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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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just because you’re afraid it doesn’t mean you’re broken.

Titans 3.05

once more into the cold dark void of the internet with my stream-of-consciousness take on a superhero tv show...

spoilers ahead.

1. i cannot believe that among the first things i get to hear in this episode with my own two ears is the line 'eluded our overdudes'. why must you give me such pain along with so much joy, show?

1.5. scarecrow stringing jason along on this path to red-hood-dom is not something i would’ve ever expected, but does kind of make sense.

1.55. i don’t know all the details of the original resurrection arc in the comics but i like that jason, weirdly, has a greater role to play in his own demise and rebirth? i think it makes it easier to draw a line between his past trauma, the demonstrably shitty and terrifying responsibility of being robin, the ways bruce and the titans wronged him, his responses to that, the reasons he turns to scarecrow, and his final evolution to red hood. it makes for a smoother character arc rather than a one that was interrupted for two decades before somebody went oh hey let’s resurrect that kid that the audience once voted to kill and make him an anti-hero!

1.75. what’s crane giving him? anti fear toxin? anyway, crane is a fucking creep and i’m not sure i want to see a whole lot of him on my screen.

2. oh, um, heads up: there’s a long sequence of unsteady cam + flickering lights right after the title card upto the 3:16 mark. it’s a bit headache-inducing so if you want to skip, you can go ahead and do that.

2.45. that’s... weird... why would he dream about... donna...

ok, who am i kidding. i’m going to jump right into my theory about Why Titans Makes Sense Actually because the show itself is apparently not interested in explaining itself:

a) it makes no sense for jason to be conjuring up donna--who famously did not care much for him!--in his dreams. (he wasn’t even there when she died.) or for her to be telling him don’t go or there’s still time.

b) this leads me to think that that’s actually donna, in some sort of limbo between life and death, the kind of place where jericho used to be

c) rachel has demonstrated that she has the power to link the minds of the titans across great distances--she called jason and hank/dawn for help in 2.01, she linked up everybody later in the season, projected dick’s hallucination of his father into their brains without even realising she was doing it, and in the finale, she managed to get dick into conner’s brain. she’s in themyscira now. is this how she gets donna back to life? but reaching out to her in that non-space between life and death?

d) the next obvious question is: why isn’t donna appearing in the dreams of the other titans? she probably is, but they have better reason to be dreaming about her since they were actually close to her, unlike jason.

e) but why would she warn jason in particular? does she foresee jason entering the afterlife--however briefly? does she have an idea of what jason plans to do and what he will become?

f) anyway, more trippy mindscapes and weird psychic powers, yay!

2.5. my heart clenched when bruce comforted jason post-nightmare: clearly i’ve been reading way too much batfam fic. this is a side of bruce we haven’t really been told to expect by all the characters on the show calling him a ‘psychopath’ (*cough*unreliablenarrators*cough*) and him getting jason to speak to a professional speaks volumes about the kind of self-reflection he’s done post dick’s departure, and maybe some of the regrets he has with regards to how he dealt with dick’s traumas.

i mean, just look at him when jason dismisses his concerns! BRUCE IS TRYING JASON

anyway, i have a whole lot more i want to say about this, but i’ll save it for later.

also: LESLIE THOMPKINS!!!!

3. i really like molly--and i love that she’s a friend from before jason got taken in by bruce, the implication that they meet up regularly and that she’s a grounding influence on him (tho clearly not grounding enough to not go along with his dumbass idea about confronting a child trafficker alone).

3.5. aw, jason. robin was his armour against everything in the world that would throw him down and chew him to bits, but san francisco proved that even robin wasn’t enough to protect him. it’s really interesting how ‘disillusionment with the idea of robin’ is so integral to the traumas of both dick and jason but in such different ways.

4. LESLIE!!!!!!! i even forgive her office being so goddamn blue because leslie!

4.5. it makes so much sense for titans!verse leslie to be a therapist, because this show is so inward looking anyway, and therapist sessions are a useful tool to showcase this character work in a story. besides, at least in fanfic, leslie often seems to double up as a counsellor anyway.

4.6. oh man. i’m not terribly convinced by walters’ red hood (tho i think that may be the point--argh. i’ll come back to this thought later. have to stop getting distracted!) but he plays the asshole kid that’s trying not to let any real emotion seep through really well.

“you’d like me to punch you, wouldn’t you”

5. not sure what to think of batman’s little trophy case other than the show winking unsubtly at us and going look look - catwoman! the riddler! two face! you excited yet?! it’s like the scene from the end of amazing spiderman 2 when they were trying to drum up excitement for a sinister six spinoff by having harry osborne walk by a bunch of display cases with stuff from iconic villains in them.

... but then again, bruce does like to display a lot of shit in his batcave, including his dead robin’s bloodstained costume, so.

5.5. bruce is so soft with jason it’s killing me. beyond just trying to learn from his mistakes with dick, it speaks to his own genuine desire to balance his dedication to gotham with doing the best by his sons, although he’s often not successful with that.

i love that titans is really playing the long game with bruce wayne, with each season and character-perspective sliding in fresh pieces of a bigger puzzle. titans’ bruce has always been a phantom of other peoples’ making, but now we’re getting the idea that he’s a whole lot more complicated than other people make it seem.

5.75. it really recontextualises some of his actions from previous seasons: the fact that he locked dick out of his security systems in 1.06 is likely his way of respecting dick’s independence and his desire not to be associated with batman/gotham anymore. jason knowing about bruce’s tracker while dick doesn’t is probably bruce trying to be more honest and upfront with his charges. bruce sending jason packing off to sanfran to spend time with the titans is probably not him passing on a big responsibility to dick (as i first uncharitably thought) but him trying to get jason out of the toxic influence of gotham for a while and a sign of his trust in dick as a leader and a mentor,

5.8. i mean, bruce is a prick, but he’s also human.

6. i think leslie is doing some good work with jason here, though she may have overstepped the line with her line about robin as a construct being projected by a man with BPD. her speculations about bruce’s diagnosis have no place in her session with jason, and if bruce confides in her, an egregious violation of patient-therapist confidentiality.

(about the diagnosis itself... i don’t know. i can’t really confirm or refute this without a whole lot more information, and i’m not sure if the writer of this episode means BPD in the same way an actual professional might.)

6.5. i think a huge thing that gets missed out in a lot of recent comics as well as movies/shows is that bruce didn’t create the robin persona out of whole cloth. dick did. he’s the starting point of that legacy and to call it entirely bruce’s creation is blatant erasure of that. in fact, i’m surprised that dick doesn’t feature more in the conversations they’re having about the pressures of being robin. after all, the guy had been robin--bruce’s partner--for such a long time before jason.

6.8. (and here’s the primal part of me that resonates the deepest with dick grayson--the Eldest Daughter part--that’s sort of resentful: that jason gets the therapy and softness and the learning from mistakes when it took years and years for bruce to reach out in any meaningful way to dick.)

7. oooh that was a great scene!

it’s fun to do these stream-of-consciousness live reactions, because the moment you step down from your soapbox, the episode goes right into tackling what you were just complaining about. bruce means well, he’s learning, but he goes about exactly the wrong way to help jason: taking away robin now can’t be read by jason as anything but a devastating judgment call from bruce. and iain glen really sells the moment that bruce realises this--too late--and his helplessness in trying to get jason to see that it isn’t jason’s fault that he’s trying to do this. he loves jason enough that jason is enough.

7.5. aaaah so jason brings up the elephant in the room at last. dick got everything makes sense from his perspective, where getting to put on a costume and fight crime means approval, means being something stronger and better than you are. dick got to be robin, then nightwing, and a leader of a whole team of other costume-clad heroes.

8. ... how did jason just walk into arkham????? this is ridiculous.

8.3. i mean, clearly jason’s not thinking straight, but betraying batman like this puts his possibilities of being robin again even further away.

8.5. watching that chemistry experiment montage was strangely funny. this guy is looking for an antidote to fear? well, constantly mixing up and inhaling gases concocted by a mad-scientist supervillain is something only the very fearless--reckless to the point of foolishness!--would do. what’s to say crane’s not given you a formula for a drug that will keep you tethered to his every will and whim? hmmmm?

8.7. so he sought out the joker to... test the formula???

9. wow the “loud and clear... boss” hits different after a whole episode of them referring to each other as father and son.

9.3. waitwaitwait HOLD UP. wait a DANG MINUTE. you’re telling me that scarecrow had enough resources that he could not only have folks on the outside steal jason away and dunk him in a lazarus pit (i TOLD you that this show would bring up and dismiss ra’s al ghul in a ten second aside! I TOLD YOU) but also have his own little chemistry lab in the basement, AND have enough resources for jason to build his red hood persona???????? all of this in barely twenty four hours?

well there goes my ‘jason orchestrated his death’ theory. it was nice while it lasted. *cups hands to the sky* fly away, my baby.

9.6. a part of me is gleeful at the rushed nature of such an iconic transformation though, especially when compared to all the character work that went before it. we’re so used to getting the opposite that it’s fucking delightful to have a show that’s more interested in exploring its characters’ minds rather than battle scenes or recreating transformations from the comics. that’s taken such bold and exciting steps to fully convey all the nuances of its most recognisable character, bruce wayne, from casting an older actor to play him to unflinchingly showing just how damaging the vigilante lifestyle has been to him and the people he loves. BRILLIANT

*sporfle*

10. again, heads up: a whole lot of flashing lights between 40:28 and 42:00.

10.3. i guess it’s the super-compressed timeline that’s really throwing me off. where did he have the time to get/develop the mind control thing from? or is it something that he got from the cabal of villains that he intimidated at the beginning of 3.02? very messy.

10.5. i love molly, i hope she shows up again this season.

11. aaaand that’s it! that was a solid episode as flashback episodes go, but now i can’t wait to return to the present.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #jason todd #bruce wayne #leslie thompkins #a tragic jalebi #robin #red hood

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drwcn · 4 years

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The Shadow Beneath the Light

Concept: Sect Master Wen Qing & her harem of Jiang heirs demonic cultivators. CQL!Verse.

[Part 1] Part 2

(long post, tw: scars)

The remnant heirs of Yunmeng Jiang all had scars, Wen Qing knew.

She discovered Jiang Yanli’s first.

“Do you want me to help you remove them,” she had asked the oldest Jiang when her brothers brought her to Nevernight for Wen Qing to ease the ravage of demonic cultivation on their sister’s constitution. Wen Qing was good at that, erasing scars. She had helped herself along these many years; Wen Ruohan didn’t like weakness, and scars were much too telling.

“No.” Jiang Yanli replied, and Wen Qing found her steel like resolve magnetic.

“What they did to me cannot be undone, Wen-zongzhu.” Jiang Yanli raised a pale hand from the dark medicinal bath Wen Qng had put her in, water dripping from her wrist down to her elbow, rolling across the countless white lines that marred her once untouched skin. With a twist of her wrist, tendrils of back smoke danced between her bony fingers and gathered in her palm.

She closed her eyes. “But they’ve paid for it.”

