#ship: green ambitions

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 10: Nobody Likes You, Everyone Left You]

A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, but Maggie Sundays are back, besties!!! And we have a new poll! Be sure to check it out AFTER you finish Chapter 10 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title and chapter title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Here’s how it happens.

Let’s say you’re on a subway, or at a bus stop, or walking in or out of a grocery store, maybe fumbling with your purse or corralling small children, or talking on the phone, or wondering how you’re going to make rent, or trying not to drop one of your shopping bags, and out of nowhere some stranger lurches over and grabs you. They are filthy and noxious and moaning, and you assume they are insane, or on hard drugs, or maybe both. Your fellow upstanding citizens rush to your aid and the assailant is apprehended and carted off, unbeknownst to you surely to infect many more blithely unaware victims.

Maybe you notice that you were bitten, even just barely, even just a scrape of the teeth hard enough to scratch the skin; maybe you don’t. If you do notice and you seek medical attention, the best a doctor will offer you is disinfectant and antibiotics, maybe a rabies shot if they’re extra ambitions. Perhaps you have too much on your plate already without a detour to the doctor’s office (or perhaps you don’t have medical insurance), and you opt for at-home remedies, a vigorous scrub with hydrogen peroxide and a large rectangular Band-Aid slapped on top. Of course, none of this will do you any good. It was over the moment a drop of zombie saliva slipped painlessly into your bloodstream and began to replicate there like an invasive species, like an insurgent force. It only takes once.

You go home, and maybe when you start to feel really bad you call an ambulance and go to the hospital, and when you turn you bite anyone you can get your claws on there. Maybe you die at home and then attack your partner, your children, your parents, your roommates; maybe this new version of yourself ends up chewing bits of gristle off the bones of your dog or cat or ferret. And if any of your victims manage to escape once you’ve gotten a taste of them—no matter how fleetingly, no matter how trivially—they are sure to die in agony and reanimate too, and to pass along this plague you’ve gifted them, the bloodiest game of telephone.

Now millions are getting sick, fevers, headaches, purging, bleeding, but where do people go when they need a doctor? The hospitals are overrun, the clinics are swarmed, and doctors and nurses are falling ill too. There are unimaginable reports of the carnage. There is censorship to smother the panic. There are public figures vanishing from sight. There are zombies-in-progress boarding planes, checking into hotels, tottering onto cruise ships with armfuls of luggage, sweating through their bedsheets in crowded military barracks, silently ticking timebombs as the world as everyone knows it hurtles towards its end.

You would be amazed what people can refuse to believe. Once you believe something, that makes it real.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are no shovels, so Cregan tills the earth with his axe and then you dig with your hands. There are no headstones, so Rhaena finds a large sand-colored rock and writes on it with a jagged piece of slate: Baela and Briar, Summer 2024. Then she hesitates, the slate hovering in afternoon air, amber sunlight and eighty degrees, dust thick in the wind. She wants to say more. There needs to be more. How can two lives end with five words? At last Rhaena adds: Mother and child who perished en route to California. They were loved. They mattered.

“That’s good, Rhaena,” Luke tells her, voice gentle, hands on her shoulders. She stares at the grave for a while, and you don’t have time to waste; the bear could return, there might be wolves or mountain lions, eventually the sun will set and you will be stranded in an infinite darkness like the ocean at night. But Aemond waits until Rhaena is ready. She tucks the shard of shale into her backpack, and then you are fleeing once again: from this day, from this world.

You hike back to I-80 and walk west towards the next ranch. All of you are here in south-central Wyoming, and yet none of you are: you are in the earth with Baela, you are back in Nebraska where Jace died, you are in Ohio where he was swept away by a river, you are in Pennsylvania where you and Rio climbed down from a transmission tower, you are in your lives before the world ended: Saratoga Springs, Boston, cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a part of Kentucky called the Wildlands. Aegon is limping along on his own and shoving Rio away each time he tries to pick him up.

“Stop,” Aegon says, wincing and exhausted, his bandages coated with dust.

“Come on, Honey Bun. You’re going to rip your foot open—”

“Stop it!” Aegon demands. “I’m not going to slow you down anymore! I’m not going to be a burden!”

There is a sound you don’t immediately recognize: a rumbling, a squealing. A car is pulling up alongside you. Instinctively, you unholster one of your M9s and raise it as you turn.

“No, no, no, we’re cool!” a woman says, showing you both of her hands. She is around fifty and driving a Subaru Outback; there is a man in the passenger’s seat, perhaps her husband, and two wide-eyed, hoodie-swathed teenagers in the backseat. “Are you…are you guys okay?”

All of you stare blankly at her: shellshocked, distraught, covered in dirt and blood. “Yeah,” Daeron says eventually.

The woman peers around, east, west. “Do you have a car or something?”

“We have a Tahoe,” Cregan says. “It’s out of gas.”

“We have a few cans in the trunk,” the Subaru woman replies. “I can give you one, five gallons. That will get you to Rock Springs, and you should be able to find more supplies there. We came through that way, it wasn’t too bad.” And then, before anybody can ask if she’s serious, the woman steps out of the car and opens the hatchback. She lifts out a red can and hands it to Rio, who is standing the closest.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, astonished.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell the woman, meaning the fact that you were prepared to shoot her.

Rhaena adds: “We’ve had some…bad experiences.”

The Subaru woman smiles. “Haven’t we all. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast,” Aemond answers quickly: vague, guarded, inviting no further disclosures.

She nods; she can’t trust you, and you can’t trust her, and everyone agrees, an unspoken acknowledgement of what the world is like now. “Well, you don’t want to go anywhere near Salt Lake City.”

“But that’s the only direct route,” Aegon says, crestfallen.

“I know.” The Subaru woman is sympathetic. “And it’s going to burn a hell of a lot of gas and time to drive all the way around, but you have to. There are tens of thousands of zombies, and a lot of people are trapped there without fuel. I’m telling you, if someone sees you driving by in a working vehicle, they’ll try to put a bullet in your head so they can take it. So don’t give them the opportunity.”

“Okay,” Aegon says glumly, already pulling his map out of the pocket of his khaki shorts to plot a new course.

“Stay far away from Chicago,” Rio offers the Subaru woman in return. “And any nuclear power plants.”

“We’re headed south,” she says, then grins. “I’ve got a sister in eastern Tennessee. We’re going to learn how to fish and cook moonshine and make clothes out of deer hide, and live up in the mountains where nobody will ever bother us.”

People glance at you, the resident Appalachian; and you remember the crackling of woodstoves, flecks of ice in the creek, kicking up snow as you ran through the woods, following tracks of deer and opossums and raccoons. “It’s a beautiful place. I think you’ll like it.”

Rhaena asks the Subaru woman: “Is there anything we can do for you? To thank you for the gas?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take from a bunch of bloodied people who are stranded on the side of the interstate.” But her eyes catch on the pistol in your hand and stay there, envious, longing. You have another, so you give it to her.

“The safety is on. There are only nine bullets left, unfortunately.”

“That’s nine more than I had before,” the Subaru woman says as she takes the U.S. Navy’s standard-issue Beretta. Then she says to everyone: “Good luck.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” Cregan replies. The Subaru woman gets back into her car and disappears eastbound with her family. The nine of you that are left—ten, if you count Ice—trek back to the Tahoe, where Rio pours five gallons of combustible liquid gold into the gas tank.

Rhaena climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The rust-red Tahoe growls to life, the engine idling. Then she rests her arms on the steering wheel and breaks down sobbing. In the passenger’s seat, Aegon looks up from his map—which he is annotating with a glittery green gel pen—to gaze at her with shining, wounded eyes. After some hesitation, he extends a hand to hold one of hers. From the seat behind Rhaena, Luke is rubbing her shoulders and murmuring words you can’t hear.

Aemond says softly: “Rhaena, you can take some time if you need it.”

“No,” she insists, her voice quivering but determined. “We can’t wait. We have to get as far as we can before dark.” She shifts the Tahoe into drive, guides it onto I-80, and speeds west towards Rock Springs and the Utah border.

Rio is saying something to you, but at first you can’t grasp it. Helaena is scratching Ice’s ears as the massive grey wolfdog lies sprawled across her lap. Daeron is sniffling and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his orange t-shirt. Cregan is talking to Aemond about needing to find an auto shop so he can get supplies to change the Tahoe’s oil and filter. One of Aegon’s mixtapes whirls in the CD player:

“My face above the water

My feet can’t touch the ground, touch the ground

And it feels like I can see the sands on the horizon

Every time you are not around…”

You are watching Aemond, your heartbeat growing loud in your ears. He won’t look at you at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the sun begins to set, you find a vacant house on the outskirts of Coalville, Utah overlooking the Echo Reservoir. You wash away the remnants of Wyoming in the cool blue water, dried blood and caked-on dirt, hopes eclipsed by horror. Dinner is soup spooned out of cans from the pantry—Dinty Moore beef stew, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle—and caffeine-free sodas, Sprite and Fanta and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Then Rhaena and Luke go straight to bed, and Helaena scuttles through the house with a flashlight to search for clothes, making each person a separate pile on the dining room table: large flannel shirts for Cregan, pastel-colored polos for Aegon. Aemond and Cregan are outside on the front porch, Daeron is carving sticks into arrows on the kitchen floor, Aegon has been passed out in one of the children’s bedrooms since Aemond debrided his burns again and dosed him with the last of the Vicodin. Fortunately, Helaena found a translucent orange prescription bottle of Tramadol in the upstairs bathroom, so Aegon won’t have to suffer too much tomorrow.

Rio tosses and turns on the living room couch. You know what’s wrong, but you have to wait for him to say it. You stay with him, kneeling on the beige carpet in the murky artificial luminance of Rio’s Moonbeam flashlight, threading your fingertips through his dark curls. And then at last Rio asks something that you know must have crossed his mind a thousand times since you left Saratoga Springs, but he’s never voiced aloud: “What if Sophie and the baby are dead?”

“They’re not.”

“But you don’t know, nobody knows—”

“Bryan, they’re not dead,” you say, and he is listening.

“I joined the Navy for Sophie.” And of course, you’ve heard this before. “I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t commit to anything, not work, not school, not a future with her, so she dumped me. And I decided I was going to get her back by proving I could make commitments after all. I could sign my life away for five years, and come out of it as someone who would be a good husband and father. And now…what if by enlisting and being so far away when everything happened, I abandoned her? What if…what if she’s gone, and she died terrified and in pain and alone, and I’m the reason why?”

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.”

“Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

“I believe they’re still alive.”

And Rio looks at you, wanting desperately to be convinced. “Why?”

You’ve never believed that you are someone who knows the right things to say; but you have to try. “If your parents’ community in Odessa is like you’ve always described it to me, I can’t think of a better place for someone to hide from all the disorder and the violence. It’s remote, but there’s support from other families who are living the same way. People have gardens, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, enough canned food to live on for years, homemade clothes and systems to collect rainwater. There are women who’ve had five homebirths and men who’ve built houses with their own hands. And the people in Odessa have guns and know how to use them. I think when you told Sophie to go there, you saved her life. And now she and the baby are both waiting for you to come home.”

“We’ve crossed this country by raiding dead people’s homes.”

“Yes. And we’ve seen plenty of living ones too.”

Rio takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling; and now he is calmer. “Okay,” he says, grabbing your hand where it rests on his head and smacking a noisy kiss onto your knuckles. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I think I’m done freaking out for tonight.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Try to sleep.”

Obediently, Rio closes his eyes, and within five minutes he’s snoring.

You rise and open the door to the front porch, thinking of what you’re going to tell Aemond when he is low, distracted, wary: You did everything you could, Aemond. It’s not your fault. It’s this world, it’s poison, it’s cursed, and you can’t turn back the clock to when it wasn’t. You’re just one man. But you can try to save the people who are left.

Yet Aemond does not speak to you, doesn’t even notice you; when you peek outside you are on his blind side, and he is deep in conversation with Cregan as they keep watch in the moonlight.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too, man,” Cregan is saying. “A mansion by the ocean sounds nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but that ain’t me. I don’t see myself somewhere like that forever. Hell, I’ve never even seen the ocean, and to be honest I never really cared to. But a community of folks who are living off the land out in the woods? Those are my kind of people, that’s a place I could be useful…”

You retreat back inside the house, flashlights and shadows, doubts and fears. You stand there in the quiet for a while, then go to Aegon’s bedroom, where he is awake now and snuggling with Ice in a child’s bed shaped like a red racecar, listening to his pink Sony Walkman—Ava, the gleaming rhinestones proclaim—through one earbud.

Aegon coos as he ruffles the dog’s shaggy grey coat: “You’re so sweet, Blue Raspberry Icee. You were always my favorite flavor. Do you miss 7-Elevens too? Wrinkled old hot dogs and taquitos on rollers, drenching tortilla chips with the nacho cheese and chili dispenser? Did you guys even have 7-Elevens in Iowa? No offense, but your home state kind of sucks. It’s just fields and barns and whatever. You would have loved Boston. You could have fetched my golf balls when they rolled into ponds.”

Then he sings along to the song he’s listening to, effortlessly melodic but so softly you can barely hear him:

“You really had me going, wishing on a star

But the black holes that surround you are heavier by far

I believed in your confusion, you were so completely torn…”

Aegon spots you in the doorway. He smiles, then turns serious when he gets a good look at your face. “You okay, Mint Chocolate Chip?”

He feels like the only person you can say this to. You confess in a weak, hoarse whisper: “I hate this world.”

Aegon offers you the other earbud. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” you say to Rhaena as Rio and Luke rummage around inside the Shell gas station for food, drinks, batteries, medicine. You know they’re fine; you’ve already cleared the store, and you can hear them in there laughing. Rio is telling Luke about the bizarre Thanksgiving dinner you once had in Chinhae, South Korea: duck instead of turkey, fried rice with pears and squash instead of stuffing, candied sweet potatoes for dessert, a choir of solemn schoolchildren brought in to sing—for reasons you will never understand—Africa by Toto. You take your remaining M9 out of its holster. “Target practice.”

“Really?” Rhaena asks excitedly. She volunteered to stay back at the little blue mobile home with Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena—only a mile away—but you knew she needed a distraction. Truthfully, you do too. Aemond is in the Tahoe somewhere searching for gas with Cregan, a strange new alliance. He still hasn’t really spoken to you. You are trying to give him what he needs, but you don’t understand what that is.

It took all of yesterday to navigate around Salt Lake City, stopping every few hours to scrounge for gas, gallons siphoned piecemeal from cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats on trailers, four-wheelers left forgotten in garages and backyards. It was after nightfall when you rolled into Battle Mountain, Nevada, a gold mining town in what is known as the Cowboy Corridor, beginning at West Wendover just over the Utah border and ending in Reno. Today supplies must be replenished; tomorrow I-80 will take you to Winnemucca, where U.S. Route 95 branches off north towards Oregon while remaining on I-80 leads southwest through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into the Bay Area of California. A decision needs to be made, which means Aemond will have to talk to you tonight. You’re relieved. You don’t want to have to be nervous and watchful with him, studying every inflection of his voice, reading some dire premonition in each line that creases his face. You’ve spent enough of your life that way already.

Battle Mountain is cloudless and hot and sandy, dry shrubs and gnarled mesquite trees, flat secretless earth. Staggering towards the Shell are three zombies, all dressed in faded blue uniforms like a mechanic’s or a miner’s. You hand Rhaena your M9.

“How many bullets do you have left?” she says, still a bit giddy.

“Fifteen. And you can have five of them.”

She raises the pistol and closes one eye. “I’m going to miss.”

“Well you’re not going to hit anything if you don’t turn off the safety.”

Rhaena giggles. “Oh, right. Whoops.” She clicks the tiny lever, then takes aim again.

“Line up your sights. Front looks like an I, back looks like a U. Put the I in the center of the U, and keep looking at that front sight. That’s where your bullet is going. Don’t blink when you fire. Don’t be scared of the recoil, that’s not your problem, your priority is getting the shot. Your arms are a little stiff…yeah, perfect, nice and limber. The recoil won’t hurt so much that way. Don’t try to fight it, just accept that it’s going to happen. If you’re all tensed up because you’re anxious about the recoil, it’ll throw off your aim, so forget about it.”

“Okay,” Rhaena says. “I am actively attempting to forget.”

“Remember, try not to blink.”

“Don’t tense up. Don’t blink.” A few seconds pass, and she pulls the trigger. There is a spray of dark curdled blood from one of the zombie’s collarbone, but it’s still stumbling towards the Shell. “Damn,” Rhaena says defeatedly, then tries to pass the M9 back to you.

“What are you doing? You have four more shots.”

“But I’m going to miss. I’m going to waste them.”

“Practice isn’t wasteful. You have to know how to do this in case something happens to me.”

“You do it,” Rhaena insists. “I’m terrible.”

“Is it alright if I help you?”

“Yeah,” she says, her doe-like eyes brightening. “Okay. Totally.”

“Go ahead and aim.”

She raises the pistol and peers through the sights. You stand behind Rhaena, place your hands lightly over hers, adjust her angle just barely. When she fires—she’s still tensing up just before she pulls the trigger, a common mistake—you hold the M9 steady. The bullet explodes through the same zombie’s rot-soft skull and the corpse tumbles facedown into the dust.

Rhaena gasps, exhilarated, triumphant.

“No celebrating yet. There are two more.”

“Right.” Very businesslike, she lines up the next shot. You provide your slight adjustments; a second zombie receives a lethal dose of lead.

“Want to do the last one on your own?” The third zombie is quite close now, maybe ten yards. It should be an easy kill.

“Okay…but if I miss, you have to save me.”

“Obviously.”

All on her own, Rhaena aims and pulls the trigger. She hits the zombie near the top of its head; an inch higher, and it would be functionally unharmed. But the corpse’s skull snaps back and its blood and brains spill out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and it is of no further danger to anyone. It is carrion for the scavengers: raccoons, foxes, condors, vultures, crows.

“And with one of your allocated bullets to spare,” you say with a smile, accepting the M9 when Rhaena surrenders it. “Good progress.”

“That felt great,” she admits, perhaps a little dazed.

You know what she means. “It’s nice to have some control over what happens in your life.”

Luke is saying to Rio as they reappear from inside the Shell: “Maybe those Korean children were singing Africa because they knew your unit had been in Djibouti. Maybe they thought you were homesick for it or something.”

“Oh my God, you know what, kid? You might be right. I never even thought of that.”

“Find anything?” you ask.

Rio shrugs, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “A few bags of trail mix, a box of Band-Aids, some Life Savers, cans of Arizona tea. Oh, and Marlboro Golds for Honey Bun.”

“You shouldn’t be encouraging Aegon to smoke. It’s bad for him.”

“Give him a break, he’s sad and crispy.”

You can’t think of a rebuttal. The four of you walk back to the mobile home.

In the small patch of parched dirt that serves as the driveway, Cregan is—with great difficulty—shimmying out from beneath the Tahoe. Then he reaches back under to grab a pan of old motor oil. “Just about done here,” he announces. “Gotta put the fresh oil in and then we’re set for another 5,000 miles.”

You glance around. Ice is panting in the narrow aisle of shade of a mesquite tree. Aegon is napping on the tiny front porch, sprawled on his back and snoring, his plastic neon green sunglasses shielding his eyes; Helaena is surrounded by a jumble of empty cans and stirring a pot of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs as she heats it over a fire. She begins dishing out bowlfuls of it. Rio, Rhaena, and Luke all graciously accept their dinner.

“Did you guys find gas?” you say to Cregan.

“Not much. A few gallons.”

“Where’s Aemond?”

“Said he’d be back soon.”

“What?” You are incredulous. “You left him? He can’t be alone out there, Cregan. Someone has to watch his blind side.”

“He ain’t alone. He took Daeron.”

“What’s Aemond looking for?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Now Cregan is pouring a bottle of Pennzoil into the Tahoe, and Rio is prodding you with a bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and Aegon is waking up and yawning loudly.

“What’d you bring me?” he says, lazy and grinning; and when he receives his pack of Marlboro Golds, he immediately sticks one between his teeth and lights it. Luke goes to sit by a shrub and then jumps up when he hears a rattling noise. Almost too swiftly for you to process it, a streak of red-gold scales slithers across the earth and vanishes into the desert.

“Western diamondback rattlesnake,” Helaena notes. “Venomous. Potentially fatal.”

“Great,” Luke says, carrying his bowl towards the front door of the mobile home. “I think I’ll eat inside.”

