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thechildoflightning · 4 years

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Blood Relation

Title: Blood Relation

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Pairings: LAMP, familial Roman & Remus, platonic Roceit

part of the jksf verse

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Summary:

On March 14, 2000 a baby named Roman was born in a small hospital in America. Four minutes later, his mother dies, leaving her son alone with his now adoptive father.

This is not that story.

On August 14, 1995 a baby named Remus was born in a small hospital in Yemen. Four years later, his mother leaves, taking her son with her to the United States.

This is also not that story.

No, this story is about a man named Remus Turner starting a new job at a theater company, where Roman Hussain-Barlo happens to be the director.

Three decades later.

Warnings: Schizophrenia, RSD, Memory Issues, PTSD, Xenophobia, Separation of Child from Parent, Parent Death (past, mentioned)

[ao3 link]

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Blood Relation

Roman had come to the conclusion that his theater company was some kind of cryptid conspiracy theory. Ever since the whole thing with Deceit and Virgil happened, he thought that it wasn’t too bold to assume that his company was in fact a conspiracy theory in the making. That had to be it, because there was literally no other way any of this could make sense. Sure, a person looking slightly to him would be one thing, but someone that could practically be his twin? Well that was another thing completely.

This had to be the reason the new guy looked so similar to him, right? Because the other ideas, the other options presented, well those were so much more terrifying than a cryptid theater company.

The first thing someone had said when the new guy had joined, was, “Wow, I didn’t know Roman had a brother.”

Here was the thing- Roman did have a brother. His brother’s name was Kenny, but Kenny had never been to Roman’s work, lived in Oregon, and- most importantly in this situation- was adopted, and therefore did not look like Roman.

The new guy had stumbled, laughed, and said, “What?” before catching Roman’s eye.

They both froze.

The similarities were undeniable. It was pretty much looking at a carbon copy.

Except that there were differences. Remus’s hair was a bit lighter than Roman’s, and Roman’s skin was more golden bronze than Remus’ amber. Roman was also a few inches taller and Remus’ eyes were a greenish brown opposed to Roman’s russet. But it was close. It was way too close.

Roman played it casual.

“Never thought I’d actually get to meet my doppelganger,” he said, ignoring the obvious elephant in the room.

The stares around him were incredulous, screaming at him to take note of the very apparent issue in the room. Roman refused and introduced himself.

“I’m Roman Hussain-Barlo,” he introduced, “The director of the company.”

“Remus Turner,” he replied, taking Roman’s offered hand and shaking it, “Choreography.”

Even their names were similar.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’ll let you get settled,” Roman said. He then disappeared as quickly as possible. It was too much. There was no way he was dealing with this right now.

So he didn’t. Deal with it that is.

Which resulted in Deceit cornering him a week later on a day when the two of them had both stayed late.

“Roman,” Deceit had said after they were done.

Roman knew instantly what he was going to say, and continued to pack up his things to leave.

“Roman,” Deceit repeated, and then again, “Roman.”

Roman sighed, stopped what he was doing, and turned to his friend.

“What Dee?”

Dee just gave him a pointed look and sat down. With a sigh, Roman joined him and tried not to think about how this conversation was going to go.

“Y’know, when someone new joins, you usually help show them the ropes,” Dee stated.

Roman scoffed, “He’s working in choreography, he has his lead to help him, not my job.”

“I didn’t say it was your job,” Deceit pointed out, “Just that you usually do it anyway.”

Which was true and Roman didn’t have an excuse for why he didn’t. Or, he did have an excuse but ‘avoiding Remus because he looks remarkably similar to me and there’s a very good chance that is for a reason and that reason is that we are related to one another’ wasn’t an excuse he wanted to think about.

“Roman,” Deceit spoke up again, this time a touch softer, “You can’t just ignore this.”

“You ignored the whole thing with Virgil,” Roman was quick to bite back. Which was maybe a bit harsh. But he didn’t want to think about it.

“Fair,” Deceit agreed, “But when I reflect on that, I’ve come to the conclusion that how I went about that was a poor decision on my part. Which you know. Plus, I wasn’t around Virgil, I wasn’t consciously avoiding him, just choosing to not interact. Remus is working with us. You are actively avoiding him, and sooner or later that just isn’t going to be realistic.”

“I can do my best to make sure it’s later though,” he mumbled.

Confusion crossed Deceit’s face.

“Can you say that again?” he asked.

Roman sighed.

“Sorry. Nevermind,” Dee said immediately.

Roman shook his head.

“It’s not you,” he promised. “You don’t have to apologize for asking me to repeat myself. Ever.”

Deceit gave a little nod to show that he understood, and then waited.

“I said, ‘I can do my best to make sure it’s later rather than sooner,’” he repeated, making sure to avoid mumbling this time.

Deceit just gave him a look.

Roman cringed, knowing exactly how bad that sounded.

“Okay,” he relented, “Okay. I’ll talk to Remus.”

“Good,” Deceit responded.

“You’re a dick, you know that?” Roman told him with a grumble.

“Again?” Deceit asked.

“You’re a dick,” he repeated.

Deceit gave him a grin, and then was gone. Fucking annoying know-it-all. Even if he was right.

Roman sighed, and resigned himself to figuring out how he was going to figure this out. And that was a bigger question, what was there to figure out? Because honestly, Roman’s mind was reeling.

He tried to take a step back and started with the things he knew. Remus Turner had recently joined the theater company. He looked remarkably similar to Roman, much more similar than just common coincidence. Remus looked even more like Roman’s mom. The nose bridge, eye color, hair type, and even his smile. (Had Roman been studying the other man? Maybe…)

Next was the things he didn’t know. Roman didn’t know exactly why Remus looked like him. He didn’t know why Remus didn’t know about him. He didn’t know why he didn’t know Remus. He didn’t know where the fuck Remus had come from, out of the blue like this, who the fuck he was.

The final thing Roman considered were the most likely conclusions, because the startling similarity between Remus and him gave him no choice.

He and Remus were probably related. There was looking similar, and then there was clear relation. This was definitely the latter. Remus was definitely related to Roman’s mom, most likely being her son. Roman’s mom had died when he was born, meaning that Remus had to be older. It also made Remus- at the very least- his half-brother. And unless Remus had also immigrated from Yemen- which wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do- there was less than a three month window between his mom and his dad meeting, and Remus had to have gone somewhere during that time.

Because, well, his dad couldn’t have known about this, could he?

Ultimately, from Roman’s attempt at organizing his thoughts he learned exactly one thing: He was even more confused than when he started.

Remus was an enigma that Roman didn’t know what to do about.

Roman was an enigma that Remus didn’t know what to do about. Remus wasn’t exactly sure why the new director was completely ignoring him, and he certainly didn’t know what to do about it.

Sure, there was something very obviously off and wrong about the whole situation, the dude and him looked the exact same, but Remus didn’t understand why that was getting him the silent treatment. Sure, it was weird, but personally, Remus was desperate to get to the bottom of this, whatever this was.

Wouldn’t it better to know than continue guessing?

When Remus had first saw Roman, he thought he was hallucinating. Except, he had never had hallucinations of himself before. Plus, everyone else in the room could see and hear Roman too, and Remus was positive they weren’t all a hallucination.

Which meant that this guy who looked almost exactly alike him was real.

Remus’s first instinct was to sit down and talk with him. Because they had to be related. There was literally no other solution that made sense. Roman was the right age, it was more than feasible.

It also meant that unless his biological father had somehow been resurrected from the dead, than Roman was definitely his mother’s son at a minimum. Roman would have to be the son of the mother Remus hadn’t seen since he was a child. Which made him and Roman brothers.

And if Roman was related to his mom, their mom (probably), then that meant that Remus might get to talk to her after all this time. He and his parents had searched for her for years.

Remus had to believe she wanted to talk to him, had to believe she had been searching for him just as desperately. She had come to America with him to give him a better opportunity at life. Neither of them knew that would result in them being stripped away from one another.

Remus had given up his search years ago. He wouldn’t of blamed his mom for doing the same.

Which was why he wanted to talk to Roman. He wanted answers. This wasn’t just something that could be ignored.

But Roman was doing exactly that and avoiding Remus like the plague, leaving him no opportunities during which to interact. So Remus did what he usually did when he didn’t know what to do about something. He called his parents.

His dad would still be at work, but it was his mother’s day off.

He pressed the call button and waited for the skype video to load. Suddenly the corner of Remus’s screen began to bubble, warping and bursting like blisters. He jerked back in reflex, the sight being both unpleasant and disturbing as well as unexpected.

Almost immediately, he took a breath, and tried to register the facts. It wasn’t making noise. A lot of his visual and auditory hallucinations tended to do one or the other, and not both at the same time. The lack of noise was a good indicator that it wasn’t real. So was the fact that the bubbling and melting was a common thing he tended to hallucinate, though it tended to happen to walls and the like. His computer also seemed to be working fine and wasn’t overheating, nor was the bubbling spreading. In addition, it took on a liquid like appearance compared to the computer’s solid state. It looked real, but all the evidence was pointing to the fact that it was indeed a hallucination. He set to ignoring it, and glanced back at the still ringing Skype call.

Not soon enough, his mother’s face filled the screen.

“Hi Goose,” she said immediately, her face breaking out into a wide grin. Remus smiled right back, and steadily ignored the continued bubbling on the corner of his screen.

“Hi Mom,” he replied relief flooding through him.

“We haven’t talked for a while,” she mentioned, “how’s your new job going?”

“Uh, it's been okay. Bit weird,” he answered, not bothering to even fake normalcy. His mom would see right through it anyways.

She frowned, crow’s feet forming at the corners of her eyes.

“Goose, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Yeah Mom, I’m okay,” he promised, “I just, I love you, okay?”

The bubbling on the corner of the screen continued to get worse and started to crackle and pop with a hiss, looking more and more real. But it the bubbling and warping of the screen seemed liquid like, which was not possible. Remus reached a hand out to his screen, sliding fingers over the perfectly fine computer screen in an attempt to help convince his brain that it was not there, that it wasn’t real.

“I love you too, Goose,” she said, “But what’s wrong?”

“I-” Remus hesitated, at a loss for how exactly to put what was going on, “I think I might have a brother,” he admitted, “Like, a biological brother.”

His mom frowned, but in that way of hers that showed curiosity instead of shame or disappointment.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean the director with the theater company looks exactly like me. Or- not exactly but yeah it’s pretty darn close. At first I thought I was just hallucinating but everyone else could see him too and he’s the right age and gosh Mom he looks so much like how I remember my mom looking its- he has her eyes and her face and her smile and-” he shook his head, too choked up to continue.

“Oh, honey,” his mom whispered.

Remus hadn’t started to cry yet, he hadn’t ever really been a cryer, but he felt like he needed to cry. The tears seemed to be pressed up against his eyes and his body trembled. He tried to take a deep breath only to have it hitch and then weigh him down.

“I just- I- We- looked for her for so long. And I accepted I wasn’t going to see her again. And now, I mean, I don’t know about her yet, maybe Roman doesn’t even know her, maybe he got taken away like me, or maybe this is just some crazy coincidence.” It was then Remus had a realization. “Or maybe it’s not a coincidence. Maybe, maybe this is on purpose,” his heart thudded at thought, “Maybe someone is behind this, trying to mess with me or something. This could all be orchestrated and-”

“Remus, Remus,” his mother's voice soothed before he could continue, “Honey. Let’s take a breath.”

Remus did so, taking a deep gulp of air as he reflected on his racing thoughts.

“Oh,” he said, “Oh, that’s that’s probably not what’s happening. There’s- there’s no one behind this. That’s not what happens.”

He knew it wasn’t logical, but he had just been so emotional that he had let his delusions get the best of him, sweeping him along with them.

“Probably not,” his mom agreed. Roman nodded firmly.

“But- Roman- he’s probably related to me,” Remus continued, “And- I just never thought I’d-”

“You’d find your family,” his mom finished for him.

“No,” he bit back immediately, “No, you’re my family. You and Dad and Maggie and Lauren and Avery and Ainsley and everyone else along the way. That’s my family.”

“Blood family then,” his mom mused, “More family. However you want to put it. They’re your family too. And I know that’s important to you Goose.”

“It is,” he agreed. It had always been. His parents had fostered him with the knowledge that he didn’t want them to be his family. That his mom would always be his family first.

That belief had changed over time, coming to reach a balance, but it had all been on Remus’s terms with his parents love, understanding, and support. It had always been his choice.

“So, what are you going to do about this? You know I’m here to support you through whatever you decide.”

This was when Remus’ mind decided to go blank. Because what was he going to do? He was at a complete loss of what he should do.

Roman was at a complete and utter loss of what to do.

There was just so much information to process. The idea of potentially having a blood relative was completely foreign to Roman, and- quite frankly- he wasn’t sure he wanted one. Sure, there was a part of him that always reflected on his mom with a sort of nostalgic softness, but he didn’t think he actually missed her. After all, he had never known her. He had only ever known his dad- the man who adopted him, and later his other father and the twins. They’d always been his family.

Now someone who most likely shared his blood came stumbling into his life and Roman didn’t know what to do.

Which was why Roman was sitting at the kitchen table as the clock crept steadily towards midnight. The rest of his husbands had retired for the night and Roman had tried to as well but the thoughts swirling in his head had refused to settle. So he moved to the kitchen, where he fully expected to be alone.

It was at exactly midnight when Patton come stumbling into the kitchen with bleary eyes. He was clad in only his boxers, a single sock, and his glasses. Patton’s hair was also still pineappled to keep it protected, further proving that he had just woken up.

“Hmm, there you are,” Patton said when he caught sight of Roman at the table. Roman gave a small nod of acknowledgement as Patton took the seat across from him.

“What’re you doing up so late?” Patton asked around a yawn. He reached out to grasp one of Roman’s hands. Roman let him, before lifting Patton’s hand to his mouth to give it a gentle kiss. Patton gave him an adorable little grin as Roman set their hands down.

The short kiss also gave time for Roman to gather his answer to Patton’s question, because the real reason he was up so late was a bit of a minefield right now. Roman decided to go a bit to the side instead.

“Pat, did you ever know your biological parents?”

Roman knew that like him, Patton was also adopted, but he also realized he didn’t actually know anything about that process, even after ten years of being together.

Patton shook his head as he rubbed his thumb across the back of Roman’s hand.

“No,” he explained, “I was a Safe Haven baby. My mom gave me up when I was a little more than two days old. No clue about my father.”

Roman nodded. He was familiar with the Safe Haven law that allowed mother’s to safely release custody of a child who was below a week old. He knew California had a similar law, other states were likely to as well.

“Do you- what if you ran into your mom now?” Roman asked, “What would you do?”

Patton gave him a look, and seemed to search in Roman’s eyes for something. Roman had to guess Patton found whatever he was looking for, because he moved on to answer.

“I don’t know,” Patton admitted, “I’m not sure either of us would recognize each other. I mean I was two days old and who knows if I even really look like her? Plus she’d be expecting a girl. I don’t think it’s very likely we’d recognize each other in the first place.”

“Okay, but what if you looked too similar that it was impossible to ignore. Like you looked so similar that even though it had to be crazy, there was no other explanation besides the fact that the two of you were related.” Patton just raised an eyebrow.

“And in what world would that ever happen?” Patton asked, a soft teasing lilt to his words.

