#like why would u command to see a baby just after the woman has given birth

[queenquinzel715]

1. Werebear Toric pt 1

Wrd count 2,313

Warnings: Angst in the beginning, implied smutt, fluff, women power lol

(Y/n) P.O.V

Finding your mate is supposed to be an unworldly thing, and is cherished by many people. Being the daughter of the moon goddess that made me extremely excited to find mine, because I knew my mother would find me the perfect one. When I actually found my mate I thought he was this sexy, powerful man. He was the son of an Alpha, and he had so much confidence. I felt we would make a great couple, and when he brought me back to his pack I thought he was happy.

I was extremely wrong. Once he brought me back I met his parents, and his girlfriend. I understand he wasn't a monk, so I just assumed he would break up with her. He wouldn't let me stay in his room, because he said he wanted to get to know me better before completing the mate bond. He would just spend time with me during the afternoon after training.

"(Y/n) honey why aren't you outside?" His mother, Agetha asks confused. "I thought training was about to start soon."

"I don't go to training. Minson told me to stay inside until he came to get me." I tell her truthfully.

She looks at me confused, and it seems like something hits her. She takes my hand firmly but softly, and leans me upstairs. She walks us toward Minson's room, and I hear the most awful high pitched moan squeal sound. I stop in my tracks as Agetha gives a Luna growl. I can't believe I am given this type of mate. When Agetha marched inside the room I ran outside, and shifted. I howl in agony as I come to a stop in the middle of the woods.

I stay there until the sun starts to set. I slowly walk back to the house, and grab a blanket that is kept behind the trees. When I walk inside it's deathly quiet. I just go to my room to put clothes on. I have so many questions in my head, but they stop when Agetha knocks on the door.

"(Y/n) I honestly can't tell you how sorry I am." She hugs me in a tight embrace. "Are you okay? I mean hurting?" She's the sweetest woman.

"I feel okay, just confused." I sit on the edge of my bed. "Why even bring me here, why not just reject me?" I talk out loud.

She sighs as she hugs me from the side, but before she says anything Stewart, Minson's father walks in. He puts his hands on his hips while shaking his head.

"I even tried using the alpha command to get him to break the bond, but his heartless ass won't do it." He growls in frustration.

"Then I will." I stand up. "I will break it, and I will go home." I give them a soft smile.

They follow after me as I walk toward Minson's room. As I go to knock it opens, and Priscilla steps out.

"What are you doing here? I thought you'd leave by now." She giggles. "You might want to leave soon, you wouldn't want to see your mate celebrate his baby shower with another woman would you?" She laughs like she said something hilarious.

"You are pregnant?" Agetha asks, shocked. "That stupid boy."

"Of course I am. We haven't left each other since he's been back." She taunts.

"ALRIGHT!" I shout pushing her back. "Malet guol imotrell qet ne bentul!" I chant the old magic of chaos.

She falls onto the couch with a shocked expression. I go to finish my punishment chant to remove her bond to any future mate, and then Minson walks in with a deep growl. I lock eyes with him, and I feel something completely snap. My body begins to glow white.

"(Y/n) stop!" I hear my mother's voice.

She appears like she's walking in from the balcony, and has a look of pure concern. I can feel my body fighting with itself, but when my mother puts her arms around me I collapse. My mother lays me on the couch as she stands tall. My mother steps toward the scared couple.

"You stupid boy. You have caused so much imbalance, and caused a future goddess to break into chaos." She turns to his parents. "I will give you a choice as his parents, and as a thank you for treating my daughter as your own. Either he loses his wolf, or you chain him until I deem him free. As for that pack whore, she's to be outed to the rogues until she gives birth, because she has her own problems ahead." Mother uses her Goddess voice, making everything she says an unbreakable punishment.

"Moon mother, I would like to chain him, so the pack will know he will never be Alpha." Stewart timidly tells my mother, but still has a strong voice.

"What?! Father I haven't done.." Minson tries to argue, but my goddess roar stops him.

"Her chaos has been let go, because of what YOU did. I knew I shouldn't have given her a mate, but her father wanted her to have a normal love life." She scoffs as she rants. "You have no idea how much pain it takes for a Goddess to lose for her chaos to take over!" She starts losing her composer the more she speaks to him.

That night he is forcefully carried, in front of the whole pack, to the underground dungeon. The pack watches on as they yell at him. Priscilla is shamefully walking behind him, sobbing like it would help her. Once everyone learned what I actually am they sent gifts of apology for their leader.

The next morning, my mother and I went back to my father's kingdom, which is now mine since I am of age with no mate. Father apparently wanted me to be normal, but I guess he didn't think of me getting my heart broken. Once home I immediately went to work on the kingdom.

1 Year later

It's been almost a year since I got back home. My kingdom is widely known for trading, and its unbreakable military. This whole year I've never stopped working, or studying more strategies. Honestly it kept my mind in order, so I could lock up my chaos.

With everything going so well I decided to throw a ball in honor of not only my success, but the kingdom's. I invited everyone from the townspeople, to Minsons parents. Throughout the year Agetha and I would send letters to each other to make sure everything is going alright. I even allowed Stewart to trade in the market, and my ports.

Once I got back to my kingdom I heard of this Orc woman, Kiva, who does amazing work. Sadly I only went to the kingdom for a short visit, so I didn't get to get any dresses. However I sent my dresser to Silentdew to see if this Kiva could make me a dress, and she delivered. She made me a dress fit for a goddess. When I first got it I couldn't stop looking at it. My jeweler gifted me with a lovely crown of stones he calls moonstones.

I could hear the violins playing as I came down the stairs. The ballroom was already filled with so many different people. As I walked in everyone stopped, and bowed. I waved for the music to start, and as the piano picked back up everyone got back to dancing. I couldn't stop my smile as I danced around the couples to get to my throne. While I start to sit Minson's parents come walking to me with wide smiles.

"Oh (y/n). Everything just looks amazing." Agetha rants as she hugs me.

"Thank you so much for coming." I tell them both.

"We are so greatly appreciative of you allowing us to come." Stewart bows to me.

"Oh please you tw…" I'm stopped by a whiff of pine and rain, making my head snap up.

"(Y/n)?" Agetha asks, concerned.

"Um… excuse me for a moment." I walk to the edge of the room, following where that smell is coming from.

When I tell you time itself stopped when the loudest, deepest growl came from toward my throne. Everyone stops, facing toward my throne, and standing where I once stood is a man. I almost whine when I see him, I can't even describe him properly. He is the tallest, strongest looking man I've ever seen. His honey-colored eyes move around the room until they catch mine. He holds his hand out to me as I take timid steps. People part for me as I let my wolf do what she needed. She makes me rush to his side, and just hide in his chest. Everyone starts to cheer when his hand rests on my head.

The ball picks back up as he holds me to his side. I was moved there when he walked us to the side where the curtain would cover us. I'm almost too scared to actually look at him, because what if he is just as vile as my first mate.

"Babybee, can you look at me?" His voice is so deep, but soothing.

I take a deep breath before I look up at his honey brown eyes, and my body all down to my soul relaxes. He moves his large hand to hold the side of my face as he smiles at me. I can feel myself getting bashful from him just looking at me.

"My name is Toric. Could you tell me your name?" He leans onto the wall, making me lean against his chest.

"(Y/n)." I timidly tell him.

"I'm glad to have found you (y/n)." His voice is so soothing. "To believe I almost didn't come when my brother invited me." He doesn't take his eyes off my face.

"I finally have a mate. I can actually feel it this time." I take a deep breath of his scent.

"This time?" He steps back confused.

I sigh. "Come with me."

I take his hand to walk him to my office. His big form takes up the whole couch as he sits down. I can't feel my body get nervous to the point I'm shaking while I shut the door, my back leaning against it.

"Toric I don't know how to begin to explain." I sit on the edge of my desk, locking my hands together. "You…I… okay. I'm not just any wolf. My mother is the moon mother." I test him with that, but he doesn't even move an eyebrow. "I have had a mate before, but he wasn't the best mate. My mother and his parents had him locked up for punishment. That was a year ago." I look down at my hands. "I didn't think she'd give me another mate."

I snap my head up to him standing. I honestly thought he was leaving, but he walks toward me with a blank expression.

"What did he do to you?" He simply asks.

"He brought me to his pack only to get his girlfriend pregnant." I look into his eyes with honesty. "I even told him to reject, his father even tried to use his Alpha command, but he just kept on." I sigh wanting to reach for him.

"Tell me." He rests his hands next to my hips after a couple of moments. "What feels different now than before?" He asks, leaning down to my height, practically squatting down like I am a child.

"I feel safe, I want to constantly touch you. With him I worried if I said the wrong thing he'd be angry." I slowly move my hands to his warm arms. "I didn't mind being away from him, but with you just the thought of you leaving this room makes me want to grab hold of you." I look into his honey brown eyes as I give him my thoughts.

"I will give you anything you wish Honeybee just actually say my name." He leans his forehead against mine. "You said it so quickly.

"Toric." I giggle at him. "Does that mean everything is okay?" I anxiously ask him.

"Honeybee, I am your mate. He doesn't matter." My legs open when he pulls me closer to him. "Besides…" He stands to his normal height. "My name sounds better coming out of your mouth than his."

"You don't even know his name." I slid off my desk to stand in front of him.

"Doesn't matter." He waves his hand while he walks to the door. "Let's get this party over with, so I can have my mate to myself." He keeps his growl low as I walk toward him.

I rest my hand on his chest giving his honey eyes one last look before stepping out of the room. However I didn't get far. I'm pushed against the wall with Toric lifting me to his height. I grip into his hair as his lips connect with mine. His arms tighten around me with a final push of his lips.

"Sorry Honey Bee, I couldn't stop." I giggle at his bashful face.

"It's okay Toric." I smile at him as he slowly lowers me back to the floor.

We rejoined the ball, getting many questions as to where we were, but Toric would turn the conversation. I couldn't leave the warmth from under his arm. Minson's parents introduced themselves. I told him how we stay in touch, and how sweet they were to me while I was with their pack. He thanked them for their kindness. As the night ended Toric gave word to his brother, who is a full werewolf and a Duke for King Jule of Silentdew, to send his belongings here.

Pt2 is up!

[jamesbuchananxsteviegrant]

I Pick the TV Show, Rogers Shuts His Cake-Hole | Bucky x Steve x Reader (Angst, Fluff)

Category: Angst, Fluff (Suggested) Age: 14+ Trigger Warnings: none, other than the standard explicit language Ship: Bucky x Steve x Reader Summary: Steve Snaps At Reader When He’s Stressed, Resulting In Her Being Very Upset Request: "can u write where steve/bucky is overwhelmed with something and when reader asks to help or is telling them to relax they snap at reader and reader is hurt which makes them feel really bad afterwards. thank you sm. i love ur writings. and this is anon right? is it alright if u dont post my response if its not anon? im sorry. thank you so much. ur blog always pictures great stucky imagines. 💗💗💗" Contains Spoilers for: N/A Word Count: 2,488

---

A given, the super-soldier had been on nonstop missions for the last month or so, but she thought she was helping him feel better, not making him feel worse.

“Would you like anything to eat, Stevie? You’ve barely moved all day.” (Y/N)’s voice is small. Quiet.

She’s leaning through the door of his study where he’s sat putting together his mission reports from the last three or four missions he’s been out on.

He shakes his head but doesn’t even turn to look at her.

Sighing, the woman walks further into the room where her boyfriend is slouched over the desk.

“You gotta take a break, Stevie.” She whispers, resting her hands on his shoulders.

She notices the way they tense up, but he still remains silent.

His fingers continue to write up his report on the laptop.

“I’m worried about you, Stevie; talk to me.”

“I’m busy, (Y/N).”

“I know you are, baby, but you’ve gotta look after yourself too.” She attempts, leaning down to press a kiss to his cheek. He pulls away.

The woman furrows her brows.

“Steve, please, you’ve got to-”

“(Y/N), just stop!”

The shout is sudden and it makes her flinch back away from the man as he turns to face her.

“I’m fine, alright?! I don’t need you babying me all the time!”

She doesn’t respond for a second, surprised at her lover’s outburst.

He says nothing more, simply turns back to the laptop and continues typing away.

“Steve, look how stressed you are. Can you please just-”

“STOP! Okay?! Just stop! Leave me the fuck alone while I finish these neverending mission reports. For once in your life can you just understand that not everything is about you?!”

(Y/N) swears that being shot in the heart wouldn’t hurt half as much as the words that just came out of the man’s mouth.

Her mouth opens and closes as if searching for the right words to say, but that hurt.

Is she really that bad? Is that the truth behind all of this? That she’s clingy? Thinks everything is about her? That was never her intention. (Y/N) is well aware of how important being an Avenger is. Hell, she is an Avenger, for Christ’s sakes.

She says nothing more and leaves the room.

She can’t even decide if she feels sad. No. She’s not sad, she’s not angry, she’s not… anything.

Numb.

Naturally, her feet lead her to their room. Steve’s room. They all basically share the super soldier’s abode since they all got together, but right now she doesn’t dare open the door.

