#not enough to commit to rendering everything else though | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ruvviks · 2 years

Text

– Beautiful Crime.

Characters >> Cassidy Shaffer (oc), Sebastian Vidal (other's oc) Total >> 3.1k words Warnings >> Blood mention, injuries, mild violence

The building stood tall and abandoned.

It was a miracle they had not taken it down yet; in the midst of a busy neighborhood in Santo Domingo, a safety hazard more than anything else at that point. No one bothered to do maintenance and sooner rather than later it was bound to start falling apart- but until then it would remain a safe haven for junkies and unfortunate souls without a place to call home alike.

And one man’s home is another man’s vantage point.

Light, careful footsteps; yet the clacking of his heels on the cold floor still echoed through the concrete staircase with each gentle footfall, the emptiness of the building an overwhelming presence in the cool interior air.

He had not been there before. In the district, yes- but never that specific neighborhood, never that specific building. Most of the jobs he took did not take him further south than Heywood, yet now he found himself near the Badlands; which truly was the last place he wanted to end up in.

A curious location; a white picket fence suburban house in a white picket fence suburb- next to a building about to collapse, no less- and Cassidy failed to see the strategic advantage of it all. He strongly doubted it was a home base of any sorts; most likely nothing more than a temporary refuge, or a safehouse, or a rendezvous.

Eliminate their leader.

Not a first. Many gang leaders in Night City had died by Cassidy Shaffer’s hands, no questions asked, no setbacks, and no dire consequences. It never got rid of the threat at hand- a new leader was more than often easily appointed, especially Maelstrom could get it done in less than an afternoon’s work- but the pay was good, and if done well it would at least render them inactive for some days as they tried to reorganize.

Though this was different.

A smaller gang with little public information, and essentially an empty case file in the NCPD database. Not unheard of, though; and if anything, organized better than most if not all the other gangs in town.

Cassidy found his way to one of the top floors of the building and briefly slowed his pace, glancing through a window to take a careful peek down. He was not fond of heights; or buildings on the verge of collapse, for that matter. Yet it was necessary at times, and he rather committed for a job well done than halfass it for a selfish sense of security. The latter really did not bring him any closer to his payment.

It was a decent angle. Not optimal, but he had worked with less in the past; had landed flawless hits from just around a corner on several occasions, so naturally this should not be any issue for him. He let a sharp exhale leave his lips while swinging the sniper rifle off his shoulder, and he kneeled down to reach the mechanism to open the ceiling-high window of the outer wall of the building.

It had not been easy to track them down. He’d had crumbs to work with, snippets of information with most detes expunged leaving just enough to at least limit his options to several districts- and at the end of the day it hadn’t even been of value to him, considering how he had finally gotten on their trail.

A purchase. One black coffee, paid via transfer rather than cash- which is why it had popped up for Cassidy during his deep dive in the Net. Clearly a slip-up, a mistake; thus far his target had been nothing but thorough, and this opportunity had been caused by pure luck more than anything else.

But Cassidy could not complain. His client had given him nothing to work with and he had needed to do everything himself; steps he was willing to take, as long as he would be compensated well for it, of course. But money had not been an issue. It rarely was, considering the kind of people he was contracted by; though much like his target, this was different, still.

A mysterious client. No name, no face- no real voice, even. As if Cassidy had been talking with a computer, those brief five to ten minutes they had spoken together. He did not mind the secrecy, understanding very well that sometimes privacy was of great importance for an assassination; and thus he had not questioned it, and had done the job that had been asked of him without complaining.

None of it mattered either way. Cassidy was rarely one to ask many questions; he had already found early on they usually did not help either way, as Night City was corrupted to its very core. Nowadays, the only questions he asked were for himself; following his own set of rules, carefully established for the sake of his own sanity.

The only question that had mattered to him, was whether or not his client was aligned with any corporation. A simple question, often met with a simple answer; a “yes” would cause him to walk away, and a “no” would give him something to hold against them would it ever turned out they lied.

People tended to not care. Lying was part of his line of work. Yet Cassidy still valued honesty above all else; knowing someone lied to him, something he wouldn’t have known had he never asked, gave him enough reason to turn against them.

It was his way of justifying it to himself, in a way. His rules, which he followed as if his life depended on it; for his own safety. And lying was something he had never appreciated.

Luckily for him, as mysterious as his client was this time, they were not from any corporation. At least- that’s what they had told him.

Cassidy carefully lowered himself on the ground entirely now, setting his rifle on the small tripod he always carried with him and taking off the safety. A gentle breeze blew in from the now opened window, ruffling his hair and gently blowing past his face-

Though to him it felt like tiny knives and needles painfully grazing his skin, sharp jabs triggering his nervous system and locking up his muscles. He clenched his jaw and quickly redirected his focus to the scope of his rifle, trying to ignore the wind as his eyes scanned the backyard of the house.

Sebastian Vidal.

Twenty-nine years old. Most likely ex-corpo, or at least corpo-aligned in the past. And that was all Cassidy had been able to gather.

Curious, but it did not matter. His target sat alone in the backyard, and none of the information about him Cassidy had and had not been able to get his hands on was of importance in any of it. Two minutes later and the man would be dead, and Cassidy would get his payment and he would move on to the next unfortunate soul he would have to put in his sights.

He readjusted his grip on the rifle as he relaxed, steadying his breathing while taking a moment to study his target. He was clearly not expecting any danger, judging by the way he sat all by himself on that chair- add a beer and clothing other than a suit and he could’ve been just anyone, blending in perfectly with the rest of the neighborhood.

Cassidy could not help but take a bit longer than usual, his eyes slowly moving over the man’s features. The picture he’d had to work with was clearly outdated, he realized now; a significantly stronger build, and silvery gray hair rather than a deep brown, leaving Cassidy wondering whether it was dyed or natural.

He was able to see the man’s eyes from his vantage point- a curious shade of pale, icy blue, yet as remarkable as they were, somehow not the most defining feature of his target’s appearance.

No, that would be his cyberjaw.

Cassidy had seen them before, though this model was different from the ones he was used to. Strong plating covering the sides of his jaw, sloping down toward his chin and seemingly ending there. Medical cyberware rather than decorative, Cassidy could only assume- and he did not want to think about what could have caused the gang leader to end up with such a jaw in the first place.

Not as if it mattered anyway. He had wasted enough time already.

Cassidy watched momentarily as the man redirected his attention to the knife in his hand, swiftly rolling it between his fingers. For some reason, Cassidy’s attention was once more drawn toward his eyes-

It was funny, how clearly he could see them from up there. Almost made him wonder what they would look like from up close.

He rolled back his shoulders and sharply exhaled, finger slowly curling around the trigger as he slightly adjusted his angle, taking the direction of the wind into account. Rapid calculations in his head, supported by two- no, three- raised fingers on his empty left hand- and the moment he locked on target he steadily grabbed the rifle, inhaling, and exhaling-

BANG!

He missed.

A soft scoff of disbelief rolled off Cassidy’s lips before he could stop himself, blood running cold as the- only partially suppressed- gunshot echoed through the building. He frowned, mind instantly going over his calculations again- had he made a mistake?

He watched as Sebastian froze, knife balancing on his middle finger as he slowly turned to glance at the wall behind him, Cassidy’s bullet drilled deep into the yellow-painted exterior of the house. He turned back, lips slightly moving as if mumbling to himself and he lightly tilted his head as his eyes trailed the building Cassidy was in, as if he was calculating the angle-

Crap.

Cassidy scrambled to reload, a flare of panic suddenly rushing through his system. It had been a clear shot- he had never missed a clear shot before. Nothing wrong with his calculations, nothing wrong with the angle, or his composure-

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he sharply said out loud, to nobody in particular. ‘Pull yourself together.’

Another bullet ready. Quick recalculations- Sebastian’s head lined up in his sights. The man was still counting, head slowly tilting up further and further while Cassidy’s finger curled around the trigger again, and their eyes met-

Sebastian’s head came to a stop.

And he smiled.

BANG!

Cassidy blinked, the air violently slammed out of his lungs the second he realized his second bullet had missed its target even more than the first. Sebastian cocked an eyebrow and glanced behind him again, the smile lingering on his face while his gaze landed on the second hole in the wall- and Cassidy felt blood rush to his ears, embarrassment overtaking him.

‘Come on, hurry-!’

‘They’re upstairs!’

No time for a third shot.

Cassidy jumped up, swinging the rifle over his shoulder again and holding the tripod tightly in his hand as he rushed back to the staircase. His heart was racing in his chest and his ears were burning, shame tightening his chest as he descended as fast as he could without tripping over his own feet.

How could he miss? Twice, even? Luck had brought him there, after several weeks of searching- and there he was, messing up fantastically, and he knew that one way or another he was going to have to pay the price.

Only one way out of the building; the same way he had entered, the same way Sebastian’s people had entered, too. Cassidy knew they would have almost caught up with him at that point, yet it did very little to him; he would make it out alive, as he always did, perhaps with some scrapes and bruises but if anything he deserved that, now.

He turned the corner and ran face first into someone- hit them with the tripod without hesitation and shoved them into the wall, disarming them before they could pull the trigger. A second person appeared, but Cassidy was fast; leapt down several steps and dropped himself on top of them, using the momentum to immediately push himself back up on his feet and continue his way down.

Oh, how he wanted to just disappear. A setback- a first- and it was most likely going to take him weeks to get another opportunity like that. He rammed himself into yet another gang member, forcefully shoving them into the wall, then activated his monowire and whipped it into the direction of two others- they both managed to dodge in time, but the maneuver gave him enough time to push himself past them down the last set of stairs.

But one of them shot after him- and the bullet grazed his shoulder.

An intense jolt of pain caused him to double over, the sensation burning through his muscles and the few real bones he still had left in his arm. He stumbled out of their line of fire, vision blurred by involuntary tears as he relied on mostly muscle memory to find his way back to the entrance of the building.

He had to get out.

The sunlight blinded him and he gasped for air, a strong taste of blood in his mouth- he had bit his tongue by accident. His arm felt heavy and he could barely move it anymore, despite the injury being minimal; he assumed it was nothing more than a superficial cut in his skin.

But it surely did not feel like it.

Cassidy grunted and clipped the tripod on his belt, then pushed his gloved hand on the wound in an attempt to relieve the pain. He nearly started walking in the wrong direction- passing by the safehouse of his target was probably not the brightest idea- but turned just in time, and hurriedly began making his way out of the neighborhood.

It was not easy for him to blend in, being as tall as he was and considering the clothing he wore- a suit, with a long, black coat over it, as if he had walked straight out of a Militech office; but his Militech days were already long behind him.

A head taller than most people on the streets and fairly easy to spot due to his soft coral pink hair, but still, with the remaining adrenaline in his system he managed to stay ahead of the gang members, and he crossed through some backyards to get them off his trail entirely. Hopped into a bus that was about to leave the stop and quickly pushed his way through the crowded interior to seek refuge in the far back corner.

Great job, Cassidy.

He clenched his jaw and blinked a few times, heartbeat refusing to settle down as the noises in the bus washed over him like a tidal wave. It’d been a mistake to get in; but it was already far too late to step out again, and at the end of the day it was better than walking home.

Cassidy dropped his head against the pole he was leaning against, the metal cold against his hot, sweaty skin. An uncomfortable sensation, but it was something he could focus on, at least. It drowned out the noises around him, and finally lifted the heavy weight on his chest.

He was exhausted, now. A common occurrence, after a job; though usually it would be after a success, rather than a failure. He would go home, take a nice, warm shower or even a bath, then go to sleep and hope his nightmares would let him rest for once.

Another sharp exhale as his mind wandered back to the shots he had taken. Missing, twice- but how? Had he truly been that distracted? But distracted by what?

The bus driver suddenly hit the brakes, causing Cassidy to lose his balance and bump into a woman to his left. The sudden physical contact shook him awake again, heavy thrumming of his heartbeat filling his upper arm, and he let out a strangled cough to keep in a pained whimper.

‘Sorry,’ he quietly mumbled, and quickly retreated into his corner.

It was not all that big of a deal. His client, whoever it was, had told him to take his time; no rush, as long as he could get the job done. And Cassidy could- he knew he could, this was a job like any other. But missing a clear shot, not once, but twice-

‘You have a location to work with, now,’ he muttered to himself, resting his forehead against the pole again and closing his eyes. ‘Deep dive into the Net to recover footage, track them down from there. Not a big deal, we’ve done this before.’

Only partially true. He had done it before, yes- though it had been part of his plan, and not after a failed assassination attempt. It had been different. And it felt wrong to compare the two together. It made him feel bad.

‘Not done it before, then,’ he said after a short pause. ‘But… That’s fine. First time for everything.’

Yeah, that was better.

Cassidy inhaled deeply and straightened his back, slowly regaining control of himself as reality washed over him again. No one had heard him talk; and even if they had, no one had cared. It was Night City, after all- some guy on the bus talking to himself was not an uncommon sight.

His nervous system had calmed down again; mostly, at least. His arm still burned painfully, and some of it had moved to his shoulder, neck and jaw. He was well aware his body’s reaction was anything but normal- yet he also knew there was very little he could do about it, his low pain tolerance and high sensitivity to physical contact the result of an accident in his past, a result he had yet to grow accustomed to.

Mostly he just tended to avoid physical contact with others. An easy solution; it was not as if there was anyone there for him.

Another hit of the brakes, but Cassidy was able to catch himself this time and flawlessly managed to keep his balance. His mind briefly wandered back to the job- but he pushed it out of his head, knowing it was no use to dwell on his mistakes for too long.

Yes, a setback- but not the end of the world. Sebastian was aware of Cassidy’s existence now, which could lead to more bumps in the road- but if anything, that would only make it more interesting.

It had been a while since Cassidy had had an actual challenge.

Perhaps this could be fun.

#nuclearwriting #fic:two sides of the same coin #rbs much appreciated :) <3 #and yeas i know i tag my other fic in a different format but it's. fine. normal about it #it's because that one is part of a huge overarching storyline so it's just a chapter and this is. a fic. SEE IT WORKS it's fine #ANYWAY HIII little side project while i'm also still working on the broker chapter but i needed some variation #and i wanted to share more about cassidy so. here you go :] with a special surprise also #TWO OF THEM!!!!

20 notes · View notes

ivypos-writes · 1 month

Text

put your lips (where i’m rotten)

— aemond targaryen [2/?]

