing the poor thing wanted to do, especially after witnessing Aemond stick his sword deep into Gunthor’s side with a back hand stab. Blood spurted from his wound as Aemond drew his sword back to him, most likely the result of the bullseye on an artery. 

She didn’t have to watch Aemond to know he was examining each of their technique with great detail and discernment, finding their weaknesses and waiting for the opportunity to exploit them. The thrum in her blood of the valerian and poppy felt warm and inviting. She wanted to dive in, and it became increasingly difficult to not plunge into its waiting sleepy comfort. 

Voices blurred together once more as a new wave hit her. She watched the men shout pointedly at Tion, and him stare back at them blank eyed. Even in her haze, Lucera gave him pity. The boy was clearly not inclined for the dirtiness of the family business, let alone the brutishness of fighting that surely came with it every now and then. 

Fighting was hardly a long process, as Lucera knew from her step father Daemon. Fights begin and end quickly. He had said as he paced the dirt with his hands behind his back. The best fighters don’t waste their energy on overwhelming their opponent with hard offense, but rather wait to feel out their opponent's weaknesses. There is too much energy being expended for fights to last very long anyway. Daemon had insisted Lucera and Jacaera watch and listen in on Baela and Rhaena’s training for their first few sessions to see what training looked like. Jacaera had only been interested in the practicalities of self defense, but Lucera wanted to have a trick or two up her sleeve just for fun. T’was a shame she hadn’t had more time with him to train before all of this happened. 

Not that she would have been able to save herself anyway. She had been unarmed to begin with, and overwhelmed by strength. Not to mention they gave her a hypnotic tea. At her current skill level, she probably could only fend off a boy with a little experience, but wouldn’t be able to hold her own against any person with any significant strength (relative to her) or a lifetime of fighting experience. 

Lucera was purposefully evading her gaze from the fighting. Perhaps if she crawled out of view, she could hide herself before she lost consciousness. 

Alas, she couldn’t be so lucky to not go unnoticed. Myles had drawn away from the swords of his father and brother clashing against Aemond’s, his eye catching in Lucera’s figure in retreat. 

His breath was hot and heavy above her. “Not so fast, pretty girl.” 

Myles grabbed her swiftly by her underarms, pushing her up from the ground. Lucera was too limp to fight it. 

“I’ll leave my brother and father to deal with your uncle.” He said as he moved to carry her bridal style. “You’re still getting shipped across the Narrow Sea, and I’m still getting my gold.” 

She felt his hard body beneath his clothing. He was warm. Warm warm warm. Lucera felt warm too. But his cloak was rough on her cheek. She didn’t like that. Smoke on his cloak. Fire smoke. Not dragon smoke. Dragon smoke was coppery. Bonfire smoke was arboreal. She bounced with each step. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. It was dark again. No more fire light or warmth. The clashing sound of steel was farther away now, just a twinkling in her ears. 

It would be the second time within a sennight that the rug had been ripped mercilessly out from Lucera’s feet. There were too many things to consider. Would she ever return? She doubted the slavers were nice. Would she be killed for insolence? Would they treat her better than the other courtesans? Maybe they would even be sweet, feeding her with sweet dried fruits and syrups, giving her a featherbed with a view of the blue sky bubbling under the hot sun. What would they do if they tired of her? Whip her for entertainment, reduce her station again and again until she worked on the streets alongside common born whores? She wanted to believe that her mother and step father would go looking, but what if they believed her dead and not missing? 

Even if she were to be returned back to her family, the scandal and horrors would be far reaching. No one would want her, as ruined as she would be. But perhaps that wouldn’t be such a terrible ending to this otherwise terrible story—she could live at Dragonstone, or in the Red Keep, doing what she pleased away from the duties within marriage. Spending out her days with her mother, assisting with Queenly duties and Jacaera’s preparation. The birthing bed had always frightened her anyway. She could take a lover if she grew lonely. She could find joy in her female friendships, journeying across the Seven Kingdoms with her ladies—oh how she did so love traveling. Grandfather Corlys made sure of that. She could follow through her days as a young knight in the stories might, with no cares besides looking for the next great adventure. 