Doing a full one-eighty spin, (Y/N) takes herself back to a place she barely touches anymore. Her room.

It’s pretty empty. Most of her clothes are in Steve’s room, in her own walk-in wardrobe. Her bed is perfectly made from the last time she slept in here - maybe a year ago?

The woman walks around her bed and straight onto her bedroom balcony, overlooking the lake at the back of the compound, and stays there. For three-hours. Until Bucky comes looking for her.

He came home from his mission about thirty-minutes ago only to find their shared room of Steve’s empty. He searched just about everywhere, completely clueless.

“FRIDAY, where’s (Y/N) and Steve?” He finally gives in.

“Captain Rogers is in study five, and Agent (L/N) is in her private quarters.”

Now that makes the brunet furrow his brows.

Why would (Y/N) be in her room and not his or Steve’s?

He prioritises finding (Y/N) first, knowing Steve will be writing up mission reports, no doubt.

Despite them being together for over six-years now, he hesitates when reaching for the handle of her bedroom door. Instead, the man opts to knock.

No answer.

“(Y/N)?” Nothing. “Doll, it’s me; can I come in?” Nothing.

Bucky tries the door handle and finds it unlocked, yet still hesitates.

“Baby?” He calls out. Again, nothing.

He’s cautious now. Scared.

Her room looks as untouched as the last time he saw it, which was a few months back when she was after one of her plushies.

“(Y/N)?”

It’s when he feels the chill of the midnight winds ruffle his hair that he realises her balcony doors aren’t fully closed.

Striding straight over, his eyes widen at the sight of his girlfriend curled up in the corner of the outdoor area, crying.

“(Y/N), baby, hey, what’s wrong?!”

Bucky immediately drops to his knees in front of the woman, reaching for her hands and gently tugging them away from her tear-stained face.

“(Y/N), doll, look at me.” His voice is gentle. Soothing.

She does almost instantly but her sadness stays.

“What happened, baby? Are you hurt?”

The fear and sincerity in his voice is enough to prompt the woman to shake her head. Yes, she’s hurting emotionally, but he needs confirmation that she’s not dying.

The woman immediately sees the relief take over his features, but he’s still concerned.

“What’s wrong, doll?”

Her eyes stray away from his, not wanting to tell him what’s got her so upset.

“Hey, no, look at me, baby,” He whispers, hand lightly grasping at her chin to raise her face back up to his. “What’s got you so worked up, (Y/N)?”

Another shake of her head as she tries to escape her lover’s hold.

“Baby, please, you’re scaring me.”

Her face contorts into something close to heartbreak as she wants nothing more than to reassure the man in front of her.

“It’s okay, Buck.”

“It’s not okay! Doll, I haven’t seen you cry since Stevie nearly died on that mission in Ohio like two-years-ago! Talk to me.”

She takes a deep breath and wipes her face of the shedding tears.

“Do you want me to get Stevie?”

The question is innocent and makes sense, but her eyes widen and she shakes her head desperately.

“No! No, please, no.”

That truly makes the super soldier concerned.

“Doll, please can you tell me what’s happened?”

Never in the last eight-years that Bucky and (Y/N) have known each other has she been so reluctant to see Steve.

Another sob escapes her and it’s breaking his heart.

“Baby, please.”

“Steve got mad at me, alright?!” She manages an attempted shout. “I just wanted him to look after himself.”

“What happened? What did Steve do?”

He’s concerned. Massively.

“I was trying to get him to eat; he hasn’t eaten properly in so long. He’s so overworked and he’s hung up on all these mission reports. He told me that not everything was about me - shouted at me; told me to stop.” She’s whimpering and sniffling again now. “Please get him to eat something, James.”

That last sentence is the one that crushes him. She’s upset, yeah, but above all that, she’s still worried about the blond super soldier.

“Come on, baby, let’s go to our room and get into bed, yeah? I’ll go and speak to Stevie.”

Her eyes meet his and she looks scared, but the ocean blue gaze that he returns makes her bound to his every command.

The woman nods.

“Okay.”

“That’s my girl.”

With the help of the Winter Soldier, (Y/N) manages to stand up, letting him lead her out of her private room and into their shared one of Steve’s.

“Here, let’s get you into your PJs, yeah?”

He doesn’t leave room for negotiation as he helps his girlfriend strip out of her casual dress and into one of his oversized t-shirts.

“You get snuggled up in bed, doll. I’m going to go and get Stevie, okay?”

He hates how she looks nervous at the mention of their other lover’s name.

“He loves you more than words can describe, baby girl, I promise you. He shouldn’t have lashed out at you, I’m gonna talk to him, okay?”

A hesitant nod and forced smile is enough for now.

“I’ll be back shortly, I promise.” He leans over and gives the woman a kiss on the lips, leaving her with one of her favourite shows playing on the TV.

“Bucky,” Her choked up voice calls out just before he leaves.

The man turns from his place in the doorway.

“I love you.”

The smile that takes over his expression is contagious.

“I love you too, baby girl. More than anything.”

Despite his reassurance to the woman, he’s pretty damn pissed for a number of reasons about Steve losing his cool with their girl. Reason number one being, how dare he? Reason number two being, he knows better than to overwork, yet here we are.

Bucky doesn’t even knock once he approaches the glass doors of the study where Steve is sat typing away on the laptop.

The blond doesn’t even glance up to see who entered. He barely heard the door open which enrages Bucky further.

The brunet slams the lid of the laptop shut without saying a word, prompting Steve’s head to shoot up, glaring daggers at whoever has interrupted him.

“What the fuck, James?!”

That makes Bucky really get annoyed.

“Are you serious right now, Rogers?”

“I’m in the middle of about seven different mission reports, Buck, I’ve gotta finish them.” The man sighs, going to open the lid of the PC once more, only for Bucky to hold it down. “James, seriously,”

“No. What you need to do is explain to me why our girlfriend has been crying for the last God-knows how many hours?”

That makes Steve snap back to reality.

“What? (Y/N) has been crying? Is she okay?”

Bucky literally rolls his eyes at that.

“Are you fucking serious, Steve?” He repeats, Steve looking confused, expression contorting as he realises that his boyfriend is seriously angry at him.

“Bucky, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

The Winter Soldier’s head lolls back as he groans in frustration.

“You seriously have no idea?” He asks, rhetorically, watching Steve look almost scared. “Do you often shout at your girlfriend and forget it happened?”

Cap’s eyes widen at that, and he visibly gulps.

“What?”

“She came in here to make sure you were looking after yourself, which you weren’t, by the way, and you tell her that not everything is about her?! Are you fucking stupid, Steve?!”

He remembers it all too well in that moment, turning his head down to avoid the frustrated glare of his male lover.

“No. No, you don’t get to look away from me. Look at me.” Bucky demands, watching the blond super soldier reluctantly do so. “I come home from my own exhausting mission, search for (Y/N) for thirty-minutes, and find her crying her God-damn heart out on the balcony of HER room; not our room, Steve, no. Her room.”

Steve’s heart shatters and his eyes widen once more.

(Y/N) hates staying in her room. She’d always be in his or Bucky’s without a doubt.

“I- Buck-”

Bucky shakes his head and stands back upright as Steve is lost for words.

“I’m not mad at you, Steve. I get it, you know? You’ve been overworking for the last month, I know you’re stressed, but fuck, baby, you can’t hurt her like that. Do you know how much my heart fucking shattered when I saw her curled up in the corner of her own God-damn balcony?! It tore me apart. She hasn’t cried since you nearly fuckin-” Bucky chokes on his own word as he walks away from his lover.

“I’m sorry! Buck, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have let Fury send me on that many missions, I- I should’ve said no. I’m sorry.” Steve attempts, standing up and following the brunet, turning him around to face him once more.

“It’s not me you need to be apologising to, Stevie.”

Captain America nods and leans up to press a kiss to the man’s lips.

“I’m sorry, James.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and forces a smile.

“I forgive you. Of course I forgive you, I know you didn’t mean it, but I swear to God, if you hurt her again…”

Steve is already shaking his head.

“I wouldn’t dream of either of you getting hurt. Where is she?”

“Our room.”

He nods and begins heading toward the woman to which he owes more than he can give.

The door is half ajar when Steve gets there, he slowly opens it to reveal his girlfriend in all her glory, curled up under their Captain America themed duvet - which Sam bought the trio as a joke last Christmas. Her face is clear-as-day red from her earlier upset, and it breaks his heart.

The man knocks gently on the day as if not to startle the poor girl.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He offers a solemn smile when she turns to see who’s there.

He hates the way he can see her hesitation to speak to him as opposed to her usual squeal of his name, arms opening wide to welcome him into her cuddle-fest.

“Hi.” She manages, forcing her own smile.

There’s silence floating between them, the only sound being Jensen Ackles, in his role of Dean Winchester, talking a load of nonsense about pie on the TV that’s streaming Supernatural.

“Baby, I’m so sorry.” Steve manages, taking a step toward the bed. “Nothing can excuse the way I yelled at you, and I’m so sorry for that, but, sweetheart, trust me when I say I didn’t mean it. I was so stupidly stressed, and I should never have let it get to that point.”

She nods, truly believing his words, but it still hurt.

The blond sits down on the edge of the bed, not daring to cuddle his girlfriend until she’s comfortable.

“I love you so much, (Y/N) (L/N).”

A bigger smile taints her lips at that.

“I love you too, Steven.” Her voice is barely a whisper but he hears it clear as day.

“Can I hold you?”

(Y/N) smiles and shakes her head as if he was being silly.

“You never need to ask permission for that, Stevie. No matter what.”

With another sad smile, he pulls the woman into his arms and holds her tighter than ever before.

“I’m so sorry, my love.”

“I forgive you, but no more missions for a while.” She whispers.

“Yes, boss.”

Bucky’s leaning against the doorframe, watching the interaction. He took a detour to Tony’s office and made sure to give the billionaire a piece of his mind about making sure Fury didn’t have Steve on any missions for a long time.

“Is this the last episode?” The brunet speaks up, stripping himself of his clothes as he enters their room properly.

“Yeah.” (Y/N) nods.

“I still think we should watch Vampire Diaries instead.” Steve chuckles, mirroring Bucky’s actions.

“I pick the TV show, Rogers shuts his cake-hole.” (Y/N) teases, mocking a line from Supernatural and snuggling herself in the middle of the bed, sandwiched between the two super soldiers - where she belongs. “I love you both.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

“Love you always, doll.”

TAGS

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Stucky x Reader Only Tag List: polarbearnamedpanda | @marvelous-glims

SFW Only Tag List: @piper-koko-barnes-rogers

[sirisuorionblack]

Counting...

Sirius Black x Reader

Summary - (Y/N) had been waiting for four very painful hours for the return of her boyfriend and he did just for mere minutes but she was determined to get him back.

Warnings - So many tears that u could bathe in and fluff.

(Y/N) sat at the dining table, alone, a coffee that turned cold being left unattended, her foot tapping anxiously and she blankly stared at the mahogany wood though her thoughts ran wild.

It's been four hours, very long four hours since Sirius - her beloved boyfriend - was supposed to be back home by the time from a "mission" but he still hasn't returned just adding fuel to the blazing amount of worry she had been enduring these days. She was a strong woman, Sirius always told her that, he would add it with a chuckle just realising how lucky he was.

Rapid knocks pulled her away from her trance. She gulped, taking out her wand and arming herself as she tentatively walked the door.

Upon unlocking, the door swung open and Sirius - she just knew it was him - smashed his lips against hers, pushing the two of them inside, pinning her to the wall.

He kissed her as though there was no tomorrow, as though he was terrified of something beyond her knowledge. He kissed her hard. A deep intuition in her just rang those bells of alarm. 

(Y/N) pulled away, cupping his face as he heaved deep breaths, his head ducked and his whole body shivering. 

"Hey, hey, Sirius, look at me," she pressed, softly as she tried to get him to look at her for she would read him like an open book once she saw his eyes.

When she did see those grey orbs, a soft gasp tumbled from her lips. There was no such thing as a sparkle in his eyes anymore, it was hollow, empty and filled with tears.

"Sirius, what happened?" She asked, worried beyond any level. A sob racked his body, his hands clawing hers as he tightly held them.

"James," he muttered through his sobs.

"James? What happened to him!?" She asked her eyes widening with fear, "Sirius, what happened!?"

Sirius flinched and tried to regain his breath, "James and Lily - they - that rat - he killed them!" 

He sank to his knees in front of her but she stood there watching him sob uncontrollably as she numbly tried to comprehend the situation vaguely.

Giving up her attempt she too, collapsed before him, collecting him in her arms as he held onto her as if she was his lifetime. Not a single tear strung her eyes rather she blankly stared ahead, holding Sirius tightly in her arms.

It would take her years to accept what had happened, she lost them, she lost her best friends, she lost her almost family but what actually made her feel something was how Sirius felt, he lost the one he called his brother right after he lost his own, the girl he saw growing accustomed to their shenanigans and keeping them on the line was simply gone. He wouldn't hear his laughter anymore, he would see her lovely emerald eyes anymore and all because of the person they considered their best friend.