“Mine,” Roman answered, before he could stop himself, “I think I might have a brother. Like a biological, we share the same genes, brother.”

“What?”

Roman scrubbed at his face with his free hand. Patton gave the other a small reassuring squeeze.

“There’s a new guy at work. His name is Remus. See? Even our names go together. He’s- we look so much alike Patton, this literally cannot be coincidence. It’s- We have to be related Pat, nothing else makes sense.”

For some reason, that happened to be Roman’s tipping point and he burst into tears. Which was rare for him. Roman was plenty emotional, but he had never been one to cry easily.

Patton face blanked for a second, and then he frowned. The hand that wasn’t holding Roman’s came up to cup his face and brush a few tears from his cheek.

“Ro, honey, why are you crying?” Patton asked.

“I- I don’t know,” he admitted, “I guess- It’s just a lot and I’m not sure how to deal with this or what I want to do and-” he shrugged miserably.

“Oh honey,” Patton said, “Okay no, I promise we’ll get to that. No, I meant,” Patton took a breath, looking a bit lost, “I forgot why we’re here, what we’re talking about. I don’t remember sitting down.”

Roman nodded and took a deep breath and blinked back tears, trying to gather himself together so he could catch Patton up to speed, filling in his gap of memory.

“Roman, it’s- I’m worried, love,” Patton admitted when Roman didn’t immediately respond.

Roman looked up and could see the fear plain in his husbands eyes. The losing time was something Patton was used to, but coming back to awareness in the middle of his spouse breaking down was certainly not a common situation.

“Okay,” he said, “Give me a second, okay? You don’t need to be worried, everything’s okay. Just a little emotional.”

“‘Course honey,” Patton said in that soothing voice that just about made Roman melt.

Roman blinked back his final tears and took another shaky breathe before he began a recap for Patton, explaining what had happened and what they were discussing. Even though he was still just as emotional, he didn’t start crying again.

“Okay,” Patton said once Roman had caught him up, “Okay. Redo. Why were you crying? What’s making you so upset about this?”

“I don’t know,” Roman said, “I think, well it’s a lot to process and I don’t even know where to start. And Patton, this guy has to be related to me but maybe he’s not and it’s just some weird coincidence or something or maybe Allah is testing me but I don’t know how-”

“Roman, dear, let’s take a breather,” Patton suggested.

Roman nodded and took a deep breath.

“Okay, let’s start with what you want, okay? We can go from there.”

Roman nodded.

“So what do you want?”

“I just want to figure this all out,” Roman explained, “I don’t know what I actually want to do about any of this yet, but I want to figure out what’s true and what's not. I just want to know what’s actually going on here.”

“Okay. And you’re pretty sure the two of you are related?”

“Yes,” Roman confirmed, “Yes Pat, you should of seen him. He looked just like my mom. He looked just like me. I just don’t get how. Like, I- it’s not easy to immigrate from Yemen to here, so I’m assuming that he came with my mom. But that means there’s a very small window before my dad showed up and then me being born. I don’t-” Roman shook his head, “I don’t know how it all fits together.”

“Okay. So why don’t we figure out a timeline?”

Roman nodded and pulled out his phone to get the information physically down.

“Uh so my mom came to America in mid 1999. My dad met her in October of 1999. I was born in March of 2000 and my mom died the same day.”

“So what are the missing dates.”

“Remus’ birth. When he came to the US. When he disappeared. Uh, how he disappeared even though that’s not actually something for a timeline but something I really wanna know,” Roman listed off, “Which again- assuming that he came here with my mom- means that there was only a four month window between my mom arriving here and her meeting my dad. Remus had to have disappeared during that time.”

“Have your thought about calling your Dad?” Patton asked.

“What?”

“Well I mean, he probably knew your mom best, right? If anyone would have more information it would be him, right?”

Roman hadn’t thought about it, but it did make sense. His dad and mom had lived together for that short period of time. They were best friends. If anyone was to know anything about all of this it had to be him.

The problem was that posed a new question. How much did his dad know? Which lead into the question of if his dad had known about Remus. Which lead into the question of if he had known, had he kept that information from Roman?

There was no way.

Was there?

“Pat- Do you think my dad knows something about this? Knows something about Remus?”

Patton gave him a gentle look and continued to rub his hand soothingly.

“What do you think Roman? You’re the one who knows him best.”

“No. No there’s no way he’d keep that from me,” Roman defended, pulling his hand away from Patton. Even so, a seed of doubt started to grow inside him. He prayed that his faith was well placed.

Remus was praying, which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence by any means. In this particular case he was praying for strength and wisdom to do the right things, also not an uncommon thing. In fact, the only uncommon thing about any of this was the reason why he was praying. A long lost brother might be some sort of common trope but it definitely did not happen in real life. Remus just worked on remembering Romans 8:28 (and wasn’t that ironic). God worked all things for good. Remus would just have to trust Him. This was His plan.

At the same time, Remus wasn’t blind to the fact that he still lived his own life and while God guided it, Remus was the one who traveled it. God wouldn’t solve his problems or come up with solutions for him. Remus had to do that on his own.

These after prayer musings were only interrupted by knocking from his door. He registered it with a confused frown. It was getting late and there didn’t seem to be any real reason for someone to be knocking on his door. He got up to check and, recognizing the person, opened the door with a swing.

“Hi to you too Mags,” he greeted.

“Don’t call me that,” she grumbled, pushing inside.

He shook his head fondly and followed her into his apartment. She quickly flopped onto the couch, Remus just trailing afterwards.

“Uh, Mags, not that I don’t love seeing you. But why are you here?” he asked, taking a seat on the other couch.

“Well, you were supposed to come over yesterday and then we were going to go out and celebrate you finally moving out here but someone didn’t show up.”

Oh right. Yeah, meeting up with his eldest sister had been on his calendar for weeks now, but with how crazy his life was right now, he had completely forgotten. He winced.

“Sorry,” he apologized, “Things have been… kinda crazy this week.”

“Yeah Mom told me,” she said.

Mom had told her? Remus hadn’t thought that his mom would tell her about the personal things they talked about.

The thought was a simple observation but it quickly led into something much more intrusive.

Were his mom and his sister talking behind his back? Did they do that often? What were they saying about him? What else did they talk about? Was his whole family talking about him? Did they all talk together without him, having private conversations he wasn’t allowed to be a part of?

Did they- Did they do it often? Did they think of him differently, as an outlier? Had they been doing this for years and Remus was only now realizing it? Was his entire family lying to him?

“Or- she didn’t tell me anything, but she mentioned that it was nice we were going out last night because you had a weird week. But we didn’t go out last night because you didn’t show up. And you didn’t respond to my texts either, so…” she trailed off and then gestured to the apartment as well as herself. “Here I am.”

Remus swallowed and try to push down the paranoia.

“So you don’t- you don’t like… talk about me?” Remus asked, unsure how to properly phrase his real question of ‘are you two conspiring against me behind my back.’

“Well I mean-” Maggie started, before coming to an abrupt halt and taken in Remus’s well hidden fear, “No. No. Re- Not like that. Mom and me chat, and sometimes you or other family members or just other people come up. That’s it. We’re not all talking behind your back or scheming or conspiring against you or anything like that. No one is.”

Remus took a breath and nodded, releasing the tension in his body. There was still the voice in the back of his head chanting ‘what if what if what if’ and ‘she's lying’ and ‘but they could be’ but Remus trusted Maggie. That was enough for him.

“Okay, thanks, sorry this week’s just been stressful and its-” he swallowed, “the paranoia just gets a lot worse when I’m stressed. So…”

“You don’t need to apologize dork. I’m here to fact check whenever you need me to.”

A sudden bursting bloom of love spread through Remus’s body.

“Thanks. Uh, how are the kids?”

The paranoia didn’t fade completely, never really did, but it was calmed and soothed and pushed down with the reassurance.

“Yeah, course. And they’re good. I think. They’re teenagers, it’s hard to tell. Sad they didn’t get to see their uncle the other day. But don’t try to change the subject. So, spill, what’s up? Why didn’t you show? What’s so weird about work?”

“I think I found my maternal family.”

“Holy shit what?” she said, sitting up to give him more clear attention.

Remus swallowed, and stumbled through an explanation he’d already given once.

“The director at work, yeah so he’s almost certainly my brother. And most definitely through my mom, maybe my dad too, I dunno yet. But yeah. We just sorta ran into each other. So I’ve been, I’ve been dealing with that this week.”

“What the heck.”

“Yeah, I know,” Remus said with a sigh.

“Okay, okay wait, so what he’d have to say? Like what? What the heck, how is this your life.”

I know,” Remus groaned, drawing out the ‘w.’ “And well, we haven’t actually talked yet.”

“Well, why the heck not?”

“I-” he hesitated, and thought about it. Why hadn’t they talked? Sure Roman was avoiding Remus, but Remus was capable of initiating conversation as well.

He realized what he needed to do. He needed to talk to Roman.

Roman needed to talk to Remus, that was really what it came down to.

After having an extensive talk with his father and confirming that he also had no idea that Remus even existed- which had been a relief considering that would have been a huge breach of trust- Roman realized he needed to get the facts down. He needed to finish constructing his timeline.

The only way to do that at this point was to actually talk to Remus.

“I’m just- I’m scared to talk to him,” Roman admitted.

Deceit raised an eyebrow and stared at Roman, utterly unimpressed.

“You’re scared?” he challenged.

“Yes,” Roman defended, “It’s, yeah, yeah I am.”

Deceit rolled his eyes and let out a little exasperated huff. Roman frowned and began to worry his lip. Deceit’s gaze softened.

“Okay,” Dee said, “Okay. Why are you scared?”

“I’m-” Roman paused, leaving his mouth hanging open for a second for snapping it shut. Why was he scared?

“I didn’t- Did you say something?” Deceit said.

Roman shook his head.

“I trailed off, didn’t say anything else,” he explained, “I don’t- I’m not sure why I’m scared.”

“Okay, then what do you know?” Deceit asked.

Roman blinked and leaned back in his chair as he thought about the statement.

He knew he wanted to talk to Remus. For Roman’s own sanity, he needed to get the facts straightened out. What he wasn’t sure of was were to go from there. Going along the most likely route of Remus being Roman’s brother… Well that changed so much. It was adding a whole new family member which could change everything and Roman wasn’t sure he was ready for that. It was a scary thought.

“I think I’m scared of how this is going to change my family’s dynamic,” Roman admitted, “I- I already have a family. I have two wonderful dads and two wonderful siblings. I have three amazing husbands and I have great friends like you. Adding Remus into that… I’m not sure I even want to do that.”

“You added me,” Deceit pointed out. Roman was a little bit surprised about how quick Deceit was willing to admit his attachment to Roman. He was usually much less vulnerable. “I mean, I guess you're alright or whatever but you haven’t really known me for that long so…” Dee then trailed on, adding in the qualifier. Plus, seriously, he was going with ‘you haven’t known me that long’ of all things? It had to be what, five years of being friends at this point?

“But really Roman- I mean you’ve added people to your family before. Why is it such a big deal when it comes to Remus?”

Simply put, Remus was different, and Roman didn’t know how to put that into words. Remus brought the past with him. Remus brought questions and mysteries and gaps in timelines Roman hadn’t even known existed. Remus brought thoughts of his mother and doubts of his father. Because Remus…

“He’s blood,” Roman admitted, “And that’s never mattered to me. I- I don’t think it even matters now,” Roman rambled, “But it feels like it should be important, like something that should matter to me. But it doesn’t? Not really? But maybe, maybe blood does matter more than I think and I’m just- I dunno- brushing that connection off? When it really it is important and-”

Deceit was looking at him with more and more confusion as Roman tried to speed through as many words as he could.

“Slow down?” Roman guessed.

“Yeah,” Deceit nodded, “Slow down a lot.”

Roman nodded, and tried to organize his thoughts. Roman had a tendency to ramble and half the time his mouth would get ahead of his brain that even he didn’t know what he was saying anymore. Taking a moment to pause and breathed helped Roman think about what he was saying and connect his wildly disorganized thoughts.

“Remus is blood. And blood has never mattered to me in terms of family. But I feel like there’s a lot of pressure and expectation for it to matter. But even after meeting Remus, I’m not sure how much it really matters to me.”

“Why does it have to matter? Fuck blood,” Deceit scoffed, “Maybe you figure out the facts. But that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to have a relationship, whatever other people say. Just do what you want. I mean you probably want to get on the same page as Remus but yeah- do whatever. Fuck things up.”

Roman nodded, then hesitated before voicing his final fear.

“What if he wants a relationship and I don’t?”

Deceit fired back with his own question.

“Do you not want a relationship?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then don’t worry about it yet. Work on figuring out the facts, and then where you stand. After that you can figure out what relationship the two of you are going to have. Cross that bridge when you come to it.”

“I- okay.”

Roman continued to sit there, unmoving, drawing lines of nothing on the table with his fingers.

“Y’know, I did mean right now, you should definitely start to figure out the facts now. Get started on that,” Deceit huffed.

Roman sighed and stood, making to leave the room and go find Remus. Before he could exit, he turned back around to face Deceit.

“Hey, thanks,” Roman mentioned, “I- you’re pretty good at this.”

Deceit scowled, “You could have figured it out yourself. You were just being slow and it was annoying, so I helped speed up the process. For my own benefit.”

Roman rolled his eyes at the blatant lie and walked back over to Deceit.

“Thank you,” Roman said earnestly, “This whole thing would’ve been a lot harder without you.”

“We have work,” Deceit announced. He stood, and quickly made for the door, not responding to what Roman had said in the slightest. But before he could completely disappear he did throw a quick, “Good luck,” back at Roman.

Roman smiled at his back and went to talk to Remus.

Remus was going to talk to Roman.

It seemed like the logical thing to do at this point. He had briefly considered stealing some of Roman’s hair to do a DNA test just to confirm things first, but had quickly brushed that off for two reasons.

The first reason being that it was invasive. The second reason was because the easiest way to go about doing a DNA test was apparently with spit and Remus wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to acquire that without Roman knowing, so that plan had fallen through. But it had mostly fallen through due to the fact that it was invasive. Totally. That was the reason he scrapped the idea.

In addition, the DNA test had downfalls. Sure, it would prove that they were indeed related, but they pretty much already knew that. It would be nice to be certain, but there was only so much that a DNA test didn’t provide. Most notably, a DNA test couldn’t provide Remus with the entire history of what happened after he was taken away from his mother. He needed to actually talk to Roman.

Remus needed to talk to Roman today.

It had already been too long. It was awkward and stressful and Remus hated it. He had to assume that Roman hated the tension too. Plus, Remus really didn’t need more stress. A new job was plenty enough. Add in the fact that his positive and negative symptoms always got worse when he was stressed, and it wasn’t a fun experience.

The positive symptoms became harder to separate from reality. The hallucinations became more and more life-like and increasingly harder to ignore while the paranoia and delusions grew and grew until it was almost impossible for him to decipher what was fact and fiction. The negative symptoms were brought back with full force. The apathy, the struggle to perform basic functions, the lack of strong emotions, all of it tumbling together, dragging him down.

It hadn’t gotten that bad in a long time, and he still had a far ways to go before reaching those points. But even though it hadn't gotten that bad, it didn’t mean Remus had to like where it currently was at either.