There was no point in asking her how these fine scars made by thin blades came to be, or what others scars she carried that could not be seen with the eye. Nevernight received reports from Wen Chao himself when he had captured the three Jiang children. Having been raised beside him, Wen Qing knew her cousin’s nature well, and she knew even better the pettiness of his mistress Wang Lingjiao.

...the Jiangs have fallen under our might, stripped of their powers and dignity alike...

Even Wen Ruohan had scoffed at his son’s letter in distaste and muttered “that idiot boy” before sinking back into deep meditation. In his later days, he had little energy for anything else but controlling the Yin Iron.

It made him easy to kill.

After she’d slain him, Wen Qing had preserved his body in her laboratory, and ordered him to be studied in detail by her healers. The physiological effects of demonic cultivation on the body: such uncharted water, so much untapped knowledge, a realm of unexplored potential. She wasn’t going to get another subject that was as readily available and un-missed as her predecessor.

And if this just so happened to allow the three Jiangs to bear witness to his systematic disassembling while his de-brained head floated in a glass tub above her workbench... well, that was a convenient bonus.

Wen Qing was not a nice woman.

Fortunately, the Jiangs weren’t looking for nice.

She married Jiang Yanli on an auspicious summer day.

With the memories of Yunmeng’s vengence still so fresh in their minds and Qishan Wen’s new political foundation so precarious, it seemed wise to keep to a serious, private agenda. Yet, this was Sect Master Wen’s da’hun, an official affair if nothing else, so no corners were cut when it came to matters of ceremony and sanctity. Though it was not the lavish event that Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian had dreamed of giving their sister in their youth, Wen Qing made sure that Jiang Yanli was afforded every measure of respect and dignity.

They rose early in the morning, bathed, and meditated to clear their minds. At noon, they climbed Nevernight’s tall stairs together to bow and pay homage to the heavens and gods. There was no song, no music, just the high altitude winds in their ears as they bond themselves to each other, witnessed in full by their brothers, their parents’ spirits and their disciples.

Then later, inside the sanctuary of their wedding suite - the only place where Wen Qing gave in to her impulse to make it as decorated and luxurious as she knew Jiang Yanli deserved and desired - the young Sect Master of Qishan Wen allowed herself to be unwrapped by her new fu’ren and to unwrap her in return.

“It’s all yours,” Wen Qing promised within the cocoon of their canopy, the air dense with the heat of their coupling. Her body tingled in pleasure where Jiang Yanli’s hands had mapped out its planes and claimed them for herself.

“Hm?” Her new wife laid propped on her elbow by her side, the curtain of her hair falling around her pale shoulders, lips dark, kiss-swollen, and smiling. She was the very definition of beauty, the epitome of divine, and living proof in Wen Qing’s mind that mere mortals could not taint perfection. “What’s mine?”

Her heart, they both knew, would have to be shared. In fact, Wen Qing suspected Yanli rather preferred it this way: all of them in Wen Qing’s bed and in her life, so that none would have to be without the other. To the outside world it may seem like a harem, but Wen Qing understood without a doubt that there could be no others, nor did she want there to be.

She reached for Jiang Yanli’s free hand, laced their fingers together and pressed a tender kiss to her palm. “Everything. All that I am - my titles, my powers, my lands - they’re yours. Fu’ren, you are my fu’ren, my legally wedded spouse, my only wife. I entrust myself, my life to you.”

“Yanli,” she whispered, caressing her wife’s - her wife, what miracle! - face with the back of her knuckles, her thumb brushing her lips open and then down under her chin, along her neck, across her clavicle and over the mount of her left breast, a motion which earned her a soft moan from Yanli’s parted lips. “I can’t turn back time, can’t undo the past, but henceforth I will do everything in my power to ensure the happiness of you future. Qishan Wen Sect lies at your feet.”

Jiang Yanli’s eyes darkened incrementally with her every word, darkened in a way that had nothing to do with the yin energy that flowed through her veins.

“I like it when you call me fu’ren,” Jiang Yanli leaned closer, her gaze falling to Wen Qing’s lips. “Say it again.”

“Fu- mhm!”

Her words were lost somewhere in between them. Jiang Yanli shoved Wen Qing onto her back and caught her lips in a kiss that was truly too filthy to have come from any good gentry girl, and proceeded to show her just exactly how much she liked it.

A-Ning once asked her once why the Jiang siblings would agree to marry her, despite the Wens being the reason for all their tragedy. Wen Qing told him that there could be no greater karmatic justice than if the clan from whom Wen Ruohan and his sons took everything became the bloodline to inherit Qishan Wen’s future.

Jiang Cheng’s scars are ragged and angry, overturned flesh, long and deep.

They hurt him on the days when the weather turned and the temperature dropped. His temper was terrible on those nights, and with the dark powers aggravating his spirit, that made him dangerous.

Wen Qing didn’t mind. She was a Wen, and Wens practiced ways of the fire, and for Jiang Cheng she would set her mountains alight to keep him warm for a moment.

Two days after Jiang Yanli became the new lady of Nevernight, Wen Qing welcomed Jiang Wanyin into her harem with a small private ceremony of their own. He looked odd in proper red; it wasn’t his colour, but his smile was sweet and shy and Wen Qing lost herself a little in those eyes.

He was her consort, what a strange notion to think about. Even now she still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. Dukes and emperors had concubines and consorts, cultivators rarely did. She wasn’t the first but certainly one of the few. Not to mention, she was the first female head of family in Qishan Wen’s history. A female Sect Master with a harem of demonic cultivators, what a colourful tableau they must seem to the world.

She asked Jiang Wanyin before he committed himself to her if there was any part of him that minded that he couldn’t be her legal husband, that she couldn’t give him the same prestige she gave his sister. He shook his head. After everything, he and Wei Wuxian both agreed that Yanli came first and that they would honour her before all others. Wen Qing thought this was perhaps their way of atoning for a mistake that was never theirs to begin with, but as much as she didn’t agree, she understood why the boys couldn’t let go of the guilt of not being able to protect their sister.

(Sometimes, they would tell her stories of what they endured at the hands of Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao, and how the three of them survived the months they spent together in the Burial Mount. It gave her nightmares, those stories, she who didn’t lose a wink of sleep after cutting off a man’s head.)

Jiang Cheng couldn’t be her husband in name, but she made sure to arrange for him all the sweet and homely customs that normal couples would enjoy on their wedding night. A veil for him to lift from her face, and wine for them to drink with their arms entwined. He looked confused when the merry old wives, who were her wedding attendants, led by Grandma came to her with a bowl of half cooked dumplings.

She took a bite. The merry wives chuckled and asked, “sheng bu sheng a?”

Jiang Cheng blushed. He understood. Wen Qing bit back a laugh and nodded, “sheng.”

Then they were left alone. Jiang Cheng was still blushing, even though what was supposed to happen next would hardly be their first.

Hm, on second thought, perhaps it would.

Their times spent together prior to this had always been accompanied by special assists that Wen Qing was quite good at using and that Jiang Cheng was quite delighted at receiving. She didn’t bring them tonight. She figured that tonight of all nights he would want her a different way, just as she wanted him.

Jiang Cheng shuffled back onto the bed and glanced in further confusion at all the dried dates, peanuts, longan and sunflower seeds spread across the silk. “What? Did we run out of plates?”

Wen Qing climbed leisurely onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Use that big boy brain of yours and think.”

It only took a couple more seconds before it clicked. “Oh”. His blush darkened. “Wow they’re really serious about this stuff.”

“What?” Wen Qing teased, purposely gyrating her hips to grind down against him. “You don’t want to?” She could feel him, and he definitely wanted to.

His hands spanned her waist, pulling her closer. “I never said that.”

Unlike Yanli, Jiang Cheng needed a firm but gentler hand. Something consistent, unwavering, safe. Wen Qing cradled him between her thighs and within her arms. The heat from her golden core flowed out from her fingertips, crawling up his spine and along his scars to warm him from within.

Jiang Cheng panted against her neck, clung to her tightly and pressed desperate kisses where he could.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered against his ear, as their shared pleasure dizzied her usually sharp perception of the world. “I’ve got you. A-Cheng, Wanyin, I’m with you, you’re safe, you’re good, you’re so good, so good, you can let go, let go. Let go.”

In the back of her mind even as their world exploded into blissful white lights, a single thought lingered. You’re not allowed to die.

Afterwards, when he curled up quietly at her side, pillowed against her soft breasts, she found herself running her fingers through his hair and lulling him to sleep with her visions of their future. Yunmeng would be free, she would tell him. Lotus Pier would be cleaned and rebuilt just as the three of them remembered. She would send her most trusted subordinates to the Jiang library, to preserve their books and scrolls. She would dispatch her most agile trackers to find remnants of their disciples and Jiang elders travelling the lands so that they may help to pass down Yunmeng Jiang's wisdom and guide the steps to train their young folks...

“Young folks,” she mused. She could still feel his spent between her legs, a bit sticky where it was starting to pool under her thighs, and a daring part of her wondered if it would happen tonight. “Hm.”

“Someday,” Jiang Cheng mumbled, half asleep. “’hm many d’you want?”

“The better question is how many your sister wants. Fu’ren is calling the shots on this front - ha ha - stop!” Wen Qing shrieked a little as his sneaky fingers danced across her sensitive ribs. The bastard knew just where to tickle her!

“What?” Jiang Cheng grinned, pulling her closer and apparently no longer interested in sleeping. “A-jie has high expectations, we can’t disappoint her.”

“Hm yes,” Wen Qing smiled, melting into his kiss. “That would be unacceptable.”

The stories about them, the stories that the Jins were spreading, painted a wretched affair.

Wen Qing didn’t have to hear it to know that it must be bad. The cold blooded assassin betraying the man who raised her, decapitating his head and usurping his rule, overthrowing him to steal Qishan Wen Sect from under him. She claimed zero tolerance for his tyranny and yet, not months later, she had taken in not one, not two, but three of middle kingdom’s grandmasters of demonic cultivation. Within a year, she’d married all of them. A harem. She was the only master of a major sect to have one. Word on the street was that the Jiangs were her puppets, her slaves, that she owned them.

What people didn’t know is that although she usurped Wen Ruohan and assumed his power, in doing so, she had also assumed his debts, the debt that Qishan Wen owed Yunmeng Jiang. Yes she owed Gusu Lan as well, so she sent her resources, and yes she owed Qinghe Nie, so she sent her healers. But the Jiangs...what could she do for them?

So no, the Jiang remnants were not her puppets, her soldiers, nor - heaven forbid - her slaves. They were her debt, a debt she could never repay, and would owe for the rest of her life.

Wei Wuxian’s scars were the worst. They were the only kind she couldn’t do anything about because they were inflicted with the spiritual fire brands of her own clan.

Wen Mao, their founder, had them forged when he established their sect. It was intended for their own disciples who’d committed the gravest of crimes. Once inflicted, the evidence of it could never be removed through any healing methods known to man. It was never meant to be used for torture.

Wen Chao clearly didn’t care, or more likely he didn’t know, since he barely bothered to read his own ancestor’s teachings.