Rage passed through her though it subsided the moment a beaming Harry's face crossed through her mind.

"Sirius, Harry!" She vaguely exclaimed. 

Sirius' sobs intensified and she waited until he calmed down enough to speak.

"Hag-Hagrid took him and I-I did a foolish thing," Sirius said, not meeting her eyes as he felt his head spin.

Her eyes widened, filled with an excessive amount of worry, "Wha-?" 

She didn't even get to finish the question before the door burst open, a group of Aurors stood at the door, their wands outstretched, glaring at the couple sitting on the ground in each other's much-needed embrace.

"Mr Black," the Auror in the middle, growled as he stepped in. (Y/N) and Sirius scrambled to their feet, (Y/N) before Sirius. 

"Ms (L/N), move over, he is dangerous," A female Auror said softly, outstretching her hand and looking at her as though she was a child about to throw a tantrum. 

"Dangerous?!" (Y/N) scoffed, "Absolute bullshit!"

"Ms (L/N), step aside," Another Auror commanded her.

Sirius slipped his hand into hers, squeezing it, searching for the warmth he was afraid he would be deprived of.

The two Aurors in the front whispered amongst themselves. Suddenly one of them harshly pulled (Y/N) back, dragging Sirius away from her.

"NO!" She yelled as she struggled against the restraints of the Auror holding her back by the arm.

Before her, Sirius struggled to remove his arm from the Auror wanting nothing more than to just rush into her arms and be in her comforting embrace though that seemed like a wild fantasy at that moment. 

Finding (Y/N) too hard to be held back, the Auror muttered a spell under her breath. (Y/N) straightened, her eyes turning blurry. She balanced herself against the wall, shaking her head and blinking her eyes.

"Sirius," she muttered, slipping in and out of consciousness. She no longer was able to stand on her feet. And Sirius watched her, yelling her name over and over again until three Aurors bodily dragged Sirius. 

"(Y/N)!" Sirius yelled as he tried to pry the Aurors' hands at the same time (Y/N) whispered, "Don't go, Sirius," watching as he struggled against them and then, blank.

"(Y/N)," she heard someone call her name, "(Y/N),"

"Moony!? Moony is it you?" She asked, trying to open her eyes.

"Yes, yes, it's me," Remus said, helping her sit up. When Remus had entered Sirius' home after he had received the news, tears staining his cheek, he found the door blast down, not a soul aware of what had happened and what he next saw disturbed him senseless. For a second he was scared into oblivion, for a second he doubted his best friend, for a second he pitied that traitor as he saw (Y/N) laying on the ground motionless.

Remus had rushed to her, racking his brain all the difficult charms and methods he had been taught to wake her up but in the state of panic, he forgot the simplest method of all - just shaking her to wake up.

(Y/N) sat on the floor, her back against the wall, her hand clasped tightly in Remus', she took deep breaths. They sat in silence as the two of them tried to contemplate what had happened. 

"They dragged him, Remus, I don't know even why. They said he was dangerous; Sirius cant be dangerous, he isn't," she muttered, looking at him with tear-filled eyes.

Remus sighed as he sat on the floor, squeezing her hand comfortingly and took a deep breath for what he was about to say, "After he found out about...Peter, he left after him and Sirius seemed to have cornered him, and then the Aurors arrived when almost 12 muggles were killed, and they saw nothing of Peter except for his finger was found. Before they could arrest Sirius there itself he had apparated here,"

By the time Remus finished, (Y/N) had her head leaning against the wall, staring at the photo frame right before her. It was of Sirius and her, making goofy faces and smiling at the camera, it was a week after they graduated.

"Why would Peter do that?" She whispered as she finally looked into his eyes. Remus chuckled sadly, "You know him, very well honestly, he would want to be under those who were more powerful than him, so he joined," Remus gulped, "Voldemort,"

(Y/N)'s lips parted in disbelief, "He was the spy?"

Remus nodded.

"But how did he do it?" 

He sighed, "He was the secret keeper, it seems,"

"What?"

"Yeah,"

(Y/N) slapped a hand against her mouth as tears ran free from her eyes. Remus wrapped his arms around her, allowing his best friend to weep into his arms and he too, unable to hold the tears, let them stream down his eyes.

The morning when Dumbledore came to the household where Remus and (Y/N) sat, silently grieving for their best friends, not a word uttered by them, to inform Sirius has been sentenced to Azkaban for life, (Y/N) didn't feel sadness rather rage, "What!? He's not been given a chance to prove his innocence! You can't throw just him like that into Azkaban forever!" She yelled.

Dumbledore spoke calmly, "Ms. (L/N), please calm down. It's been declared by the Ministry, we cannot do anything about it,"

She took a deep breath and looked at the man pointedly, "Well, professor, if that's it, I don't find a reason for your presence here anymore,"

Dumbledore's blue eyes flashed but he apparated without a word nonetheless.

"What have you gotten in your mind?" Remus asked with a smirk as he looked at her pulling her hair into a bun and taking a deep breath.

"I am gonna prove Sirius' innocence and get my godson back," she said, determinedly as she left to her room leaving Remus sitting on the couch smiling to himself. When you have a determined (Y/N) with you, that's an announcement for the hell that is about to break loose and it could be positive or negative. 

"Coffee," Remus muttered, placing the flask on (Y/N)'s desk as he glanced over the papers and textbooks scattered on her desk, "What are these?"

(Y/N) sighed, placing her pen down and leaning back on her chair, tipping it as Sirius taught her, unconsciously and Remus didn't want to point it out to her, dampening the mood.

"It's so simple, honestly," She said, glancing at the papers and then at him, "I have to get Harry's custody, and if not me Sirius should, it's legally that way too. You can't just place a year old baby in a household of the worst sort of muggles, one that absolutely ignored the fact that she had a sister,"

She took a deep breath, "Now, to Sirius, you cannot arrest someone without any evidence, much less sentence them to prison with no trial permitted. If we just try to get him a trail then everything will fall back to normal,"

"As normal as it could be," Remus said carefully. 

(Y/N) sighed and nodded, "As normal as it could be,"

"What are we gonna do next?" Remus asked.

"Find someone who could help us officially for this,"

"Can't we, I dunno, do it ourselves?"

"I...I don't know,"

"We will give it a shot?"

"Damn right you are,"

Finally after two exhausting days, (Y/N) stood before Barty Crouch, some would say glaring at him, the other a cold fixated stare. She stood briskly, head held high without the minimal amount of shame or fear in that massive room, filled with people.

"Ms (Y/N) (L/N), you are here requesting another trial for Mr Sirius Orion Black." Barty Crouch said, looking at her through his glasses. 

She shook her head, "Demanding for a trial,"

Crouch's nose flared as he without any disagreement corrected his mistake, knowing far too well the capability of (Y/N).

"Now, the best Aurors have seen Mr Black on the spot laughing like a maniac as the street held 13 dead bodies, including his very own friend Mr Peter Pettigrew," Barty Crouch said.

"First of all, 13 dead bodies? When was Peter's body found?" (Y/N) asked, ignoring the whispers and mutters that grew thick in the council, her gaze fixated on the man before her.

"That's right. His body was never found," She said.

"So are you telling the Wizengamot that Mr Pettigrew just magically disappeared from the scene,"

"Oh please, this Wizengamot is for magic!" She stopped to look at the slightly embarrassed face of Crouch and smirked, just look at him in the end, "Besides, he could have apparated for all we know. But that's a matter for another day; all we have at our hands is a trial for a falsely imprisoned man,"

"Ms (L/N), I will be the one directing the Wizengamot today, so please," Crouch glared at her. Someone raised a hand amidst the crowd, Amelia Bones, "Mr Crouch, I think it's best if we allow her to explain her demand. We can vote," she said, looking at the council.

A little more than half of them raised their hands, "Ah, the motion is passed, Mr Crouch, we must let her speak,"

Barty Crouch's lips twitched, "Very well then, please proceed Ms (L/N),"

(Y/N) had a smirk rivalling Sirius himself's. She took a deep breath, this moment would determine her whole life, "I demand a trial for Sirius Black, with respect to the event that happened on the night of Halloween. I am quite blatantly ashamed that the most powerful ministry wouldn't grant a trial for an innocent man," there was a voice of disapproval. 

(Y/N) ignored it and continued, "I find it extremely disturbing that someone just based on his last name could be sent to Azkaban for a crime he allegedly committed. Now, Siri-Mr Black's relation with...James Potter was well known, they were almost brothers and the question here is how was he supposed to betray someone so close to him,'

"It was also known by almost everyone here about how Mr Black was disowned for going against the absurd ideas of his mother at the young age of 16, would that very man commit a crime as such!? And it's quite easy to find the truth here at the Ministry of Magic, a simple Veritaserum would do the job and if that didn't work, a check of memories of muggles at the spot would have shown the truth. And just as you said you have the best Aurors, allow them to seem the truth!"

(Y/N) finished, taking a sip of the water beside her and the council looked rather convinced by her speech. Once again Amelia Bones stood, "A vote again, perhaps, Mr Crouch?" She asked.

The man in question looked absolutely bewildered by how wrong things have been going now that the spotlight to it had been given. He nodded. 

"Great. Those in favour of granting Mr Black his fair trial upon the use of Veritaserum," she said and grinned as almost all the members in the council raised their hands.

(Y/N) beamed as Crouch announced, "Sirius Orion Black will be given his trial on the third of November, here at this very room with Veritaserum brewed by a highly talented Potions Master. Any objection? Very well then, Council dismissed,"

"Moony!" (Y/N) rushed into Remus' arms, tears stinging her eyes, "We did it, Moony! We did it!"

"You got the trial!?" Remus asked, grinning at her after she pulled away.

"Yes!" She chuckled happily.

"You did it!" Remus yelled as he pulled his best friend into a bone-crushing hug, wiping his own tears.

"When is it?" He asked, still beaming.

Her bottom lip quivered, "Third of November,"

Remus' shoulder slumped, Sirius had planned something that would have changed the two of their lives on that day, and it was part of the reason why he got arrested. Remus engulfed her in a warm hug.

"Don't worry, we know he is innocent," Remus reassured (Y/N), him moving to the stands while she stood in the front of the very room she struggled for a trial on November 3.

Minutes later, the Aurors escorted Sirius into the room, he looked glum and hollow. He looked as though he feared human touch anymore, as though all those bad memories within him surfaced. He looked fragile and in that moment (Y/N)'s heart shattered. 

She wanted to just rush into his arms and never let him go, hold him close to her, whisper soothing terms into his ears, for only him to hear.

Sirius glanced around the room, his eyes falling on (Y/N), he felt in the precise second nothing but pride blooming through his chest, she was his brave girl, he wouldn't worry about her, he knew she would survive. If his world hadn't collapsed, he would have called her his fiancee. 

"Mr Sirius Orion Black, after the request of Ms (L/N), you have been granted a chance to prove your innocence. You will be given two drops of the truth potion - Veritaserum, and then Ms Amelia Bones, will question you," Barty Crouch announced.

Sirius was then seated in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed on nothing but (Y/N) who smiled warmly at him and he felt as if there was nothing wrong, it's just another prank he got caught in, just another petty detention, just another pathetic duel with Slytherins, he felt a bloom of comfort spreading from his chest. He allowed a little smile, very minuscule to tug on the corner of his lips.

"You, Sirius Orion Black, son of Walburga and Orion Black?" Amelia Bones questioned the basics, testing the potion.

Sirius snorted, folding his arms before him and slumping on his chair, "Unfortunately,"

"You were a Gryffindor?"

He smirked, "Yes,"

"Well, Mr Black now let me know what happened on Halloween's night?"

Sirius took a sharp intake of breath and sat properly on the chair, "I went see Prongs first to tell about the ring and when I went there the roof of their house was absolutely collapsed and I was afraid what could have happened so I went in and," Sirius' voice broke and tears stung in his eyes just as it did to (Y/N), she never knew these.

"And I-I saw James laying on the floor, his eyes were open but....he wasn't- he wasn't moving and when I checked for his breath," Sirius took a deep breath, "There was nothing,"

Sirius retold what he had seen and done on that day, with pauses for breath and sips of water to calm himself down.

By the end, Amelia Bones was moved to tears so were the rest of the courtroom, especially (Y/N) who often wiped her eyes.

Bones turned to Barty Crouch, silently asking him for the final judgement. 

He took a deep breath, "Very well then, at the end of this trial, based on accounts given by the Accused induced with Veritaserum, I, Bartemius Crouch, hereby declare, Sirius Orion Black innocent!"

Remus and (Y/N) patiently waited for Sirius to change out of his Azkaban clothes and into the one he was wearing that day.

"Love?" Sirius called, tentatively, about four feet away. Tears started to stream down (Y/N)'s eyes as she ran towards him.

She threw herself into his arms, burying her head into his shoulders and chanting his name. Sirius slowly started to rock her, finally, the warmth he had been deprived of seeped into his body, he felt safe and...home.

"Darling, I am here, don't worry, it's going to be OK," He consoled her. The turn of events was almost hilarious for (Y/N), it was supposed to be her saying those words.