Yes—perhaps when this nightmare is over, if it ever ends, she could be happy one day. That day might not be near, and it may not ever come, but she could hold onto this dream until she is free of her chains, or until the last breath is squeezed from her lungs. 

Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot . His boots crunched each fragile twig to pieces. 

[akwolfgrl]

LFT part 34

What is that guy's issue?” Zoro put his sword away as he walked towards the barrel. Zoro had told him a few times he wasn't interested in selling him his sword. Zoro began digging through the barrels searching for something decent.

“You must lose a lot of swords if you think you have to carry three of them around. Unless of course you're copying that infamous Pirate Hunter,” Zoro ignored Tashigi as she came up behind him.

“Yah, pirate hunter,” Zoro muttered to himself.

“He's made quite the name for himself, Roronoa some call him a demon. He is known throughout the East Blue for his sword skills, but he's clearly not a good person to have earned the moniker of demon. A bounty hunter is not someone who has any honor, and swordsmen without any honor shouldn't be allowed to be called swordsmen. Someone who uses their swords just as a way to make money. It's too bad for real swordsmen being compared to him, it's all backwards. Pirates and bounty hunters calling themselves swordmasters makes no sense to me. They even have most of the world's legendary swords as well, it's such a tragedy,” Tashigi continued to talk as he looked for swords.

“Oh don't know,” Zoro chuckled. “It's the kinda thing that you have to look at on a case by case basis,” Axe hand Morgan may not have been a swordsman but he was a Marine. A Marine who allowed his men and his son to terrorize the village they were at. A little girl had almost been torn to shreds by a vicious animal, and when he killed it he had been tied up, left without food or water. The world wasn't black and white, it was made up of shades of gray. “You never know what people are capable of or what they've been through.”

“I don't give a damn, I'd be more than happy to welcome criminals as long as they have money. I remember when my shop used to be filled with people shopping before trying their hand in the GrandLine, but ever since that monster you call a Captain was put in charge I hardly ever get any customers,” The man complained, it would explain why he was asleep when Zoro arrived.

“Captain Smoker isn't a monster, he's done great work cleaning up these streets,“ Tashigi retorted.

“He's a damn devil fruit user! That is more than enough reason to call him a monster!” The man yelled back.

“This is my Shigure. I'm going to work as hard as I can to perfect my skills and one day I'll take back every single last one of the legendary swords, because the filthy hands that hold them do not deserve them! I am including the War Lords of the Sea! They are nothing more than a pirate with a fancy title! That includes Dracule Mihawk! Yes. The twenty one top O-Wazamono, the twenty one O-Wazamonos, as well as the Ryo-Wazamonos, I'll find them all! I'll keep them safe!”

“What about my sword? Do you want to take my sword from me? Wado Ichimonji,” Zoro asked, turning to look at her as unsheathe his sword, just because she looked like Kuina didn't mean she could have her sword.

“Oh um I'm not trying to get them back for my sake, I just don't want criminals to have them,” Zoro turned back to the barrel of swords when one caught his eye, he warped his hand around its handle, this sword was cursed. He took it out of the barrel, its red and gold sheath in good condition for being so cheap. “Oh I think that's, just a sec let me check my book,” Tashgi flipped through the pages of the small book she had on her. “Ah, just as I thought! That blade would be Kitetsu! Kitetsu the third! Its predecessor is an O-Wazamono and the first Kitetsu is a top O-Wazamono,” Zoro took the blade out of the sheath looking at the moderately curved katana with a white edge and a blue hamon that looked like flames. “Hey are you really only selling it for 50,000?” Tashigi asked. Zoro would happily only pay that much.

“Y-yeah?” The man's voice sounded shaky and unsure.