[SERIES MASTERLIST] | [GENERAL MASTERLIST]

summary: There are times when Aemond thinks he hates her, if only for the crime of reminding him about the chains of servitude shackled to his throat. Other times, he convinces himself that he feels nothing towards her at all. She is a stranger. A no one. A face without a soul. She is but another prisoner within these walls; a spoil of war, only one he never wished for.

He cannot condemn her for existing.

(He does. He does.)

Or, in which war puts them together, bound by duty and united in wrath.

warnings: 18+, aemond x unnamed!betrothed, angst, implied/referenced abuse, arranged marriage, falling in love, tension, morally grey characters, doomed from the start, dual pov, they’re both miserable and broken, eventual smut

word count: 8.5k

notes: this is my first time writing aemond’s pov—i’d love to hear your thoughts! thank you so much for reading<3

(also available on ao3.)

The walls of the Red Keep close around him like bloodthirsty jaws.

Aemond paces their length with the same rigidity he has donned since Driftmark—this much remains unchanged, even when everything else around him shifts and turns and blurs into something darker. He has come to recognise harshness as the one thing that shields him from curious gazes, as though the sharp lines of his silhouette served the purpose of intimidating any onlookers. As though the leather patch on his face couldn’t achieve the same on its own. As though the scar marring his face wasn’t enough. At all times, he is stiff and cutting. None dares meet his eye.

There is a foreign restlessness in his bones that he cannot rid himself from. Tremors of hollow anticipation run their course down his spine, each more forceful and rattling than the other, rendering him powerless against their brunt. He is suspended in vicious claws of idleness, trapped in a state of procrastination that has never truly suited him. Never before was he allowed to fall into a suspension quite like this, forever preferring action to its lack. He is waiting—for what, though, Aemond does not know. Assurance? Solace? Both are laughable motions, and not ones that will ever come. Not from his mother, who seems to have grown a cutting coldness inside her chest, no longer willing to spare him crumbs of her affection. Certainly not from his brother. The king. The fool.

It began with a storm.

Aemond knows the rot inside him. Vhagar might have disobeyed him, but she was only ever fuelled by the ugly, festering rage of his heart. It may as well have been his own teeth that had sunk into flesh; that tore it apart in one gnawing of jaws. Aemond One-Eye became Aemond the Kinslayer in a moment of insanity and hungry wrath, high above ground and clouds and the eyes of the gods. He returned from Storm’s End a changed man—a man forced to own his crimes, if only to spare himself from spouting meaningless justifications for an act that cannot be defended. It is better to be seen as a wretched sinner than a fool who lost control. He clings to this newfound depravity with blood-stained hands. It must suit him. Not even his mother seems to question its existence.

This is what he has been made for. This is what granted him a feast thrown in his name. Aemond adapts to the environment with violence carved into his stone-cold heart. Blow after blow, he welcomes grief. It is thorned and cuts through his flesh, and remains forever shielded from others’ eyes. He will not admit to it. Doing so would defeat the purpose of painting himself a villain.

(Does a villain stop being a villain when their sins have been accidental? Or do the crimes committed through mistakes only ever occur because there was never any innocence to begin with? Was he born like this—with rage in place of bones, and a festering emptiness where his heart should be? Aemond does not know. He never will. It changes nothing.)

Only his brother is capable of glee at the prospect of Aemond’s sin. His grandsire’s gaze becomes disapproving; his mother tears away the last of warmth, turning her back on him. Everyone knows what he has done. They watch him with revulsion. Scorn. It is nothing he has not known before, and Aemond endures the stares with a practiced indifference. He is not truly there. Their eyes fall upon him, and all the while Aemond pictures himself amongst the skies. When he closes his eye, he sees distant lands that hold no meaning nor value. They are not kingdoms. There is no crown.

Only the crown exists. It is there to haunt him each day, placed upon Aegon’s head. It adds to his brother’s vanity; fuels his depravity that he is no longer obligated to hide. He stains it with his corrupt touch, and Aemond stands by and watches.

A second son. It is his fate. It always has been.

In the aftermath of self-proclaimed victory, he has been reduced to a bargaining chip. Aemond never fooled himself into thinking that chains of marriage would never be shackled to his hands, but he always believed that he’d be offered the right to choose. He supposes that it makes little difference in the long run—whoever his wife is, she is sure to fear him. How could she not? Why would she not? Aegon may be a fool, but even he knows much the same. This is his new way of tormenting him. Take a wife, the king orders, and have her shrink away from you in fear. Have her repulsion. It is all you deserve.

And remember—always remember—that Aegon is the only one who welcomed him home with open arms.

The one who deserves loyalty in return.

The one Aemond ought to bow before.

Ever the good soldier, Aemond swallows his own fire and obeys.

Fear means nothing, either way. What matters is the girl’s name, and her father’s soldiers, and the support of another prominent house it grants them. This will be a long war—war of both swords and fire, ashes left in its wake. Dragons will not win it alone. Aemond breathes in and breathes out, and pretends that being chained to this foreign girl doesn’t make any difference. It is his duty. He will sell himself for armies, and it will not matter.

Except that it does. She is there now, living within the same walls and making them shrink, and he cannot forget her name nor her eyes. She is made of contradictions. Her spine straightens out in pride; eyes lower in a display of humility. She is frightened. Indifferent. She looked at him as though she saw only the blood on his hands. As though by one glance alone, she saw right through his rotten heart.

He knows deep-rooted anger when he sees it. It is there, flickering inside her eyes. It was the first thing he saw. What haunts him now, even if it’s been days since their gazes last met.

Sometimes, Aemond awakens amidst night and chokes on the hatred that spreads from his heart to his throat. He hates with all his being. He cannot help it. No longer does he recall the boy he once was—the one cowering before his brother’s vicious gaze, the one who was no dragon and whose blood was just blood and not fire. It is for the best. That boy was weak and soft-hearted. That boy only ever lost, and never, never gained. Her eyes are a mirror image of it—of wrath, ugly and barbed and poisonous. Aemond dared look into their depths only once, but the memory is intense enough to burn to this moment. In more ways than one, the fire in them reflects his own. He is curious to know what it’s borne from. He shouldn’t. He cannot stop.

The signs of past torment are written all over her being. She may not think it, but Aemond catches them each time they walk past one another. It is the constant tremble of her fingers that she ineptly tries to hide. It is the way her eyes flicker towards each and every sound. It is the insistence with which she clings to shadows, half-shrouded by their darkness as though in hope that she’ll become invisible. She is not. Aemond sees her everywhere he goes, though he desperately wishes he didn’t. She is like a ghost that haunts the walls of the keep, appearing only in brief, dissolving into nothing when one attempts to chase it. He never tries. More often than not, Aemond aims to eradicate her from his mind, if only to save himself from another onslaught of torment.

Has he doomed her, or are they both equally doomed? He remembers her hollow cheeks and pale skin, and decides that it must be the former.

It is still early when he finds her. He does so unintentionally, half-prepared to flee before she notices him. She sits with her feet tucked under the skirts of her dress, and there is contemplation written over her face. She holds a book in her hands, so obviously engrossed in its contents that Aemond doubts she can see him at all.

It is what keeps him still—the prospect of seeing her without being seen in return. It’s a stolen moment, and he allows himself to exploit it against better judgement. His eye traces her cheek, and the slightest pouting of her lips, and the way that stray wisps of hair fall onto her forehead, braid long come undone. He is surprised to find that she is quite gentle-looking when she isn’t frowning. Unaware of his presence, she allows herself to be just a girl—not a sword eager to cut through his being; not a shield ready to keep him away. There is a softness about her that wasn’t there before.

He averts his gaze. He has no right to see her like this. And though he should not care, it oddly reminds him of the eyepatch covering his scarred eye. Aemond never lets anyone look underneath it anymore. The wound is private—it is his.

And the softness is hers. Only hers.

Aemond rarely hesitates. It is what puts him apart from the rest of his family; what more often than not fuels his rotten ego. He is quick and effective. Unwavering. Determination flows through his veins the way debauchery flows through Aegon’s; it grows with time, flaring up and boiling. Sometimes, it is driven by duty; sometimes, it is borne from the everlasting urge to be better. He is the son who bites his tongue and holds onto his restraint, and yet does not fear dirtying his own hands in the name of preservation. Aemond offers his sword and flesh ready to bleed, and in return he gets nothing.

He hesitates now, and immediately pays the price for it.

Stupid. Stupid.

He should have left long ago.

In a sudden movement, she closes the book and stands from the window sill. The skirt of her dress sways and brushes the stone floors. She looks around. Their gazes meet.

There are times when Aemond thinks he hates her, if only for the crime of reminding him about the chains of servitude shackled to his throat. Other times, he convinces himself that he feels nothing towards her at all. She is a stranger. A no one. A face without a soul. She is but another prisoner within these walls; a spoil of war, only one he never wished for.

He cannot condemn her for existing.

(He does. He does.)

Aemond’s mouth moves without thinking. “You skulk about like a shadow.”

He watches her freeze. It is a curious sight; rigidity spreads out from her fingertips, higher, higher, until it reaches her face, its lines turning harsher. Her eyes remain alive, though—even from afar, Aemond sees the flames inside them. He watches her veil under composure—she does so quickly and almost effectively, though not without minor flaws. The corner of her lip trembles.

Aemond knows attempts at feigned sense of control too well, though. He sees right through it. He sees the deep-rooted fear.

“Must I announce every step I intend to take outside of my bedchamber?”

Aemond’s mouth quirks in response. For all her quietude, the girl has yet to lose the spark. He is relieved to know this. Her face is too expressive to become an empty visage carved in marble.

In truth, Aemond wishes to know nothing of her whereabouts. The Red Keep is large, but not large enough to prevent their paths from crossing. It’s a pity. He would rather forget her face and her existence; forget what her presence means. Alas, they are doomed to repeat this cycle: running into each other against their will, eyes forever refusing to meet. Clinging to stubbornness. Forgoing politeness. Sometimes, Aemond wonders which of them is worse at pretending there is no resentment blooming between them. He knows that she tries to avoid him with equal fervour. He knows what she thinks of him.

He could say it. Tell her the truth. Reveal the extent of the rot inside his heart. If he wanted to, he could spit words that sit at the tip of his tongue—voice his hatred without letting her return it. He could. She deserves it.

Aemond corrects his posture and takes a step forward. All the while, the girl’s eyes don’t stray away from him. Does she anticipate hostility? The slightest, barely noticeable way that she flinches provides an answer to his silent pondering. Of course, she expects violence. It is all she has known. Aemond sees the invisible scars she wears underneath flesh, ugly things made of trauma suffered throughout her childhood. She isn’t very good at hiding her past. It took Aemond moments to discern it.

Despite himself, Aemond stops. Swallows the spiteful words. Intimidating her serves him no purpose. Her fear is useless to him.

“My brother would have us dine together,” he tells her instead, mostly because silence borders on unbearable.

She remains impassive. “No, thank you.”

He hums quietly, letting the sound stretch between them, and tilts his head. Her eyes follow every motion of Aemond’s body. Like this, she reminds him of himself in the training yard. Does she hope to search for his weak points? It is what Aemond would have done to his opponent. There is no blade in her hand, but she has no need for it. Her gaze alone cuts through his skin. It is effective on its own.

“And if his Grace ordered it?”

There is something wild that flickers in her eyes. With a smile that isn’t really a smile but an ugly twist of her lips, she says, “Can his Grace afford to waste time on such trivial matters? Surely, if he crowned himself as king, he ought to focus on his war.”

She spits the words as though they burned her tongue, and Aemond’s eyebrow arches at the unbridled display of repulsion she seems to care little about concealing. Is this what evokes her anger? Would she rather support his half-sister’s claim?

A traitor, then. Pretty-faced and doe-eyed, and a traitor nonetheless.

Like him. The same resentment flows through Aemond’s veins, though he is entitled to it. Most times, he keeps it curbed, if only for the sake of their mother. His thoughts never falter, though. Aegon’s only talent lies in having been born first; his head is too empty and wine-addled for the crown. There are plenty better suited for its weight. Even Rhaenyra is more worthy than he is.

But the girl doesn’t know that. She is speaking for the sake of defying the law, without truly grasping the reality they’ve come to live in. If she continues with this nonsense—if she nurtures traitorous rhetoric instead of smothering it, she’ll only get in trouble. The Red Keep is full of curious eyes and ears. Most of its residents live to serve their masters through capable spying. It won’t take long before she says the wrong thing to the wrong person—before word spreads and she is led to the gallows.

He should not care. The girl means nothing to him. If she chooses to cling to senseless defiance, it is not Aemond’s concern.

And yet.

Aemond takes a bold step forward and decides to test her. “It was his right to be crowned. Or do you deny it?”

She is quick to answer, eyes a little wider, “I never said that.”

“Your tone speaks for itself.”

He expects her to lower her gaze in obedience. To apologise. To twist it into something else, claiming innocence. Instead, she squares her shoulders and narrows her eyes.

She looks a little more alive than before.

“I have little care about who sits the throne, so long as they do not plunge the realm into a war that cannot be won. The issues of House Targaryen are its own.” She hums, and Aemond recognises the sound as one of his own. It clings to his skin; elicits goosebumps. With a bold step forward, she crosses the distance between them. She smells of flowers that he doesn’t know the name of. “Only they aren’t. Bannermen march to battle in the name of two rulers, though none knows their names nor cares for their fate.”

He studies her face. It is closer now—close enough that Aemond can trace all its details and lines. All softness is gone. He wonders if it was ever there in the first place.

She looks as though she’s testing him, too. As though she’s waiting for something. Aemond traces her eyes for answers and finds only anticipation. She seems to be awaiting eruption.

Perhaps she wishes to know how far she can push before he gets angry. Before he burns down everything around. He is a kinslayer, is he not? She must expect the worst of him.

Punishment. She is checking whether or not he will punish her. It would be his right to do so.

Just to defy her, Aemond will not give her his anger. It will remain shielded. His and his alone.

Veil of composure remains fixed on his face. It matches the one she tried to put on before. His is impeccable.

“Such is the way of war,” he says tonelessly.

“What a stupid way,” she retorts with an ugly grimace. “It only makes sense, I suppose, since it has been paved by men.”

“And you think yourself wiser than history and tradition?”

“Do you wish to know what I think, my prince?”

A step forward. Another one.

Aemond hardly remembers the last time anyone dared come this close.

Flowers. Flowers and warmth. A day underneath the scorching sun. She smells of life. He holds his breath and steadies himself, and tries not to let her scent embed in his memory.