Aemond and Daeron don’t return until shortly before dusk, the sky turning to rust, lavender, gold, fire, blood. When they walk in, Rhaena is curled up on the floral couch—shredded in spots by a cat, though there are no signs of it now—and reading Mockingjay. Luke is sitting with her and keeping watch with periodic peeks out the window. Ice is resting with her muzzle propped on her large front paws. You, Rio, Cregan, Helaena, and Aegon are playing Uno on the floor.

“What color?” Aegon asks Helaena when she puts down a wild card.

“Blue.”

He groans. “How do you always know what I don’t have?!”

“Rhaena,” Aemond says, and then tosses something to her that glints in the artificial, sickly yellow radiance of the flashlights. She catches them in midair: a set of keys. She is mystified.

“What are these for?”

“The Ford Expedition that’s parked outside.”

“What?!” Luke says, twisting around in his seat to snatch the curtain aside and peer through the window. “Oh wow. Yeah, it’s out there.”

Rhaena is staring confoundedly at Aemond. “Why do we need a Ford Expedition?”

“Because that’s what you’ll be driving tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with the Tahoe?”

“They will be driving the Tahoe to Oregon,” Aemond says, pointing to you, Rio, and Cregan. “We are taking Expedition to California.”

Everyone is too stunned to speak at first; even Daeron looks at Aemond doubtfully, as if this is the first time he’s learning of it. Aegon’s hand hovers frozen in the air above the draw pile of Uno cards. Ice whimpers.

Rio chuckles uncertainly. “You’re…you’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Aemond says. “When we leave Battle Mountain tomorrow, you’ll take I-80 to Winnemucca. We’ll take Route 305 south to Austin and then head west so we can get off the interstate and avoid the Reno area.”

Your voice comes out dark and poisonous. You can feel your eyes glaring, searing; Aemond won’t look at you. “What are you talking about?”

“We can’t stay together?” Luke asks.

“No,” Aemond says again, and now he’s getting impatient. “We have two different destinations. That’s been the situation since the day we met, and now it’s time to split up.”

“Why can’t we all travel to one place and then the other?” Rhaena says. “We could drive to the Bay Area, see what’s going on at the beach house, and after—”

“I can’t wait,” Rio interrupts. “My wife and baby are in Oregon, I’m going straight there even if no one else is.” As distracted as you are, you touch your palm to one of his broad shoulders. You’re going too. You promised.

“So we’ll drive to Oregon first,” Aegon says agreeably. “Right? We could do that. Go north and then swing by the Bay Area later.”

Aemond shakes his head. “It’s almost impossible to find gas now. There is just enough in the Tahoe to last it until Winnemucca, and just enough in the Expedition to get it down to Austin. There is no guarantee we’ll be able to find more. Every day there’s less gas and food and bullets, because there are less places that haven’t already been looted. There are 400 miles between where we are right now and either Odessa or San Franscisco. There are another 400 miles that separate those two destinations from each other. So let’s say we drive all the way to Oregon and then can’t find any gas to go south to the Bay. How long do you think we’d last like this on foot? A month? Because that’s how long it would take us, assuming not a single rest day. So if we travel to one location together, there’s a good possibility we’ll all be trapped there.”

“Maybe I’m okay with getting trapped in Oregon,” Aegon mumbles.

Aemond lashes out fiercely. “Are you serious? What about Criston, what about Mom?!”

“Maybe there are some things about home that I don’t miss!”

“Then go the fuck to Oregon!”

“You know I have to stay with you!”

Aemond scoffs. “Because you’re so capable of protecting anyone.”

Aegon rubs his sunburned face with both hands. He murmurs softly, miserably: “I’m trying, Aemond.”

“So that’s it?” Rhaena says, staring at you and Rio and Cregan, stunned and mournful. “We’ll just never see each other again?”

Aemond shrugs and averts his gaze. He doesn’t have an answer; maybe he doesn’t care.

Aegon turns to Cregan accusingly. “You helped plan this?”

“Nah,” Cregan says, avoidant and downcast, which is unusual for him. “I mean…I said I didn’t really see myself spending the rest of my life with a bunch of millionaires in a California mansion on the seashore, and that’s still true. I’d rather live in Oregon with people who are more like me. But that’s different than wanting to split up forever. I could always try to find y’all later for a visit, I guess…”

“Sure,” Aemond replies briskly. “Whatever you decide to do afterwards isn’t my problem. But you get them to Odessa first.”

Rhaena bursts out with sudden urgency: “This feels wrong. Don’t you see how this is wrong?! We’ve been through so much together, and now we’re just going to wave goodbye and disappear? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“You want to add 400 miles to our trip?” Aemond asks her, and Rhaena falls silent.

“You know,” Luke begins. “We…we’ve already lost people. Maybe Aemond’s right. Maybe we’re forgetting how dangerous the world is now. It would be great if we could stay in contact, but the most important thing is to get everyone safely to where they need to be.”

“Exactly,” Aemond says, and something jolts awake in you as you remember what he told you in Nebraska, and in Wyoming, and in so many quiet moments that you’ve shared since you met, each an oasis in the desert. He said we would figure it out. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you were lying when you pretended not to know what we were going to do when we got to Nevada.”

Aemond nods towards the front door. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

You stand up; Rio watches you apprehensively, wondering if he should follow. Your eyes flick to his. I’m fine. He relents, redirecting his attention. Aegon is slumped and despondent; Helaena is starting to cry, and Cregan tries to console her. She’s saying that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what.

On the porch of the mobile home, beneath a lilac sky pierced with stars, Aemond does not attempt to hold your hands or kiss you goodbye or give any other indication that you have ever been someone who mattered to him. “This isn’t personal. This is what gives everyone the best chance of survival.”

“You’re afraid of making a mistake and getting hurt,” you tell him. “And I understand, I know what that feels like, but Aemond…with the way the world is now…you can’t afford to wait for things to happen or cut them loose to see if they’ll come back to you. You might not get another chance.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Aemond says flatly. “Your route is safer than ours. Less cities, less zombies.”

“You’re honestly going to act like you are completely unbothered by the thought of never seeing me again?”

“I don’t know what you expected. I’m just some guy who helped get you off a transmission tower back in Pennsylvania.”

“Really? That’s all you are?”

And then Aemond smirks to himself, a cynical, mocking twist of his lips, something so dismissive and so cruel you almost believe for a razor-thin second that you could hate him. “Look, I’m not the one for you. Go to Oregon. Fuck Cregan.”

“There is nothing romantic between me and Cregan!”

Now Aemond seems annoyed. “Well, you two seem exceptionally suited for each other.”

“Because we both grew up shopping at Dollar General and know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent?! That makes us soulmates, that’s the end of the calculation?!”

“Then find a man like him!” Aemond flares. “That’s what you really wanted, right? That’s what you were after this whole time. Some hero to convince you he’s worth it. Someone to break you in.”

You are seething, thunderstruck. “And you just said that in the most hurtful way possible to…what, prove how little you care about me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“We were never going to end up in the same place.”

“Except we were, you told me that, you told me we’d figure something out, I mean, you…you…you said you’d be there if I wanted kids someday, what was that if not some kind of commitment?!”

“You don’t trust me,” Aemond says, so sharply and so abruptly it startles you.

“I do,” you object softly.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But there’s nowhere for us to go from here.”

You can feel yourself becoming young and powerless and desperately afraid. “Please don’t do this, Aemond. It won’t bring Jace or Baela back. If we don’t have a plan before we split up, this is over. We’ll never find each other again. We’ll never have another chance.”

And he shakes his head like this was such a needless mistake. “I knew you’d fall in love with me.”

He’s leaving, you think, hazy and omnipotent like a nightmare, the present inseparable from the past and the future. I left my family and now my family is leaving me. “I’m not in love with you,” you reply as ruthlessly as you can. “I think you’re right. Cregan is a better man.”

“Yeah,” Aemond snaps.

“And I need someone like him.”

“Yeah,” Aemond says again, staring into the west where the last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon, you erased as you stand where his left eye would once have seen you.

“And you need someone who’s going to fuck with your head so much you can’t possibly mistake it for something real.”

You walk back inside the mobile home and leave him speechless in the dying light.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I drew this for you,” Aegon says, handing Rio a folded piece of paper torn from Helaena’s spider notebook. It’s a map, illustrated in forest green gel pen ink. “Your route is actually really straightforward, it’s impossible to get lost. You’ll follow I-80 northwest to Winnemucca, then Route 95 north until it intersects with Route 140, and you stay on 140 all the way to Odessa. The only real city you’ll go near is Klamath Falls in Oregon, and I’ve marked that. Route 140 mostly stays along the outside, but you can cut it wider if things look dicey. The whole trip is just a couple days by car, assuming you don’t have to spend too long hunting for gas. But listen…” He points to the green dot labelled Winnemucca. “Between here and Denio Junction up by the Oregon border, there’s 100 miles of nothing, just desert. So make sure you have more than enough supplies to last you in case something happens. Then from Denio Junction to Adel is another 85 miles with no towns in between. So just…be careful, okay? You’re not back east anymore. Things are a lot farther apart, and it’s harder to find everything. If you run out of gas or bust a tire, you can’t just call AAA to come pick you up.”

“We got it,” Rio says, touched but trying not to dissolve into too much sentimentality. The three of you are standing in the short dirt driveway the next morning, Aegon putting most of his weight on his good leg. Cregan is waiting behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe that once belonged to his parents. Ice is peering out at you through one of the rolled-down windows. “Thank you, Honey Bun.”

“No problem. Now flip it over.”

Rio does; on the back of the first map is another, this one from Odessa south to the Bay Area, a place just north of San Francisco called Bolinas.

“Go all the way to the coast and follow it down,” Aegon says. “You don’t want to bump into Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, San Jose, any of those places. Too many people.” Then he smiles, kind and warm. “I’m going to see you guys again, one way or the other. But first I have to make sure Aemond is safe. And Rio has to meet baby Otter.”

Rio laughs. “Man, don’t even joke about it. I’m seriously concerned that’s my firstborn’s name.”

“If you end up not staying in Odessa, leave me a note carved into a tree trunk or something so I can track you down.”

“You do the same at the beach mansion.”

“Totally.” Then Aegon turns to you; and although he’s still smiling, his eyes—those pools of murky, melancholy blue that remind you of the Gulf of Tadjoura, Corpus Christi Bay, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean—are catastrophically sad. “Tortilla Chip, it’s been real. Don’t forget about me.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

He pats your backpack and winks, and you don’t understand why until ten hours later when you’re lying on the rooftop of an abandoned RV in Winnemucca, Nevada, gazing up at the stars as Rio and Cregan swap stories to weave affinity until it’s thick like a braid: Rio hiding a dead lemon shark in the Jeep of an officer he hated when you were stationed at Key West, Cregan’s fiancé leaving him after she got a field hockey scholarship to the University of Iowa. You haven’t found any gas for the Tahoe yet. You’ll have to search again tomorrow. You reach into your backpack for a pack of Life Savers and instead are surprised to discover Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman. The rhinestones spelling out a doomed little girl’s name glint in the moonlight.

You slip in both earbuds and press play. Aegon left it paused at an Enrique Iglesias song; you assume he must have been thinking of Rio.

“You look at me and, girl, you take me to another place

Got me feelin’ like I’m flyin’, like I’m out of space

Something ‘bout your body says, come and take me

Got me begging, got me hoping that the night don’t stop…”

You try to see constellations in the night sky instead of random, indifferent distant suns. You try not to remember the way Aemond was when you thought his mark on you was permanent.

“Girl, I like the way you move, come and show me what to do

You can tell me that you want me, girl, you got nothing to lose

I can’t wait no more

I can’t wait no more…”

You spot a glimmer of light among the stars and choose to believe it is a comet rather than a fighter jet, or a forgotten satellite, or the refracted remnants of a solar storm, or something you only imagined and that never existed at all.

[libraryoffandomsuniverse]

Trust

Series masterlist

YNN: your nickname

My first time writing something steamy (ish). Hopefully it's not too clunky.