The first time Wen Qing saw Wei Wuxian’s scars, it was when she had finally wrangled him into her clinic to have him examined for damages from demonic cultivation. She had examined his sister, and she had examined his brother. They both got better under the care of her and her team of healers. Only Wei Wuxian resisted, even though he was the most aggressive practitioner of the them three.

When he finally shed his upper robes, Wen Qing understood why. He was covered in them. Her assistant healer actually swore aloud and flinched, though Wen Qing’s withering glare had him quickly lowering his eyes to apologize. “I’m sorry, that was unprofessional.”

Wei Wuxian shrugged.

He drank a lot and was indiscriminate about his liquor, but once in a drunken stupor he confessed that he missed Gusu’s Emperor’s Smile. So when Wen Qing proposed to him like his siblings wanted, she expected him to refuse. Wei Wuxian wasn’t the type to be forced to do anything no matter how much his brother and his sister wanted him to.

Except he didn’t.

“You understand what I’ve saying right?”

“Yeah. Being the concubine of the most attractive young Sect Master in the land - no offence Zewu-jun and Chifeng-zun - uhm some would call me a lucky bastard.”

Wen Qing was baffled. “If you’re sure. You know I wouldn’t let the Jins do anything to you or Yanli or A-Cheng, marriage or no marriage.”

“Pff, I’m not afraid of the Jins, and why wouldn’t I be sure?”

“Because....Lan Wangji?” No need to beat around the bush about these things. She was there when the two of them fell out of the cave together, wrists bound with Gusu Lan’s head ribbon.

Hm.

Wei Wuxian glowered. “Well, more reason to get married isn’t it? If I’m part of your inner court, your harem, the venerated and righteous Hanguang-jun can’t reasonably come and force me to go back to Gusu with him so he can exorcise the evil out of me.”

“He said that?” Somehow the dots just didn’t connect.

“Not in so many words.”

Right.

Well, in her defense, Wen Qing didn’t really know Lan Wangji all that well, so she couldn’t be blamed for what she did next.

Two days after her ceremony with Jiang Cheng, and four days after her da’hun with Jiang Yanli, Wei Wuxian dressed himself in red and Wen Qing came to him with a giant vat of Qishan’s finest alcohol.

There was none of the grandeur she afforded Yanli (he wouldn’t have preferred that even if she could arrange it), nor any of the sweetness she shared with A-Cheng (“He’s the sentimentalist in the family not me”, waved Wei Wuxian dismissively). Wei Wuxian just wanted a good time, and Wen Qing obliged.

In short, they got drunk. Blindingly drunk. Over many, many rounds of drinking games which started with betting and ended with stripping, both of them worked themselves up enough to get their hands on each other.

Probably.

She was not entirely sure. When she woke up the next morning, she was on the floor with a pounding headache, completely naked, sore all over and wrapped in a red silk drape that somehow came down from the wall. The bed behind her was still made, which meant they never made it there.

A groan came from the table. Crammed under there, Wei Wuxian was also completely naked. He shuffled out, rolling over onto his stomach, blew the errant strands of hair from his face and whined, “Ow! I’m so sore. Did we fuck?”

“Uh...” What time was it? Surely way too early for any decent person to ask her to do a medical exam on herself. Wen Qing squinted against the light streaming in from the windows. “Uh, I’m not sure.”

Wei Wuxian padded down his body and winced when he reached his backside. “Yeah we did.” He gave a triumphant pump of his fist. “Alright! Mission accomplished.”

Wen Qing laughed. Wei Wuxian sat up and laughed with her. She laughed harder when she was sure that his mirth was genuine.

She felt lucky. She had a household: a brother who was safe, respected and maturing into a fine young man every day, a wife who was the pillar of her life, a consort who she loved very much, and a man who kept things interesting. A family.

Wen Qing laughed, but she laughed too soon.

“Gusu Lan Sect is sending an envoy next month to Nevernight for the trade negotiations.” Wen Qing paced the length of her wife’s private study.

Jiang Yanli raised her eye brows. “Yes...we’ve spoken about this. Everything is in order, is it not? Lan Xichen was very reasonable in his letters. Certainly more agreeable than Jin Guangshan.”

Wen Qing smacked the newest letter down on Yanli’s desk. “This was delivered to me personally this morning, addressed to the both of us. I can’t believe I’m receiving something of this nature from Zewu-jun of all people.”

Jiang Yanli picked up the slip, glanced it over, and fell silent. “Oh.”

“Yanli, ‘Oh’ is an understatement, this is an outrage!”

The intention of the letter was very clear; Lan Xichen wrote on behalf of his brother Lan Wangji for Wei Wuxian’s hand in marriage.

The ladies stared at each other, in utter, shocked silence. No matter how close the Twin Jades were, there was no version of reality in which Jiang Yanli would believe that Sect Master Lan would ever stoop to asking a fellow Sect Master for her concubine, like Wei Wuxian was some kind of giftable property. This has to be a mistake.

“Listen to this language. ‘My brother, though he may often find it difficult to express his affections, feels deeply for Wei-gongzi.’ Gongzi, he wrote, not xiansheng. ‘As there are regrettably no elders present for either the Jiang or Wei family, I must then seek blessing and permission from you Wen-zongzhu and Wen fu’ren, the current head of the clan with whom Wei-gongzi resides and his adopted elder sister’.” Jiang Yanli read aloud, pausing to exclaim, “I - I don’t think he knows!”

“How could he possibly not know? Jin Guangshan is fabricating nasty stories about us in every tea house, tavern, and inn. How could Lan Xichen not know?!” Wen Qing dug the heels of her hands into her eye socket in frustration. “Wen zongzhu and Wen fu’ren - he knows we married.”

“Yes, you and I. The vernacular used on the streets is the Jiang heirs, so maybe he thought it didn’t include A-Xian. In any case, you haven’t gone out in public with him yet.” Yanli tried to rationalize. People knew about Jiang Cheng because Wen Qing had taken him on an inspection of Qishan Wen’s cities and citadels three weeks ago. Everyone saw: subsidiary clans, townsfolk, peasants, travelling merchants.

“That’s true.” Then Wen Qing suddenly had a thought. “At the risk of sounding like a warlord trying to curry favour with an ally by gifting away her concubine, you think we can just ...lie about the marriage....? No, no that’s insane. And immoral.”

Yanli sighed. “We could try all we want, but A-Xian would never buy into it, even if you and I both know there’s still something there.”

“Not that he’ll ever admit it.” Wen Qing grumbled.

“A-Xian can be...difficult. Once upon a time, I had harboured some kind of hope that he and Lan-er-gongzi could...” Another sigh. “And then everything happened. I can no more speak for him than I can speak for myself, and without a family to back him, given his method of cultivation and his record during the war...well.” Jiang Yanli’s eyes took on a far away look.

Wen Qing cocked her head. She was starting to see why Jiang Yanli wanted her to marry Wei Wuxian. Jiang Yanli understood as his sister just as well as Wen Qing understood as his once-physician, that Wei Wuxian was more fragile than he let on, and she wanted someone there to take care of him. More than that, Jiang Yanli wanted herself to be around to ensure that he was taken cared of. That person wasn’t going to be Lan Wangji. She had given up on Gusu Lan Sect.

Perhaps she should’ve waited. Perhaps they both should’ve.

Wen Qing rounded the table and came behind Yanli, kneading her thumb into the tense muscles of her trapeziums. Jiang Yanli hummed. “He still loves him, you know.”

“I know.”

Over the months, Wen Qing had discovered that she and Wei Wuxian were quite compatible. She shared his bed - occasionally - because they were friends and it was fun and he needed the connection, but it wasn’t like that between them, and they were both well aware of it. Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing saw each other only as family, in the best sense of the word.

Things were good. Really. It was warm and comfortable. Wei Wuxian spent his days with his siblings and Wen Ning and found joy in the duties he took up within her sect. If Wei Wuxian liked to stare at the orchids on his window sill, the white orchids Nie Huaisang brought as a gift when he visited lasted month and which Wei Wuxian tended to himself and didn't let anyone touch, Wen Qing pretended she didn’t see.

“The envoy next month is clearly a ruse. Our trade agreements are all but finalized. Lan Xichen clearly wants to talk about this marriage in person, but why the smoke and mirrors?” Wen Qing knelt down and wrapped her arms around her wife.

“His Uncle probably doesn’t agree. Or his Elders.” Jiang Yanli leaned back into the embrace and closed her eyes. She was tired. They both were. “I don’t imagine Lan Xichen is coming here himself.”

“Naturally not.”

“Who is he sending?”

Wen Qing pulled back just enough to tilt Jiang Yanli's chin towards her for a kiss. "Guess? Who does the kind and magnanimous Zewu-jun have at his disposal that is good with words, has his trust, and knows the ins and outs of Nevernight."

"Ah." Yanli understood.

Sunshot Campaign’s most prolific little spy.

“Meng Yao.”

[Next]

Notes:

da’hun 大婚 - the official marriage of a person to their legal spouse.

sheng 生 = raw, but also “birth”. It’s an homonym for “is it raw?” and “are you going to give birth?” It’s for good luck.

date (zao), peanut (sheng), longan (gui), sunflower seeds (zi) - zao sheng gui zi 早生贵子 another homonym for having babies quickly. Lol yes traditional families are obsessed with babies.

#cql #the untamed #chengqqing #wangxian #yanqing #yunmeng trio #jiang yanli #wen qing #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #tw: scar #corie fics #tsbl #cql ficlet