Because he cannot let her win, Aemond doesn’t take a step back.

“Just like you have no care for their names and their fate,” the girl continues, the warmth of her breath hitting the skin of his neck, “know that there will be none to truly cheer nor mourn you, be it in victory or defeat.”

With a quick movement backwards, she is gone. So is her warmth. So is everything else. The fog in his brain that had him standing there, unmoved and tongue-tied. Whatever invisible chains she must have shackled to him to keep him from leaving.

It is true. She may possess an inclination for dramatics, but she is not a liar. Aemond doubts his own family would have found it in their hearts to mourn him. He was born with decay—it began long before him, somewhere in his mother’s heart; somewhere atop his father’s flesh. They don’t know how to love him. They are unwilling to learn. He is undeserving of praise and grief and everything. It took the girl before him just one glance to know this much.

Aemond’s hand wraps around her arm before she can walk past him, though it is not his mind that makes him move. He acts upon instinct. Or maybe madness. It is not a strong grip. If she wanted to, she could free herself from him in a moment. She is colder to touch than he expected; the fabrics of her gown are scratchy underneath his fingertips.

There it is: a tremor. Flinching. She tries to pull back, and there is something dark painting itself across her face that has Aemond pausing. He takes in her wide eyes. They stare at him with fiery wrath, though there is something else, too. No matter how she tries, she is incapable of keeping a stiff upper lip. The alarmed glint inside her gaze betrays her.

He doesn’t need her fear. He doesn’t.

His hand falls from her skin so rapidly that it almost seems as if she burnt him. Aemond pretends he doesn’t see the way hers is quick to come up and rub the spot he touched, fingers lingering against it.

Aemond is unsure if he was harsh enough to leave imprints.

Just for a second, he prays that he was not.

“You’d do well to curb this boldness,” he says, a hoarseness he cannot explain colouring his voice.

Her eyes are a storm. Aemond knows storms. Storms never bode well, whether they come from high up in the skies or this foreign girl’s gaze.

(Is this where violence comes? Is this where one of them bleeds? Aemond doesn’t fool himself into thinking it won’t happen. Wrath is the only thing that prevails. It may as well come early and end any suffering yet to come.)

There is a shakiness in her voice that she attempts to shield with harshness. “Have I displeased you?”

“Any prize loses its value when it doesn’t know how to hold its tongue.”

She chases his gaze when he tries to avert it, as though trying to haunt him with the raging tempest of her eyes. She is too close. Too explosive. Aemond’s skin itches from the proximity.

He wants her to hurt. To buckle underneath the cruel reality. To know that she will never again be anything more than a prize he never wanted. A spoil of war. Unloved. Untouched. He wants her to look at him and know that this is her fate. Fire. Wrath. A tormenting sort of emptiness.

Sooner than later, she will become just like him. If there is any trace of hope she still possesses, it will be gone before a moon has passed. One day, Aemond will look into her eyes and find there a mirror image of himself. A being without light. Just another shadow.

His words don’t seem to unsettle her. She tilts her head without a care for the fire in his eye, and he watches the corner of her mouth lift in a bitter smile. “Perhaps you ought to get rid of me and pray that the next one knows her place.”

Finally, she walks past him. Her arm brushes against his, and though it lasts no more than a second, Aemond knows that the touch will scorch him for days to come.

Such is his fate. He burns. He never stops.

“Since the King himself orders me to join you for dinner, I will be glad to accept,” she calls out from behind. “I’d so hate to lose my head.”

Aegon officially announces their betrothal during the feast, red in the face, wine dripping down his chin. His shoulders shake from the force of his laughter; he laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and his eyes never stray from Aemond’s face.

Aemond counts the stones within the walls. Then the stones beneath his feet. He counts the cups of wine that Aegon downs with increasing speed. He counts until he forgets all about rage. Aemond’s restraint has gone warped, a jagged line that cuts through flesh, yet he clings to it all the same, bleeding on the inside but stubbornly persisting. He cannot let go. If he does, he fears there will be no return.

(It was storming when he last let himself go.)

Their mother is absent. So is Helaena. Otto entertained this farce only for a quarter hour, leaving at the first opportunity to do so. There’s only Aegon, sprawled on the large chair much like he was on the throne earlier this day, feet planted atop the table in a display of impertinence. Jaehaerys sits by his side, clutching his favourite toy, paying no attention to anything else. He is too young to recognise the taunting of his father’s voice; the tension in the air, thick-layered and thorned. Too young to see the rot. Aemond envies the boy this blissful unawareness. If he could, he’d switch places with him in a heartbeat.

And then there’s the girl. Pale. Stone-faced. For the first time since before their departure from her home, she is donning red, and Aemond is quick to decide that it doesn’t suit her. She sits there, seemingly shrinking into herself, and looks small enough to go unnoticed. Her lips are pressed into a thin line—thinner than any blade and no doubt sharper than it. He knows her ability to spout cutting words. It may falter and grow subdued under pressure, but it is there all the same.

Briefly, Aemond wishes she would not hold them back now. Would she curse them? Spit out insults? If she allowed rage to blind her, would it manifest itself in scorching viciousness spilling from her mouth? She is capable of it, he thinks. Of malice. He swallows his own because he must, but oh, wouldn’t it be nice to see someone let theirs ignite instead of being smothered?

There will be none to truly cheer nor mourn you.

Her voice still echoes through Aemond’s head. Her touch still has his skin feeling raw.

Erupt, he urges her, eye bearing into her face with a ferocious sort of intensity. For the first time that night, their gazes meet. To Aemond’s disappointment, hers remains dulled.

Then again, she is just a girl. Any display of her wrath that would go unpunished is little more than a pipe dream. She may cling to the false sense of defiance that they share, but it will never be enough to eradicate the duty tied around them.

We are both equally chained.

Let her keep silent. It wouldn’t do to have Aegon remove her tongue.

Aegon’s gathering of useless lickspittles stands by the entryway, keeping up the pretence of guarding their king. Aemond smells the wine even from afar. The cunts wouldn’t do shit should danger present itself. He doubts they’d manage to draw their swords without fumbling with the sheaths.

He supposes that a king this useless warrants a kingsguard of equal measure. It wouldn’t do for his cronies to outsmart him.

“Let us hope your cunt is worthy of a prince, my lady,” Aegon simpers. “My brother’s tastes are unique. It will be no easy fit to satisfy him, though I have faith in your assets.”

His guards guffaw at the remark, their gazes landing on the girl. Aemond tightens his hold on the empty cup beside him. He could unsheathe his dagger. It feels heavier than ever before, a tingling sensation spreading from where it’s attached to his hip. It calls out for him. Urges him to draw blood. With a straight spine and unblinking eye, Aemond looks at her face instead. If there is a trace of resentment—if she seems to be pleading with him to act in retaliation, Aemond doesn’t know whether or not he’d be able not to.

She says nothing in response. She has yet to speak at all, having held her tongue since she entered the chamber. Like this, she seems to be carved in stone: she is so still that Aemond wonders if she’s forgotten to breathe. Her features betray nothing.

“Should your marriage bed remain cold, though,” his brother adds, leaning forward, elbows pushing away the platters around him, “please know that mine own is not so far away.”

Aemond’s fingers go white from the pressure.

There are no words that come to sit on his tongue. He cannot look at Aegon without imagining him swallowed by flames. It is not the first time he feels such ugly resentment towards his own blood, and it is certainly far from the last. Aemond doesn’t yet know what to do with it. How to stop himself from acting on it. How to smother it instead.

(It is just like it was with Luke. The bitter taste sitting on his tongue is just the same. If he lets himself lose control again, it will end in bloodshed. It always does. It always does.)

Aemond forces himself to swallow down the hostility—to once more begin counting everything within sight—to breathe—

But then her lips part. Their eyes meet. It is the briefest of moments—so brief that he almost thinks he imagined it. She is as quick as always, averting her gaze before it can become meaningful. But it is too late—Aemond already saw the fire. A fire like his. It burns and burns, and Aemond welcomes the flames with a heavy exhale.

She shifts in her seat. Like this, they are closer together. The warmth of her body merges with his own.

His heartbeat slows. Gradually, it becomes steady again.

Somehow, silently as though in sin, it feels like a short-lived moment of affinity.

Like two flames recognising one another.

Like a beginning.

His mother has no wish to see him in council meetings. Her faith in him is long gone. Aemond takes his seat regardless of the weight of her disapproving gaze, keeping his face artfully blank.

War is a fragile thing. They toe the line between passive and active participation, swayed by varying opinions and opposing viewpoints. His grandsire seems to think the weight of it remains entirely upon his own shoulders, as though he alone was wise enough to dictate its course. Aegon succumbs to rashness. It is only a matter of time before he gets rid of Otto; Aemond recognises the wild glint inside his brother’s eyes even from afar. He will send him away. Ravens and written demands will not satisfy him for much longer.

Aemond remains with his feet planted firmly in the spot where passiveness and action clash. He once allowed wrath to blind him, overtaken by the urge to take revenge that no one before him had dared to, and it resulted in fire and blood. He let himself be rash. Their current situation is the aftermath of his own impulsiveness. Aemond likes to think he knows better now—that he is rid of the previous lack of control. But inactivity and letters will not grant them victory, either. To admit that is not equal to succumbing to violence.

It is yet another of his brother’s many faults. He is swayed by their grandsire, and their mother, and the self-important imbeciles sitting his council and spouting wisdom about the ways of war. And Aemond knows the truth of it. He knows it the way he has since he first mounted the largest dragon. Aegon slouches in his seat and looks from one face to another, and waits for someone to win the fight for him because it is what he does best: be useless.

Inadequate.

But he was born first.

Later, on his way to patrol the skies above King’s Landing, Aemond enters the Throne Room. It was not his intention to come here. The hundreds of swords called to him, some inaudible chanting acting as summons.

Sometimes, when he lay suspended in a place between lucidity and dreams, Aemond sees himself on the throne. The scar marring his face blurs away, erased by the crown placed atop his head. He sits there as king, and no longer do they see a crippled boy, but a man. They bow before him. Whispers are gone. Who would dare mock the ruler? Who would see the protector of the realm as incapable?

They wouldn’t remember the missing eye. They wouldn’t dare to.

But Aegon was born first.

Aemond no longer believes that there is an end to his infinite bitterness. He will forever be forced to bear the image of his unworthy brother, and the whispers that fuel antagonism will never really fade.

A loyal hound.

Aegon trusts him. He has faith in Aemond’s ability to keep them all safe. Vhagar is their biggest asset, and it was Aemond who struck first—it was him who begot the war. He made a choice and would now have to live with it. He forced their hand. He did, he did, he did.

And shouldn’t they know better now? Aemond is the one who lost his eye, and yet his brother’s blindness surpasses his own. There are truths that he has yet to recognise. Ones that Aemond’s heart is gradually growing accustomed to.

Trust is a weakness.

Hounds know how to bite.

Aemond’s days go by in accordance with an established order. He mounts Vhagar and ascends to the skies along with the rising sun, patrolling the horizon above King’s Landing until his hands ache from their grip on the saddle. When morning turns to afternoon, he returns to the Red Keep and loses himself in the training yard. He grips his sword with a vice strength; swings it blindly, hoping that it’ll cut through flesh and bone, regardless of who his opponent is. Hours pass and the sun gives way to the moon, and once he’s sweating and bleeding and panting from exertion, Aemond returns to his bedchamber and imagines that he doesn’t exist at all.

Cole puts up a good fight. His blows are vicious. He knows where to hit to make it hurt; knows every weak point ready to be exploited. It was him who taught Aemond how to properly hold a sword; how to wield anger without losing composure. There are times when Aemond wonders which of the two of them is cursed with a stronger rage. When they enter the training grounds, more often than not Cole seems to forget who he’s fighting with. As though he looked at Aemond but saw someone else. An enemy. His own demons.

Here, they are both different people. Honourable men. Here, vicious anger is justified. They push and shove and draw blood, and it is not seen as a sign of insanity-driven violence. This is what men do: they hold swords and point them at each other on training grounds, and it doesn’t make them murderers.

Aemond is quicker. He always has been. In a swift movement, he swings one foot behind Cole’s, forcing him to lose balance and stumble. Aemond uses the hilt of his sword to block the counterattack, dodging to the side before the blade hits him. Three steps left. One forward. He consistently breaks any rhythm and pattern there may be, keeping his footwork unforeseen.

In some ways, this particular freedom reminds him of flying.

There is peacefulness that sinks into his bones. Aemond clings to it with feverish force. For the first time in days, he lets himself forget about the past. There is just him and his sword. There is just brutish strength and gasps of exhaustion, and the eagerness to prevail—

“Your betrothed is here,” Cole announces, glancing over at the balcony stretched above the courtyard, a change to the cadence of his voice. It’s a little less raspy. A little more teasing.

Aemond tenses.

Just like that, all sense of peace is gone.

Cole uses the sudden loss of focus to strike, the tip of his sword nicking Aemond’s neck. The wound stings; Aemond’s eye flickers to his opponent but remains glazed over.

She is there. Just standing. Looking at nothing in particular, as though lost deep in thoughts. As always, she’s alone. As always, she doesn’t spare him a glance. Aemond tries and fails to keep his gaze steady on Cole’s face; the dull greys of her gown distract him, even if the lack of colour should do anything but.

“Come now, Aemond,” Cole breathes with amusement. “It would do you more good to impress the lady.”

But it wouldn’t. She is cursed with him anyway. It is best to let her see his real face—the face carved by violence and wrath, kissed by a scar that dictates his life. When she sees him like this—sweat-slicked, holding a sword—does she see a murderer? She must. It is who he is.

He drops his weapon and moves towards the entryway, ignoring the tingling at the nape of his neck.

He wants her never to look at him again. He wants her gone.

Later, he lies on soft linens, skin caressed by softer yet hands. Low chatter and the sound of skin against skin rings in his ear; Aemond tunes it out and imagines the surroundings blending into some other place. His bones are heavy. It feels as though he’s been carrying the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. Just for a little while, he needed to get away. To flee from reality. To disappear.

It might have been shameful to think of this establishment once—even more so to step inside. It reeks of sin and gluttony, and it poisons the hearts of those who choose to enter. Everything it represents is a contradiction to what Aemond once thought was his core. Years before, he was forced to come here—and for years after, he endured dreams about it, cruel and haunting and terrifying. Dreams about foreign hands on his body, pulling and squeezing and burning. Nightmares. Images he could never erase.