Sometimes romance is a date to a restaurant. Sometimes it's plotting murder together. 😉

~~~

"I want him dead."

Although she spoke quietly, Rhaenyra's voice seemed to echo around the room.

You twisted your head to look at her in disbelief. You had just finished making love after hours. You'd coaxed her to pleasure several times using your hands, mouth and cock. How could your darling wife be thinking about murder when you were still barely capable of stringing words together?

"I need you to repeat that," you said slowly, "because it almost sounds like I haven't made you come enough if you're thinking about murder. It's not mine, is it?"

She giggled and moved closer, resting her head on your shoulder. Your arms instantly wrapped around her, an echo of the countless times you'd held each other like this before.

"Of course it's not you," she rubbed your chest in reassurance. "I'm talking about Otto Hightower."

At the mention of the Hand, your good mood plummeted.

Ever since Lord Strong's resignation, you had been cursed with Ser Otto's presence. The fact that he became the Hand again was beyond a joke, given that his ambitions to make his grandson Aegon King was a secret only to Viserys.

The sight of Queen Alicent strutting around the Red Keep with her supporters flaunting their green robes made you seethe. Coupled with the divide between both camps of supporters and it made for an increasingly poisonous atmosphere in court.

You and Rhaenyra had not been idle. The return of your father as Master of Ships, along with your promotion to Master of Laws had caused quite a bit of grief to Ser Otto's plans. The sight of the vein throbbing on his forehead whenever you managed to persuade the King to agree with you was a beautiful one, and it took everything you had not to smirk or snigger like a child or Daemon.

The thought of your goodbrother reminded you of his and Laena's recent return from Pentos. If anyone knew of a way to remove the Hand, it would be them.

"He will die," you whispered. "I'll make certain of it. Laena will know of something that may help."

"Not Daemon?" Rhaenyra tilted her head to face yours.

You snorted. "Daemon's solution would probably involve a dagger and a catspaw. We need to be subtle and leave nothing for the Queen to accuse us of murder. Laena will know; she was always interested in plants."

"If she finds a way, who will replace Otto? Your mother? Daemon? Tyland Lannister?"

"Actually," you began. "I thought it could be you." She lifted her head and looked at you with shock. "Let me finish," you continued. "You became cupbearer at eight, you've had a seat on the Small Council for almost ten years. You've seen how it works, you know about the issues the other Masters face. When Lord Lyonel was Hand, you regularly met with him to discuss solutions."

Your voice had risen as you'd argued your point, but your hands remained gentle as they cupped her face.

"Think of it as extra training for when you become Queen," you said.

Rhaenyra's face was uncertain. "You are so sure of yourself. How do you know it will happen?"

"I'll make it happen, my love," you promised before reaching up to kiss her.

"I do not feel ready, YNN," she confessed. "Every time I sit at that table, I feel like a pretender, like a girl again."

"Rhae," her name rolled on your tongue. "I don't think anyone is ever really ready to wear the crown. But there have been good kings, bad kings and kings that were middling. There have also been excellent and terrible Hands. You becoming Hand will not cause the Seven Kingdoms to collapse. I would always be happy to advise you if you wished, but you're more knowledgeable than you think you are. If you can't believe in yourself, believe in me and the fact that I trust in you."

The kiss she gave you was hungry, full of teeth and passion. You pulled her up so that she lay on top of you. Her hands made their way to your hair, while yours slowly crept down her back.

When she finally pulled away, her lips were red and bruised. Her cheeks were flushed while her white hair fell loosely around you both, creating a veil that hid you both from the outside world.

"When my wife makes a request, what loyal husband wouldn't strive to see it done?" your lips brushed against hers. "I'll fly to Driftmark tomorrow to ask Laena."

"I want Otto Hightower dead," she ordered.

Like a Queen.

Your wife's reply was not in words.

[elaratyrell]

Poor Unfortunate Souls {Part 1/3 -> Part Of Your World}

*All images found on Pinterest. Moodboard made by yours truly*

Dark! Ursula! Aemond x Fem! Eric! Reader x Ariel! Jacaerys

Warnings: Nothing in this chapter.. reader almost drowns but is saved. Daemon’s an asshole. *Divider from Firefly Graphics*

Synopsis: Jacaerys Velaryon, the reluctant heir to Atlantica. The moment he saw you, he knew he would never see someone who could capture him with their beauty again. You would haunt him eternally. In a desperate attempt to meet you, he turns to Aemond Targaryen, an outcast from the merfolk, to help him walk amongst the land dwellers. But when Aemond lays his eyes on you, he knows he has to have you. By any means necessary.

Part Two Jace's Ending Aemond's Ending

Jacaerys Velaryon. The son of Queen Rhaenyra and the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantica, the home of the merfolk. An adventurous young merman, he was often found exploring sunken shipwrecks or the deepest sea caverns in search of treasures and trinkets…

Even when he was supposed to be attending his royal duties.

He couldn’t help it. He knew his mother wanted him to step up as her heir and become the prince he needed to be for his people, but he knew he wasn’t the prince they wanted. He wasn’t the prince they needed. He lacked the drive and ambition for ruling as king. He wasn’t interested in politics, or ruling over the merfolk.

In fact, he often felt conflicted between two worlds.

His home, the ocean, was where his family and his people were. And even though his four younger brothers and two sisters often drove him insane, he loved them dearly. And he loved his mother… his stepfather, Daemon, on the other hand, he barely even tolerated. He disliked how much of an influence he had over his mother, and how much power he held in the kingdom.

The other half of him, however, wished to be above the surface of the waves, where he could feel the full warmth of the sun, the softness of the sand on the shore and the cooling sea breeze…

He wanted to be where the people were.

Out of the water and living among them.

He knew it was outlawed to travel to the surface after his father, Harwin, was murdered by humans. He was incredibly young, barely over five years old, and his brothers Lucerys and Joffrey were too young to even remember, but that didn’t stop him from sneaking off to watch them from a distance. And besides, he was certain the kingdom was so against humans because Daemon seemed to loathe them, often spreading his rather false horror stories over humans and their prejudices against merfolk. There were even whispers of him trying to convince Rhaenyra to go to war with the surface world. Jacaerys disapproved of this, but knew his mother was wiser than that.

And while Jace certainly resented the humans who murdered his father, he knew not all humans were that cruel, just as not all merfolk were like Daemon. He still found himself greatly intrigued by the surface dwellers. Whether they were sailing on their great ships, or frolicking on the beach, or dancing… he wanted to try dancing…

But he knew he could never trade his tail for legs.

And so he spent his days exploring with his companion since birth, a fish with glittering olive green scales and bright orange fins called Vermax, eagerly taking any trinket or human object he could find at the bottom of the seabed or in a long abandoned shipwreck.He would take it to the surface to have it inspected by a seagull, Cannibal, before taking it to his secret grotto, a deep sea cavern where he stored his treasures.

He was often scolded by his mother for forgetting his duties, often arriving late or failing to show up at all sometimes, just like earlier in the week, when he failed to show up to a royal concert when he and Vermax had an unfortunate encounter with a shark while exploring a shipwreck. He had completely forgotten about the concert, going to Cannibal about the two interesting objects he’d found to add to his collection. When he had returned to rather sheepishly apologise to his mother, he had both her and Daemon lecturing him over duty and his careless and reckless behaviour whenever he opened his mouth to try.

It had even gotten to the point where Rhaenyra was now sending Syrax, her golden crab companion, to watch him and make sure he wasn’t getting into trouble, reporting back to her over whether he’d been to the surface. Jace had visited the surface world far less frequently as a result, only managing to do so when he out swam the crustacean. It wouldn’t surprise him if she sent his younger brother Lucerys or his uncle Aegon after him next. Or, heaven forbid, one of his sisters.

It was after one such scolding that Jacaerys found himself at his grotto, admiring his growing collection and daydreaming about being among the people on land. Being where he could walk, run, dance… where he could ask them the thousands of burning questions he had… where he could stay all day in the sun.

Where he could be part of their world.

He smiled to himself at the thought of walking on two legs, but found that fading into a disappointing frown as he looked down to see his tale, scales glittering scarlet and ebony in the fading sunlight.

Everyone assumed he had everything anyone could ever need in life. But he didn’t. He felt torn, ad though he didn’t belong under the ocean, but above the surface.

He wanted more than this.

He let out a soft exhale of disappointment, allowing himself to float down to the bottom of the cavern and landing on a slab of rock jutting out from the stone floor.

“I just wish to be part of that world, Vermax. Up there. All these treasures I have… they’re neat. And it seems as though I have everything… but it’s not enough. I want to live among them. I have everything I could ever need, and yet I want more…” He murmured, too caught up in his own thoughts to notice the stone entrance to his grotto sliding open.

A low whistle of mild impressment did, however, catch his attention, followed by a amused voice.

“Mother’s going to kill you.”

Lucerys was leaning against the closed entrance to the grotto, his arms crossed. Both Velaryon boys were rather similar, with dark curls and deep brown eyes. But Lucerys’ hair was shorter, and a slightly darker brown, and he had more black scales than Jacaerys, whose tail was mostly red, like their mother.

Jacaerys shot up, his cheeks slightly flushed. “Luke-“

“What is all of this stuff?” Luke asked, looking around the grotto rather amusedly.

“It’s… it’s just my… collection…”

“Impressive. I always wondered what you were doing when you constantly snuck away,” He mused. “But like I said, if mother finds out about this, you’re dead. She’s worried about you, always obsessing over the surface world and neglecting your duties...”

Jace rolled his eyes at his younger brother. Above him he heard a distant booming noise. Glancing up through the hole in the cavern roof where the surface of the water was visible, he saw a thousand colours light up the sky in a flurry of sparks and fizzing. He ignored his brother’s continued chattering, transfixed on whatever was happening in the world above.

“I told her that you were either crazy, or this is a just phase…”

“What do you suppose…?” Jacaerys muttered to himself, ignoring his brother’s teasing antics and swimming up to where the noise and bright flashing colours were coming from.

“But I didn’t realise you were this obsessed- where are you going? Jace! You can’t go up there! Humans are trouble! Mother said so!” Luke called after his brother, but he was already gone, Vermax hurrying after him. Luke glanced over at where Syrax was perched on a nearby ledge.

“So… should you follow him or should I?” He asked.

Syrax, realising Luke didn’t want to be the one to do so, hopped off the ledge and hurried after the older prince, who had now reached the water’s surface.

Jace gazed up in sheer awe at the great ship sailing towards him, the illuminating the night sky in a flurry of sparks in the most vibrant shades of scarlet, blue, emerald and gold. The sails billowed in the ocean winds, the largest of which was imprinted with what Jace could only assume was a royal sigil.

As Jace moved to get closer to the ship, he let out a yelp, feeling a sharp a pinch on his arm, Looking down to the culprit, he flicked Syrax off him and rubbed his arm, the skin slightly reddened from where the crab pinched him.

Diving back beneath the waves to move closer to the ship, Vermax hot on his tail. When he reached the great vessel, Jacaerys hoisted himself up and managed to climb up the side of the ship. He knew it was a risky move. If he was caught by the sailors, he would be captured or even killed. If was caught by his mother or Daemon… it might be even worse. But his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

He kept hidden in the shadows, peering through a gap on the side of the boat. There was cheering, dancing, drinking and singing, a celebration of sorts, and it somewhat relieved Jace that the sailors were probably too occupied with the festivities to notice him.

A sweet melody filled Jace’s ears as the sailors danced. A flute, he believed, was playing. He remembered reading about them in an old book he’d recovered from a shipwreck. He’d always imagined how their tune sounded, and he wasn’t disappointed.

He wasn’t sure what was being celebrated, but it seemed to be a most joyous occasion. Everyone seemed in the highest of moods and the most joyful of spirits. It was wonderful to see this side of the surface dwellers, and he couldn’t look away.

In fact, he was so entranced by the humans that he found himself jumping back in shock as a rather strange and hairy creature, a dog he believed came bounding over to him. He had read about them but had never seen them in person before, but it seemed friendly enough, sniffing him with interest and wagging its tail.

Jace smiled, rather tentatively reaching out to the animal, only to shrink back into the shadows as a female voice called out to the creature.

“Max! Here boy!”

Jace cautiously peered back around, his eyes widening as he laid eyes on who might possibly be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

You.

He watched as Max eagerly bounded over to you, jumping up to lick your face in greeting. You laughed, gently pushing the dog away from you slightly and patting his head.

“Down boy. Good boy. C’mon what’s got you so excited?” You smiled, looking over in Jace’s direction and causing him to duck back into the darkness again. His cheeks were flushed pink, his mouth slightly agape. He knew if Luke were here, he would never hear the end of it. But after having seen numerous paintings and drawings of human women in books he’d found, as well as meeting with countless potential matches organised by his mother, be found that none of them, even the most notoriously beautiful mermaids, compared to you.

He found himself peering back around to admire you once again as you sat down with Max, rubbing the dog’s stomach and watching the ongoing celebrations. You were dressed rather simply in a white linen shirt with the top two buttons undone and a pair of blue breeches, a pair of black knee high leather boots on your feet. Your hair was down and loose, fluttering in the nightly see breeze.

You were absolutely beautiful.

A sudden loud screech to Jace’s side caused him to reluctantly tear his gaze away from you, sending the culprit a nasty glare.

“Quiet, Cannibal.” He hissed, not wanting to draw attention to his hiding place. Cannibal edged closer to Jace, seemingly wanting to see what- or who- had caught the young prince’s attention. When the bird laid eyes on you, he let out an even louder screech that sounded a little like a squawk of amusement, only to have Jace grab him by the beak to shut him up.

“I said quiet.” He shot the gull another glare before returning his focus to you. “I’ve never seen a human up this close before.” He breathed as he watched you play a small, cheerful melody on a flute, the flute he must have been hearing earlier, Max running around in circles around you as you twirled around, the both of you almost dancing together to the tune.

“She… she’s very beautiful…” He murmured, shooting yet another glare to the bird as he let out a slight muffled wheeze through his closed beak. Jace followed Cannibal’s gaze to where Max continued to dance around you. “No, not that thing.” He muttered, using the hand wrapped around Cannibal’s beak to move the bird’s head upwards to look at you. “The human.”

“Silence! Silence!” A man suddenly announced, his arms outstretched as he stood in the centre of the deck. “It is now my deepest honour and privilege to present our esteemed Princess Y/N with her birthday gift.”

“Y/N…” Jacaerys murmured dreamily, watching you step forward with a chorus of cheers from the crowd onboard. “Princess Y/N…”

The man stepped to the side to present a large object concealed by sapphire blue cloth and tied with a scarlet ribbon. “Happy birthday, Y/N.” He smiled, and with one tug on the ribbon, the cloth fell to reveal… a statue of you.

You were dressed in an extravagant gown, your arm raised in the air, your gleaming sword pointed towards the sky. Your expression was not warm as it was in reality, but one of hardened steel.

It was a warrior’s statue.

Jace tilted his head, his brows furrowing. The statue captured your beauty, that much was certain, but there was something missing from it. Maybe it was lacking your smile that sent a swarm of butterflies to erupt in his stomach, or the sparkle in your eyes. Whatever it was… it made the statue seem… unlike you.

“Wow… Grimsby you shouldn’t have.” Your voice sounded rather exasperated. “It’s… truly something to behold.”

Jace smiled. He could tell you were struggling to muster a compliment, but didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

“You like it?”

“It’s… really something…” You muttered, staring up at the statue, your lips pressed into a thin line and your eyes crinkled at the edges as you winced slightly, looking physically in pain at the sight of the gift. “Although it seems rather-“

“I commissioned it myself,” Grimsby declared rather proudly, his hand placed over his heart and making you immediately close your mouth. “Although… I had hoped it would be a wedding gift…”

“Oh don’t start, Grimsby,” You groaned, turning away from him and leaning on the side of the boat, just above where Jacaerys was hiding. “Are you really still sore that I rejected the proposal from that Dornish prince?”

“It isn’t just me, Y/N,” Grimsby sighed, stepping forward. “Your parents, the entire kingdom wishes for you to happily settle down with the right man-“

“Exactly, Grimsby! I need to find the right man,” You argued, sitting down on the side of the ship with one hand holding the rigging of the boat to prevent yourself from falling. “I know he’s out there somewhere. But I don’t want to marry for duty. I’ve always devoted myself to that. I want to marry for love. I want to find someone who… who has the same ambitions as me. Who… wants to see the world and sees past the fact I’m a princess. Someone who understands what it’s like to yearn to be out there exploring the world. Someone who understands freedom, and who wants to break free… and who understands that a part of me belongs out there in that world. Out there in the seas.”

Jace’s expression brightened at your words, his heart fluttering in his chest at you possibly sharing similar struggles to him.

It was like you were too good to be true.

That could be him… he could be that man for you…

“I’ll find him one day. He’s out there somewhere I… I just haven’t found him yet.”

“Well, perhaps you haven’t been looking hard enough.”

“Not helpful, Grimsby.” You grumbled, rising to your feet and looking out at the ocean, as black as the clouds brewing overhead. “Believe me, when I find him, I’ll know. Without a doubt.” Your words were firm, your expression one of clear resolve. “When I see him, it’ll… it’ll just hit me like… like lightning!”

No sooner did those words leave your mouth, you and Jace looked up as the deep growl of thunder rumbled overhead, a flash of lightning lighting up the sky.

“Hurricane!” A sailor yelled. “Stand fast! Secure the rigging!”

You immediately sprung into action, leaning forward to pull on the ropes as the waves lapped against the ship more aggressively than before, the wind whipping through your hair and rain beginning to pelt down from the sky as though the heavens themself were opening.

Jace grabbed ahold of the ship, failing to grab Cannibal as the gull was blown away by the wind torrents with a loud screech of protest. While the others focused on untying the lifeboats, Jace watched as you leaped up the stairs two at a time to reach the steering wheel of the ship that was spinning out of control, trying to stop the ship from capsizing into the water. A large surge of water passed over the ship, drenching you completely and those onboard.

Despite gripping onto the ship as tightly as he could, Jace soon found himself falling back into the water, barrels, crates and even the sailors following him beneath the surface. He swam upwards as quick as his tail could move, breaking through the surface to see a jagged flash of lightning hit the main sail of the ship.

Flames blazed through your royal seal emblazoned on the sail, burning through the cloth and spreading to the mast of the ship.

Jace gasped as he saw the ship uncontrollably heading towards a cluster of jagged rocks jutting out from the sea, you still at the wheel struggling to gain control of the ship. He wanted to scream at you, to climb onto the boat and help you steer the ship to safety, or to just grab you and get you off the ship, but he knew he couldn’t. He watched with a horrified expression as the ship rammed against the rocks, throwing more sailors and cargo, including you and the statue, overboard and into the depths below. The mast snapped, falling forwards and spreading the fire to the rest of the ship.

Jacaerys swam forward to see you help Grimsby onto the lifeboat to join several other of your crew mates. He felt a small sigh of relief to see you safe as you hauled yourself into the small boat, but it the feeling was short lived as you frantically looked around the small cluster of life boats, your gaze ultimately returning to the raging inferno consuming the ship.

“Max!”

No, no, no, no.

You couldn’t go back.

Jace couldn’t watch you do that.

To risk your life and possibly lose it.

He followed you as you swam back to the burning ship, hauling yourself back onboard to save your beloved dog.

“Jump, Max! Come on, you can do it. Come on, boy, just jump!” You desperately cried out to the animal, unable to move further forward thanks to the flames and the collapsed mast.

Jace squinted, trying to see you through the billowing smoke, his breath caught in his throat. As he saw your silhouette emerge through the smoke, he released the breath he was holding, but it got caught in his throat as your foot suddenly fell through the deck and out of his sight.

Max fell off the boat and into the sea where he was pulled onto the lifeboat by the surviving sailors, who cried out to you as you desperately tried to free yourself from where your foot was stuck, the flames flickering higher and higher around you, the smoke filling your lungs and choking you from any oxygen.

You managed to loosen your foot enough to pull it out of your boot as the inferno raged on, but it proved feeble as a barrel of gunpowder rolled past you and into the flames. As soon as the ship exploded, Jacaerys surged forward to where the ship wreckage was sinking beneath the waves, frantically looking around for any sight of you, the flames providing enough light for him to see clearly. Upon seeing no sight of you, he rose back to the surface. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw you, unconscious, balanced on a plank of wood from the deck. No sooner did he see you, the violent waves caused you to slip from the plank and under the water.

As you sank deeper and deeper, Jacaerys swam after you, managing to grab ahold of you and heading in the direction of the shore. He made sure to keep your head above the water so you could hopefully breathe, not even caring whether you were dead or alive at that moment. He just needed to get you to safety.

His arms ache as he finally reached the shallows, struggling to drag both you and himself onto the beach. He cradled you in his arms, his chestnut eyes scanning your form for any sign of life. For any slight twitch, any movement, any breath. Yet your eyes remained closed, your skin pale and your mouth slightly agape.

“Is she… dead?” The word almost got caught in Jacaerys’ throat as he turned to where Cannibal landed beside them on rather shaky legs.

Please don’t be dead… please don’t be dead…

“She… she can’t be dead…” Jace murmured, a finger gently opening one of your eyes. Upon seeing them up close, he realised how beautiful your eyes were. Cannibal hopped between you and Jace, pressing his head against your foot, letting out a small, sorrowful caw.

“Wait… wait look! She’s breathing!” Jace exclaimed as you let out a small exhale, your chest beginning to gently rose and fell. He sent a small disapproving look to Cannibal. “You know that’s not where they breathe, right?” He muttered as Cannibal leaped the air and landed on a nearby rock.

Jace rolled his eyes, looking back to where your breaths were becoming less shallow and more even. “She’s so beautiful…” He whispered as he looked down at you. Your clothes were torn, and one of your boots was gone, your dripping wet hair plastered over your forehead. Jace reached over to gently brush it away from your face.

As his hand moved to gently caress your cheek, he found himself humming a small tune his mother used to sing to him at night. It was an old tune from generations long since passed, sung in an ancient language that was no longer spoken by merfolk other than the royal family, although Jace’s was a little rusty at best after missing so many lessons. It was a lullaby that always soothed him after a night terror when he was young.