“That's unbelievable! It's an authentic Wazamono.” Zoro stared at his reflection in the sword. “Wow you must buy that sword!” Zoro had every intention of doing so. “It's worth at least a million berries or more,” Zoro was not going to tell Nami how his swords were worth. He didn't trust her not to sell them behind his back. “You can't pass it up, it's so valuable,”

“Dammit! I can't sell it!”

“I didn't think so, I knew it must have been a mistake, it is a legendary sword after all ”

“It's not what you think!” The man cried out as Zoro tightened his grip on the sword and swung it down, now facing towards Tashigi.

“The swords cursed.” Zoro spoke, a cursed blade had not what he had been expecting to find but still he had.

“Huh? How the hell do you know that?”

“Just…do,” Zoro didn't know how he knew, but he could feel it, feel with every part of him that this sword would love nothing more than to bathe in blood, be it his or his enemies it didn't matter. He would enjoy taming it.

[jackoshadows]

Do you think Arya sailing away at the end has any chance of happening in the books?

100% not happening.

Anyone who can read a book and understands themes (and that's definitely not David Benioff and Dan Weiss) can see that GRRM is building up a story for her character in terms of home and identity.

From Arya starting out as a bullied child, unable to conform to patriarchal ideals, feeling like she does not belong in the world she grew up in and wanting to go on fun adventures to her then going on the adventure from hell (an absolutely harrowing journey), the story is about how despite the trauma and how much it has changed her, at her core she holds onto Arya Stark, to family, to her father and mother, to Jon, to Winterfell.

All Arya has been trying to do from book one is get to family and home. And a big part of her narrative theme is identity:

It's been pointed out that a lot of characters in A Dance With Dragons are losing their names, and their very identities, as a result of intense circumstances. What's that about?

Arya has been doing it for some time, actually. Arya has gone through a dozen different identities, even getting to Braavos — where the ultimate goal of the Faceless Men is to become no-one, and to be able to assume identities as one assumes a suit of clothes. But yes, identity is one of the things that I'm playing with in this series as a whole, and in this particular book — what is it that makes us who we are? Is it our birth, our blood, our position in the world? Or something more integral to us? Our values our memories, et cetera.

Usually in a heroic fantasy series when someone loses their identity, you expect that to be followed by them regaining their selfhood in some dramatic way, or taking some heroic action that reasserts who they really are. Do you feel a responsibility to subvert that? Or play with that trope?

I'm certainly playing with it. There are different ways of assuming identities. Some of them I try to get at in books, and it's a little bit reflected in the chapter titles. In some cases, it's just someone putting on a mask. I mean Qwentyn Martell and his companions assume false names at several points during their journey from Dorne to Meereen. They assume different roles and different identities, but it never really affects who they are. When they're in private, they're still the people that they have always been. When you're dealing with Arya and what she's going through, or you're dealing with Theon... you're dealing with something much, much deeper there, where the original identity is being threatened or kind of broken down by one means or another, and maybe is in danger of being lost entirely.

Arya takes on different names and travels in disguise through war torn Westeros, finally ending up in Braavos. And it's at Braavos she has to make that ultimate change and become 'No One'. While at the same time holding onto Needle.

Needle! The last link to Winterfell and Arya. The Faceless Men want her to give it up because they recognize it’s importance - GRRM

This is why Needle is so important in Arya's arc. It's what connects Arya to the idea of home and Winterfell. And she has Needle hidden away for a reason.

And we have two more books to go. Is Arya going to give up 'Arya Stark' and then just be a nameless, faceless assassin running around killing characters for the next two books? Is that why GRRM loves this character so much, has written so much for her (female characters with the most POV chapters) has so many plots revolving around her ? Makes no sense.

I mean look at which Stark has the most POV chapters in the series:

Which Stark thinks the most of other House Stark members ?

Which Stark thinks of their parents the most:

And which Stark child thinks of Winterfell the most in their POV:

[Note: Bran is in Winterfell for two whole books]

And yet this traumatized child - who has been trying to get home since book one - is going to sail away from family and home at the end because she wants to go on adventures? Absolute fuckery I tell you.