And now he’s back, and the same hands that once haunted him are touching him, and he holds his breath for so long that his lungs seem to collapse. Aemond forces himself to be still. To yield. To endure. The madam brushes his hair away from his face. Aemond tries and fails to stop himself from flinching.

This touch is warm. Kind. It is tender and familiar in ways no other touch could ever be. It burns and it hurts, and oh, doesn’t he deserve this pain? Doesn’t he deserve it? Pain is what makes him. It is what has led him to this point. It is an old friend, and a lost lover, and a splinter stuck in the centre of his heart. Here, he controls it. He inflicts it upon himself. If he wishes to, he may pull away and never return; he may cut her hands off for daring to touch him. He may burn this hole into the ground.

He is in control. Just this once. Only ever here.

She whispers sweet nothings into his ear, and her hands are soft and kind, and he is warmer than he has been in a long time.

If he pretends intently enough, he barely remembers that it hurts.

Second sons can only live a life within shadows.

It is his fate to own nothing, and to cling to the nothingness that comes with the shroud of darkness. He was born with only his name, and to this day it serves as both a blessing and a curse. Aemond Targaryen, son to one king, brother to another, his own head free from the weight of the crown. Had he never been maimed, Aemond doubts they would have remembered his name at all. Sometimes, he thinks he has become a shadow himself. There was a poisonous seed planted inside him, and what bloomed from it is smouldering wrath.

He has come to appreciate the darkness.

It’s well past the hour of the owl when he walks the familiar path to his bedchamber, the scent of fire and smoke clinging to his robes. Each day, the patrols become a little longer. He is unwilling to leave the skies—unwilling to face the real world. There is nothing good that waits for him on steady ground, anyway. Every crumble of happiness he could ever attempt to chase remains high above clouds.

He finds her trodding down the corridor, an impatient shakiness to her steps.

Aemond leaves nothing to fate. Fate hasn’t extended kindness towards him. He has a servant keeping an eye on the girl, informing him about her habits with varying frequency. It’s the reason why he knows of the girl’s taste for late-night reading. It’s why he should have expected it.

Aemond halts, mouth twisted in displeasure. He makes to turn around and walk away before she notices him, but—

No.

Is it not his right to look her in the eye? To demand that she look at him, scarred and ruined and angry? She is the latest source of his wrath. She is the reminder of duty. Aemond will not flee at the mere sight of her. Her repulsion does not mean anything to him. It is all he has ever known.

He still remembers the way she shifted closer.

He is cursed with the memory.

When she reaches an entrance and slips inside, Aemond can do nothing but follow.

“You seem to favour the library.”

She tenses. The sight is a familiar one. She is always tense when there are eyes upon her. Although Aemond’s lip twists, he clears his throat and forces himself to look away.

“I came for a book,” she announces in a flat tone, not sparing him a glance.

He shrugs. “Don’t let me distract you.”

And she doesn’t. It is almost as if he weren’t there at all. The girl marches off towards the farthest corner of the library, hand coming up to brush away the dust covering the spines of the books. Most tomes have been left to wither away with age; they are fragile, pages ready to crumble. Aemond’s eye traces the movement of her fingers—even from afar, he sees how gentle she is about it. She knows not to apply too much pressure. Her fingertips caress the binds in a featherlike manner.

Although he knows that he should leave her be, something prevents him from moving. He entered the library despite himself, and now remains standing there like a fool. There is no one but the two of them. None else would think to read books at such hour.

He should leave.

He should.

He doesn’t.

Something between them has changed. Aemond constantly goes back to the brief moment of understanding that they shared; the way her gaze reflected his own rage. Try as he might, he cannot fool himself into thinking it does not mean anything. Those seconds linger in the back of his mind, coming forth whenever he is not too busy to think of anything at all. They haunt him. He has yet to decide whether the shivers they induce are ones of anticipation or dread.

Before he can change his mind, Aemond grabs a random volume and takes a seat by one of the wooden tables.

When he was younger, he’d sit at the same chair with Helaena by his side. She would hold one of her bugs, and together they’d search for books on various insects, trying to figure out what species it was. His sister was a different person, then. A little lighter. She would offer him a smile and sometimes laugh with abandon, and she’d never flinch away from him.

And Aemond was not yet a kinslayer.

And now that he became tainted, Helaena, too, has abandoned him.

The sound of the girl’s footsteps force him to open the book he picked up. He pays no mind to the scribbles inside, too focused on listening. Three steps. A pause. A moment of hesitation. He can almost see the grimace that must be now gracing her features.

Aemond holds back a laugh when she sits as far away from him as possible while at the exact same table. She drops her own book atop the surface, applying enough force to indicate vexation. She does not want him here. Not this close. Not when they’re alone.

And although he knows better, Aemond remains seated there. Just to vex her further. Just to spark a fire.

“Dragonkin?” he muses.

She closes the book she has just opened, a thud echoing through the room, and raises one eyebrow in challenge. Her face is barely discernible in the subdued lighting, but Aemond is able to make out its lines. The gentle curve of her nose. Lips forever twisted in displeasure.

She is lonely like him, but the way she wields the solitude of her heart is different. There is bitterness in her, yes—bitterness that he, too, possesses. But where his own is forever aimed towards himself, hers busts out from her chest and scorches everyone nearby.

It scorches him now. Somehow, the flames seem almost pleasant.

“I’ve been sold to a dragon prince.” Her jaw is clenched; even without seeing them from up close, he knows that her eyes are burning. “Isn’t it wiser to know your enemy’s customs?”

He smiles despite himself. It is easier to do so without illumination piercing his skin. “What customs do you expect from me?”

“Something savage,” she says without missing a beat. “Befitting a beast.”

Aemond knows what she thinks of him. She expressed her feelings in every conversation they have ever shared. He knows the word that sits at the tip of her tongue despite never being spoken aloud. Kinslayer. Kinslayer.

But there was a fire. Not just hers, and not just his, but theirs. He did not imagine it. His mind could not have conjured such an image on its own.

It is that fire that keeps him seated there, even though he’d rather leave without once looking back. The memory of it prevents him from walking away. Confusion blooms inside him.

He is possessed by some mad urges. Unexplainable emotions. He is acting like a fool—

“Enemies?” he prompts.

“Do you dislike the word?”

“It implies care for each other’s existence. I’m rather indifferent about you.”

Indifferent. Infuriated. More often than not, Aemond himself is unsure of the extent to which his emotions are affected by her existence. She is always in the back of his mind; always closer than he wishes she would be. She is a constant. He cannot be rid of her.

“And yet here you are.” She puts her elbows on the table, pushing herself closer to him. The table is suddenly not large enough. The distance between them shrinks into something much more agonising. “And here I am.”

And so is the fire. It is there, it is right there—

Something inside him flares. Aemond lets his hand tighten into a fist underneath the table.

Without looking at her, he murmurs, “Do not mistake it for a want of companionship.”

She lets out a breathy laugh. “I know better than that. Just like I know you seem intent on following me.”

“You shouldn’t wander around at night.”

“Shouldn’t?” she cuts in, a low hiss reverberating through the empty walls. “Or cannot? Do you forbid it, my prince?”

“Would you listen to me if I did?”

She offers a shrug. He wonders what expression graces her face. “Only one way to find out.”

He doesn’t think that she would. She has thus far painted herself as an image of sheer force. She clings to defiance and meets his gaze without hesitation, and more often than not, Aemond believes that she is seconds from snapping at him. She doesn’t truly fear him—not the way everyone else does. It is odd. Entirely unfamiliar. Almost… curious.

But he hasn’t yet given her a reason to be afraid.

He will, eventually.

He always does.

“Back home, I was forbidden from doing many things.”

The confession spills from her lips so suddenly that Aemond hangs onto the echo of the words until it fades. He half-expected her to throw her book at him and leave, and yet here she is… talking to him?

Aemond keeps every inch of himself still. He breathes in and breathes out. He waits.

“My father never allowed many books to be held in our house. They were a distraction from other duties.”

He raises an eyebrow. Though he asks no questions, Aemond hopes that she’ll continue speaking to him. Her voice is melodic. Soft. She seems to have abandoned the biting tone, no longer intent to evoke anger or have him walk away. Like this, the fire they shared becomes warranted. They sit together and they talk, and isn’t that what people do?

Almost as though they weren’t doomed.

Almost as though they weren’t cursed.

“He would catch me reading and then burn the book. Always, always before I finished.”

“Your father isn’t here,” Aemond replies. His own voice surprises him. “And you are welcome to read as many books as you please.”

The hint of sarcasm is back. Aemond imagines that she narrows her eyes at him. “You’d let a war prize spoil your precious books?”

Aemond’s cheek twitches in annoyance. He doesn’t need to entertain this taunting. He doesn’t even need to be there—to listen—to pretend that this is anything more than duty—

“Do whatever you want. It makes no difference.”

He pushes himself upwards, finger tapping against the wooden table before he folds his hands behind his back. Despite knowing that it’s ridiculous, Aemond chooses the longer path towards the door, only because he has no wish to walk past the girl.

“Why?” she demands. Just like he expected her to.

Aemond lets himself ponder the question. Why? Why does nothing ever make a difference? Why would they sit at the same table despite the festering hatred between them? Why would she proclaim them enemies when they are anything but? He is all she has in the Red Keep. She is all he owns.

There isn’t much that he can tell her. Aemond settles on a half-truth. “Duty will be there whether you waste your time on being miserable about it or not. It won’t go away just because you’re content.”

Duty is all that remains. Realm will soon turn to ashes and still, echoes of past promises and agreements and birthrights will haunt them.

Duty is the chain that connects them.

Today—just this once, and only within the solitude of the library—Aemond admits to himself that the chain is lighter than he thought.

“Do you ever forget about yours?”

My lady, he wishes to say, I am never, never content.

Kinslayer. A loyal hound. His head is forever filled with echoes of past sins, and those sins continue to shape him. Each day, he is sharper. More jagged. Touching him would make someone bleed.

“I do not.”

He takes one step. Another. There is an odd rush in his veins; Aemond flexes his fingers to rid himself from the tingling sensation, determined to make haste. The corner is right there—

“Thank you,” she calls after him, so softly that he barely makes out the words.

They are odd. Foreign. Aemond lets himself still for just a moment. To bask in the warmth the novelty has brought about. When he turns around, the girl is already engrossed in her book, but the library remains bathed in an unfamiliar sort of light.

She said the words as if it were the easiest thing in the world. She said them to him. To the dragon prince who barged into her house to claim her. To the stranger. The kinslayer. The forever unworthy.

No one ever has before.

Aemond resumes walking, forgetting where he was headed in the first place, and just for a little while—just until he must shield himself from strange eyes—he lets himself be bewildered.

#aemond targaryen #aemond fanfiction #aemond smut #hotd #asoiaf #aemond one eye #a song of ice and fire #house of the dragon

44 notes · View notes

mattydemise · 2 years

Text

Some nights are darker than the void, no light pierces that veil of infinity, others the stars shimmer and sparkle like a blanket made entirely of light. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world or what you did today. I’m hoping you’re happy. I hope you’re in love. I hope you found someone that appreciates you. It takes a while to find that rarified air of joy for another but I’m close to finding that comfort now. I know not what the future holds in store for me (or anyone else, for that matter), but damn I want us all to find something to be happy about, something to hold, and if not own, share. Sometimes life puts something beautiful in front of you, and none of us ever really know how long it’s going to be there. The wise among us cherish and savour it, for they know everything is only temporary, the fools gawk, drink their fill, and then forget. I wasn’t always wise but I cherished the moments that I could. The soft curves of body that rested easily in the early morning light. I was wise enough to take enough mental pictures, record enough memory, to last a lifetime. On my darkest days where everything is rendered monochrome and darkens ceaselessly, I hold those memories so close I can feel their fingernails pierce my skin. Where I faltered, where we all falter, is that I wasn’t able to commit everything to perfect memory. Some moments are alcohol blurred and taste of Nirvana Black and cream skin. I have impressions, tastes, the lingering motions of flesh in shadow, but it would have been nice to remember everything from those nights. I remember enough though, enough to live happily, enough to know in my marrow that once I was the light in someone else’s life. Not everyone knows that joy. But I do. One day, maybe, I will inspire such beauty and feelings again. If not, I will imbibe those memories until I’m full enough to doze, comfortably, forever.

#mattobsidian #writing #words #blog #text

22 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 3 years

Text

Part of why I harp on about Last Laugh all the time is because its not just about Dick killing the Joker which is what Jason always wanted someone to do for him, to know that he mattered enough for that......but also when you erase Last Laugh or discard it because it just doesn’t fit into your perception of the characters as fanon has dictated, like.......another huge factor of the Jason-Bruce-Dick dynamic falls by the wayside as well.

And that’s how Jason’s not only always been convinced that Bruce would kill to avenge Dick’s death.....but in ADDITION, Jason has always been convinced that Bruce would be more forgiving of the kinds of actions Jason has taken, aka murder, if Dick had been the one doing it.

Because see....the other thing Last Laugh showed aside from Dick’s feelings about Jason’s death......is that Bruce very much was NOT okay with what Dick had done. Bruce always said he brought back the Joker because he knew Dick wouldn’t be able to live with having done that, but IMO it was NEVER about what Dick could or couldn’t live with, it was about what BRUCE could live with Dick having done.

Because regardless of the Joker being resuscitated.....Dick was still keenly aware of the fact that he’d still beaten him to death first. Jason’s resurrection, Dick being revived after his own death, those never erased the impact of their actual deaths, rendered them moot, and neither did resuscitating the Joker. If Jason died and it matters? Coming back doesn’t make that unmatter. If Dick only was dead for a couple minutes tops, that doesn’t mean Luthor DIDN’T kill him and he wasn’t still dead; he’d still actually died.

The same is true of the Joker’s death, no matter how short-lived it was. Dick still DID it. Dick was still very cognizant of that. Dick actually struggled with this for a number of issues, though I don’t think that really was about regretting what he’d done so much as that he’d let the Joker ‘win’.....AND it was ALSO about how Bruce saw him now.

And IMO you can’t argue that Bruce only resuscitated the Joker for DICK’S sake and because DICK couldn’t live with that.....when Bruce notably, distinctly, NEVER EVER EVER actually....engaged Dick on the topic of what he’d done there.

Ever.

