#i wanted to make these for the oc compendium and i liked how they turned out

[sealrock]

'official' renders

[auxiliarydetective]

Evie's One Piece OC Compendium

SO @eustasskidsfattits asked me to make a post about my One Piece OCs, so here it is! I wanted to make this way sooner, but then stuff happened and then I got to show one of my friends OPLA and 8 OCs turned to 9 (oopsies...). Also, the perfectionist in me would not shut up. Yes, this is technically the intro for the three newest ones, so buckle up!

I'm gonna list them in the order that I created them, simply because listing them in the order of their appearance in the story would be fairly impossible with how OPLA likes to introduce characters earlier on lol - These OCs also all exist in their own separate universes, by the way...

So yeah, long post incoming and, for any OPLA-onlies reading this post: Spoiler warning!!!

Not proofread because I just wanna finally get this post out and I am lacking energy

The Guardian: Aether S. Luna

The original One Piece OC and also the one who has gone through the most changes. I revamped her only recently!

Luna is convinced that she's the daughter of the moon goddess aka of Mother Moon herself, and there are some very odd things about her that make that very plausible. She looks like how you would imagine the daughter of the moon to look like, with very pale skin and very light blonde hair, she has magical powers that are charged by basking in the moonlight, she needs very little sleep as long as the moon is out, her strength is based on the moon cycle... Oh, also: Wings. Large, white wings, that don't fit in with any other humanoid creature in the world. So, nobody really has any solid evidence against it either. Well... Nobody who hasn't been to Egghead Island.

She's introduced into the story at Long Ring Long Land (I actually have two fics for that) as a part of Foxy's crew because he won her in a Davy Back Fight. Before that, she was sort of aimlessly travelling the seas with various crews, just trying to find a place to belong. Throughout the Davy Back Fight, Luna ends up befriending the Straw Hats and Luffy, being Luffy, of course won't pass up the opportunity to have someone as weird as her on their crew, so she joins!

Sanji is, of course, very enamoured with this literal goddess. Even more so than usual. Luckily for him, his charm seems to be working on Luna too. She essentially goes from "Oh, you're adorable. You're funny." to "Oh. Oh no. That's the love of my life, isn't it?", at the very latest when she sees Sanji after he absolutely decimates the people on the Sea Train.

I can't really talk too much about her because a lot of my ideas for her are very visual, but I guess I could give some more little facts? First of all, Luna is 18 and her blood group is S. You can take a look at my animanga character sketches for her here and here if you want! Her wings haven't grown to their full size yet pre-timeskip, and she molts like a bird as she grows, so whenever that happens, she's essentially grounded and chronically exhausted. And that happens around the time of Sabaody. Perfect timing, right? Also, she has to preen her wings, especially after battles, and her crewmates keep around her feathers either for practical or sentimental reasons. And in case you were wondering, of course she heads to Whole Cake Island to go after her boyfriend. Big Mom takes an interest in her, Judge wants to steal her lineage factor, it's a very fun time for everyone involved.

The Sweet Tooth: Charlotte Inari

Ah yes, sweet little Inari. Inari is Pudding's twin sister, she's also a member of the Three-Eyed Tribe and she's named after inari-zushi (if you were wondering how she fits into the Charlotte Family naming scheme). She ate the Kami Kami no Mi, Model: Shikigami, which has a very complicated way to how it works, but, essentially, it binds her to a master whose orders she has to follow and, in turn, gets special abilities from based on her master's. That master is the person who last saved her life. The problem with that situation is that she got the devil fruit when she was still very young and travelling at sea with one of her siblings, and a sea battle ensued where chaos happened and she got herself kidnapped. So, she ends up being passed around from master to master for years until finally ending up with Enel. That is, until Luffy defeats him, and she joins the Straw Hats.

Inari, being that she spent her early formative years on Totto Land, has some very interesting ideas of what's considered normal for animals, plant life, people... for everything, really. She fights with two war fans (as well as her devil fruit, of course) and knows how to play the shamisen, both of which she picked up while travelling with a crew of Wano ancestry for a while. Also, she naturally has a huge sweet tooth and loves to make sweets too. It runs in her genes.

Inari's goal while travelling with the Straw Hats at first is to get back home. She's just a kid, she wants to go home, at least to let her family know that she's okay. And her family and her friends will totally get along, right??? That's also why she doesn't fully consider herself part of the Straw Hats for the longest time. She's a member of the Big Mom Pirates, simply by birth right. However, this all gets a bit thrown on its head with the Timeskip and everything after that. Because, during the timeskip, Kuma sends her to Totto Land, and she officially joins the Big Mom Pirates. So, she has everything she has ever wanted, right? Well... She still ends up coming back. She loves her friends too much not to go back to them. And then Luffy ends up starting a war with Big Mom, which is... not ideal? Whole Cake Island is especially fun. And Wano? Oh boy!

Also... remember the special ability of the Three-Eyed Tribe? Yeah. Inari awakens her third eye when she hears the Drums of Liberation, but nobody notices and she doesn't tell anybody until the battle is long over, and even then she only tells Sanji and Robin.

The Tailor: Akaito Coraline

My dear, sweet Cora... We're entering the live action era now! Aka when everything started to escalate and I started drowning in OCs. I freaking love the live action, man... Maybe a little too much.

Anyways, Cora! Cora is the last living member of the Akaito Clan, a tailoring family from the North Blue of world-class fame who was eradicated by Germa 66 when they didn't want to work for their evil plans. Their main identifier is a sewing needle pierced through the left ear, and they can tell a person's measurements just by looking at them. Of course, there are many imposters around because Akaito-made clothes sell for a fortune, but they usually fail at these criteria. Cora was only a baby when the attack from Germa happened, so she doesn't remember anything from that day or about her family, except for her mother, who was selected as the sole adult survivor of the massacre, because she had Cora, and Judge had plans for Cora. Little did Judge know that her mother also had plans for Cora, and that she had given the baby the Akaito Clan's most prized possession: The Sew Sew Fruit (Chiku Chiku no Mi), which gives its user mastery over the entire clothesmaking process and its tools and materials.

I don't want to get too much into Cora's backstory here, but she befriended Sanji and thought that he had died, and then her mother died, she helped create and designed the Raid Suits and then she ran away with the help of Reiju at 16 years old. Afterwards, she rose to considerable fame as a tailor in the East Blue, until finally stumbling across Sanji at Baratie, the same day that the Straw Hats also show up there. Shenanigans ensue.

I think, if I were going to describe Cora's personality in only three aspects, it's trauma, kindness, and a huge double crush that she doesn't like to admit. Because not only is she wholly unprepared for Sanji being not only alive but also a pretty and charming young man, there's also a swordsman who she has to stitch back together after a big fight and who she ends up falling head over heels for. The two boys constantly bickering doesn't help much either, and they also bicker over her, constantly trying to out-boyfriend each other. In case you were wondering whose side Cora usually takes in these fights, the answer is: She joins in on the side of entertainment. Whichever side would yield the funnier result. She just thinks their fights are way too funny and stupid. Also, she's constantly touch-starved and also scared of touch. And sleep-deprived. She gets better in the "scared of touch" category over the course of her journey with the Straw Hats, so... Sleepy cuddles. So many sleepy cuddles. If Zoro's taking a nap, she's taking a nap too, no buts. And Sanji eventually ends up with his arm around her waist 90% of the time. His personal space is also her personal space.

So, uh, fighting style! She uses a rapier and keeps explaining to people that, no, she's not a swordsman, she's a fencer. There's a difference. Also, she uses strings a lot, and plagiarizes Doffy's travelling method after Dressrosa. The thing with strings and dyes and whatnot is a whole new can of worms that I won't get into right now but it's super cool.

One more fun fact: Cora is short. She's tiny. And she wears heels to compensate, which Zoro hates because they're not practical at all. Her entire fashion sense gives him minor aggressions, partially because a lot of her clothes are a lot more fashion than function, partially because she looks too damn gorgeous in them and he's constantly reminded of his embarrassing crush and has gotten so distracted by her that he has walked into tables and doorframes multiple times. Sanji, on the other hand, fully supports her fashion choices. Maybe show a little more skin next time..? Pretty please? I have concept art for her and one of the more distracting outfits :)

The Scout: "Desert Fox" Felicity

The baby of the crew. Yeah, she's younger than Chopper. Inari is already young, being 14, but Lily? Lily is twelve. Absolute baby. How did she end up with the Straw Hats? Blame it on Buggy kidnapping her and then kidnapping the Straw Hats on top, letting them bust her out with them. Nami and Zoro pretty much become her caretakers on the spot, Nami consciously and Zoro... well... Turns out he has a bit of a soft spot for little scared kids with fox ears. They bring her back home to her "sister" Kaya at Syrup Village, but then she almost gets murdered by a killer butler, and Kaya asks them to take Lily with them, so... Well, she's with them now! Only about a few days later though, one of her caretakers gets himself almost killed and the other decides to abandon the crew. Good thing that Sanji has pretty much decided to adopt her, because otherwise she'd be crying her eyes out.

Lily is actually half mink! That's where she got her fennec fox features and some of her behavioural patterns (i.e. cuddliness, switching between napping and getting the zoomies...) from. But her behaviour could just as well be caused by her devil fruit, because she ate the Jōi Jōi no Mi, which gives her emotions magical properties. Which ones? No one knows! You'll find out when it happens. Pretty much the only really predictable effect back when Lily joins the crew is that she turns back into a nonverbal five-year-old when she gets too scared. She also has a pretty good success rate of turning into a more anthropomorphic fox creature when getting into the spirit for a battle. She's a mink after all, and minks are born fighters! And in case you're wondering: Yes, she does have electro! And sharp teeth. You do not want to make her upset. Best case scenario is that she bites you, worst case is either some magical shenanigans or she starts crying and her crewmates come to kick your ass.

I haven't developed her too much beyond the first season of OPLA, but I just know that she has to go absolutely feral at Alabasta, because that's a fennec fox's natural habitat and her epithet is "Desert Fox", so it only makes sense for her to get it at Alabasta. Also, it would be peak funny for Crocodile to complain to the Marines about a literal child messing up his plans, and peak funny is also peak One Piece, so you best believe I'll do it. Also, her being this young means I get to watch her grow up over the timeskip. I imagine she maybe gets sent to Zou and starts to really master her electro and devil fruit attacks? Something along the lines of "I'm all grown up now! I have my powers under control!" and then immediately turning back into a kindergartener in the face of danger would probably be her running gag post-TS. Also, I'm so soft for her relationship with Sanji. I could go on for ages about Whole Cake Island, but I'll leave it at that for now. This post is already getting long enough...

The Matron: Dracule Aurelia

Oh boy, you're not ready for her. She's the daughter of Rayleigh and Shakky. Trans queen (thanks, Iva). Raised as a Kuja, got love sickness just like her mother and fell for a red-headed idiot first, then for a certain swordsman. Ended up marrying the swordsman in the most dramatic way possible. Also maybe the second most beautiful woman in the world, after Boa Hancock of course.

Aurelia is essentially the fusion of a mafia boss, a mob wife, and an Ancient Roman patron. She has unbelievable amounts of money and an invisible net of connections that makes her almost untouchable. She's allied with Emperors, Warlords, kings and queens... Her main deal is providing smaller, more inexperienced pirate crews with her protection and support and getting their services in return, for example as soliders, for transportation... Whatever she needs at that moment. She can be as kind as she can be cruel, and people are generally both in awe and scared of her. Her epithet is "Black Widow" both because of her spider net of connections and because all of her lovers keep mysteriously dying as if through some sort of curse. Mihawk is the only one who has been able to resist that curse. Shanks doesn't count because Aurelia claims she never truly loved him.

One of the places under her protection is Baratie, and so she gets caught up in the Straw Hats' shenanigans. First, Nami asks her for help, then she returns to Arlong ransacking the place and essentially kidnapping Nami, then she finds out that Zoro was almost killed by her husband... Also, Sanji is the closest thing to a son that she has, so Sanji joining the Straw Hats is pretty much the final nail in the coffin to her deciding on her own terms that she's going to protect those kids to the best of her ability. You can kind of imagine her as the rich aunt, but a lot more deadly. Generally, she spends a majority in the story picking up her den den mushi and going "Luffy, what did you do this time?" The boy pretty much becomes her most effective portégé when it comes to expanding her territory, because he keeps punching tyrants and asking her to put the newly freed kingdoms under her protection. She also kicks ass at Marineford, of course, helps protect the Sunny during the timeskip, and becomes decorously unhinged when Whole Cake Island comes around because of her own personal history with Big Mom and "That's my son!" and "Luffy, you are not going to kill an Emperor." - so yeah, she pretty much has to follow the Straw Hats to Wano too, lest they get themselves kicked. She's both the queen of the literal universe and the exhausted mother of a crew of literal toddlers. Or. Well. Children and one supercharged toddler who will not stop causing chaos.

Her entire backstory is so freaking great. Growing up as a Kuja, running away from home because she's mad at her mother for leaving the Kuja tribe, her very first murder of a lover who also happened to be a nobleman, her bond with Iva and speedy hormone therapy, whatever the hell was going on between her and Shanks, her relationship with Mihawk, the whole situation with Big Mom and her rules for alliances, Mihawk literally fighting for her hand in marriage, her meeting Sanji and essentially adopting him... There's a lot going on. Wish I could write it one day.