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zarayushas · 6 years

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(In her eyes tonight There’s a glow tonight They’re so bright they could light Fountainbleu tonight She’s so gracious So vivacious She is not thinking of me Bless her little heart Crooked to the core Acting out a part What a rollicking, frollicking bore! She’s such fun tonight She’s a treat tonight You could spread her on bread She’s so sweet tonight) “ [Verse 1] When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured As by a shining brainless beacon Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world When you are calm and joyful And finally entirely alone Then in a great new darkness You will finally execute your special plan [Verse 2] One needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows And who I had believed was sleeping or dead Imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten The teeth tearing into it The tongue tasting it's savour And the hunger for that taste Now take away that flesh he said Take away the teeth and the tongue The taste and the hunger Take away everything as it is That was my plan My own special plan for this world I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder If this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision Even in his deepest dreams Or his most lasting death Because I had heard of such plans such visions And I knew they did not see far enough But what was demanded in a way of a plan Needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh Beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night And a strangely shining light That owed nothing to the light of day [Verse 3] That day may seem like other days Once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations Once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear But that day will have no others after No more worlds like this will follow Because I have a plan A very special plan No more worlds like this No more days like that [Verse 4] There are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly There is dying that occurs relatively gradually There is dying that occurs relatively painlessly There is the death that is full of pain Thus by various means they are combined The sudden and the gradual The painless and the painful To yield but four ways to die And there are no others Even after the voice stopped speaking I listened for it to speak again After hours and day and years have passed I listened for some further words Yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me There are no others There are no others Was it then that I began to conceive for this world A special plan? [Verse 5] There are no means for escaping this world It penetrates even into your sleep And is its substance You are caught in your own dreaming Where there is no space And are held forever where there is no time You can do nothing you aren't told to do There is no hope for escape from this dream That was never yours The very words you speak are only its very words And you talk like a traitor Under its incessant torture [Verse 6] There are many who have designs upon this world And dream of wild and vast reformations I have heard them talking in their sleep Of elegant mutations And cunning annihilations I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe Which they with their new designs were made straight and sound But each of these new and ill conceived designs Is deranged in it's heart For they see this world as if it were alone and original And not as only one of count with others Whose nightmares all precede Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep And I stand waiting for them As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs They know nothing of me And none of the secrets of my special plan While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs [Verse 7] It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows Who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner And enter a narrow street And stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight Then he said to me He whispered That my plan was misconceived That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake Because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go There is nothing to be and there is no one to know Your plan is a mistake, he repeated This world is a mistake, I replied [Verse 8] The children always followed him When they saw him hopping by A funny walk A funny man A funny, funny, funny man He made them laugh sometimes He made them laugh, oh yes he did He did, he did, he did, he did Oh how he made them roll One day he took them to a place He knew a special place And told them things about this world This funny, funny, funny world Which made them laugh sometimes He made them laugh, oh yes he did He did, he did, he did, he did Oh how he made them roll Then the funny man who made them laugh Sometimes he did Revealed to them his special plan His very special funny plan Knowing they would understand And maybe laugh sometimes He made them laugh Oh yes he did He did, he did, he did, he did Their eyes grew wide beneath their lids And how he made them roll [Verse 9] I first learned the facts from a lunatic In a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space There are no people Nothing at all like that The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion Each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity That there are persons of any kind When all that can be is mindless mirrors Laughing and screaming as they parade about In an endless dream But when I asked the lunatic what it was that saw itself within these mirrors As they marched endlessly in stale time and space He only rocked and smiled Then he laughed and screamed And in his black and empty eyes I saw for a moment, as in a mirror A formless shade of divinity In flight from its stale infinity Of time and space and the worst of all Of this world's dreams My special plan for the laughter And the screams [Verse 10] We went to see some little show That was staged in an old shed Past the edge of town And in its beginnings all seemed well The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness While those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes And in its beginnings all seemed well But then there came a subtle turning point which some have noticed And I was one Who quietly left the show No, I did not Because I could see where things were going As the antics of those dolls grew strange And the fragile strings grew taut With their tiny pullings, tiny limbs The others around me became appalled And turned away and abandoned the show That was staged in an old shed Past the edge of town But I wanted to witness what could never be I wanted to see what could not be seen But the moment of consummate disaster When puppets turn to face the puppet master [Verse 11] It was twilight and I stood in a greyish haze of the vast empty building When the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice All the things of this world it said Are of but one essence For which there are no words This is the greater part which has no beginning or end And the one essence of this world for which there can be no words Is that all the things of this world This is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end And for which words were conceived solely to speak of The tiny broken beings of this world it said The beginnings and endings of this world it said For which words were conceived solely to speak of Now remove these words and what remains it asks me As I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building But I did not answer The question echoed over and over But I remained silent until the echoes died And as twilight passed into the evening I felt my Special plan for which there are no words Moving towards a greater darkness [Verse 12] There are some who have no voices Or none that will ever speak Because of the things they know about this world And the things they feel about this world Because the thoughts that fill a brain That is a damaged brain Because the pain that fills a body That is a damaged body Exists in other worlds Countless other worlds Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness For which no words are being conceived And where no voices are able to speak When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts When a damaged body is filled only with pain And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness And exists in a world for which there is no special plan [Verse 13] When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured As by a shining brainless beacon Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world When you are calm and joyful And finally entirely alone Then in a great new darkness You will finally execute your special plan” Thomas Ligotti - I have a special plan for this world

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247reader · 6 years

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Otilia Thing!

So I finally finished the Grand Otilia backstory! (Otilia being my character in our Curse of Strahd 5e game). I now present it below. Rated T-ish for violence.

Background: Haunted One. A terrible guilt consumes me. I hope that I can find redemption through my actions.

[note about the writing process: this was somewhere between fanfic and original writing, which was an interesting balance. Takes heavy inspiration from The Great God Pan, including one nearly-direct quote, but I also threw in a few references to other works and at one point Otilia also quotes Loreena McKennit]

It was the tail end of a glorious Season. For Professor Grayson, most surmised, it had been glorious indeed - two daughters engaged, his youngest to a viscount's heir! For the younger son of a baronet - for such the Professor was, the third of old Sir Henry's boys and uncle to that young Sir Henry who had been the talk of London three years ago - the thought of sitting his little Sarah in Blennox House must have been fine indeed. And yet it was the second proposal that the old man seemed to recieve with greater joy, when Reynard DuPuis, a former student and now a friend of long standing, asked him for Otilia's hand.

Otilia! She made appearances, still, at dances, and her brothers took her across the floor, but what men had been tempted by her bright eyes and blond curls enough to set aside the rumors - not only pertaining to herself, but those that still swirled around her long-dead mother, beautiful Bona Grayson, of questionable origins and questionable demise - soon sheared away from her strange habit of answering a question before one spoke it, of reciting a poem and then stopping off in the middle; from her three flint-eyed brothers; above all, from a disinterest on the lady's part that was rather more insulting than intriguing.

The Professor had married again, after Bona's death, to a woman of fine and respectable blood but no money, and Otilia had never known another mother but Anne. She had doted on her young half-siblings, and her brothers had promised her, when it seemed she was destined to the life of a literary spinster, that she and her poems would always have a place in their homes, Thomas offering his tree fort and Robert - her cheerful Robin - the manor he was certain to acquire when he became an admiral; as he was still a midshipman it seemed she would have to live with Papa and Charles for some years yet.

The thought did not bother Otilia, except for the nagging concern that she had failed them, and she set aside her wild dark poems for a few that she hoped would be publishable. She had set one of her step-mother's thousand Orllewin fairy stories to verse, and was drafting another, when Reynard DuPuis kissed her hand and asked her if she would do the honor of becoming his wife.

She said yes. There seemed nothing else to say, but she was not unhappy. She knew him but little, but he was one of her father's dearest friends, and could be nothing other than a scholarly man of kind character with that to recommend him, for her father was drawn to those most like himself - ever more, they said, since the death of his first wife, the mother she'd never known.

The voices said many things about her mother. But she was a wife now, Mrs. DuPuis, with an estate and servants to oversee, the hostess and not the guest - and perhaps the voices were things of Otilia Grayson, and would plague Mrs. DuPuis no longer.

Sally - Sarah - the future Viscountess Blennox-on-Trivers - Otilia’s Sally, still, twisted roses into her sister's hair and veil, flapping the servants away.

"What luck Mr. DuPuis is an orphan," said Sally, her face sullen. "I fear that Eddie's mother hates me." A rose slipped from her fingers and fell. "She shan't let us marry until I'm nearly twenty!"

Otilia thought of Lord Edward's mother. Of the nightmare she'd had the night after, and then again after that, a small figure in a curtained bed, pain like fire in her belly, a still white shape in the arms of a faceless man, the wait for a baby's cry that never came.

"The Viscountess adores you," said Otilia, which was a statement safe enough. "It's Lord Edward's uncles who you must be wary of."

Sally moved forward until her own dark amber eyes met Otilia's gray ones - it was her eyes, her father's oldest friends would whisper, that most resembled poor Bona. "Wary?"

"They want to see him dead," said Otlia, her eyes clouded and distant, as though she did not realize that she spoke. Not consumption then, the voices had said, taking on a strangely human, too-familiar tone. More's the pity.

"I won't let them. I'll warn Eddie -"

Otilia covered her mouth with her gloved hands, heedless of the smeared powder. Her brothers and sisters believed her, every time. They would be ever so much safer once she was gone, but she would miss them dreadfully.

"Warn him of what, Sally? That your foolish sister had a nightmare?"

Sally gripped Otilia's shoulder with her small plump fingers. "I shall watch them, then. I shan't let them have Eddie!" In the mirror, Otilia could see her sister's face, scowling and red. She reached up a hand, and laid it on Sally’s.

Gilderoy Abbey was a tall, dark house, nestled in the rolling moors. Reynard DuPuis' grandfather had paid off the debts of its former owners, and in exchange had married the daughter of the house. Someone, once, had planned out elegant gardens and a tree-lined drive, but all, now, was overgrown, cedars bowing down under their own weight, the roses gangly and sparse, the boxhedge maze a thicket.

It was beautiful, Otilia thought, in its own way, wild and strange, but her husband, beside her, apologized profusely. He had hired new gardeners, and hoped they would be better than the last, and if some things were beyond repair, perhaps she could assist him in planning new ones?

There was nothing that could have delighted her more. He asked her favorite flowers, whether she like to walk, and what she thought should be done with his father's folly, built to resemble a collapsing Aldor temple but now collapsing in truth.

Planning her first formal dinner as lady of the house was not quite so natural or pleasant as sketching columns, but Otilia, conscious of the debt she owed her husband, threw herself into it with as much fervor as any a general going into battle. The countryside was sparsely inhabited, with inhabitants of quality even sparser, but the local parson and his wife, and a few far-flung squires, could fill up the table with the aid of a few of Reynard's friends from the capital.

The servants of Gilderoy Abbey all seemed to her eyes to be either nearly children or the oldest of old retainers; the cook was of the latter sort. Anne Grayson had taken pride, and taught Otilia to take pride, in the food served in her home, but there was little in the fare of Gilderoy to excite the palate. The best dishes were those of her husband’s mother and his childhood, well-spiced cakes and strange cuts of meat Otilia had never before considered.

She sat proudly in the hostess chair in her best lace gown, a strand of diamonds at her neck, and tried with all her might to ignore that the buttery lumps on her plate had once hopped their owner through the fens.

Mr. Chester, of the West shires, was apparently among her husband’s closest friends, but he had not been one of her father’s. He was a tall man with a mustache that he clearly thought was very fine indeed, and Otilia put on her most vacant smile and murmured assent to half-understood words. This was familiar, if not enjoyable, though she felt high and lonely without Charles or Cathy by her side.

“…But that is what they said, is it not?”

Catching herself, Otilia nodded in agreement. “I suppose it must be, sir.” People said many things. The voices in the dark said things, as well, and she awoke some nights beside her husband surprised to be indoors, covered in blankets instead of vines. It was worse on the nights he didn’t come to her; sometimes then she walked, and sometimes then she didn’t dream at all.

“But Reynard, my man,” Mr. Chester continued, “I still say Wilcox found the sailor’s brother. Poor luck for us that horse, what?”

Otilia smiled distantly. Even the voices had little to say about Mr. Chester. In her mind, this was a firm point in his favor.

“What sailor, then?” One of the men lower down. He had a forkfull of meat halfway to his mouth, and Otilia reflexively scowled.

“From the Crescent, of course.” Mr. Chester gestured with a pale, flapping hand. “The one who saw poor Bona go.”

Otilia’s voice was very still. “I’m sorry?”

She lifted a hand to her mouth. Had she spoken? Had she meant to? Bona, Bona, Bona.