He went back to Gotham and never made a single appearance to help Dick process things, even when others like Wally showed up in Bludhaven while Dick was holing himself away from the world. Bruce and Dick literally NEVER spoke of it again. Because Bruce wasn’t okay with what Dick had done. He didn’t know how to forgive him or look past it, so he basically did everything in his power to make it so it basically never happened.

And the difference with UTRH is....when Jason showed up, by the time Bruce knew it was him, pretending Jason hadn’t done the things that Jason wasn’t the least bit ashamed of was never actually even an option.

So I don’t actually think Bruce is any more inclined to forgive Dick of things like murder because its Dick.....I think Bruce had to force+quit all thoughts of Dick actually killing, in order to preserve his relationship with Dick.

(Even though his relationship with Dick still suffered, because Dick was still keenly aware that Bruce was not okay with what he’d done, and like, not trying to understand WHY Dick had done it or that he was actually maybe okay with having done it albeit outside of the context of it having played into what the Joker wanted him to do. Like, Dick after Last Laugh still very much angsted about Bruce’s assessment of him after it, and did need that reassurance that Bruce still loved him and forgave him....and what Bruce actually gave him is “I’ll agree to never reference it as having happened and look past it for the sake of our relationship” which is very much NOT the same thing. And with, as I’ve also gone into before, this no doubt being HUGELY central to why Dick was so lost and shaken by his fears of having let Bruce down AGAIN by letting Blockbuster die. These things are absolutely connected.)

The flip side of this is that......I don’t think Bruce was any LESS inclined to ‘forgive’ Jason of murder just because he was Jason and not Dick. In that case, it was just more about the fact that there was no way for Bruce to even TRY to force+quit out of his awareness of what Jason had done. Denial wasn’t going to cut it in the same way it had with Dick, because Dick’s ‘crime’ had been one and done.

But THEN, the flip side of THAT - or maybe we’re just on a tangent now, oh hell, who can keep track, let’s all just agree that flips were flipped and tangents were...tangented - like, the other interesting facet of this for me is if Bruce HADN’T been so intent on forcibly ignoring or forgetting that Dick had killed the Joker, for the sake of their relationship or whatever, or if someone else had brought it up - not only could this have improved Dick and Jason’s relationship, it also could have forced Bruce to confront the logical fallacy inherent in like...his MAIN ARGUMENT for why he was so deadset against Jason’s choices.

And that all goes back to how Bruce has a tendency to project his own worst flaws onto his children, and be paranoid that they’re going to go down the same dark paths he constantly is trying to keep himself from straying down - ironically in part due to how he uses his childrens’ similarities to him in order to build common ground and see a place and purpose for himself in their lives in the first place. He sees himself in his children, that’s what draws him to them in the first place, and makes him act to bring them into his own life and build a home for them....but there’s a double-edged sword element to this too, as Bruce I think often perceives his worst fears for HIMSELF in his childrens’ actions and choices....and acts based on that. Rather than keeping centered his awareness that for all that they are LIKE him in various ways, they are their own people. As different from him as they are alike.

See, because like....Bruce’s primary reason for why he can’t ever allow himself to kill, even someone like the Joker....is because he KNOWS himself, and knows that if he ever allowed himself to cite precedent by doing it even just once.....he’d open up the door and progress through it past a point of no return, whereupon he’d never STOP being able to come up with justifications for why he should also kill this villain and this one and this one. Its the slippery slope argument. He can’t ever start down that slope, because he doesn’t trust himself to ever stop.

And he projects this same logic onto his children, who he seems so much of himself in....the good AND the bad. And so his fears AND his judgment, for both Jason AND Dick when they kill, even just in one special case....is that it sets them both on the same slippery slope. Because they are after all just like him, right?

But also they’re not....as evidenced by the fact that Dick DOESN’T KEEP KILLING. The Last Laugh is basically an outlier (assuming we don’t count Creighton, which I don’t rate the same because while I think Dick definitely did kill him, it was a clear cut case of self-defense and thus a totally different ballgame). Its significant that Dick killed, not just because he did it, and not just because Bruce didn’t actually ever forgive him for it....but also because...despite Bruce being afraid to face or acknowledge it because of how it played into his own fears for his own worst self and choices.....Bruce facing it is exactly what needs to happen in order for Bruce to ever acknowledge that his actual fears of the slippery slope....DID NOT HAPPEN, with Dick. Dick’s never used what happened with the Joker to cite a precedent, to justify to himself the choice to do that again with another villain he had just as much reason to hate.

And from THERE....once you connect all these dots and all these parallels and contrasts and intersections......its notable not just that Jason has killed, and with intent and without regret....but also that there IS no rationale for taking it for granted that Bruce acts differently with Jason’s crimes than he would if Dick committed them, just because its Jason and not Dick.....because the key difference is not WHICH of them did it, its the CIRCUMSTANCES of them doing it....and Jason’s circumstances not affording Bruce the same luxury of denial.

And then from THERE, finally, the coup de grace at the end of it all:

Is it also makes it equally notable that....just as Dick’s lack of killing again after the Joker, like, establishes a counter argument for Bruce’s fears that such a thing is inevitable once Dick killed even once....and with this fear being WHY he comes down so hard on the topic of even his children killing villains guilty of heinous crimes....

Dick’s lack of killing others after the Joker ALSO establishes a PRECEDENT....for the fact that no, killing someone does not make it IMPOSSIBLE to ever step BACK from that ledge if one so chooses. ‘Pulling the trigger’ as it were, even just once, initially....does not doom one of Bruce’s children to a lifetime of never being anything BUT a remorseless killer who can never choose a different path.

And of course, the fact that Jason killing certain people DOESN’T mean that he can’t ever stop, like....this is actually central to the entire Batfam’s dynamics as a whole?

Because after all.....literally every canon story, continuity or fanfic that has Jason reunite with the family to ANY degree, after having killed....which is like, basically all of them.....

These all take it as a given that....Jason is absolutely fully capable of choosing not to kill. He is not LOCKED into anything, beyond the possibility of having any kind of relationship with his family whatsoever, just because he’s killed....with the proof being like....literally all the stories where he still has a relationship with his family despite having killed previously or even still killing in some circumstances in the present!

The slippery slope does not rule all, is the thing. And the proof that Bruce’s fears of the slippery slope once slipped upon, being a one way street straight the fuck to hell, like.....the proof that that’s more a HIM problem than a hard and fast rule that can only ever play out one way for everybody Bruce see himself reflected in?

That proof literally begins with Last Laugh. With Dick. Paving the way for Jason there, rather than making a case for how actually things with Jason and Bruce would look totally different if it had just been Dick and Bruce there instead.

The second you acknowledge that the comics and most fanfics ALREADY take it as a given that Bruce’s projection of his own fears of the slippery murder slope is like....NOT actually any more of an inevitable death knell for Jason’s relationship with his family than Jason’s own actual death knell meant shit about his own longterm survival.....

Then Dick’s killing of the Joker in Last Laugh becomes extremely relevant not just because of what it reveals about how Bruce’s views on murder and his sons doing the murder is NOT actually conditional, based just on which son it is that does the deed most dirty....

It also becomes extremely relevant because of the precedent it establishes in countering the very argument/view that is central to keeping Jason from having any real relationship with his family until Bruce gets the fuck out of his own and everyone else’s way on this front.

289 notes · View notes

stillness-in-green · 3 years

Text

No, Re-Destro Is Not Destro’s Literal Son

and

Yes, I Will Die On This Hill

I have a number of small, persistent quibbles with some of the widespread misapprehensions I see included in BNHA fanfic, quoted as fact in meta posts, even cited on the wiki. Quirk cancellation restraints, what the 20% quirklessness data point means in practice, when Kurogiri comes into existence relative to the time of the Shimura Family Massacre, things like that. My biggest one, though, is as the title suggests: the idea that Yotsubashi Rikiya is Yotsubashi Chikara’s son.

I don’t entirely know where this confusion comes from. As far as I can tell, the early scanlations didn’t get it wrong—one rendered the line in Chapter 218 about Destro having a child he didn’t know about as being children, plural, but otherwise, they were all accurate enough. It seems people just assumed that the child mentioned in 218 must be Re-Destro, who was, after all, right there on the panel. Even though the scanlations never said it, even though the official translation never said it, even though ample evidence in the manga disproves it, the idea still got around that Rikiya is Chikara’s son.

I have and will maintain that this is obviously wrong if you stop to think about it for even a moment, but unfortunately, most people don’t. The error can be found on less well-tended parts of the fandom wiki[1]; it’s in tumblr meta posts about the villains; it’s in fanfic.

And now, god help me, it is on the official anime website, too.

“Stillness-in-green, maybe you should consider that you might just be wro—”

I will face BONES and walk backwards into hell.

But if you want, you can come with me, and I’ll explain on the way. Hit the jump.

Dialogue + Narration

There are two places where the relationship between Chikara and Rikiya is explicitly addressed—the lead-in to the dinner scene in Chapter 218 and the fight between Clone!Shigaraki and RD in Chapter 232. If you include the Ultra Analysis databook, the number goes up to four: once each in Re-Destro and Destro Classic’s character blurbs.

Let’s take a look at each of those places, shall we?

The relevant Japanese text here is in the first narration box: 子ども, kodomo.

Kodomo is not gendered. It literally just means child. The key kanji is 子, ko. Like most kanji, it has a lot of potential readings, and you can add other kanji to it to modify it. Add 息 and you get musuko, son. Pronounce 子 as shi instead of ko, and you get a term that is frequently, though not exclusively, used to refer to boys. Add 女 to that reading and you get joshi, woman/girl. 子 is in a lot of words, many of them gendered! Used for kodomo as Hori does here, though, it does nothing to indicate a gender one way or the other.

Also too, it does nothing to indicate that Rikiya is the child in question; it simply states that there was such a child, somewhere in the world. Now, the natural assumption for anyone who knows how the graphic novel medium works and who understands basic literary analysis would be that the significant character we just met is, in fact, the child in question—except that everything else we learn about Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army here makes it entirely impossible.

I’ll do a full breakdown on why that is in the next section. In the meantime, here’s the next reference:

Here, we’re looking at the phrase the Viz translation renders as, “His blood runs through these veins.” The literal Japanese there is, Desutoro no matsuei chi o tsugu mono! In a literal translation, chi o tsugu mono means, “one who inherits the blood,” or, more loosely, “blood successor.” It’s matsuei—末裔—that’s the key word here.

Japanese has several words to express the concept of “descendant.” Matsuei is one word; the data book uses shison. So what’s the difference? Well, I’ll talk about shison in a moment, but I had an inkling of it just from looking at the kanji in matsuei—“end” and “descendant” respectively, leaving me with an impression of something like a final descendant or the terminus of the bloodline. Further research confirmed it: shison can refer to any lineal blood tie, but matsuei refers to a bloodline’s final inheritor, the person at the end of a long line of many, or even countless, generations. It’s the difference between being able to point to a grandparent and the kind of painstaking genealogical research that lets you[2] point to a famous royal from eight hundred years ago—matsuei is a word that very much assumes the existence of those countless generations.

So not only does Rikiya’s line there not imply that he’s Chikara’s son, but his specific word choice also tells us that he cannot be Chikara’s son. That’s, uh. Pretty conclusive, I would say.

Lastly, though, there’s also the data book. This is, perhaps, the actual closest you’re going to get to a manga equivalent of those character blurbs on the anime website, at least until such time as Hori deigns to give the MLA types character profile pages. (I live ever in hope.)

There are two relevant bits of text, one in Re-Destro’s entry, and the other in Destro Classic’s. The first describes how Re-Destro organizes the MLA as Desutoro no chi o tsugu mono: the same phrase he uses for himself in the manga, minus the matsuei. @codenamesazanka (the one who told me about the databook references among other citations, bless) rendered it as “Destro’s blood successor”; I have also seen it given as “the successor of Destro’s bloodline.” Note again, the lack of reference to a father/son bond.

Chikara’s entry uses that other descendant word I mentioned before, 子孫, shison. Notice that the term uses that ko kanji from kodomo before? As it does in joshi, 子 here reads shi. The other kanji, 孫, means grandchild. Thus, literally, grandchild-child—or, in the vernacular, simply descendant.

And then we have the anime website.

So, for comparison’s sake, the anime website uses 息子—the same combination of kanji that I said earlier gives you musuko, son. Heck, it even uses 父, chichi, for Destro—father. It’s as explicit as it’s possible to be, and I just don’t know why or how the anime website could fuck that up so bad when absolutely nothing in the manga describes the two Yotsubashis that way, and, indeed, one specific word choice actually rules out the possibility.

So, that’s all the manga says directly. It’s not the only evidence there is, though. In fact, the next piece makes it even more clear how colossally and impossibly wrong a father/son connection for Destro and his modern successor is.

Timeline

The long and short of this section is, “Since Harima Oji was Sako Atsuhiro’s great-great-grandfather, there is no possible way that Destro—who pre-dated Harima—can be Re-Destro’s father.” If you read that sentence and nodded your complete understanding and agreement, feel free to skip ahead to the last section. If you’d like the full explanation it takes to reach that sentence’s conclusion, though, read on.

So, aside from the word matsuei, the timeline is the most telling piece of evidence to my eye. I address it secondly rather than firstly because it’s less direct than the explicit narration; it relies on drawing conclusions based on things we’ve been told elsewhere rather than on the immediately relevant text. Oh, Mr. Compress’s relationship to Harima is explicit enough, but on what am I basing my claim that Destro predates him?

Regarding that, there’s no explicit year relative to My Hero Academia’s current events given for when Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army were active; the same is true for Harima Oji’s escapades. However, we are given some broad-strokes information, relative not to current events, but rather to the history of heroism as a legal institution in Japan.

We know that there was a widespread, lengthy period of chaos following the rise of quirks—called meta-abilities in those early years. At some point, however, people began to search for a way for meta-humans to live in peace with non-metas. The compromise that was reached was the foundation of professional heroism in Japan—while the use of meta-abilities would be legal in private settings, it was only by becoming licensed by the state as “heroes” that people could use their quirks in public.[3]

The legislation curtailing the use of meta-abilities—and the appropriation of a dead woman’s language to popularize a law establishing exactly the opposite of what she used that language to call for—is what catalyzed the rise of the original MLA. Thus, we can position Destro as being alive and active around the same time that heroism as a legal institution was being formed. Since we further know that he committed suicide in prison, we can assume that his child was conceived at some point prior to his capture. Ergo, Destro’s child, were they alive today, would be as old as Japanese professional heroism itself.

