#tori who thinks his sister is dead and jame who's been dead for a while but thinks she's doing okay actually

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Jame/Tori. 12 and 16. Happy Birthday! Wishing you a year full of understanding medical professionals.

SAME!!!  Anyway, last night I was reading God Stalk out loud to my partners, because we are all very adorable, and I almost paused the chapter to wax adoring about Jame and Tori because Jame made an idle comment about not understanding how someone could decide not to support their brother, no matter what their brother did.  So you get to go first.

12) What first changes when it starts getting serious?

The first thing that Jame notices as a change, a real change, isn’t something anyone else would notice.  Tori kissed her, and didn’t run--kissed her, and held her face between his beautiful scarred hands, and rested their foreheads together like they did when they were children, like she was safety to him again, and that was--that was new, but she didn’t really think of it as a change.  Everyone else sees it as a change, but not Jame.  She thinks that Tori might not see it that way either.  It wasn’t a change, it was a return to the right shape of things.

The first thing she notices as a change isn’t until a few nights later, when she collapses in a chair and falls asleep.  The dream is pleasantly nonsensical at first--a nightmare, but a real nightmare, which is a relief, of dancing in the Res aB’tyrr in front of the randon council, while her feet bleed and her balance slips on the slick tabletop.  She realizes she’s dreaming when she stumbles, but dances on as if a puppet on strings, until finally the dance ends, and she bows, and takes her bloodied feet and her weariness up the stairs to the loft.  

It’s her brother’s study, at the top of the stairs, and he’s there, sitting in the chair by the fire with one leg crossed over his knee and frowning in concentration, and he blinks at her as she stumbles through the mirror and lands clumsily on the floor.  She braces herself to watch horror flicker over his face--sees the moment of instinctive alarm--and then he asks, “What are you wearing?”

“What?” Jame asks, blank, and then says, “Oh.  It’s a dancer’s costume.  What are you doing?”

Tori’s lips twist briefly and he says, “Trying to sleep.”

“Are you hiding in here on purpose?”

He looks uneasy, almost--apologetic.  “I just need some rest.”  And then he hesitates, and then Tori says, “You can stay.  There’s another chair.”

“What?” Jame repeats.

“I can keep us both here for a while, I think,” Tori says.  “You look tired.”

Jame is nodding before she thinks it through, and collapses in the chair across from Tori--the dreamscape can’t manufacture pain or weariness the way the soulscape can, but she is tired.  She hasn’t slept in days, and she’s all too aware that she’s as likely to wander out the door into a disaster as she is into a restful night.  And Tori’s study--the dream he’s made for himself, a shelter from visions and souls--is warm and quiet, with the fire and the old chairs, and with her brother.  It’s--nice.

Tori offers her a faint smile, and takes his foot off his knee and stretches his legs out in front of him, mirroring her, so that their ankles cross in front of the fire.

16) When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together?

I genuinely do not think they would bat an eye at a zombie apocalypse.  They essentially grew up in one.  Honestly I think they would be THE clutch people to have in charge, because they are very good at this, before Jame and Tori were dancers or fighters or leaders or soldiers or anything, they were dealing with the undead.

The first thing Jame, in northern Tagmeth, does upon seeing the first haunt in the Riverlands is to sit down with a map and every report she can barter, beg, or borrow, and draws out the advancing line.  She gathers her people and gives them exacting instructions, on how to kill the dead, and she sends a letter to Mount Alban that simply says I need help, cousin, meet me at Gothregor, and she sends out scouts for one week.  At the end of the week, she rolls up her maps, tells everyone to pack everything they want to keep, and takes her people south.

She arrives at her brother’s doorstep unannounced, and the Knorth Kendar are getting used to the way their Highborn do things but also they hate the way their Highborn do things.  It’s not really right for their lordan to show up with every single one of her people in tow and demand to see her brother now.  But, then, most of them have served their lord for years now, and they know that hard-eyed silver stare, and no one stops her from storming out to the barracks where Torisen is going over their census with Rowan.

Tori is already looking at the door when Jame opens it, and he says, “Jame,” and Rowan says, “Lordan,” and Jame says, “I have bad news, and I think we’re the first ones to get it, so we need a plan if we’re going to save our people.”

And Jame thinks it says something kind, about her brother, that even at his worst, he cared about their people to the point of desperation.  And he’s not at his worst anymore, and so she’s not surprised when he gestures to the chair at his other side, facing Rowan, and says, “Of course, what happened?”

[qqueenofhades]

You're going to think I'm such a weirdo because you're my go-to person for whether particular British monarchs were gay, but I have another question along those lines. Was Queen Anne in a lesbian relationship with Sarah Churchill? And if not, was she gay? I read one book that explained she wasn't "because she hadn't heard of it." Needless to say, I didn't finish it.

Ahaha. We’ve all gotta be known for something, right?

Short answers to both your questions: No and no, but also in both cases sorta, and which reflects a really fascinating entry point into a discussion of the female side of seventeenth/eighteenth-century LGBT culture. (Seriously, guys, the eighteenth century was HELLA GAY. I’ve written about the male side of it, but there is just as much or more to look at from the female. It’s also why you should continue to laugh at Certain Unnamed Persons telling you gay people did not exist before the 1960s.)