With these thoughts, Remus set out in his search for Roman. He had been backstage earlier with Deceit so maybe-

“Remus,” a voice called out. Recognizing the voice, Remus turned around.

Roman was walking fast to catch up to Remus- and when he did catch up, he stopped just a short distance away.

“Hey,” Roman said, “I uh- I was hoping we could talk?”

A loud buzzing noise filled Remus’ ears as he struggled to compute Roman’s words. Remus had wanted to talk to Roman, but he kinda had gotten that Roman didn’t want to talk to him.

Was Roman trying to trick him? Roman was the one playing the avoidance game, why was he changing his behavior now? Had something happened? Did Roman know something Remus didn’t? What did Roman have on him, did he know something? What did he know? What did he know? What did he know?

He took a breath and refocused, gathering the paranoia back in before it could run any further away. This was a chance to talk to Roman, that was it. Plus, it was exactly what Remus wanted, he needed to stop blowing this out of proportion.

“Yes,” Remus responded, “Yes we can absolutely talk,” he agreed.

“Great.”

People continued to move around them, leaving for the day.

“Uh, do you have time right now?” Roman said, “We could move to the break room.”

“Yeah I have time,” Remus was quick to respond, “Let’s do that.”

Roman nodded, and led the way to a break room. He kept quiet during the short walk, and Remus did as well.

When they reached the door, Roman grabbed the melting handle and pushed it open. Remus followed right behind him, and the minute he entered the room, he was hit with a strong smell of smoke. He looked quickly to the microwave in the room, which seemed fine. Roman seemed unbothered by it as well, so Remus firmly pushed the smell away, trying to convince his mind it wasn’t real.

Roman took a seat at one of the tables and Roman joined him.

“Okay,” Roman said, sliding a hand over his face, “Okay. How do we-”

“We’re siblings,” Remus said, jumping right into it, “Well, probably.”

Roman’s hand dropped to the table.

“Yeah, yeah that seems likely. Uh- but for proof- what was our mother’s full name? I can show you a picture in return.”

Great. So they were getting into it then.

“I don’t actually know,” Remus had to admit, “I was four. I don’t- I don’t remember. I thought we could do a DNA test? I mean I want proof too.”

“Oh we’re definitely taking a DNA test,” Roman agreed. He then hesitated, and his face softened, “You said- you said you were four? You were four when what?”

“I was four when I was taken away from our mother.”

“You were what?”

“I don’t remember much. All I really know is that it was filed as child neglect.”

“She would never-” Roman started, fire in his eyes.

“I know,” Remus agreed quickly, “I know. I do remember that. I remember her being caring and loving and kind and yeah- But I was taken away. I- I don’t know how much you know about adoption and foster care, but uh, when a child gets taken away from their bio-parents, the goal is for their bio-parents to get them back. Which honestly shouldn’t always be the case, but that’s- that’s another topic and that wasn’t my experience. But yeah- the goal should’ve been to return me to my- our- mom.”

“Should’ve been,” Roman stressed, because how Remus said it, implied that it wasn’t the goal.

“Yeah. Most-” Remus gulped, “Most of the time parents get support to get their kids back. But uh- well they saw a Muslim women who was a refugee from Yemen and decided they weren’t going to help. They decided that the child could have a much better life without her. I- I was uh, not happy about that. I uh- I’ve been looking for her ever since. I mean I found a truly great family but yeah- never stopped searching for her. Didn’t think I’d actually find anything, didn’t have enough to go on. But well, now? I mean… So yeah that’s all-” Remus concluded with an awkward hand wave.

“Holy shit,” Roman said, “Holy shit. Are you fucking with me?”

“No.”

Roman went absolutely still. A second later and his chair was scooting back with a screech and he started to pace the room. Remus wasn’t sure if he was muttering, or if it was just the voices, but regardless it didn’t sound happy.

“I hate people,” Roman claimed, “I can’t- I can’t fucking believe that they literally just took you away and then turned a blind eye on- Holy shit, if they, if they had just done their jobs if they had had actually helped her, her chances could’ve been way better and maybe with more help, more assistance she…” Roman trailed off, so Remus didn’t quite get to know what his mother would’ve been.

“You don’t know,” Roman said, realization crossing across his face, “Shit- Remus you don’t know.”

Remus heart thudded. He didn’t know what Roman was talking about but it didn’t sound good. Roman stopped pacing and sat back down. He sighed heavily and stared across at Remus.

“I- Remus. I know-” Roman closed his eyes tightly for a second before looking back at the man across from him, “I’m really sorry Remus, I know you said you’ve been searching for her for a long time, but uh, our mom’s dead. She died giving birth to me. I’m really really sorry.”

Remus’ world froze. The smell of smoke started to burn is nose.

“I-” he started, but found he couldn’t say anything else. When he finally found his words all he could let out was a weak, “What?”

“She- uh- She was already sick. She was already dying. And she- she decided to have me anyway. I was four minutes old when she died. I’m- I’m so so sorry, I-”

Roman had to be lying. Roman and his mom were playing tricks and this all just had to some elaborate scheme. Maybe, maybe Roman didn’t even work here or maybe Remus wasn’t even supposed to get a job here this was just some elaborate set up to get Remus here and trick him and convince his mom was dead and that this was his brother and Roman wasn’t even his brother and this was just an entire scheme set up and devised and Remus was falling for it and-

But for what?

What could Roman gain out of lying? What was the point of tricking Remus?

Remus couldn’t find an answer that made sense. Which mean that Roman was telling the truth.

Which meant that his mom was dead.

“Oh,” Remus said numbly as his brain tried to compute the information, “Oh.” He let out a weak laugh. “Guess it makes sense why you didn’t know about me now.”

“Yeah,” Roman agreed, at a loss of what else to say, “Yeah.”

Remus didn’t know what to do. Sure, he had given up seriously searching for her years ago. But he had always thought that she was out there somewhere. It seemed naive now that he was reflecting on it, but he had never for even a moment thought that she was dead.

He would never meet her again, he realized. He never even had a chance to meet her again.

“Okay,” Remus said before repeating, “Okay.” (Maybe if he repeated the words enough times things really would be okay).

“She’s- I- Do you want to see a picture?” Roman asked.

“Yes,” Remus responded immediately.

Roman nodded and pulled something out of his pocket. He unfolded the small rectangle, revealing a picture of a heavily pregnant women who looked just like Remus. Who looked just like Roman.

It was also a relief to confirm what she looked like. There had been times where Remus had wondered if maybe he had been hallucinating the entire time and maybe she wasn’t how he remembered her at all. The thought itself was irrational because Remus hadn’t had hallucinations that young, nor had he ever had hallucinations of real people. But it had always been a buried fear of his, that his mind had been playing such a trick on him without him knowing it.

“You have the same smile as her,” Remus commented.

Roman chuckled lightly.

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” Roman admitted.

For a moment the two sat in comfortable silence.

“So,” Roman said, “Tell me about yourself. You said you had a good family?”

“Yeah,” Remus agreed, “I do. Uh, I’ll tell you about me and then you do the same?”

“Yes,” Roman said easily, “Yes. Absolutely.”

Remus smiled and began.

He told Roman about being placed in foster care. He told him how he kept running away trying to find his mother and consequently never stuck in one place for long. He told Roman about his fears of going crazy- though an extremely censored version, he wasn’t quite willing to explain the positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms that followed, leading to an eventual schizophrenia diagnosis.

He told Roman about his parents and them fostering him. He told him about how when Remus explained his situation with his mother to his new parents they were instantly horrified at what happened to him and completely on board with finding her. He explained how they had fostered him to give him a support system that actually cared about him, but never expected him to see them as parents.

He told Roman about how they became his parents anyways, but that didn’t mean his connection to his biological mother was any less. He told Roman about his sisters and their chaos. He talked about being Christian and church and finding peace within a complex religion that had a multitude of issues. He talked about coming out and being loved and supported and never having doubted that support for a minute.

Remus told Roman about his entire life, about everything he possibly could.

In turn, Roman did the same.

Roman told him about his dads and how Roman was technically responsible for their getting together even if he was too young to remember it. He told Remus about his own siblings and what growing up in California was like. He talked about moving to Utah, and then moving out the moment he had the chance. He talked about meeting his husbands and falling in love. Roman talked about working in the theater company and working his way up and about his friendship with Deceit who was apparently “a prick, but he grows on you.”

Roman wove stories of his life and didn’t spare a detail.

They only paused the stories when someone on the janitorial staff had stumbled into the room and they both realized how late it had gotten.

When Roman realized how late it had gotten he immediately pulled out his phone. The screen lit up with numerous texts from his husbands, wondering where he was. The more recent ones were from an increasingly panicked Virgil and the most recent were from Patton and Logan to ‘please call just to let us know that your okay, Virgil’s freaking out.’

“Sorry,” he said as he pressed the call button on his phone, “I need to call my husbands, I didn’t tell them I would be late.”

“Yeah, of course,” Remus agreed.

Roman nodded and stood as the first ring echoed in his ear. A moment later a familiar voice picked up.

“Ro?” Patton asked.

“Yeah, hey Pat I’m really sorry for not calling. My phone was on silent. I’m okay, I’m still at work.”

“Okay,” Patton answered a sigh of relief coming through the phone, “Lemme just-” Patton trailed off. Patton’s voice returned, but this time more distantly, “Virgil hun, Roman’s on the phone. He’s okay, he’s still at work.” A moment later and Patton’s voice was clearer again, “Roman, why are you still at work? It’s really late.”

“I- um I’m actually talking to Remus. Is Virgil okay?”

“He’s…” Patton trailed off and a heavy feeling settled in Roman’s throat. “He’ll be okay,” Patton said eventually. Which meant that no, Virgil was not currently okay.

“Pat?”

Patton sighed, “He panicked pretty bad,” he admitted, “He’s- your usually home a lot earlier and sure, you’re late sometimes but never hours late without telling us.”

“I’m sorry,” Roman said immediately, the shame lying heavily on him. He should’ve called. Or texted. It was so stupid of him to forget something so simple.

“Hey, no, Ro honey it’s okay,” Patton insisted, “Yes, it would’ve been nice to know that’d you’d be this late. But it’s okay. You didn’t mean to, it slipped your mind. It’s fine. And it’s your life, you don’t have to tell us where you are every second of the day.”

“Yeah, but Virgil-”

“Virgil will be okay. You hit a trigger, but we all do sometimes and it wasn’t intentional. I’m positive he isn’t mad at you.”

Virgil might not be mad at Roman, but Roman was sure as hell mad at himself.

“-And,” Patton carried on, “Roman, you shouldn’t be mad at yourself either. It slipped your mind, that happens. It wasn’t intentional and you can’t be perfect every second of the day, okay love?”

Patton knew him too well. Roman took a breath and worked on believing that. He wasn’t a bad person.

“Okay,” he agreed, and actually believed it. “How’re you and Lo?”

“Lo’s a bit unsettled cause you broke routine. I forgot most of the afternoon anyways so…”

Roman frowned, “Pat, that’s twice in a week.”

Patton’s memory was bad, but it wasn’t often that he lost large chunks like this in such a short period of time.

“I know,” he confirmed, “I’m keeping track. And Logan’s making sure I don’t forget to keep track. I’m not worried yet, but we’ll see if it persists. I-” Patton’s voice began to fade a bit, “Hey Virge. Yeah, course,” Patton’s voice became clearer again, “V wants to take to you.”

“Absolutely,” Roman confirmed.

There was a bit of random noises on the other side of the line and then a clear voice was speaking.

“Hey Ro.” Virgil’s voice was quiet and lacking any of its usual zest.

“Hi dear, sorry about not calling.”

“It’s okay,” Virgil replied immediately, “Don’t beat yourself up.”

“I should have-”

“No,” Virgil firmly insisted, “I can play that game too. I shouldn’t’ve panicked as easily. I shouldn’t’ve demanded to know when you’d be home. I should give you more space. We can all play the should’ve-would’ve-could’ve game Roman. And we’ll all lose. You forgot to tell us you would be home late. That happens. It’s okay.”

“Okay,” Roman agreed. He felt a lot better with the additional reassurance from Virgil. “And V- I- you do give me enough space. Demanding you know where I am every second of every day is a little extreme, but you don’t do that. I think it’s more than reasonable to want to know if I’m okay and where I am after being hours late with no warning.”

“I know.”

“And similarly- you shouldn’t get mad at yourself for panicking.”

“No, I know,” Virgil agreed, “I’m not. It is something I want to work on more though. I don’t want to panic this extremely this easily.”

“Okay.”

Roman shifted a bit more and glanced over at Remus. He was on his own phone, politely ignoring Roman.

“I- do you want to talk to Logan for a minute?” Virgil asked.

“Sure.”

More shuffling and then Logan’s voice was coming through.

“You’re usually home by now,” Logan said.

“Yeah,” Roman chuckled lightly, “Sorry about that.”

“Why are you so late?”

“I- uh- I well it’s probably something I should talk to all three of you together when I get home. Not really a phone conversation or a one-on-one conversation.”

“Okay. Will you be home soon?”

“Probably,” Roman replied.

“Okay. I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you are doing. Goodbye Roman.”

“Bye Lo, love you.”

“I love you as well.”

Logan hung up and Roman turned his phone off before shoving it back in his pocket.

“Sorry about that,” Roman said, rejoining Remus at the table, “I’m usually home by now and Virgil worries.”

“He seems to worry pretty obsessively,” Remus noted.

Roman bristled.

“Hey, no, I’m sorry,” Remus said, “I wasn’t trying to- He just seemed kind of demanding, but I only get half the call. I wasn’t-”

It was a bit presumptuous of a thought, but Roman could see the faint logic behind it. If Roman had only heard his side, he might have thought the same. Remus was overstepping, but Roman couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t do the same in a swapped situation. Remus just didn’t know their dynamic.

“My husbands aren’t demanding,” Roman clarified, voice firm with no room for debate, “They were just very worried when I didn’t come home on time and still happen to not be home hours later than I was supposed to be.”

“Right,” Remus said, “Sorry for assuming.”

Roman nodded in acceptance and the atmosphere softened.

“So,” Roman said, “I should be getting home. But-”

“Let’s talk more?” Remus finished hopefully.

“Yes,” Roman agreed, “I can- let me give you my number. I want to get to know you. I haven’t ever had an older brother before.”

Wait what? When had Roman started thinking of Remus as his brother? When had that happened?

The revelation surprised Roman, but it didn’t exactly bother him.

Remus smiled, looking once more just like their mother, “Yeah that sounds good. I’ve never had a brother before either.”

Roman winced and realized he had forgotten to share one very important detail.

“I- I’m actually genderqueer. I use he/him pronouns but I don’t use gendered language. I actually usually start with that information but well,” Roman laughed, “This wasn’t exactly a normal introduction.”

“Of course,” Remus replied, “Sibling then. Well I already have four of those, I'm more than happy to add another one.”

“Okay.” Roman said.

“Okay,” Remus agreed.

They got up, ready to leave, Roman opening the door for Remus on the way out.

Remus opened the door, allowing him entrance into his apartment. With a sigh, he quickly collapsed on the couch in the main room. Moments later and his phone started to ring.

He groaned loudly, but his groan quickly turned into a wide grin once he saw the caller ID. He answered his phone immediately.

“Hi Dad.”