His humming soon evolved into him softly singing the song, and a smile spread onto his face as he saw your eyelids flutter and open ever so slightly, your soft, small hand reaching up to place over his. When your hand made contact with his, Jace felt his heartbeat quicken, his skin feeling as though it were on fire from your touch.

A loud bark made him flinch back away from you, spotting Grimsby and Max on the horizon. He dived into the water as the dog bounded over to you, eagerly greeting you by slobbering on your face as you slowly sat up, one hand- the hand that touched Jace’s- resting on the side of your head as you groggily looked around.

“Y/N! Oh thank goodness,” Grimsby breathed in relief, his hand reaching into his pocket and taking out his slightly damp handkerchief, which he used to dab his clammy forehead. “You really delight in these sadistic strains on my blood pressure, don’t you?” He muttered, leaning down to help the princess to her feet. “Are you alright, my dear?”

“I… I saw… a boy. He… he rescued me…” You muttered, one hand still clutching your head as you regained your balance. “He was singing to me. He had the most beautiful voice…” You trailed off, swaying slightly.

”Oh, Y/N,” Grimsby sighed. “I think you’ve swallowed a bit too much seawater.”

“No, I saw him.” She protested, looking out at the shore. “I heard him.”

“Of course you did, my dear,” Grimsby sighed, wrapping an arm over the girl’s shoulders. “Come on. Off we go. Come along, Max- Max! What is that dog barking at now?”

“Max!” You called out, followed by a sharp whistle that got the dog’s attention from where he was barking in Jace’s direction, the prince hiding behind a rock.

As you, Grimsby and Max left the small beach and headed towards your castle, Jace watched you go, Cannibal perched on the rock in front him.

“I don’t know when, I don’t know how… but watch and you’ll see, someday I’ll be part of that world. I know I will be!” He declared to his feathered companion, a steely determination set in those deep brown eyes of his. “No matter what it takes.”

A short distance away, Jacaerys was being watched by an ancient beast. A large, bronze eel, one eye a glittering green and the other glowing a vibrant sapphire blue. She watched him silently for a moment before dipping beneath the surface to return to her master.

It was only a matter of time before the young prince sought him out.

“You summoned me, mother?”

Queen Rhaenyra smiled fondly at her second born son as perched regally on her throne, her golden trident, the source of her power passed down from her father, resting beside her.

“Yes, Lucerys. I wished to ask you about your brother.”

“J-Jacaerys?” Luke stammered.

“Yes. I tasked you with watching over him but you have yet to report back to me. Your sisters have noticed certain things…”

“O-oh?”

“Apparently he’s to himself, daydreaming even more than usual, not swimming to sunken shipwrecks looking for trouble… it’s almost as though something has consumed his mind completely.”

“Well… he seems normal to me mother.” Lucerys chuckled nervously, making Rhaenyra raise an eyebrow.

“Rhaena and Baela said he swam past them in very high spirits this morning, putting flowers in their hair and singing to himself.”

“Well… well I-“

“Lucerys, I know you’re keeping something from me, sweet one.”

“Ke-keeping something, mother? I would never.”

“Really? Because Rhaena and Baela told me something else rather interesting.”

“They… they did?”

“About Jacaerys… his mood. His high spirits and his daydreaming. It’s as though he’s come alive. I’ve seen the signs before, both in myself and others.”

“You… have seen what?” Luke visibly gulped as Rhaenyra beckoned him closer.

“Isn’t it obvious? Jacaerys is in love, is he not? Or at least infatuated?”

“I… I don’t know mother-“

“Come now, Luke. I understand that you and Jace are at that age where you don’t feel the need to tell me everything, but this is important…”

Luke felt face flush slightly. If Rhaenyra found out, she’d be furious. But what would be worse is if Jace got captured, or killed.

“Mother… I do not know-“

“I only wish to know who the lucky mermaid is…”

“Mother-“

“Or merman perhaps? He is rather good friends with Cregan of the Arctic waters, is he not?”

“I- I wouldn’t know, I-“

“Unless you simply do not wish to fulfil the task I have given you and have been neglecting your duty-“

“I tried to stop him mother!” Lucerys suddenly exclaimed, making Rhaenyra raise her eyebrows in slight surprise at her son’s outburst.

“Stop him? From what?” Rhaenyra’s expression changed from one of mild amusement to immediate concern.

“I tried to stop him from doing it but he never listens to me. Just because he’s older, he thinks he can swim to the surface even though I warned him about the humans-“

“Humans? What about humans?” Rhaenyra demanded, gripping her trident harshly and making Luke stop in his tracks.

“Hu-humans? Why mother, who said anything about humans?” He chuckled, glancing away from his mother.

“Luke…” Rhaenyra warned, rising from her throne. “What has your brother been doing? Tell me. Now.”

“I… I don’t know what happened mother. He saw these flames in the sky and he followed them to the surface. I tried to stop him, I promise I did. When he returned the next morning he was a completely different person. Happier. And yet somehow more annoying-“

“Luke…”

“Anyway,” Lucerys cleared his throat. “I asked him what happened and… and…”

“And what? And what, Luke?”

“He said he’d saved… a human…” Lucerys muttered. “A princess.”

“He saved a human? Those murderous savages.” A voice spoke from the shadows.

Lucerys felt his heart sink as he realised he’d failed to notice Daemon’s presence, too focused on trying to protect his brother’s secret from their mother.

“I…” For once, Lucerys had found himself at a loss for words.

“I think that’s everything we need Lucerys… you may leave.” Daemon ordered, but Lucerys stood his ground.

“No. I want to know what you’ll do-“

“Luke, go to your chambers.”

“But, mother-“

“Lucerys. Go.” The sternness of Rhaenyra’s words and the fire within her eyes made Lucerys reluctantly comply, swimming off with his heart sinking at what he’d done.

“Humans? Love? He’s going to get himself killed.” Rhaenyra sighed, looking over at her husband. “What do you suggest I do?”

“The only way we can save Jacaerys is if we rid him of these absurd thoughts. We need to act quickly.”

“I do not want to push him away more than I already have.” Rhaenyra said as Daemon swam over to her, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“If we don’t act now, you’ll lose him to the surface. You of all people know what they do to our kind. He’s your heir, Rhaenyra. Your first born son. To protect him, we may need to hurt him.”

“But, Daemon-“

“Do you want him to resort to extreme solutions like your brother did? Do you want him to suffer that same fate as Aemond? Or turn to him for a solution?”

“Jacaerys isn’t like Aemond in any way. He is not cruel, or cunning like him. He would never seek him out. He knows better.”

“For now.” Daemon replied. “But love can cloud and deceive the mind in ways that can make the greatest of men fall.”

“Vermax, what’s going on?” Jace asked as the small fish attempted to herd him in the direction of the grotto. Jace rolled the stone away, moving forward to enter, but his companion stopped him in his tracks, swimming right up go his face and turning, flicking his tail into Jace’s eyes.

“Ouch! Vermax,” Jace rubbed his eyes, wincing slightly at the small sting. “Okay, it’s that important of a surprise.” He sighed, complying with Vermax’s wishes. “If you wanted me to close my eyes you could just ask nicely.” He muttered, feeling himself being gently nudged slowly into the grotto, his arms held out in front of him in case Vermax decided to steer him into a wall. Again.

Jace had been in his grotto so many times he knew where he was when Vermax moved in front of him again, this time flicking him on the hand to stop him in his tracks.

“Really? Again?” Jace sighed. “At least it was more gentle that time.” He muttered. Vermax nudged his hand, and Jace opened his eyes, letting out a small gasp at the sight in front of him.

There, placed in the centre of his grotto, the new centrepiece of his treasure collection… was your statue. He turned to the small fish, a wide smile growing on his face.

“You’re the best, Vermax,” He grinned, swimming over to the statue. “It’s perfect. How… how did you find this- how did you get this in here?” He asked. “Nevermind, I know I’ll never find out. Oh gods, it’s perfect- she’s perfect. It looks just like her- well, her eyes have more sparkle in real life, and they’re kinder too…”

He swam circles around the statue, analysing every angle. “It really is a work of art,” He murmured, a hand reaching up again to rest on the statue’s stone cold cheek. “If only it were real. Then we could run away from all our troubles… and find a place where we can belong. Don’t you think that would be the best thing, Verm-“ As he turned to address his closest friend, he was instead greeted by the face of his mother. A face that was half concealed by shadows and that was twisted in both sorrow and fury.

“M-mother. I can explain-“

“I think everything is quite clear to me, Jacaerys,” Rhaenyra interrupted, swimming out of the shadows, golden trident glinting in the fading light. Jace felt himself wince at the harshness of her tone when she spoke his full name.

“I consider myself a reasonable mermaid. A reasonable queen. And a reasonable mother,” She continued, her voice although soft in volume, was also cold in time. “I set certain rules to protect my people. To protect you. And I expect those rules to be followed.”

”But, mother, it’s not what you thi-“

“Is it true you rescued a human from drowning?” She demanded. Jace felt his mouth dry up. She knew? Luke… or Syrax, somehow?

“I… I had to. She… she would have died…”

“Contact between the human and mer worlds is strictly forbidden. You know this, everyone knows this. And I thought you of all people should understand this.”

“She would have died mother!”

“And that would only be one less human to worry about,” Daemon spoke up, emerging from the shadows behind Rhaenyra.

“You don’t even know her!” Jace protested, placing himself in front of your statue, as though he was protecting you.

“Know her?” Daemon let out a mocking laugh. “We don’t need to know her.” He snarled. “Humans, they’re all the same. Spineless, savage, harpoon, fish- eaters who are incapable of any feeling-”

“I love her.” Jacaerys blurted out, stopping Daemon in his tracks and making Rhaenyra’s expression morph into one of horror.

“No…” She breathed. “No, Jacaerys it… it cannot be true… have… have you lost your senses completely? You haven’t even met her! She’s human.”

“And you’re a merman.” Daemon sneered.

“I don’t care.” Jace retorted defiantly. “I’ll find a way.”

“Jacaerys, so help me, please do not escalate this.” Rhaenyra warned.

“Escalate it? What can you do mother? I’m not a child anymore!”

“We clearly aren’t getting through to him,” Daemon said. “You know what you have to do, Rhaenyra.”

“W-what’s he talking about, mother?” Jace asked, backing up so he was blocking the statue completely, a weary edge to his tone.

“I need to get through to you Jace,” Rhaenyra’s voice was solemn. “And if this is the only way…” She looked away from her son, raising her arm so the trident was pointing to an upper shelf of the grotto. “…So be it.”

“Mother, don’t!” Jace exclaimed, the realisation finally dawning on him. But it was too late. The trident was now glowing with lightning and flames, casting the grotto in a harsh orange light. Beams shot from the trident, perfectly landing on their targets.

His entire book collection? Gone.

His paintings, his jewellery collection, his candlesticks and compass? Reduced to dust.

Everything, from his gadgets and gizmos to his whozits and whatzits, were completely destroyed.

“Mother, mother please stop,” Jacaerys pleaded, desperately grabbing onto Rhaenyra’s arm, his eyes glassed over with tears threatening to spill at any moment.

But he wasn’t going to give Daemon the satisfaction of letting them fall.

“Mother- mother no, please no!” He yelled, following her gaze to where she aimed the trident at your statue, reducing it to rubble mere seconds later.

Jace let go of his mother, letting himself float to the grotto floor in front of where your statue was standing so proudly moments ago.

Rhaenyra, tore her gaze away from her eldest son, quickly swimming away from the irreparable damage she’d caused, both to herself and Jace. She too didn’t want to let the cracks show. Daemon stayed where he was, admiring the destruction of the treasures created by the beings he despised so.

“If you truly loved the humans, Jacaerys, if you truly wanted to be where you belong, you should go to them,” He said coldly, cruelly. “Because you certainly don’t belong here.”

As Daemon swam from the grotto, followed by his companion, a blood red moray eel called Caraxes, Jace finally let the tears spill, his chest heaving with the sobs that racked through his body.

“Jace…”

“Go away.”

“Jace, I’m sorry-“

“Sorry? Sorry that she destroyed everything?” Jace exclaimed, turning to glare at his younger brother. “Look what she did Luke. Look what Daemon made her do.” He turned away again as his voice cracked, another wave of realisation hitting him that his pride and joy, his wonderful collection that had taken him years to put together, was gone.

And your statue along with it.

“Jace, I didn’t know this was going to happen. I thought you might get in trouble and-“

“Just go away,” He whispered.

Luke hung his head low, reluctantly leaving his brother alone and joining Syrax, Vermax and Arrax, an infant ray who shimmered a pearl white, with the exception of his golden underside and eyes to match. Like Vermax, he was not yet fully grown.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t leave him, and… I hate seeing him like this, annoying as he is. It’s all Daemon’s fault, that son of a-“ Lucerys’ ranting was cut off as Syrax pinched his lips between her claw. Before he could prize her off him, a large shadow loomed over the group, and the three sea creatures ushered the younger prince behind a rock, hiding him from sight.

It was an eel, but it was considerably larger than Caraxes, by two times at least. She looked more like some ancient sea serpent, for she was an ancient creature. Her bronze scales that once gleaned brightly had dulled with age, but her eyes still gleamed just as bright, as did the small clusters of blue and green streaked along the top and underside of her body. One eye was a vibrant green, like grass in the height of springtime. The other was an unnaturally vibrant blue, glowing brightly in the night like a sapphire.

Vhagar was surely an fearsome sight to behold.

Lucerys watched the beast slither into the grotto. He went to follow her, but Syrax stopped him by pinching his side.

“I can’t let him be eaten, can I?” He hissed, rubbing the reddened skin. “I have to do something!” He protested, but Syrax and Arrax blocked his path adamantly. Even Vermax was more focused on keeping the younger prince hidden than going to Jace, grabbing long stems of kelp and dropping them over Luke, who brushed them off him immediately.

“You have to let me help him? It’s just some old eel, right?”

Jacaerys had wiped his eyes, but was still staring down at the rubble, not wanting to lift his head to be greeted with the sight of his former grotto, once a proud collection, now reduced to nothing. He didn’t want to cry again.

He let out a deep, shaking breath, trying to slow his hammering heart and calm the tremble in his hands. And yet every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was the princess he saved.

“Mijegindita riña… Mijegindita dōna riña…”[Poor child… poor sweet child…]

Jace’s head shot up to be greeted with the sight of Vhagar circling him like a constrictor about to suffocate it’s prey, her blue eye glowing violently in the darkness. He recognised the language as High Valyrian, the ancient language of merfolk. But he was far from a fluent speaker. In fact, he was rather terrible.

“I-I’m sorry I… I don’t fully understand…”

“It seems as though you have a very serious problem… if only there was something that could be done…”

The beast continued, this time in a modern tongue. Her voice was more of a deep, ancient rumble, coming from within. She didn’t move her mouth when she spoke, but Jace saw the glinting of those dagger like teeth. It was as though she were a vessel for someone else to speak to him. As though someone was speaking through her.

“Perhaps there is something that could be done for you…” Vhagar continued, circling closer and closer around Jace, turning her head towards him so he could clearly see her in the silvery glow of the moon above.

“I… I know you…” Jace breathed, and she retreated back into the inky murkiness of the shadows. “But that’s impossible… you… you and him… you were both banished… after what happened with- with Luke…”

He was only young when his uncle Aemond was banished, and Lucerys was too young to properly remember everything, but the memories still stuck with the elder prince vividly. He remembered the glint of the blade in the torchlight, he remembered Lucerys lunging at Aemond, and the young man’s screams wailing through the kingdom.

That was many years ago. Over a decade.

“Don’t be scared…” The voice spoke. “I represent the person who can help you. Someone who can make all your dreams come true…”

“I don’t think-“

“Just imagine-“ The voice cut him off, Vhagar’s head slithered past him, that piercing blue eye focused entirely on the prince. “You and your princess. Together, forever.” There was a slight mocking edge to the voice as it spoke, making Jace frown.

“No… no I can’t.” Jace faltered, knowing the offer, although tempting, was surely tainted with something far more sinister in return.

“Aemond has become incredibly powerful. He can use his power to help you...”

That stopped Jace in his tracks. He’d heard the rumours of his depraved uncle turning to dark magic in his exile. Some said he’d saught out the sea witch, Alys Rivers, who had mysteriously vanished months after his banishment.

“No I... I couldn’t possibly go to him. No. Get out of here! Leave me alone!” He exclaimed, lunging forwards and out of Vhagar’s reach to sit on one of his now empty ledges and facing away from the beast.

”Suit yourself,” The voice said as Vhagar retreated. “It was only a suggestion.” As she left, her tail flicked upwards, causing your statue’s face, still somehow intact unlike the rest of the statue, to land beside Jace. He reached over and picked it up, cradling it in his arms, Daemon’s words echoing over and over again in his mind.

“If you truly loved the humans, Jacaerys, if you truly wanted to be where you belong, you should go to them…”

“…Because you certainly don’t belong here.”

And for once, Jacaerys agreed with Daemon.

He was his mother’s heir, and yet he had no qualities of being a king. He wasn’t studious, or particularly charismatic in the eyes of the people. He did his royal duties when he remembered, but he had never aspired to be a king.

He remembered every little slip up, every time he’d been late to an event, every time he’d disappointed his mother and his siblings. Even little Viserys and Aegon could do a better job that he could. Even Luke with his mischievous ways, and young Joffrey, carried out their tasks to perfection. And his sisters, Baela and Rhaena were born to lead.

He wasn’t born for that.

He didn’t belong.

When he watched you on that ship, when he watched the people celebrate your birthday, and dance and sing and tell stories, he felt more at home. Like he could belong.

Daemon was right.

His mind was made up.

He was going to see Aemond.

“Wait!” He called out, and Vhagar’s face loomed into view once again.

“Take me to him.”

A/N: I know, I know, and I’m sorry to the Aemond girlies who are disappointed he didn’t show up. But I can promise you that he will be centre stage throughout most of Part Two

Masterlist

Tag list:

@thekittyxo-blog @iamavailablesstuff @eggofpower @thatbitchanna27 @aleemendoza2425-blog @ekavamonfort @rhaenattargaryen @ewwwitsel @marytargaryen @snowprincesa1

If you want to be added to the tag list for this story feel free to ask

[pralinesims]

// character associations

Tagged by @sertrallne @living-undead @salemsimss, thanks so much! <3

Gonna do this for... Emilio!

⊱ EMOTIONS/FEELINGS (Over)confidence, paranoia, fear, desperation, depression, guilt, mourning, head-over-heels in love, ambition, appreciation, enthusiasm, gratitude, courage

⊱ COLOURS Green (all shades), beige, bright red, dark fuchsia, muted blues

⊱ SCENTS Cedar, expensive aftershave, MFK Grand Soir perfume, disinfection, mint toothpaste, freshly mown grass, crisp summer morning air, after workout sweat, air freshener, eucalyptus

⊱ OBJECTS Sports cars, newspapers, hand cream tubes, massive chronographs, credit cards, signature cooking apron, family heirlooms, leather case journals, steak knives, heavy decanters, miniature pirate ships, large mirrors, toothpicks

⊱ BODY LANGUAGE Arms on hips, threatening stares, straight and proper posture, wide grin, tense shoulders, alcohol induced laughter, winking, very firm handshakes, intense eye contact, hands behind head

⊱ AESTHETICS Anything luxurious, casual athletic elegance, old money, sad beige core™, marble surfaces on things where it doesn't even make sense, candle-lit dinner parties, constant tidiness (never cluttered)

Tagging: everyone who is in mood to also do this~ feel free to do so and say that I've tagged you!

[yannaryartside]

SydCarmy vs Lucus

AMBITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES ON ART

This is a long one. Is about the series's themes on pursuing the arts, and the reasons that this ships work as symbolism for it.

When thinking about the reasons Marcus and Sydney were not going to work out (as far as we can see), I read a comment saying: "they are not on the same level" and the more I thought about it, I realized it not only meant they are not equal in culinary expertise, but they also have different ways to "live" their path in the culinary arts, almost opposite philosophies about it. And all of it is explained in their conversations with their (possible) romantic interest. 

WHAT IS AN ART PHILOSOPHY?

When you enter a path in the arts, any part, at some point, you will have to make decisions about how you are going to transit this path because there are very different ways to live a creative life, to make money out of it, and how feel fulfilled about it. Many people will enter their path with an idea of what success looks like, probably modeled after an artist that you admired, the desire for your art to be recognized as good, or as "the best," or even to disrupt what came before you. Shortly, art philosophy is how you value your path in the arts: What makes it good art? What point of your career is gonna bring you satisfaction? What guides you to it?

CARMY AND SIDNEY : "LET'S BE THE BEST AND REACH LOST OF PEOPLE"

They both want to be "the best," their definition of it equals stars, reviews, magazine interviews, and restaurant numbers. The creative impulse is only as valuable as is booming, and a chef is only as good as the size of their kitchen.

They both want exterior recognition and aspire to a big audience, and their satisfaction in their craft depends on that; what makes their unbearable jobs worth it somehow is if "people loved the food." They both have wounds and bonds formed around food and love making people happy with the food, but they have selected a perspective of what "the best" is and is an ambition they run almost blindly to. You can think the burger place on your block has the best food in the world. There are cooks utterly content with that, but the Michelling stars are telling otherwise.

Of course, this is the most tangible way to measure success in arts, the singer with the most loved songs, the book with the most readers. Quality is supposed to be evident by popularity, and they want it, decorated with the prize of succeding in such a competitive industry. They have tried to win the culinary rat race and have regrets about it.

Carmy (motivated by the rejection and abandonment from his brother) worked his ass to unhealthy levels to climb the culinary ladder, living to best everybody around him and run the best restaurant on the planet (which, if we believe his monologue, only took two fucking years). Sydney is presented to us as somebody with equal creative powers, intelligence, and instincts as Carmy, which is particularly obvious in their brainstorming sessions. But she hasn't been offered the same opportunities. Her previous bosses described her as "incredibly talented, impatient, and green." and one friend told her as "always trying to be the best." There is much to say about how her impatience may sabotage her ambitions. Still, it may be because she fears getting stuck, labeled, or never recognized by her talents.

These two have 3 things they prioritize in their art paths:

Creative expression+people love the food

Exterior recognition based on the industry standards (stars and big kitchens)

A rat race (sense of urgency) and your ability to play on it.

What makes your food the "best" is comparing it to everyone else and "winning" in a particular category. 

Not to mention, they are both deeply aware of the logistics and money sides of the restaurant life. It is not like they don't value inspiration, but their ambition is the defining force behind said inspiration. 

MARCUS AND LUCA: "LET'S BE INSPIRED AND EVOLVE"

Luca was introduced to us as someone who was "trying to keep up with Carmy, who was much better than him," the same way the audience feels Marcus is someone trying to impress and keep up with Syd. Luca knows the culinary world, has traveled, and has a privileged position making high-end desserts (possibly in a place with stars). He is the Carmy to Marcus's Sydney. 

Btw, there are some crazy parallels here too:

Marcus and Sydney have a wound/fear related to their mothers.

Luca and Carmy have strained relationships with their siblings (Luca has a sister he cannot find).