Mr. Chester leant over to her. His breath was too warm on her bare shoulders. “Oh, you’d know, of course, wouldn’t you!” His face bore too many smiles, suddenly, too many eyes and too many mouths. The voices clung to him, and Otlia could not breathe. Bona. “They say he went mad, after – said she walked off the ship – how was it he said? Called to the sea – or sang, something like that – and it rose to meet her.” He was smiling, still, and his chin was very large and very smug.

“Chester! I believe you are upsetting my wife.”

Reynard’s hand was on her shoulder. His voice was a bastion against the world, steep walls against the storm, and she leant into him, desperate and grateful.

The rest of the table was silent. Finally, the waves of conversation rose again, soft and smooth as though the moment of fear had never been. Mr. Chester did not speak again, and neither did Otilia DuPuis.

They did not speak of the incident at supper again. Reynard tried, hesitantly and awkwardly, to apologize, and Otilia lifted her fingers to his mouth. It was a moment better buried. Mr. Chester did not tarry long at Gilderoy, though Mr. Morley and Dr. and Mrs. Ashwood remained for some time. They were gray, quiet people, and Otilia was a gracious hostess if not a glittering one.

Dearest Mama, she wrote to Anne, and Dearest Papa. Sally and Thomas sent her scrawled letters of home, and at the edge of winter there was even a salt-stained envelope from Robin. She kept them in one of the little black wood chests in her room.

There were several of these, and only two would open. Reynard had apologized, as he’d apologized for so much of Gilderoy, the house Otilia had determined to love for all its flaws. The Abbey and its master were hers, after all, and stuck chests and locks with no keys merely inconveniences.

You should have been there, dearest, when my Horace told Papa that we were expecting a ‘sittle langer’! Poor dear, I believe he’s suffering more than I am. You must return to Greenlee in the spring – and tell me, if you can, if it is to be a son or a daughter, and if there is some way I can avoid naming the poor creature for all of Horace’s aunts.

Your most affectionate sister,

Cathy

Otilia clutched the letter to her breast for a moment. Catherine had been the first of her siblings to marry, to a gentleman of good standing – kind, stammering Horace Lee, one of Charles’ schoolfriends. Otilia and Charles had labored long for the only two creatures who seemed to enjoy a ball less than she did, carrying messages and fending off rakes. Otilia had danced with more men in Cathy’s first Season than in her own.

Her sister, a mother! Otilia put the letter down on her desk, straightening out the folds, and then moved to open the letter chest, catching a black splinter of wood to one finger in her distraction. A few drops of blood dripped down the small stack of chests. Otilia sighed, and began to wipe them up with her handkerchief. At the second swipe of the cloth, something moved.

Otilia lowered the handkerchief, and peered at the desk through her reading glasses. The lock on the lower chest had fallen. Rusted through?

She picked it up. It was tarnished, dark metal, the same as it had always been. It was simply open, now, as though someone had finally found the key for the strangely-shaped hole on its front. Otilia slipped it beneath her skirts and into her pocket, then turned back to the letter-chest, hands unsteady in her excitement.

Gilderoy Abbey was old, older than the house she’d grown up in, older even than the rambling half-timbered manor that was her grandfather’s, and now her cousin’s, seat. Otilia would have loved it for that alone, but its mysteries, its hiding holes, intrigued her like one of Sally’s novels. Two weeks ago she’d found a priest-hole behind the east-most stairs, and the smile it had brought to Reynard’s face was nestled, now, in her heart.

They’d spoken of history together, of stories, even Otilia’s poems, and he’d listened and spoke to her just as he would have to her father. Her words were not valuable because of the voices, because of the devotion her brother and sisters had to what Sally and Thomas still called her magic. Her words were valuable because he thought she was intelligent, thought she was interesting, listened to her as he would have listened to a man.

She wanted Gilderoy’s mysteries for herself. But she wanted them, too, to make Reynard look at her that way, and speak to her that way, and kiss her afterwards with a laugh until her heart swelled out of her chest.

She lifted the lid of the box, and it was empty.

The next morning, Otilia awoke in the gardens.

The air around her was the shimmering, foggy silver of the mornings. She could just see the tops of the folly’s broken pillars, and the new wooden scaffolding around them, hazy in the mist. Bare branches rose like islands in the sea that had swallowed the distant hills. The ground was cold, damp against the bare skin of her arms, through the thin cloth of her one remaining stocking.

She allowed herself a moment of despair, to gather her knees to her chest and weep. The walking had not been this bad in years. Servants had found her, twice, in the hallways of Gilderoy Abbey, but they had never ventured questions, simply helped her back to her room. One of the little kitchen maids had brought her warm, spiced cider, and that night she’d slept again, dreamless, and woken with the voices quiet, as they so often were at lovely, silent Gilderoy.

Today there could be no such rescue. She had no dressing gown to cover her nightdress, and as for her feet – one stocking!

Otilia shoved herself to her feet, wincing at the pain. She’d walked though thorns. Through thorns, and they hadn’t waked her.

She’d dreamt of a voice that wasn’t quite her father’s. Bona, it had called. Oh, Bona, Bona, Bona! She had dreamt, and she had followed. Her teeth began to chatter in the cold.

“Otilia!”

She shuddered, slipped, jumped back. It took her a moment to realize she was hearing the voice with her ears.

“Otilia!”

Her husband stood at the edge of the fog, his greatcoat hastily thrown over his shoulders. Heedless of the muddy ground, the thorns, Otilia ran towards him, throwing herself like a child into his arms.

His arms were warm, and real, and he murmured half-understood words into her hair.

“I thought we had lost you.”

Otilia pulled herself back just far enough to look into his eyes. They were a shining, honest blue, and, alone of his features, even Sally would have found them handsome. But every aspect of Reynard DuPuis, in this moment, was beautiful: his coarse sandy hair and old-fashioned sideburns, the sharp points of his cheekbones and nose, the bony strength in his arms as he held her.

“I’m so sorry,” whispered Otilia, and he kissed her hair, and led her back to Gilderoy.

He did not leave her side that morning, though he did not speak even to the servants of where or how he had found her. They lay in her bed, curled together far too closely for daytime or propriety, but when a maid came into the room, Otilia only clutched her husband more tightly. Recognizing the maid, pale and wide-eyed with red hair escaping from her bonnet, Otilia made to ask for hot cider, but Reynard forestalled her before she could speak, and requested mulled wine.

It was a better choice, she allowed, as the warmth filled her. She drank only when it could not be avoided, but, this morning, she welcomed the soft clouds around her mind. At her father’s dinner parties, wine had made the voices louder. Here, with her husband, it stilled them, wrapping them in the fog.

“Cathy is to have a baby,” Otilia said, finally, lowing the empty cup. She tried for a smile, though Reynard’s face was pressed to her neck and he would have some difficulty in seeing it.

“Oh?” She could feel something in him tense where he lay against her back. “And when is the happy occasion?”

“In the spring, she said. Not for some months.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said. “Travelling is hazardous here in winter. It would be a poor thing to lose you in a sled crash so soon after having found you.”

A twinkle of laughter bubbled up in her throat. She reached for his hand, pulled it up against her breast and held it tightly. “Greenlee is beautiful in the spring,” she said. “I cannot wait to bring you there.”

“I’m afraid that Gilderoy on the edge of winter cannot hope to compare.”

Otilia shook her head. “Wait until the snow falls, then, Mr. DuPuis.” The smile came more easily. “The peaks of the roof will look like mountains. The frost will turn it all to diamonds. And you, with snowflakes in your hair…”

“You are a treasure, wife.”

“And perhaps, next winter,” she said, quietly, “there will be three of us to see.”

If he had tensed, before, it was nothing to this. He was suddenly as still behind her as mannequin or a corpse. “…Have you,” and she felt him gulp against the back of her head. His voice was ragged, and she almost felt guilty for teasing him. “Have you had …signs?”

She felt another bubble of laughter leave her throat. “No,” she said. “Not yet.” The red bird made its perch each month, and her belly was flat. But Anne Parr had not even been married to Clarence Grayson for a year before Charles arrived, a fat pink face in the nursery for the young Otilia to dote on. Cathy had followed, right on his heels, and Otilia might have been strange but she had never been lonely. Even the voices were kinder when there was someone for her to care for and protect.

She wanted a child. A child, with her golden hair and Reynard’s bright eyes. A child, with voices whispering around it and a grandmother who had thrown herself into the sea –

It rose up to meet her –

Reynard’s arms tightened around her ribs, pulling her closer still.

“Your child will be glorious,” he whispered.

Winter came to Gilderoy.

Her husband had acquired a new book – or, rather, had pulled down from a little-used shelf a ragged ancient thing, filled with sketches of Tyrrhenian tomb inscriptions made by a nameless scholar. Otilia adored old books, but something about this one seemed disquieting – perhaps simply that she did not know the language and shivered at the thought of all that knowledge next-to-lost. She did not linger long in Reynard’s study; she could be of little help to him in his translations. She missed him, still, in her bed and at her side, but those were the dangers of marrying a scholar.

Determined not to wallow in any more self-pity, Otilia had selected a few other books from the library. Her High Altor was passable, and her Elline not atrocious, to say nothing of her modern tongues, and there was more than enough to busy herself through the long dark evenings.

Worse, though, was to come. Twelfmona had not yet ended before they were besieged by unexpected guests. A few her husband had invited, a few more seemed merely to appear, victims of the weather or distant cousins who assumed they had a standing right to trespass.

One of them was Mr. Chester.

Reynard had apologized for each guest as they arrived; for this one, he sat Otilia down on her bed and held her hands. His eyes were shadowed, his face drawn. He had slept too little, and she told him so.

He shook his head, with a distant smile that faded in an instant. “I must beg your pardon, my darling. I could not have backed out of my obligations towards him without offending his brother as well. I- “

“It’s all right,” she said, and thrusted her chin forwards. “I shan’t have you worrying on my account.”

He squeezed her hands. “If you want him gone, even so, just tell me. I’ll try to find an excuse somewhere – “

“I will be fine, Reynard.” She would not be the cause of the shadows beneath his eyes.

They arranged, even so, that Chester would be told that she was ill; this necessitated avoiding the rest of the guests as well, but Otilia could find little to complain of in that. Her dreams had been monstrous of late, and the fewer strangers, the quieter the voices.

Instead she occupied herself in the favorite pursuit of her youth: her poetry. Her step-mother had told them all beautiful fairy tales, Orllewin and Norrish and otherwise, and she and her siblings had changed them with her, adding songs and new touches and characters based on themselves – she remembered Robin’s offended insistence that Cendrillon be sent to the ball by her fairy step-sister. She wove these, then, into poems.

Her Lay of the Exiled King took form as snows buried the countryside. She expected to have an end to it by Spring, but therein had always lain the difficulty when her step-mother had told the tale: Thomas fighting for a happy ending and Charles sitting the boy on his knee while trying to draw in Cathy’s support for glorious tragedy, Sally flinging her arms about as she explained why Thomas and Robin’s hated sad ending was happy after all.