“My young grasshopper,” he greeted. Remus snorted.

“Dad, I’m pretty sure you can stop calling me your ‘young grasshopper’ now that I’m in my mid-30’s.”

“Nah,” his dad disagreed, “You’re always gonna be my young grasshopper.”

“Gee, thanks,” Remus bit sarcastically.

“How are things? We didn’t get to talk early this week, but your mom mentioned that there was something about a potentially brother in the mix?”

“Sibling,” Roman corrected.

“What?”

“Uh- his name’s Roman. And we are related. But we aren’t brothers because Roman doesn’t use gendered language. So we’re siblings.”

“Gendered language?”

“Mhhm. Roman uses he/him pronouns but he doesn’t use language that refers to him as male or female, like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ or ‘sister’ and ‘brother.’ He uses terms like ‘sibling’ and ‘person.’”

“Okay. Got it. But he is your sibling?”

“Yeah,” Remus replied, “Unless he’s a real damn good liar. We want to do a DNA test to confirm but yeah, yeah he is.”

Remus turned his head as he waited for his father’s response and immediately saw a huge spider crawling up his wall. He jumped, more due to be startled than actual fear. The spider was about the size of his hand. Big enough to be registered as ‘oh shit that’s a huge spider’ but also not big enough to seem unbelievable. Which was the problem.

It probably wasn’t real, Remus decided. It looked real, and it acted real, but tarantulas weren’t native to the United States. It wouldn’t make sense for one to be in his house.

But, he was pretty sure one of his neighbors had a pet tarantula now that he thought about it. Maybe it had somehow escaped and gotten into his house. Sure, it was unlikely, but what if it was a pet? If Remus just ignored it when it really was someone’s lost pet he’d feel terrible.

But he couldn’t just go down to his neighbor’s door and asked if they lost a spider. First off, he wasn't sure which neighbor it belonged to. Second off, if the spider wasn’t real and he then asked if it was missing he’d have to explain and he didn’t know how to do that without awkwardly laughing and leaving, or admitting he had hallucinations. Neither were things he wanted to do.

“Remus? You there?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, eyes still on the spider, “One second, I’m just going to take a photo.”

“Okay.”

Remus pulled his phone away from his ear and snapped the photo. When he looked at it, he thought he saw the spider in the frame, but he wasn’t positive. He couldn’t tell if he was hallucinating the spider, or if it was really there and he was doubting it was there, making it seem like it was a hallucination.

“Dad?” Remus said as he placed the phone back to his ear.

“Yes?”

“Can I send you a picture and you tell me if there’s a spider in it?”

“Sure,” he replied.

Remus nodded and pulled the phone away again before sending the picture to his dad. He lifted his phone back to his ear and waited for a response.

“No, no spider.”

“Okay. thanks.”

It was probably better that way anyway. Now Remus didn’t have to go track down who owned the spider in his building. Though then again, maybe he should. A spider sounded like a cool pet. Maybe he should get one. A smaller one that stayed in a cage and not creepily on his wall and was now looking at him and he couldn’t seem to look away and now the fear was setting in and-

“Hey Dad, what do you think about me getting a spider?” he asked, desperately tearing his eyes away.

His dad chuckled.

“Good luck finding someone to take care of it when you visit, because it certainly isn’t coming with you.”

“Oh, come on. I could get a small one.”

“Absolutely not. That’s what you said about your lizard and it got to be over a foot long.”

“Hey! Pickle was a great lizard and you loved him.”

His father grumbled but didn’t deny it, so Remus took that as a win.

“So,” his dad began, “Roman, huh?”

“Yeah,” Roman sighed, “yeah. He’s about five years younger than me. My mom was pregnant with him when she first immigrated here. She probably didn’t even know at the time.”

“And, your mom. Does this mean…” his dad trailed off and Remus clenched his teeth at the reminder.

“I- Well I guess I did technically find her,” Remus admitted.

“But?”

“But she died about 30 years ago, just after Roman was born.”

No point in beating around the bush. Remus would have to accept it eventually.

“Oh. Oh Remus.”

“I don’t even know why I’m upset,” Remus muttered. A burning feeling grew in his stomach. “I mean- I barely remember her anyways. And I had mostly given up hope on ever finding her anyways.”

“Giving up hope of finding her doesn’t mean you were ready to hear that she had died,” his father spoke gently.

Remus huffed.

“I dunno. I just feel so stupid. Like- I barely knew her. I don’t even remember my own fucking last name. I don’t know why I even care.”

“She was your mom, Remus. And she loved you. And you knew she loved you. And you were taken away from her. And now, 30 years later you’re learning that she died. It’s okay to be upset.”

“I don’t wanna be,” Remus whined. He may be a grown adult, but something about talking to his parents brought out the part of him that had always been a scared kid. He sighed. “Okay. Okay. I get your point. I’ll think about it.”

“Good. So I’m assuming that you’ve gotten a chance to talk to Roman?”

“Yeah, I did,” Remus said, and settled in to tell his dad everything.

Roman was going to tell his husbands everything, but it was probably a topic that would have to wait for a hot minute.

At first, he wanted to get straight into it, but when he arrived home Virgil and Patton were making dinner and Kit was on duty. Virgil almost never had Kit on duty while at home. Roman needed to address the earlier phone call first. He felt the shame in him start to rise again and worked on forgiving himself.

“Hey,” he greeted, not wanting to startle them. Virgil immediately abandoned the meal and raced into his arms.

“Hi,” Virgil said as he clung tightly to him.

“Love, I’m safe,” he reminded.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Virgil agreed shakily, “Just waiting for my brain to get the hint.”

Roman smiled and dropped a kiss to his head.

In response, Virgil stood on his tip toes and engaged him in a proper kiss. When they broke apart, Roman kept an arm wrapped around Virgil, not allowing him to get further than an arm lengths away. Virgil didn’t even try to protest, and instead looked quite pleased.

“Patton?” Roman asked.

Patton grinned and and joined the two of them, giving Roman his own kiss. It was soft and sweet and felt like ‘welcome home.’ Roman melted into it. But there was still one person missing.

“Where’s Logan?”

“Office,” Virgil said, “He’s frustrated.”

The shame returned. Roman sighed and worked on chipping away at it, reducing and rationalizing it. Guilt was acceptable here, Roman had forgotten to inform his husbands he’d be so late, but shame was too much and he needed to remember that.

“Not at you,” Patton was quick to add on, “Break in routine was making him uneasy. We kicked him out of the kitchen so he could go take space. But dinner is almost ready, and I know he’ll be happy to see you. Want to go grab him?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” he promised. He gave them another kiss before wandering off to grab Logan.

When he reached the office he knocked gently and pushed the door open. Logan was doing… something with numbers and charts on his computer that Roman couldn’t begin to comprehend. Logan also had his old weighted blanket in his lap, the one he had as a kid. The corner was clenched between two fingers, and they rubbed at the blanket in a comforting stim.

“Hey Lo, I’m back,” Roman greeted as he stepped into the room.

“You’re home,” he said as he tore his gaze away from his work.

“Mhmm,” Roman agreed, “Sorry I broke routine without a warning.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Logan claimed.

It was a fair comment, and probably true, but that didn't mean that Logan wasn’t feeling frustrated and thrown off in general.

“Okay. Uh, Virgil and Patton finished up dinner.”

Logan immediately looked towards the clock and then at Roman. Logan let out a low hum and cast his eyes down to his old weighted blanket, fingers still rubbing it soothingly.

“Y’know, you could always bring your blanket with you to dinner,” Roman offered.

Logan seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding and standing, folded blanket in hand. He joined Roman at his spot near the door.

“Dinner?”

Roman nodded and the two left.

Roman didn’t bring Remus up during dinner. Dinner was family time and not the place for serious discussion. It was a time to catch up and enjoy each other’s presence.

So after they had cleaned up after dinner, Roman asked everyone to sit back down at the table.

“Okay, Patton already knows about some of this,” Roman admitted, “I didn’t mean to tell him before anyone else but we were both up late and it’s taken me a little while to figure out how to broach the rest of this.”

Virgil grabbed his arms, nails digging into elbows. Kit nudged his arms apart and- under Virgil’s command- leapt up to lay half his body across Virgil’s lap, hindlegs still on the floor.

“It’s not bad,” Roman clarified, “It’s- Okay. So I just found out that my mom had another kid. I have an older brother.”

He let the news sink in for a moment before starting to ramble.

“Yeah, so I guess he came with her from Yemen when he was about four and he got taken away from her and then she never told my dad so neither of us knew, nobody but my brother knew and basically his name is Remus and he works with me now.”

The room instantly fell into silence as everyone tried to figure out how to move forward with that new shocking revelation.

It was Virgil who broke the tense atmosphere.

“Hey Pat, Lo, any long forgotten figures from either of your pasts? At this rate, there’s a good chance we know where to find them.”

It was a weak attempt at humor, but it did lighten the room ever so slightly.

“I know right,” Roman groaned, burying his face in his hands, “Seriously, how is this my life?”

“To be clear- you recently found out you have a biological older brother and you found this out because he now works with you?” Logan asked.

“Yup,” Roman agreed.

“Are you sure he’s your brother?”

From anyone else, Roman would of taken that question as an attack, but this was Logan, built on pure curiosity and need for fact.

“I mean, technically no. We’re going to do a DNA test. But everything’s he’s said lines up perfectly, and he looks just like me and my mom. So it’s a very loose technically.”

“Okay, so what does that mean?” Logan then asked.

“I- what?” Roman asked.

“Well, what are you going to do about this information.”

“I think I want to get to know him more?” Roman offered, “I mean, he is my brother, right?”

“It seems to me that that is up to you to decide,” Logan insisted.

Roman paused, and thought about it. This same topic kept coming up. What was he going to do about Remus? What was Remus to him?

When they had left that day, Roman had called Remus his brother. To his face. Remus in return had called Roman his sibling. Roman thought he liked that, wanted that.

“He’s my brother,” Roman decided, “He, yeah. He is.”

“I still can’t believe I’m an only child and not you,” Virgil said, “You’re the true example of an only child mindset.”

“What, how?”

“Attention-seeking, bratty, selfish, impatient-” Logan started to tease with no real heat, mouth quirking up in that way of his.

“Hey! How am I selfish?”

“You didn’t share your breakfast with me this morning.”

“You had your own!”

From then on, the conversation was lost into petty bickering, and there was nowhere Roman would rather be.

Finding out he had an older brother at this point in life wasn’t something that Roman had ever been expecting, and if he had been asked, he would have probably said he never would of wanted it either. But here he was anyway and Roman- Roman wasn’t displeased or disappointed. He was confused and a little lost, but that was life sometimes. They would move forward.

So they did.

He and Remus started to get to know one another. One of their earliest interactions was conducting a DNA test. And a month later, a month into getting to know each other, the test came back.

Positive.

taglist below

-message me to be added or removed-

@mewithanie @eddies-spaghetti @lemonyellowlogic @savioursailor @goldteethandacurseforthistown @you-betcha-weirdo

#ts roman #ts remus #ts deceit #sanders sides #ts sides #ts patton #ts virgil #ts logan #lamp #calm #angst #hurt/comfort #fluff #ao3 #fanfiction #fan fiction #colupdate #jksf #just keep stumbling forward

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soundwavereporting · 4 years

Text

title: the moth and the robot

fandom(s): Transformers IDW1, Godzilla Heisei series

characters: Cosmos (the robot), Mothra (the moth)

summary: set directly after the 1992 Godzilla vs Mothra movie. Intent on keeping her promise, Mothra heads to space to stop a planet-destroying comet.

notes: totally unbeta’d, feedback is always appreciated.

Yesterday, she had made her first friend in half a century.

Today, that friend was dead. Alone, she hurtled through space, lacking even the fairies. They had been left on her island to guard her egg--at some point between the airfield and now, she had resigned herself to the notion that she was destined to be alone.

Which was fine.

It wasn’t like she was lonely; the fairies were good company when they were around. Once he had seen the sense in working together, even Battra had accepted her offer of a tentative alliance to defeat a stronger enemy. Privately, she wondered if he had been lonelier than her, truly lacking any kin besides the planet itself. She wondered if anyone would have ever been able to understand him.

So, she was happy enough being alone.

Battra had not told her the exact location of the Gorath comet. He had not lived long enough to know how to navigate the stars and currents the way she had, but she could feel its presence, tingling in the back of her mind like a headache. And she could hear something else; a soft static just behind her eyes.

She suspected it was nothing more than a satellite. The humans had started sending them up into space some time ago, though she had not thought they would be so far from the earth. She made a mental note to ask her fairies to ask the humans about the satellites once she got back.

Ah.

There—slightly larger than she had expected, green and round—was the satellite. Mothra tucked in her wings as she approached, landing softly on the satellite. It smelled like alien metal. Beneath its core components, she could feel its circuitry humming, felt the engine pulse under her feet.

The satellite made an offended sputter. It jerked away from her, metamorphosing in a whirl of green and white and silver, until it had evolved completely, becoming a strange, two-legged creature with a blue eye screen that matched her own eyes, gawking up at her.

It chirped and chattered angrily. Mothra frowned, straining her ears as she tried to make sense of the little alien’s language. It was a little alien, wasn’t it? Surely the humans were not so advanced that they had learned to design mechanical beings such as this—surely they had some generations to learn and grow before repeating the mistakes of the Elias. If the humans could make little robots intelligent enough to travel so far, to chirp angrily at her, surely their technology was not so far from reaching the point where they would desire to control the earth’s climate.

Perhaps, Mothra realized despairingly, her friend had not been wrong to act so quickly.

“—¸.•..>?” The alien gestured to her with one hand, then to the vast expanse of space around them all.

Mothra blinked. It hadn’t run, nor had it tried to attack her.

She backed up, far enough to easily dodge the alien if needed, close enough that she didn’t think the little alien would think too badly of her.

“Mothra,” she said. “My name is Mothra.”

“Mothra!” The robot tapped his chest. “Thank Primus the translator picked up your language. You understand me?”

Mothra’s eyes had gone wide in awe. Fascinating. The alien—now, she was sure it was an alien—could understand her! “I understand you.”

The robot’s eye screen flashed. “Hi, uh, Mothra. I’m Cosmos.”

Mothra’s antennae twitched. An appropriate name. Were his species named after their functions? Mothra supposed she had named herself. Or perhaps the Elias had. It had been so long, she could no longer remember.

“It’s nice to meet you, Cosmos,” Mothra said. Now that she was paying closer attention, she could hear it: what she had believed to be the satellites’ circuitry humming was Cosmos’s voice, quiet and constant against the silence of space. “I believed I was alone.”

“Oh!” Cosmos tilted his head, eyes watching Mothra with an expression she wanted to label as curious. “I’m usually by myself out here. I mean, not totally alone, but, you know: lonely.”

Curious, Mothra tapped Cosmos’s arm with one leg. She could practically taste it, sharp and sour at the back of her throat. Wishing desperately for something out of reach.

She wondered if Cosmos could sense her loneliness.

“So.”

They had been floating in silence for perhaps a minute. Mothra was used to the silence, but apparently, Cosmos was not.

“I’ve never seen a ‘Mothra’ before,” Cosmos asked. “Are you just…out here for fun? For recon?”

“I made a promise,” Mothra said. “To a friend. There’s a comet—an asteroid, I think—that’s going to hit the planet we live on. I promised I would stop it.”