Both Carmy and Sydney got into cooking because of early childhood passion

Marcus and Luca got into it by "chance," discovering a passion that they never expected to love this much or be good at.

Mentor x student relationship.

Back to Marcus and Lucas's perspective of art. Notice how Carmy was trapped in a sense of urgency environment, with many people working for him, in NYC, a chaotic city; while Luca seems to work entirely by himself, in a pretty chill environment, in a rather peaceful city. Luca and Marcus thrive on this environment, which is about thought and delicacy, unlike the "efficient, fast run kitchen" Carmy and Sydney established.

Marcus had no philosophy about his craft because he was barely starting. Still, he adopts Luca's philosophy, which has 3 parts:

You may never be the best. Some artists have to let go of the idea of being "the best." There is a lot to say about this. But I want to express this using an example of the craft that I aspire to get into: writing. A friend once told me that some books are not meant to reach millions because they have a very specific audience, and what makes them good is how "memorable they are." More of it, some artists are never recognized in their times. The industry may not be made for them, or it may be just luck. Limiting the value of art by the industry standard is depriving the world of art that needs to be more exploratory, spontaneous, or just free. 

Since industry validation may not be available to you, instead of "being the best" against others, you can decide, "My only competition is me from yesterday." This perspective is super important because it gives you something to aspire to, ensures your creative growth, and allows reinvention.

It is not about skill but being open to the world, yourself, and other people. It is not about fancy techniques or recognition but about being inspired. 

To Luca and now Marcus, the creative process is as good as is honest, and a chef is as good as the effort he puts into it. The "self-exploration" and the recognition of the people surrounding him allowed Marcus to create his desserts: The Copenhagen sundae, for his ultimate school (and Luca), "Mum's" honey bun, Sidney's donut (the first one in believing in him and when he recognized his dreams), and "The Michael" the one that put him to make bread, and the tribute that needs to be made.

[alicentflorent]

I liked Rhaenicent at the beginning but slowly I realised how one sided both the ship and the fandom was.

EVERYTHING revolved around Rhaenyra, the only acceptable ending was Alicent forsaking her family to kiss the feet of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen.

Do you think they’d ever consider a scenario where Rhaenyra agrees to name Aegon II her heir instead of Jace to make peace with both factions? No, instead Alicent must sacrifice her own children for Rhaenyra’s precious boys.

Yeah that was my exact issue with it too. As adults, Alicent has to be the one to sacrifice her children, her faction and her ambitions to earn back Rhaenyra’s love. People use the excuse of how awful Aegon and Aemond are but they are still Alicent’s children. People would lose it if Rhaenyra was ever expected to disinherit her son or give up her throne to end the war and be “worthy” of Alicent. Hell, no one even expects her to hand daemon over to the greens! Neither of them should have to sacrifice their loved ones for this relationship. The show and the fandom always think Rhaenyra is justified in her feelings towards Alicent and the greens (and she absolutely is) but Alicent needs to be humbled and put Rhaenyra before anyone else.

[kirbybecomesastarwarrior]

💋: what motifs/symbols do you associate with your ship?

I would love nothing more than to explain all of them.

Motifs/Symbols

When I say that they're the heart & soul of KBASW I mean it! Arthur & Celestine are the moral compass of the story/KBASW AU.

Tropes/Themes/Dynamics

@kirbyoctournament

As you can see once again I had too much fun. Sorry, it took a while for these inbox questions. I ended up putting them together because they went so "hand & in hand". (link to questions)

Once again I will say this again... "writing romance is a different type of beast I kid you not!" Shoutout to all the romance writers. I've been a single pringle my entire life so... that's why these posts (Celarthur/Merther) post take so long!

I hope my portals of romance aren't... I don't know how to put this "don't seem too romanticized" or that cringe (LOL).

Keep reading for my long in-depth explanation of the content. (and honestly I still don't think it's enough lol)

I hope you guys enjoyed the post.~

Please continue reading if want a full explanation of the following...

Motifs & Symbols explained~

Creatures:

Celestine: Owls are the symbol of wisdom, power, and spirituality; the birds of Athena. But they're also the symbol of bad luck and are also known as an omen of death.

I've worked this into her character, she's all known just like the animal she represents. But also worked the "bad omens" in her future sight... she mostly (if not always) sees horrific futures. Despite this, she's used that to her arsenal, after all, you learn more from your mistakes, or in this case horrible futures.

And of course, her "cracked warpstar" is her omen of death.

Arthur: Dragon (of course) can either be a force of good or evil. Bravery, ambition, and strength a symbols of adversity, and wickedness.

This paired so beautifully with Arthur's character, (since he is a redeemed good bean). All the best qualities can be used for good and evil... Also, I made his dragon green & red as a reference to the Welsh flag and well...

Alright truth be told the only reason I had Arthur go to "Yomi" is so I can justify why he as dragon monster form (I've been working on it)...hopefully you'll be seeing it soon

Flowers:

Celestine: Lotus represents overcoming adversity, the cycle of rebirth, and enlightenment. Not only that but spiritual growth.

Just like the flower itself, she was able to bloom in the murkiest water and despite all made the most of her life. The (sad) truth of it all is had she not had that hardship... she would have been just as egotistical & selfish as Icarus & Uther.

It was her "future vision" & her struggles that made her into such an empathic person.

Arthur: Marigolds represent family ties divinity and the connections between life and death.

And as I have recently revealed Sir Arthur is why Morpho Knight can go in & out of the living world. Also without spoiling anything refers to when he becomes King of Avalon. (and those of you who have seen Coco... there is indeed going to be a Marigold bridge that Arthur can create with his powers :3)

Elementals (symbols):

(Water power) Celestine (like her elemental) is a very go-with-the-flow person. She understands that the unexpected can happen at any moment and will change the course.

With Arthur when he's particularly stuck in a rut, Celty will give him options, or mentally stuck she goes to her "Rolodex of knowledge." Adaptive and flexible with he thinking, she's very willing to think outside the box.

This is also throwing Arthur's burn mark: I changed Arthur's burn mark (caused by Uther's fire magic) to just be the right shoulder. To represent the burning of the " angel on your right shoulder."

Celestine (who's a water element) is healing his right shoulder, or basically, the goodness he lost. Of course, the mark is still but in the sense he no longer bears the burden alone. "Literally taking the weight off his shoulders. " That he doesn't have to be this perfect soldier... that he can just be a "wart".

(Earth powers) Arthur, he can be stubborn (as a rock) and stuck in his ways, (which is why it takes him a while to get him out of Uther's thumb). But this also applies to his determination. Someone who doesn't give up and makes him incredibly ambitious.

When she's thinking "what I could've done" or "what I should've done", ruminating on it. (trapped in her own current) Using his "very a matter of facts" to remind her of what she's done, and that things are better because she did act.

Out of the many vast futures she sees, Celestine can rely on one constant... who was there for her was Arthur... he's her constant her rock. And was the thing that ultimately made her choose Arthur to be the one to help her fulfill Kirby's prophecy. Because she knew he'd still complete it even after she was gone/.

~

(I'd love to explain Arthur & Excalibur but if I'd go into detail with it that'd be going into spoiler. But for those of you who aren't familiar with Arthuriana lore... the true value of Excalibur is in the Scabbard...

But here it's for another reason... because the Scabbard & Excalibur are two separate relics. The scabbard belongs to Arthur... the sword however was never his.~)

The Yin & Yang to each other & when the sun and moon are brought together they form the dusk & dawn~ Taking on and bringing out the best in each other.

Tropes/Themes/Dynamics

Enemies to Lovers troupe & cop vs. vigilante.

As a result, they have such a fun back & forth and witty banter... but despite it they.

In short, the cop working for the corrupt system is first at odds with our lovable rogue. And believe they are the villainous one (because society says so), only to realize through their many interactions that they are fighting for good despite operating outside of the law.

Then eventually (the cop) realizes "Oh, crabs" I'm working on the wrong side. For Arthur, his hesitation/ignorance of this doesn't come from the idea of a "holier than thou mindset" (like Uther). Rather it comes from "I want to be accepted" & "I want to be worth something..." Arthur started as the weakest of the three (students of Uther) which is why he was burned by Uther (to be used as an example to the other two)

When he finally beat the odds it was his proudest moment. The desire to be seen by Uther was what blinded him and made him see his mentor as the pinnacle of what he should be. (but in reality, it was actually just a want for affection and praise.) And believed in these ideals (that Uther spits out), making the ends justify the means & ignoring the damage they cause. (For the greater good)

The fact that accepting this means that the suffering & all the hard work he went through were for nothing.

But it's through Celestine's influence as Merlyn who actively tried to expand his worldview. That there was so much more to life than war, and showing "Might is not always right" him there are other ways than (Uther's) brute force.

A more fulfilling & smarter way, where he can still do his duties without having to sell his soul for it. Having his first taste of unconditional love.

Leading him to be able him to befriend Gaius, and Kit Cosmo (who is Sir Kay in this) later become his sworn brothers, emotionally adopted by Sir Ector (Kit's father ), and tame/ befriend Fritz Stahlbaum (Ribbon's Grandfather).

The Double life /Secret Identity

Are very much an important aspect of Celestine's character. While she is confident in herself and who she is... it's not as herself it's as her alter-ego Merlyn.

Basically, being Merlyn it's not just her "redemption for Shiver Star" but this is also her escape as well.

She's seen as this hero, someone great and fantastical when she dawns on the the cloak and the mustache. She's the great mage Merlyn she can be herself... But when she's Celestine her true self she's seen as the broken... the useless Hero of Yore something to be hidden away and ashamed of.

(I'd know you from anywhere & any form)

Celestine only ever told her friends (Minerva Mimi- great grandmother, Dairus Drosslemeyr- Daroach's great uncle, and Velvet Stahlbaum- fairy Queen, Ripple's stepmother) about her Merlyn persona.

That's why it's such important that the only person to ever figure it out (without Celestine telling them... ) was Arthur. You see, Arthur Celestine as Merlyn, but as she became more popular in the diplomatic world, she. had to be seen more. (Much to Icarus & Uther's dismay~)

Arthur started to see the similarities between her and Merlyn... it was through her quirks & character that she was indeed Merlyn. And does not mind at all she's still the same person. Respectfully Arthur pretends that he does not know..

It was also through these interactions realization... that she does not value herself (true self) as Celestine.

And this hurts Arthur deeply, the person who he always saw as this amazing mage, who was the smartest person he knew.. doesn't see that in herself at all. Arthur has always asked her (as Merlyn) "what he could do to pay them for everything they've done for him..." But all they'd ever say was... "the fact that we're able to be finally partners in crime is enough for this old man" (basically they were saying, the fact we were finally friends & your company is enough).

Uses this as a chance (of knowing her identity and Celestine not being aware of it) to repay her for everything she's given him.

Not only that but he actively does things that make her more comfortable and appreciate herself more (as Celestine.) Buy subtly reminds her that she is Merlyn. And performing these small acts of kindness for her gives her chances to be herself around him and encourages it.

Scene Example of this/ & more of their Dynamic :

C: You know you don't have to do this for me, you merely have to just guard me have to-

A: Oh but I do...It seems your diplomatic work was overlooked... Unfairly I may add especially.

C: Thank you so much... War-ta (had to stop herself from calling him Wart) The war on the battlefield must be so physically taxing on everyone... people tend to forget it's a political one as well... this means a lot but in reality, it's not that much as you do.

A: I don't see it like that... if anything your battles are one of tongues

Y' know an old friend of mine told when people forget to appreciate you... you forget the importance of yourself, so they told me to perform small acts of kindness to myself... to remind myself.

I hope I'm overstepping or making you feel uncomfortable *sees her blushing & getting embraced*

C: No, it's nothing I just wasn't expecting someone to give me flowers today (Oh, hoot he's talking about me *as Merlyn*)... Your friend sounds wise~

A: Oh my friend? *smiles sweetly at her* I wish they could tell you this themselves... they have such a fantastic way with words... I don't know how convincing I sounded compared to them, after all... *looks at her directly* They're the smartest person I know~

C: Oh is that so * gets more embarrassed* that's so sweet of you to say... I should take his advice... I tend to forget this myself.

A: Oh no need to be so hard on yourself... Actually...* grins wickedly* the friend I speak of is actually a very old man... with very old bones... at first I thought he was making up old bones since he seemed so energetic for an old man~

C: Oh hoo hoo, hoot really? *nervously laughter

A: Ah, but alas I haven't seen him for awhile... perhaps its old bones have caught up to him... he just seemed so lively... but who are we to determine the vitality of the elderly after all... We're not old men!

C: Yes we most certainly are hoo hoo hoot *still nervously laughing*

Oh look dear we're already at the temple!

Good night dear have a wonderful evening *hilarious sprints inside*

A: Go-od night, My- la-lady *tries to stifle his laughter then-* AH BwaHAHAHAHAHAH!~

Alright, admittingly he does have a little slice of revenge for Celestine hiding her identity as Merlyn. With little fun jabs like that. (LMAO)

~

They do have this "More than the mask moment..." Arthur admits the only reason he ever found out that she was "Merlyn," was because they were the same person with or without the cloak.

Oh I have so many ideas for this but that'll be for another day~

Forbidden Love

And of course, it's forbidden!~

Since astral are born from wishes (made by the positive energy of the Fountain of Dream) there was no need for "relations". Not only that because of status, or (mainly Uther ), but a tragedy involving Sir Orpheus & his lover.

Uther took this as a chance to further his agenda "Look & at the tragedy of Sir Orpheus... look what happened to him and his lover! It's clearly a sign from Void... THIS LEADS TO WEAKNESS AND WEAKNESS LEADS TO DEATH! WE ARE SOLDIERS NOTHING MORE THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIVERGE FROM THE PATH! THIS IS OUR LOT IN LIFE DO NOT BELIEVE YOU CAN BE ANYTHING ELSE!"

And yes that is indeed Papi. (Sir Orpheus )

Nobody Gets Me Like You ~

They are the two sides of the same coin. Both of them are trapped in the positions they were given...

Arthur is trapped in the position of being Sir Uther's (bloody) right-hand man, his Perfect Killing Mach- I mean soldier- his golden boy.

Celestine is trapped in the position of being the Oracle... the broken one, the one cast aside, the overlooked and underestimated.

The key to breaking these chains that they've been cursed with is finding self-love within themselves. And they find that within each other. "A Steven Universe Love like you" moment.~

It's this deep understanding and trust they have for one another that allows love to develop feelings for one another. Emotionally they're both dealing with the same issue.

Being able to be there for one another and not having to explain it allows the other to put their guard down. And truly fall apart in front of another knowing that the other will hold them together.

I really love these two so much... if you've read this long thank you so much I hope you guys enjoyed the post!

[polutrope]

The world bent and, like Beleriand before it, Elenna was no more. But as a stone cast in a still pool sets a bright autumn leaf sailing to its hoary edges, the ships of the Faithful rode the wake of their kingdom’s downfall to the shores of Middle-earth. 

Elendil and his sons observed no period of mourning, left no empty space in which to contemplate their loss: almost at once they set footprints of great cities atop the villages of Eriador. Monuments to their strength, their survival. 

Soon, Elendil wrote, soon there would be time to visit the Last Homely House. But as the years wore on, it became clear that if Elrond wished to meet his brother’s proud heir he would need to make the journey to Annúminas himself. 

“You look so like him,” were the first words the King of the Exiles spoke to the Lord of Rivendell, once the door of his meeting chamber was shut behind them. Before, he had stared, as he had failed to hide his astonishment — and, it might be said, discomfiture — behind a kingly reception. 

“Who?” Elrond asked with half a smile, knowing full well who he meant. 

“Elros,” Elendil answered, completely serious. “The statues and portraits—”

“Yes, he was my twin.”

Elendil shook his head, abashed. “I am sorry, I suppose it is… Artists are known to flatter their royal subjects. You do not think, seeing the statue of a king of legend, that he might really have looked so in life.”

Elrond laughed. “You have something of him in yourself, too, lord.” He did not say it was his self-assurance, his candour that nearly overstepped the bounds of common courtesy. For all it had irked him at times, Elrond had ever admired his brother’s boldness and was pleased to see it had not been dulled over the generations, even in the more humble strain of his descendants. 

“Call me not lord,” said Elendil, then laughed and swept an arm across the room, beckoning Elrond towards a sumptuous green settee by the window. “But come, come. Let me have wine and cheeses brought — or perhaps you wish to eat a proper meal? I am sorry, you have come a long way, you must be tired. A bath, perhaps, and then we can meet again at supper?”

“No, no, I have all I need. I was hosted well at an inn on your city’s borders yesternight.”

“An inn!” Elendil cried. “You ought to have come at once to the palace.”

“My arrival was late.”

“Nonetheless,” Elendil said, and called to a servant positioned outside. “Solmion, have food and wine brought to us.” Sitting, he again addressed Elrond. “I do wish you had sent word of your coming. We would have had rooms and a great reception prepared.”

Elrond nodded and smiled graciously. He did not tell the king that his promises of pomp were the very reason Elrond had given no notice of his coming. 

* * *

Elendil’s wine cup barely touched his mouth, so absorbed was he in tales of his ambition, his hopes for Endor. His hands flew expressively as he spoke, and Elrond's eyes returned always to the ring adorning the index finger of his right hand: the green emerald crowned in gold, the serpents devouring each other. The ring of Barahir: Elrond knew it from the histories, though how it came out of the ruin of Beleriand, he could not say. For all its fame in the great tales, a ring must have seemed but a small token in those days when Elros’ ships were laden with all the surviving heirlooms of Men and Elves. Now, many of those had no doubt been lost, and Elrond noted how securely the ring circled his finger, as though it had become a part of his hand — for so jewellery appears when seldom, if ever, removed from the wearer. 

Elrond wore no such jewels.

Only one heirloom had come into Elrond’s hands, passed quietly from Gil-galad’s safekeeping, as if the High King felt some consolation was needed for all the times he had been passed over in favour of Elros. Elrond accepted the gift with gratitude, but in truth he had felt no jealousy for the many reminders of their legacy that had been heaped upon his brother the king. The heavy longsword, moreover, had never been Elrond’s weapon. For many centuries now Narsil had lain unused, awaiting a more fitting bearer.

Elrond bore it with him to Annúminas, for he had heard the sword of Elu Thingol had been lost at last in Pharazôn’s ignominious fall. 

“The work of Telchar!” Elendil exclaimed, admiring the well-balanced blade. “How have I heard no rumour of this weapon?”

“Alas,” Elrond answered, “the heirlooms of the Edain are often overshadowed by those of the Eldar.”

Elendil hummed his agreement, not taking his eyes from the sword.

“I am told,” Elrond elaborated, “that it  was commissioned by Felagund for Bëor the Old and became, for a while, the sword of his House. But Barahir sent it from Dorthonion with his wife, Emeldir Manhearted. Its history in Brethil is obscure, but it was kept by those peoples in honour, for it was carried with them to the Havens of Sirion and thence to Balar. Gil-galad entrusted it to me —but ever has it sat uneasily in my hands.”

“Nonetheless, it is a generous gift.” Elendil sheathed the sword. “You can be assured that I and my heirs will bear it with honour, Elrond son of Eärendil.”

* * *

Great as its deeds had been, it was all too short a time before Narsil returned to Imladris in shards.

Elrond balanced them upon his lap as young Valandil played among the wildflowers, uncomprehending of his doom. Tears gathered in Elrond’s eyes and wet his cheeks. Such premature grief was ever the price of foresight. Somewhere, Sauron’s Ring survived. Long would be the road and many the losses before Elendil’s sword was lifted once again against the shadow of evil. 

On AO3 | On SWG

[sunnysideaeggs]

Black stans are justifying Rhaenyra’s blockade as revenge for the greens usurping her. So they are basically trying to say Rhaenyra is starving a bunch of innocent people because she wants to sit on an iron throne and tell people what to do. She had to slap her own advisor because he knows she’s nothing without Daemon

Rhaenyra knows nothing about being a Queen or politics in general. Her only hope is other people winning the throne for her. Daemon gathering an army for her, Mysaria’s plotting to get the smallfolk on her side, Corlys’ is refurbishing the ships for her and the dragonseeds will gain her more dragons. Even her own son made a plan to win the Freys over to her side behind her back

oh they will justify anything 💀 from their point of view, her actively starving a highly populated city, then creating riots with food as bait and ‘giving an opportunity’ to her less fortunate relatives that ends up with at least 20 deaths it’s okay because ‘they knew’ and ‘she needed dragons!’. she literally starved those poor people then gave them hope and locked them up with a beast. that is unforgivable.

i hate to say this, but they have succeeded in making another daenerys. she is a targaryen queen in a position of power, who knowingly killed a bunch of poor people to gain dragons. she even made the blood sacrifice! she sacrificed targaryen blood, king’s blood, but as the coward she is, she didn’t put her own life at risk.

rhaenyra is acting now, i just see that her actions are not heroic at all. it is so clear to me that i can’t even comprehend how can someone see this cruelty as heroism. this is kinslaying! this is a blood sacrifice! she is killing her blood for power, and she intends to kill more of them! the red sowing is named appropriately. the last frame of her unnerves me, she’s dressed in red, dyed with the blood of the nameless targaryens that died for her ambition, and she smiles.

[gunnrblze]

Kick x Hesh

NSFW, 2000k+ words, pt. 2 here

A lazy little thing for these two, idk what it really is lol but I love shipping them. Very teasing, very sappy sweet (it was actually supposed to be horny shit but I lost the plot like three times. will probably write something else actually smutty for them)

CW: no actual sex but mention of dick and what not, 18+ MDNI

Kick couldn’t quite explain it, but there was something intriguing about one of the newest young additions to the task force.

Hesh was a smart kid in his eyes. A damn good soldier, trained well and bred with enough ambition and determination for a lifetime. Not a kid, actually. A man. One he found himself lingering on for too long sometimes, amber eyes tracing the outline of Hesh’s biceps all the way down to the belt constricted around his waist. One whose voice made his stomach twist when it rang in over comms. One who had started to drive him up the wall.

It was that little grin that usually did him in. When the man would dote on Riley or joke with Logan, his mouth would curve up, and it made Kick’s heart stutter behind his ribs. He’d willfully ignored it for a while, until Hesh began talking to him more. Asking more questions, unnecessary ones, really. Kick didn’t mind, he could chat if the time called for it. But he couldn’t focus with Hesh standing over him at his desk. He had to will himself to look in those pretty green eyes instead of at the pretty mouth yapping over god knows what.