She pulled away, cupping his cheeks. There were dark circles under his eyes, his eyes - Oh goodness - they were a dark shade of grey, bad memories and tears clouding them, and he looked pale.

She couldn't hold her to see him anymore so she smashed her lips against his, inviting him for a passionate embrace. Neither of them knew until then that this was what they wanted, to feel the other, a silent reassurance that everything is going to be alright.

Remus watched as the two of his...remaining best friends held each other in a much-needed embrace, he smiled warmly. The surprise that would await the two of them by the other.

"Come on," (Y/N) beckoned inside their, squeezing Sirius' hand and Remus in tow, "Stay here," she said and disappeared inside a room.

Sirius took out the velvet box buried inside his coat pocket and showed it to Remus, who clapped him on the back and nodded encouragingly. 

When (Y/N) returned with a sleeping baby Harry in her arms, beaming, she didn't expect to see Sirius on his one knee, holding a velvet box open, a beautiful diamond ring shining inside.

The two of them gasped simultaneously as Remus watched with proud eyes, feeling like a mother watching her kids grow.

"I dunno what to say," Sirius said, "Everything I prepared flew out of my mind. But just one thing, I need you in my life, I need you for my sanity, I am absolutely nothing without you and you hold my world above, darling, if it wasn't for you it would have collapsed ages ago. Over everything else...I love you, so much that I can't even express it. I-will you, (Y/N) (L/N), marry me?"

(Y/N) nodded rapidly, unable to speak she rushed into his arms, still holding Harry carefully.

They pulled away after a moment and Sirius slipped the ring into her finger and took Harry in his arms, admiring how much he looked like his father.

"I love you, (Y/N)," he said, his arm encircling around her waist.

"I love you too," she muttered, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Remus," Sirius called, glancing behind for his best friend, "Group hug,"

Remus rushed to the three of them. Finally, they felt happy perhaps like tightly woven remainings of one big family.

[hadestownmodern]

Junie’s Dance Class

It’s not Hades and Junie, but here’s today’s fic! I wrote this a while ago and Annika literally reminded me last night, I’m not sure I ever posted this but I plan on revamping the mater list again today so we’ll see Anyway, I have a stockpile of fics now, I’ve put writing into my own little quarantine schedule and it seems to be working out alright. -Danielle -------------------       Orpheus and Eurydice walk briskly, hand-in-hand, following the directions they’d been given to Junie’s dance studio. The day had been long anticipated for Orpheus, who had seen all of her recitals and sat proud and tearful in the audience at each. When Persephone had invited him to the open dance class this afternoon, he’d jumped at the chance to attend.

          “She doesn’t know, so don’t say a word.” Persephone had briefed the young couple at the day before, while Junie was at school. “I want her to be surprised; she’s going to be so excited to see you. She always asks why you can’t come to every dance class-instead of me, because of course-so this is going to be huge.”

          Persephone hadn’t been exaggerating.

          When they step into the studio-a beautiful, extravagant space with one wall of windows and one wall of mirrors-Junie jumps up and runs right to them with her hands outstretched, calling Orpheus’s name and causing the other parents in the room to glance over at him. He picks her up and swings her around, Junie resting her head on his shoulder and squeezing him tight.

          “You’re here, Uncle Ophie!” Junie’s tiny voice resonates through the studio, bright and cheerful, and she reaches a hand out to Eurydice. “And you brought ‘Rydice, and my best friend too!”

          Eurydice laughs, one hand over her tiny baby bump as she kisses Junie’s forehead. As Orpheus puts her down, she truly takes in the sight of it all. A gaggle of little girls in pink tutus and white tights sit in a circle in front of the mirror with a tall, skinny woman the center of their attention. She speaks to them softly, yet with clear direction, and Eurydice finds appreciation in the way all ten of their heads nod along with her as she talks. She then stands, directs the girls to find their partners and brings her attention to the small crowd of adults in the room.

          “Welcome to our open invitation class-our girls have been working so hard, and we wanted to take this opportunity after the winter recital and the Nutcracker to have some fun and show you all what we do here on a regular basis, when we don’t have the holiday craziness to worry about.” She walks around the studio with a confident air, the posture and poise of a well-trained dancer. Then, she commands the room with the grace of a gesture and a smile.

          “I asked the girls who they’d like to invite to be their partner for this open class, who they’d choose to take class with them if they could have one guest. I’d like to invite those guests to come and stand next to their child now.”

          Persephone nudges Orpheus and grins a mischievous grin, casting her gaze over to little Junie, the smallest in the class, standing on her toes in her baby pink ballet shoes.

          “She chose you-have fun!” But Orpheus finds no embarrassment in this, no issue at all. Instead he hops right over to her, bends down to her level and holds his hand out for a high-five. She collapses into him instead, kisses his cheek and dances around with the tulle of her tiny leotard skirt bouncing neatly along with her.

          He is the only male in the group of adults; the others are all women, looking to be around his age, whose girls stand beside them neatly. They’re excited, yes, but not with as much enthusiasm as Junie. Eurydice sits as daintily as she can on the floor, resting her feet, and Persephone joins her. They seem to be the only spectators in the room, the rest of the adults having a child to dance with. Eurydice’s shocked by it all, watching the group around them disperse into the hoard of dancing girls until they’re the last two ready to watch.

          “Where is everyone?” Eurydice asks, looking around the room. Persephone merely laughs, rolls her eyes and leans casually against the wall.

          “We’re it,” She says simply, shrugging. “Those girls all have nannies-not one of the women there is a mother. There are never any other moms here, just…nannies. Nothing against them, not at all, but honestly? I hold everything against their parents. It would kill me not to be here watching her dance. Hell, it killed me when she asked if Orpheus could dance with her this time and not me.”

          Eurydice stares out at the row of little girls in tutus and neatly done buns, looking up at their nannies with love, but also waiting for their direction. Junie is the difference; her bun had been done by Orpheus that morning-neatly, yet still slightly askew. She holds on to his hand as the teacher begins her direction, hopping along from foot to foot and glancing back at him every so often, flashing him a wide smile. The teacher leads them through fundamentals, standing at the bar going through each position, and Orpheus follows along with ease much to Junie’s delight. She applauds him as he dances, moving once to put both hands on his foot and push it out a bit more to correct his posture.

          Eurydice is captivated as Persephone chatters on to her about Orpheus; how he knows the moves from practicing with her in the living room, letting her play dance teacher and direct him through each step. He comes to every recital, uses every opportunity to support her, and always with a bouquet of flowers in hand. She scrolls through old photos; a baby-faced Orpheus holding two year old Junie, impossibly tiny, in her first big tutu with ringlet curls and stage makeup. There’s Orpheus in first position next to three year old Junie at Christmas, both still in pajamas and looking lovingly at each other. When Persephone is done her slideshow, her rundown of this history, the ballet instructor has moved on to a small pas de deux.

          Orpheus holds Junie’s hand, leaning down and helping her spin. Eurydice can’t hear his words, but she can see them; the way he leans into her, gives her his full attention and praise as she twirls around. Then he lifts her up to his shoulder. Junie’s giggle, clear and angelic, is the loudest in the room as she raises her hands in the sky.

          “Yay, Ophie!” He laughs along with her, holding her proudly in the air and following along with the short choreography they’ve been given. He dips her, Junie jutting her arms out straight and holding a stage smile before hopping around him once more. And as the dance finishes, and Junie launches herself into Orpheus’s waiting arms again, Eurydice finds herself wiping tears from her eyes.

          “Oh, damnit,” she laughs, shaking her head. Watching Orpheus she’d been holding on to her own slightly rounded belly, imagining the day that he might be dancing with their baby, loving their baby with as much adoration as he gives to Junie. His attentive manner, the glimmer in his eyes and the way she holds every ounce of his attention, makes Eurydice cry even more.

          “You’re a mess,” Persephone jokes, holding a tissue out for Eurydice to wipe her eyes. She smiles, attempts to collect herself as she subconsciously runs her hand over her stomach.

          “I really want this.” It’s a quick realization; she feels the tug at her heart upon watching Orpheus with Junie, giddy and unashamed as he dances along with Junie. The uncertainty that still linger within her-whether she’d be a good mom, whether they’d be able to provide fully for the baby-disappear momentarily as she imagines their own child in Junie’s place, sitting on Orpheus’s lap and kissing his cheek.

          Orpheus carries Junie from the class, lets her ride piggyback as they sing together, exuberant and joyful. In that moment, Eurydice wants nothing more than to stop; to let Orpheus know right there that they can do it-that she’s ready for whatever will come next. She wants to share her excitement, the mesmerizing feeling of happy anticipation that comes along with the thought of him holding their new baby, of loving him and the family they’ll have. She doesn’t need to say anything.

He ducks into a warm cookie shop and Junie cheers, Persephone shaking her head in what is a playful sort of protest. Orpheus walks with Junie to the front counter, reading out the menu for her and pointing at the cookies underneath the glass.

          “She needs a cookie, did you see how beautiful her turns are now? She’s been practicing, and she deserves a treat!”

          “Orpheus, you’re spoiling her!” Persephone jokes, leaning against the counter as her daughter clings to Orpheus’s back, chatting incessantly to him. They end up with a dozen cookies and an unapologetic shrug from a beaming Orpheus, who lets Junie sit on his lap at the table by the window.

          “Orpheus would let Junie get away with m-u-r-d-e-r if she asked him to,” Persephone sorts through the cookies until she finds a sweet and salty mix, and teases her son as Junie bends back to shove a piece of her cookie in his mouth.

          “I would not,” He shakes his head, holding Junie closer to him and kissing the top of her head. “I just love her, and I want her to know that I’ll always support her. And if that means dancing in her dance class or getting a dozen cookies when we only needed four, that’s how it’s going to be.”

          “You’re in trouble.” Persephone nudges Eurydice, who laughs and nods her head. Orpheus is not swayed, however, merely taking another bite from Junie’s hand. Eurydice hasn’t stopped smiling since they got to dance class that morning, taking everything in and attempting to commit it to memory. She looks across the table and catches Orpheus’s shining eyes, watches his smile turn soft and his gaze lower to where her stomach is hidden by the table. Her voice is but a slight whisper, a longing as she takes another bite of her own cookie.

          “Can’t wait.”  

[my-miraculous-headcanons]

The White Knight and His Queen Part 4

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [AO3]

Chat Noir finds himself sitting rather awkwardly beside Marinette’s father at the dinner table. It’s crowded with a wide assortment of foods, and while he’s practically drooling at the sight, he can’t find it in himself to start eating when he’s feeling like he shouldn’t even be here at all.

Tom’s reaction to Chat Noir made sense. Sabine’s was downright bizarre, and certainly out of character, if Marinette’s expression was anything to go by. She’s been staring at her mother as if the woman’s been replaced by an alien fake for the last ten minutes.

“I made all of your favorites, dear,” Sabine says, still arranging the plates so that there’s more room on the table. “Tofu spring rolls, steamed salmon, sesame balls, pork dumplings— oh, don’t worry about having to eat that if you can’t, Chat Noir, we also have chicken dumplings.”

Chat blushes at that, realising he made a face. Pork dumplings are not kosher.

“And I even bought some of those dolmas you love so much! Didn’t have time to make those from scratch, but I have a feeling you would have preferred the store-bought ones anyways.”

As Marinette’s mother continues to list all the food spread out, Chat finds himself glancing towards the TV not far from the table. Tom had turned it on for background noise, he said. So when everyone starts eating, the silence doesn’t feel awkward. 

It’s an old Italian movie he doesn’t really understand. Well, Tom probably understands it, so it may not completely be just background noise. Personally, he would have chosen the news, but—

Oh. Now that’s an idea.

“Um, Monsieur Dupain?”

Tom quickly turns and grins at him with a fanboyish glee, probably once again fantasizing about the Dupain-Noir bakery now that the hero and his daughter had gotten akumatised together. 

He doesn’t know how to break it to Tom that he’s far more likely to take Marinette’s last name than the other way around. Not that... he’s ever thought of it, of course. Not deeply, at least. Only once or twice. He might have doodled it once in his notebook during class, out of curiosity. Because he definitely does not have a crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng, since he likes La—

Wait. 

“Uhum,” his voice cracks as he tries very hard to brush away the realisation, attempting to make a polite request. “Would it be alright if I could change the channel to the news? Since Ladybug hadn’t used her restoration magic, so—”

“Ah, of course, of course! Don’t worry, son, I’ll find a good station.”

It takes only a few seconds before Nadja Chamack’s familiar face lights up on the screen. Just beside her, there’s clear image of their akuma.

Whoa... 

Nothing about their akuma screams evil or destructive, not at first, second, or third glance. Marinette’s hair is done up into a woven bun, with delicate pink butterfly pins scattered about it. She wears no mask, eyes wide open and chin raised as if to command a crowd. Her gown reminds him of the historically accurate redraw of Princess Aurore, except a lighter, gentler pink. Her dress is that of a kind and noble Princess, and yet, her expression and the way she holds herself demands a respect worthy of a Queen. 