The Mechanic: Lux Jirou

Lynx boi! Kuro tricked him into thinking he had Amber Lead Snydrome but it's actually just vitiligo. Used to be a member of the Black Cat Pirates (posing as the mansion's security guard) but liked Kaya a little too much and figured out Kuro was lying, so he teamed up with the Straw Hats to take him down. Also has the worst crush on Zoro and Zoro has the worst crushback, but they're both too stupid to figure it out. He goes by Jirou while with the Black Cat Pirates but starts going only by his last name Lux once he starts rebelling. Ends up joining the Heart Pirates and working as a mechanic on the Polar Tang.

Once again, so many of my ideas for him are more visual because... big kitty! Huge freaking paws! Cuddly cat naps! Involuntary purring because he has a crush and he's a cat and... Yeah. Also, he's absolutely thriving at Punk Hazard. Lots of snow? No problem! Lynx have built-in snow shoes. Also, his devil fruit (Neko Neko no Mi, Model: Lynx), much like the dinosaur SMILEs of the Beasts Pirates, works with Zoan logic. "Lynxes can walk on snow, so they can also walk on water, right? Since water is just frozen snow. And then maybe they can walk on air too if they train hard enough? Because of the humidity?"

The Siren: Kanyalani

Also known as Kan-chan, because Luffy is not pronouncing her full name. She's a betta fish mermaid and former slave and joined the Sun Pirates after being liberated. She has a romance with Jinbe which eventually turns into a polycule with the addition of Robin and Franky when they both join the Straw Hats. Kan-chan fights with chakrams and uses Merman Combat as well as some Fishman Karate.

Now for some mermaid characteristics: Since she's a betta fish mermaid, she shares betta fish characteristics. This means that she loves her color when she's unhappy and becomes more vibrant when she is happy. She also has a unique ability. Whereas all mermaids have beautiful voices, Kan-chan's singing can lull anyone to sleep, even in the midst of battle. Also, she's over thirty, so her tail is split, but she has trouble walking, so she practically never does it. She prefers using Bubbly Corals to navigate and claims that her very frilly fin makes for bad legs anyways.

The Archer: Shimotsuki Kaede

A Kuina look alike from Ebisu Town who nearly gives Zoro a heart attack when he sees her with her mask off for the first time. The concept for this OC basically came to me in the concept of many What Ifs. What if Kuina was still alive? What if Kuina was even more gender? What if there was a flying squirrel? What if someone pulled a Robin Hood on Orochi?

So, here's Kaede. Regular Ebisu Town citizen by day, dying and mending kimonos, stealing food and shooting arrows at people by night. As Ebisu Town gets the leftovers from the Flower Capital, this also includes the half-eaten SMILEs, and Kaede had the one-in-a-million luck of one of the SMILEs, finicky things that they are, still having traces of the power it once gave. And so, she got the power of the flying squirrel SMILE, making her the "devil fruit twin" of Bao Huang. She practices kyūdō in secret and almost runs an arrow through Orochi's head after Yasuie's execution. She would've hit the bastard too if someone hadn't hit her bow and made her miss.

The Soldier: Roronoa Sonoko

Ah yes, the reason why this post took me so long... She just appeared the moment I saw the scene in OPLA where Morgan tries to get Zoro to join the Marines. Because my brain went: Y'know, what if he actually had? So, I bring to you: Zoro's sister. No, not biological sister. They're siblings the way the ASL brothers are siblings. By exchanging sake cups. They got in trouble for stealing the sake and the cups but it was all worth it. What makes the situation even funnier is that Sonoko keeps on telling people that they're not biological siblings but nobody believes her because she's pretty much Zoro's spitting image. And it's her fault, too! Because she chooses to wear those earrings (more or less, but that's a bit of a longer story) and she chooses to dye her hair green! Yes, among the thousands of people with naturally funky hair colors, Kaede is pretty much the only one who actually dyes her hair.

So yeah, she's a Marine! Freshly promoted to Ensign when Koby and Helmeppo join and Garp's protégé. Her sword training comes from Bogard but she uses Two-Sword Style, so it's more her figuring out techniques and Bogard putting up with them. That is until Garp calls on Mihawk to go catch Luffy. Hawk Eyes comes to the ship to say that he decided not to do just that and Garp, as a payment for not reporting this to the World Government, asks Mihawk to take Sonoko on as a student. Mihawk, being Mihawk, is about to remind Garp that he does whatever he wants and doesn't need a deal like that. But then he sees the spitting image of Zoro in front of him and hears the same last name - and he changes his mind. Maybe it's worth a shot?

Following that, I don't have that many ideas except that Sonoko gets a bunch of promotions, only to go AWOL to warn Mihawk of the dismantling of the Warlords system during the Reverie because, at this point, she's far more loyal to him than to the Government or the Marines. She then completely deserts and dashes to Wano to help her brother and his crew defeat Kaido. In the process of the Raid on Onigashima (possibly while protecting either Hiyori or Zoro), she loses an arm and one of her swords and is just... overcome with guilt and shame. So much so that she can't bring herself to return to Mihawk after this incredible failure. Franky does replace her arm with a robotic one and everyone is super nice and supportive to her, the samurai step in and try to reason with her, but she's completely blinded by shame and anxiety. She keeps training, of course, she keepy going, but she just doesn't see herself as worthy anymore of being the student of the World's Greatest Swordsman. But then Mihawk himself shows up at Wano, looking specifically for her and tells her that she isn't a failure, that he's proud of her for her sacrifice for her cause and, most importantly of all, because she kept going. So, all is well and she joins the Cross Guild. Maybe befriends Cabaji, I dunno.

Taglist: @starcrossedjedis @oneirataxia-girl @daughter-of-melpomene @bravelittleflower @box-of-bats @supermarine-silvally - let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!

[honeybyte]

Can you explain all your OCs and worldbuilding in detail? I've always seen these beautiful drawings and sketches of your character is based on song lyrics and stuff, but I've never really figured out much from a cursory scroll of your blog

OKAY i'm gonna take this as an invitation to spill my guts abt my verses. so let me start by saying these get tweaked all the time, little details might change but generally once i settle on a plot it typically stays the same. And, for the most part, these are all outlines w scenes and A》B subject to change. BUT 👏

Honey Verse Compendium: Start!

Axe + Cleaver

》Agnes, Elle, Goliath, Angus, Euan, Odelia

Agnes Laroche is a theologian hellbent on writing an esssy of the Harlach Parish, a cult in a small town called Kencree. While searching for leads she meets Elle Sinclaire, a butcher in the Rhodes District of Kencree who specializes in. Less popular cuts for the smaller crowd. Elle points her in the direction of Goliath Abernathy, a former cult member and champion for the priestess Odelia Harlach.

As it turns out, the Harlach Parish is darker than Agnes imagined; members offer pieces of themselves to the priestess for her favor, trophies she collects in reliquaries. Her most favored happens to be an eye she keeps on a necklace, stolen from Goliath shortly before he left her court. As Agnes pokes around (meeting blacksmith Angus Reid and unwilling court member Euan Harlach), she catches Odelia's attention, who makes a bid to ensnare her in the cult. Outraged and fueled by old anger, Goliath finds his way into her church and a confrontation. He takes back his eye, steals documentation, and sets the church alight.

The town will take time to heal, but Odelia's death is everything she didn't want it to be: quiet and unremarkable, alone in a dark hall.

Flock

》Kaz, Valentine, Mozzwood, Gabriel, Neera

Years after a series of HEMP bombs take out tech worldwide, knowledge on agriculture and horticulture are considered scarce and precious. Kaz, a tractor driver, and Mozzwood, a variant of apex predator gone anxious, are traveling cross country looking for... something. Neither is quite sure yet. They meet a ghost from Kaz's past, a seed dealer and arsonist named Valentine. In a fight to understand their actions comes the revelation Valentine was a cult child-- one that burned down the church that kept them captive, and who continues to burn churches now. Its cleansing, they say.

During their journey, Valentine burns one more church, saving a single little girl named Gabriel. This event inspires a new direction for the group: a cross-country trek to find Kaz's mother and shelter with her.

From there, the story is a road trip. It comes with the ups and downs of having a family along for the ride, with the trials of tribulations that comes with adventuring across a post-apocalyptic land. But they find Kaz's mother, find a safe place with her, and build a home.

Red Heron

》Alec, Librarian, Johann, Kairos

The Red Heron Project is an experiment in body modification, its extreme and practical uses. Alec and the Librarian are abandoned projects, experiments deemed failed but just functional enough to keep in the program as archivists. They rarely receive visitors (there's often fights when they get them), and they like it just so. Its when the doctor Johann and their subject Kairos visit that things become strange.

Alec has never known much about the Librarian; they met in the archives and he's never seen the actual body behind the modification. It happens that Johann knows everything there is to know about the Librarian-- in fact, they're the one that made it. The question isn't so much where the body is as much as it is who has access to it? Certainly not Johann, and definitely not Alec. Not now that they're both considered failed experiments.

Now. How do they get the body back?

Farmer's Bible

》Eremiah, Garrett

This is admittedly my most threadbare concept. What I know is this:

Garrett is a priest in a small town beset by a plague, one which consumes the host via spore and mycelium. The host becomes feverish, then demented, then becomes a mushroom, and Garrett is sick to death of watching his people die. He sets out to find patient zero, tracking lead after lead, until he is brought back to his hometown, and the woods behind it. He finds patient zero there: a man named Eremiah, who keeps to himself and tends an infected farm.

Eremiah doesn't really know he's infected, and if he did he wouldn't much care, benefit of having a mushroom for a brain. The real trial for Garrett is whether it would sit right with him to kill a man like Eremiah, someone who just happened to wander into town with a bad cough.

Kor

》Adriana, Frogmouth, Grace, Andrew

Adriana spends her whole life blaming herself for the death of her best friend when she was a child. Wrought with grief and self-blame, she becomes skilled in ways she shouldn't and takes up work as a mercenary. Work eventually brings her home, where she meets a strange jester with the circus visiting town. She calls him Frogmouth when he won't say his name, but soon annoyance turns to fondness as he gives her a peek of his world. She takes up singing, something she hasn't done for years, and finds herself a new life within the tents. She can almost leave her grief behind like this. Almost.

Alas, work brings her to an audience with the duchess of the town and her advisor. In a breakdown of negotiations, a fight ensues, and Frogmouth finds himself at the center of it. He steps in to protect Adriana, but in the process loses his mask, shattering against the edge of a blade as it reveals the face of the elusive jester:

Adriana's childhood friend, Kor.

[mandosaur]

Dance of the Mythosaur and Dragon (1/?)

Fandom: The Mandalorian, House of the Dragon

Pairing: Din Djarin / OC

Chapter: I (Daenys)

Warning: Allusions to incest, mentions of blood and injuries.

Word Count: 4,791 Words

Estimated Reading Time: 17:25

Previous | Next

Aemond’s injury is a gruesome sight to see. Daenys fights to hold in her horror as she takes a seat next to her younger brother. He blinks a lavender eye wearily at her from his place in his bed while the other rests under heaps of bandages.

“Does it hurt today?” She asks the question softly as she eyes the milk of the poppy on the bedside table.

Aemond has drunk it all already. The maesters have already warned him against consuming more than what he is able to. The pain will only get worse if he teaches himself to become reliant on their concoctions to hold it at bay.

Aemond, to his credit, presents a brave face. He sits up in his bed although it pains him and looks away. His fists clench around the fabric of his sheets in an attempt to fight off the yelp of pain he surely wants to release.

“It will heal soon enough,” he repeats the words he has heard the maesters utter so often, “The swelling has gone down.”

Daenys presses her lips together and softly brushes some hair out of his forehead.

If she closes her eyes, she can still remember that horrid day. She had been sleeping when the sound of screams had woken her up. She had dressed herself in a hurry only to stumble into the throne room to find Aemond in a chair covered in blood and her nephews shouting over each other. From what she had gathered among the arguments, there had been a terrible fight. Her nephew, Lucerys, had taken her brother’s eye with a knife.

The nightmares from that scene have yet to leave her.

“Do you want me to read to you?” She tries to make her voice sound upbeat, normal. Aemond has had enough people fretting over his form and weeping at his bedside. He needs someone who can feign a sense of normalcy just to give him a sense of hope.

On his bedside table rests an old tome of dragons. She recognizes the worn leather cover from the many times she has read it to him before. It is a compendium of all the Targaryen dragons that have passed through their family as well as those still in the wilderness.

Aemond has always enjoyed the book. Like Daenys, his dragon egg had turned to stone in his cradle. He had been tormented by their family for not being a dragon rider like them, and the book had given him a sense of fascination. He loved to hear of all the different dragons he could one day tame.

Of course, now he had Vhaegar. Vhaegar was smaller than her Cannibal, but it was a fearsome beast that towered over buildings and had once flown with Visenya. A hardened war soldier if there ever was one.

She flips the book to Vhaegar’s section.

“If you hurry up and heal, you and I can finally ride our dragons together. I can teach you how to soar across the skies and touch the tips of clouds. We can race to see who has the fastest mount,” Daenys teases.

Even amidst his pain, a tiny corner of his lips quirks up in a smile. Aemond rests his head across his pillow and his fingers go to the edge of his bandage. He winces when his fingertips brush across a particularly tender spot.