The worst part though, above all he reckoned, was the dreams he’d started to have about the man. Dreams of lips glued to one another, hands up shirts and mouths going down in directions they shouldn’t.

Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he stared at the sway in Hesh’s hips for too long sometimes. Maybe he shouldn’t admire the way his tac pants wrapped taut over those thick thighs, corded with muscle and littered with enough dark hair to make anyone salivate a little. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Or maybe Hesh just had a charm that could drag down even the strongest of men.

——————

“Hey man, have you seen Merrick? Got paperwork to do” Hesh would linger in the doorway of Kicks office. He didn’t even need to turn around to know it was the younger man before he spoke, and frankly he didn’t want to. Didn’t want to fuck up his focus, is what he decided on.

“Nah, probably lurking around here somewhere though” the amber eyed man shrugged, clicking at some bullshit on his desktop while his fingers curled around the mouse a little tighter than necessary. He’d curse himself for being so goddamn affected by the kid one day, all it took was that smooth, honeyed voice and he was no better than a sailor being dragged down by a siren at sea.

He could hear Hesh walk up behind him, no doubt eyeing said bullshit on his screen. Kick could smell him too and god, he thought he’d have to force the poor soldier out of his office before he did anything regrettable.

“Watcha working on?” Hesh asked with more intrigue in his voice than he knew the boy really had. He’d been doing that lately. Along with the questions of genuine curiosity he’d throw at him, Hesh would do exactly what he was doing now. Linger. Kick felt both lucky and psychotic about it.

“Workin on work, kid” Kick would reply easily, his free hand biting the nail off his thumb, a habit he couldn’t recall when he’d picked up as of late.

He could feel those mossy eyes on him as Hesh stood behind his desk chair, observing too intently at the way Kicks mouth moved over his thumb. He distantly wondered if the nearest insane asylum had any beds available, because he was certain he was being driven to madness.

“Ya know, Logan told me how gross it is to bite your nails, lots of bacteria-“ Hesh would start to ramble, and Kick wasn’t sure why he was still here, but he couldn’t complain. He’d never complain. It was just difficult to focus with a six foot one, brick wall standing behind you, the dizzying scent of his musk and something faintly pine scented filling his nostrils.

Kick let him rant, and he nodded, chuckling at Hesh’s insistence that he stop the habit before it gets worse. That he should find something else to chew on.

Goddamn himself for taking the whoreish route everytime, but his mind filled with so many other options of items he could sink his teeth into. Things he’d chew and bite and lick at until they were raw-

“Just saying, kinda gross if you really think about it” the soldier would cap his rant off with, reaching a hand around Kicks shoulder to knock his fingers away from his mouth. A grin would form on both of their faces, making the amber eyed man turn to look up at his office intruder, ignoring the way his heart flitted too hard at the contact.

“Don’t ya got something better to do than insist what goes in my mouth and what doesn’t?” He’d ask Hesh, and honest to goodness, he wasn’t sure if he could take the sight before him when he actually did turn around.

Wide grin on the man’s face as he chuckled deeply, the type that made his stomach lurch and his dick twitch a little. Staring down at him with those deep eyes and a comeback settling on the of tip of his tongue.

“Trust me, what goes in and out of your mouth is your business, not mine” Hesh would retort, making Kick smirk deeper than necessary as his mind filled in so many blanks. He debated for only a moment about whether or not he should voice those fill ins.

“Yeah? You seem to care quite a bit about my mouth” he’d settle for something cheeky enough as he swiveled around in the desk chair, thick arms crossing over one another as he faces the soldier now.

It made Hesh blink plainly for a second, a gear visibly turning in his head as the grin faltered for a moment. Kick worried for a second, if he should shut the fuck up and never speak again, but the blush that started to bloom on the man’s cheeks in front of him had his own mind stuttering.

“So what? Nail biting is a bad habit” Hesh recovered quickly, giving a perfectly pretend nonchalant shrug. Kicks brain geared into autopilot, unable to talk himself through whether or not he should bite his tongue now.

“Not biting them anymore…still concerned with the state of my mouth though, aren’t ya?” A little grin found its way on his lips, looking up at the man to admire the way the worsening pink of his cheeks contrasted against the green of his irises. The momentary widening of those eyes was just the cherry on top for him.

“No, just…just saying” Hesh would shake his head, and Kick could see the way his fingers dug into his thick biceps, curling around the firm muscle.

“Yeah? That why you’re still in my office instead of Merricks?” Kick would add swiftly, wondering how far he could take it. How far Hesh’s leash would run before he let himself detach from it, and hit Kick with the comebacks he knew the soldier wanted to give him.

The amber eyed man wasn’t stupid, he knew this wasn’t an equal playing field. That Hesh was younger, less experienced. Too dignified to let himself flirt with an older team member, one that outranked him regardless of actual rank. But Kick knew he wanted too. Wanted to test the waters with him because why the hell else would he still be here? Why would he linger so much? Why would he drive Kick crazy and then let him flounder? Why, why, why, would he let himself get worked up over the resident computer nerd of the bunch?

“Yeah” Hesh nodded, not very subtly biting the inside of his bottom lip as he gazed down at Kick, whose turn it was to be at a loss for words now. His eyes flicked to the open door of his office, and back up to Hesh, eyeing him down and ignoring the way his throat felt a little tighter all a sudden.

Hesh stepped a little closer to him, eyeing the man himself. The way Kicks thighs were spread in his desk chair, tactical shirt tight over his upper arms and shoulders, the delicious week old stubble on his jaw.

“What if…I did care?” He’d ask the operator below him with enough confidence to surprise them both, fingers in a vice grip around his own arms, crossed taut over his chest. Kick merely stared up at him, a smirk forming on his pretty mouth.

“What if you did, hm? Would that be so bad, kid?” Kick would ask, head tilting slightly as he felt his brain start to turn to molten lava at just the simple sight of Hesh biting his lip now.

“Would it?” The younger man asked a bit more seriously, voice deepening. Confirming all of Kicks suspicions. He didn’t want to get in trouble for this.

“No…” Kick answered easily, shaking his head softly. All he wanted was to reassure him, to run his fingers over his buzzed hair and kiss those pretty lips red until every worry drained from Hesh’s head.

“…wouldn’t be a bad thing at all” he was becoming less and less concerned with the state of his office door being open, trusting that he could rely on the sound of any footsteps down the hall to make him act more professionally than he was about to.

Kick stood up, stepping too close for comfort toward the soldier in front of him. His hand extended, cupping Hesh’s cheek with more tenderness than he usually exerted. He could feel the man’s jaw clench and unclench under his roughened fingers, and it made him smile. A smile that Hesh couldn’t help but return.

It was far more warm and inviting than Kick ever thought the world would allow him. Especially with someone who deserved that whole world in its entirety. Someone who deserved a world sweeter than the one he was given.

It became a blur as Kicks other hand cupped Hesh’s face, leaning in only halfway before the green eyed man reciprocated, lips pressing firmly enough to make both men weak in the knees.

Hesh was backed up into the wall behind him, boots squeaking against the linoleum flooring, his own hands flying to Kicks shoulders for support as their mouths fought for first place. One of Kicks hands slid down the man’s cheek to the back of his neck, grasp firm enough to belay his own need, the all consuming heat that was spreading throughout his body.

Sighs turned into groans, hips pressed flush against one another as both men fought to control themselves, all too aware of the open door, and the fact that they’re both very much on duty.

“God, this is even better than I thought it’d be” Kick rasped against the other man’s mouth, willing his dick not to harden up just yet. He could feel Hesh smirk against his lips, the soldiers hands leaving his shoulders to grip his hips with enough firmness to make Kicks knees even weaker, damn near threatening to give out on him.

Somehow Kick could hear footsteps coming down the hallway over the pounding of his heartbeat and the melting of his brain. He regrettably pulled himself off Hesh, catching a bit of oxygen as his eyes roamed over the man’s swollen red lips. A sight he wanted to sear into his brain.

The footsteps drew closer and Kick backed away from the wall, walking toward his office door to shut it before catching sight of Merrick ready to peer into the room.

Merrick immediately noticed Kicks equally disheveled state, but thankfully chose to ignore it, instead, asking if he knew where the lieutenant was. A moment of silent understanding passed between them, before he mentioned a little too loudly to tell Hesh his ass is due in his office if Kick just so happens to see him. Followed by what looked like an eye roll.

Both men fought not to laugh after Kick shut the door and put his lips right back where they belonged.

[atopcat]

I really liked your post about Rhaenicent. What do you think of Olivia’s recent interviews in regards to Alicent’s character, she seems to be really pushing for Rhaenicent despite everything.

Just to start I want to make it clear that this isn’t an attack against Olivia Cooke, she’s a brilliant actress who is entitled to her opinions. As a fan however I don’t like her interpretation of Alicent simply because she’s made it abundantly clear she’s more invested in Rhaenicent than Alicent herself.

Olivia could’ve done a Lena Headey and unapologetically supported her character despite not being popular with the general audience, who cares if people think she’s a bitch, she’s your bitch and that’s all that matters. Instead she sought out the one part of the fanbase who supposedly like Alicent but also has a large universal following: Rhaenicent.

Here’s where it gets tricky, when it comes to ships such as Rhaewin, Jacegan, Laenyra, Daemyra, Jace/Baela, Alicole, Aemond/Alys, Helaemond etc. it’s pretty straightforward: you’re a fan of both characters, maybe one more than the other but you do genuinely like both. Rhaenicent doesn’t have this, it’s a lot more complicated mainly because it’s the only one that doesn’t exist in book canon.

The Rhaenicent fan base is split into three unequally distributed categories:

>1% who are genuine fans of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, emphasis on the genuine because although some claim to be they end up in either of the latter two. The problem with these fans is that they’ve succumbed to the trap of “benevolent misogyny”, reducing both women to being nothing more than 24/7 victims of evil men. They rob Alicent of her ambition, Rhaenyra of her agency, they think these women will abandon everything and run off on dragon back because they’re still silly teenage girls who only care about cake and clothes.

14% are Alicent stans, the majority of them don’t actually like Rhaenyra she’s simply a self insert because there is no one else you can ship her with other than Criston but Alicole is nowhere near as popular because it doesn’t include a fan favourite. In Rhaenicent’s case the fan favourite is Rhaenyra not Alicent.

85% are all Team Rhaenyra, the only version of Alicent they’re interested in is one who is nothing more than a personal cheerleader for the Black Queen. They don’t want to hear about how Rhaenyra’s actions negatively affected Alicent, only how Alicent still cares about her and will do anything for her despite everything.

Both Olivia and Emily Carey faced a lot of harassment on social media, someone even came up to Olivia in real life and called Alicent a c*nt to her face. I know when you’re in a fandom bubble it’s easy to think Alicent and Team Green are just as popular as Rhaenyra and Team Black but that’s far from the truth. So although the vast majority of Rhaenicents are first and foremost Rhaenyra stans, they’re also the ones most welcoming to the actresses who are having a hard time because of stupid trolls who can’t differentiate between a character and the actor playing them.

Then it makes sense why Olivia will jump on board the Rhaenicent train, but it comes at the expense of her character. I’ve read some of her recent interviews, she’s throwing not just Alicent under the bus but also the entirety of Team Green just to maintain the illusion that Alicent’s no.1 priority will always be Rhaenyra Targaryen.

“Alicent is scared of Criston”, he’s her right hand man, the only one who has her back, he’s loyal to a fault and President of the Alicent Fan Club. But he’s also disliked by Team Black for this very reason, he’s openly antagonistic to Rhaenyra calling her a “spoiled c*nt” so Olivia wants to distance herself from Alicent’s most ardent supporter.

“she’s watching him [Aemond] grow up into an absolute killer, which is terrifying for her”, if Criston is President of the Team Alicent club then Aemond is Vice President. You see throughout Season 1 how close she is to her second son, how she relies on him for support, how he truly loves and respects her. He said he wants Luke’s eye as a gift for his mother, from Alicent’s four children she is definitely closest to Aemond but he’s also the one who killed Nyra’s precious baby so fans don’t like him. Again, Olivia is detaching Alicent from her own children so she can appeal to Rhaenicents who mourned their sweet boy Luke.

“That’s what the whole series has been about: trying to get back to each other” this coupled with her saying she pushed for a Rhaenicent reunion at the end of S2 really emphasises just how willing she is to destroy everything about Alicent’s character in order to warp her into the sanitised version of a Rhaenicent wet dream.

Alicent doesn’t care her grandson was slaughtered right in front of her.

Alicent doesn’t care her 6 year old granddaughter was threatened with r*pe.

Alicent doesn’t care her daughter went insane.

Alicent doesn’t care Team Black almost killed her sons in battle.

Olivia’s version of Alicent doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t revolve around worshiping the ground Rhaenyra walks on. So as far as she’s concerned there is “still hope” because her ideal ending is one where Alicent abandons her family, agency and ambition just so she can be Rhaenyra’s personal cheerleader for the rest of her life. The Alicent she’s envisioning is one who will set her own children on fire just to keep Nyra warm.

[im-probably-crying-rn-ngl]

fuck it, book recommendations based on your favourite driver

+ age rating, summary and rambling disguised as explanation as to why

if your favourite driver is Lewis Hamilton...then i would recommend Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

(historical sports fiction, standalone) "Carrie Soto, a fierce and determined retired tennis champion, comes out of retirement at thirty-seven to reclaim her record and face personal challenges, coached by her father partnered with the man she almost opened her heart to, in Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete's epic comeback."

the connection between this book and lewis is what inspired this whole post in the first place. a comeback story even if you have proven all there is to be proven? trying to beat all the odds against you even time? being an all-time champion AND an underdog? there are so many links that can be made between carrie and lewis not just with their careers and relationships but also what adversities they have had to face. idk but is this like manifesting that lewis is going to be "back" for his 8th wdc?

if your favourite driver is George Russell...then i would recommend A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

(young adult mystery thriller, book 1 of 3) "In 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder,' Pippa Fitz-Amobi reexamines a closed case, challenging the conviction of Sal Singh for Andie Bell's murder, unearthing hidden secrets that threaten her safety as she seeks the elusive truth."

ah mr wannabe investigator (we all saw him checking out that redbull) but seriously there's something we grussell sprouts must enjoy about someone who seems so straight-laced and uptight be absolutely blatantly unhinged both on and off track. it's just so george to choose literal murder inquiry as a school project, from the ambition bordering on arrogance of believing a high schooler could do what the authorities couldn't to the genuine heartfelt sincerity in wanting the truth and to bring justice for those already deemed outcasts by society. he's OUR good girl that's not-so-secretly "bad".

(main ship are george and alex coded btw like im just saying)

(+ bonus rec bc i am incredibly biased) if your favourite team is Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team (had to google the name for the nth time)...then i would recommend The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee

(adult fantasy, trilogy, best books i have ever read) "The Green Bone Saga is a fantasy trilogy by Fonda Lee, exploring the intricate power struggles and conflicts within and around the Kaul family. Set in the fictional city of Janloon with ability-enhancing jade as it's lifeblood."

my faves with my faves. mercedes aren't a national institution/emotion (ferrari), a team (red bull racing), a villains' lair (ashton martin) or a pop band (mclaren) but a family. a dysfunctional, awkward, barely concealed hot mess of a family, but family nonetheless. chasing victory while trying to survive the horrors of life and each other is the merc way and you will see the same in this trilogy. *toto voice* loyalty!

family is duty. magic is power. honor is everything. <- literally them

if your favourite driver is Oscar Piastri...then i would recommend The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

(young adult fantasy, book 1 of 5) "In 'The Lightning Thief' by Rick Riordan, seemingly troubled teenager Percy Jackson discovers his divine lineage as a demigod, embarks on a perilous quest with his friends to prevent a war among the gods."

wow guys i don't know what to tell you except oscar JACK piastri, SON of nicole and chris piastri, might literally be percy JACKSON (i have connected the dots, you haven't connected shit). your guy might have had a former illustrious career in undertaking dangerous quests and asking greek gods to pay child support, you should check.

if your favourite driver is Lando Norris...then i would recommend Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings

(adult contemporary romance, check tws, book 1 of an ongoing series) "In 'Magnolia Parks' by Jessa Hastings, a tumultuous love story unfolds between the beautiful and self-involved London socialite Magnolia Parks and Britain's notorious bad-boy BJ Ballentine, as they grapple with a dysfunctional relationship marked by heartbreak, secrets, and the enduring pull they feel towards each other."

picked this based on vibes, just pure vibes but immaculate ones. the drama, the glitz, the glam yes but also the family, friendship, and love found within the pages of this series. this is british gossip girl. i am telling you there is a vision here people.

(+ bonus review because this might be the only book on this list that has less (3.84) than 4+ stars on goodreads and i can't do him and y'all dirty like that: i personally didn't love the first book but the series really comes together and you truly get invested in these characters and their happiness, actually pretty excited to read more.

also if nothing else it's fun, just some brain popcorn)

if your favourite driver is Carlos Sainz...then i would recommend The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

(young adult romance fantasy, check tws, book 1 of 2) "In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, Shahrzad vows vengeance for her friend's death and becomes the next bride of the tormented Caliph Khalid, discovering unexpected love as she navigates the perilous palace of secrets and stories, torn between survival and the promise of retribution."

wow like you think he didn't step out of a magical retelling of 1001 nights? mhm but let's leave aside the fact i am still not convinced otherwise. carlos this year has shown his insane mega ultra galaxy brain, so i believe the plot of the wrath & the dawn would be something that would resonate with you. the quick wit and guile of the mc as she tries to carry out a revenge plot while trying to not get executed is only comparable to carlos coming up with his own race strategy mid race and cementing himself as the only non-rbr race winner in 2023. wow.

if your favourite driver is Charles Leclerc...then i would recommend The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

(historical romance fantasy, standalone) "The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is an Iliad retelling, focusing on the deep and complex relationship between Achilles and Patroclus."

he has that sadness in his eyes that you only see in tragic greek myths etc etc. i will have to say, achilles walked so charles leclerc could race. *soft longing sigh* il predestinato and aristos achaion, the predestined and the best of the greeks. beloveds born and bathed in golden light. it just makes sense to me.

if your favourite driver is Alex Albon...then i would recommend Beach Read by Emily Henry

(adult contemporary romance, standalone) "A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters."

i mean alex is a living-breathing romance novel of a man. BUT it hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows (helmut marko if i catch you). so i think any emily henry book but especially beach read captures the ups and downs of alex's journey so well compared to just any ole romcom (...but if i had to give one for the alex enjoyers then it would be Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter, coincidentally also george and alex coded lmao).

but was it his remarkable drive back to f1 or the recent holiday beach pics that was the reason behind this rec? i guess we will never know

if your favourite driver is Logan Sargeant...then i would recommend Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

(young adult fantasy, book 1 of 3)"In 'Howl's Moving Castle' by Diana Wynne Jones, eldest daughter Sophie is cursed to age prematurely, the key to break the spell lies in the enigmatic Wizard Howl's castle. Sophie embarks on a quest to confront the Witch who cursed her all the while unraveling hidden truths about herself and Howl."

"let's bring it in and call it a day - let's look after of you." to "that's my girl" pipeline and vice versa. i know what you are.

but logang (the only one i know frfr) you deserve it okay? a cozy lil fantasy full of whimsy and wonder. tuck in and have some tea and cookies, pookies.

(i wanted to do the full grid but keep the teammates together and i haven't yet come up with something for all of em so there will be a part 2...? hopefully...?)

sources for summaries: thestorygraph and goodreads

[donaweasley]

I Will Find You (Part 01)

Pairing: Loki x Fem!Asgardian!Reader

Plot:

It has been three years since Ragnarok; three years since the attack on the Statesman; three years since Loki, the love of her life, has gone. But a mysterious event tells her that he is back. Certainly! … Probably. But taking everything back to normal sometimes isn’t as simple as one might wish.

Warnings: Angst, mature themes, eventual smut in next part (with a happy ending).

Part 2 is complete! Read here!!

Read time: ~37 mins

Minors: DO NOT INTERACT! Please, sweeties, you’ll have your time for reading mature themes soon. It’s just not now. 🙂

"I will find you."

With a promising squeeze of her hand, he had repeated the words "I will" before pushing her further into the escape pod, and fading away into his usual green glow.

That was the last time (Y/N) had seen him, or even heard from him. That was on the Statesman. When the ship with Asgardian refugees was under attack, (Y/N) had wanted to stay back and fight, for she was the commander of the army under Loki's rule. But her king - the only one she had truly been loyal to - had ordered her to mind the safety of the people escaping to Earth.

"We Odinsons will handle it here," he had said with his usual confident smirk.

But, for the first time in her life, she could not trust her king. Her fear - or maybe it was her instincts - had told her otherwise.

Several months prior, when Loki used to sit unchallenged on the throne of Asgard, he had described to her, in confidence, the ruthlessness of Thanos's ambitions, the extent to which this Titan could go in order to fulfil his dreams. And he was not the least ashamed to confide in her that he was scared of him; that even the thought of that monster scraped chills down his spine.

Despite all these, Loki had gone off to fight him. To save his people. To save his brother. All (Y/N) could do was beg the Norns for his safe return.

But apparently, the Norns did not hear her pleas. Thor had returned but without his brother, without the love of (Y/N)'s life. Without her betrothed.

New Asgard was built and, even though it took a lot of emotional effort and time, the survivors had gradually started calling it home.

But not (Y/N). Her home had a heartbeat. It had a warm embrace and caresses of soothing lips. Her home had magic radiating from his fingers.

And it was all gone. She had no home now.

"Lady (Y/N)?"