For his daughter was dead and his son was a fool, and the kingdom he’d left would soon fall, but he had climbed the cloudy mountains to his true love’s keep, and love was still the lord a’ all…

It was a new moon, in the depths of winter. Night came early, and candle smoke teased at her eyes. She had pled her false illness to avoid hosting dinner; she had not liked, the nights past, how the crowd of faceless guests had seemed to stare at her, eyes crawling on her face only to dart away.

She knew it was all in her head. Somehow, this did not make it easier. This was the rest of her life, and she was failing at it already. Perhaps in twenty years Reynard would have to hide her in the attic, locked away like the maiden aunt she should have been. He was kind, and that was the worst of it.

Otilia shook her head, fiercely, curls falling in front of her eyes. Sleep would do her good, she decided. Sleep, and summer.

She was half-dozing at her desk, still fully dressed, when a knock came at the door. Mrs. Sawley, the housekeeper, with two tiny maids at her back like pilot fish. It was unusual; Mrs. Sawley had seen seventy years if she’d seen twenty, and hadn’t been a chambermaid since her husband’s grandmother’s day.

“Poor dear,” she said, shaking her head, and helped a half-protesting Otilia to her feet. “He ought to have seen you to bed, at least.”

Otilia blushed.

She let herself be helped into her best nightgown. Mrs. Sawley tucked her into her pile of coverlets as Anne Parr had, or long-suffering Rose, as perhaps Bona had, once upon a time. She had given up on seeing her husband even before the housekeeper had spoken. He was likely in his study with the book, or cornered by one of the horde who had descended onto their home.

Mrs. Sawley closed her eyes, looking pained, and Otilia immediately tried to relax her scowl. The old woman patted her softly on the hand in response.

“Drink this, child,” she said, quietly.

Otilia took the steaming cup. The taste of the cider seemed muddled, and sickly-sweet. Mrs. Sawley took it back from her softly, Otilia’s eyes fluttering closed. Her bed was a drowning mass of warm clouds, white fading to gray in the darkness. The maids closed the curtains, and Otilia, with a small smile, faded off into sleep.

Bona, Bona, Bona…

It was not her father’s voice, this time. It was a woman’s. Otilia, dreaming, felt herself buoyed up in great arms, music playing at her ears, a choir and an Aldor lullaby.

Anne Grayson sat before her, her eyes redrimmed from tears. Thomas clung to her skirts, white knuckled and shaking. A hand stroked his back. A hand stroked Otilia’s.

“Do you know what is coming, my Lady of Spring?” Her stepmother’s beautiful low voice wavered as she sang. “Off in the distance, the funeral bells ring. And straining to hear them, the –”

Thomas wailed.

“Mama,” whispered Otilia. For a moment, tear-stained eyes locked on her own, but the moment was gone in an instant. Slowly, slowly, Anne and Thomas faded away.

Vita mia… Ah, vita mia…

Blood dripped down around her, staining her skirts, bubbling up between her bare toes. It was sharp and strong and cloying in her nostrils, sticky in her hair. Otilia screamed, and it poured across her face and down her throat.

Otilia woke.

Otilia woke, but it was not true waking. There was a sharp clarity of mind, a taste of blood on the back of her tongue, but she knew she could not be awake, because her body was lying in front of her, and its eyes were closed.

Golden hair, spilled out of its ribbons, fell in curls down the sides of a long wooden table. Otilia stepped forward. She reached out towards her own face, lighting soft hands upon one pale cheek, and shadows began to form.

Figures of irregular height surrounded her, each in a long black robe that winked with green. Their heads were hooded, and their faces masked with rough clay grotesqueries that might have been taken from some Tyrrhenian tomb.

As she stared, the shadows began to recede. As if in a painting, long stroke by long stroke, the marble floor appeared, white pillars stretching up to the gloom of the ceiling, distant high windows dripping down the walls. She knew this place. Around her loomed the old great hall at Gilderoy, now an occasional ballroom and haven for mice and spiders.

Whispers coiled around her ears, fleeing the low, insistent chanting that encircled the scene, rising and falling like a heartbeat. The body before Otilia twitched, slightly, hands rising for a moment before going still. Her breath was warm against Otilia’s fingers.

One of the cloaked men stepped forwards. He was unmasked, but his hood fell forward to shadow his face. He loomed over the waking Otilia and the dreaming both, as tall as her husband. In his hands there was a knife.

It was dark and jagged-edged, an ancient thing, and shined to a perfect mirror. Two pale faces swam reflected in the blade.

“The bride has come,” said the man with the dagger, and Otilia’s hands jerked and fell away, until she was clenching at her own ribs like corsetbone, mouth open in a silent scream.

“The bride has come,” a dozen discordant and dissonant voices, none worse than the first.

“The bride has come!” Reynard DuPuis stood above her.

The dagger gleamed red in the candlelight, dancing like fire. Otilia could not move. She felt the hard wood cold on her back, the ropes on her wrists. She was the woman on the altar, she was the ghostly form who lingered at her head. She was a heart, wrenched and torn, bleeding carmine, bleeding red –

And then the world was still.

Fog rushed in, blurring the hooded figures, the ballroom, even Otilia’s body and Reynard’s knife raised above her, inches away from her breast. Otilia floated above them, the rising mist catching in her hair.

She closed her eyes. Is this what it is to die?

“Oh, no, little one.” It was not a voice, not even one of the bodiless ones that whispered in her ears, and it was not speaking words, not as she knew them. There were raw and ragged edges to each one, each hitting her in a sudden burst of knowledge, until she knew what was being said as though looking at a painting, and recognizing her home. “This is what it is to ascend.”

The clouds rushed up around her. The air smelled of the last snowmelt, full of rot and growing things.

“You hate.”

Otilia gave a raw, short, ragged breath. Her heart was a burning coal within her chest. If she peered through the fog she saw Reynard above her body. If she pulled into her mind, locking every door behind her, she saw worse. She saw a kind man with a sharp smile, she felt his hands on her body and his lips at her ear, and she saw that she loved him.

“You hate,” the voice repeated, and trees of antler began to rise up from the ground, creaking around her. “You want to live. The little ones always want to live. Hers, Ours, Mine, they want to live. They want to live. They want to kill.”

Otilia shook. The winds of autumn rose at her back, the air full of leaf-dust and searing heat.

The knife lowered another inch.

“I can give you power, child.” The antlers cracked and groaned. Leaves rose around her, wheat fields black with blight. “We can give you power, granddaughter.” There might have been two voices, or there might have been a thousand.

The knife touched her collarbone.

You have power, vita mia.

The world twisted and snapped like a coachman’s whip. The air screamed, and tore, and a woman walked out of it, draped in pale cloth and black hair. Her eyes were blank and white, and barnacles clung to her skin.

More power than you know. A cold, dripping hand reached towards her as the clouds convulsed again.

“Bona,” Otilia whispered. Bona, Bona, Bona…

Clammy hands caressed her face. “They sing for you, after all. I had hoped there was enough of him in you that you could live.” Her voice was low and rough. Otilia stared at her, trying to commit this woman’s face to memory, trying to see in it her own. “I am so sorry, my Otilia.”

“I don’t want to die,” Otilia whispered, tears hot in her throat.

“Then live.” Bona pressed an icy kiss to her forehead.

Then live.

The air began to scream. Bona turned away, and was swallowed in the shifting shadows. The drips of seawater shivered into drops of blood, linking together and growing.

Thunder rolled. Lightning singed the air around her, turning it to smoke, and it roiled into a form too close to a woman for comfort. “You want to live? Then come to me, granddaughter!”

Beneath her, the blood had pooled into an ocean, waves rising and crashing.

“No,” said Otilia, less a voice than a ragged breath. Her eyes stung and smarted from the smoke.

Otilia looked down. The antlers rose and tangled, shedding velvet, but beneath them, the waves of blood flooded ever higher, a wild and scarlet sea.

She called to the sea.

And it rose to meet her.

Otilia screamed, and her voice was red. Her voice was red, and her eyes were red. When it faded, there were only broken bodies, slumped and squirming against the walls.

She took a heavy step forwards, and another. Her hands were red. Lightning burned down from her wrists, and it was red. The shapes it made looked almost like blades.

One of the things in robes was trying to stand up. She lumbered towards it, feet sliding in the bloodstains on the floor.

There was a bang, and a short feeling of pressure against her leg. Otilia looked down, her vision strange and triple-shadowed, to see a thin new line of blood against her skin. Pistol, suggested a distant part of her mind, and she turned to see one raised in a shaking hand.

Dr. Ashwood, offered that same distant place. Otilia stepped towards him, and the gun rattled. Her first slash severed his hand. Her second slit his throat. The small, distant place screamed. The rest of Otilia shook into a laugh.

Red, red, red. The world was red.

Something pulled her, again, back to the leftmost wall, back to the creature trying to stand. Red dripped down from his sandy hair into his sideburns, and he stared at her through cold blue eyes.

He was still holding the knife.

“Why?” She barely recognized her own voice. A weak voice, a child’s voice, thin and pale. “Why, Reynard?”

“I found you,” he said. His voice was a raspy whisper, twisted and tortured, and her hands shook, the red whirling around her and filling her lungs. “I found you, in that dusty old man’s house. A child of the Unnamed, and he thought he could turn you human! I found you, and I saved you, and I think, wife,” a harsh, rasping breath, his eyes a feverish flame, “that your life was mine, to use as I saw fit.”

Blood bubbled up between his teeth. Otilia looked down, and saw the great, gaping hole in his chest, saw her own hand. Time twisted and jumped in gashes around her. She watched him slip down, pale and lifeless.

She watched, and she watched.

And she began to scream.

The red splintered away, and she was left with herself. Left with Otilia, pale and shaking. A spectator might have thought her another corpse, leant up against the wall, her eyes pale and empty and her golden curls turned to a twisting thicket of gray.

She had killed a dozen men. She had killed them, and left their broken bodies in the old hall. That they had been in the process of attempting her own murder seemed meaningless now. She had killed them, and the wild whispering place inside of her had spilled out of her mouth in laughter. Around her, Gilderoy was bare and silent. No servants came to investigate the screams, and Otilia did not dare lift the masks from the bodies before her and see just who they had been.

The candles guttered. The silence hung. When she could bear it no longer, she ran.

The corridors were dark. She stumbled more than once on an uneven floor, ripping her nightgown and bloodying her knees. Each time, she scrambled to her feet, and hastened onwards, uncertain of her destination, knowing only the deep and primal need of prey to flee. What predator pursued her, she could not say, only that somewhere past the darkness lurked the thing that had called her granddaughter.

She was a monster. She was a murderer. She would be hanged. Tears spilled from her eyes, bloody and red. She thought of Cathy and her baby, Sally and her Viscount’s son, Robin and his ship. Her father’s face, and her stepmother’s. Her steps slowed, and her tears thickened.

The upper halls were red with candlelight, and the air smelled of burning flesh. Otilia was white mist in the hazy air, some ancient specter, longing for the sunlight to come and burn her all away. At the end of the hall, past the guest rooms where the Ashwoods had slept, she saw for a moment the antler forest, the grain, the sea of blood. Eyes seemed to open beneath her skin. The veil was thin here, she knew.

Live, vita mia.