Cosmos nodded. “I’ve surveyed this quadrant for the last cycle looking for artificial weaponry, but I did collect data on a medium-sized comet that’s scheduled to enter the SOL-84 system within the next half-cycle.”

Cosmos pointed somewhere to his right. “I guess I can’t upload the exact coordinates into your processor, can I?”

“No.” Mothra blinked. “But I can sense its presence, just as I heard you.”

“Huh.” Cosmos dropped his hand and crossed his arms, looking away from Mothra. Then: “D’you need…help, stopping it?”

She hadn’t even considered asking. Surely Cosmos had his own missions to complete, his own promises to uphold, but if he was offering…

“Alright,” Mothra said. After all, Battra hadn’t told her how he planned to stop the thing. “Thank you.”

“I’m technically not supposed to have this,” Cosmos was saying. “But my boss, uh, well, I’m not sure where he got it, or who developed it, but it works!”

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

Cosmos shrugged. “It’ll get the job done. We haven’t been able to study black holes in too much detail, but I think it’s safe to say that your comet won’t cause you any more trouble. Press the big button. Second from the left.”

Mothra tapped the button. It flashed yellow and she looked up, studying the deactivated sensor net.

She and Cosmos had spent the better part of a day planting tiny metal circles the size of Cosmos’s hand around an asteroid belt. According to Cosmos, once the comet entered the sensor’s range, a highly experimental (yet safe) black hole would be created. Once it had consumed the Gorath comet, Cosmos would activate another highly experimental (yet safe) device to render the black hole harmless.

Mother knew little of human (or robot) technology, and all of the more technical words Cosmos had used to explain had failed to translate into her language. From what little she understood, Cosmos planned to disrupt the inner workings of the black hole, destabilizing something in its orbit in order to dissipate its energy.

“After this,” Cosmos said, “Are you going back to earth?”

Thoughtfully, Mothra tapped her fingers against the metal controls. She hadn’t considered going anywhere but Earth, but the robot’s tone made it seem like there was another option. She could stay with him, perhaps. For a time. Yet, the seal she had placed on Godzilla would not last for long. She had a year—perhaps two—before he awakened. And when he did, Mothra was unsure if she would be able to stop him by herself.

“Yes.” Mothra turned to look at Cosmos. She couldn’t tell what the robot was thinking—without spending more time around him, it was nearly impossible to pick up any but the most urgent of his thoughts. Nor could she understand his body language: he had no discernible eyes, simply that shining blue plate of on his head. He didn’t even have wings. The robot watched impassively as she found her voice, and spoke:

“I am sworn to protect my planet,” Mothra said. “And I must return. However, I would welcome the help if you wanted to come with me.”

Cosmos had been slouching on an asteroid, but as she spoke, he straightened, as though he were startled.

“You’d want—you just met me!” Cosmos said. “What if I were a Decep—a bad guy, out to destroy your organic species?”

“There’s only one of me,” Mothra said, ignoring Cosmos’s half-uttered apology. “Besides, if you wanted to kill me, surely you would have done so already?”

“I guess.” Cosmos shrugged. “I mean, I’d love to. It sounds much nicer than staying in space all the time. Are there other people where you live?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” Cosmos checked one of the screens on his wrist and turned in the direction of the comet’s approach. “And you were the only person they sent to stop this thing?”

“I was the only one who could do it.” Mothra frowned. “The only one alive, at least.”

Which was true. Though he could fly far faster than her, she doubted even Rodan would have the strength to travel this far with no air. Plus, if Rodan died in this airless, frigid place, he would never come back. Mothra would.

“Oh.” Cosmos looked back at her. “I know what you mean. I’ve been one of the few spacefaring bots who survived this long into the war, so I’m always posted out here. I mean, not here, specifically. Wherever Prowl or Skids need me.”

“What strange names you robots have.”

Cosmos snorted. “You’re literally a giant moth.”

“Fair point.” Just a few hours ago, it had been little more than annoyance—helpful, even, as she navigated the stars—but now, pressure in her head was reaching a crescendo. If the comet did not enter the asteroid belt soon, she would need to retreat before it got any more painful.

“Will you be alright?” Cosmos asked abruptly. “Going back to the earth alone?”

Mothra was quiet as she considered his words, scratching at the scales on her neck as she thought. She hadn’t taken the time to properly clean herself after the fight, and her fluff was still covered in the ash and debris of Godzilla’s radioactive breath. At least she hadn’t gotten any blood on her, Mothra thought morbidly.

Yes, she had realized in the last few hours: she was lonely, had been lonely for some time, and acquiring and losing a friend in the span of a few minutes had only forced her to realize that. Had that been why she had asked Cosmos to return to earth with her?

“I—“ The pressure in her head spiked, and Mothra looked up to see the comet, once little more than a speck on the horizon, now looming above them. “I think we’d better move back.”

“Agreed.”

Together, they flew to the furthest tip of the asteroids, as far from the comet as they could get before Cosmos lost the signal.

“You ready?”

Mothra nodded.

Cosmos pressed the button.

The light was strong enough that Mothra had to look away, and the blast that followed had her huddling beside Cosmos as rock and ash pelted their bodies.

It hadn't made a sound.

When Mothra looked up, there was no sign of the comet—hardly any sign of the asteroids themselves. What little remained floated aimlessly; some of the rocks had been split open, revealing shimmering crystals and dark obsidian. It was a beautiful sight, and Mothra wished Battra was here to see it.

“Thank you,” Mothra said. “I don’t know how I would have done it on my own.”

“Hey, anytime.”

Mothra imagined Cosmos was smiling. He had to have a mouth, didn’t he?

“You know,” Cosmos said. “I know you’ve gotta go, but if you’re ever in the quadrant…”

Mothra moved to bump her head against Cosmos’s forehead. Among her species, it would be considered a fond gesture—one of respect and solidarity. But Cosmos leapt back, emitting a harsh, staticky yelp.

“Sorry!”

“Oh! No, no, it’s okay.” Cosmos hesitated, then patted Mothra’s forehead awkwardly. “Caught me by surprise is all.”

Collecting the equipment took far less time than setting it up. In no time at all, Cosmos had transformed back into his strange, circular form, and Mothra had reoriented herself to face Earth.

“Thank you,” Mothra said, again. “I do hope we will meet again one day.”

“Me too.”

#someone: but [soundwavereporting] are you implying tarantulas was accidentally responsible for creating space godzilla?#me: p e r h a p s #transformers #godzilla #mothra #cosmos #kaiju #maccadam #idw

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yume-x-hanabi · 5 years

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A sort of retrospective on this blogs’ 4 years on Tumblr...

I think my best fandom year was 2014. I was pretty active, writing out posts, translating, engaging with the fandoms. I even wrote fics!

Then in early 2015 it started going downhill, I think for a few reasons:

- my ever declining mental health (I had failed exams again and my thesis wasn’t writing itself; it’s around that time that had some suicidal ideation, and also when I finally started to get help. But getting better took a long time).

- the beginning of a string of terrorist attacks in Europe. I still remember how shocking the Charlie Hebdo attack was. I was almost obsessed with following every news on the subject, then. That kinda put things on the backrunner for a while tbh. (Now it’s almost frightening and terribly tragic how I’m not even surprised when something happens. It’s kind of like “Oh no, again?” Not apathy, far from it, but the surprise and shock is just... gone. Replaced with sad resignation. I wonder if others share this feeling...).

- Tales of Zestiria came out, and the fandom moved on from Xillia to it. Since I wasn’t as invested in Zesty, that contributed to losing enthusiasm for the series. Plus all that drama made me weary.

If you look at my archive, you can see the dramatic drop in text posts between 2014 and 2015 lol. I did have some bouts of productivity though, did some translations, wrote a couple one-shots... (especially in December).

Funny aside, it’s in 2015 that I got Missy, and gawd did the cat posts increase in numbers from then on haha.

The first half of 2016 had little Tales activity aside from the random ask memes and answers to asks. The stress of school was over but now there was the stress of unemployment and how badly I approached it.

But in August 2016 I was back into fandom because of Berseria. I liked it a lot, and I talked about it a bunch. sadly i never did a second playthrough, which i totally should now

Then came Fall and my stressful night job, my first experience in education... and my dad’s death.

I... honestly don’t remember much about the end of 2016 and 2017. I was like in a daze, I think. I vaguely remember spending a lot of time in bed. I also immersed myself in Dragon Age a lot, partly to have something to distract me, partly to flee Tales fandom, as I didn’t feel like interacting much with people. My archive of this period is mostly a lot of reblogs. I also - I don’t remember when exactly - unfollowed a bunch of people from Tales fandom. I kinda regret it now, but I think back then I didn’t have the mental strength to be in the fandom anymore, even if I missed it from time to time.

I also got pretty into kdrama around mid-2017 iirc, but I didn’t really have a fandom to interact with, so, again, it was pretty passive.

In November 2017, after a year of passive fandoming and distancing myself from Tales, I officially decided to leave Taleslations. I didn’t see the point in trying to pretend I would produce anything again anymore.

I wanted to focus more on kdrama but tbh I’m still mostly reblogging stuff, not producing active contents. Most discussions I have about what I watch are done in private. I do post a bit about what I’m watching sometimes, but it’s far from the long analyses I would write before. idk why I never managed to openly talk about it much. Maybe because my main followerbase was from Tales and it felt weird to talk about something else? Didn’t prevent me from reblogging pretty gifsets and other people’s opinions, though. But, again, passive passive passive.

That was the trend for the end of 2017 and most of 2018. Spring 2018 was a mess because I tried to do everything health-related at once (wisdom teeth, weaning off antidepressants, losing weight...). July-August 2018 didn’t see much posting because I was in Japan yaaay vacation. September was busy with exams and the beginning of the school year, October was busy with the move, and November...

That was when I started “waking up” and wanting to get back into Xillia, (in a way retrieve a part of who I was before). I was still busy and didn’t post that much, but my mind’s been pretty active about it, and now I’m slowly setting the path to come back.

So what changed? Why do I feel I can do it now, after nearly three years of inactivity?

I think the main reason is, simply, my mental health. 2015-2017 was a sometimes dark time with a lot of high and lows, and I think that’s the main thing that contributed to my passivity. Now I’m much better, and most importantly, stable. I’ve weaned off antidepressants completely, I’m in a better living environment, I have a good job and now enough experience to be able to balance life and hobbies.

This is the perfect time to get active again, and, honestly, the Tumblr thing prompting moves and archiving to other platforms have kept me occupied and active (though mostly behind the scenes), and I think that’s a good stepping stone. I look forward to seeing what I’ll be able to do when I’m done with that.

Also I’m (unofficially as of now) back in Taleslations. Who would have thought. But you know what? This feels right. I had no idea how much I’ve missed this.

I think, for the first time in three years, I finally like what I’m doing here again.

#this is super long lol #but it felt good to write #to see where i come from #and how i've changed #and i feel really hopeful about the future #i want to go back to participating in fandom #any fandom but xillia especially #and this time i think i truly can #i've come far enough #yume's archive

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miss-musings · 6 years

Text

The Similarities between TBL’s Red and Mr. Rochester, a.k.a. A Classic Byronic Hero

Several in the Blacklist fandom, myself included, have compared our protagonist “Raymond (Red) Reddington” (James Spader’s character) to the likes of Edmond Dantes and Mr. Rochester.

The reasoning behind this, other than sharing some parallel plot points (such as being a sailor, being labeled a criminal by his government, going into exile, wanting revenge and/or relief, etc.) … Red shares a lot of the traits of a Byronic hero.

According to the Wikipedia entry for the Byronic hero, various iterations of the character-type are described as:

“a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection …a solitary figure, resigned to suffering … the “fallen angel” … [with a] violent temper and [capable of] seduction … [has] occasional outbreaks of remorse [that] reveal a tortured character, echoing a Byronic remorse … a remarkable blend of both villain and hero, and exploration of both sides of the Byronic character.”

Here are some other slides I found that give descriptions and examples of Byronic heroes. I take no credit for any of these slides:

Now, obviously, the Byronic hero is a bit fluid, meaning that not every single example of one fits every single characteristic in each description. But, I truly see Red as a Byronic hero. (I bolded all the traits in the description that I think fit him.) The Byronic hero is sometimes seen as the predecessor or primogenitor or at least the “cousin” of the modern-day anti-hero, which Red DEFINITELY falls into. He’s by all accounts a “bad guy” and yet we love him and we want him to win.

But in a recent post, I used the similarities between Red and a very early example of a Byronic hero, Mr. Rochester of “Jane Eyre,” as evidence for why I think Red is the romantic lead in our story, and why he and Liz getting together in some form or fashion (a.k.a. Lizzington) is the endgame.

Looking at it more closely, if we assume that Liz is Red’s love interest, as Jane is Rochester’s, more similarities and parallels become evident:

His love interest works for him in some regard

He is about twice her age

He sees her as his “second chance,” etc. (we’ll dive into that more in a second)

In comparison to the female protagonist and the other characters, he is considered to be very worldly and well-traveled

He travels, in part, to escape both his inner and outer demons

He was previously married and had several trysts and relationships with various women until meeting the protagonist

(Seemingly) flirts with his female acquaintances to make the protagonist jealous

Once meeting her, he becomes completely devoted to the protagonist, and has eyes for no other woman

One thing that has always struck me about Red on TBL is that, while we do get references to him being in relationships and having sex with women in the past, we REALLY don’t see Red engaging in relationships or trysts since meeting Liz in the pilot. Maybe he does it off-screen, and there is that shot of Luli in 1x05 where she walks through the room in one of Red’s shirts… but, other than that, NOTHING! Yes, he flirts. Yes, he makes sexy comments and allusions. Yes, he dances with Madeline seductively and closely in 1x14. But, for a man who admits that he views sex as a drug, and his FAVORITE AND GO-TO DRUG at that, he has been relatively chaste on-screen.

The show clearly has no problem showing couples hooking up so long as its “family-friendly”. They showed Ressler and Samar getting together. They’ve shown Liz and Tom having sexy times on several occasions. They insinuated sexual activity between Aram and his shitty girlfriend. …So, why have James Spader, who once played a character that said “Everything is sex,” be relatively celibate and not get in on the action???

If the show wanted to quell the whole “Lizzington” uproar, all the showrunners would have to do is have Red tell Liz he’s her dad or relative or father-figure or whatever, and then give him a nice, steady, likable love interest. Piece of cake.

Anyway, back to the Byronic hero.

While their backstories differ greatly, Red FEELS and SOUNDS a lot like Mr. Rochester, or other Byronic heroes in general. Like Dantes, he seems to have some kind of elaborate “long-game” of revenge that targets the people who did him wrong but who are also legitimately evil and are doing the world harm; while at the same time, he’s intent on protecting the lives of the innocent. Like Dantes, maybe Red has or soon will become too wrapped up in his mission of revenge and will need others to show him the light.

But, as for his similarities to Mr. Rochester, as I pointed out in the other post, Red has these long, grand monologues about what he has become, who he used to be, and who he wants (Liz to help him) to be again.

(EDIT: I previously had tried to embed videos before, but they didn’t come up on either mobile or desktop, so I’ve just added links to the YouTube videos instead.)