He, in contrast, is dressed like a kind of knight he’s never quite seen before. A skintight white fabric covers his body, with a white metal breastplate woven into the material, as well as plates around his arms, shoulders, and legs. There’s flaws in the design, gaps between the metal plates that could easily be pierced through, but something about that seems like a dare. His yellow eyes scream the same thing his armor does. Come and try it. He stands behind Marinette, a rapier at his side. 

In the picture, there are many civilians on either of their sides. None of them are injured or frightened, simply standing and staring at the pair, staying out of their way as they march through the streets.

He forgets to listen to what Nadja is saying, and as a result is startled when the image suddenly takes up the whole screen, turning into a video. He briefly glances away and turns to look at Marinette, who also looks as though she had been startled out of a trance.

“Oh, I remember seeing this playing live,” Sabine says, noticing where the children’s attention is at. “I was so worried. I knew my baby was smart, and paired with a superhero, I thought you would be unstoppable. I was scared Hawkmoth was actually going to win, this time. Can you believe it? You two sure showed me, of course.”

What was that supposed to mean, exactly? He wants to ask, but something definitely seems odd about this situation, and he isn’t sure if he should admit that he doesn’t remember a thing. Sabine is making it sound like they were easy akuma to beat, that Marinette wasn’t smart, that his power wasn’t so great. 

The fact that he had a sword was an easy enough reason for him to believe that he most certainly was not easy to beat. Not with his experience. And Marinette being Ladybug, the other half to his whole, there was no way they weren’t a total nightmare. 

But there’s definitely something he’s missing. Something confusing.

Why were they simply walking through the streets at such a leisurely pace? Where were they going? Why hadn’t they simply given Hawkmoth their Miraculous yet? Why were they not causing a havoc, destroying everything in their path, making the public bend to their will?

What were they doing?

The video continues on, finally revealing exactly where the dual akuma is heading. They make it to a platform where the Mayor is standing, looking nervous, but not running away. The knightly version of him holds a hand out for his lady, and he politely helps her up the steps.

The camera zooms in as Marinette gets behind a microphone. Chat belatedly realises that the video actually has audio, but everyone had remained completely silent as Marinette had made her way onto the stage. 

“This part was clever of you, sweetheart,” Sabine says, smiling and kissing the top of her daughter’s head. “You really fooled everyone in Paris.”

Fooled? This was a trick, then? Didn’t Sabine imply earlier that Marinette was not as cunning as an akuma than she was normally?

When Marinette speaks, it’s almost as though the earth itself had gone quiet.

“What you see before you, today, is the White Knight, and I, his Queen. We have one goal in mind. A Miraculous we must obtain. We will find it whether this holder reveals themselves or not. We will battle them until our very last breaths. We will bring Paris into a peace it had not experienced since the beginning this war had begun.”

A shiver goes through his body, and if it weren’t for the fact that he knew who Marinette truly was, he knows he would have been absolutely terrified for his Lady. If it weren’t for a fact that Marinette was Ladybug herself, he would have believed that this, the Queen, was talking about defeating Paris’ last standing hero, fully confident in their ability to take them down, marking the defeat of good in a war against evil.

But she can’t possibly be talking about Ladybug, that much he knows now. No, while the entirety of Paris must have thought as such, she must have been talking about someone else, a different Miraculous user. This was the trick Sabine was talking about.

He presses a hand to his suit’s pocket, feeling the indent of the Butterfly brooch. 

This wasn’t simply a trick to fool Paris.

This was a trick to fool Hawkmoth. 

The pieces are clicking into place, one by one.

“I have one message for you, our final foe,” the Queen says. “We will defeat you. Your life will be spared, despite the numerous reasons it shouldn’t be. I am a merciful Queen, after all. But you will be defeated, as swiftly and painlessly as possible. In fact...”

The Queen’s lips crook into a smile, confident and determined. Behind her, her White Knight grins.

“You won’t even know what hit you until it’s too late.”

[azulaahai]

I Close My Eyes, But She’s Still There

When her older brother fails to return from a voyage to a nearby village, it is up to Sansa Stark to find him again.

A messy Jon x Sansa Beauty and the Beast AU based on the Disney movie(s) for @miazeklos for this round of the @jonsaexchange - I really hope you enjoy it! ♥ Title, of course, from the song ”Evermore” on the movie soundtrack.

You can also read this on ao3.

* * *

T H E   B E A U T Y

It will have to be her, Sansa thinks, as she mounts the horse, the old leather of the saddle creaking in protest as she straddles it.

There’s no one else left.

They’ve been scraping by, her family, doing what they could to keep above water. Losing father was unbearable, the loss and grief threatening to undo them. But losing mother, not a year thereafter … that was almost impossible.

That winter brought them close to starvation - Sansa and Robb went without food for days so that Arya, Bran and Rickon could eat. They had few friends in the village, the Stark always having been viewed as peculiar, worshipping other gods and keeping other customs than the rest of the villagers. In the coldest weeks of winter, they all fell ill with fever. Rickon, baby Rickon, was in the worst shape, and for a few days there Sansa was sure they would lose him too.

But Rickon had made it through the peak of the fever, shiny Stark-grey eyes blinking awake in the morning, and Sansa had thanked whatever gods that must still have been hearing her prayers.

And spring had come again, as surely and suddenly as winter had snuck up on them - the drives of snow had begun thawing, the cold winds softened their touch, the early flowers sprung up where there had been ice weeks before. Arya went out without her furs. Hope, that treacherous beast, began spurring in Sansa again. With spring here, the roads would once more be safe for travels - they could trade with neighbouring villages, as their parents had - sell furs and handiworks of Sansa’s making, grow vegetables in the garden again.

It had all looked so heartbreakingly bright, there, for a while. Robb had set out on his first trading journey with a broad, victorious grin on his lips, and they’d all been there to wave him off as he went in the carriage, Grey Wind, their beautiful silvergrey gelding, pulling Robb and their goods off on an adventure.

And then came the waiting.

First, he was a day or two late. It was easy to brush off, to explain to Rickon, who threw a fit when Robb wasn’t home on time - their brother could simply have decided to stay longer in the other village for whatever reason, or have been delayed on the road. He’d be home anytime now, for sure.

But he wasn’t.

On the third day a terrified Grey Wind, without the carriage and sweating profusely, galloped into the garden, large dark eyes stirring white.

And Sansa’s world came crashing down once more.

A cloud of steam rises as she exhales in the early morning - a chilly bite remains in the air, though spring has come for true now.

She is following her brother’s trail, Grey Wind uneasy beneath her as they set off into the woods. The landscape lays quiet around them, the silence broken only by the occassional bird or snapping tree branch.

No one is there to see them go - only Arya knows she’s leaving, and she’s still sleeping inside with their little brothers. Her sister begged and demanded that Sansa let her go find Robb in her stead. Arya is the fiercest of the two, no doubt about it, and by far the superior rider - but with Robb and their parents gone, Sansa’s the eldest, responsible for the others. She could never send Arya off to an unknown danger.

And if she’s to never return, their brothers would likely fare better with Arya, she-wolf with teeth and claws, to protect them, than Sansa with her songs and stories.

* *

The ride is hard, at least on her untrained body; Sansa’s legs are sore after a mere half hour. Grey Wind is not his usual calm, reliable self - he’s taut as a bow string beneath the saddle, freezing or jumping to the side at every small noise. They keep a humble pace, trotting along the forest trail. Not a single man or creature is in sight, save a bunny that flees when it spots them and a bird flying up from the bushes, giving Grey Wind a fright.

There’s something strange in the air, Sansa reflects with a shiver; the air seems to have grown colder. Snow remains in the ditches on the side of the trail, and Sansa must be imagining it, but it almost seems as though the amount of it increases the further into the forest they travel.

The silence, too, seems to grow louder in here among the trees, more piercing. Sansa hasn’t been this deep into the woods for years, but the forest she remembers from her childhood, when she used to ride in the back of her father’s carriage, was not at all this quiet. It’s as if nature itself is holding it’s breath.

* *

When Grey Wind wants to trail off track into the woods the first time, she stops him with a pull on the reins. The horse, behaving highly out of character, ignores her command, continuing on the small path he’s found. Sansa, equally annoyed and scared as she gazes into the dimness of the forest ahead, half-dark even during the day, urges him to turn back.

Instead, he increases their pace as he sets off into the woods, breaking into a trot, then a canter, dark silhouettes of trees whirling by on both sides as Sansa desperately pulls on the reins to hold the horse back.

Grey Winds does not heed her commands, nor her shouts as their speed turns reckless. Snow lies thick on the ground here, though Sansa has no time to dwell on that. The horse has lost his mind, it appears - fear flutters through her. She does not notice the trees beginning to thin out around her, knows nothing but the sound of hooves hitting snow at a mad pace and her own primal fear telling her she’s a second or so from death. Sansa presses her eyes shut, not wanting to see the end as it hits her -

And then - suddenly - salvation.

Grey Wind suddenly slows down, steam rising from him in the cold, Sansa sees as she hesitantly opens her eyes again.

The cold, yes - so unforgiving now, cutting through Sansa’s thick woolen cloak as were it cotton.

The horse’s pace gradually decreasing, until he’s walking calmly again, he bows his head and snorts, as if in apology for his temporary outbreak of madness.

And that’s when Sansa realizes there are no trees surrounding them anymore.

That’s when she sees the castle.

* *

T H E    B E A S T

It has been a long, long time since he’s seen people.

And now there’s two of them in a matter of days.

He hears voices, as he moves up the stairs, echoing in the tower like a beautifully twisted melody.

”Robb!?” a bright, melodious one exclaims. Is that the name of his prisoner? Jon has not bothered learning it.

His steps feel heavy.

”Sansa?” is heard next, in the deep voice he’s come to recognize as the prisoner.

They know each other, then.

”You have to leave, Sansa”, says the prisoner, and Jon grinds to a halt in the stairs.

They’re afraid of him.

Of course.

Why wouldn’t they be?

He begins moving up the steps again, quicker. No more of this, no more strange people in his castle. He prefers to mope in solitude.

There comes more talking from up in the tower, lower now; Jon can’t make out the words. He steps up the last few steps in a rage, angry to be disturbed, angry to be feared.

He steps into the tower room and there she is.

Red hair, glistening blue eyes. She does not cry out when she sees him - that is to her credit. But she flinches away as he steps into the light, and the revulsion written across her features stings.

The prisoner stands on the other side of the bars of the cell, looking ready to break out just to stand between Jon and this woman.

”What is the meaning of this?” Jon roars, in that voice that still isn’t quite his.

”Who are you?” the girl breathes, still taken aback.

”Given that it is my castle, it is I who should be asking you that.”

”I’m here for my brother.” She straightens her shoulders, a quiet defiance in her eyes as they meet his. To his surprise, hers don’t have fear as much as vigilance in them.

In the cell, her brother begins speaking to him, both pleading and demanding at the same time. ”Let her leave. She has done you no wrong. Let her go. Sansa”, he says to the girl. She looks at him despairingly, and for a second, Jon feels …

Strange.

”Sansa, leave now”, the prisoner says. ”Go home …”

”Not without you.” There’s tears in those eyes now. Jon takes a step back without thinking.

The girl turns to him then, accusation written across her features.

”By what right do you hold him here?”

”He trespassed on my land”, Jon grunts. ”Slept in a room in my castle.”

”Sansa”, the prisoner says again. ”Go. Now.”

”And what would it take for you to release him?” Desperation in those sky-blue eyes.

Jon snorts, and the sound startles her. He hates it, hates the way he is a monster -

but he is.

A beast.

”Your brother is imprisoned for a crime. I will not release him. If you leave here now and swear never to return, I shall grant you leave this once.”

”Sansa”, comes from the prisoner again. ”Leave. Please.”

* *

T H E   B E A U T Y

Robb is pleading with her from his cell, the beast before her turning to leave, thinking the matter settled. But in Sansa’s mind, an idea has hatched - a plan vaguely beginning to form.

It’s rather mad. Not at all like her.

But she thinks of her younger brothers back in the cottage. They’ll almost be ready for bed, now - twilight’s just around the corner. She thinks of Arya - angry and frightened and strong. She’ll probably be up all night, waiting for someone to come home.

They don’t need me, Sansa thinks. The thought both hurts and relieves her. Not as they need Robb.

And so she calls out to the beast.

”And if I wish to take his place as prisoner?”

[believingbrook]

She doesn’t start out with a portrait on the wall behind her. That enchantment is not the first one she lays.

No; when the Bureau is constructed, the first piece of furniture she moves in, one she tacks down by hand, is a map.

Over the past forty years, Davenport entrusted her more and more with command. By this point, a year into their stay on this plane, it’s almost second nature for Lucretia to create an organization on an interplanar scope. She needs a headquarters, and she needs technology, and she needs people to get the job done, and it’s almost rote to establish communication with the Millers and the bugbears and the families Fangbattle and Bonecrusher and Octavius until her dome-encrusted base brims with talent.

In her spare time as Director, even in these budding years of the Bureau of Balance, Lucretia searches. Endlessly.

Every evening she returns to her office and looks at the map and thinks, Lup, where could you have gone?