Otilia saw the light where it tore, the darkness and snow beyond.

She flung herself through.

#writing #my fic #dungeons and dragons #i was torn between 'and caused my bridal flowers to swoon' and 'the rites of bona dea' for titles #so its a good deal i realized i didn't have to give it one

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foreversillythings · 7 years

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roses are red, roses are white

This is a Wars of the Roses Hunger Games AU.

I've had to take certain liberties with the actual history of the Wars of the Roses (especially the dates) as well as with some of the HG characters (namely their ages), for this to work. Still, I hope you enjoy it, because as a giant history nerd, this is something I've been dying to write!

roses are red, roses are white prologue a king of death and blood and bones

Madge of Bedford is born to an England on the cusp of war, soon to run red with its own rebellious blood.

The year is 1453 and her mother falls terribly ill, nearly dies in childbed. Midwives rush about in a panic as the Duchess of Bedford turns ghostly pale, blood pooling on the floor and outside, Madge's father the Duke paces along the stone floors of the hall, worry gnawing at his nerves.

The healthy, screaming child is hurried away from her dying mother and the nurse that attends to her cannot hide her disappointment that the wilting Duchess couldn't have given her husband a son and heir. What use will a small daughter have to so great a lord?

(greater than you could imagine)

The Duchess of Bedford does not die, manages to cling feebly to life but the midwives and physicians are clear, she will have no more children.

The newly christened Madge of Bedford will be her parents' only legacy.

(and what a legacy it will be)

Lady Madge of Bedford is adored and cherished, showered with the affection her parents cannot give to the bevy of children they had planned to have. She spends her early years raised in the comfort of her father's grand estates, far from court life and all its intrigues. Her father is the only one to travel all the way to London, always brings her back a gift, an exquisite dress or beautiful doll.

(she does not notice what he brings back for her mother, whispered words and frightened looks)

The world outside is rather foreign to her, the tumultuous landscape of England entirely unknown but then she enters her ninth year and with it, comes the invitation.

Her father returns from a session at Court but he is not cheery as he usually is, looks older even to Madge's young eyes. Her mother pales as she looks at him and Madge begins to feel anxious, looks from one parent to the other in question. Her father takes note of her and smiles, though it does not reach his eyes.

"Would you like to go to Court, my love? The King and Queen have requested that you and your lady mother accompany me to the Christmas celebrations. Would you like to meet the King and Queen?" he asks and Madge nods a little eagerly, perhaps not quite as dignified as a young lady should be. She cannot imagine anything more exciting that going to glorious royal palaces for the festivities, meeting the great King and his Queen. She is lost in the wonder of it, does not notice the silent words that pass between her parents, the fear in every line of their faces.

It wouldn't have mattered though, would it?

What the King commands, they follow.

What other choice is there?

(death)

Time moves far too slow for the young Madge, eager and bursting to go to London.

Her father commissions a new dress for the occasion and Madge feels like a princess in periwinkle blue. She concentrates with new passion on her lessons, is determined to be the perfect lady, impeccably mannered and well versed in court etiquette. She practices dancing as often as she can, is so short only one of her father's pages is suitable as a partner. He is clearly an unwillingly partner, only there because her father has insisted but Madge hardly notices, is far too focused on each and every step.

While Madge dreams of the beauty of England's royal court, her mother grows pale and ill, spends long hours of the day in bed. Her father too looks weary, nervous lines deepening in his face. There is a fear in Bedford Castle, a terror of the King she has never met that Madge does not quite notice, too caught up in her own excitement. To Madge, the King and Queen are fairy tales, shining and noble.

Soon, though, they will be her nightmares.

They leave for London at the end of November, in the hope of arriving before the weather reaches its worst.

Madge attempts to remain composed as she sits with her sickly mother in a litter, her father riding beside them. Her parents have told her little of the royal family, but she knows King Coriolanus has been king for many, many years, far longer than Madge has been alive. She knows the Queen, Enobaria, is from Anjou, though she cannot quite remember if Anjou is in France, or just very near it. And finally, she knows Prince Cato, heir to all of England, is near her own age, perhaps a year or two older.

Madge cannot wait to meet them, imagines the Queen will be beautiful and kind, the King just and strong, Prince Cato handsome and brave.

(she is wrong)

Madge has never been in a city like London, is breathless with awe at the sheer size of it, at the throngs of people spread throughout the streets. The smell would normally horrify her but she barely registers it, doesn't even notice how gray her mother's skin has become as they trundle through the city. It is magnificent and Madge is instantly enamored, never wants to return home. She cannot understand how her parents could choose to live on their estate in the country when they could live here, in the jewel of King Coriolanus' kingdom. Westminster Palace looms ahead of them, majestic and awe inspiring, steals the breath from Madge's lungs.

"Look Mama," she whispers in excitement, her mother moaning in response. Madge doesn't notice, can't take her eyes away from Westminster, her imagination racing ahead of her. Magnificent balls, handsome knights, beautiful gowns, they flitter across her mind like birds, bright and mesmerizing.

When the litter stops, when Westminster towers darkly above them, when her mother is so weak and grayed she has to be carried down, Lady Madge of Bedford blooms, unfolding like the rarest blossom. Springs bounce in each of her steps, thrills shine in her blue eyes and her smile stetches wider with every second. The Duke and Duchess of Bedford are quiet, menaced by the evil lurking in Westminster's halls but Madge, Madge comes alive for the very first time.

(oh, how times will change)

Madge is fairly certain her insides are humming when they go to present themselves to the King, her ears buzzing like summer bees. Her mother leans heavily into her father, each step slow and labored but Madge is the opposite, has to keep stopping herself from running. She shivers all over with anticipation when the great doors to the King's audience chamber are opened, her stomach writhing with snakes.

A smartly dressed herald announces them and they step inside, Madge's eyes magnetized to the heavy gilded thrones at the far end of the room. There is a great puprle banner hanging behind them on the wall, with the King's badge stitched in with fine thread. Madge feels a tingle in her spine as she looks at it, a wolf wearing a crown and surrounded by the red roses of the king's royal house of Lancaster. She drops her gaze to the people sitting in those great thrones, her breath freezing in her lungs.

Prince Cato stands to the King's right, dressed in fine burgundy velvet. He is young, with still rounded cheeks and fair hair, but there's something in the darkness of his eyes and the curve of his smirk that makes Madge shy, her heart thudding with nerves. The Queen sits on the King's left, wearing a sumptuous golden gown dripping with jewels. Rubies dangle from her ears, emeralds shimmer at her throat and sapphires shine on her wrists, the whole of her glittering like a precious gem. There are pearls woven into her dark hair and she smirks just like her son, her teeth sharp and pointed. Madge almost flinches, something foreboding slinking into her chest and she rests her eyes on the King then, the one man who holds all of England in his fists. He is much, much older than his wife, his hair a snowy white, his face lined and waxy. His lips are swollen and red, blood kissing the corner and Madge stifles a gasp as he looks at her, his eyes frozen over with ice.

The Duke of Bedford sweeps into a low bow, "your Majesties," he murmurs and then his Duchess wilts into a curtsy, her skin nearly translucent. Madge hurriedly drops into her own curtsy, chest feeling tight. They wait like that, heads bowed as the King's observes them, his eyes prickling over Madge's skin.

"You may rise," he says, a note of humor in his voice that has Madge wondering if she missed a joke. They all stand and Madge tries to remember her manners, but she can't help but take in the royal family with wide eyes. Prince Cato sneers at her and she frowns, would make a face but knows she isn't allowed.

"It has been too long, our dear Margaret," the King says, addressing Madge's mother. The Duchess of Bedford doesn't meet his eyes, her voice almost too quiet to hear.

"Indeed, your Majersty."

"We insist you visit more often. We won't have you hidden away from us in the countryside." His tone is almost light, almost joking but there's enough of an edge to it that Madge's father stiffens and her mother closes her eyes with a pained expression. Madge is confused, because the King is speaking as if he knows her mother, but neither of her parents have ever mentioned any sort of relationship before (she's also wondering why he keeps saying "we" when he seems to mean "I"). She wants to ask them but can't here in front of the royal family, Prince Cato's mean eyes digging into the side of her head. She wants to glare back but knows she isn't meant to, well brought up young ladies aren't supposed to glare.

(manners are sometimes dreadful)

"And this must be your daughter, then?" the King asks and Madge startles as she realizes he's talking about her.

"Yes, your Grace," her father answers and Madge turns in the King's direction, but doesn't raise her eyes, knows that would be improper. She can feel the King's heavy gaze on her and it makes her hot and uncomfortable. He doesn't speak, scrutinizing her and she holds her breath, anxious to hear what he has to say.

She never finds out, the oak doors exploding open before he can pass any sort of judgement and she nearly jumps out of her dress in surprise. The two doors crash back against the walls and a well dressed man about her father's age comes striding in with purpose.

"The Duke of York!" the herald calls in a shocked voice and the King frowns deeply. The Duke marches right up to the King, bypassing Madge and her parents, and drops into a hurried bow.

"What is the meaning of this?" the King asks in a rough, unhappy voice.

"Your Grace, four men have just been apprehended at a local pub. It is reported they were in the midst of plotting an assassination." There is a pause and the Duke rises up from his bow, face dark. "According to the Captain of the Guard, their plan was against your Majesty."

Madge knows it is undignified but cannot help her mouth from dropping open. Why would someone want to plot against the King (she's not really sure what assassination is, but it can't be good)? The King does not look frightened though or even angry. He smiles, wide enough that his lips look like they're cracking, blood dribbling down onto his chin.

"Well, Lord York, tell the Captain that we will punish these men immediately. Send them to the square."

There's something ominous in the way he says "the square" and Madge wonders what could be there. The Duke of York looks startled, in a bad way, his eyes widened with what could be outrage.

"Your Majesty, they have had no trial. We do not know all the facts."

"You may not, but we know enough. Give the order, Lord York." There is a brutal finality in the King's voice and the Duke straightens up, his spine stiff, his face an emotionless mask.

"Of course, your Grace."

"They are to be hung, drawn and quartered. Make sure everything is prepared."

The King is smiling again, wide and amused. The Duke turns and sweeps from the room, the door echoing closed behind him. The King stands and claps his hands, fresh and excited.

"Come along, we shall all witness justice being dealt on these traitors." His voice is raspy with anticipation and there is a cruelty in his eyes, one that makes Madge move closer to her mother, knotting her fingers in her dress. Prince Cato vibrates, his expression lit up with joy and the Queen bares her teeth in a grin, all the royal family clearly enthused at what's about to happen.

"My daughter, your Majesty-" her father begins but the King silences him with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"It will be good for the girl to see what becomes of traitors," he says, barely casting a glance at her hidden by her mother's skirts and there is something about the King that reminds Madge of the monsters under her bed.

Madge follows her parents with nervous curiosity, wondering just what "hung, drawn and quartered" means. Her mother can barely walk, her father having to support her and he looks terrified, so terrified Madge feels the sudden urge to cry. Fear flutters in her bones and all her shining dreams start to crumble, crushed to dust beneath the King's booted feet.