Examples include:

The Ugly Fish monologue in 2x09

The North Star monologue in 3x02

He also tends to wax philosophical about the guilt he feels, and how he is making or has tried to make amends, and how the life he leads has caused him to feel less-than-human, etc.

Examples include:

The “…just a nice gesture” monologue in 2x16

The “I’m a violent man” monologue in 3x12

And because of all this, he feels very much like a wandering, tortured soul… as we learn very vividly from the infamous “Parable of the Farmer” in 1x04.

All of these is, of course, very much like Mr. Rochester from “Jane Eyre.”

Here are some passages from “Jane Eyre” where Mr. Rochester is talking about the woman he loves. At the time, Jane is in love with him, but she believes he is in love with someone else (Blanche Ingram). In reality, though, Mr. Rochester has been in love with Jane since he first met her, and decided that jealousy would be the best way to 1) see whether Jane loved him, and 2) if she did, to make that love grow and become more apparent.

(BTW, just gonna put these two completely random pictures here:)

Here’s the first one, in which Rochester is talking to Jane after she saved him from a fire in his bedroom.

(BTW, the narration is written from Jane’s first-person perspective.)

[Rochester:] “But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.”

He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, them in both his own.

“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”

He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but his voice was checked.

“Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case.”

“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight!”

And, now, in this second passage … this is after Rochester has been (sort of) “courting” Blanche in front of Jane, and Jane and he are sharing a quiet, peaceful moment together after a very strange and stressful night.

Here, Rochester starts talking VERY VAGUELY about the shitty things that have happened to him, how he’s tried to find solace in worldy things and ultimately, only now, has he found happiness and peace with the woman he loves. Jane ~assumes~ he’s talking about Blanche, when in reality he’s talking about Jane:

“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a crime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is error. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?…

“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?”

“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.”

“But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—”

He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.

“Little friend,” said he, in quite a changed tone—while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic—“you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?”

Now…

(SPOILER WARNING FOR JANE EYRE)

What Rochester is ACTUALLY talking about, in reference to what he experienced as a young man, was – about 20 years before the events of the novel – he traveled from England to the West Indies and was convinced by his family and others into marrying a woman whom he later discovered was clinically insane. He tried to live with her initially, but later brought her back to England and paid a servant to watch her and not tell anyone about it, never told any of his friends or other servants he was married, and then runs off and roams about the world for 20-ish years having trysts and trying to find solace where he could. And then – after he meets Jane – he tries to marry her without informing her that he’s already married.

So, after Jane finds out during the ceremony – through the providence of someone outing Rochester for his treachery – the two have a discussion about where their relationship will go from here. Rochester wants to “marry” her or at least have her live with him, away from people; but, she’s not down for it. This is what he says as part of his long-ass explanation as to why he did what he did:

“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. … After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

Just in these four phrases I bolded from Rochester’s monologue to Jane about what he did, I saw parallels to four very notable Red quotes: (in order) when he tells Fitch “you cannot possibly fathom how deep that well of my truly goes” in reference to his desire to protect the things and people he loves in 1x20; the “I have you” in 1x03; his description of Liz to Sam in 1x08; and the “love is having no control” moment in 2x08.

(End of Spoiler Warning)

This is all a very long way of saying that I have no idea whether the writers intended for Red to have parallels to the Byronic hero or to Mr. Rochester specifically.

But, he does.

Red is clearly keeping secrets from Liz the way Rochester kept them from Jane. We’re not yet sure what these secrets are (many, including myself, believe it’s that he stole the identity of Raymond Reddington, who is Liz’s biological father).

And, despite a very large age gap, these two have been set-up as the romantic couple of our show, as Rochester and Jane were. Right now (in S5a), Liz believes Red to be her dad; and, in Jane Eyre, Rochester remarks to Jane how he’s old enough to be her father. (He’s like 40 and she’s around 18-20.)

And, just as with Rochester, Red is hoping to find some kind of re-humanization with Liz... that she will restore him to what he once was. People don’t say things like that to friends or family members, so it becomes very strong evidence that Red and Liz are meant to be our end-game.

Another quick thing I’d like to point out is that, in the novel, Jane has very few friends, and as of S5a, the only friends Liz has ever had on the show… consistently … are people from work. (And I guess you could count Tom.) She’s an orphan, like Jane. She doesn’t really have anyone to call “family” or “home.” (Other than Tom, but he’s dead now.) In S1 through S2a, we saw how alone and isolated and tricked and manipulated she felt, just as Jane does throughout various points in the novel.

Now, obviously, there are PLENTY of differences. This is a crime-drama procedural after all. Liz is a full-grown woman with a child of her own. She’s not an 18-20 year old governess who has never gone beyond her schoolhouse and childhood home. She’s not completely naive; she’s not completely without family and friends. When compared to Jane, she’s seen and done plenty.

But the fact that Red and Liz have these strong individual parallels to Rochester and Jane, respectively, and the fact that there are so many parallels between them as couples – ie, he’s keeping secrets from her; he’s besotted with her and sees her as his redemption, etc. – makes me wonder whether this WAS intentional to some degree.

Even while many TBL fans have been watching and screaming at the screen, “JUST SAY HE’S HER DAD ALREADY!” and then breathed a long sigh of exasperation and annoyance when the question was finally answered in 4x22... I’ve been sitting over here with these weirdly intertwined images stuck in my head:

#mr. rochester #rochester #jane eyre #raymond reddington #elizabeth keen #masha rostova #red reddington #james spader #byronic hero #megan boone #the blacklist #nbc the blacklist #charlotte bronte

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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Do you really think current Cas couldn't end up being The Empty? I don't necessarily believe that because I think Cas is not acting like himself but the "All Magic Comes with a prize"-stories, of there being a downside to major "mircles" like resurrections are pretty common, plus having a newly introduced major foe that looks like Cas (+ can access his memories) thats not explored yet, plus being told that Cas would be back "slowly" or "at least his most important parts"

*shrugs* I mean if they’re doing it they’ve basically wasted an entire episode of supposed Cas stuff plus 2 previous ones that only made sense with Cas’ reactions and actions if it was him, so the only way it would happen is if we do already have our Cas on screen, but there’s a catch or some consequences yet to hit about the resurrection and Cas BEGINS to belatedly suffer side effects which retroactively cast into doubt how much he was here or just suggest something was wrong with him all along and waiting for some reason to activate, as he’s not currently being depicted in any distress whatsoever. I agree the clothes are suspicious and I was saying all along since the beginning of the season or before, mostly as crack posts since I don’t like speculating, that if Cas gets handed an outfit out of thin air instead of picking it for himself, that concept fits what I figure would be symbolism warning that Cas has ongoing problems, but as someone who deals with speculation in about that much vagueness I really don’t have any sort of solid ideas beyond that.

For me, talking about TV shows isn’t really fun to guess what will happen and I would just want to end up writing it myself or go down convoluted threads that the writers wouldn’t keep up on, and trying to stay in the lines of what might actually happen is an enormous headache and no one is particularly great at it unless they’re extremely vague or only analyse the very obvious threads and offer generic scenarios they could play out in, e.g. how we could predict a reverse crypt scene, because it was basically a looming issue not a wild speculative idea, but being threatened for most of the season subtly or not.

I mostly live entirely in the moment for TV shows if I can help it, and I prefer watching things I’ve had at least mild spoilers for when it comes to things I would want to get emotionally invested in, even if it’s really just scoping out the personality of the thing. Watching Supernatural as it airs is pretty messy for my anxiety about not knowing what comes next, and after a little while in fandom I realised how pointless speculation is for ever making you feel better about anything. If you’re right you’ve bored yourself out of the story, if you’re wrong you’ve made yourself annoyed or built up your expectations.

And if you’re super invested in a fictional character and scour the internet for spoilers about them because you’re worried about their well being, and analyse every inch of the show for clues about what might happen to them while creating potential worrying scenarios, that play out or not, you mostly get into a huge panic about them, start treating your imagination as if the horrible stuff has already happened, and lose a lot of objectivity as you start to perceive the writers going out of the way to do bad things to your fave because you’re super focussed on what bad stuff will happen to them, and blah blah character stanning cycle of being protective and angry etc. I’ve seen it consume too many people since I got to fandom :S

So… Something is probably about to happen to Cas or because of Cas, and the trip through the Empty seems like it maaaay have been too understated or an under-utilised resource (but I also have immediately made my peace that that’s all we’ll see of it, even if it isn’t, because I just can’t LIVE like that with expectations and serious plot demands and trying to construct versions of the season that only make sense if X Y and Z are in it and then getting upset when they aren’t) and we missed a few important steps between bargaining and resurrection considering the new clothes and Cas’s moment where he took in that he was dressed in them. There’s also left over weirdness about him and Jack which also has a lot of unexplained things he and Dean need to talk about and may or may not cause a serious problem now Jack has legged it.

I don’t think he’s acting strange, because there have been no blatantly obvious cues for the people at the back about him acting strange, e.g. lingering shots where he was pulling weird faces, lines in the Empty to indicate it wanted anything other than to go back to sleep, or hints that anything is particularly coming for Cas based on the MotW obvious mirrors (which have been pretty low key because the MotW have been very secondary to the emotional drama so far). Billie never hinted about Cas more than that he was dead because he killed her, and now we have spoilers that it seems most likely the Winchester knocking over the house of cards will be Jack seemingly motivated on his own steam to do something good, so that literally covers every doomy portentous line this season that wasn’t completely incidental, although I have been joking about some, I don’t really get into conspiracies about them…

We’ve had lingering shots with Cas squinting in a very familiar Cas-like way with understandable exasperation at whatever’s going on, and he’s had emotional moments with all his family and generally been presented as mostly fine and not visibly perturbed or confused by not being able to heal the guard for example, just resigned that it was too late for him to do anything, and he hasn’t been dangerously put in any crosshairs in the symbolism. I can’t think of anything really at all that’s threatened Cas in the symbolism or foreshadowing and nothing he’s done on screen has been suspicious about his personality or characteristics or actions. Dean’s not suspicious. Sam is a little concerned about *how* he got back but not *if* he is Cas.

Like, of course they might blindside us with something, but considering they spent time on emotional moments with Cas dealing with ongoing characters arcs between him and the rest of them, it makes no sense a fake out Cas would be getting Cas’s emotional development. Unless it was laden with dramatic irony. Remember in 11x11 when Casifer was talking to Dean? Even if you didn’t know that he was Lucifer and pretend they never revealed that detail and this is the first time we see him since, there’s a billion things wrong with his interactions with Dean in that scene. There was stuff visibly wrong with him before we knew for sure he’d been possessed in 11x10 just in how he hung back from the team and watched them all very, very carefully, and took too long to reply while weighing his options.

Cas already did come back slowly because it took him until episode 6 to actually be back in the game, even if he was restored in episode 4, so at this point I figure that spoiler was being careful about revealing how Cas’s appearances in the start of the season were spread out, and not commenting on Cas’s internal stuff.

I don’t know, bad stuff happens to them all the time on the show so of course I just assume something is coming, but I’m not worried about it like it might happen to a friend or something because it’s just a part of the story so I don’t get being worried about stuff happening to your faves as if it’s the end of the world… Cas is currently occupying the very centre of the story along with Jack, possibly MORE important than him since he’s important to Jack in turn. I feel like Cas is the actual beating heart of the story in season 13 so far based on his entire blanket presence in the empty spaces caused by Jack and Dean’s need/want for him. It’s a bit ridiculous to now hope because he’s back he’s going to just settle into the family with them and have no troubles, though of course that’s a point I’m always happy to be proved wrong on, it’s better just to use bored eyes and just… ¬_¬ something’s gonna happen to Cas… ¬_¬ your way through the story. And it will be something that’s probably super important to the main arc because Cas has been so far, in a deep, intrinsic way, so whatever happens I’m down for it, unless it’s some randomly abject level of awful that no one could have called, and his treatment in the story, against all odds, is somehow really horrible.

Aside from horrible character-trashing worst case scenarios, though, the manner in which is happens is, to me, completely arbitrary as a non-speculating blog that just analyses what ends up on my plate and occasionally wonders what the OBVIOUS cues mean without committing to theories beyond musings and wondering out loud with obvious disclaimers that I’m just thinking and don’t care if it does or doesn’t happen.

Like, I’m analysing all the themes as they show up and I assume whatever happens will fit the themes and character arcs and whatever. At the moment I see Cas as being Cas because I just got handed an incredible Cas episode on a plate where Cas was being very Cas-like all over the place, and his biggest problem was Jack, who was not directly threatening him at any point, and if anything it seems like Cas futilely chasing after Jack trying to stop him getting intro trouble (nearly shot by Dean, actually shot by Dave the Cowghoul) would be the one theme I’d wonder has any actual suggestion that Cas is going to have Problems, but that’s not directly happening to him, that’s just his issue with not being able to help Jack and stop him getting in trouble. And, I guess now, chasing after him before he does that. And based on episode descriptions for upcoming stuff, not very successfully, so we already know that symbolism pays off, however Cas ends up going about this :P

So that’s my one and only reason to be worried about Cas right now… Granted, I’ve only watched the episode twice while extreeeeemely woozy with a migraine but I’ve been reading my dash all day and seeing discussion of most parts of the episode and all the Cas bits and I’ve been rewatching bits here and there and nothing is leaping out at me that anything is currently trying to warn us to brace for Cas, except the general sense of ¬_¬ about something inevitably coming his way because of course he’s not in every episode - but he could just leave entirely of his own agency to go look for Jack off screen and even without the worries about what Jack may or may not have done to him in season 12, given what they set up, it would be entirely understandable for him to do it just because he’s Cas.

#Asks #cas analysis #13x06 #season 13 spoilers #13x09 #this blog remains completely chill about pretty much all things that have not yet actually happened on screen :P

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valerie · 4 years

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I’m breaking up with you – a fangirl melodrama

Some knowledge of our fan group kerfuffle will put the following in context:

My Point of View of Our Side

After much contemplation, I have decided not to name Listworthy5. Readers, you are all smart enough to know who he is but if you’re still not quite sure, you can ask me privately. Even though I don’t want anyone to lose love for him (this is all about me and my reaction to things you might not think are that noteworthy and that’s cool), I think it’s important for this to be out there if only for my own selfish reasons. He’s human with his flaws and unfortunately for me, the particular flaw of trusting the wrong person has affected my regard for him. So this post will not explicitly name him. Out of respect? Well, for my fellow fans more so than for him.

I would not be offended if he somehow found his way to this letter so if you, my gentle reader, feel the need to point out this post to him, you have my permission to do so. (Just be sure you point it out to the right fella. If you’re not sure, you can ask me.)

Just because I’m “breaking up” with him doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t still like to meet him someday. (I know, probably won’t happen, especially after I hit publish on this entry!) He seems like a really cool person in general. I encourage everyone to read the interviews he’s done with that other fan site as they are rather enlightening. You’ll have to find them on your own because I’m not so good-hearted to point you to the site of the person who tried to steal from us.

As for the one I call “hypocrite” in this entry, I stand by my words. She actually believes that what she tried to do was righteous but most people I know see it for what it was– a betrayal and an outright attempt at thievery.

So if you’d like some wordy fangirl melodramatics, read on. If you make it to the end, good on you!

Dear Listworthy5,

I’m breaking up with you. It’s mostly you and just a little bit of me. I wrote a version of this letter a few months ago that insisted it was all you but now I think it’s both. After all, I’m the one doing the breaking up, right?