A familiar deep voice pulled her out of her reverie. She looked up to find Thor's smiling face awaiting her. The once cheerful and flamboyant god's condition was no better than hers. The man who had once been the heartthrob of every lady in the city now hardly cared about his shabby looks or his health.

(Y/N) was seated on one of the many rocks on the shore where the sea often came by to cast a soothing hand. The crashing sound of the waves helped her to cut the noises in her head and drift off to a place where she and Loki were together… or could have been together.

Seeing Thor, she rose from her place and walked towards him, careful not to slip off the uneven surface.

"Prince Thor- Pardon me. My king!" She had only ever addressed one person as her one true king, and it was difficult for her to assign that title to someone else so soon.

"Please, lady (Y/N)," the new king replied, "you do not need to address me as your king. I am no king here. Besides, you and I have a stronger relationship than that. You are my sister. My brother's betrothed."

"Nonetheless, you are still-"

“(Y/N),” he interrupted her, “I’m not here to debate on some formalities. We are long past that … I hope we are. I … It hurts me and everyone else to see you fading away like this. I simply wanted to ask you to take care of yourself. It has been over three years now. He is not-” The words stuck in his throat like a sharp blade. “He’s not coming back,” Thor resumed in a softer, shaky tone. “You must move on. It-”

“Have you been able to move on?”

Her question took him by surprise.

“It is different for me,” he tried to justify himself.

“It is nothing different, Thor. You think you deserve a tragic life ahead because you were their king and his brother. Well, I was the one charged with protecting you all, in charge of protecting him. I failed.”

The last word came out in almost a sob.

“I knew he would end up doing something stupid,” she tried to hide her tears behind trembling hands, “and he did exactly that. Every time I thought I had lost him, he returned. I waited this time, too. And waited. Why did he not return, Thor? Why?”

The older Odinson could no longer hold his emotions back. As tears started staining his face, too, he took a few steps towards her until he wrapped her in his protective, brotherly embrace. She was the only family he was left with, and it broke him even more to see her break a little more every day.

“Be strong, sister,” he tried to console her, “our people need us,” and kissed the crown of her head.

When the grief subsided a little, they both walked back to the village, with tattered hopes that someday - maybe someday - things would get better, even if just a little.

Later that night, something unexpected happened. A man from the village came running to (Y/N)’s doorstep to inform her of a news that was going viral on the internet. Although stunned initially, she refused to believe him, waving it off as some Midgardian’s silly joke to gain attention. But when he showed her the videos that apparently many people across the northern borders of the country had posted, the hair at the back of her neck stood up.

Afraid that she might faint, she gripped the door frame tightly.

“Does the king know of it?” She asked the man who had once been a foot soldier under her command.

“Not yet. I thought you should be the first to know it.”

“Thank you, Axel! Thank you!!”

She rushed past the soldier and did not stop until she was able to bang her fist on Thor’s door.

When a tipsy Thor finally opened the door, he panicked upon seeing her breathless state and wild eyes. Like a burnt man who feared fire, his first assumption was that they were under attack again.

“Have you heard the news?” She panted.

“What news? What-What happened? Why are you-”

“People have observed a sudden spike, a sudden burst in the northern lights!”

Thor, who could make no sense of it, stared dumbfounded at her.

Steadying her thoughts, she tried to elaborate. “It looked like the lights suddenly rushed upwards with a strong force, as if they were being pulled by something powerful in the atmosphere. Or,” she paused, “more like someone was radiating a sudden burst of energy through the lights.”

She remained quiet for a while, allowing the other person to process her words.

“Do you not get it, Thor?”

She showed him the videos on Axel’s phone which she had grabbed on her way.

Finally, with eyes as wild as hers, Thor tried to form a coherent sentence, but failed. “Are you trying to imply that…”

“No matter how much they credit the Sun and the magnetic fields on this planet, we of all people know who created those magical lights,” a grin was cracking its way through her lips.

“If this true-”

“This is true!” She cut Thor off.

“Where?”

“All along the northern border of Norway. But they were the most powerful in Tromsø. The reports say that it lasted for about 4-5 minutes before the lights resumed their normal state.”

“We must leave. Now!”

“It would take almost 24 hours from here. I-I cannot believe… I…”

She seemed frantic. After all these years of waiting, of almost giving up hope, were her prayers finally heard? Burdened with a myriad of emotions, her knees gave way and she dropped to the floor, sobbing.

“(Y/N)!” Thor tried to help her up. “We must make haste. Let’s go.”

—----

The ride was long. But the years that it took for them to see even a tattered veil of hope was even longer. Loki was back. Probably. But indeed if he was back, why did he not try to communicate with (Y/N)? Was he alright? Where had he been all this time?

A cyclone of thoughts and questions had taken control of (Y/N)’s mind. The Norwegian countryside swept past her, but her vision was clouded by the hope and ecstasy of finding the man she loved once again, and by the doubts and fears that her mind conjured. As the cold night air nipped at her face, she was taken back to one of those beautiful nights in Asgard where the only fear that sometimes poked her was that of Loki’s disguise being discovered by someone. But with the sorcerer’s abilities, those anxieties eventually waned. Every single time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“(Y/N), wake up!”

A voice was calling her from a distance. A soft whisper. She could not locate the source of it but she knew that deep, soothing sound. Loki’s voice.

“(Y/N)!”

There it was again. But… It was too dark. Someone caressed the side of her head. She could not see who it was until…

“Loki!” (Y/N) opened her eyes to see her king hovering over her with a hand on her head.

“Forgive me, love, I never wished to pull you out of your sleep. You looked so ethereal! But this is important.”

“How did you get in here?”

Her question was met with a smirk and with a pair of eyes that almost spelled out the words for her: “You really did not ask that.”

“Oh!” She realised once the last traces of sleep evaporated.

“Now that you have realised, get up, darling. I have arranged a picnic!” Loki said excitedly.

“A picnic?” She was dumbfounded. “In the middle of the night?”

A slender finger rested on her lips. “Shh! Do you trust me or not?”

“With my life, yes, but I cannot say the same about your madness,” she suppressed the urge to chuckle.

Rolling his eyes, he ignored her comment. “Come now, get dressed,” Loki placed a folded fabric beside her pillow.

(Y/N) had eventually learned that it was hard to argue with the God of endless-surprises-up-his-sleeve. So, without pestering him with further questions, she took the gift and unfolded it, only to be mesmerised by what she saw.

It was dipped in the colours of the night: a dark shade of blue that could only be found on moonless nights, when the sky is anything but jewelled with solely the lights of distant stars. The lower half of the dress - the part that would probably extend beyond the knees - gradually descended into cascading folds of tulle, sprinkled with tiny stones that shone like faraway planets and stars. The back was designed in a deep V-shape that would travel to the small of her back while the length of the said tulle was longer on the backside than on the front, leaving the fabric looking as though the night sky had flowed down on it and would be proudly flowing behind her as she would walk.

“I love this, Loki, I do! But … this is a bit too much, is it not?” She announced with a small frown.

The king, who had made himself comfortable on a cosy chair, dismissed her statement. “You refuse to wear something lavish in front of your people, I do not protest that. But, the future queen of Asgard can certainly do her king a favour in private, can she not?”

How could she ever say no to his charms!

“And how are you supposed to declare me as the queen when people always see Odin sitting on the throne? Hmm? Do not ruin something that took years for you to build, Loki. I am your queen. Whether people know it or not, I do not care.”

“Love, I know you have a penchant for drama and overthinking but,” he crossed a leg over another, “I have a plan. I always do! So, cast your worries aside, and please, bless me with a view of you in that gown!”

“Are you simply going to sit there and stare or would you show some decency and turn around?” (Y/N) gently got off the bed and took the dress in hand.

“Darling, this is not the first time I would see you as you are, unhidden by some bland piece of fabric, that does nothing to compliment your beauty. Is it?”

“Are you suggesting that what I wear is hideous?” She narrowed her eyes threateningly.

“Of course not! But they are nothing compared to what lies beneath those. Are they?” His eyes travelled across her body as though he could already see what he was praising.

Shaking her head, but not without a soft laugh escaping her, she sauntered towards the bathroom.

“That I do not know, my love. But I am afraid that I must disappoint you this time.”

Before Loki could make another smart remark or could stop her, she closed the door. But what Loki did not did not know was the way he had already flustered her, how she had leaned against the closed door and laughed into the dress in her hand.

The only downside of being with the trickster was maintaining secrecy. To his subjects, he was Odin. The younger prince had supposedly died a valiant death while saving his brother. So, (Y/N) and Loki no longer got a chance to stroll through the woods, as they once loved to do, or to sit silently in the garden as the sun bid goodbye to the lands.

Loki teleported them both to the picnic spot, which turned out to be a small clearance in the hills. (Y/N) observed that the sky reflected the outfit that the king had chosen for his beloved.

“It is gorgeous…my king!” She gently squeezed his arm. “But a bit chilly, do you not think?”

Standing behind her, he purred in her ear, “I am here to keep you warm, my queen,” and gently grazed the skin on her shoulder up to her neck with his lips.

“If this was your plan, then we could have stayed in the comforts of my chamber,” she whispered through ragged breathing.

“But there is a different kind of magic beneath the open sky. Would you not agree?”

She broke away from his arms and turned to face him, “Have you brought me here, in the middle of a cold night, robbing me of my sleep, only to chit-chat and to try to seduce me into losing this dress?”

Loki’s eyes shone with mischief. “The last part, yes. But not before I show you something. And not before this.”

He extended his right arm and with an elegant wave of his fingers, a large rug emerged on the ground, with baskets of her favourite fruits and snacks, jugs and goblets of wine, accentuated with lamps and streaks of flowers.

“Shall we?” He offered her a hand.

“I love you!!” She did not take the hand but wrapped herself around him, gifting him with one of those emotional but passionate kisses that reminded them of the bond that they shared, and left them both thirsty for more.

Loki was not fooling around when he had said that he was there to keep her warm. The air had indeed changed from being cold to pleasantly cool. Sitting there on the cosy rug, she kept stealing glances at the man who had made her life so beautiful that, for the first time in years of her service as a soldier, she feared death. Life was beautiful ever since he had walked into it. It was one of those heart-warming yet adventurous stories that have people believing in the magic of love and of life. And there was no version of this story that involved anything or anyone other than Loki.

“Loki?”

The trickster was lying on his back, with his arms folded behind his head. (Y/N) found him staring at the sky with a hint of a smile toying on his thin lips. It was clear that he had sailed far away in his thoughts and into some warm island where his world was blessed with Spring.

“Hmm?” His eyebrows arched as he looked at the source of the voice that tugged him out of his rumination.

“Would you promise me something?” She asked softly.

“Anything, darling! Anything that does not involve the disappointment that you had thrown on me by shutting the doors of your bathroom on my face,” he answered with a sly grin.

Hitting his chest lightly, she resumed, “Please promise me that you would never stray away from me again. Under no circumstances. For I would not be able to live without you. I shall survive, yes. But my life would be as good as death.”

“What- Why are you saying these things, (Y/N)?” Loki sat up.

“You are always up to some mischief,” she explained. “Either that or you run off to some heroic act. You have no idea how I shatter every time you fake your…” The word was like a poison that she could not bring to her lips.

“I know, love, I know,” Loki wrapped an arm around her and brought her head down to rest on his shoulder. “Believe me, it hurts me just as well to even think of the misery that I had brought on you.”

“Whatever you do, Loki, promise to come back to me. Always. From even the farthest corner of the universe. Promise me.”

“I shall always come back to you, darling. Where else would I go? You are my home. I shall always find you.”

He sealed his promise with a loving kiss on her lips. Wiping fresh tears off her cheeks with his thumbs, his mouth conveyed all the feelings, all the unsaid things that even the Silvertongue did not know how to frame into words.

When they pulled away, Loki took her hand in his. “Remember I had said that I wish to show you something?”

She nodded with a smile.

“It is time!”

The confidence and the mystery radiating from him excited her. It was this thing about Loki that made her fall in love with him over and over again. He was a wise ruler who made sure that his people were safe and happy, an emotional lover who understood every depth of his partner, and a child who always had a spark for something new in his life.

“Lie down with me?” He asked softly.

“Is this another one of your tricks to-”

“No!” His protest made her break out into a hearty laugh. “No. I do think of things other than making love to you.”

“I was teasing you, you oaf!” She kissed his cheek amidst laughs. “Alright then,” she did as requested. “What is it that you wish to show me?”

Loki copied her action. As she gazed at the contour of his face, he raised his hands and gracefully moved his long fingers as if they were doing a dance of their own.

“I know I look ravishing but you will miss it all if you keep staring at me, my love,” his eyes were strained on the sky above as he spoke with a smirk. “Look above you.”

With a playful huff, she turned her head towards the zenith. And was she spellbound!

Above them, dancing in synchronisation with Loki’s fingers, were several folds of green glow - the kind that Loki’s magic produced but softer.

“Are those-?” She squeaked excitedly.

“Yes. Midgardians love them!” He stole a glance at her. “They once thought that it was the Bifrost. Now they say that it is their sun that is responsible for these. Fools!”

“They do not know the magic that is you,” (Y/N) whispered.

“Mother taught me how to create these. These were,” he sighed, “my first big gift to her as a student.”

She could not decide which was more mesmerising: the ballet of lights in the sky or their reflection on her trickster’s face that emanated a mix of happiness, pride and nostalgia.

“Why do you not adorn the sky here with these lights?” She turned sideways to face him, still captivated more by him than the lights.

“Father never liked them here,” the joy left his features. “Said these were a stain on the perfect Asgardian sky.”

“Well, we both know he was wrong,” she smiled, hoping that Loki would do the same but he simply shrugged.

“Do you have to keep working at them?” She asked.

“No, just for a little while,” he explained. “These cannot be seen by anyone else. Else they will know that I am here. They are only for our eyes.” The mischievous smile returned to his face.

“Good. When you are done, I want your fingers to work their magic on me. And on this dress,” she added in a gravelly voice.

“Who is seducing whom now?”

“I do not care!” She lay back to watch the captivating glow above. Her chest swelled with pride for Loki. He was undoubtedly the best sorcerer she had ever known about, and yet so underestimated. The ignorance of her people made her laugh inside.

“Neither do I,” Loki broke her chain of thoughts when he hovered over her and kissed her breath away.

Fingers that had once made those lights above dance, now danced nimbly on her skin as it deftly freed it of the gown. His own robes were, however, not so gracefully shed, for (Y/N) now lacked the patience which she once had when they had arrived at the woods. Loki’s mouth left a hot trail behind wherever it went while cool fingers soothed the path.

Indeed the open sky had a charm of its own. Walled from the rest of the world by a strong spell, beneath the dancing lights, they drowned in each other as the green lights above danced on their skins.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“(Y/N), wake up!”

A hand gently shook her by the shoulder.

“We are here,” Thor stated.

Blinking, she looked outside the van. The green lights were gliding across the sky in harmony, casting their reflections on the duo.

Loki!

A voice inside her breathed the name.

“Let us spread out. We will ask the locals if they had seen anything or anyone unfamiliar yesterday when the spike occurred,” she instructed Thor as they stepped out of the vehicle.

The search was futile. Every person they asked knew only about the spike and nothing else. Not one soul could mention anything about any person who might have looked suspicious or out of the ordinary. Nothing.

“There is nothing to be found here, sister,” Thor mumbled. The poor man had finally found one thin streak of hope, and even that turned out to be false.

But the other person was adamant. “No. No, it cannot be… It cannot be a deadend. There has to be something. We must keep looking.”

“(Y/N), listen to me. If Loki was indeed here, wouldn’t he have come to us?”

But (Y/N) wasn’t listening to any logic. There had to be some mistake, she was sure of that. Something was certainly wrong. Her intuitions had never been wrong. And this time, they were stronger than ever.

Or was it just the illusion of a broken heart?

Rubbing her hands over her face, she was about to protest when a man called them.

“Hey, are you with that team of scientists who came yesterday?”

The sudden interference startled them.

“No, we’re-”

“No,” (Y/N) cut off Thor’s blunt confession, “we are not with them. But we are looking for some kind of pointer that would help us locate the cause of yesterday’s event.”

He eyed them suspiciously. “You don’t have any fancy equipment on you? The other guys looked like they came out of a sci-fi movie!”

“Sounds like S.H.I.E.L.D to me,” Thor whispered in (Y/N)’s ear.

“Well, I am afraid our team isn’t that rich yet,” (Y/N) quipped. “We’re on our own here for now. For basic research purposes.”

From the looks of the man, he sounded convinced this time. “Yeah, you may try the lake. I'd said the same thing to the other guys.”

“The lake?”

“Yeah. God knows what they have hidden in the waters. Should take you about,” he shrugged, “ten minutes from here.”

“Why the lake?” Thor enquired.

“You haven’t heard?” The man shifted amused glances between them. “That was where the real show was! I was nearby. That place … it still gives me the chills to think of the way those lights suddenly seemed to burst upwards! Thought it was the last day of my life!”

“Did you see anyone there? When it happened?” (Y/N) put a pin on his enthusiasm.

“No! Just me and my dog. We were returning from-”

“Thank you!” She pulled out a fifty Krone bill from her purse and handed it to the man. “Thank you so much! This is all we can offer.”

But the man held his hands up. “I don’t need your money! Thanks, anyway. And I must say, for a bunch of poor guys, you certainly are generous. They didn’t produce even a penny yesterday.”

She smiled. “I want you to keep it. Please. You do not know how much you have helped us.”

Reluctantly, the man took the note from her. “For science,” he said cheerfully.

“For science,” she nodded, and rushed back to the van with Thor by her side.

“If S.H.I.E.L.D is already there, then we won’t get a chance to set foot on the place,” Thor voiced his fears.

“I do not know what I will do,” she ran a nervous hand through her hair, messing it up even more. “I truly do not know! I just hope … We will find a way, Thor. We have come this far. We shall certainly find a way.”

Her energy lifted his spirits but at the same time, he was scared that her hopes might be burnt to ashes in case this was but just a cosmic event.

All the way, she kept placing different theories out before them.

“Maybe Loki was there. He can be invisible if he wants to. Maybe that is why that man did not see him… Maybe Loki was not here earlier. Maybe he was lost somewhere. And yesterday night he landed here, and something - I do not know - caused him to bring a change into those lights? … Perhaps he himself had an energy boost… But… why?”

“(Y/N),” Thor placed a hand on her knee, “calm down. Please. We are almost there.”

The place was indeed marked with S.H.I.E.L.D’s tape all over it. It looked like another one of their camps. It was, in fact, just another one.

“I’ll go talk to them,” Thor assured her. “They know me. Well, someone here should know me. You stay right here, okay?”

With a smile and an encouraging pat on her back, he dissolved into the crowd. The truth was that Thor’s own heart threatened to beat out of his chest. Regardless of how huge the god was, at that moment, he felt like he would crumble under the weight of the anxiety that had been building inside him ever since he had heard the news the day before.

(Y/N) stood at the edge of the camp, looking around, trying to find perhaps the tiniest of clues that would lead her to the god she came looking for. And yet, nothing that could whisper even a shred of a tale about Loki caught her eyes or ears. With a sigh, she wandered off towards the lake.

Under the dark veil of the night, the water looked gorgeous. Silent, calm, and yet with the promise of a storm beneath the surface, and an even deeper sense of mystery shrouded within. That and the reflections of the rippling lights on it reminded her of Loki.

Is he not as enchanting as this? No. Much more than this.

The thought made her smile. Her dry lips stung slightly as they spread after a long, long time.

Something about the lake called out to her. Gingerly, she took small steps until she found herself standing on the bank of the waterbody. The auroras were swaying above, casting graceful shadows on her. She should have been anxious and yet she felt a sense of calm that she had believed to be lost forever. It was as if she had finally landed on a piece of earth where she was meant to be.

He is here!

Her entire being seemed to be screaming out to her. The feeling had never been stronger. She looked around with wild eyes.

Loki is here! I can feel him!!

Finding herself on the edge of insanity, she filled her lungs to call out his name. But stopped.

There were a lot of other people around whose attention she should not be drawing. Taking a deep breath, she sat down on the wet grass and closed her eyes. At last she knew what she had to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Here,” Loki placed a hand over her heart, “we are connected here. Nothing can break this bond.”

In response, (Y/N) placed a hand over his. “And what about all those times when you go away, intentionally or not? How am I supposed to find you?”

“Darling,” he chuckled, “I think the summer heat and my close proximity have got you a little confused. Is it you who finds me or is it me who finds you?”

“It is not funny, Loki!” She removed his hand with a frown.

He loved to tease her relentlessly, the strong commander-in-charge of the Asgardian army who chose to become no less vulnerable than a child before the god of lies and mischief. Every moment spent with her breathed life into him, but there were times like these that he cherished the most.

“Come here,” his voice had dropped a few octaves but in a warm way. His hands ran down her arms until he found her fingers and placed them on his temples.

“Feel that?” he asked softly.

“Your heartbeat,” she nodded.

Gently, the trickster placed his own fingers on her temples.

“Now, do you feel that?”

A soft tickling gradually wrapped the skin on and around her temples. It felt like someone was tracing feathers upon her skin but from the inside.

“What-”

“We shall always feel each other,” he explained, “no matter where we are or how far we are.”

Her eyes widened at the revelation. She never knew such a thing was even possible!

“Are you telling the truth?”

He sighed. “Darling, do I look like I am in the mood for some mischief? We can hear each other’s thoughts now-”

“But-”

“Only,” he interrupted her, long fingers requesting her to pause and listen to him, “if we want us to.”

“Alright,” she shrugged with a satisfied smile, “I like that part.”

“Love, you forget that I can hear your thoughts any time I wish to! I choose not to.”

“Oh, I know that!” She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “So, you are telling me … that now we can amuse each other even across a ballroom filled with uninteresting people?”

“Even across the palace, darling! Across the realms!” He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against him.

“Well, in that case,” she whispered in a sultry manner, “I shall bid you goodnight.”