“I would win,” he challenges, “Vhaegar Can outfly your cannibal. Speed over size.”

Daenys hums as she finds Vhaegar’s section. It details every battle the dragon has fought in under Visenya and a few other additions from Laena’s time riding it. Some day, the tome will be updated to annotate Aemond’s claim. She hopes the historians will at least note that her brother has declared the loss of his eye an even exchange and not a horrific tragedy. Wings for an eye make him seem braver and less of a victim.

“I doubt that which is why you should hurry up and heal,” Daenys remarks, “So we can put it to the test. Now Aegon won’t have anything to torment you with.”

She flips the tome again. This time, the image of the Cannibal spreads out across the pages. The book describes it as a fearsome beast in the wild unclaimed that devours its own kind. A lone addition at the bottom of the page bears her name and the year when she claimed it. The first Targaryen to ever tame it.

“Can I go see her?” Aemond asks suddenly. His eye drifts outside to the fields.

Somewhere past the palace walls, Vhaegar is being corralled in by the dragon keepers. She had been brought back to the Red Keep following Laena’s funeral, but Aemond had been ordered to stay in his room as his eye healed.

“Your mother asked me to keep you here,” Daenys answers quietly.

Aemond huffs in exasperation. He knows his mother, Queen Alicent, means well, but he is full of conflict. The pain in his eye rages daily, he is tired of staring up at the same four walls for days on end, and he is still resentful of his father, King Viserys, for not aiding him.

Viserys had not stopped by to see his son since the night he had been brought to his bed by the Maesters. Daenys believed he felt sick by the sight of his son so horridly injured, but Aemond believed he was unbothered. Even the night Aemond had been brought to him covered in blood and missing an eye, Viserys had shown more concern towards his grandsons than his own blood.

“How about this? How about I promise to race you on the Cannibal when you recover? We’ll race until we’re tired,” Daenys offered.

Aemond thinks on the offer then gives a quiet nod. His fingers drift to the bandage. A thin line of blood has bloomed on the white fabric indicating it is due for another change.

Daenys gets up.

“Sit up,” she orders.

She has seen the Maesters change the bandages enough times to know how to do it herself. She’s not afraid of blood or infection having also been present each time Alicent gave birth. She can do the changes herself if Aemond allows it.

Aemond’s lone eye stares at her wearily before complying. He winces as she undoes the bandage.

The eye looks worse underneath the layers of fabric. A long jagged scar etches past raw, red flesh. The Maesters had done all they could that night, but there was no saving his eye. Lucerys had completely destroyed it in his clumsy swipe of a knife.

Daenys keeps her expression neutral. She is aware of her little brother watching her intently trying to gauge her reaction. He has already seen Alicent nearly faint when she first saw the injury and the Maesters pull faces. She will not give him another insult by reacting.

“I can’t give you more milk of the poppy. You’ll have to be brave for the pain. A dragon rider sustains a great many injuries in the battlefield. Your scar will just be another story you can tell over cups of ale one day,” she gets to work quickly. The Maesters have thankfully left some extra bandages to the side of his bed.

Aemond grits his teeth.

“I’m disfigured. No one will want me now. Someday I’ll take Lucerys’ eye-“

Daenys winces. She fears the rage and hatred she can hear in his voice. It pains her to think of her family so terribly fractured. She loves both sides of her family equally.

Rhaenyra, Daemon, her nephews, nieces, and Viserys are her family. She has grown up with them, watched them grow up, and loves them all. Rhaenyra is her full blooded sister. She is the blood of the dragon that rages inside their veins and the best parts of Viserys and Daemon combined. Her nephews she’s held in her arms and seen them be brought to this world as she held her sister’s hand through child birth. Daemon is the uncle that carried her as a child and gave her a Valyrian steel dagger for her birthday to protect herself with. Viserys is the loving father who doted on her once her mother had passed and often told her that she was the spirit of Aemma reincarnated.

But Alicent, Aemond, Helaena, Daeron, and Aegon are also her family. Alicent is the mother who watched her grow up into an adult and loved her as her own. Aemond, Helaena, Daeron, and Aegon are her siblings too who she held as infants and watched grow up. They are extensions of her, a family that has loved her from the beginning, and she holds no ill will towards them unlike Rhaenyra and Daemon.

To have two sides of her family in conflict with one another makes her sick to her stomach. She fears the resentment in Aemond’s voice. He is so young and already so poised to strike like a dragon lying in wait…

Aemond senses her discomfort and changes the subject. He is incredibly perceptive. A lifetime of managing his siblings and soothing his mother’s worries has taught him to read the emotions of others.

“The Maesters say I’ll have to wear an eye patch. They’re designing one meant to hide my eye,” he remarks.

Daenys finishes securing the bandages around his eye.

“You don’t want to wear it out? Show the castle what a fearsome soldier you are?”

She teases him quietly hoping to lift his spirits. He needs all the comfort he can get. Aemond makes a sound at the back of his throat. He thanks her quietly and eases back into the pillows. A strand of his white hair falls across his forehead.

“No,” he looks away, “Mother says I should wear a prosthetic and eyepatch. She worries what the sight of my injury will do to the people I meet. I expect the prosthetic to look hideous too.”

Daenys remembers Alicent in the nights after his injury. She had wept at his bedside and prayed to the Seven until her knees had bled. She sobbed when the Maesters had carried his body to his bed. Pale, bleeding to death, and missing an eye, Aemond had looked like a corpse nestled beneath the rows of bandages and blankets. Alicent had held Daenys’ hand so tightly she worried she’d break her fingers as she had prayed to the Mother for Aemond’s healing.

“I have a sapphire,” Daenys recalls, “Perhaps that will be more interesting than a prosthetic? It was my mother’s. I Can present it to you as a gift.”

Her fingers go to the necklace at her throat. It’s a tiny blue sapphire on a silver chain which had once belonged to Aemma Targaryen. A precious heirloom gifted to her after her mother’s death. It means the world to her and she hates to part with it-

But her family means the world to her too. If the sapphire will bring joy to her little brother, it will be a small price to pay.

She slips the necklace from her neck and places it gently in Aemond’s hand.

“You don’t have to-“

“I want to. A gift from me to you. An eye is a precious thing to lose, so a precious gem is an equal exchange.”

She rises to her feet and leaves Aemond stunned. Offering him a small smile, she presses a light kiss to his forehead and quietly excuses herself.

———————————————

Alicent is sitting next to Helaena when she finds them. Helaena has another insect in her hands. A grasshopper which stares at her with beady little eyes and scuttles across her fingers.

Alicent eyes the bug with a note of displeasure in her eyes. A note is laid open on her lap. Daemon’s seal hangs off one side of it.

“You received a summons,” Alicent quietly says, “From Daemon.”

She makes no effort to hide her distaste at his name. Alicent had already disliked Daemon before, been weary of his violent outbursts and crass behavior, but now she detests him. He sided with Rhaenyra after her son had taken the eye of hers.

Daenys takes the letter from her silently. A sense of dread fills her stomach.

She knows what Daemon wants. Before the disaster that was Laena’s funeral, Rhaenyra had approached her.

Daenys is 20. She is at an age where many will consider her an old maid. Already whispers in the kingdom mocked both of Viserys’ daughters through Aemma. The rumors claimed that Rhaenyra was more man than woman daring to consider herself the heir to the seven kingdoms, and Daenys an old maid who no one would want for a wife. With such distasteful claims, it only made sense for her to be married off.

Thus far, she had managed to stay Viserys’ and Alicent’s hand. Viserys had agreed to allowing her to remain unwed in fear that he would lose yet another reminder of Aemma like he had Rhaenyra in marrying her off. Alicent had floated the idea of engaging her to Daeron or Aemond but had backed down when Daenys had pleaded with her not to. She begged that she had been too young when the conversations had taken place, and a far away look full of pain had crossed Alicent’s expression before she had taken back her suggestions.

Daemon and Rhaenyra, however, had not given up. They intended to use her as a political tool for an alliance. They had discussed which Westerosi house to engage her off to and then moved on to the planets beyond theirs. Daenys had at first resisted until Rhaenyra had begged her to help her secure her throne. Seeing her sister nearly desperate had broken the last of her resolve and she had finally agreed.

Now the letter requesting her presence had arrived. Daemon had surely found her a spouse and wanted her to travel to him. From his lands in Pentos, they’d depart to whatever foreign planet he had sold her off to.

“Have you requested a ship for me?” Daenys asks, “I will need to be there soon.”

Alicent picks at her fingernails until the skin bleeds, “You need not go. I can make an excuse. The less time you spend with that dangerous man the better-“

“He’s my uncle,” Daenys defends him, “I will go. Tell the staff to prepare a ship. If I leave by tomorrow, I can be there early.”

To the side, Helaena lifts her eyes from her grasshopper. Her gaze sweeps over the letter in Daenys’ hand.

“The mythosaur will fly side by side with the dragon,” she mumbles, “A war of stars will end when the sword, black as the night sky, pierces the heart of a land made of glass.”

Daenys and Alicent turn to her in confusion, but Helaena has already returned her attention to her bug. Alicent sighs used to her cryptic chatter.

“What does he want with you? Is it not enough his nephew has taken your brother’s eye? Shall he take you away now too?”

“He is my family too,” Daenys responds, “All of you are.”

Her last words are firm. Her family may be content with ripping itself apart, but Daenys wants no part in the conflict. She belongs to both worlds and will not be made to take sides.

Alicent presses her lips together. She looks tired, Daenys notes. There are dark circles under her eyes and lines on her face that weren’t there before. Her hair is in its usual style but less composed and her clothes are slightly more disheveled as if she had hurried her handmaids in dressing her. She has the weight of kingdoms upon her shoulders and the worry for her children embedded deep into her very soul.

Since Aemond’s injury, there has been an uneasy tension in the air that permeates every corner.

Alicent had taken a knife to the heir to the throne. Before the King, before the Kingsguard, before her step grandchildren and children, she had lunged at Rhaenyra’s son with a blade.

Everyone had seen their queen lose their composure. There were still whispers in the air that painted Alicent out to be a mad queen with hatred in her heart. Quite a few of Rhaenyra’s supporters had believed Viserys should have imprisoned Alicent after what she did.

Daenys had wept to see her stepmother and sister fight as her nephews had pressed their faces into her dress. Little Lucerys had blanched and cried his aunt’s name in fear when he thought he might lose an eye. The battle lines had been drawn that day in the throne room.

Greens versus Blacks.

Velaryons versus Targaryens.

Alicent had been forced to kneel before Viserys and beg his forgiveness claiming herself to be a mother frightened for her son. Viserys had quietly accepted her apologies but had done nothing to mend the broken pieces of their family. The blood line was pulled taut and fraying at the edges slowly tearing itself apart.

Daenys felt caught in the middle of it all. Her family in the Red Keep wanted her to stay and remain with them. Show them that she was on their side and would support them the day Viserys took his last breath.

But her family in Dragonstone called her to them. They wanted her to fly past stars and constellations in their support.

Everything felt so wrong and so painful.

“Shall I tell the servants to pack your belongings? Or will you return?” Alicent finally asks.

At her side, Helaena looks up to with a look of worry across her pretty features. Much like the rest, she didn’t want to lose Daenys.

Daenys stares down at the envelope in her hand. Her uncle’s messy scrawl demands her presence. He has kept his message brief knowing that whatever he writes will end up in the hands of ”that cunt, Otto Hightower”, but Daenys knows the true message at the heart of his words.

Once she leaves the Red Keep, there will be no going back. She will be smuggled out into space and will seek out another planet. Perhaps, she may never return to Westeros at all.

“I will return someday,” she hears herself say, “I promise.”

Alicent closes her eyes and bows her head. She knows Daenys has just made a choice. Despite her professed neutrality, she has already fallen into the hands of one side of the war.

“Very well, I will tell Sir Criston to accompany you-“

“No,” Daenys interrupts, “I am sure my uncle will send his cloaks for me. Sir Criston’s presence will not be welcome.”

Helaena’s grasshopper jumps from her hands and away from the stone floor. With a few quick jumps, it disappears around a corner. Helaena looks up at Daenys.

“Do you have to go?” She asks quietly.

Daenys nearly wilts at the sad expression on her face. Helaena is her little sister. She has been by her side since the moment Alicent brought her into the world. It will pain her deeply to say goodbye-

But her other sister needs her too. She cannot ignore the pleas of another sister across Westeros.

“I will be back someday, bug, you always knew I’d have to leave someday,” Daenys stretches her fingers out to braid Helaena’s hair. There are little leaves amidst the blonde tresses where Helaena has surely crawled across the garden in search of her beloved insects.

Alicent watches her quietly as Helaena bites her lower lip. Her eyes are already a little red.

“Do not let them use you as a tool, Daenys. Daemon sees value only in what he can use,” she warns.

“Empty promises yield full coffins,” Helaena whispers. She does not elabore further and Alicent speaks over her.

“The Seven protect you on your journey, dear one. If you ever need anything, send me a letter. Wherever you are, I will send men to retrieve you and bring you back home,” Alicent swears. She stands up and brushes a hand across her skirts. Once more, she looks exhausted, “Shall you tell your father or shall I?”

Daenys braids Helaena’s hair in a little crown at the top of her head. She pins it back with a pin from her own hair.

“Tell him I must travel and ask the servants to prepare my things. I reckon I will have a long journey ahead of me.”