Let me start by saying that I truly believe that you’re a good guy. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to express my anger, disappointment, and, ultimately, my resignation in regards to you. I’ve read the words you’ve spoken in the fan interviews and you are warm and gracious and articulate and appreciative. Normally, these are things that warm my fangirl heart and would make me love you more. You have shared so much of yourself in those fan interviews and I’m struggling with getting past the person who’s asking the questions.

And therein lies my quandary– you have entrusted details of your life and thoughtful insights to a person who utterly betrayed the trust of fellow fans. Is it melodramatic to say it like that? Hell yes. But it doesn’t change the fact that this person is an unethical, backstabbing hypocrite who dares call herself a “fan.”

Maybe it doesn’t bother you how she got to her place of trust in your life. She cultivated your good will based on our long-standing fan account, using years of our support and calling it her own. We had made first contact with you and unfortunately for us, we trusted her to nurture that connection into the interviews that were conducted under our auspice. Maybe she spun you a tale of how she wanted to branch out of our group, that she made the decision on her own. Perhaps she left out the part where she changed the password and contact information on the twitter account in an attempt to take it for herself. She just wasn’t clever enough to cover all the bases, which is why she had to create a whole new fan account after we regained control and locked her out of all our group accounts. And because she couldn’t build a whole following on her own, she has to have you pimp out her fan site so that YOUR followers might check out her account and perhaps follow.

For this long while, I let myself believe that you didn’t know any part of the more unsavory details of her separation from our group. Even now, there’s part of me that wants to believe you’re basically “innocent” in all of this. But I think you’re smarter than that. So either you condone her actions or she didn’t tell you all the details. None of us in the group will ever publicly detail the incident with names (although if asked, I will tell exactly who I mean). I might not name you or her but hopefully there are enough clues in this letter for people to figure out things. (And if one of those people want to point you to this letter of mine, I’m absolutely cool with it. Permission granted!)

It HURTS that you chose such a hypocrite as your “fan” voice. If she had just branched out on her own without trying to steal our account, perhaps this would feel differently. But she did attempt to steal our account and if she tries to spin it a different way, WE HAVE HER WORDS. She told us of her intentions and insinuated that you approved. Did you? Maybe you did. Maybe you felt that whatever she needed to do to wrest OUR fan account from us was what needed to be done. It pains me to even consider it.

This shouldn’t feel personal but it really does. My friends and I have been supporting you and your work for several years and the hypocrite was brought into our group because of how supportive she was of you. She was certainly more active and started to hoard control over the twitter account. Please know that even though we split the duties of the social media accounts, we individually also had access to each account. As long as we posted about you and were respectful of our fellow moderators, no one really cared if someone else posted on one account or another. Except for her. I remember more than one time when a photo cross posted to the account she moderated and even though it was YOU (unlike half the posts she was posting), she deleted the photos. She wanted that particular social media account to be seen as HERS even though it belonged (and still belongs) to all of us.

So yes, it feels extremely personal to me (and to my friends as well) that you chose the backstabbing hypocrite’s sites as your official fan accounts. It’s a slap to the face to not just us but to all the other fan accounts out there that have been around for a long time. We all share our love of you and promote your work but you chose the person who insinuated her way into your good graces from the connection we created. Saying she has a “kind heart” and “gentle spirit” is such utter and complete BULLSHIT because we absolutely know better. She thought she was doing all the work in our group and we weren’t doing enough and therefore we shouldn’t get any credit at all. She used us to get to you all the while accusing us of only wanting attention from you. You probably don’t even know all of our names but you sure as hell know hers. So who exactly was wanting attention from you?

Your support of her legitimizes her “official” fan accounts. Allowing her to use the designation tells your fans that you trust her and we should too. I cannot. Our group cannot. We have held our tongues because we don’t want to shine negativity on the fandom but damn it, it really hurts that you chose her. No matter how amazing the interviews with her are, she’s still the one who attempted to break our group, to steal our account. Yet she’s the one with access to you. Your ever constant praise of her is like daggers to the heart. And because you praise her, our fellow fans follow suit because they don’t know better. And that might hurt even more.

I’ve been stubborn enough to keep chugging along with our fan group because I don’t want the hypocrite to think she’s “won.” But maybe she has already won. I don’t feel the same about you. I’ve actually lost some respect for you. The fans who follow her account think she’s great, a lot of it because you think the same. All of this uneasy energy is mine to bear. The practical side of me asks, why waste my time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it? Then I remember that the fans still appreciate our work promoting you. They are the ones who keep me going at this point. I don’t want to disappoint them even though I think they deserve the truth. I suppose if they find this letter, they’ll know some of that truth.

I do wish you well in your future endeavors. If your next project looks worthy, I might even watch it (I didn’t watch your last gig as it wasn’t my cup of tea and they utterly wasted your talent). I’ll probably still watch your past work because that one show is still one of my favorites. I hope someday I can just watch you again and appreciate your talent and forget the man. Are you that good an actor? Probably. If we ever meet in the future, I promise to be polite and adoring. I hope someday you remember that there are more fans out there than the hypocrite and that those fans deserve some praise as well. I don’t expect it for myself.

So thank you for sharing your talent. Thank you for sharing your time with the fans. Thank you for opening yourself up to that hypocrite because at least we could get some insight into you. And thank you for inspiring creativity in me, in us, in your fans. We spend our time screencapping, combing the internet for stories, posting edits, and promoting you because we care about you and want you to do well. So thank you for all of that. Even with this particular melodrama, I would never take any of it back. This was a great lesson in trust and betrayal. So I suppose I should thank you for that as well.

I wish you amazing roles and great work. I wish you long life and happiness. You seem like a really good guy and that does go a very long with me as a fan. But from me as a fangirl to you– I hope one day the hypocrite’s true character reveals itself to you. I hope it weighs on you even just a little bit that supporting her meant losing our respect for you. And just a thought– if she could betray us, what more could she do to you?

Best always, Valerie

from I’m breaking up with you – a fangirl melodrama

#I’m breaking up with you – a fangirl melodrama

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amorremanet · 7 years

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Arthur/moody, lucius/moody, lupin/snape?

the brutally honest ship opinions game

Arthur/Moody: ……okay, like, I have basically no positive feelings about Alastor Moody — I mean, I feel the same need to defend him from JKR’s ableist garbage that accidentally got me in too deep with Lockhart, but we are still talking about a guy who supports using Dementors on people and apparently dngaf about what someone’s done, just send ‘em all to fucking Azkaban (GOF ch. 30, the flashback of Moody we see in the first Pensieve scene)

who thinks that the best present you could give to a kid who’s lost his parents and just watched a classmate be murdered…… is going over a photo of the First War Order and telling him about how all of them died horribly and he doesn’t ever stop to think that this might not be the best idea (OOTP)

and who is legitimately less sensitive to other people’s needs and less dismissive of people who aren’t his exact model of “useful” than a literal fucking Death Eater one of the biggest points where Barty Crouch Jr. drops character in GOF is when he takes Neville to his office and gives him a pro-Herbology pep-talk, and goes, “so, hey, Longbottom, Professor Sprout said you’re super-good at this subject, why not pursue it,” because based on the actual canon about him? The real Alastor Moody would never do something like that.

Like, he might have the moment he has with Harry and Hermione, where he goes, “so, hey, both of you could be gr10 aurors if you wanted, you should think about it” because that, from Moody, would be a compliment, and Harry and Hermione more closely fit his own ideas of usefulness, but not so much the Neville moment)

—but seriously, do you hate him or something? Why else would you even dream of shipping him with Arthur Weasley? (okay, fine, I acquiesce that there is enough of a canonical basis for some people to roll with here, and I myself have made ships out of far less…… but seriously, why would you ship anybody with Arthur Weasley. Like…… wow, rude.)

Lucius/Moody: again, I’m not on the Alastor Moody fan-train or anything, but why would you even do this. Nobody deserves to be shipped with Lucius Malfoy, like? He’s not even an entertaining villain, he’s just pathetic. He’s a sad, pathetic fantasy-fascist who gets his kicks by bullying twelve-year-olds and torturing muggles who can’t defend themselves. He’s a complete waste of character space and forcing anyone to be in a ship with him is just unfathomably cruel

Lupin/Snape: meh, whatever. Like, it’s not my thing, but… *shrugs* meh?

Like, idk what you’re looking for here, nonny, but I’m guessing, based on the other two ships, that you’re looking for me to get cranky and ship-bashy and figured that Snu//pin was a good way to get there, since there are a lot of legitimate Problems with this ship in the text

But the thing is, I’m just under 900 years old (at least in fandom terms), and I remember the days back before HBP came out, when Snu//pin was the second-most popular Remus ship (after Wolfstar, to the surprise of no one), and was, in fact, so popular that it had its own private archive and got black-listed from most rarepair comms because it, “wasn’t really rare, just less popular than D//rarry, Wolfstar, Ro//mione, Dra//mione, H//inny, and J//ily”

—I mean, there was a short stretch before OOTP where I tried to make myself like it because there was a BNF whose art I loved, and she shipped Snu//pin, so I felt like I had to be missing something obvious and cool and because I was, like, twelve, I tried to make myself ship the thing. That didn’t work and I eventually just moved on, but one thing that I recall about the Snu//pin fandom that appears to still be more or less true, based on everything I’ve seen of the present-day Snu//pin fandom?

Is that they came out about the same as the Wolfstar fandom, in terms of how many shippers ignored or made excuses for #Problematic things about the ship vs. how many shippers work those things into the overall fabric of how they ship the thing, how many shippers LIKE the ship because of those Problematic parts and having the opportunity to explore them in fiction, how many shippers actively dive head-first into exploring those parts of the ships because that’s where they find the most engaging character interactions or whatever they’re into, etc.

For examples of what I mean when I say #Problematic things about the ships:

the fact that all three of them are self-loathing [human or werewolf] disasters who are often passively suicidal and either prone to acting out on those feelings (Sirius and Severus), or prone to repressing those feelings until they explode all over some innocent bystanders (Remus)

the fact that all three of them have suffered horrific abuse in their pasts — whether from their parents or other sources — and find ways to take it out on other people (Severus on his students, Sirius on Severus and Kreacher, and Remus on almost anyone who tries to get close to him, even as he makes it seem like he isn’t doing that)

Severus outing Remus as a werewolf because he’s upset and felt like punishing someone else for it, thereby leading to Remus tendering his resignation

the fact that Sirius assuming Remus had to be the spy would’ve been at least partially based on anti-werewolf prejudices, and Sirius still clearly had at least some of those prejudices on his own, because even if Peter totally manipulated them in his favor, there had to be something there for Peter to manipulate in the first place, so???

the fact that Remus doesn’t help shit anything, in any situation ever, with his habit of trying to weasel out of any Emotionally Difficult™ conversations and his tendency to mentally spin most situations so that everyone is going to leave him in the end anyway so it’s acceptable to shut down, close himself off, and pull stunts that more or less come down to, “totally up and bailing on everyone,” which is understandable, given his backstory, but dude, that doesn’t make it okay or helpful??

basically, “literally anything about the characters as individuals, or in terms of their interactions with each other — both past and present — that could potentially cause problems for either/both/any/all of them and potentially make the relationship unhealthy (or unhealthier than it already was, in the cases of Snu//pin and Snack because…… oh boy, let’s not even act like either of those — or any ship with Sev in it, for that matter — is ever going to be ‘healthy’ by any definition)”

So, like? Is Snupin #Problematic? Yes, definitely. Are some of its shippers prone to ship it in #Problematic ways? Oh, yes, absolutely (Hell, the BNF whose art I used to like even flat-out said things like, “Sirius would never be able to be there for Remus like Snape could” and… um? Even granted that this was pre-OOTP: ummm???)

But on the whole, Snu//pin shippers aren’t actually any worse about totally ignoring and/or excusing these elements of their ship than Wolfstar shippers are (and, actually, they might be doing better than a LOT of the present-day Wolfstar fandom, since I usually don’t see any more recently made Snu//pin that doesn’t grapple with at least some of the #Problematic elements of it — they don’t always do it well, but at least they’re trying, which counts for a lot, to me, because most people don’t even try — while most Wolfstar these days flat-out ignores all the #Problematic elements of Sirius and Remus as characters, and of their relationship, in the name of what often amounts to borderline-OOC caricatured fanon nonsense, so…)

(……Look, I love Wolfstar, and I have for longer than some people on this website have been alive. But I don’t love a lot of Wolfstar shippers, which has been the case since the beginning of my Wolfstar shipping

stayed the case when HBP came out and I was all, “Hey, guys? I don’t like this BS Remus/Tonks thing either, but can we NOT erase bisexuals or treat Tonks like garbage when we’re talking about it, it’s not her fault that Molly Weasley is a meddling nosy garbage buttinski who thinks it’s her job to play matchmaker to fully-grown adults who didn’t ask and don’t want her input,”

and is still the case as I’m over here, all like, “ugh, man, at least we used to have SOME people in this fandom who enjoyed reading Wolfstar angst, now it seems like nobody cares about anything unless it’s all fluff, all the time, with absolutely no room for anything else because god forbid you ever want to write about LGBTQ characters whose lives aren’t 5,000% perfect, that obviously must mean that you’re a gross fetishistic cishet and not, for example, a neurodivergent, mentally ill lesbian survivor who feels left out by the trend towards forcing every LGBTQ person to act like we’re happy, all the time, and to act like we’re only interested in fictional LGBTQ people who are perfectly 5,000% happy all the time

“and to decry any and all depictions of LGBTQ people being UNhappy as gross fetishistic straight people garbage even when they were actually created by and for LGBTQ people, only to be misappropriated by straight people, as if there’s no way you could possibly be LGBTQ and NOT feel ~used and maligned~ by depictions of LGBTQ people that are less than 5,000% perfectly happy, even when they are being created by other LGBTQ people, yeah? ……but yeah, no, clearly: the fact that I like angst obviously means that I am a straight person because no ~real~ LGBTQ person ever has any need for those ~gross negative feelings~ or fictional outlets for them, never mind how many LGBTQ people get excluded from our narratives and spaces by this bullshit bc lmao who cares amiright. ://”)

—anyway, my motto has been and remains, “It isn’t a question of WHAT you ship, it’s a question of HOW you ship it,” so hey. Snu//pin is not my thing (it’s not even as non-shippingly interesting to me as Sirius/Severus is, because I love how much those two hate each other while unwittingly being perfect foils for each other), but I don’t actually have any desire to ship-bash it and most Snu//pin shippers are okay with me because unless they’re actually doing anything that’s harmful to anyone else, it’s not my business what they ship

That said: “Snu//pin” is still one of the worst portmanteau ship names ever and it still sounds like a deadly virus or something, but *shrugs* Whatever, it’s not the shippers’ faults that their ship members’ names don’t smush up all that nicely

#memes for ts #ask box tag #mine: replies #mine: asks #mine: hp #harry potter for ts #character disliking for ts #ship disliking for ts #mine: fandom blah blah blah #lgbtq stuff #(under the read more… it. um. kinda came up while talking about snu//pin and wolfstar. …sorry? :/)#opinions for ts #wank for ts #(probably??? like not intentionally but the answer for the snu//pin one kinda goes there so)#nonny

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jesatria · 5 years

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The Other Princeps, Chap 39

Title: The Other Princeps Fandom: Codex Alera Characters: Aquitainus Attis, Amara, Antillus Raucus, Ensemble Pairings: past!Attis/Invidia, slight past!Attis/Septimus, Attis/OCs Word Count: 3,273 Rating: R Summary: In which Attis’s confrontation with Invidia during the Battle of Riva goes better for him. AU. WIP. Warnings: Massive spoilers for First Lord’s Fury. Disclaimer: I do not own the Codex Alera. This is only for fun & no profit is being made from it. Previous Chapters

Chapter 39: The New Alera

Time passed.