Next, consider Harima Oji, the Peerless Thief, a criminal who targeted the riches of “sham heroes.” We’re specifically told that he was active in the days in which the current system was settling into place—e.g. he only became active once the Hero System was established enough to have produced corrupt heroes. We’re told he preached reformation—he wasn’t just some pre-existing criminal who saw a shiny new target in heroes; he had specific grievances which he wanted addressed by the system, and which the system was not addressing.

The earliest Harima could possibly be active, then, is concurrent with Destro—Harima fighting against the corrupt people who had found their way into the new heroic institution, and Destro fighting against using the institution of heroism to oppress non-heroes. What I think is more likely, though, is that Harima came after Destro—Harima needed to have had time to realize what kinds of fakes had been drawn to this shiny new career path, maybe even to spend some time trying to change things the legal way.

I don’t suspect they were separated by very long—I would imagine Destro was easily within Harima’s living memory, and might well have influenced why he chose the path of protest that he did—but I do think they were separate.

Moving forward, then, Mr. Compress is four generations distant from his famous ancestor. Thus, even if you assume that Harima is of the same generation as Chikara, that’s what you’re looking at for Chikara’s child: someone who, were they alive today, would be old enough to be the great-grandparent of a thirty-two-year-old man.

Re-Destro’s probably a few years older than Mr. C, sure,[4] but that man doesn’t have Ujiko’s slow-aging quirk. Unless you want to start pulling theories about cryogenic stasis the story for some reason never saw fit to mention out of thin air, Re-Destro is in no way old enough to fit the bill.

This is backed up by one other piece of the timeline as well, and one more place we can look at language:

The small child at the center of the image is Rikiya, so young that he’s in schoolboy shorts for a meeting otherwise so formal that he’s been made to wear a tie. He’s, what, six to nine here, tops? And the adults speaking to him say that they’ve been in hiding for generations—代々, daidai, the kanji for generation followed by a kanji that just means, “See that kanji written right before me? Yeah, just read that one again.”

The original MLA was active for only a handful of years, and, per Chapter 218, they didn’t dissolve until Destro was captured. Thus, we can assume they have been in hiding since then, but not before then. With that in mind, this is another line that renders a father/son relationship impossible.

Remember, Chikara already had a child in the world circa his capture. If Rikiya were Chikara’s son, then Destro’s capture and his army’s subsequent dissolution could not have happened any farther back than nine months plus however old Rikiya was in this exact moment of his youth. Rikiya, who we see here as a child of less than ten.

Ten years in hiding doesn’t make one generation; it damn sure doesn’t make multiple ones.

Now, you could make theories about cryogenic statis that would explain this ludicrous discrepancy, sure. You could also theorize about e.g. artificial insemination,[5] or time stop quirks, or any number of other possibilities in the vast panoply the HeroAca world offers. The point is, though, that you don’t need to. There was, in the manga, no discrepancy that needed to be explained. It is only fanon misinterpretation and a glaring disinterest in the series’ villains from official sources that have presented this issue.

I’m praying that it’s all just a misunderstanding on the part of whoever maintains the website, and that the anime itself will render the relevant bits of dialogue correctly. Given the extreme cuts and alterations that My Villain Academia has been subjected to thus far, though, I’m sure you can appreciate my being concerned.

…So that’s the meat of it. The idea that Rikiya is Chikara’s son is wrong simply on the basis of what’s said in the text, and it’s doubly wrong on the basis of the timeline. There is, though, one other thing I think points towards Re-Destro being exactly the descendant he says he is, not a son playing down the connection out of humility or something. This one is a lot more headcanon-y, though, so I saved it for last.

MLA Social Dynamics

It’s quite simple. We have, in the MLA, a group of people that venerates Destro’s bloodline to an obviously unhealthy degree, putting up portraits of him wherever they can get away with it, tagging his successor with a “Re-” as if to invoke reincarnation or miraculous return, entirely willing to throw their lives away for what they think was his cause, and others’ lives if those others say anything too scathing about the words Destro wrote, quite as if they treat Destro’s memoir as some sort of holy writ.

They venerate Destro that much, and you’re trying to tell me that they wouldn’t just call a spade a spade and acknowledge RD as the son of their great leader? Come on.

Since long before I turned up the matsuei factoid in researching this piece, since long before Mr. Compress gave us such a helpful generational comparison, I’ve held the opinion that, given a group that holds their leaders in such high esteem, with such particular regard for bloodline, the only reason Rikiya does just call himself a descendant, rather than citing the specific term for what he is, is that the specific term is distant enough that it actually does sound more impressive to just say “descendant,” rather than something like, “great-great-great-grandson.” That kind of thing just begs the question, “What took you guys so long?” or, “You and how many other people, buddy?”

Mr. Compress may have the panache to carry off a line like that, but Rikiya’s a different story. If he had something so amazing up his sleeve as, “I am the son of the great Destro,” I have to think he’d just say it proudly, not fall back on the impressionistic vaguery of something like chi o tsugu mono. Even if I had no other evidence to work with, I’d think the same—all the evidence you need is right there in the character writing of who Rikiya and the MLA are and how they talk about the man whose dreams Re-Destro was raised to carry.

A closing note: I will allow that Rikiya is being overdramatic when he uses matsuei and its connotation of countless generations. There are a few other things we can use to trace the history of heroism—Ujiko’s age, and the 18-years-or-less periods that One For All was held by its pre-All Might bearers—and running those numbers leads me to believe that it is, in fact, entirely possible to count the number of generations between Rikiya and Chikara, and the number, while higher than one, is probably not all that high. Certainly matsuei is being more dramatic about it than is entirely warranted, hence the poetic flourish of the official translation’s, “His blood runs through these veins!” The theatricality only makes me fonder of him, however.

------------------------

FOOTNOTES

[1] It was changed and reverted on Re-Destro’s page at least twice before it finally stuck in January of this year. Chikara’s page took until July to be corrected, and it’s still wrong on various other subpages.

[2] Or your kids, if you have those. Only the last generation in the bloodline is the matsuei, but that’s a moving goalpost as long as the bloodline is still propagating.

[3] This summary of events combines what we know from both My Hero Academia proper and the Vigilantes spin-off, which I recommend to anyone who’s at all interested in finer-grained worldbuilding on Hero Society Japan than the main series makes time for.

[4] I personally headcanon him as 42.

[5] To which point I would refer back to the word kodomo, and note that that word choice indicates that Destro had a child in the world. Not a sperm sample kept in a freezer somewhere, waiting for the right would-be mother: an actual child. Some quick research on my part says that the farthest that term stretches is in using it to refer to yet-unborn children, fetuses still in the womb. Seeing as Japan doesn’t even allow inmates conjugal visits in real life, much less in a setting where villains are so dehumanized that Tartarus is an acceptable punishment for them, the line about Destro “having a child out in the world” takes us right back to a date of conception no later than Destro’s final night of freedom.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha meta #yotsubashi rikiya #yotsubashi chikara #re-destro #destro bnha #meta liberation army #my writing #i have thoughts on the anime's nonsense too but #hahawow #that's gonna take a little longer to get coherent #preview: it's not about capitalism #it's about fear

140 notes · View notes

hes-writer · 4 years

Text

drivers’ license

Summary: harry teaches y/n how to drive

Warnings: angst, a little bit of fluff

Word Count: 1805 words

A/N: the ‘blonde girl’ has no face claim.

Support me on Ko-Fi // Sign up for my Patreon //

MASTERLIST

_____

There were many milestones that Y/N strived to remember; things that she wanted to embed in her memory because each fleeting moment was a few seconds away from being lost. She was afraid that in a blink of an eye; everything would disappear, that she wouldn’t even remember what had been forgotten.

But she would never forget him. Harry. The best friend who taught her how to drive with the utmost patience, calm correction of her mistakes and gentle voice to ease her worry as soon as the shift went from ‘P’ to ‘D’. He was there with precise instruction, detailing each rule and advice that would help her acquire her drivers’ license. He was tolerant of her constant ability to doubt herself, always assuring Y/N that she could do it.

It was silly why Y/N was scared of driving. It was because it felt so grown up, so adult-like and it bought a sense of responsibility. It meant fully committing to adulthood. There was a shift that everything was changing. And by that, she meant everything.

It seemed like a distant memory now.

Y/N took the leap of faith to start learning how to drive, trusting him to teach her the ways. Harry was her light in a dark day. His smile was bright enough for her to admit that through the haze of her nervousness; it wasn’t just caused by her fear of handling and operating a vehicle.

It also had to do with the way Y/N’s stomach fluttered with butterflies when she had parked in an empty lot, Harry sitting on the passenger’s seat as they talked to each other about anything and everything their minds could conjure up at that very moment. No filter.

How Harry enthusiastically shared his excitement about Y/N’s newfound ability to drive to and fro from her apartment to his place. They would be able to go on drives on the coast with nostalgic songs blasting on the radio, screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs where no one would hear them. The wind sifting through his hair to which she commented on maybe getting it snipped; it was why Harry opted to not trust Y/N with scissors anymore after a close-call with the sharp tool. She didn’t know why he had decided to trust her with it in the first place--she was a clumsy one.

Yet Harry continued to spend each and every second of his free time with her, even when he was booked to the hilt with mandatory meetings and unplanned fan encounters, Y/N stood by his side as an unofficial photographer. The dopey grin on her face must’ve been permanent every time that she was around him. Sometimes she looked through the screen of the phone and wondered just how much she would break if Harry wasn’t around in her life and all she had to remember him by was the captured portrait of his kind aura leaking through the device; almost as if he was there right beside her because Y/N seemed to label her best memories with him around.

Harry was it for her. Even if her feelings were not mutual, Y/N would take being his closest friend over being a stranger because at least she was near him. Luckily, Harry returned her affection. Though, it was humiliating to vouch for a relationship that would have to go through troughs and trenches in order to be rendered successful. It seemed impossible with her stoic life compared to his fast-paced, always moving, always travelling situation.

Y/N was willing to work for it. If she were to make a list of things she wanted most, it would be the unconditional love from the one that meant the most to her. Harry was exactly what she wanted--what she needed. Y/N didn’t know what she did in her past life or even now that caused the universe to gift her with a presence as charming and graceful as his but she would do it every day if it meant coming home to his warm embrace.

But Harry wasn’t so keen on commitment. There was no denying that his thorough discourse of relationships hindered his ability to fully trust any future partners and Y/N understood that. The distance gets to peoples’ heads, even his, admittedly. Loneliness seeps through his fingers, directing his body to strangely familiar bodies. Ones whom he was not currently committed to. Wandering hands.

Despite that, Y/N knew that Harry was a good person. Some may call her a fool for giving him a chance but he truly was a genuine guy. She had seen it when he was coddled up, blankets bunched all the way to his chin, only showcasing his angelic face. The crease of his brows free from any worries. He was simply him. She had seen him when he was the most vulnerable.

Harry was a romantic person. He loved to love. He adored the concept of having someone behind him, beside him and in front of him at all times to catch him when he fell, to support him in any new journeys and to lead him when he was lost. Y/N could understand his shortcomings, aiming to better the other person instead of putting them down. She wanted a dialogic approach instead of having a conversation where all she pointed out was his bad qualities.

What she couldn’t comprehend was how easily he had lied to her.

She wasn’t asking for much; Y/N promised to wait for him until he was ready. Until his previous baggage was deemed easy enough to carry, or at least when Harry was able to talk about it without anointing skepticism to his actions. Though, Harry had blatantly disregarded her purity to be patient towards him. Basically, he had told her that he was not ready for a relationship yet here he was now, holding hands with another girl. The blonde woman had caused insecurities to sprout from deep within her since Harry kept citing her age and maturity, adding that she was ‘different’ from the rest as if he hadn’t mentioned it previously.

Y/N would ask herself from time to time; when a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

She compared it to the times’ Harry’s voice cracked in the middle of singing songs that embedded itself in her memory and the way his ears tinted a blush pink even under the night sky after Y/N quickly gave a glance in his direction. She reminisced about the times when he would explain any ideas he had about new songs, thoroughly immersing not only himself but her as well, in his art. He would sometimes stop midway as if lost in thought when really he was just mesmerized by the slope of her nose and the pucker of her lips.

He was so passionate. So indulged and fervent in making sure everything he did was one-hundred percent, authentically him. Harry spoke with grit when he was overly zealous and he tended with a soft voice when he felt vulnerable.

It was glaringly loud; Y/N could hear him everywhere she went. But now that he was gone—out of reach—did those conversations ever really happen? Was she even present when Harry shyly played a song he had been working on for her, singing stripped with just his raspy voice, serenading her with a tune describing how much gratitude he felt that she was present in his life. He appreciated her so much for accepting him even when the world criticized his every action. For being there when he seemingly felt lonely.

Life itself was funny to her.

Sometimes Y/N wondered how she could let herself be vulnerable with somebody else other than herself. It was plastered everywhere—love never lasts. Relationships come and go, people leave and never return, friends, drift apart and detaching from oneself was even possible. It was practically the motto of anyone searching for love—looking for a sense of comfort and belonging, yet she was practically crushed by the overwhelming reality that it may never happen.

She hated the way her heart longed for him to be near as if when he was too far away it ached in pain. Y/N disliked the feeling of being out of place because where she truly belonged was in his arms. Harry’s nose nuzzled at the top of her head, inhaling her scent as though it was the last time he would hold her—for a while at least.

And it really was because the next day he had left to catch a flight a mere continent away.

____

The night before was special to Y/N. Harry left with a promise of ‘forever’ and that he would return straight to her after his tour ends. It was a dainty promise but Y/N chose to believe him because it was Harry and he never strayed from his words.

He promised to return and Y/N had sworn to wait for him. They both agreed, after admitting their feelings the night before he left, that a long-distance relationship was not how either of them wanted to begin. Although their friendship had lasted years prior to finding out the bubbling flame between them, crossing the line as seamlessly as possible was the gateway to a healthy relationship.

Y/N could hardly wait for his return now that she was driving alone to where she needed to be. Harry was always at the back of her mind no matter how hard she tried to distract herself. He was attached to the episodic memory of Y/N successfully learning how to drive; that was something she couldn’t really forget.

Y/N unlocked the car doors, breathing deeply as soon as she was situated on the driver’s seat. The beeping of the car ringing in her ears until she was reminded to close the car door shut.

She blinked her lids tightly, feeling salty tears pooling at her waterline. It was a sad excuse of trying to not start sobbing right then and there but she was successful.

