#im bored. im supposed to be memorizing a speech

[chocogi]

Alchemist’s Assistant pt2 here

In which I got bored and forced Albedo to find a Skychild in Dragonspine

Albedo sighs, the wind whipping through his ashy blond locks. He tugs his coat closer by habit; he does not feel the cold.

He ducks into Starglow Cavern to avoid the snowstorm, before looking around absentmindedly for mint samples. There was something he needed to confirm, and he wanted to brew mint tea, or maybe make mint jelly as well, to indulge in.

He hums quietly, pulling out the mint stalks from the snow-covered ground and whisking them away to a small pocket dimension where he kept his weapon.

It’s.. peaceful here today, Albedo thought. Too peaceful. Has something happened? The alchemist sighs, his breath puffing into mist in the cold air.

Starglow Cavern was quiet today. Too quiet.

Shivering by the strange ice shard at the bottom of the cavern, The skychild stayed curled up by one of the red seelie’s court, cursing at its luck. One last time, it built up its energy to amplify its voice, and it let out a fully charged call.

Honk!

The call reverbrates through the cavern, but soon fades. It whimpers, scooting closer to the seelie court. Out of the fourteen wing charges its cloak can store, it only had six left.

The skychild doubts it can stretch those wing charges to get itself all the way to the entrance of the cavern. Especially not with it wearing the Chibi Mask that the Hide and Seek spirit gifted them.

The fur collar sown on its inner shirt can only do so much as to keep it warm.

The call echoes through the spacious cavern, and Albedo suppresses a flinch. What was that?

Summoning a sword with a gold handguard and blue highlights on both the hilt and the blade itself, Albedo starts to trek downwards, to where the call has originated.

The sword— Cinnabar Spindle— glinted under the light reflected by the snow.

The snow crunches underneath Albedo’s feet.

He wonders what’s down there. Was the call the reason why there’s no monsters here today?

The snowstorm rages behind him.

The small skychild shiver by the seelie court, flinching harshly when it hears something akin to a surprised hum. It scrambles away from the seelie court— immediately mourning the loss of the bit of warmth— with a shriek, mindlessly using the last six wing charges in a quick burst to propel itself to the top of the strange ice shard.

It whines, pained, from the sudden cold.

The source of the sound— a young man with ashen blond hair, a star on his throat and wearing a white, customized lab coat— looked surprised for a second, before he settled back to a calm face.

He steps closer. The snow crunches under his boots. The child scoots back ever-so-slightly.

He goes closer, till he’s by the base of the ice shard and it can’t back away unless it wants to wfall.

“Hello there..” He cooes gently. “I am Albedo. May I know your name?”

It does not answer, in a mixture of fear and confusion.

“Come on, let’s get you down from there…” Albedo mutters, purposefully using slow movements as he tries to reach up to it. “Come on, little thing, slide down to me. Why are you here?” He tries, but it whimpers and curls into a ball, afraid. Albedo does not look like its kin.

Albedo sighs, his breath clouding over in the cold. He backs away before using his elemental skill, placing a Solar Isotoma at the base of the ice shard. He steps on the Isotoma and it pulses, before it rises, carrying Albedo along. The skychild shrieks and instinctually move away, but Albedo refuses to be discouraged.

He extends his hand to it.

“Don’t be afraid, little thing. I won’t hurt you.”

Albedo cooes at the fearful child gently, patiently holding out his palm, waiting for it to take his hand.

“Come here.” It hesitates.

Albedo smiles, and summons a white, thin twig from Khemia, earning himself a gasp from the cloaked youth, as it scoots closer to touch it.

Its pale fingertips brush the fragile leaf by the tip of the twig, and its eyes widen as the twig starts to fade into chalk.

It scrambles to his hand, trying to cup its hands around the dissolving twig but when it peeks back in, the twig is nothing but chalk coating its hands. The child visibly wilts.

He chuckles, patting its head and summoning another twig. The skychilds perks up, letting out little squeaks and calls as it tries to keep it from disintegrating.

Albedo smiles at the enigma before him, before extending his hand closer to it again. And immediately, its filled with the hesitation it had from before.

But it takes his hand.

And Albedo waits by the entrance of Starglow Cavern, by a fire, waiting for the snowstorm to end with a buzzing, warm skychild on his lap.

[anxiouspotatorants]

heyy first off im obsessed w your account and the underdog quartet but also i feel like, with your new jess/paris playlist post, we need to acknowledge paris and jess’s first interaction when paris went into luke’s diner in “Richard goes to stars hollow” they had a very subtle interaction but he was clearly memorable enough to her to remember him and his name. I wonder if whenever paris when to stars hollow in the future she would look for jess what do you think

Thank you so much for this ask and the kind words!!! I’m obviously obsessed with UQ too, so finding more people who love that dynamic is just amazing!

Also yes we only had about two direct interactions between Paris and Jess but holy shit was the platonic chemistry there!! Paris bothering to remember him is something I would love to take as a sign that she was a Jess gal (especially since if you combine that with Keiko Agena saying she and Lane are team Jess, that means all my faves support my ship!)

Now for Jess and Paris specifically, I could honestly give you three different types of answers for this. First is that ASP and company didn’t feel like exploring that dynamic, so Paris probably doesn’t think about Jess or seek him out in the future, especially not after Rory’s break up. But that take is boring so let’s go for wild headcanons!