Barry was a meticulous note-taker. Lucretia thanks any of the gods on this plane for that. He notes carefully which cities he visited, which ones he and Taako visited together (and it hurts, for years, to even hear that name—in her darker moments she thinks, will he ever know how much I took? and she thinks, what a relief it will be to have his anger if it means I have someone to return to him.)

There are a handful of villages that Barry left unturned, so in all of her spare time, Lucretia goes. Upon the ruins of a once-thriving Greenhold she can see a perfect plane of black glass glinting along the horizon. It takes her several minutes, when she lands in the center of that abandoned town, to tear her gaze away.

Their Relics are incredibly powerful objects, Davenport’s perhaps the most so, but in that moment she hates the Gauntlet the most. When Taako compared the worlds to dust he was not wrong, and Lucretia cannot help but hate the Gauntlet for taking one of the only seven people that truly mattered.

Then, she brings them home.

But it’s not home, not really. It’s a home fragmented into seven pieces and torn apart. Bonds, shredded between her own fingers. Lucretia welcomes them to the Bureau with a warm smile and a heavy heart—there’s a space at Taako’s side, a blank absence that tears through her heart like flame.

She has to keep Barry from them, but Barry is still her brother. In her limited spare time, when she takes a break from working, she visits him. It’s one of the few moments she can be Lucretia, nothing more, nothing less; not the Director, nor the stern-faced woman who lost ten years of her life in Wonderland, just...Lucretia. Someone’s sister. The little girl who tried to save her world.

Most of their conversations are filled with silence, now. Even in the dark caves in which Barry has taken up primary residence, he conjures tea for himself, coffee for her. It’s perfectly blended: two sugars, a dash of cream, another of milk, two percent. Barry remembers what she likes, perfectly, because that’s what Barry does: commits to memory what is most important.

They talk about trivialities and the weight of the world and nothing in between. Their conversations are either about the slimming effect the robe has on his silhouette or the last place he saw Lup, places he’s checked, places they have left to scour. The rest of their interactions are filled with silence.

Though the silence should be awkward, perhaps—she has stolen from his family, after all—they aren’t. They’re thick and heavy and warm, somehow, and settle over her shoulders like a well-worn robe.

They say goodbye the same way, every time: “Best of luck.”

Eventually, Lucretia switches out the map for her portrait. Eventually, her days jam up with research about the Relics, about where they could have gone. Eventually, her nightmares—of the Hunger, of Wonderland, of her family shattered by the Relics they created—keep her up at night, wandering the halls of her own organization like a ghost. She takes no comfort in the reflections of these unfamiliar stars, refracted and jagged through the glass planes of the dome.

And on and on, she looks for Lup.

She tucks the map away, unwilling to field questions about it. She stows it next to the baby Voidfish, because deep inside herself she thinks that this child, who has provided her with so many solutions, would have one more answer. Just one more. She’d take this one answer over all the solutions it’s given her so far.

It’s no use. After the Hunger devoured their world Lucretia gave up on praying, and she’s hardly about to start now. Over the last century, the gods have never seen fit to help. Why should they start now?

Those ten years without her family, she looked. Every month, every week; she’d go every day, if she could. She scours the continent top-to-bottom, asking, please, an elven woman with hair spun like gold. Perhaps wearing a red robe, perhaps not. Looking lost and confused. Sometimes Barry comes with her, shielded from prying eyes by one of her spells, and together they devour the continent.

It never shows them Lup.

Lucretia never gives up.

She keeps looking. Even after they recover the Gauntlet, she keeps looking. Even after she spies the Umbrastaff hooked over Taako’s shoulder, scrapes off the remnants of the name L-U-P burned into the wall through blurred eyes. Even after they recover the Oculus and the Sash and the Stone and the Chalice, even as she prepares to send her family into a hell from which she barely escaped—she never stops looking.

In the end, Taako finds her. It’s fitting, Lucretia thinks.

She stows away her map, for a few weeks, tucking it into her apartment. Then she burns it. She doesn’t want anything to do with it, never again.

They come find her later that day, Lup and Barry. Barry talked his way into restoring Lup’s body, and she beams to see Lucretia in a way that makes her gut twist nauseatingly.

Lup sweeps her up in an embrace. She’s so warm.

Lucretia buries her head in Lup’s shoulder, trembling arms clasped around her back, and sobs.

Over Lup’s shoulder, Barry nods. Then he goes to make tea and coffee, and soon, her apartment is filled with the fragrances shrouded with a hundred years.

They talk for hours. They talk about trivialities and the weight of the world and everything in between. “I know what you did,” Lup tells her, when the dregs of her coffee have long gone cold and Lup has twined her fingers with Lucretia’s own. Her smile is radiant and soft, a bed of embers gleaming against twilight falling. “I know how long you looked. Thank you, Lucretia.”

Lucretia swallows, hard. She cried so hard and for so long on Lup’s shoulder that she doesn’t think she could manage any more. “You’re welcome,” she rasps, then: “I missed you.”

Lup’s grin burns brighter. She squeezes Lucretia’s hand. “I missed you too, babe.”

They talk about the festivals of this world, the towns they’ve seen. In their searching she and Barry were not entirely blind to the beauty of the world around them, and one joy—they learned this from Merle, to find joys even in the darkest of places—is that Barry can show Lup the most breathtaking sights on this plane.

He invites Lucretia to join them, for this next one. Talks about a place they discovered together, during their travels. Says he thinks she’d like to come along, and they’d like her to come too.

She says yes, of course. Those last few tears she didn’t think she would manage prove her wrong, but—she’s smiling.

Evening trickles into night into dawn, and in the span of a blink one day has turned to the next, midafternoon streaming bright and burnished into her small kitchen. Old and worn as this body is, she can’t help a cracking yawn that crackles up her jaw. Lup laughs.

It’s a gorgeous sound, and oh, she’d missed it so.

“Let’s get you to bed, babe,” Lup laughs, and curls her arm around Lucretia’s, escorting her to bed. When Lucretia wakes that evening, she finds a note scrawled in Barry’s handwriting—not Lup’s, for good reason—containing an address not far from their place. For rent, Barry’s ink proclaims. We think you’d like it.

The three of them take their vacation. The scenery is gorgeous but there’s nothing so striking as the quiet awe on Lup’s face as she watches the full, bleeding sun drip yellow-orange-red over the horizon. All the light and heat of this arid place and nothing burns quite so bright as her.

Lucretia tours the place once, twice. Then she walks to Lup and Barry’s place, just to test out the stroll. She’s under no illusions about her own condition; soon, she’ll hardly be able to walk, and it’s hardly worth the purchase if she can’t pay her family a visit. They receive her with joy, and coffee, and tea, and the spices that only Lup and Taako know how to transmute, and together they lost track of another day. The next week, another; the next month, Lucretia spends more time at Lup and Barry’s than she does in her new home. She keeps a toothbrush over there, yes, along with several changes of clothes and some of her favorite books and a rocking-chair, a custom Burnsides artifact, tucked in the corner for when she needs to nap.

They travel. Not only around their plane, as they did in the beginning, but across the planes; just the three of them, sometimes. To the ones with good memories but to new ones, too. Barry starts a few cults and Lup holds it over his head, blackmailing him with the knowledge that she would absolutely tell Kravitz if she thought it necessary. The petulance on Barry’s face is so childish and bright that Lucretia can’t help but laugh.

It surprises her. Going by the shock on their faces it surprises them, too. Then they both beam, warm and reassuring, and tell stupid jokes and old, old stories she’d forgotten, until she’s laughing so hard she can hardly breathe.

When she can’t move as much she spends hours in their living room, drawing. It’s a talent that has never left her; both of her hands are steady, and after so long observing so many people and cultures of so many colors, blending and shading comes easy to her. She burned the map but she makes new ones, landscapes of the places they’ve been, both in Faerun and not. She draws their whole family. She takes the pictures that Davenport sends of himself, that Merle sends of himself and his children, of Magnus and Merle and Taako.

She draws Lup and Barry, too. Sometimes, the three of them together. They’re her proudest works.

Her room in their home is painted blue, like her office in the Bureau, but this one—this one she decorates with portraits, layered so thick and so fast that the burnished borders paint the walls scarlet.

[laguanrodgers]

While Waiting

(A Short Story by LaGuan R Rodgers)

I never liked when my stepfather would drive me to school. It wasn’t because I was embarrassed by his car; the ’87 Pontiac got us where we needed to be and then some. It was more so how I found him to be weak. He let my mom rule him, and somehow I thought his frayed machismo might find my skin like a plotting ointment. I found myself studying the sky for planes from that backseat window, most of all trying to guess exactly where a given hunk of traveling metal and its passengers were off to. I’m pretty sure my guesses were always confined to the states, as the geography of thinking beyond and what places fit where would get lost just around the time Sean’s car would halt and I’d shuffle to homeroom.

“Can I get you anything else, maestro?” my waiter asks. For the past twenty minutes or so, I’ve been slowly sipping a black coffee and picking at this dry blueberry muffin, waiting for Gianna to arrive. I’m not buying anything else. She is lucky I agreed to come to this damn diner. The parking is so so and some of our most memorable arguments happened in the booths here. Whoever made the menu goes skimp on the omelet and there’s something I don’t trust about their maple syrup like a station with gas prices lower than nearby spots.

“Thanks, buddy, but no I’m ok,” I reply. The waiter has pillows under his eyes, not the glaring hangover or mid-term up all night weights, but somewhat noticeable, especially by another night owl. He has yet to declare his name, and I haven’t cared to ask. I study his veiny hands, and though his short fingernails are without dirt, I suspect he still lets a family member cut his hair. And who the hell is maestro, anyway? I put my head down to tear at the muffin and shift my cup, yet he stays in the same spot. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to the inevitable. The stage where I have to get in his tired face and let him know I’m not with that sugary stuff.

“Their uniforms do nothing for me,” he says.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask.

“The Trail Blazers’ uniforms,” he answers, pointing up to the flat screen positioned in the corner. A replay of last night’s game versus Oklahoma City is playing with the volume off.

“Red and black work together, but ugh, they can do better with those bending lines that take up most of the jersey. It’s all too…too…too…I don’t know, but once I think of something better, I should reach out to their people.”

Gianna told me the owner of Swan Street is originally from Portland, and the dude has yet to come to grips he is more than 2,600 miles from home. The pennants and postcards on the wall scream of everything Oregon and his Left Coast Is the Best Coast pie is a hit here in WNY. She made me try it the night we first hooked up. I didn’t like it, but I said I did.  

“I’m a fashion student at Buff State,” the waiter points out.

Oh, wow, that’s what’s up,” is my reply. I give him a look as if to ask why isn’t he serving other people, yet it’s mid-morning and empty, and the rush from the Larkin Building across the street won’t come about until lunch hour.

“Where do you go?”

“Oh, I’m not in school, right now.”

“Guy, I feel you. It’s not for everybody. When you think about it, they’re just teaching us how to make someone else money. Fashion is the closest thing to independence if you ask me. But I hear there’s a big need for the trades nowadays because all of the dinosaurs our grandparents used to call in the Yellow Pages are retiring, and few young folks are stepping into those jobs, you know.”

“Good point,” I say with a shrug. I forgot to put on my Timex, so I’m starting to stare at the spot where the tan line on my wrist will eventually be. Doing odd landscaping gigs two or three times a week every summer will do that. Gianna has been sending me e-mails of jobs here and there. I’ve filled out a few applications online, yet there’s something discouraging about completing questionnaires where you can’t tell the truth. Where the hell is she? For the past six months, we’ve been doing the distance thing after she moved to Albany for some job in a big library. I can’t remember all the details, but she’s happy and spends less time knitting uneven sweaters for her yorkie and sending me recipes off Pinterest she knows I’ll never make on my own. Today is supposed to be the day we decide.

“Coming!” the waiter whose name is Jackson shouts. I now know this little useless tidbit because a male voice from the kitchen yelled his name while I was staring out the window. Three tulips stand at attention from the flower bed that needs just as much attention as the blueberry muffin ingredients. She must think I have all day.

The entrance door swings open. A toddler boy wearing overalls wobbles over the threshold. His mouth already has stains of juice, and he wants no assistance from his parents who give off this que sera, sera vibe. The man and woman scan the room, and locate me in their tripod scope of discovery, only to flash grins at me before muttering some baby gibberish to the little one, as he has already rung the front counter bell enough to awaken something in the basement of a day failing to officially start.

Hey, fine folks, how are you?” Jackson asks the newest patrons, sort of doing some half-hearted skip to the front. “As you can see we are jam packed, but I’m sure we can find something cozy and comfortable for ya.” Everybody laughs, except the tike and I.

“Oh no…no…no, Brady,” the mother says, smiling once she realizes her little person is running toward my booth. She is too late. He grabs the second menu from the table, and waves it wildly like my grandmother sometimes does with those usher appointed fans during stuffy marathon church services.

“You eat,” is what I make out from the boy. “Him eat, right?”

“I’m so sorry,” the mother says. “He’s a traveler.”

I look at the father who just shakes his head, as if there is more he wishes he could tell me over a Cuban and some bourbon.  