Starting the engine, Y/N sniffled as she adjusted her mirror, making sure that she could see through them before driving off. As she focused her eyes on the road, Harry’s voice repeated in her head.

She didn’t know where she was going. Y /N didn’t really have a destination to arrive to because her brain was filled with images of Harry and her. Kissing, hugging, looking at each other as if nobody else in the mattered; not even Y/N.

And it hurt a lot because she kept her promise of waiting for him to return but it seemed like he had no trouble filling the hole in his heart, unlike her.

He moved on.

_____

#harry styles one shot #harry styles imagine #harry styles x reader #harry styles writing #harry styles blurb #harry styles fan fic #harry styles angst

255 notes · View notes

kurowrites · 4 years

Note

Soulmate!au + fake dating +you confuse me.” OR “if you’re happy, then so am i.” because I couldn't decide lol. Love everything you write, like somehow your writing style is exactly to my taste, you know? So thank u for sharing your work with us.

They have reached terminal dumbassery, I’m sorry to say.

(Also, thank you!!!)

---

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying cried when he caught sight of Lan Zhan. He was quick to catch up to him, huffing and puffing with the exertion. “You haven’t found your soulmate yet, right?”

Lan Zhan looked at Wei Ying with a frown, wondering what the sudden question was really about. It was a rather personal question. Still, he dutifully answered in the affirmative. The answer was obvious, anyway. Lan Zhan did not have anyone he was particularly close with, other than his brother, and family rarely led to soulmate bonds. Not to mention that his brother already had a soulmate.

“Excellent,” Wei Ying breathed, and beamed up at him. “Wanna date me, then?”

Lan Zhan’s heart stood still for one moment, and then started beating impossibly faster at the words. Had Wei Ying noticed his feelings? Wei Ying hadn’t found his soulmate yet, either, and Lan Zhan had found himself quietly hoping…

“Not date date, of course!” Wei Ying was quick to add, immediately crushing Lan Zhan’s quiet hope. “I just need someone to play my lover and then break up with me in some kind of horrible way, so my family will finally get off my back about finding my soulmate. It’s such an outdated concept, too. Waiting for your soulmate. Mine is probably a hoard of cats, anyway, so there’s nothing much to look forward to.”

It hurt a little to hear Wei Ying talk like that. Lan Zhan had always hoped that he and Wei Ying would turn out to be soulmates, and that romantic hope had sustained him through his teenage years. But it had never turned out to be the case. He and Wei Ying were barely friends, and obviously not meant to be. Still, he thought, it was better if Wei Ying committed himself to a hoard of cats instead of waiting for his soulmate, who would probably turn out to be an abuser or some other kind of ghastly individual.

A hoard of cats and Lan Zhan as his friend sounded like a much, much better option.

But then, Wei Ying’s offer…

It was bad to accept it, underhanded probably, but it would be his one chance at dating Wei Ying. And even though it would be a fake relationship, Lan Zhan found himself wanting to know. How Wei Ying would be, as a partner. As a lover. As a soulmate.

That… that would be enough.

“Hn,” he said, therefore. “I will do it.”

Wei Ying looked at him with evident surprise on his face, as if he had never expected Lan Zhan to actually agree to his request.

A moment later, a big smile spread over his entire face.

“Lan Zhan!!” he cried. “You truly are the best!”

If Wei Ying truly thought that, Lan Zhan thought a little uncharitably, then Lan Zhan would be his soulmate. Alas, he was not.

Still, he accepted the offered hug from Wei Ying, who always was enthusiastic and far, far too tempting to refuse. He listened to Wei Ying’s excited rambling about the things they needed to plan to make it ‘realistic.’

He already regretted his decision. Because now, he wouldn’t have to dream up scenarios any longer. He would actually know how it was to be with Wei Ying. He would know, and he would inevitably lose what he had.

A suitable punishment, probably.

---

If Lan Zhan was honest, nothing much changed after they ‘got together.’ They talked about the same things and went to the same places they always did, only now they were holding hands while they were doing it. When they had a movie night, Wei Ying would cuddle into Lan Zhan’s side and laugh when Lan Zhan went all stiff because he got nervous whenever Wei Ying was in his vicinity. Sometimes, when they were in public, Wei Ying would even lean in and peck him on the lips.

Lan Zhan would never admit it, but it was the best, sweetest torture he had ever had. This was everything he had ever wanted, and he got to experience it, only all of it was fake.

It was a hell of his own making.

He wondered again and again how it could be that Wei Ying and he were not soulmates. Wei Ying was everything that he wanted. He could not imagine how anyone other than Wei Ying could be so exactly what he wanted. Any possible soulmate that came after this would just lose out against Wei Ying.

Which was also unfair, he felt. Towards his potential soulmate as well as towards Wei Ying. He was not required to like Lan Zhan back the same way as Lan Zhan liked him, after all. That was why he decided that after this all ended, there would be no one else. Even if he should one day meet his actual soulmate, he would have to let them down gently and give them another chance at happiness. Because for him, there was no one but Wei Ying, soulmate or not. There was no way he was going to involve another person into this.

When Wei Ying told Jiang Yanli that he was dating Lan Zhan, she was overjoyed by the news. She congratulated them both with tears in her eyes, saying that she was so happy that they both had found each other, and how romantic it was that they had been friends for so long before discovering that they were soulmates.

Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, threatened Lan Zhan physical harm if he were to hurt his ‘asshole of a brother.’ Not that Lan Zhan worried that he wouldn’t be able to take Jiang Cheng on, but he felt terribly guilty about the idea that he would inevitably ‘hurt’ Wei Ying once they ‘broke up.’ That was the last thing he wanted to do. Both break up with and hurt Wei Ying.

But it was all fake. The separation would come eventually.

The more people kept telling him what a good couple they made, the more it hurt. But no wanting of his would ever turn his idle daydreams into reality.

---

When it came, it still felt far too soon.

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying had been out all day, taking a walk in the botanical garden that was full of the most beautiful flowers of spring. They had bought ice cream (or rather, Lan Zhan had bought them ice cream after Wei Ying had pestered him about wanting to eat ice cream for too long) and ate it as they walked around the part hand in hand. All in all, it had been a wonderful day.

He had looked at Wei Ying and thought how much prettier he was than any of the flowers blooming at the wayside. He had been happy.

Which was why it came as a shock when Wei Ying suddenly turned towards him and smiled shakily.

“Lan Zhan. We should probably end this.”

Lan Zhan was brought back to earth with a heavy jolt.

This was it. This was the moment where he needed to say goodbye to Wei Ying.

And then the rest of his life would be the same: just him and the rabbits he was inevitably going to buy in order to combat his heartbreak.

Wei Ying still smiled up at him, shrugging a little helplessly.

“You must be pretty fed up with me by now,” he said. “And you probably want to go back looking for your actual soulmate.”

“There will be no one.”

Suddenly, it seemed very important to Lan Zhan that Wei Ying was aware of that.

Wei Ying looked up at him with big eyes.

“Lan Zhan?”

“There will be no soulmate. Not for me.”

“But, you haven’t-”

“Wei Ying. I have decided that there never will be a soulmate for me.”

Wei Ying was silent for a moment.

Then, with sudden speed and ferocity, he hit Lan Zhan in the chest.

“Goddammit, Lan Zhan, why are you so frustrating? Why would you rather be alone than with your soulmate? Why couldn’t it be me?”

He turned pale, evidently shocked at his own words. Without another word, he turned around and ran away, quick as a deer.

Lan Zhan stood there for far too long, trying to figure out what had just happened, and then ran after Wei Ying with all his might.

Wei Ying would not, could not slip through his fingers now. Even if he was as slippery as an eel when on the run.

When Lan Zhan finally caught him, Wei Ying let out a deep breath that almost sounded like a shudder. He refused to look at Lan Zhan.

“Why?” he asked with a small voice. “Can’t you let me suffer in peace?”

“I wanted it to be Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan found himself saying, desperately. “I always wanted it to be Wei Ying. There will be no one else because I have already decided.”

Wei Ying finally looked at him, his eyes full of unshed tears. And then he started to cry in big, ugly sobs.

“You dumbo,” he blubbered. “It’s always been only you. Just you. I just wanted to see how it is being Lan Zhan’s soulmate.”

Lan Zhan could not remember when exactly Wei Ying ended up in his arms. But it was good. Very good. And Lan Zhan was not going to let go a second time.

---

Two days later, Wei Ying showed him his soul mark. His real one, hidden among the many tattoos on his skin.

It was a little rabbit, perfectly rendered in black and white.

Exactly like the one that stared at him from his own reflection in the mirror sometimes.

#kuro writes #the untamed #wangxian #mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #unofficiallylost

541 notes · View notes

yan-genshin · 4 years

Note

Hi! May I request yan! Aether with s/o that is/was really in love with him? 💙

a/n: aha you now get to witness MY aether characterization. i play the game with lumine but i do love braid boy quite a bit!

warnings: general yandere themes, mentions of violence and blood

❥ aether

he doesn’t really know life outside of what he’d been doing for eons- traveling from world to world alongside his sister. that was all he’d done, all he’d wanted to do; and as he stands now, stranded in teyvat, stripped off his wings and powers, of his twin, aether needs some sort of pillar to lean onto

his darling knows this- knows that aether is an outlander, that he’s deeply hurt by his sister’s disappearance- so it’s easy to excuse his clinginess at first. even if he always seems to be eager to help and rather unshaken, he’s been through a lot: it’s ok to let him be a little possessive, isn’t it?

aether is greedy with how he takes his darling’s love. before, he’d never even thought about romantic affection; he’d been content to just travel the world next to lumine, fighting and exploring by her side. but now, aether seems to take and take and take all his darling has to offer- their attention, their time, their everything if they’ll let him. he doesn’t particularly know he’s being greedy, after all, it’s the first time he’s felt like this.

but just because he’s found love doesn’t mean he’s giving up on his sister. aether doesn’t see what the problem is on taking his beloved along with him; doesn’t see what’s so wrong with uprooting their entire life in the city, taking them along to the dangers of the wild, taking the warm bed they used to sleep on and exchanging it into cramped camping cots haphazardly set up in makeshift tents or humid caves.

it wouldn’t be too far from the truth to say he drags them along, but he doesn’t quite force them. they love him, they really do: enough so that when he asks them to please accompany him, saying he’s just headed to liyue, it won’t be that bad, they believe him even though they know aether has a tendency to run and fight any hilichurl camp he sees, know that he camps out in the wild just to hunt and explore old ruins on side roads nobody crosses anymore

on the second week of following aether, they begin to miss home. love can only take them so far- and it’s hard to justify the cold nights spent in aether’s shoddy camping cot as he holds them close, the weather far too frigid and yet the body heat being all too suffocating to be comfortable. it’s hard to justify the long walks when aether keeps deviating from the main road to explore and take on odd jobs and quests, hard to justify the horror of watching aether bring down almost unspeakable violence and gore upon monsters that nearly make them feel pity for the hilichurls he runs into. that last part is the scariest part, really; how ready and eager he is to unsheathe his sword and stab and dig into anything that crosses his path, how he turns and casually smiles or chats with them even covered in his enemies’ blood and carnage as paimon just laughs at him for getting his clothes dirty. they’re too far from any city to consider returning by themselves, knowing how dangerous the roads are. when they ask aether when they’ll be able to spend the night at an inn or at least somewhere in a town, he never seems to have a straight answer.

aether wants to show how well he can take care of them and protect them. he already lost someone he cared about; now, he seems almost too eager to cause carnage and bloodshed, as if to prove himself he can do anything to protect his darling. more twistedly, he wants his darling to watch- as he slashes at hilichurls and mitachurls, as he stabs into treasure hunters and fatui skirmishers. this is how much he cares for them, this is how he’ll protect them!

it always leaves just a sliver of fear in his darling’s mind, even when he’s making sure they’re never hurt. the question of ‘when can i go home’ grows less and less frequent as they notice aether becoming more and more disgruntled by it- the quiet whisper in the back of their mind bringing forth the image of aether bathed in his enemies’ blood with his sword in hand, asking if they really want to risk angering him?

perhaps in another time, they’d have laughed at the idea of aether hurting them. but after a couple of months of being forced to trudge along him as he continues his search, nothing seems impossible. he’s already been to liyue by now- been there and left, and of course they had to go with him. sometimes he visits mondstadt and spends a few nights at their place; and then it’s back on the road, no questions asked. the townspeople coo at how adorable it is the hero of mondstadt found a lover so dedicated to follow him on his adventures. sometimes they wonder if it’s truly still dedication making them follow, or something else

aether is like a cat at times. it’s been a while since he rented a room in an inn to rest, being used to roughing it out in the nature- but today he’s rented a room in wangshu inn after doing a favour for the owner and scoring a discount. paimon is off eating the meal that came for free with renting a room, leaving the outlander with his lover. he leans into them, and they stroke his hair- if he could purr, he’d surely be doing so, judging by how his eyes close and he snuggles closer. but their hand moves almost automatically, muscle memory of a time past when they’d look forward to snuggling with their lover. now when they look at aether, they can’t help but see him as they usually do: violent, covered in blood, holding little to no regard for others. the events of what happened earlier in the day keep them shell shocked: they’d run into a treasure hunter just relaxing, doing nothing wrong. and then the man had complimented their hair and aether had run him with his sword before he could finish speaking, blood sputtering from his mouth as he slouched forward. the outlander had then shaken the blood off his blade and turned to his darling, smiling as if nothing had happened.

aether is possessive. he doesn’t want anyone to look at his darling the way he does: it’s not so much fear of them being whisked away as much as it is an... almost childish jealousy. it ranges from downright violence to those he deems are crossing the line to just immaturely glaring and ignoring others he thinks are paying too much attention to his darling. he doesn’t justify his attitude. there’s no “i do it to protect you” or “i do it because it must be done” kind of talk. aether just does as he wants, always turning to his darling with his gentle smile even after committing horrible attrocities

out of the two twins, aether was the impulsive one. the one to jump the gun, the more talkative of the two (which isn’t much to say, seeing as both lumine and aether barely used words). he follows his gut instinct, letting himself be carried by his emotions. way back, lumine would be there to hold him back, be there to keep him on check, and he’d do the same for her, maintaining a balance. but now in teyvat there’s nobody to keep aether in check, everyone either hails him as a hero or doesn’t mind him much, and all he has is his darling to fill the void in his heart

he’s just... not going to let them go. in aether’s mind, he’s already formed a picture of the future where he reunites with lumine and takes his darling with him as he and his twin travel around worlds. he talks about it, sometimes- and it’s terrifying. he loves them, loves them too much, and it seems like he forgets that they have a life outside of his love for them

the fire crackles in the campsite as aether pokes at it with a stick, making sparks from the not-quite dry wood crackle. the smell of smoke and burning wood has long since stopped bothering them. it’s by no means a comfort- it makes them miss their cozy home, where the only smell of burning would come from the small fireplace and good hunter’s nonstop cooking- but they don’t cough anymore, they don’t squint their eyes in fear of smoke getting into them. as always, paimon fills in the silence and aether sometimes answers back with a quip or a remark- to him, this is as good as it gets, at least until he finds lumine. there’s a bruise on their wrist from when aether tugged on it harshly to get them to duck and avoid a ruin guard’s misiles, and it makes them miss home even more. but there’s no point in asking him when they can go home: by now they know it’s either never or until a monster, a fatui or even an archon strikes him down. he’ll never let them go- if he wants to keep them by force he can, and they look at his sword resting by the fire, cleaned up after being stained by blood time and time again. sometimes they wish he had a vision they could shatter to render him a bit less powerful, to make it so he couldn’t keep going, and it’s a horribly selfish wish to have, but they’re allowed to be a little bit selfish in their fantasies, right? after all, aether has already taken their life from them, and he’s not handing it back.