The second approach is on the more realistic side. I bet that Paris would avoid bringing up Jess every time he popped into her mind in front of Rory, but she would be too desperate to finally have that decent conversationalist to not bug Rory about him. She probably wouldn’t head over to Stars Hollow of her own accord considering how disappointed she was with the research results for that article, but she would ask about when Jess could come over to Hartford so she could rip his literary takes to shreds at a nearby cafe or at the elder Gilmores. Once Jess and Rory were a couple, Paris would double down on her requests but probably only have them met once or twice (Jess has work, Rory still has a tendency to compartmentalize parts of her life etc.). Post-breakup Paris would take Rory’s side, but secretly be sad to see a potential friend go. She probably felt like this guys really could be something, not just for Rory who seemed to finally get decent taste in boys, but for Paris who was finally starting to get more true friends. She carries a secret team Jess torch for the rest of the series but hides it in general criticism of any and all guys Rory is involved with.

On to approach three, aka balls to the walls whatever I want!! Hold on to your hat because this will be a long and windy ride:

After the diner-meet, Paris is intrigued by the guy who played along with her interrogation and eye-flirted with Rory. She doesn’t think she’ll see him again, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t want to.

After the dinner at Rory’s, Paris is honestly elated to finally have a great literary conversation with a guy her age. The only one to have come close is Rory, and that doesn’t say much for the «opposite sex» in Paris’ eyes. But she’s also furiously disagreeing with Jess’ «Austen loves Bukowski»-take, so she writes a whole several page argumentative essay and forces Rory to deliver it to Jess the next school day.

Jess responds not with a letter, but by having Rory hand Paris an annotated («blasphemy!») copy of a Bukowski work. There are no arguments from Jess notes, just underlines of quotes he thinks Austen would approve of, and excerpts from different Austen works put in the margins for comparison. Paris despises him for how much she is seeing his point.

At some point Rory get’s sick of being a carrier pigeon and drags Paris with her to ST after school so the two can fight in person. All three stay until Lorelai pops over for dinner, and Paris realizes she needs to haul herself over to the bus. She’s hungry and worried about the time she should have spent on homework, but ultimately really happy about the day.

She’s bummed to see Jess go after the car accident, but doesn’t have much time to think about it between school and… well, school. She does end up being one of the few Rory can talk to about Jess without getting the whole «bad bad boy»-speech she gets over in ST and at her grandparents’.

Rory doesn’t tell Paris Jess is back until the very end of their Washington trip when Paris finds the unfinished letter and Paris is boiling. She does cool quickly, but only to constantly bug Rory about when the three of them are going to meet up again for coffee and verbal war. Rory gets so stressed about it that at some point she gives Paris the number to Luke’s and tells her to go on her own for all Rory cares.

Paris does. Jess is surprised, but they get in the groove quick. What doesn’t go as smoothly is Paris asking what the hell is going on between him and Rory. His non-answers pretty much spell everything out, and in a rare moment of comradery, Paris decides to turn the conversation in to hating on Dean. Jess appreciates it. It doesn’t happen again, but Paris firmly puts herself in the team Jess camp from then on.

Paris is releived once Jess and Rory finally are together and it is great! More cafe talks! Study sessions! Movie nights! They even sneak both Paris and Lane out into concerts! Paris feels like for the first time in a very long time, she has real friends her own age. The kind who actually like you for you and want to spend time with you for you, not just to get better grades or a better reputation.

Paris sucks at being strong for Rory when Jess leaves. Like, she takes it really personal. This was supposed to be the one good guy, and he decided to be just like everyone else. But with time she learns to coach Rory into speaking her mind about the whole thing, and to support her in her own Paris-y way.

What she doesn’t tell Rory is that at some point after summer break (either because she gets hold of Jess for some scolding or because Lane does and spills to Paris or even if Jess gets in touch himself) Jess starts sending Paris beat up books he collects on the road around the country. None of them feature letters (at first), but annotations at the beginning declaring his safety and momentary location, as well as his general style annotations of the book inside the text. Paris starts responding with letters, and with time they start talking on phones and through email.

Paris helps Jess with his GED. They make it an equal study-buddy thing because Paris needs help taking certain writers seriously in her essays. Most of their sessions are over the phone, and a lot of it is just them daring each other to actually try. Paris gets actual stars on her improved essays, and Jess passes with flying colours.

Paris doesn’t know about Truncheon until Jess stands in front of her place ages later, dressed like a Kids Bop version of himself and holding a messengerbag with his debut novel. Paris tears through it in two hours (forcing Jess to sit on the couch next to her the whole time) and then spends another half hour furiously trying to tear it to shreds but actually praising it. She gives him their first hug ever, and hopes this afternoon is a sign they’ll slowly get back to being close friends in person.

Paris sucks at hiding how team Jess she is. So. Much. She does have genuine critiques of Logan and other guys, but her gut-defenses of Jess at random times in the day and weird reminiscing back to the «good old days» of diner talk after school gives her away immediately. Rory is uncomfortable, but Paris doesn’t even change her mind after Rory still picks Logan.

What she does do is invite Jess over for grown up evenings with Doyle. Whenever Rory is scheduled to be out and Jess needs to visit Luke anyway, Paris extends her invitation. They test wines based on price and taste, watch cult classics, eat takeout (in honour of Paris’ very first Mac and Cheese night) and talk for hours. One day wires cross and Jess gets in while Rory is there/Rory gets back while Jess is there and things get awkward.

Paris invites Jess to the graduation. Yes she has a limited amount of tickets and yes it’s weird to invite your friend who has barely been around ever but damn it she wants him there. He came to her when he was celebrating his accomplishments, she wants him to be there for hers.

They actually grow even closer as adults; emailing, texting and calling regularly. About 70% of it is general banter and picking on everything and everyone around them, but it’s a far more loving kind now — not that anyone who isn’t them would know, from the outside it looks like they want to kill each other. Regardless of outcome, Paris remains forever team Jess, and the two end up having each other’s backs for life.

So this went long and away from the point (and I only went through Paris’ pov!) but it was fun to write! I hope you like rant answers!