By now, the mother comes over to my booth and ushers away her little explorer by the arm.  

“Him eat, right?” continues the boy. “Him do it…”

“Yes, honey,” says his mom. “Go to Daddy.”

“This is why I hate going too many places in a day,” the father says in a tone somewhere between madness and unbridled surrender.

“It’s fine,” the mother says. “It really is ok.”

“Well, let’s get you guys seated,” Jackson breaks in, mustering up a manufactured smile he’s most likely perfected in the back kitchen or voguing outside one of his textile classes.

I look at the clock on the wall behind the front counter, and spread some butter on the muffin.

  When Gianna moved into her upstairs apartment on Claremont Ave. with her two girlfriends, I helped them. Being her boyfriend, I knew such heavier things would fall to me. We found a way to defy trigonometry, stubbornly bending half painted corners with used furniture and appliances. She is the organized type of XX and that day the Eisenhower in her began to bloom. She elected to drive the U-Haul with Jamie and Allison, as I was content to drive my own car and meet them at the new place. My commander of a woman backed the truck on to the lawn, got out and handed her troupe instructions and goals written on loose-leaf. I put the paper in my back pocket, and just grabbed labeled boxes. The first few trips, I placed them where they needed to be, the carefully taped cardboard containing shampoo, tampons, and razors found their home in the bathroom. Maybe it was because no one else’s boyfriends showed up until I was a sweat stained version of former self, or the way Gianna stood in the downstairs doorway with frustration when her full proof battle maps left no margin for things falling apart or how the summer rain would slap our efforts then back pedal into some distant pocket on the other side of town before I could adequately curse it, but I found myself unashamedly putting boxes in rooms where they didn’t belong. We later ate pizza and drank bottled water on the floor, a collegiate picnic of sorts. Both boyfriends whose names I dismissed looked as if they struggled to please any woman, and their talk of IPAs and invites to join a softball league only made my decision to leave more justifiable. “Oh, before you go, lover, can you help me hang these?” Gianna asked me, as she opened a box marked CLOCKS in black sharpie. It wasn’t her handwriting, and as her and I went room to room hanging ticking numbers with power drill and the dull need to be alone, the thought of that stayed long after I left.

 “Hey, Ian,” Gianna says. She leans over and kisses both of my cheeks before sitting down.

“When did you come in? I didn’t even see you.”

“I’m a love ninja,” she declares. “I move in silence.”

“Well, Ms. Storm Shadow, are you having your usual? There’s a new waiter working, and he is full of life.”

“Be nice, lover.”

“What makes you think I’m not.”

“I know you.”

“Do you, really?”

“I’d like to think I know if the man I love is being an asshole or not.”

I still hear the ongoing jabber of my toddler friend from the other side of the diner, and once Jackson discovers I am no longer solo, he darts towards the action.

“You didn’t tell me you were waiting on a lovely guest, my guy,” Jackson shrieks. “Exciting.”

“Good morning,” Gianna says. “Is it still morning? No…wait…it’s technically morning? Sorry my brain is in every county of the state today.”

“No worries, I understand,” Jackson replies. “It’s finals time, and I’m the same way. I’m living the dream, though. Stress and all.”

“If it isn’t too much trouble, I think I’ll try something new today.”

“You have to get our new red velvet pancakes,” our waiter urges. “To die for!”

“Hmmm, should I?” She calls my name, but I’m staring at little Brady who is biting his straw and too curious to be held at bay by whatever routine conversation his parents may be conducting.

“Ian?”

‘What’s up, GiGi?” I snap back onstage, knowing the second time she calls me is the important one of the two. I shrug and simply say it’s spring.

“I am a horrible server,” Jackson says. “I didn’t start by asking you what you wanted to drink. I’m so caught up in the vibe of you two chirping birds.” Gianna orders the pancakes and asks for orange juice to come when the food arrives.

“Are we going to do this?” she asks.

“I’m prepared either way,” I say.

“That’s not the right answer. It’s been three months.”

“But how are you feeling?” I ask, picking out blueberries I can find in the torn pieces of muffin.

“Ok, I guess,” she says. “I still get sick, and the new clothes fit now.”

I want to bring up something about how I’ve applied to the latest jobs she’s sent me, but I close my eyes and try to take it in every molecule of air in the building.

“What time do you have to be back tonight?” I ask.

“I don’t. I already called in sick for tomorrow.”

“Go easy, you’re going to need those days later down the road.”

“So you’re saying you do want this, right?”

“I want to keep you happy and occupied.”

I turn at the waist and find the tulips outside the window. I wish I could pick all three and the curtain would close.

“And here you go,” Jackson declares with a smile, waiting for immediate approval. “I present delicious pancakes, your juice and our in-house maple syrup.”

“It looks amazing,” Gianna says.

“Is there anything else I can get you?” It’s as if Jackson wishes he were the stack of crimson flapjacks with a melting cube of butter atop.

“We’ve got all the bases covered for now,” she says. With fork and knife in hand, the woman I met at a farmer’s market four summers ago, puts a piece of pancake to my mouth. I submit to her honor, and chew slowly so I can really give her the truth of it all.

“What do you think?”

“They’re actually really good,” I admit.

She takes a bite and her eyes become big with unexpected glee.

“Boy, you better get one more taste because I can’t promise I’ll save anything else.”

“Go ahead,” I say. “It’s all you. You need it for strength. After all…you know…”

“You act like it’s some sort of plague, Ian.”

“No, I don’t. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“A lot.”

“No shit, man,” she says, now with a tear bubbling by the corner of her eye nearest the window.

“We can make it work.”

“Do you really want it to?”

“I’m here.”

“Have you even thought of names?”

“Of course, I have.” Really I haven’t, and now would be a fantastic time for Jackson to save the scene.

“Have you told your mom?” she asks, still eating.

“Yeah, she knows.”

“What are her thoughts?”

“You know my mom, GiGi.”

“I don’t want to play games.”

“I see no ball or joystick.”

“Answer a question for once in your life,” she shouts. By now, the tears have bullied the breakwall and run southward to a place I have little to no access to. It’s one of those classic embarrassing moments when I sense all eyes are upon us, yet I have no hard evidence to support it other than the intuition that comes from past battlefields still ripe with blood. The Larkin Building traffic infiltrates what was an empty place of business.

“My mother told me to be a man,” I say.

Gianna stares at me for awhile before she finishes the plate of pancakes, only leaving streaks of red mingled with the sappy sauce that is the Oregonian’s special recipe. Without as much time to devote to us any longer, our waiter gives me the check and says he hopes to see us soon. I tell him thank you and good luck with his exams before I make my way to the front counter where there is now a female waitress at the register.

“It seems you made a friend,” Brady’s mom says. “He hasn’t stopped talking about the man who eats by himself.” The family of three prepares to leave the diner, a precautionary measure on the part of the husband and father who doesn’t want to cause a scene I suspect.

“Maybe I’ll see you in this joint sometime soon, little man,” I say to Brady. “Be good for your mommy and daddy.”

I foot the bill and tip, and wait for Gianna to come from the bathroom. I know she will want to take a walk and possibly talk more on what is a pleasant afternoon in early May. Once again, I’m looking out the window where I see Brady and his parents walking to their car. The father has little patience, and if it wasn’t for his wife, who knows where that car would go. She is the reason her child gets away with picking one of the tulips I’ve been staring at all morning. That little boy doesn’t have to take unnecessary long walks. If anything, I am sure he fixates on passing airplanes.  

[thecloserkin]

book review: Jennifer Fallon, Medalon (2000)

Genre: High Fantasy

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Alas no

Is it shippable: Yes

Here is what happens in Medalon: two siblings who have always been unusually close, who have just experienced a lengthy separation, are reunited. A war breaks out. They go on the run. They fall in love and initiate a physical relationship. If you think this sounds too good to be true, it is — it’s not endgame and while the story opens with a laser focus on our sibling pair, it’s eventually overwhelmed by other plot threads. But it’s worth reading anyway and I recommend, with reservations. I will now summarize the first 1/3 of the book and post a big SPOILERS linebreak before I hit major spoilers.

What I like about Medalon is the setup. I was unimpressed by how it developed and unsatisfied with how it was resolved (it's trilogy so hardly anything was resolved in this first book), but I would be lying if I said I was unaffected by the bind our adolescent protagonist finds herself in. R'shiel Tenragan has spent her whole life pummeled by her mother's ambition, steered into a political vocation for which she shows little inclination and less ability. On one level the story of Medalon is about how nepotism creeps into supposedly meritocratic technocracies. It's been less than a generation since the militantly atheistic Sisterhood of the Blade overthrew the polytheistic dynasty that preceded it, but that's precisely what her mother’s ambition threatens to turn the Sisterhood into: a dynasty, with R’Shiel to follow reluctantly in her mother’s footsteps. R'shiel has grown into a mutinous teenager whose isolation from other sources of emotional support and validation (friends or grandparents, for instance) is positively ghastly. The only person she might confide in, her older brother Tarja, is a soldier who has been banished to the southern border for the past four years as punishment for some as-yet-unspecified misdemeanor.

The story opens with the funeral of the First Sister - that is, the head of state - and the election of the next one. This means a major shakeup in the power structure. The very first thing R’Shiel does is corner Tarja’s commanding officer and beg him to recall Tarja from exile.

”Please, Lord Jenga. Bring Tarja home.”

That’s the last line of Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 we meet Tarja, who is well-liked by his men and respected by his enemies but he does not suffer fools gladly, and it comes as no surprise that he was banished for insubordination. In Chapter 3 we have R’Shiel and Tarja’s reunion. I’m not sure if they were writing each other but given the tech level I doubt Medalon boasts a reliable postal service. So R’Shiel shows up late at a reception for one of her mother’s lackeys and catches her breath because there he is, her big brother, in full dress uniform:

”Now if you will excuse me, my Lord, I see that my sister is anxious to welcome me home.”

DAMN STRAIGHT SHE IS. And he takes her arm and whisks her away so they can talk privately.

”You know, I almost didn’t recognize you. You’re all grown up.”

Last time Tarja saw R’Shiel she was fourteen. A lot happens to a girl between fourteen and eighteen. C u r v e s happen. The text doesn’t dwell on it but I guarantee you Tarja’s internal monologue is some variant of damn, my sister is hot playing on loop. There is a pretty big age gap between R’Shiel and Tarja (ten years) so he was a grown man by the time he left and she was still a girl but now they’re both adults and it could be awkward or stilted but instead they fall right back into their old rapport.

”I can’t believe you had the nerve to show up here tonight. Mother looks ready to burst something,” R’shiel laughed.

These two are united above all by their common enemy and oppressor, their mother. “I don’t think either of us has turned out quite what Joyhinia intended,” says Tarja. Their bond was forged by the anvil of Joyhinia’s parenting. At this point Tarja’s best friend Georj joins them in order to urge Tarja — who has been home less than 24 hours — to take up a gladiatorial challenge issued by an uppity young cadet.

Georg took R’shiel’s arm conspirationally. “Well, you might be too young to remember, but back in the good old days, before Tarja publicly called Trayla a fatous bitch, he was the undisputed champion of the Arena.”

”I remember,” she said, before turning to Tarja, wide-eyed. “Is that what you did? You called Trayla a fatuous bitch?”

Just imagine preteen R’shiel hero-worshipping her big brother, the actual undefeated champion of the training arena; sneaking out behind her mother’s back to watch him fight; squealing with delight every time he gives a big middle finger to authority.

”I said no, Georj!” snapped Tarja. “Cajoling R’Shiel isn’t going to change my mind either.”

Look if Georj, Tarja’s BFF, thinks the way to change Tarja’s mind is through R’Shiel by proxy, he probably has good reasons for thinking so. Like the fact that she is THE WAY TO TARJA’S HEART.

”No! I’m not afraid he’ll beat me. I’m afraid I’ll win, and then every half-witted, glory-seeking Cadet in the Citadel will want to take me on. I’ve done my time in the Arena, R’shiel. I’ve nothing to prove.”

So it ends up that Georg takes up the gauntlet that Tarja declines, and R’shiel is there to wish him luck before he enters the Arena. Actually she didn’t particularly want to go but her roommate bodily drags her along. Her roommate wants to be introduced to Tarja, you see. So does an entire clique of other girls they have somehow collected along the way. Because Tarja is a certified heartthrob.

Tarja looked up as she neared him, his smile of recognition fading to a frown as he looked at her. “Founders, R’shiel! You look awful.”

”It’s nice to see you too, Tarja.”

So Tarja ignores his flock of fawning admirers in favor of interrogating R’shiel about her health. Her roommate helpfully offers that R’shiel hasn’t been eating lately. Tarja is alarmed:

He took her arm and before she could protest steered her away from the other girls … Tarja spun her around to face him. “You don’t look awful, R’Shiel,” he said with concern, “You look like death. What’s wrong with you?”

”I don’t know, Tarja. I keep getting the worst headaches, and every time I smell meat I want to throw up.”