Loki looked at her with a question mark slapped over his face.

“Let us speak in our thoughts, from our separate rooms, across floors!”

With a twirl, she freed herself from Loki’s arms and ran towards the door with a squeak, her lover following behind with the most mischievous grin on his ecstatic face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Loki!” It was a whisper, even in her thoughts. “Loki, I know you are here. I was not sure before but now I do. I can feel you, more than ever!”

Her prayers got stronger with each sentence she uttered in her mind.

“Loki, I know you can hear me. We promised that no matter where we are in this universe, we will remain connected. Do you remember that? I know you can hear me. So, please, listen to me, Loki. … Maybe it is because somewhere deep down I felt you … because I still feel you … that I never left hope of seeing you again. Not even when the entire world screamed that you are … gone. I still feel you, Loki. And I know that I shall see you again. That you will find me. Like you promised. Like you have always promised. … You have always found me, Loki. Every single time. Please come back to me. Once more. Please, Loki! Find me once again. … Loki!!”

A sudden shiver ran up her spine; something had disturbed her. Something like a gust stirred behind her. Her senses told it was not just the wind but someone. And instinctively, a fear burnt inside her momentarily only to be doused quickly by an even stronger hope. When one has lost everything that they love, little room remains for fear. It is a fanatical hope for the impossible that remains behind.

And this time, her hope was not misplaced.

“You found me.”

The deep voice floated through the cold air and into her soul.

With a loud gasp, she opened her eyes to find Loki standing right beside her: head held high, the wind blowing messy locks onto his face, his armour - the very one that she had seen on him three years ago - tainted with scratches, his green cape tattered in several places, and yet, he radiated the aura of the king that he once was!

She did not remember how she was able to stand up on those legs that threatened to give way any moment. She did not remember when her hands went up to hold his face, gently yet firmly. All she remembered was the pure joy of feeling complete.

Loki did not utter another word. As her trembling fingers trailed his skin, she realised that his eyes were sunken, his face thinner than usual. Her hands trailed down his armour, still unable to believe that Loki was indeed standing before her, that it was not some cruel joke of the distraught mind.

He was indeed there.

Her thumb drew soothing circles over his cheekbone. “How have you been?” Her lips quivered as a drop of tear trickled down her face. 

Loki’s eyes mapped her features. “I am alive.”

“I have…” (Y/N) could never finish that line for she finally broke into a sob that had been threatening to overpower her from the moment she saw him.

With arms wrapped around him, she wept like she had never done in these three years. All this time she had hope, even though a silver of it, of his return. So, no matter how sad she had been, she had never wept for long. Only the ones without any hope mourn their loved ones, and she was not one of them.

But now, when she had finally found him, all the emotions struck her at once. She had a home now. Again.

Amidst the gush of feelings, she failed to notice how Loki did not engulf her in his arms, as he should have done. Or how he did not bury his face in her shoulder, as he loved to.

“I still cannot believe my prayers were heard!” A shaky laugh left her.

Unwrapping herself from him, she gazed at him longingly again.

“You are actually here!” A pair of trembling hands tried to hold back the sobs flowing from her lips but failed. “I always knew! I…”

(Y/N) took a deep breath and wiped her eyes.

“Okay. I believe you need rest. Let’s go home.”

“Do I still have one?” Loki finally spoke. But there was a despondency in his words.

“What?” It took her by surprise. “Of course, you have a home. Why-why do you ask this?” A hint of a smile unsuccessfully tried to support her words.

“How should I know? I had been away for too long.”

Everything seemed to be ending up in knots for her. Shaking the doubts off her mind, she took his hand.

"Oh! I see. I know it is nothing like Asgard; not even close. But…we call it New Asgard. And it is all we have. This is our home now. And…my home has always been you, anyway." She looked up hopefully at him. "And now that you are back, I have found my home again!"

Loki did not respond.

“You must be exhausted," she said. "You need to rest and eat properly. And then we shall talk. Okay?” She gave him an assuring smile. “I shall go and inform Thor.”

The moment her hand left his, a scoff escaped him, followed by an icy, “Of course!”

(Y/N) stopped in her tracks and turned around towards him.

“What?”

"Of course, you would have to inform Thor."

(Y/N) noticed that the name had a bitter ring to it, just like it once had several years ago.

He continued, "He is the king now. Obviously he would need to know every single thing that happens in his kingdom. And you, of all people, would certainly be the most loyal to him. Dear big brother always gets what he wants!"

Nothing made sense to her. Absolutely nothing! Every syllable uttered by Loki sounded alien to her. There was no way she could fathom the disdain that he held for his brother - the very brother for whom he had not thought twice before putting his own life at stake! And… was that a hint of distrust that she heard? For her?

“I-I do not understand you, Loki,” she stepped closer to him, the business with the elder Odinson thrown out of her distressed mind. “Why- What happened? Was it something I said? Did Thor do something that I do not know of?”

“It was a mistake coming here. A big mistake… I should have never listened to you. It is all a lie! You, in your sole existence, are a lie!!”

The words struck her hard. But before her emotions could even react, (Y/N) noticed the beginning of a faint green glow around the god.

“Loki, WAIT!!” She screamed loud enough for the entire camp to hear. But it worked; the glow was gone, and with it was the immediate fear of losing Loki again.

“Just wait!!” With a shaky voice she pleaded with the love of her life as she gripped his hands tightly, “What is wrong with you? I… Would you please explain! What have I done to deserve such hatred from you when all I have ever been capable of, regardless of all circumstances, is to love you with all my heart and soul?!”

“You demand an explanation after what you have done? Claiming to love me only to give my place away to someone else?”

“What?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. The hands that held on to him desperately slowly slipped away.

“I do not care,” he cried, “about what anyone thinks of me or does to me. And I understand very well that I was not around for quite a long time. I could not be even if I wanted to with all my might! But…you could have at least told me the truth. If you really felt me, as you claim to, you could have at least told me! Why do you pretend to love me now when you have already given yourself up to your new king??”

“Loki!! Do not accuse me of things that I am too ashamed to even speak of!” She clenched her fists around his arms. “Are you out of your mind? Do you even hear what you are saying?”

“Oh, do not deny it now!”

Before she even realised what was happening, she felt a sharp sting on her palm as it connected flat across Loki’s face. However unpleasant it may have been, perhaps it was what was needed to shatter Loki’s rage and allow his pain to flow out - a sentiment that he had mastered at hiding behind a mask of anger.

"I saw you… yesterday…" Loki's voice started shaking. "I came back. To you! Only to find you in my brother's arms!"

His knees gave way, and the god dropped to the ground, kneeling before her, weeping like a child.

Loki’s words washed over her like those giant waves that crash over a lost soul and pull them in, only to drown them again when they try to fight back. (Y/N) tried to replay all the incidents from the day before but with everything going on, it all became a haze in her mind.

The sight of a broken Loki before her did nothing to help her. Immediately, she mimicked his position, and held his face in her hands.

"Loki, whatever you saw, whatever you are thinking is a misunderstanding. I swear! I do not know what you are talking about, not now at least, but we will figure it out. Okay? I assure you, Loki, there is only one person I have given my heart to. And it is you. What I feel for you, is beyond anything that I feel for anyone! Believe me! Please!"

All this time, Loki refused to look into her eyes. He was scared that if he did, he would not be able to refuse her.

"I want to," he finally breathed a shaky whisper.

Gently holding onto her wrist, he finally looked at her. But his hopes were short-lived.

As fate would always have it for him, just at the precise moment when he had decided to believe her, the silhouette of his brother came into view behind her.

Thor had heard (Y/N) scream, and came running to ensure her safety. But…

"(Y/N)! I heard you! What happened? Is-" He stopped in his tracks. His lost brother's name, even through a shallow breath, sounded to him like the most melodious music. "Loki!!"

The older Odinson stopped in his tracks. Tears flooded his eyes as he took in the sight of the brother he had believed to be dead. When his body could finally respond from the shock, his legs tried to take him as fast as possible to Loki.

But the scenario on the other side was not the same. The sight of Thor, regardless of how warming it was, brought up fresh images of the blonde wrapping (Y/N) in his arms on the seaside, of kissing Loki's betrothed on the head.

And that was enough to stir the fire within him - one that (Y/N) had just managed to calm down.

Loki got up, blinded by a searing pain somewhere deep within his chest. 

"You do not deserve me," was all that he uttered to (Y/N) before disappearing from the scene.

A stunned Thor froze in his tracks. A broken (Y/N) sat on the cold ground feeling more empty than she had ever felt.

"He is gone!" She whispered to the dark night air.

Thor stumbled up to her.

"Where did he go? Where did he go?? He was here, wasn't he? (Y/N), he was here, right? (Y/N)!!"

But (Y/N) was lost in her own world. She kept mumbling to herself, wild eyes searching for something - or someone - in the far distance.

When Thor called her again and shook her, it was only then that she looked at him. And repeated the same line:

"He is gone, Thor! He is gone."

"What do you mean he is gone? He was right here!!"

"I cannot feel him anymore." A hand loosely trailed down from her temple to her chest. "He has…severed the bond. He has cut me off! Loki has… He has really ended our…relationship."

The words trailed off as she tried to make sense of what just happened. Or why it happened. Standing beside her, Thor looked around helplessly. He knew nothing about this bond that (Y/N) was talking about. All he understood was that his brother was probably lost forever. Again.

This time Loki had really left.

...to be continued...

Part 2 is complete! Read here!!

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[gooeyringtown]

summer romance au headcanons

((inspired entirely by the song “striptease” by carwash))

*slight nsfw warning*

i like to think this all comes about by gloria winning another cruise at sasha’s school raffle

(but she and her husband are divorced now, and she finally has enough vacation days at work, so she can go!!)

sasha will be staying with her dad in the meantime

the cruise is going to the Caribbean and gloria will be gone for roughly a month

she’s a little hesitant at first because she’s not sure if she feels comfortable being apart from sasha for so long, especially since the divorce is rather fresh, but eventually she’s persuaded. more than anything sasha expresses that she’ll be fine and her mom should go for it. with the green light from her daughter, gloria feels a lot better about it. she really does deserve it, after all

it’s a little lonesome at first… the service isn’t always great, and the feeling of being disconnected and alienated is a little jarring for gloria

it gets better though

they dock at a beach village in the caribbean where they’re scheduled to stay until the end of the cruise

one beautiful tropical morning (they all are, honestly), gloria sits on the beach reading a book

and barbie tentatively approaches her, and asks if it’s ok if she sits there too, because it’s the only spot on the beach with shade, and barbie is already sporting a slight sunburn that she doesn’t wanna make worse

and gloria of course says yes

through small talk, they dissolve into an actual conversation

they are both from california. gloria from LA, and barbie from the bay area. she is not part of the cruise like gloria, though. instead, her parents own one of the resort’s restaurants and barbie more often than not spends her summers there, helping out

barbie is really sweet and tells gloria she should stop by the restaurant sometime

(she promises she won’t get offended if gloria doesn’t like the food, which makes gloria laugh)

then she has to leave, but she really hopes to see gloria again

she does, because gloria goes to the restaurant a few days later, for lunch

barbie spots her as she walks in and is immediately beaming

(and maybe gloria showed up because she’s had that smile stuck in her head ever since seeing it for the first time)

the food is actually really really good, which isnt even the point but still

barbie sits down with gloria while she has her meal and the two talk again. it feels so nice and so natural. so easy.

gloria is the most captivating person barbie has ever met. she has this ambition and this fire about her, while also being sophisticated yet very down to earth, and wow

barbie, in turn, is so sweet and easy to talk to and get along with. she has this air about her that is soothing and calming. it’s so hard for gloria to imagine ever feeling anything negative around her

barbie offers to show gloria more around the village sometime if she’d like

(gloria would very much like)

so the next day they meet up and barbie gives gloria a day tour of the village. they visit all these little shops like fudge ones and tea ones and farmers markets and souvenir shops

gloria uses this as an opportunity to get sasha a postcard that she can mail to her later

(barbie ends up infiltrating on the postcard. where gloria signs “love, mom” barbie adds in her pink pen “+ barbie! <3”)

they get these small matching keychains of their first name initials because they think they’re so cute

they end their day by having dinner at barbie’s restaurant on one of the private patios overlooking the ocean and drinking wine

barbie offers to walk gloria back to the cruise ship which gloria happily accepts

(and maybe barbie has to keep her hands in her pockets the whole entire time to have self control because gloria looks so unbelievably beautiful right now)

they get back to the ship and barbie is a whole mess talking about how wonderful today was. but she’s still somehow able to stumble out the words “will you go out on a date with me”

gloria says yes

(actually she has the biggest smile on her face and she leans up to kiss barbie’s cheek first and then she says yes)

barbie is dazed the entire walk home

and gloria tries her best to go to sleep, but she’s smushing her face into her pillow to hide the smile on her face that just won’t go away

the next evening barbie “picks” gloria up at the cruise ship, and she has a bouquet of flowers and looks so extra sweet and nervous, and gloria melts

her blue eyes are so sparkly and tender when she sees gloria, and she’s breathless at the sight of her

gloria’s stomach flutters, because barbie looks so pretty… and because barbie looks at her the way gloria has always dreamed of being looked at

they go on their date—barbie has pulled some strings with some people in the village and has arranged a moonlight picnic with fresh berries and warm chocolate

and after, they have the town bookshop all to themselves to browse

they pick out books for each other<33

at the end of the night barbie walks gloria back to the ship again

and this time they kiss

and thus begins their relationship

they spend the next few days and weeks with each other. swimming in the ocean and sitting on the sand, having wine on the restaurant patio, drinking sweet, tropical cocktails and eating delicious food. they trade the books they picked out for one another and read them, annotating the pages and leaving little notes for when they switch back and the other person reads it. they also trade keychains so barbie has the G one and gloria has the B one

the cruise has an event one night on the beach with an extravagant dinner and a fireworks show and they dance all night, as well as at the end, slowly, to this one song

and the cruise is coming to an end soon, and gloria will have to to leave

the night of the big event, they are in a private villa for the night, making out on the bed with barbie sitting on the edge and gloria straddling her, and there’s only the light of the moon, and barbie can’t stop thinking about gloria leaving, so she pulls away

she feels spontaneous, and unwilling to let this go. it is like a young love: reckless and unfazed by the consequences. she tells gloria to please stay. they can go to the bay area for a few days, to barbie’s house, and then barbie will drive gloria back home to LA

at first gloria only shushes her, puts her finger on barbie’s lips and wants to keep kissing her. because they’ve talked about this. there are so many things. it has not even been that long since her divorce, and what will sasha think? she is still struggling with her parents’ separation. and what about their jobs? they can’t just relocate overnight.

but barbie keeps asking. she is practically begging. and she looks so hopeful. so pleading. her hands are on gloria’s hips, over her flowy dress

and maybe gloria is drunk off this feeling. off barbie, and so she kisses her again, softer this time. more patiently

and whispers “okay” against her lips

and FINE i’ll give the titular satisfaction. gloria nudges barbie back on the bed and

“lie back for me. just relax and watch me.” whispered in barbie’s ear

and so gloria does a little striptease for her

barbie watches, eyes shiny and dazed, and her heart is like a drum inside her chest, and she’s completely enraptured, breathless and all she can think is oh my

the night seems to last forever then. they have sex and it’s warm and wet and the most sensual thing in the world, gloria thinks. she is molded to barbie’s hands, to her touch, to her mouth. they are both a mess that doesn’t stop. barbie’s soft cries of pleasure—here in the middle of the hot, humid caribbean island with sweet rum and blue water everywhere—make gloria’s heart race. and barbie’s cheeks flush and her neck arches when gloria hits this one spot inside her, and it’s addicting

gloria thinks this could be the christening of their newfound life together or something, if life was easy

but a few hours later, when she checks the time on her phone, her lockscreen with sasha in the picture stares back at her

and the answer is clear, isnt it?

when barbie wakes up, gloria is not there

and fuck it’s already almost noon

and she has this horrible feeling in her stomach

and she throws on her crewneck—which smells like gloria because she has spent all these weeks wearing it—and some shorts, running outside only to see-

that the cruise ship is now gone

but… maybe gloria is still around… maybe she is somewhere around the island, and will come back, right? she said yes to barbie after all

barbie picks up the book with all of gloria’s little notes inside

and when she opens it up she sees there’s another one, in a different-colored ink, which means it was made later, and it says–

“I’m sorry.”

and barbie crumbles

and you always like to think love is enough. the prevailing force that drives everything to an end, to completion, and that you’ll find your way back to each other. don’t you?

but a lot of the times… is it really? and will you ever?

gloria gets back home. and a few days later, sasha makes a comment. in passing, really. super offhanded. she points to the postcard on the fridge, and says

“who’s barbie?”

it’s innocent, but gloria has not stopped thinking about her. this whole time. she probably will not, ever, she thinks

“oh.” she responds, and the B letter keychain sits heavy in her pocket, like it’s burning a hole right through her.

“a friend.” one day she will have to pick up the book barbie annotated for her. she will have to admit barbie was so real for her

“she was just a friend.”

why did this turn out so much more sad than i thought…

i was thinking of making a pt 2 though 👀 should i?

ps i have a whole playlist for this au if anyone is interested or wants to hear it!! lmk or message me 🩷

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

hot take: show!daemyra post time skip is one sided. it's only daemon who is into the relationship. rhaenyra cares more for her ex bestie who abused her for a decade and treated her like a doormat over her husband whom she proposed to join her in her war against the greens only to chicken out when the war came for her and blamed him instead. it would have been better had they depicted them as a political alliance only while having his true love be laena and hers harwin (though we all know it's alicent) like many fans speculated before the show. daemon's sacrifice could have been about his children with whom he might have had a relationship had he not been written to have no personality besides obsessing over rhaenyra on the show. what's the point in making them a love match if it is only daemon in it and rhaenyra doesn't give a fuck?

It's weird how the Rhaenyra of the first five chapters despite being the one with a relationship with Alicent is not nearly as weakened by her as post time jump Rhaenyra is.

This is why so many people prefer young! Rhaenyra. I don't deny that some of the preference has to do with transphobia, but not all is rooted in it.

Young! Rhaenyra was a much more consistent character, she was obviously in love with Daemon, and given that more than half of the fandom ships Daemyra this compelled people more. This Rhaenyra is active, she doesn't just react to things. This Rhaenyra has ambition and goals. Despite her flaws and the writing flaws, this Rhaenyra feels much more real.

In the other hand the other Rhaenyra goes from asking Daemon to marry her for the war to refuse to listen to him when war breaks. She goes from loving her children to not being willing to protect them against Alicent's ambition. She only cares about the woman who abused her for a decade, even her children come second to her. Same with Alicent. This character does nothing, she hasn't done anything since episode 7.

And this is terrible for Emma who is an amazing actor and would be great as the actual Rhaenyra.

And you are right, it would have been better if they put them as a political match and develop Daemon's relationship with his children. But that wouldn't have give them money, because the general audience doesn't care about Rhaenicent.

[voluptuarian]

honestly all the hotd writers did with alicent was shift her and aegon's story up one generation to her and her dad, changing otto into the parent we see manipulating his reluctant children into danger out of greed and ambition. Show alicent has her back against the wall already and is worsening a situation that was already bad, and her relationship with aegon is only a weak echo of her own story, a narrative aftershock. Book alicent's ruthless ambition borders on hubris and its she who decides to make her children pawns and aegon who is forced to maneuver and see things from the limited place she's backed him into. This changes the inner push for all the Greens' actions from a full blown insider actively plotting a usurpation from within the center of Targaryen power and dealing with the results of her own actions, to a reluctant middle man with her reigns held by a grey eminence, suffering the consequences of other people's scheming and able to consider herself ill used by all sides and genuinely tragic when hurt. Show aegon is left to be just sort of a putz, narratively and hierarchically unnecessary, just a physical reminder of his mother's lack of choice and an extension of her in basically every plot avenue. Instead of an agent for her own ambition alicent is the employee who gets yelled at, and aegon merely the dog she kicks in response. Idk I find that incredibly disappointing, especially considering how the original skews the familiar gender/parent dynamic and the show just puts it back. (Let's not even get into the decision that Criston Cole needed to have sympathetic reasons for planning a usurpation, or that they should hinge on being a minority or getting "manipulated" by a teenage girl.)

I think the fully "women's wrongs" unabashedly proud, greedy, evil-First-Lady-esque alicent giving birth to and then leading to their deaths all of her children for her own political gain, and working with a patriarchal framework to get herself power, then stripping it from the rightful heir and condemning her gender to nothing but indirect, manipulated power ever after in the process, hand-in-hand with her power hungry and ammoral "work husband," and aegon as the target and tool for her ambitions consumed by her and subsumed into her until he loses his mind, his body, and eventually his life as the result of her plans is just so much more interesting and satisfying.

Like post-Dance book alicent will have to live out the rest of her life knowing she sacrificed her family, cheated another woman, and burned the world to try and win and then only managed to not-lose, and we don't even know if she will feel remorse for her actions or just annoyance that things didn't turn out how she expected. Show alicent on the other hand will end up exactly as she started, with things "happening" to her and her behaving badly in response. I consider that a huge fucking downgrade and much less satisfying, and getting a toxic lesbian ship out of it is not enough to placate me.