Alicent knows she is not merely talking about Dragonstone. Her lips draw in a tight line, but she sighs to herself and agrees. The star of the Seven winks at her throat as she brushes past her two daughters and disappears.

Daenys wonders if she will see other seven pointed stars in the night sky once she takes off in her special ship sailing for her destiny.

———————————————

Rhaenyra greets her when she arrives at her home. Her nephews stand to the side along with her twin cousins. Daemon has his arms crossed as Daenys arrives on Cannibal’s back.

The Cannibal allows her to dismount him. Daenys pats his neck soothingly. The dragon keepers are ready to take him to the other dragons. Syrax and Caraxes coo in the distance having caught sight of him as he flew across the blue sky.

“Rhaenyra,” Daenys makes a dash for her sister. It has been a while since she has last seen her.

Rhaenyra’s lips turn upwards in a smile and she wraps her arms around Daenys. Daenys is her little sister. She has loved her the moment Aemma called her into the birthing chamber and introduced her to the tiny form swaddled in blankets.

Daemon hangs off to the side, face impatient. He has another letter tucked into his pockets. The crest stamped across it is not one Daenys recognizes and her stomach turns at the knowledge that it belongs to the house she will marry into. It is a beast with two tusks at its front.

Her nephews and cousins take turns embracing her. Little Luce presses his face into her neck and melts into her embrace. He is the kindest of her nephews and the one who always clung to her skirts and wanted to be tucked in when Rhaenyra and Laenor lived in the Red Keep. It is hard to believe the young boy that presses his face deep into her neck like an infant is the same one who blinded her brother.

“Niece,” Daemon greets. His arm goes around her waist in greeting but his form is tense.

He doesn’t trust her, Daenys realizes. She has spent too long in the company of the Greens. Daemon is weary of her even if he means to use her in his schemes.

Perhaps that is what motivated him to send her across the cosmos. Maybe it was less the need for extraterrestrial aid and more a desire to keep her at a distance from where she could not support Aegon’s claim.

“Children, go to your lessons. The dragon keepers will take you flying today,” Rhaenyra orders. There are protests from the children who wish to spend more time with their aunt. A look from Rhaenyra silences them and she physically walks them to the dragon keep.

Daenys taps her foot in anxiety. Left alone with Daemon, she drops the smile from her face.

“Have you found me a husband, uncle?” She sounds exhausted, “Will I leave so soon?”

“I have. The Mandalorians have accepted your hand. They are a people of warriors across the stars. They say their armor is made of a material even Valyrian steel cannot break through. Their new leader was crowned not long ago and he needs a wife to provide him heirs. We will deliver you to him as soon as we can. I have already arranged for a starship to be prepared.”

“And my father knows?” Daenys narrows her eyes at him. She knows he doesn’t.

“I will tell him once the marriage contract has been signed and you have consummated your marriage. Viserys’ will does not extend past our skies. He will not be able to bring you home even if he decides to use the starships we have. I will take whatever vengeful wrath he has for me as long as it means you sit the throne on Mandalore.”

Daenys sighs. She suspected Daemon had kept her father in the dark given Viserys’ calm acceptance of her traveling. He probably hadn’t even realized she would not be returning back to the Red Keep much less Westeros. Nor, she reckons, he knew she would be wed off to a stranger.

“And my sister agreed to this?”

It stings to know that Rhaenyra agreed to sell her off. Daenys always thought that her sister would be on her side. Once sold off to Laenor, she imagined her sister would not force her into her own arranged marriage.

But war makes hypocrites out of allies.

“I would not have asked this of you if I thought there was another way,” Rhaenyra calls out as she returns, “But we need fighters. You know a war is brewing. The Hightowers will not let me take my throne peacefully. I must gather as many allies as I can. You once swore to me you would help me keep my crown.”

Her sister grabs her hand and squeezes it tightly. Daenys is reminded of the day Rhaenyra had been crowned heir. The lords of the other houses had bent the knee and recognized her as their next queen. An 8 year old Daenys had also clasped her hand after the celebration and promised to do anything she could to support her sister.

She just hadn’t imagined how far Daemon had been willing to stretch that promise.

“I do not want to shed the blood of our brothers and sister-“

“Then don’t,” Rhaenyra interrupts Daemon before he has a chance to retort something dark, “Marry for me instead. Make allies with these Mandalorians and rule them as their queen. Ask them for their fighters when the time comes and use their planet to scare Otto Hightower into not using Aegon as a tool against me. If he is too afraid to fight me, you will not need to spill any blood. I would never ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was the best option.”

Daenys stares down at their clasped hands. She is reminded of all the times Rhaenyra held her hand as children when she was scared.

The first time she had ever ridden on a dragon, it had been on Syrax. Daenys’ dragon egg had turned to stone when she was an infant and doomed her to a life of never flying according to the dragon keepers. Daenys had cried at the gardens seeing her sister soar across the sky with Syrax despite Aemma’s attempts to soothe her and Viserys’ quiet words of comfort.

When Rhaenyra had landed again and seen her sister in tears, she had rushed towards her and taken her hand. Ignoring their mother’s protests, she had helped Daenys up into Syrax’s saddle and taken her flying above the clouds. Any time Daenys had grown scared because the dragon had flown too fast, Rhaenyra would squeeze her hand to soothe her. Soon, the pair had descended into giggles and screams of glee as they drifted past the clouds and up towards the gleaming sun.

On the day that Aemma had died, when Rhaenyra had returned from the tourney and their mother’s screams had echoed through the halls of the palace followed by their father’s wails, Rhaenyra had taken her hand and squeezed it tightly. She had soothed Daenys and held her head to her chest as her own tears had run down her cheeks.

And on the day of the funeral for their mother and little brother, as their bodies had been consumed by dragon fire, Rhaenyra had held her hand tightly and promised to protect her. She had not let go once even after the mourners had gone back inside. The two had drawn strength and courage from each other as their hearts cracked for the memory of their mother and brother.

It was for those memories of her sister that Daenys allowed herself to be used as a bargaining chip. She and Rhaenyra were the last of Aemma’s memory. She would always love her sister and have her back even if it pained her.

“Tell me about these Mandalorians then,” Daenys hides her sadness as she stares across the waters of Westeros and says goodbye to her planet for one last time, “If I am to become their ruler, I must know everything about them.”

[mizufae]

I posted 938 times in 2022

238 posts created (25%)

700 posts reblogged (75%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@tijuanabiblestudies

@paramaline

@mascarons

@ghostalservice

@wexlermendelssohn

I tagged 727 of my posts in 2022

Only 22% of my posts had no tags

#star trek - 39 posts

#oh hey art happened - 16 posts

#food - 14 posts

#botw - 13 posts

#laugh rule - 12 posts

#miniature things - 11 posts

#bnha - 11 posts

#craiyon - 11 posts

#the gloaming - 9 posts

#forbidden jellies - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i’m imagining everyone else shows up in like cardboard and snow boots and will feels overdressed until everyone begs him to help them match

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I have sealed my fate in hell this hallow's eve by making a pumpkin hat for my cats

13 notes - Posted October 31, 2022

#4

I would pay a whole sixty dollars new Nintendo game price for a Breath of the Wild DLC that added a whole traveling naturalist storyline where they’ve made a way to update the sheika sensor with new entries for all of the non-useful flora in Hyrule, like the different flowers in the fields, the different types of trees, the thorn bushes and shrubs… maybe even the types of rocks? Anyway, add to that all the non-combative fauna like the different birds and squirrels and different creatures, maybe also the bugs and lizards?? Maybe the different colorations of horses? And the storyline would be that Link needs to go around and photograph all of these to contribute to a great compendium to help Hyrule recover from the lingering effects of the great calamity. Maybe it would start with Beedle asking you if you have any pictures of beetles collected, because he’s writing a book on his collection (which you could later buy from him and store in your house, natch), but there would be different types of things asked by different people but maybe one of the sheikah scientists helps you collate it all together into a compendium, or maybe there is a scientist OC. I imagine Flowerblight Gannon would demand pictures of every type of ornamental flower. Anyway you would get incremental rewards and hints for finding the more elusive and rare things when you turn in pictures. Maybe that Korok who wants to see a picture of a blupee would point you to other more mystical things. And if you complete everything you get a cutscene with a bunch of happy scientists and intrigued school children and instead of calling you the hero some people call you the famous naturalist.

15 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

#3

@brofisting in makeup news, I have been splurging on some stuff and have some thoughts and conclusions!

I think that your conclusion from before, that everybody notices way less about skin texture than we do on ourselves, is totally true. But ALSO, that a lot of makeup, specifically foundation and adjacent, are intended to change the apparent texture of the skin. That looking like you are wearing makeup is, in fact, intentional. I think the conclusion is that skin is not in and of itself a desirable base for “looks” and it interferes with, yknow, capitalism. It seems like getting a true skin-but-better appearance is one of the hardest and most idiosyncratic things a makeup utilizing person can aim for.

Like, I have watched many videos and read many articles now on how to apply foundation when you have peach fuzz and stubble and that shit involves like, numerous layers of smooshing silicone all over and very fussy brush movements and presumably like, not moving your face until everything sets and then wtf I guess like, not moving for the rest of the day either??

I have also investigated how to apply foundation for older skin, skin with fine lines, skin with uneven base tones, etc. And a ton of it is either like, get those pores out of here, we can’t let them know we osmose! or like, now that you are a gaunt corpse with saggy fat lumps you have to rub this magic stone on your face every day for no reason I can explain!

So this all seems like bullshit and there is only one strain of advice I’ve come across that in any way seems legit for people who are not doing a 4K HD photoshoot in the next twenty minutes and/or a drag show, and that is: just don’t use foundation at all, because it creates a problem to be solved. Instead, use carefully chosen and applied concealer and tinted moisturizers in judiciously chosen zones, and focus on skin health. This seems to be the tack that k-beauty takes, or at least it used to, and it seems to be the best way for old people to look old and still have fun with makeup without looking like they forgot to put on half their face.

So like, things I’ve bought and have messed around with:

Fenty Beauty Eaze Drop Blurring Skin Tint - this shit is definitely top tier. Unlike other tinted moisturizers I’ve tried it doesn’t cake up in creases and really does seem to blur discoloration and spots. But it doesn’t interfere with skin texture and in areas where I have stubble or hair it doesn’t cling to it either. I was able to buff it out with my fingers without seeing prints, and I was able to layer on more for more coverage on a spot with a tiny cut and it didn’t get shiny.

Bare Minerals tinted moisturizer - this stuff cakes up on my dry skin BUT is a much higher coverage than the fenty stuff and is a better match for my weirdly neutral skin undertone, and it has spf. I think if I were oily it would be better. I like their powder products more but I’m not mad about this one because I can use it in combination with other products to cover stuff like a healing zit.

Bare minerals liquid concealer - definitely the best match for my skin tone. It’s ever so slightly lighter but doesn’t have any color correction and it doesn’t settle much into fine lines like other thicker concealers do. I can put some on the inner corner of my eyes, some on the redness around my nose and some on the corners of my mouth and trust that it won’t look like I have huge blobs of concealer dotted around but that it will cover any redness that I get over the day, and helps me control stuff like my resting bitch face through careful use of lipstick and eyeliner. I have also used a tiny bit as an eyeshadow base since it’s such a close match.

Elf camo concealer - damn this shit thicc. It is definitely lighter and more warm toned than my skin and mad opaque. I used way too much of it when I first tried it, not cuz I was doing guru triangles but because it just like glopped on there. If I take a teeny tiny brush and load it from the doe foot applicator, and then use it to kind of… outline my eye bags, and pop it on juuuuust a couple places where I have some dark spots, and then very very carefully bounce a damp sponge along those lines to feather it out, but not too much!! I can get some color correction and very subtle contouring (is it reverse contouring?? If it’s only highlight??) that is totally not gonna go anywhere until I wash it off. Putting it on UNDER tinted moisturizer seems to help, it’s like doing an overlay layer so it makes things more harmonious. Face, photoshop, what’s the difference honestly.

Neutrogena oil cleanser: oil cleansing is REAL. I have been doing this a few times a week for a few weeks now and my skin is way less flaky and my under eye puffiness is a bit less (I think cuz of the massage aspect, so just do lymphatic massage if you don’t want to do oil cleansing) and some of my hormonal zits went through their cycle MUCH faster. Also I seem to have less visibly oxidized sebaceous filaments on my nose and chin, hurrah! Like, they are still there, but they aren’t clogged or bumpy feeling. I tried a couple other oil cleansers and this one is cheap and not smelly and washes clean, like, it really does turn a milky texture when you get it wet and lifts off the skin easily, unlike a certain bee-themed brand which was sticky for like two days after.

Just straight up jojoba oil: I have been slapping this onto my dry flaky eczema patches and it doesn’t mitigate the itch but my skin is SO MUCH faster at being not horribly red and inflamed when I leave this on there. It absorbs really well and doesn’t leave residue and I assume if I am ever actually sufficiently moisturized that won’t be the case but as it is I appear to be a sponge for this. It is helping my chronically chapped lips! It doesn’t taste like ass like a lot of other intense moisturizers, and isn’t an exfoliant or anything, but it seems to be helping the wrinkly parts of my lips be less wrinkly. Which leads to better lipstick application and so-on.