He leads them up onto a large wooden viewing platform hung with silks and with two large thrones, one each for the King and his Queen. It has clearly been here for quite some time, shows no sign of being fresjly erected. Whatever happens in this square, clearly the royal family watches it often. The Queen sits down on her throne and Prince Cato eagerly throws himself against the railing at the edge of the platform, desperate to be as close to the action as possible. Madge and her family shuffle over to the Queen's right and Madge looks out at the square with trepidation. There is a scaffold hanging with four ropes and four large tables with four smaller beside them. What could those be for? she wonders. Beyond that is a crowd of London's citizens, hemmed in by palace guards in sturdy armor. The people gathered look pale and frightened, hunched over and clumped closely together.

King Coriolanus moves to stand beside his son at the front of the platform and as if summoned, four burley executioners arrive, each dragging a man in chains. The King's eyes are narrowed in approval and his tongue comes out to run over his bleeding lips. Madge bites her own lip and fastens a hand in her father's doublet for comfort. The King opens his mouth to speak but the Duke of York steps to his side with urgent eyes.

"My King, these men are peasants, hungry and desperate for their families. They could not possibly have succeeded in their plot. Might there be a lighter sentence you could impose?"

King Coriolanus does not look at him, eyes shadowed.

"A lighter sentence?" he questions, voice sending shivers across Madge's skin. The Duke nods.

"Perhaps a simple beheading? Mercy might dissuade others from pursuing such avenues."

His words hang in the air for a moment before the King turns to him, eyes dark like a midnight sky.

"My cousin of York," he begins, poison in each of his words. "These men are traitors. They have conspired to commit high treason against the King's person. If we pardoned them, we would be condoning their actions. Do you condone treason against your king?"

The air feels suddenly colder and no one speaks. The Duke of York's face is pinched tight and King Coriolanus regards him with glittering eyes, something dark Madge doesn't understand hovering between them. Her father places a sweaty hand on her shoulder and finally the Duke of York's expression wilts, eyes drooping and closing.

"Of course not, your Majesty," he says, voice almost lost in the wind and the King smirks, red stains on his teeth. He turns to face the crowd, made up of haggard faces and glassy eyes. Madge is terrified but doesn't know why, a low whimper struggling from her mother's lips.

"These men have tried to assault their King, who has been anointed by God himself! The Lord has preserved us and condemned them, for there is no power on earth great enough to topple His mighty King! For their heresy and treason, we give you their blood! Let it quench the unholy fires of any foolish enough to believe they could depose a King, set upon the throne by the Lord himself!"

King Coriolanus' voice booms but no one cheers, the silence of the crowd like a thunderstorm at midnight. The nooses are placed around the necks of all four men and her father's fingers dig painfully into Madge's shoulder. One of the men whispers a prayer and another starts to cry, tears and snot mixing on his chin. The King takes a seat in his specially erected throne, draped in red velvet and smiles, his eyes bright bright bright.

He waves his hand and the floor beneath the four men disappears. Madge squeaks in shock as they thrash about, legs kicking wildly. She clamps her hands over her eyes to block out the sight but she can still hear their gurgling, choking struggle and Prince's Cato laughter, enthusiastic and energetic. Then comes a series of heavy thuds and Madge's lowers her hands to see the men have been cut down. They breathe heavily and oh, she thinks, they're still alive. She feels relief but then confusion, because hung, drawn and quartered. What does drawn and quartered mean?

Executioners in black haul the men up onto the tables and strap them down, her father's fingers bruising on her skin. Her mother swoons slightly, sagging against her husband and Madge hates the fear needling her heart. Each executioner turns to the smaller tables beside the ones where the men are tied down and pick up silver tools that glint in the late November sun. What are they-

Madge would scream but her voice seems to have died in her throat, the Executioners carving each man open. She flinches back and squeezes her eyes closed, hands clamped tight over her ears to block out their screams. It doesn't work, their agony cutting into her as they are disemboweled and her stomach curdles with horror. It goes on forever and Madge wants to wake up, safe and warm in her bed.

Silence settles like a shroud over the square and Madge chances to open her eyes. There is a moment of suspended terror and then she watches four axes rise, fall and four heads roll across the scaffold, severed from their bodies. The executioners lift each dripping head and show them to the crowd, but no one cheers, all except the royal family who applauds heartily. Madge feels sick but the brutality isn't over, each man sawed into four equal parts.

Her mother collapses, blood coats the ground, the crowd is pale and lifeless and King Coriolanus smiles, wicked like the Devil himself.

Madge of Bedford is nine years old and she has learned a harsh lesson.

There are no fairy tails here.

chapter one

#Hunger Games #gadge #historical au #madge undersee #gale hawthorne #roses #wars of the roses au #fanfiction

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veliseraptor · 7 years

Note

For your meme: Quiet me, RTC, Pietro and Loki, after Loki had a Thanos nightmare, the others are away and Pietro is left to (try to) calm Loki down (bonus points if prickliness and angst on both sides ensues).

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, remember this cold verse, 1.2k, pietro & loki, post-to face unafraid the plans that we’ve made

The dreams had gotten worse.

He was less certain now that they were dreams,either: tense, anxious nightmares where he huddled in the dark, trembling atthe feeling of some terrible gaze seeking him. And after, when I find you,when there are no boltholes left…

The dread was so thick it tasted like blood. Heremembered all too keenly the feeling of being shoved down in his own mind andwaking with a blank spot in his memory, only the damage he had left to testifyto what he’d done while Thanos used him. Put you on like a glove, Stark’swords. Accurate in a way that left him sick to think of.

He should not have used magic to push Steve backinto sleep when he woke, but he had needed, just for a moment, to get away.Suddenly unable to breathe, suddenly terrified that he would find his handsgoing for Steve’s throat, outside of his control.

Loki looked down at his hands. Still shaking.His eyes fixed on the simple silver ring on his left.

You should run, the fear whispered. Run far away, before Thanos claims youagain, this time completely.

He heard a sound and jumped, whirling. His magicsurged to answer his anxiety, but it was only the witch’s brother, staring athim looking rumpled and annoyed. Loki schooled his expression to impassivity.“What are you doing awake?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Maximoff saidcurtly.

“You could,” Loki said flatly. Maximoff’s eyesnarrowed.

“My sister may think you are a friend. I am notso sure.”

Loki looked out the window and closed his handsinto fists, hoping that would stop their shaking. “That likely makes you less afool than her.”

Maximoff moved in a flash to block his view,staring up at him belligerently. “You will not insult my sister in front ofme,” he said. Loki scoffed under his breath and started to turn away. He’d findelsewhere to settle his humming nerves. “We are not finished,” Maximoff said,and grabbed Loki’s arm.

He yanked free and pivoted, hand lashing out atMaximoff’s throat, and just managed to pull the action in time before he mighthave crushed his windpipe. For just a moment, the witch’s brother’s eyeswidened. Holding still, they could both see his hand trembling.

Loki jerked away and stepped back. His heart waspounding a little too hard. “Never touch me without my permission,” he saidharshly. “And certainly do not grab me. Wanda would be dreadfully upsetif you were hurt.”

Maximoff’s expression of anger sharpened. “Areyou threatening me?”

“No,” Loki said. “Offering you a warning.” Heturned his back.

“Your hands were shaking,” Maximoff saidsuddenly. Loki fell still and said nothing. “Why are you out here?”

Loki bit the inside of his cheek. “I do not seethat that is any of your business.”

“Does it make it more or less my business thatyour memories infected my sister’s nightmares for days?” Maximoff demanded.Loki tried not to flinch even as he felt a surge of rage.

“You may not want to remind me of that incidentjust now,” he snapped. Maximoff didn’t flinch.

“They all talk about this great danger hanging overall our heads,” he said. “It seems to have something todo with you. Wanda will only say a little.It seems this danger is something you brought, like the scepter.”

Yes. No. You drew it to yourselves when youmeddled in matters greater than your ken. Lokifelt himself coil tight. “Whatever the witchling said to you was not hers toshare.”

Maximoff took a step toward him and Loki tensedfurther. “From what I understand it endangers all of us.”

Magic sparked at Loki’s fingertips. “Youunderstand nothing.”

“I understand that this Thanos-”

“Do not say his name,” Loki cried, thebubbling panic boiling over. He could almost feel that awful gaze pinning him,magic pinning him like an insect as Thanos shredded his mind apart, there isnowhere you can hide from me, no secrets you can keep, everything you are ismine, you think you know pain you will yearn for something so sweet-

“Loki. Loki.” Someone swore loudly. Hecouldn’t inhale properly and he felt distant from his own body, untethered.None of this was real.

“Breathe,” said someone suddenly, far away.“Into your stomach.” Loki tried but it stopped halfway through. Tried again.Again. Someone was muttering under their breath and Loki tried to focus onthat, on the hard floor underneath him, the smell of damp forest waftingthrough the open window.

He opened his eyes. Maximoff stared down at him.

“I am going to get some water,” he saidabruptly, and turned on his heel. Loki let his head fall back against the wall,exhausted and swallowing the urge to weep. Stupid. Foolish. Weak.

Maximoff returned and shoved the water at him.Loki took it after a moment and drank the whole thing.

“Thank you,” he said tightly, after a longsilence during which Maximoff continued to stare at him. Loki did not think hecould have tolerated seeing pity there, but his expression was tight andunreadable.

“Why is it dangerous to say his name,” thewitch’s brother asked. Loki avoided his gaze.

“Names have power,” he said flatly. “They maydraw attention. We are not...none of you are ready for his.” Silence, again.Loki wanted to push himself up, to leave, but he didn’t quite trust hislegs yet. “Was there something else,” he said eventually. It sounded less harshthan he wanted it to.

“No,” Maximoff said. “Nothing else.” He turnedhis back. “You should not hide out here alone. It is stupid.”

Loki’s hackles rose. “I am not hiding.”

“Then why not turn to Rogers with your fears,”Maximoff said bluntly. “He is there. It is stupid to say nothing and forceothers to deal with your troubles.”

Loki’s jaw tightened. “I did not force youto deal with anything. You were free to leave. And you were the one who pressedin the first place-”

“My sister, for whatever reason, values yourteaching,” Maximoff interrupted. “It was for her I intervened.”

“And what are you hiding from, PietroMaximoff,” Loki snapped, shame prickling down his spine. “Why do you notseek your sister’s comfort? What haunts you that you cannot share?”

Maximoff went very still, not even twitching.“You do not know me,” he said finally, the words spilling from his lips in arush as though he could not get them out fast enough. “You do not know mysister. And I owe you nothing.”

He was gone in a flash, before Loki could say nothingbut your life. He sat alone, pressing his forehead into his knees, until hefelt steady enough to stand. Looking down at his left hand, he ran his thumbidly over the vibranium band.

Loki made his way back to the rooms he sharedwith Steve and slipped back into the bedroom, crawling under the covers. Hepulled Steve against him and inhaled the smell of his hair.

“Steve?” He said quietly. “Can I...I want totalk to you.”

Maximoff’s words might have been harsh, butmaybe he wasn’t wrong.

#remember this cold #steve&loki 5ever #a wild fic appeared #anonymous #conversating

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