What Tarja doesn’t know is that R’shiel, at eighteen, alone among her peers has not gotten her period. Which is weird because (a) she’s not an Olympic figure skater on a starvation diet and (b) she has all the other outward signs of puberty. It’s always the first question that Joyhinia asks R’shiel during their weekly mother-daughter chats, “have your courses started yet.”

”Have you told Joyhinia?”

”She told me to see a physic,” R’shiel admitted.

”For once, I agree with her,” Tarja grumbled. “Why not go home, R’shiel? …” Then he smiled at her, and she understood why half the Probates in the Citadel wanted to be her best friend. “I’m sure Georj can redeem the honor of the captains without you cheering for him.”

R’shiel frowned. “He will beat Loclon, won’t he?”

”He’d better!”

”Can I see him before I go?”

”Of course,” Tarja said, taking her arm. “I’m sure if he’s planning to die tonight, the last thing he’d rather see is you, in preference to our ugly faces.”

Tarja and R’Shiel have been onscreen for about five minutes together and I count three instances of him taking her arm to draw her away and talk privately. But also, THAT SMILE. When he smiles at her R’shiel can totally see why all those other girls are ready to swoon when Tarja so much as glances in their direction. This is obviously a COMPLETELY NORMAL way to feel about your brother who is hands down your favorite person in the world. And then he basically tells her that he sees her as an object of desire, because how else are we supposed to interpret that comment about the last thing Georj wants to see before he dies? When men die in battle their last thoughts are of the woman they love, isn’t that the way it goes? R’shiel is crushing a little on Georj but that’s because he’s the closest thing she can get to Tarja. At this point they are interrupted by Georj’s opponent:

”Is this your sister, Captain Tenragan?”

Tarja did not appear too pleased that he had forced an introduction. “R’shiel, this is Lieutenant Loclan.”

”Lieutenant,” R’shiel said with barely a civil curtsy. Something about this handsome young man set her teeth on edge.

Tarja does not want that sonofabitch anywhere near his baby sister. And R’shiel doesn’t care how “handsome” Loclon is, she’s not interested (which would place her among the minority because we’re told Loclon is considered quite the catch). I could read about Tarja being overprotective all day. R’shiel changes her mind and decides to stay for the fight, which is a fucking BLOODBATH and Loclon that worm cuts Georj down and then Tarja goes running into the middle of the pit even though he’s not even one of Georj’s seconds. He scoops up the sword Georj dropped. This has got to be against the rules but nobody intervenes. Now we have a textbook case of battle-hardened veteran vs. fancy duelist. After Tarja makes mincemeat of Loclon, he contents himself with mutilating Loclon’s face and leaves him lying there in the sand screaming.

Another crippling cramp seized R’shiel, and she realized that it had nothing to do with seeing so much violence. So much blood. Something else was wrong … Another cramp, even worse than the last one, twisted her belly and she cried out. The sound must have cut through Tarja’s fury. He stopped and glanced back at her.

”I warned you to go home,” he told her.

R’shiel didn’t answer him. Couldn’t answer him. She held out her hand, as she felt a warm rush between her legs. She looked down and was surprised to find herself standing in a puddle of bright blood.

”Founders!” Tarja rushed toward her as she fell. He caught her and scooped her up into his arms. The last thing she remembered before falling into a swirl of blessed darkness was Tarja holding her. Running. Calling for help.

This passage is my favorite from the whole book. The fact that her cry of pain is the only thing that can pierce his haze of battle rage, and that he’s there for the very public, very painful onset of her menses to catch her when she faints — I mean he’s already covered in blood but he doesn’t give a shit that R’shiel’s going to bleed all over him before he gets her to a medic. When she wakes up it’s to a scolding from her mother, who says:

”I suppose I should be grateful it was Tarja who found you, although why he insisted on running through the Citadel, yelling like a fishwife, instead of dealing with the matter discreetly is beyond me.”

Because he panicked, that’s why. He was petrified that he might lose her; she is his everything. Tarja comes to her while she’s convalescing:

”Why does she hate you, Tarja?”

Tarja shrugged. “Who knows? For that matter, who cares?”

”I care.”

He took her hand in his. “I know you care, R’shiel. That’s because no matter how hard Joyhinia tries to mold you into another version of herself, there is part of you she can’t seem to corrupt. I hope she never succeeds.”

Like I said before, the depth of Tarja and R’Shiel’s bond owes much to the necessity of forming a united front against their bloodless reptile of a mother.

”Where do you get all this big brother nonsense from?” she demanded. “Every time you want to weasel out of explaining yourself, I get the same excuse.”

He smiled but refused to answer. “You take care of yourself, young lady. Big brother will be checking on you when he gets back.”

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Tarja leaves for a tour of duty, in the course of which he discovers some pretty big honking skeletons in his mother’s closet, aka the fact that R’Shiel isn’t Joyhinia’s biological child. Joyhinia wanted a daughter for dynastic purposes and did what she had to do to acquire one of the right age; later she even torched an entire village to keep her secret. Tarja has the tale from one of the survivors:

”She called the child Rochelle, or something like that.”

”R’Shiel,” Tarja corrected softly, afraid that if he spoke too loudly, Bereth would not finish her tale.

He’s got a hostile witness on his hands and he knows he shouldn’t antagonize her but he can’t resist correcting her when she mangles his baby sister’s name. Sheesh Tarja, you just can’t help it can you? When it comes to R’Shiel your default setting is defend defend defend. This is him discussing his mother’s perfidy and his sister’s parentage with another soldier:

”I’ve seen your sister at the Citadel. She’s very pretty.”

”She is,” he agreed. “And apparently she’s not my sister.”

”At the risk of sounding trite, there’ll be a lot of officers at the Citadel quite pleased to learn that, sir.”

So we’ve established that R’Shiel is attractive and likable and if Tarja had been home the last few years he’d have been chasing off her admirers with sticks. This is literally how Tarja arranges a clandestine meeting with R’Shiel— he has another soldier ask her to dance, and pass the message along:

”Fear not, my designs on you are completely honorable.”

”Is that so?”

”Tarja wants to see you.”

”My brother is in the north.” She’d heard her shares of lines from dozens of Cadets and Officers, but nobody had ever tried using Tarja before.

WELL MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE, i’m sure she would have been off like a shot at the sound of his name. So the designated rendezvous with Tarja is …. the caverns under the amphitheater.

”You look a lot better than the last time we met,” he told her, taking her hand and leading her deeper into the caverns … In the distance, R’Shiel could hear the faint sounds of a couple giggling and urging each other to silence. They were not the only ones seeking privacy tonight.

Okay so Tarja and R’Shiel are meeting clandestinely on SRS BZNS but is it an accident they choose to do so in the same place that horny teenagers come to hook up??? I THINK NOT. This is when he breaks the news that Joyhinia’s not her biomom. At no point does either Tarja nor R’Shiel interpret this revelation as undermining their relationship, however—they are still each other’s family.

I need to zoom out slightly and explain you guys a few things about the larger geopolitical context. If you recall, the onset of R’Shiel’s womanly courses were accompanied by nausea, fainting, and a violent aversion to the smell of meat. This turns out to be because R’Shiel is the product of the union between a human and a demigod - who are all pacifists and vegetarians - which means she is the prophesied Demon Child, and she is finally coming into her power. At present nobody, least of all R’Shiel, has the faintest inkling of this; nobody except the priests of the monotheistic theocracy that borders Medalon to the north, whose holy mandate is to stamp out every other religion on the planet. A couple of priests with scary magical staffs are dispatched on a “diplomatic” mission to Medalon to neutralize R’Shiel. Their goals happen to coincide with Joyhinia’s, who sells R’Shiel to them like a sack of potatoes and in return secures their support to maneuver her own election as First Sister. This is a bridge too far for Tarja, who very publicly refuses to swear allegiance to his mother, renounces his officer’s commission, and storms out of the Citadel in a scene guaranteed to generate bad publicity for the new First Sister’s reign. At least he’s able to warn R’Shiel before she’s sold down the river. The two of them steal some horses and go on the lamb:

Her decision to run away appeared to be much easier than his. She was bound by no oaths, hampered by no thoughts of treason. But she was nursing a smoldering rage that manifested itself as stubbornness.

R’Shiel here has the exact same chaotic energy as Lucrezia Borgia in Season 1 of the Canal+ Borgias TV show, seething with long-suppressed “burn it all down” rage against the system. It’s a very destructive sort of teenage rage seeking a constructive outlet. There are quite a few shippy moments as soon as they go on the run:

For most of the winter they survived by R’Shiel’s wits or by Tarja’s hunting skills or by hiring themselves out for a few days at a time to farmers … She had surprised him at the first farm where they sought shelter, by introducing herself as his wife rather than his sister.

He had grown used to her sleeping next to him over the winter.

They act Fake Married to avoid detection!!! Ok so Tarja and R’Shiel accidentally start a bar brawl. It gets out of hand, soldiers kill civilians, and all of a sudden R’Shiel and Tarja have been recruited to lead The Resistance—which consists of a couple hundred unarmed, under-resourced pagans who resent the new administration’s crackdown on non-atheists. In effect, Tarja and R’Shiel are defending the smallfolk against tyrannical federal troops. Goes without saying that neither of them is a True Believer in the cause. Here is an outsider POV perspective:

When he first met them, Brak had thought Tarja and R’Shiel were close, but they fought more often than not these days. Tarja counseled caution, while R’Shiel advocated aggression.

R’Shiel is obviously out for blood. She’ll do anything to get back at Joyhinia—these pagan rebels are merely the instruments of her vengeance. Tarja, a professional soldier, is a little more circumspect:

”If I had a hundred years, I could not teach your heathen farmers how to fight like the Defenders.”

There is the added wrinkle of a very attractive young girl in their orbit whose obvious come-ons to Tarja render R’Shiel green with jealousy, even if she won’t admit that’s what she’s feeling (R’Shiel has yet to admit she wants Tarja for herself). The reasons Tarja’s attracted to Mandah are the same reasons he admires R’Shiel: Mandah too was a probate at the Citadel before she washed out; she’s educated and she has many of the same leadership qualities that R’Shiel possesses. Yet the Mandah issue is only one bone in Tarja and R’Shiel’s increasingly contentious relationship. They harbor fundamentally opposing visions for the embryonic rebellion: R’Shiel is basically indifferent to the body count so long as their tactics hurt Joyhinia, while Tarja is reluctant to launch a frontal assault that stands zero chance of success. Their tempers boil over into a heated argument and they’re literally about to come to blows when the Goddess of Love, Kalianah, shows up & intervenes:

The goddess waved her hand and Tarja, who Brak had feared was on the verge of slapping R’Shiel, suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her against the wall and kissed her with bruising force. Although taken by surprise, R’Shiel did not appear to mind in the least.

Aaaaaand they kiss!! You’ll notice the goddess made Tarja fall in love with R’Shiel, not the other way around. That’s because R’Shiel has long been in love with him. It’s not, like, my ideal setup, as far as OTPs go, this whole love potion/magical geas thing? Like, Tom Riddle’s mom did it and that didn’t end well. Still, the underlying bond between these two is real and true, even if the romantic cast to it is new and not (on Tarja’s part) strictly voluntary. The goddess has her own reasons for acting (ie. she needs R’Shiel to fulfill a prophecy, and thinks the girl will be more tractable if somebody’s head over heels for her). R’Shiel runs away from the encounter, a swirl of emotions in her breast, lonelier and more confused than ever:

R’Shiel had been raised to believe that tears were a sign of weakness. She had not cried as a child … She never shed a tear when Joyhinia had her pony put down after she caught R’Shiel trying to run away rather than join the Novices when she she was twelve. She did not cry over anything, not even when Georj was killed. But as she fled Tarja in the darkness, tears she had bottled up for years burst forth, determined to undo her.

Look at that she never cries but kissing Tarja has opened the floodgates because what does it MEAN does he love her she thought he hated her what if he hates her she doesn’t have anyone else!!!

If you thought this was going to be a trilogy about R’Shiel and Tarja saving the world from a megalomaniacal demon then you have another think coming. It’s not. It’s about a much wider cast of characters (y’all are sleeping on the brotp of the century, Tarja Tenragan and Damin Wolfblade) and it’s a fun romp when it’s not boring the hell out of me (the 30% of the plot that involves the gods and their demigod descendants does absolutely nothing for me). I mentioned at the beginning of this review that Tarja/R’Shiel is not endgame. They end up with other people but like six books down the line the God of Death takes a number of R’Shiel’s nearest and dearest hostage in order to make her Do Something, and one of the people he nabs is Tarja’s wife. I just think it’s very telling that R’Shiel has never gotten along with Tarja’s wife, can’t stand her guts, and yet still feels the same obligation to rescue her as the other hostages. Because it’s Tarja’s wife. (Tarja being the Commander-in-Chief of the Medalonian army, the God of Death could not very well have taken him hostage without starting a war.) Maybe the relationship didn’t last; maybe they grew apart; maybe it wasn’t meant to be. But when I think of Tarja and R’Shiel I think of the girl who worships her older brother, who’s always remembering morsels of arcane knowledge he furnished her with, and the boy who’s forever holding his sister’s hand and scooping her up and carrying her and catching her as she falls.