I did indeed shave my face with one of those little face razors. I am now stubbly and the texture is NOT desirable. The moment I did it I played around with makeup and it was okay, but maybe not like… better than when I’d done it pre-shave. And like, later that night I had shadow, so… fuck that. I think I’m gonna mess around with sugaring my stache and chin hair, and definitely leaving my cheek fuzz to be free and flowing. I think that not using a foundation at ALL on areas where I have dark hair is actually better than trying to cover it up.

Let me know how your quest to be the hottest boy band boy is going!

25 notes - Posted May 12, 2022

#2

Broke: when they are in civvies, bakugou is goth punk, midoriya is a candy pastel cutie

Woke: they both go incognito, bakugou wears soft lavender and cute character merch with fluffy sweaters, midoriya is full goth with eyeliner and torn fishnets and studded leather

Bespoke: neither of them have a single thought beyond heroing in their heads and thus graduate with only school uniforms and ancient gym clothes, they run into each other in full costume at 3am at target shopping for pj pants a month after graduation.

50 notes - Posted March 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

One thing that helps me identify purity culture in disguise is asking this question: are they telling me what is and is not pure, or are they giving me a framework to decide for myself and only myself? Like, for example, when talking about fandom stuff, is a person saying a story that contains certain things will be bad universally for everyone, or is someone saying that the reason something is bad for them and possibly for me is because it contains those certain things and why that is? In something like nutrition, is someone giving “advice” that talks about lists of things I must include and exclude from my diet because we all must optimize our machine-bodies? Or is someone explaining how certain foods can make some people feel different things, how to recognize those feelings and ideas for how to change that if we think it necessary? In religion, is someone telling me what god declares about all people, or is someone talking about how we can individually relate to the things their god has declared?

65 notes - Posted May 23, 2022

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[whumping-to-conclusions]

Howdy there! Thanks for tagging me on the post. Could I get number 20 please? [voice trails off as I vanish behind a corner in awkward slinkiness]

This snippet introduces a couple of my OCs, Eleanor and Jesse, two definitely-not-in-love programmers in their mid-20s who you'll be seeing on here every now and then. They're a pair of cuties; I hope you like them.

----

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Eleanor was typing away at her computer when it started.

It was early afternoon at the office and she was editing a line of code, nose practically pressed to the screen, when suddenly, her vision went fuzzy at the edges. She rubbed at her eyes, thinking that maybe she had gotten something in them, but her periphery remained fuzzy. Lights and blobs of nameless colors started popping in front of her eyes.

“That’s weird,” she murmured.

Then came the pain.

A sharp, clear stroke of pain cleaved her forehead, like someone had driven a searing nail into her brain.

“Agh!” Eleanor took her glasses off and pressed her hands to her head, but it did nothing to abate the throbbing, aching pulse, the nail driving in further second after second.

“Eleanor? You okay?” Jesse’s voice floated out to her from the neighboring cubicle. Eleanor couldn’t even answer.

She heard footsteps approaching. Jesse’s hand touched her shoulder, the brush of a bird’s wing.

“Eleanor? What’s wrong?”

“Headache,” she gasped. “Really bad headache.”

More footsteps.

“What’s going on?” Mia’s voice. A pause. “Is… she okay?”

“I don’t know. She says her head hurts.”

Eleanor heard Mia bend down beside her, felt her feel her forehead.

“Eleanor, can you hear me? Look at me.”

Eleanor lifted her head from her hands and winced at the radiance from the fluorescent light above her. It was much too bright.

Mia was kneeling beside her, and Jesse and a few of her other coworkers were standing around her. She groaned a little. “Nothing―just―the head―and I can’t really see―it’s too bright in here.” She shivered and closed her eyes, pressing her hands to her head again.

“I think she has a migraine,” Mia said to Jesse. “She’s probably going to have to take the day off, especially if she’s got no meds for it.”

“I’ll take her home,” Jesse said immediately.

“You sure? I can take her if you’re busy with something.”

“No, I―I got it.” The others murmured their assent. Jesse’s hand touched Eleanor’s shoulder again. “Can you stand up?”

Eleanor nodded. Woozy from pain, she rose from the desk. It felt like she was underwater, her movements thick and slow. She opened her eyes a crack, looking down at the floor to avoid the fluorescent lights. Mia handed Eleanor her bag and glasses. Jesse offered his hand, and Eleanor took it, grabbing at the walls of the cubicle for support as he led her out of the office.

Jesse stopped and turned to face Mia again. “Uh, tell Ben I’m taking the day off.”

Twenty minutes later, Eleanor was huddled on Jesse’s couch as he brought her a cup of tea. The room was darkened, the lamps turned off to keep from hurting her head. The apartment was cluttered, but cozy--movie posters on the walls, CDs and books piled up around the coffee table and couches, not to mention the wealth of electronics scattered around.

Jesse handed her the cup and tried not to wince. He hated seeing Eleanor like this―her skin too grey, her hands shaking, her beautiful dark eyes dull with pain. He handed her the cup. “Drink this--my mother always made it when I was sick.” Eleanor took a sip, and Jesse glanced at her for her reaction. “You like it?”

Eleanor swallowed. “Yeah, it’s―it’s good. I just….”

Jesse knew that voice―she always had a little hesitation to her speech when she was afraid of inconveniencing someone. “What is it?”

Eleanor set down the cup on the end table. “Something cold sounds better, actually.”

Jesse nodded. “No worries, I’ll get you some ice water. Anything else?”

“And… a cool rag for my head sounds pretty good right now,” she admitted.

“Of course. I’ll be back in a second.”

Jesse dashed out to the apartment’s kitchen and poured a glass of ice water for Eleanor, then took a clean dish rag out of the cupboard and ran it under the faucet. He started wringing it out with more force than what was strictly necessary. The worst part of this whole thing was that there was absolutely nothing he could do to help Eleanor but keep her comfortable. His job as a programmer was all about fixing―tweaking the code, eliminating bugs, changing the programs to function exactly as intended. But this was a bug he couldn’t fix. He hated it.

Jesse returned to the living room along with the glass and cold rag. “Here you go, El.”

Eleanor took a sip and draped the rag on her head, brushing her dark bangs aside. Jesse took a seat on the other end of the couch and tried to let his mind wander. But he was still too fixated on Eleanor’s pain. He found himself looking back at her every minute or so, just to make sure that she was okay.

“You can go do something else if you want,” Eleanor said softly, after a while.

Taking care of you is what I want. “I’m staying here.”

Eleanor nodded.

The afternoon passed by and slowly changed into night, and Jesse’s stomach started to rumble. “I… kinda need some food,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Eleanor gave a listless shrug. “Still hurts. And I feel a little sick to my stomach.”

Jesse took her hand and rubbed at her knuckles gently. “I’m sorry. Does food sound good or no?”

“I don’t really feel like eating.”

“Okay. Let me know if you want something later, though, yeah?”

“I will.”

Jesse turned on some classical music and thirty minutes later he sauntered out of the kitchen with a bowl of tomato soup.

“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said as he sat down on the couch again.

Jesse’s brows drew together. “For what? You haven’t done anything.”

“I... didn’t want to put you through this whole mess. I… I don’t want to be a burden on you.” She picked at the hem of her blouse.

Jesse set down the soup and looked her straight in the eyes. “Now, I want you to listen to me, El. You are not a burden. Don’t ever think that, okay?”

“Okay.” Eleanor nodded, then rubbed at her temples. “It just hurts so bad.”

“I know.” Jesse gave a sympathetic grimace. “Is there anything that can help take your mind off the pain? Any movies you like, or music? Or maybe… no, that’s a bit silly.”

“What?”

Jesse felt his ears getting hot. “I was going to suggest I could read a book to you, but, you know, if that’s childish or whatever―”

“No, that sounds nice. Really,” Eleanor added, leaning forward earnestly. “You seem like you’d have a good reading voice.”

“Okay. What sounds good?” Jesse got up and walked over to the bookshelf on the other side of the room and started running his index finger down the spines of some of the books. “I have all kinds of novels--mystery, fantasy, a little horror but you probably don’t want that right now….”

“Any fairy tales?”

Her voice was so soft, a bird’s wing brush, that Jesse wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Sorry, what was that?”

Eleanor blushed and cleared her throat. “Sorry, I, uh, asked if you had any fairy tales.”

Jesse smiled. Look at her, all embarrassed about it. “I think I do, actually. Give me a moment.”

Jesse darted through the door on the opposite side of the living room and into his bedroom. It took a few minutes to locate the book, but eventually he found it stashed under his bed.

He walked back into the living room toting the huge volume and flopped down on the couch beside Eleanor. The cover was dusty, faded pink and green, and embossed with curly gold letters. Jesse rubbed the dust off the cover. “Hans Christian Andersen’s Compendium of Fairy Tales. My favorite as a kid, actually. Here we go.” He flipped to the first page and cleared his throat. “Once upon a time….”

Jesse had no idea how much time passed as he read tale after tale, keeping his voice lilting and soft as to not aggravate Eleanor’s migraine. Eleanor watched the pages turn with her lovely eyes, which seemed to grow just a bit brighter as he read. Eventually, Jesse realized that it was very silent, and looked over. Eleanor had fallen asleep against his arm, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. Her breathing was deep and even.

Jesse didn’t want to disturb her, so he simply stayed like that for a while, listening to the sounds of the night, until the book slipped from his hands and he, too, drifted off with a head full of dreams.

[bigmeatymudcrabchitins]

A not-so-brief overview of my Skyrim Dova OCs bc i need to scream to the digital void about my ideas

Freyora Lind, more commonly known by her strange alias “Bjorne Icepick”

A Nord-eventually-turned-werewolf who orphaned during the Great War and taken in by a Dunmeri mercenary whose residence was in Windhelm’s Gray Quarter. Grew up in a cramped boarding house setting among desperate mercenaries of varying backgrounds. Many of them would all come and go, but there was always some sort of a familial bond between them all.

From a young age she got in a lot of fights against people who insulted her for living in the Gray Quarter among the dark elves. Eventually she took a fight too far and was jailed for murder around 14, but was broken out shortly after by a band of masked vampires. Turns out some of her mercenary comrades unwittingly caught vampirism during a contract to clear out a vampire den and had to skip town, but not before ensuring one of their own wasn’t left to rot.

Lived in Cyrodil for about 15 years, but returned to Skyrim pursuing rumors surrounding a cure to vampirism, as her adoptive father would be nearing the end of his elven lifespan and had wished to die a normal death.

Seeing as she was literally a fugitive, and her long-belated parents were somewhat renowned for their battlefield prowess, she took on a false identity. AND an act to match it.

She’ll eat raw meat, chase prey with swords instead of using a bow like a normal person, harp about irrational conspiracy theories, and more. Everyone’s foul reactions to her outlandish act are plainly hilarious to her and only encourage her to act even stranger.

The alias “Bjorne Icepick” was simply the most ridiculous name she could think of.

Not the most morally outstanding. Besides drunken brawling, she’ll steal from anyone who angers her, even if it’s things she literally won’t ever need such as all the goblets in a household. It’s the pettiness that counts. “Try drinking your damn high-end wine now, jackass.”

Calls Dwarven Automatons “Gundams.” Including she herself, no one knows what that means.

Joins the Companions out of homesickness and a desire to fill in a gap that leaving home left.

Hasn’t bothered curing herself of lycanthropy because her whole schtick is being incredibly resourceful, and that includes using any means of power necessary. Still doesn’t fancy Hircine’s Hunting Grounds as her desired afterlife, though.

As her journey goes on, however, her lightheartedly eccentric face starts to fall off as a number of events push her to begin to question the legitimacy of her actions up until that point.

Some of which include the eventual death of her adoptive father (and how she was indirectly responsible for it even if it was what he wanted), Delphine’s ultimatum, the civil war as a collective, learning the tragic history behind the Falmer and the original Companions’ role in it, and killing of Vyrthur (no matter how much he genuinely deserved it).

She grows disgusted by herself down to the core. She takes to skooma to cope, and starts to be plagued by serious skooma-induced side effects. She ends up shutting herself away from all her responsibilities and distancing herself from her friends.

Does she get better? Maybe. I haven’t thought up anything past this point lol

Moureneris Alta

A very, VERY ancient vampiric snow elf, (though it’s notable she was born a considerable amount of time after the razing of Sarthaal)

Survived many atrocities. Stayed in isolation with a band of vampires for countless years out of sheer disgust for the nature of the sapient races. (I’ll explain her full story some other time. It’s pretty complicated)

She was abducted from her isolated lifestyle by a certain person i’ll talk about later. She managed to free herself south of Skyrim, and uh, walks right into that Imperial ambush. The rest is history.

Super ignorant to modern society as a result of centuries of isolation. Exploited for comedic relief. (“What in the name of Oblivion is a Cyrodilic Empire? Are you messing with me? And please, how does levitation magic simply get outlawed by this hypothetical Empire? What are you to do when you fall down a crevice? Just... let yourself perish? How degrading.)

She reintegrated herself into society with vengeance in mind under the belief that all humans are savage bloodlusting murderers who had to answer for their treachery. (And she was royally angry there was no Dwemer left to spite, but partially satisfied at the same time). But she grows conflicted after being shown genuine kindness, even as early as being freed from her binds in Helgen.

Subsequently has a very muddled redemption arc. Queue Dragonborn hero stuff

She has impaired vision, but she cultivated detect life magic to aid her in daily life and combat (think Hyakkimaru from Dororo ‘19 and his soul detection or Toph Beifong from ATLA and her seismic sense). At her peak, she can detect life from about a kilometer away.