The Realm healed.

My children grew.

When spring came again, and with it the one year anniversary of the end of the war, it caught me by surprise. Much had happened since then, to say the least. Octavian decided to declare the anniversary of the Vord’s defeat a day of remembrance for all those who perished in the war. This brought with it a host of ceremonies, and thus I found myself in Riva for the duration. I made good on my promise to see that the Legions who fought on the first wall were commended. It was also the first meeting of the Dianic League of the new year, and Camilla had received an invitation to join.

“The Dianic League. I’ve never even given it much thought. Courtesans do not get invited to join organizations of female Citizens,” Camilla remarked to me after the invitation arrived.

“No, you are certainly not their typical member. But you are High Lady Aquitaine now, and you can’t be ignored or excluded,” I replied. “Invidia was very active in the Dianic League, so it’s possible they expect you to follow in her shoes.”

“It sounds like those are some rather large shoes to fill,” Camilla observed.

“She took it upon herself to win me the support of the League. It wasn’t terribly difficult—half the League wanted to mother me and the other half wanted to fuck me,” I remarked, grinning.

“Did you actually sleep with any of them?” she inquired.

“A few. The women of the Citizenry have found me… interesting ever since I was a youth not yet come to manhood.”

“Can’t say I blame them. I suspect there was some overlap between those two groups—plenty of women like mothering men and plenty of men like being mothered by their lovers,” said Camilla, her eyes shining with mirth.

“Invidia used to mother me sometimes because she knew it annoyed me.”

Camilla shook her head. “Truly incredible you remained married to her as long as you did. You should get some kind of medal for that.”

“It certainly wasn’t easy. However, she did do her job well with regards to the Dianic League,” I replied. “All joking aside, I do think being physically attractive helped me get their support. That and publicly opposing slavery.” I’d learned shortly after realizing I was attractive that it was another weapon I could add to my arsenal.

“Did you actually go before the League yourself?” asked Camilla.

“Several times. I thought it best to remind them from time to time who it was they were supporting. I probably should’ve done it more in retrospect. Invidia was the public face of my cause on too many occasions.”

Camilla made a face. “You couldn’t be more different! I hate to think that people saw you that way.” She and Invidia had only met a handful of times, but Camilla had heard plenty about her from me.

“That makes two of us. I’ll not make that mistake again, though I no longer need to gather support to make a bid for the throne.”

It soon became obvious after we arrived in Riva that the Dianic League, like everything else, had changed. A number of its members had died in the war, which was unsurprising considering many of them were powerful Citizens. As such, Aria and Isana had taken the reigns of leadership. Exactly what the role of the Dianic League would be in the new Alera had not yet been determined, though the presence of Kitai as a new member certainly set the tone.

Aria and Isana gave Camilla a warm welcome. It didn’t surprise me, but I was glad to see it nonetheless. “We are pleased to welcome you to the Dianic League, Lady Aquitaine,” said Aria. That took me aback for a moment—I hadn’t yet gotten used to Camilla being addressed as Lady Aquitaine. “And I offer both of you my congratulations on your marriage.”

“Thank you, Aria,” I replied. We’d invited the Placidas to the wedding, but they’d been too busy with the process of liberation to attend.

“I’m very pleased you chose to accept the invitation,” Isana told Camilla. “This is likely all a bit intimidating for you. It was the same for me when I entered public life.”

“You would be correct,” Camilla replied. “Courtesans are not generally trained to address bodies such as the Dianic League.”

“Neither are steadholders. It took me some time to grow accustomed to doing these things,” said Isana. The more time I spent around her, the more I came to understand how she had captured Septimus’s heart. Speaking at these kinds of events had never come easy to him, though he’d done well enough in Rhetoric class. Isana was completely outside that political world and had only been forced to join it out of necessity. That was probably a not insignificant part of what drew Septimus to her. She was in no way a political creature.

“I’m sure the same will happen to me in time. Fortunately, I do have plenty of experience in a variety of social settings,” said Camilla with a small grin. “I doubt many of the League’s members will have a high opinion of me, however. I immediately became the most hated person among the women of the Aquitainian Citizenry the moment Attis and I announced our engagement.”

“At least some of them have resigned themselves to the reality of you as their new High Lady by now,” I pointed out. “I doubt any of them will openly insult or slight you, but I want to know if any of them do. That cannot be tolerated.”

“Of course, dear. Though I suppose you being there for my presentation might be enough to dissuade them,” she said, grinning.

“And you have the full support of Isana and myself,” Aria assured Camilla. “That should send a message.”

“Thank you, your highness, your grace. Your support is greatly appreciated,” Camilla replied.

When the time came for Camilla’s official presentation, I waited with Isana and Aria in my box. Camilla had spent some time carefully reviewing and memorizing the remarks she was to deliver. I gave her a few speaking tips and used my earthcrafting to calm her nerves before she was called to the podium.

“And now the Dianic League is pleased to welcome our newest member, Aquitainus Camilla, the new High Lady of Aquitaine!” The audience broke into polite applause as Camilla approached the podium. She wore a new gown in our colors, as it was typical to wear your city’s colors on an occasion such as this.

“Greetings, fellow Citizens,” she began, “I am pleased to accept the League’s invitation.” As she spoke, I relaxed my shields enough to sense the feelings of the crowd. There was some excitement, but I could also sense disgust and disdain. There was no doubt that they knew she was a former courtesan, even though they might never mention it aloud. That the new High Lady Aquitaine had sold her favors in exactly the same way as a common whore was not a topic for discussion in polite society. “The relationship between the Dianic League and the House of Aquitainus has been a long and productive one. My husband,” some of the crowd turned to look at me, “and I mean to continue this relationship. I fully intend to participate as an active member of the League and do what I can to improve the status of women in the Realm. Both myself and First Lady Gaius Isana represent women who have come from different backgrounds to join the ranks of the Citizenry. It is my hope that more women will have that opportunity in the new Alera. I look forward to working with all of you in the future.”

Loud applause followed Camilla as she walked back to the box. At least half of it was genuine, I was sure. Pride swelled within me—my wife, a former courtesan, had just spoken before the Dianic League as a full member. As soon as she set foot inside my box, I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a soft kiss. “I’m so proud of you, Camilla.”

The memorial events had concluded and we were preparing to return home when Octavian approached me. “I would like you to take a short trip with me, Lord Aquitaine.”

Of all the things I’d expected him to ask me, that wasn’t it. I did not think it was anything sinister, not after his previous decision to spare my life. “What sort of trip, sire?”

“To Appia.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Appia? For what purpose? Has it even been cleared of Vord?”

“It has, and I have some important matters to discuss with you.”

“Very well. I will go with you to Appia,” I replied, inclining my head in agreement. A short while later, we boarded his windcoach. It was surprising he was willing to be in the coach alone with me, though I was sure each of the squad of Knights Aeris accompanying us were all completely loyal to him. We made small talk on the way there, discussing our infant sons and the areas still in need of liberation. The trip passed quickly and before long we were arriving at the ruins of Appia.

It looked much the same as it had the last time I’d been there, during my time at the Academy. Few seldom ventured there, expect for scholarly purposes. The Vord had left the place largely untouched, though I had seen some patches of croach from the windows of the windcoach on the way there. “May I ask why you brought me here, sire?”

“Because I’d like your opinion, Lord Aquitaine. I’ve been thinking about what to do for a new capital. Riva has sufficed for an interim capital, but it can’t be a permanent one. I’ll be accused of favoring Riva over the other high cities. No, there will have to be an entirely new capital. Why not Appia?” he proposed.

“An interesting choice, to be sure. Most of the Realm expects you to rebuild Alera Imperia,” I said. It wasn’t surprising that he did not favor that course of action. Octavian never took the expected option.

He shook his head. “I thought about it, but I think what Alera needs is a new beginning. A new capital would be the perfect symbol of that. And it doesn’t feel right to build a new capital on the bodies of the dead,” Octavian explained.

“And Appia was the old Romanic capital, built without furycrafting,” I added, following his reasoning. “By making Appia your new capital, you send a message regarding your intentions to build a new Alera where furycrafting is no longer the only measure of a man’s worth.”

“Exactly. Do you think it has merit?”

“I do. It sends the right message for your objectives and Appia is as good a location as any. Not as centrally-located as Alera Imperia, but close.”

Octavian nodded. “It will naturally be some time yet before construction can begin, but I mean to start as soon as possible.”

“I would be happy to suggest some of the best architects in Aquitaine for the project.” We began to walk among the ruins, with the Knights Aeris staying close enough to alert us of any danger. Our walk took us through the ruins of a large colonnaded building. Much of the roof had collapsed in places, but numerous statues could still be seen here and there. I stopped by a particular favorite I’d seen during my previous visit. It was of a beautiful young man reclining on his side, a crown of spikes upon his head. A name could be read at the base of the statue: Attis.

Octavian noticed it too. “Your namesake?”

“Apparently so. Your father and I spotted this statue years ago when we visited Appia as part of Magnus’s class,” I explained.

“You were in Magnus’s classes?”

“Of course. I’ve always been interested in the Romans. Raucus was in the class too, but he was never all that interested in history.”

“My interest in the Romans was more about their lack of furycrafting than the history aspect,” Octavian confessed. “It made me feel like less of a freak.”

I nodded, seeing how it would’ve appealed to him. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did it take so long for you to come into your furies? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Your father…”

“Started furycrafting when he was five, yes, I know,” Octavian cut in. He sat down on a broken pillar. “It was my mother. She didn’t want anyone to guess my real identity, so she used her water fury to stunt my growth. It ended up working a bit too well.”

I seated myself on a broken pillar across from him. “No one could accuse your mother of not being cautious.”

We remained where we were for a few minutes, looking out over the ruins of Appia. “I won’t have all of these ruins made into new buildings,” said Octavian, thinking out loud. For a moment I wondered if he’d forgotten I was there. “Scholars would be furious with me if I did. This structure, for one. No one knows exactly what its purpose was.”

“The scholars will certainly appreciate that. I daresay my daughter will come up with a list of things she’d like to research after she visits Appia for the first time.” I could’ve sworn Thyra’d spent more time in our library over the winter than anywhere else.

“She seems like a very intelligent and capable person. I’m glad you chose to acknowledge her and welcome her into your family,” said Octavian. “Bastards have been treated terribly for far too long.”

“I’m glad too. I only wish I’d been able to find and acknowledge them sooner.” The corners of my mouth twitched up into a smile. “Your father and I talked about this a few times. We knew about your friend Maximus—Raucus told us right after he was born. We didn’t care in the least that he was illegitimate. Septimus told me he wanted to do what he could to remove some of the stigma around it once he was First Lord. He never liked seeing people being treated badly for something they had no control over.”

There was a hungry expression on Octavian’s face, something I’d noticed when we’d discussed Septimus previously. It was natural for someone who’d never known his father, I suppose. I took it as my cue to continue speaking about Septimus. “He liked to disguise himself and go incognito among the common people. He thought it was good for a Princeps to spend time among his people and see what their lives are really like.” Octavian stared at me with rapt attention. “But I think he also liked to escape from being the Princeps for a while. Sometimes all of that, being given special treatment because of his station, got to be a bit much for him. He told me once that one of the things he appreciated most about our friendship was that I always treated him like Septimus instead of the Princeps.”

“I’ve heard he used to do that,” Octavian remarked. “It’s how he met my mother, in fact.”

I hadn’t heard how Septimus and Isana met before, but I wasn’t surprised. “Of course. That makes perfect sense.” Octavian’s eyes were so fixated on me now that I doubt he’d have noticed if a pack of Vord attacked us. “We used to disguise ourselves and sneak out of the Academy at night. Much of the time we went carousing, but we also took the time to observe and interact with the people we encountered.” I smiled as the memories came to me. “One time, we got into a brawl after Septimus confronted a slave trader who was beating his slaves. We always tried to hide the true extent of our powers on these outings so no one would guess our identities, but we ended up giving up the charade once he called in a bunch of his thugs. The looks on their faces when we revealed who we really were…” I grinned, remembering. “Gaius was furious with Sep for ‘causing such a scene,’ as he put it. But we kept doing it.”

“It sounds like you had quite an enjoyable time at the Academy,” Octavian commented.

“Yes, your father and I certainly did, and Raucus too. He and Septimus didn’t get along at first, but eventually we befriended him. The three of us became inseparable after that.” I had to pause for a moment as so many memories came rushing back to me. “Septimus and I would talk about what we were going to do once he was First Lord and I High Lord of Aquitaine. He truly understood that it is the duty of the First Lord to protect all of his people, Citizen or commoner, slave or freeborn. When he came out publicly against slavery, he took quite a bit of criticism for it. He was interested in doing what was right, regardless of whether or not it was popular.”

“I can tell how much he meant to you every time you speak about him,” Octavian said, voice soft. “It’s obvious, even through my shields.”

Camilla had said something very similar to me once, when I told her about what Septimus meant to me. “I couldn’t hide it even if I wanted to. He was the greatest friend I ever had and I’m certain he’d have been an excellent First Lord. He was the best of us.”

“I wish I could’ve known him.”

“I wish that as well. He’d be very proud of you if he could see you today.” I paused a moment and looked out at the ruins. “He should be here right now. Everything would’ve been different. I might’ve been an unofficial uncle to you instead of a one-time political rival.”

“Well, we are technically adopted brothers,” Octavian reminded me, a note of amusement in his voice.

I inclined my head to him and grinned. “That is true. In all seriousness though, as much as I wish Septimus were here with us today, I can see now that part of him is here. I can see him in you.”

A wave of strong emotion hit me from him. It was nearly overwhelming with my shields as relaxed as they were. His feelings regarding me were still complicated, though I could sense they were changing. There was still wariness and some degree of suspicion, but the roots of trust were beginning to grow. That was something I could work with, a beginning.

“Thank you, Lord Aquitaine.”

We sat in silence for several minutes, the weight of understanding settling comfortably between us. I could not say what went through Octavian’s mind in that comfortable silence. Perhaps he was thinking of his plans for Appia. For my part, I felt another burden lifted from me. Septimus’s son and I were not friends, but perhaps someday we would be.

“You know, I think Septimus would be very amused that his son grew up as a shepherd boy with no idea he was the Princeps,” I observed, breaking the silence.

Octavian smiled and rose from his seat. I followed suit and together we left the unknown structure behind us. As we walked back to the windcoach, I felt excitement begin to grow within me. I couldn’t say where the future was headed, but I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be boring.

Notes

The statue described in this chapter is based off of real life statues of the god Attis. Since the gods aren’t a Thing in Alera, Attis would have no idea that he is in fact named after a fertility god.

One more chapter left, folks!

#the other princeps #codex alera #aquitainus attis #jesatriafic #au

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