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin impact #aether genshin impact #yandere tw #blood tw

388 notes · View notes

guqin-and-flute · 3 years

Text

[I am once again giving you an unrelated fanfic. Have some Modern married Xiyao.

Potential CW: poor anger coping skills?, very brief mention of suicidal ideation in internal dialogue. It's an errant thought and he doesn't actually mean it]

Jin Guangyao is upset. What's more upsetting is that he doesn't know why he's upset--this lack of information rankles him more than the feeling. He's used to feeling badly. That's how life is. But without a name, there is nowhere to file it away neatly. It is easier to ignore the sharp sting of a newly noticed cut than this fucking awful malaise that has apparently decided to settle over him with no rhyme or reason like he's some stupid idiot in an artsy French film, slowly choking down filtered cigarettes on some rusty balcony against a sunset or something.

That's not what he does. He is efficient. He is useful. And when he is like this, he is not.

And he still doesn't know why. And the fact that he cannot categorize and escape this has the ennui sliding slowly into a slow boil of tooth grinding fury.

Had it been the morning traffic? The fact that the library had emailed to inform him of a delay on his inter-library loan? The fact that his overpriced coffee was just a tiny bit burnt? The fact that Zixuan had taken a sick day today and so had not brought the soup his wife had promised Jin Guangyao for lunch? It shouldn't be, because these are all so horrifyingly trivial.

He has a tension headache beginning to string itself along his temples. He hates that the receptionist has a perky goodbye ready. He hates that the sun is shining so brightly. Then, he hates that the shadows of the clouds when they pass make things look grungy and dull. He hates that there is a flap of leather from his steering wheel that has peeled up in the back from his picking and he can feel it rubbing against his index finger as he stares, white knuckled and unblinking into the brake lights ahead of him as this bubbling pique crescendos as slowly as one of Xichen's beloved classical music pieces.

In fact, one is playing on the radio, softly, just within hearing range. The quiet, shrill edge of violins makes him want to kill something. Maybe himself. There's a bridge coming up in half a mile. He, very sanely, presses the button on the dash that turns it off instead of doing any of those things. The thought of Xichen has a voice of reason suggesting that he might meditate, while trapped here, 10 minutes from home.

Instead, he jabs a button on his fancy, stupid steering wheel with this thumb. An attentive computer noise beeps. The sudden noise in the relative silence of the car makes him dig his nails into the leather. "Text A-Huan," he snaps.

"Okay! What would you like the message to be?"

Jin Guangyao is going to find whoever programmed this faux-friendly robot voice and make them watch him drown their entire family in a toilet. "I. Hate. Everything."

Beep. "Okay! Your message reads; 'I hate everything'. Send?"

"Yes, send," he seethes before it can fully finish.

There is no plan to this. None at all. He just needs something real to sink his metaphorical teeth into. A reasonable anchor to reality to tell him whether or not he's being stupid and terrible for no reason at all.

Even though he already knows that he is.

The response returns in 43 seconds. Jin Guangyao had been counting. The cheery beep sounds just as the very stale green light turns yellow ahead. He presses the gas. "One message from A-Huan."

The light blinks red while he is only 1/4th of the way through the intersection. The lead car of the adjacent left turners beeps and he bares his teeth at her because he isn't fucking invisible, he's in a high profile gold Lexus and she had definitely seen him fucking coming. He stabs the button that makes the car read him the message.

"'Oh no. Bad day? Want to call? Blue heart emoji'," the female robot voice chirps in a butchery of his husbands words and no, no, he does not, because, at this point, it would simply be a minute long sustained scream of rage over literally nothing at all. He should have kept it to himself and found a quiet place to throw rocks at a wall or something until he wasn't such a repellant time bomb.

He does not reply because if he hears that robot voice again, he's going to commit vehicular homicide. And being arrested would not calm him down.

Finally, traffic parts and he pulls into his driveway--he notices how the bush on the side of the house's branches are creeping up to scrape the window of the kitchen and makes a mental note to send a curt text to the landscaper about his pruning habits. Why are they paying him several hundred dollars a month to let a stupid bush get unruly enough to damage the paint on his window trim?

When he slams his door shut, he hears a loud CLACK that announces that he has just closed his seatbelt in the door and lost the last tenuous thread of his temper. Heaving the door back, he plants his other hand up on the black plastic next to the window and smashes it shut again with all of his strength. Repeatedly. CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK--Chunk.

Breath hissing between his teeth, he jerks his suit jacket straight, loosens his tie and stalks to the house. The garage door groans to life behind him. Xichen had been watching.

Perfect.

He's nowhere to be seen when Jin Guangyao slams through the backdoor like a vicious thundercloud, which is good and probably intentional, because it allows him to wrestle off his shoes, jacket, and tie in privacy. This does nothing to release any pressure, because it must be intentional wrestling--controlled and confined so he doesn't pop off a button or rip a seam or scuff the shining black leather. Now he's seething in their immaculate, state of the art kitchen, hating how the cold tile feels against his black dress socks and the fact that it smells like tea. Which is stupid. Because he likes tea. But not right now.

Stop being a piece of shit, he snarls at himself. You've already probably fucked up the car and Xichen doesn't deserve this. He balls up his fists so tightly that the bright pain from his nails sinking into his palms leaks up his arms. Be better.

He has no idea how to do that because he has no idea what is wrong.

Reason says to steer clear of Xichen until he can get a hold of himself and behave like a fucking adult. And in the early days of their relationship, he would have. He had. Whenever he got like this, he would shut down or not have inflicted himself on Xichen at all with a smooth lie, and no amount of prying would get anything useful out of him because he would not be a bother. There had been Talks. Long, extensive Talks about trust and love and wanting to take care of him. He had even believed some of them. That's how they can be married, now, years later--Xichen knowing just how close he is to this at all times. How thin his veneer of manners and pleasantries actually is. (He can't truly know, though, can he. If he knew how much none of it makes sense, there is no possible way someone as kind and intelligent as him would choose to stay.)

Xichen would purse his lips if he said this out loud; somewhere between exasperation and sad fondness. Jin Guangyao doesn't tell him, anymore. Most of the time because he doesn't actually think this.

This is not most of the time.

Yes, reason says that he should suck it up and become a human being before burdening Xichen.

But his husband has long, cool hands and soft eyes and a brilliant mind that can solve any problem just by holding it and maybe he just wants to be small and angry and ugly and pathetic and selfish in the comfort of his own home while someone reminds him that there have been, in fact, good things that have happened in his life and he had been, at one time, happy--believe it or not.

And if nothing else, it compounds his streak of bad decisions.

The smell of tea intensifies when he reaches their room. The curtains are drawn. It renders the deep, dusty blues of the bed spread and the armchair black and the aged gold accent pieces muted, except for where the warm light pouring from their open bathroom door paints them bright again. Xichen sits on the edge of their bed in the soft, expensive loungewear Jin Guangyao got him for his birthday last year, one ankle on his knee, watching him with eyes just as soft as he had been expecting. A mug of tea is tucked into his hand and a plate with round, lumpy shapes sits by his hip. Beside that lays spread out the absurdly oversized and absurdly soft heather gray shirt that Nie Huaisang had gifted to him as a joke but was, in fact, one of Jin Guangyao's guilty pleasure sleep shirts.

With his perfect voice and his perfect logic and his perfect way of being the only good thing on this entire, worthless planet, his husband says, "I think you need to scream into this pillow."

'This pillow' is, in fact, one of theirs, dark blue with a thread count that was higher than any savings he ever had in college, perched on a bundle of blankets that is the perfect size to throw himself upon like a sulking romance heroine. He hates it. Hates that this is known, that this might help.

So he fucking does it. He deliberately stalks around the bed, climbs up, smashes his face into the pillow and screams as loudly as he can. With every single ounce of rage in his body, curling him up like the shriveling of a raisin in fast forward, like the curling of a scorpion tail, like throwing up, wringing every last scant molecule of oxygen out of his lungs.

When the sound peters out and he has to drag in another breath, he curls tighter, the claws of his hands reaching over the top of the pillow to fist in his hair. It presses the plush of it firmer over his face and bites it until his teeth ring with dull pain, and his jaw aches and his head throbs and his eyes sting. His scalp burns from the pull on his hair and his throat is raw and tight.

Tearing himself away, finally, he gasps in a gulp of cooler air. Xichen has turned so he is now cross-legged at the foot of the bed, watching him with a mix of calm and understanding sympathy. "Lay down?"

There is a ragged, hollow hole in him that still has scraps of rage clinging to it like disgusting lichen--but the visceral, all consuming hate seems to have been absorbed by his pillow. So he lets himself roll sideways, eyes closing. Xichen gets off the bed--Jin Guangyao assumes, wearily, that he's putting down the tea mug and hopes that he uses a coaster--and then returns by knee walking up the bed to his side. Then, those cool hands he had been hoping for pick open the tiny hard buttons of his shirt. Each pop releases a a tension across his skin and he feels that he can breathe easier with every one.

Jin Guangyao can hear him breathing, slow and measured, through his nose and thinks that it's probably the most comforting sound that he's ever heard in his entire life--now that he's willing to be comforted. Able to be. The reminder of Xichen's continued existence is the only sound he will ever need to be calm again.

The button up is abandoned in favor of undoing his belt--breath, more of it, infiltrating him deeper and deeper--popping the button on his slacks, tugging them down his legs in a warm slide. The quiet clink of it being tossed somewhere. A closing quiet as Xichen leans in and presses his smooth lips to his forehead. Then the corner of his eyebrow. Then the bridge of his nose. Different points and planes of his face like he is unlocking a combination that will open him up and allow him to purge the rest of the awfulness that lingers.

What it mostly is is exhaustion, now. "A-Huan," he groans--whines. Ugh.

Before disgust at himself can settle in, his husband takes this as the invitation for what it is and kisses his mouth, gentle and slow. Jin Guangyao moves his mouth back, halfheartedly, mostly parting his lips to allow him access to do whatever. But all he does is kiss him chastely. Lovingly. He tastes like green tea. Then, Xichen murmurs against his lips, "Would you like a bath?"

He vents a negating grunt, lolling his head back and forth. Baths are so much work. Even when Xichen offered to wash his hair or read to him or even join him, you still had to keep it hot, you had to endure cold when you left, get yourself dry. Too much change, too much sensation and movement.

He should be shaking himself awake. He should be apologizing for his terrible, pointless mood. He should be trying to kiss him back, love him back, pay him back. Thank him.

Xichen merely lifts his hands and presses the heels of his palms into the hinges at Jin Guangyao's jaw, inexorably grinding the tension out of them. Jin Guangyao allows himself to melt. When those cool fingertips slide into his hair, he lets them tug him upright, so Xichen can slide off his button up and slip him out of his undershirt. He shivers against the chill of the bedroom air, but he doesn't feel a surge of utter hatred for the sensations so, well, that's something. In no time, Xichen has coaxed him into the oversized shirt, removed his socks and bundled him up against the padded headboard, tucked into Xichen's side.

Jin Guangyao allows this. He allows himself to allow the blanket to be tugged up over his bare legs, Xichen to tuck the warm mug of steaming mint tea into his hands, and wind his fingers through his hair. He closes his eyes and takes in a deep, shuddering breath before sighing it all out. Xichen's fingers rub soothing circles across his sore scalp.

"Open?"

He cracks one eye to see a cookie hovering at mouth level. It's too dim in the room to properly tell what kind it is, but because Xichen has been perfect in literally every other way, he simply obeys and bites down. Browned butter and sea salt and semi-sweet chocolate ooze across his tongue and the instant spike of sugar satisfaction warms his chest. Jin Guangyao chews with utter contentment, swallows, and opens his mouth again.

"Good?" Xichen's amused voice vibrates warmly through his chest as he indulgently feeds him another bite.

"Mm. Very. Did you make them?"

"I did, earlier today. I just got lucky with the timing." His nails scrape oh so gently across his scalp. "How are you doing?"

Instead of answering, Jin Guangyao blinks up at him and his sweet, kind, ridiculously gorgeous face that is graced by a light smile and a gold edge light from the bathroom.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"Being terrible."

"You're never terrible."

"I was today. I think I fucked up the car."

Xichen chuckles, smile crimping to a knowing press. "I saw. It won't be a big deal. We'll deal with it later."

"...Thank you."

"Of course, A-Yao. Do you still hate everything?"

"Mm-nn." He snuggles down deeper against his ribs, looping an arm around Xichen's warm waist. He has the best husband in his arms, his dark-sweet scent is in his nose, chocolate on his tongue, and 1000 count sheets against his skin.

What is there to hate?

#I was in an exceptionally bad mood #so therefore I projected it onto JGY and made Xichen make it better #because that's what writers DO #There is no plot at all except my own journey of being in a better mood. I am now. But it is also 4:20 am. Oh well. You do what you can.#my stuff #my fic #xiyao #lxc #jgy #text #xiyao fanfic #completely unedited because that's how it goes #it's an errant thought and he doesn't mean it #brief suicide mention

140 notes · View notes