She can just barely read, but only if she holds the text incredibly close to her face, not to mention her Cyrodilic lessons were left unfinished after her abduction, making reading a very taxing process. Weary travelers are often spooked at the sight of a floating, ghastly looking elven woman with her nose pressed up against crossroad signs, and it has become somewhat of an urban legend.

Isn’t as nearly as skilled with detecting the dead and tenses up in burial crypts or around other vampires for that reason. Unfortunately, being the Dragonborn and all, she finds herself in a lot of crypts...

When questioned about her background due to her unique appearance: “Oh, yeah. My mother was one of those mer from the east. You know the ones. Dark elves, I think? And my father was one of those er, tall elv- no, sorry, HIGH elves. Yeah. They both died in a big fire or something though. It was horrible. I can’t get the noxious smell or the deafening screams out of my head. Good talk, but never ask me about that again.”

Queue sheltered old immortal antics: “Wow, you’re THAT old? Enlighten me on how it felt witnessing the fall of the Dwemer. Or perhaps the rise of Tiber Septim’s Empire. The Gates of Ob-“ “Oblivion if I know. I lived in someone’s basement for thousands of years. And I still don’t know what everyone means by Empire. You all are messing with me, aren’t you? That really annoys me.”

She ultimately returns to faith in Auri-El and makes it her life’s purpose to help the Betrayed find peace, as well as to seek out any remaining snow elf groups. Probably good friends with Gelebor or something.

Had a crush on Serana. We all know how THAT went. Damned temples.

Was originally gonna spiral into a much darker corruption arc (another ATLA comparison being Jet or Hama) but I just felt bad for her. Moureneris can have a little found peace. As a treat.

That’s her preliminary design made. I’ll need a mod to properly play her, because that right there was made by choosing Dunmer as her race. But I can’t do that. I’m on console, and while I got the Steam port a month ago, my PC’s stone age specs can’t handle Skyrim yet and I’ll need to wait until I can afford a better graphics card (thanks economic inflation)

Alexandre Armasi, jokingly nicknamed Alexandre the Curious

A complete and unapologetic export of my character from a dead and unfinished DND campaign. Except there are no Aasimar in Skyrim, so he’s half Altmer half Bosmer. And his initial last name was Armas but I thought Armasi suited his Skyrim counterpart more, as subtle a change it is.

He’s mainly Bosmer in appearance and constitution, save for his hair and eyes, which are more similar to that of his Altmeri father’s.

I can’t really export his original backstory though because the campaign wouldn’t translate well into TES lore at all.

He’s a writer who came wandering into Skyrim in search of inspiration. While he mainly writes dramatic fables, he wanted to divert his focus to crafting his own bestiary and herbal compendium surrounding Skyrim’s fauna and flora. The ones at home are simply too vague to him!

He’s very altruistic, wishing to spread cheer wherever he goes, through the art of song (even though he was a cleric in DND and not a bard. My bad.) However, many of his verses are just blatant self promotions of his published fables.

But he’s too naive for his own good. Dangerously so. In fact, he says what’s on his mind with little forethought, with little grasp on the consequences of his actions, which lands him in lots of trouble. “I don’t favor him myself, but you guys kill people over Talos worship? That’s not very cool. A bit scary, if you ask me.” or “A Stormcloak rebel? Didn’t your leader kill a bunch of Reachmen rebels years back, or so I’ve heard. By the divines that’s not a man I’d make a symbol of nonconformity.”

He’s also insatiably curious. The type to ACTUALLY shove alchemic ingredients in his mouth with no knowledge of their properties, experiment with dangerous rune spells, throw rocks at pressure plates, and more. Needless to say he’s very accident prone.

Doesn’t know common curse words. People exploit this for laughs. Think that episode of Spongebob.

Everyone is a little baffled that HE of all people is the prophesied Dragonborn of legend. This agonizingly imbecilic writer who has absentmindedly wandered into burial crypts, troll dens, bandit forts, and more, too busy juggling his manuscripts to pay attention to his surroundings.

His past doesn’t exactly reflect his outlook on life. His mother and father fought in the Great War aligned with the Imperials despite their elven background. Both managed to live to see the war’s conclusion, but his father vanished without a trace shortly after, and it seems his mother knows something she won’t tell him.

With plenty of exposure to bad influences, his innocence is slowly lost throughout the course of his journey, and his altruism begins to grow twisted. But nevertheless, he maintains his jovial, social persona, except this time with much darker undertones. Kinda like a creepy dentist or something.

Whoops. He winds up becoming a feared Dark Brotherhood assassin. (Haha get it “Innocence Lost”???) He somehow deluded himself into thinking that the life of an assassin was the right thing to do. But he’s a funky little guy so he gets a pass for his heinous crimes against society

[inthegroundontime]

Title: A Matter of Perspective Rating: K+ Ships: Rudyard/OC Summary: In which Rudyard’s in-laws struggle to see what Cordelia sees in the man she married.

Cordelia Roach’s parents believed three things about names. Firstly, Mr. and Mrs. Roach believed that a monosyllabic surname could only be improved upon by a multisyllabic and mellifluous first name. None of their children had a name shorter than three syllables. By contrast, they believed that middle names should be short and secret and so it was not until Cordelia was fifteen that she learned her middle name was “Anne”, which was an anticlimactic moment in young Cordelia Anne Roach’s life. Finally, the Roaches believed that names carried meaning and the most meaningful names in all the world were those from literature. When Mrs. Roach discovered that she was pregnant with twin girls, it dawned upon Mr. Roach (who would one day become “Dr. Roach” for this hypothesis) that he could test this hypothesis by naming the eldest and youngest for the least and most dutiful of Shakespearean daughters. 

Desdemona Roach consulted her parents when she chose careers and boyfriends alike, eventually marrying her father’s TA after being granted parental blessing three times. Cordelia Roach consulted no one before deciding that she would write a compendium of obscure musical instruments and travel the world to do so. She certainly did not consult anyone when, after three years of traveling, she settled on the island of Piffling. And if she consulted either of her parents before marrying Rudyard Funn, she never told Rudyard who upon asking Dr. Roach for Cordelia’s hand over Christmas was told rather tartly that he’d be better off asking Cordelia if he wanted an opinion of consequence.

Dr. Roach thought Cordelia married Rudyard as another act of defiance. He never liked the man and, naturally, that meant that Cordelia liked him. He and his wife had indulged their daughter in numerous boyfriends up to this point - bohemians and lawyers and everything in between – and no sooner than receiving the seal of parental approval, Cordelia would break things off with the boyfriend. They never once liked Rudyard, who had once expressed his dislike for Shakespeare after someone had foolishly handed him Cordelia’s eggnog. One sip of alcohol had sent him on a long-winded rant about the faults of “King Lear” and the rules of inheritance that ended with the revelation that he had a twin sister, who he’d left to spend Christmas alone – all cardinal sins in the Roach household.

Mrs. Roach thought Cordelia married Rudyard because he was the safest option. For all his unlikability, Rudyard Funn was steadily employed as a funeral director and the only things certain in life were death and taxes. After spending three years adrift in the world, Rudyard was by far the tamest and most stable of choices Cordelia could have made in a husband. The fact that he scandalized her parents served as a bonus, but not the impetus of their union.

Desdemona, however, knew that neither of her parents was correct. Cordelia had rung her the day she met Rudyard to announce that she had met the man she was going to marry. Desdemona had been cooking dinner for her boys – Demetrius and Lysander – when the telephone rang. When she answered it, she expected to make a little small talk with her sister before Cordelia announced her next big adventure across the globe. Instead, Cordelia wasted no time with a preamble.

“I’ve met the man I’m going to marry,” she announced instead of saying “hello”. It wasn’t unlike Cordelia to get straight to the point, but it was unlike her to speak of marriage. Desdemona clicked her tongue.

“That’s nice, love,” she said. “And how’s the music shop going?”

“He came into the music shop with the most beautiful mandolin. One of the strings had broken and he wanted a new one and a tune-up, but he’d been very clearly doing it himself for quite some time.”

“I see.”

“You don’t understand,” Cordelia continued, “I thought the instrument was from the 18th century. But he said it was very early 19th and he was right!”

For courtesy, Cordelia waited three weeks before asking Rudyard Funn out and the more phone calls Desdemona got, the more she believed her sister was right that she would one day marry Rudyard Funn. When Cordelia made up her mind, she was not easily swayed. They shared a few obscure interests, but chiefly they shared self-confidence bordering on fearlessness. One thing they did not share was common sense. Cordelia was a sensible woman, a bit overzealous for most people, but competent and capable.  The only time Desdemona visited Piffling before the wedding, she watched Rudyard drop his watch into a casket and have to tear up the planks himself, once the family was gone and only Cordelia and Desdemona remained to witness. When he found it again and reconstructed the casket, Cordelia sighed patiently and said, “It’s the little, human things that make you fall in love, isn’t it?” What, then, were the big ones that kept her in love with him? Desdemona was never really sure. She’d been back to the island only a handful of times – which was more than their parents – especially during Cordelia’s pregnancy.

“We’re hoping to only have one child,” Cordelia said. “I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you what being a twin is like.”

Desdemona hugged her teacup tighter between her hands.

“You realize biology is against you,” she said. “Twins tend to run in families and both you and Rudyard are twins.”

Cordelia waved a hand.

“We’ll take our chances,” she said. “I just wouldn’t wish the kind of pressure Dad put on us on any of my children.”

“He would have done it whether we were twins or not,” Desdemona pointed out. “That’s just Dad.”

“But that isn’t my style. Or Rudyard’s.” Cordelia’s hand settled atop her swollen belly. “And anyway, we won’t know until the baby is born.”

“You should go for a sonogram.”

“Now look here,” Rudyard said, emerging from the kitchen and wiping his hands on a tea towel. “We won’t be invading our child’s privacy during what may be the last moments of peace he or she knows before being forced to join society.”

“The doctor doesn’t have a sonogram machine,” Cordelia explained.

“That too.” Rudyard sighed. “Are you sure you want to deliver on Piffling? There’s still time to change your mind…”

She didn’t and three months later, when their daughter was born, Cordelia had been given so many painkillers that she lay passed out in her hospital bed while Rudyard, Desdemona, and Rudyard’s twin sister, Antigone, took turns holding the baby and hovering around her. 

“You need to name her,” Antigone said, handing the baby back to her brother. “Rudyard…”

“I’m waiting for Cordelia,” he said as if it was the most rational response. “If that means the baby doesn’t have a name for an hour longer…”

“Rudyard…”

“Two hours.”

“Didn’t you and Cordelia have a list of names for both genders?” Desdemona asked helpfully. Her brother-in-law loved lists and Cordelia had always appreciated cataloging. Rudyard patted down his trouser pockets and paled. 

“It was in the other go bag,” he confessed. “I meant to make copies but…”

“Jesus wept.” Antigone threw her hands up. “Isn’t this just typical?”

“Remind me to judge your split decisions when your wife is in labor someday,” Rudyard snapped venomously. The baby made a fussy noise in his arms and he shushed her, rocking her in his arms. 

“I’m going to get a coffee,” Antigone said. “And when I come back, I expect you to have your shortlist ready to review.”

She disappeared from the room, leaving Desdemona alone with Rudyard for what must’ve been the first time since they’d met. Silence ensued. 

“You know,” Desdemona said after two minutes and she felt sure Antigone wasn’t coming back any time soon, “my family has rules about naming.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard. I quite admire them, even if I think you and Cordelia should both be in therapy for what your father tried to pull with you,” Rudyard said. “But only a multisyllabic name would do with the last name Funn. And something serious. This child will one day run Piffling’s only funeral home.”

“Our parents favored Shakespearean names.”

“Shakespeare was a hack. Give twelve chimpanzees enough time and typewriters and they could just as easily write Hamlet.”

“I’m sorry you think that. Ophelia would be a lovely name.”

“Oh, yes. Ophelia and Cordelia. The rhyming wouldn’t at all make me feel like the odd man out.”

“Then pick something that doesn’t rhyme,” Desdemona said. “There’s Juliet, Beatrice, Rosalind-”

“Will you forget Shakespeare for a moment?” Rudyard snapped. “Cordelia and I agreed to expand our options.”

“To what? Dead authors and Greek tragedies?”

“As a matter of fact-”

“Christ.”

“That’s how my family chose to do names. It’s every inch as viable as the Roach Approach.”

Desdemona raised an eyebrow and stared not at Rudyard, but at her newborn niece, pink and wrinkly and looking out at the world with unfocused eyes. She softened a bit.

“Maybe not a Greek tragedy,” she said softly. “Do you really want to condemn her to a lifetime of sorrow?”

“Antigone turned out perfectly fine.”

Desdemona made a skeptical sound. Rudyard looked up and then nodded.

“Right. Fair enough.” A pause. “Are there Greek myths with happy endings?”

“Not for the women in them.” 

Rudyard’s shoulders slumped and he eased into the armchair in the room. He cast a weary, side-along glance at his wife’s unconscious form. He looked helpless for a moment but smiled with sad fondness. 

“We talked about using musical terms. Cordelia liked ‘Allegra’ but I think it’s a lot of pressure to name your child ‘Happy Funn’. Imagine all the smiling she’d have to do.”

“What did you like?” Desdemona asked.

“Cordelia told me we couldn’t name our child Mandolin.”

Desdemona’s jaw dropped so far, it was practically unhinged. When she finally found her voice she said - “Where is the middle ground on this?”

Rudyard frowned. 

“You said not to ascribe Greek tragedies to her, in light of Antigone and what have you.”

“We’re only brainstorming until Antigone gets back. What did you and Cordelia both like?”

“Calliope.” Rudyard’s voice was small and soft. He smiled down at his daughter. “It does double duty - it’s a musical instrument and a greek goddess. One of the muses. It fits all the syllabic requirements and I can so easily imagine leaving all my worldly possessions and accomplishments to Calliope Funn, even if she takes after her mother and prefers to be a musician. I would be so proud of her either way.”

“I think you have a name.”

“Yes, I quite think so too.” 

For the first time, Desdemona saw a little something of what Cordelia did in Rudyard. When Cordelia came to, she was so pleased with the name and the baby - Calliope - that there wasn’t time to tell anyone that she’d realized why her sister stayed with Rudyard Funn.

[thrashff]

This is how it happens.

Title: This is how it happens.

Word Count: 5,454

Synposis: Jung Hoseok's life, and everything in between.

Pairings: Hoseok/named female OCs, YoonMinHopeKook love square (??) and a dash of OT7 brotherhood

Warnings: Mature for (very) mild cursing, minor character death, substance abuse, and a lot of angst

Setting: Run Era madness, a soulmate timer AU and koi no yokan concept with a twist

A/N: I’m baaaaack! Sort of. 

Dedicated to @chamabolmanhae! I’m two months late with your birthday present, but thank you for always kicking my ass and getting me to write again.

That said, I sat on this for days and wrote it out in a rush so feel free to come yell at me. I love you, Hoseok and I love you Bangtan. What have I done.

In another life, this is how it happens.

On the morning of Jung Hoseok’s 16th birthday, he wakes up to the timer on his wrist starting to count down.

What he should feel is elated—even in a world where everyone (almost. everyone?) has their timers appear at some point, numbers a digital, violent red the color of fresh blood signaling the amount of time before one is supposed to meet their soulmate—having yours start at 16 is practically unheard of. There are stories of people’s timers starting in their 50s, 60s, even a couple of cases of people going through their whole lives with their other halves missing only to lay on their deathbeds to have the countdown finally start. A week, a day, maybe even scant seconds that they never get to see because their hearts are no longer strong enough to keep waiting.

So when Jung Hoseok wakes up on the morning of his 16th birthday, an unpredicted cold snap making the February air frigid even in the stuffy confines of the orphanage dorm, the branches of the tree outside the window brittle to the point that a strong gust of wind will break them off, what he should feel is elated—but no one warned him that having your timer appear hurts.

When Jung Hoseok wakes up, he is screaming. This should have been his first warning that things don’t always go the way you expect them to. The way you want them to. The way you hope.

Hoseok screams, and he wakes up everyone in the room. As he sobs in the tiny kitchen, one that is in no way equipped to handle the demands of feeding a house full of twenty-five orphans of every age, the people who run it congratulate him. As he cradles his aching wrist, stabs of pain still shooting up his arm and straight to his chest, the younger kids all pushing and shoving to get a better look at the numbers, barely visible over the angry red of his skin, he wonders why having a soulmate hurts.

He wonders what he or she will be like. If they are the same age. If they will like dancing as much as he does, if they listen to the same music. If they will look at him with pity or with understanding for his lot in life, deposited at an orphanage by a mother that considered him a burden but he still holds out hope will return; too old for adoption and too young to be on his own. He wonders and hopes, fiercely, naïvely, if his soulmate will be his new home.

It isn’t until three years later when he finds out. Three years and an unceremonious exit from the orphanage later, when he is living with a boy named Kim Namjoon in an abandoned train car on a stretch of unused tracks, putting food on the table by busking in Hongdae and Namjoon’s occasional tattoo clientele.

All things considered, he’s lucky to have met Namjoon. When they’d met on the wrong side of early morning, Hoseok exhausted and defeated behind a club in Itaewon where he’d thought no one would mind if he would just sit for a couple of hours and gain a little reprieve from two straight days of wandering with nowhere to go, Namjoon had had no reason to take him in. No reason for him to share the tiny home he’d carved out on the fringes of a city with no room for the likes of them.

Sure, there were things that Hoseok has had to turn a blind eye to, like Namjoon’s well under-the-radar business of tattooing over timers, illegal in a day and age when the government uses them as a way to keep people in line. When timers are vaulted, valued. Paired mates are considered first-class citizens—tax breaks, more opportunities for work, the works—because paired mates are submissive, docile. They want for nothing more as a completed set. After all, how can you rally and rise against an oppressive system when you have everything you could ever want tied to you, bound to you for life?

But on the other side of it there are those whose timers have yet to start, like Namjoon. There are those whose timers have begun their countdown but refuse to submit themselves to the hands of fate, like Namjoon’s friend Yoongi; who believe that love is more than red numbers on your wrist. That it should be a person’s choice who to love and live with—not the seemingly random process of selection that no one, not even the best scientists in the world, have been able to figure out.

Because of course, of course there are horror stories. Good people who are bound to bad ones. People who follow the rules their entire lives, who celebrate when their timers start and wait for the numbers to tick down with bated breath only to be disappointed. Only to suffer, sometimes die, at the hands of people they are told are their better halves.

On the day that Hoseok’s timer starts to count down from hours to mere minutes, Hoseok is walking. Namjoon tells him that he should, that wherever he is when the red lights finally stop shifting and stay steady at 000:00:00, whatever unearthly light powering them finally bleeding out to leave those zeros tattooed on his wrist forever, a sign, ideally, of nothing but better things to come, that Hoseok’s soulmate will find him. That fate will take care of the details. That Hoseok will know, somehow, where to go and what to do.

But with minutes left, Hoseok’s feet don’t know where to take him. He wants to run, wants to go back to the train car where Namjoon and Yoongi are waiting, to ask Yoongi how he keeps his timer glitching at 546:23:58. To ask Namjoon if he knows what will happen when his timer ticks from 000:03:23 and no one finds him. If it will hurt, physically or spiritually, if no one does.

All of Hoseok’s questions come back to him, all of the hope-fueled musings that he’s never voiced to his jaded companions. Will they be pretty? Will they be kind? Will they have a home to offer me? Will they love me? Will I be enough?

000:00:12

Hoseok learns that the answer to all of the above is yes.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Jung Hoseok, all 19 years of him and his gangly limbs and the stress-induced smattering of teenage acne on his cheeks, meets Kang Nayeon outside of a record store in Hongdae. She is 22 years old, fresh out of college and living on her own, a stranger in a city she’s never known but whose language she had grown up with. She is beautiful and she is kind, and when they meet Hoseok expects fireworks but feels like he is underwater instead. Not in the push-and-pull kind of way that he imagines tides must feel like because he hasn’t been to the ocean yet, but in the way that being submerged in a warm bath must feel, like that one time Yoongi had sold a song and treated him and Namjoon to a day spa. Comforting and warm, with the promise of coming out cleaner than he’d been coming in.

On the day when his timer blinks 000:00:00, the red numbers settling, permanent on his skin, he learns that Kang Nayeon listens to Dynamic Duo, that she can’t dance but wishes that she could. That she’s allergic to shellfish and can’t stand spicy food, that she loves dogs and all things soft and fluffy. Nayeon cries over every movie—she likes horror the least and animated ones the best—and maybe most importantly than the compendium of all these tiny tidbits and maybe useless facts: she looks at Hoseok like he’s the sun.

That first day ends too soon, Hoseok untangling himself from her comfortable limbs on her comfortable couch in her comfortable apartment that smells like pine cleaner and fresh laundry. With anyone else the skinship would be strange but they’re soulmates, after all, and the physicality of them falling into each other like they do is nothing more than the gravitational pull of two halves finally becoming whole.

It’s hard, for Hoseok to leave now that he has her. Now that they have each other. Nayeon feels it too, the wrongness of distance now that fate has allowed them to be together. She asks Hoseok to stay the night, so Hoseok stays. For the next week, Hoseok stays and doesn’t leave, cocooned in happiness, this all too beautiful bubble of completion. They learn more about each other, they learn everything about each other. She watches him dance on the streets, her face beaming with he’s mine, and Hoseok tucks her into bed, his heart full of I’m hers.

But the thing about bubbles is that they burst, and it isn’t until the following week, when Hoseok moves his meager collection of worldly possessions from the train car and into her apartment, that she tells him the truth. That she is sick, and there’s nothing she nor Hoseok, nor the slew of world-renowned doctors that her parents in the United States have found, can do about it. It’s only been a week, but Hoseok learns the most important thing about Nayeon:

He isn’t allowed to keep her.

Eight months later (eight entire months of Nayeon refusing chemotherapy, of Hoseok watching his other half slowly wither away, of holding her brittle bones and bruised skin so close to his chest so that he can memorize how she feels in his arms) and Nayeon’s body is sent back to her family. In the way of all transitory, fleeting life experiences, the last eight months have been beautiful, and Hoseok wants to feel lucky. Wants to, but understandably has a difficult time accomplishing it.

Saying goodbye to her body, nothing but an empty shell now of the girl he had loved, the girl who had made him finally whole, is easier than the goodbyes they bid in her hospital bed. Hoseok unleashes a seemingly endless supply of tears and snot that he is unashamed to show her, to drown her in, because this is not how the story goes. This is not the Happily Ever After that either of them deserve.

“Who says I didn’t end my life Happily Ever After?” Nayeon asks him, letting him hold the birdlike bones of her hand hard enough to bruise. (One last time.) Not that it had mattered then, not anymore. The pain would be over soon for her, and Hoseok was no where near cruel enough to point out that it would only begin for him. Nayeon doesn’t even cry. Instead she smiles. (One last time.)

The other thing that no one had told Hoseok about soulmates is this: how to live after you’ve lost them.

“Chase the sunshine,” Nayeon tells him. For parting words, final ones, they make sense to no one else but the two of them. Nayeon loves (loved) the summer, always said that sunshine made her feel healthy and clean. She’d called Hoseok her sunshine in turn, that his smiles and enthusiasm for life even in the face of it ending were her endless season.

Not that Hoseok had a choice. He’d showered her with as much love and life as he could, rending his own self empty just to keep both of them from going under the swell of sadness in both their souls.

Hoseok hopes that wherever she is now is bright and sunny, full of life and the season she loves (loved). Wonders if she’s waiting for him. Wonders if she isn’t the only one who died that day in the hospital.

It isn’t until a month later, thirty days that Hoseok spends catatonic on the spare futon in the train car having crawling back to his friends, the only family he knows, with his tail between his legs and more broken than he looks on the outside, that he musters up the courage to return to the apartment. Nayeon’s family has been kind enough to let him keep should he want it.

He doesn’t. Doesn’t know if he can live in rooms where he still expects to see her curled up on the couch watching Pixar films or singing off-key to G.D. in the kitchen. But he comes back because in the time he’s spent away, Namjoon has made a new friend in the form of another lost boy named Kim Taehyung, and Yoongi has adopted a dongsaeng in the form of a wide-eyed boy named Jeon Jeongguk, and for some reason another man named Kim Seokjin has joined their motley crew of outcasts, too handsome and too put-together to really look like he fits in but at the same time too fragile to be anywhere else.

See, Kim Seokjin’s timer has also run out. The red zeroes on his skin have settled, sunk in, permanent, just like Hoseok’s, and Hoseok knows, even after all this time, that it’s no work of Namjoon’s. Namjoon’s, whose timer still hasn’t appeared, and neither has Taehyung’s or Jeongguk’s. Yoongi’s is static, eternally in glitch either by force of his fucked up fate or sheer stubbornness on the musician’s part, so Hoseok knows Seokjin’s soulmate isn’t one of them, and he spends far too much time on the tracks to have one waiting for him somewhere.

(It’s one of the few things Hoseok now knows about soulmates: time apart is painful. Tenfold, when they are gone.)

Even though Hoseok doesn’t ask, he knows. Understands the sadness behind Seokjin’s eyes, the brokenness he hides under the pressed collared shirts and perfectly-coiffed hair. Hoseok doesn’t ask because he knows and he understands completely, so when Seokjin tells him he needs to get out of bed and get clean clothes from the apartment, he goes. Because Seokjin knows. Seokjin has survived, and Hoseok knows that Nayeon would want the same for him.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Hoseok returns to the apartment where he’d lived an all-to-brief life with his soulmate Kang Nayeon and finds her left-over painkillers in the bathroom cabinet. He packs his things, allowing himself to keep a single framed photo of them together, and lugs the bags into the living room where Yoongi and Jeongguk are fawning over the entertainment system and Seokjin is sitting politely on the edge of the couch. Namjoon is digging through the bookcase even though there’s barely anything on it, and Taehyung is blinking wide-eyed at the room, the demand to know why Hoseok would prefer a cramped train car over a nice, clean apartment on the tip of his tongue.

“If you aren’t going to stay here you might as well rent the place out,” Yoongi grunts, flopping onto the couch and kicking his booted feet up on the coffee table. His heels are muddy and Hoseok should tell him off, but it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.

“Sell it,” Hoseok says, tracing Yoongi’s gaze back to the entertainment system. “Sell everything.” Everything is in his name now, after all, and dead people don’t miss things. They don’t anything, period. “I don’t care.”

And it’s wrong for Hoseok not to care. So very, very wrong, but none of it matters anymore. Nayeon is gone, the apartment is his but he doesn’t want it, and Hoseok is too fuzzy from the painkillers he’d taken while no one was watching to have any of it touch him in the way that they should.

“Okay,” Namjoon says, dimpled grin behind the lollipop stick in his mouth. Hoseok came back and he was in the middle of trying to quit smoking, so he’s always talking around candy these days. Hoseok’s happy for him. Is glad for the reminder that life goes on, that his friends are changing.

Hoseok could do with a little bit of change. Could do with a lot of it. What he needs is them to be loud and raucous, for their lives to be big enough to fill up the void that his soulmate has left behind.

He needs and he wants, still, but he doesn’t know what, exactly. Wanting Nayeon is a dead end, and death just another. The pills help. They blur the edges until they almost fill the gaps. They help Hoseok pretend that the life that had upended to make room for his other half still fits. They help the curb the growing emptiness, they help fill the chasm.

They use the money to rent a house. On the wrong side of town, still, dilapidated and run down, but it’s not like any of them would fit in any other kind of place but this. (It’s not like any of them would with in with anyone else but each other.) Namjoon continues to work out of the train car because now he doesn’t have to shit where he eats, and Yoongi and Jeongguk move in from wherever the hell they had been staying. Jeongguk looks at the house, still too small for the four of them, like it’s a palace, so Hoseok doesn’t bother asking what kind of hole Yoongi had dragged him out from. They’ve all got demons, pasts that are best left behind all of them. A group of lost boys just trying to get to the end of the day, except at least now they have somewhere to come home to.

Hoseok thinks it’s the only good thing to come out of losing Nayeon. Considers it her way of helping him, still, by letting him be with the only people who give him a semblance of the kind of comfort and sense of belonging that she had given him.

Seokjin, always working behind the scenes, does his best to make the house feel like more than four walls and a place to sleep. Slowly, Seokjin fills the place with furniture and pots and pans and most nights with the smell of freshly cooked food, and the few times he’s sober Hoseok wonders where Seokjin’s money comes from. If Seokjin works. How he pays the bills for his own empty apartment, neglected with how much time he spends with them.

Most days it doesn’t matter how much Seokjin cleans up, really, even though Hoseok appreciates the effort, because Taehyung is always over, spray painting walls and leaving a mess in his wake. A mirror image of the chaos inside all of them, buzzing with violence that they learn resides within his own home. It’s refreshing, and Hoseok falls in love with all of them in a way that he would have bet money on his inability to, not after being paired and all-too-quickly unpaired, but he loves them. No one understands except Seokjin, and even at four in the morning when they’re the only two awake, Hoseok numb and high out of his mind and Seokjin’s eyes dark and haunted, they don’t talk about it.

They don’t talk about it, because there really isn’t much to say. They’re all angry, all broken, fallen through the cracks in a system that doesn’t even see people like them. What is there to say except fuck it? What is there to be, really, but this?

In the end it’s Yoongi who finds him. Yoongi, the angriest out of all of them, hair dyed a radioactive green after losing a bet with Jeongguk. Jeongguk, who has started to look at the hyung that had dragged him out of hell and given him a home with them with the same kind of eyes that Hoseok had seen Nayeon through. (It’s the only reason he knows what those eyes are even supposed to look like.) Yoongi, who is oblivious to it all, too concerned with how his timer has finally started ticking again, whose wrist still bears the marks of him trying to scratch the now-days off in a drunken rage.

It’s Yoongi who finds Hoseok, ditched cigarette burning feebly in the sink, voice like smoke as he tries and fails to wake him from his bed in the bathtub.

In Hoseok’s defense, he hadn’t actively been trying to drown himself. He’d collapsed somewhere along the Han (going where?) and had woken up at home (how had he ended up back here?) aching with emptiness like he always does these days. He’d taken a couple more pills and gotten himself into a bath, desperate for the same comfort he’d felt on the day he’d met his soulmate; that easy submersion, senses stretching past his skin into oblivion.

Yoongi finds Hoseok and Yoongi screams for Seokjin, who drives them to a hospital that Hoseok spends the next week comatose in. The whole time a boy screams in the bed next to his, his wrists carved up from his own nails as he pulls against his restraints, again and again and again like clockwork, like a metronome, and it’s the sound of complete and utter agony that drags Hoseok from the other side of the river Styx and back into the land of the living.

Jimin. The boy’s name is Park Jimin, and he becomes the seventh addition to their family.

Hoseok likes Jimin. He’s…something else. One second his eyes are happy little crescent moons on the milky white sky of his face, and the next he is screaming, screaming, screaming. Hoseok likes Jimin, because he gets it—how easy it is to switch from one to the other, to ride that in-between. The boys like Jimin, too, because while they don’t understand the switch as well as Hoseok does, they all have a need to protect. So when Hoseok takes Jimin and gives him a home, Jimin becomes theirs, too. To have and to hurt, to love and to destroy.

It’s Jimin, with his easy smile and hair-trigger, who gets Hoseok back into dancing again. For Jimin, the dance studio is the only place he can stay himself for longer than a couple of hours at a time. For Hoseok, it’s the only place where he can move quickly enough that the face that stares back at him in the mirror looks less like a stranger.

Weeks pass, months. Hoseok stops asking Yoongi what he’s doing watching them in the studio. Stops asking where the hell Jeongguk is. Stops asking what happened when his timer ran down.

Hoseok thinks he knows, but Jimin, who keeps his wrists and his scars and his own red zeroes covered up by the sleeves of his sweater, looks at him the way Jeongguk looks at Yoongi. The way Yoongi looks at Jimin. Hungry, and desperate, and angry.  And Hoseok is still getting used to feeling so much so soon that he doesn’t want to touch that hive of bees with a ten-foot pole.

Hoseok is allergic to bee stings. Hoseok is allergic to feeling anything.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Namjoon comes home with Taehyung under his arm, nothing more than a broken baby bird under Namjoon’s equally broken wings, and for a second Hoseok thinks that a spray paint can must have exploded on him again before the red that stains the boy’s arms and chest registers as what it is: blood.

Namjoon comes home with Taehyung under his arm, and Taehyung is covered in blood.

This is different from the days that Jeongguk comes back with his face and knuckles nothing but open nerve-endings, from the nights they have to hold Jimin down to keep him from hurting himself too badly. This time the blood isn’t Taehyung’s own, even though it might as well be for all the life that’s already bled out of his eyes.

A day after the mess is sorted out by the police, a day after Taehyung says goodbye to the sister he’d sacrificed himself to protect, Taehyung moves into the house. He moves into the same room as Namjoon, because Namjoon has the same blood on his hands. Namjoon vibrates at the same wavelength, speaks the same language of weighted silence and necessary violence that Taehyung has learned overnight. Hoseok moves out of the room and into Jeongguk’s, which probably isn’t the best idea because Jeongguk has his own ways of coping that clash with the new ones, better ones, healthy ones that Hoseok is trying to get into the habit of, but it’s better than the alternative.

It’s better than the poor kid having first row seats to the Yoongi Pining Show, featuring Jimin Pining for Hoseok.

It’s a mess. A goddamn mess, and Seokjin, the only house of cards left standing in a room full of jokers, valiantly tries to pull their frayed ends back together.

The beach is as cold and as empty as it is in Hoseok’s dreams. The beach Seokjin takes them to looks like it’s never once felt the hands of summer, the kiss of the sun. It’s desolate and echoing—the entire shoreline might as well be one they’d find under the waves instead of running parallel to it, but Taehyung is singing and he is running, his long limbs a blur of motion through the air. Jimin’s smile is sincere, and he hasn’t once turned it to Hoseok the entire time, which Hoseok wants to take as a good thing. Namjoon is dancing, is trying to, valiantly; Seokjin’s trashy, shameless pop music his backing track as it fries the speakers of the pick-up truck. Jeongguk is quiet, he always is these days, and goes missing for a bit until Yoongi returns with him in tow, both with the same secret smiles that had been missing since the day Jeongguk punched him and Yoongi had broken the only mirror left in the house.

The beach Seokjin takes them to looks like it’s never once felt the hands of summer, and Hoseok loves it. His friends are loud, their lives and their beings big enough to fill up the empty space left in his, and when Jeongguk and Taehyung dunk him under the water, Yoongi screams, still a little traumatized, and Hoseok laughs and holds the water in his throat until it burns. When he comes up, Yoongi and Seokjin are in the water, the only two people who understand; whose brains are still sharp enough to fear, whose hearts are still big enough to hurt for him. Hoseok laughs again, maybe the first real one in years, and he coughs up saltwater and eight months of Nayeon and two years of missing her.

When Hoseok comes up and Namjoon wraps his battered leather jacket around his shoulders and Jimin places his red beanie on Hoseok’s head, Hoseok leaves the hurt and the ache and the pain and the longing in the ocean—a sacrifice to the gods of tide and timing, a final goodbye to summer and all the good things in it.

When they are camped out in their favorite lot behind the house a couple of hours later, Yoongi builds a bonfire to help Hoseok get rid of the remaining chill left in his bones. They’ve left the ocean behind them, as well as trashed a restaurant like the uncouth, uncultured, malcontent misfits that they are, and Hoseok likes to think that they’ve also dropped some baggage in their wake.

In another life, this is how it happens.

A week after their trip to the beach, Seokjin goes missing. Jeongguk is inconsolable, and not even a crowbar can pry Taehyung from Namjoon’s side. Yoongi and Jimin are sitting side by side on the couch, both buzzing with the need to break, but they’re holding onto each other’s hands in a way that Hoseok can see both their timers, their tattoos set to zeros.

About time, Hoseok thinks, through the Seokjin-sized hole in his vision. About time, he thinks, through the Seokjin-sized hole in his heart.

About time. It’s a funny thing, and it’s Taehyung, with his voice broken and his lips chapped, a boy when he’d met them but a man now with a lifetime’s worth of regrets, who points it out to the room at large.

“Hyung,” says Kim Taehyung. “Hyung, your wrist.”

Hoseok looks down and his first impossible thought is that it doesn’t hurt this time. Hoseok looks down, and the red numbers on his wrist are lit up like the bonfire, like the stars behind his eyes back when the pills had made everything simultaneously better and so much worse, like the sun setting over the shore, burning everything its light touched.

About time: it’s a funny thing.

Hoseok’s world comes crumbling down because Seokjin is the last lynchpin holding them all together. He’s disappeared without a trace, and without him Namjoon retreats back to his train car, Yoongi and Jimin vanish, Jeongguk dissolves back into the shadows he came from, and Taehyung goes back to what’s left of his other family.

Seokjin takes every picture and video he’d taken with him, and without those it’s easy to pretend that he’d never existed. Seokjin, with his windshield wiper of a laugh, with his broken hands struggling to cook them fresh meals, with those dark, dark eyes that carried the weight of a thousand lifetimes lived, is gone. All Hoseok is left with is an empty house full of broken things, paint and blood staining the walls, and an unbelievable, improbable, impossible countdown on his wrist that should feel like death coming.

Hoseok knows all about death. Has seen it, lived it, brought himself back from its clutches more than once, so when the miracle of his timer blinking with a new countdown happens, Hoseok knows that it should feel like death. Should feel like another ending, because his life is full of those. He is surrounded by it on all fronts in the form of the cigarette butts Yoongi leaves in the ashtray on the coffee table, the legs of it broken by one of Jimin’s fits and put together by his spit, duct tape and prayers. In the form of Taehyung’s last piece of work on the inside of the front door, a dark, nameless thing with wings that should have stayed in his nightmares but he’s brought to life with no heed for how his housemates will feel about it. In the water rings of Seokjin’s cups of tea on wood of the kitchen counter, in Namjoon’s forgotten sketches still taped to the living room walls. In the bomber jacket, a birthday present from Yoongi that Jeongguk probably couldn’t bear to bring with him, still hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.

It should feel like death but in the wake of so many other things ending, Hoseok (fiercely, naïvely, blindly) hopes, and that takes root in the cavern of his chest.

Will they be pretty? Will they be kind? Will they have a home to offer me? Will they love me? Will I be enough?

Will I get to keep them, this time?

In another life, this is how it happens.

Jung Hoseok is 23 years old and he has lived through a thousand heartbreaks. He has stared death in the face and lost his soulmate to it; he has stared death in the face and come back to tell his tale. He has been left behind by everyone who has ever mattered to him, but still, he is stronger than even he himself gives him credit for because he is still trying. He has been called sunshine by the most important people in his life, has been loved to the ends of the earth and back around by a group of lost boys who loved each other so much that they couldn’t bear the weight of it. He has been battered, bruised and left broken, and he is alone in a house full of ghosts.

But none of this matters to Na Ri, because she’s in the middle of a game of hide and seek with her nephew when the timer on her wrist blinks to life. None of this matters to Na Ri, because she has lived 22 years on this Earth and given up hope that she is one of the lucky ones blessed with another half.

None of this matters, because Na Ri screams when her timer blinks to life, not with pain but with joy. She cries not with hurt but with relief.

Because when the timer on her wrist blinks to life, it reads 000:29:38, and it means that her soulmate is finally ready to meet her.