Anyway, so, Anne. As girls, both she and her sister Mary (the future Queen Mary II) had a passionate attachment to an older woman, Frances Apsley, and wrote letters to her that reflect this romantic imagining. (p.1648-49). The thirteen-year-old Mary addressed the twenty-two-year-old Frances as “my dearest dear husband” and called herself “your faithful wife, loyal to your bed […] how I dote on you, oh I am in raptures of sweet amaze, when I think of you I am in ecstasy.” In fact, when Anne began her own correspondence with Frances, Mary was jealous of her/seemed to have viewed her sister as a romantic rival for Frances’ affections. In their letters, Anne cast herself and Frances as star-crossed lovers from the play Mithridates, and there was an atmosphere of unabashed hedonism and sexual liberty at the Restoration court of Charles II. The girls were mostly kept away from this, but there were plenty of plays, novels, etc that centered around themes of female same-sex desire. Eighteenth-century English literature (see p. 261-62) had all kinds of exploration of it, and indeed reflects a vernacular for LGBT relationships arguably more detailed than what we have today (if by nature pejorative): “sodomite” and “molly” were the terms for the active and passive partner in a male homosexual relationship, and “sapphic” and “tommy” were the equivalents for a female homosexual relationship. (But of course, I forgot, we didn’t have LGBT people before the 1960s.) 

What Valerie Traub calls “the renaissance of lesbianism in early modern England” wasn’t just a literary phenomenon either. The habit of women sharing beds at all level of society, from working class to noblewomen, and the usually all-female social circle of young women offered a convenient environment for practical explorations of the kind of passionate desire seen above. At least one contemporary commentator had no problem with it (see p. 54) and viewed it in pragmatic terms:

Calling himself “neither their censor nor their husband,” Brantôme maintains that “unmarried girls and widows may be excused for liking such frivolous and vain pleasures and preferring to give themselves to each other thus and so get rid of their heat than to resort to men and be put in the family way and dishonored by them, or to have to get rid of their fruit.” As for the homoerotic exploits of married women: “the men are not cuckolded by it.”

In other words, female same-sex activity might not be optimal, but it’s essentially harmless, preferable to unwanted pregnancies, illicit abortions, or the spoiling of marriage prospects. And since everyone knows (according to bountiful eighteenth-century medical wisdom) that women are “hot” and need to relieve their humors with sex, lesbianism (though it wasn’t yet called that) was fine as an option. This of course was not the only view on it, but it does absolutely make it the case that yes, Anne (and other women of her class and era) would have heard of it. (Seriously, do these Str8 Historians just… assume that nobody ever mentioned same-sex relations/desire/literature, because gay people are “so modern” or… what? I’m baffled. On that note, Emma Donoghue’s “Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801″ is also a recommended read.)

Anyway, back to Anne and Mary themselves. It’s highly unlikely that their ardor toward Frances Apsley ever went beyond letters, and Mary did not have another relationship with a woman of the same intensity; after a very rocky start to her 1677 marriage to William of Orange, she fell quickly in love with him and devoted herself to him. However, Anne continued to have the same sort of passionate attachments to women, including that to Sarah Jennings, later Lady Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough. Sarah is a fascinating historical lady for many reasons, and through her relationship with Anne over several decades, was able to exert considerable influence and prestige. She was a strong-willed, well educated, politically ambitious, and formidable woman, and I think the assessment of her relationship with Anne in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (login needed for full text) is essentially correct:

Anne wasemotionally vulnerable and always depended very much upon her near circle offriends; Sarah wasthe closest of these. Anne wasromantically, but platonically, in love with Sarah, who, for her part, understood very well theimmense value of her relationship with the princess. So close did Anne feel to Sarah that from about 1691 she insisted thatthe aliases Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman be used between them, to overcomeany undue feeling of formality when in private. Although Sarah eventually found the princess’sattentions irritating in their childlike ardour, she responded with genuineaffection, but not with love. She later wrote that she had little in commonwith Anne; she usedher periods of exclusion from the court to widen her reading, including Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, Montaigne, and Seneca, whereas Anne remained stubbornly non-intellectual. Nonethe less, their political interdependence and genuine affection kept theirpersonal relationship alive.

I would say in my view this is about right. Anne was definitely in love with her, while Sarah liked her, but saw the overall value in being attached to the princess (later queen). They fell out over differing political opinions (Sarah was a Whig, Anne was a Tory) and both had devoted relationships with their husbands. Sarah’s was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the statesman, political player, and hero of the War of Spanish Succession, and Anne’s was Prince George of Denmark. Sarah and Churchill had seven children, while Anne had at least seventeen pregnancies by George, but only one living son (William, Duke of Gloucester, who died at the age of eleven).

George has generally gotten a bad rap as a total unambitious dullard, and there has been some attempt to portray Anne and Sarah as lovers while Anne was unavoidably saddled with George and only kept having sex with him in hopes of a Stuart heir, which I think is both inaccurate and unfair to George. He had almost no political ambition at all and was absolutely happy to let his wife rule and be queen and to support her decisions, which was the reverse of Anne’s sister Mary and her husband William (Anne’s immediate predecessors). William refused to let Mary be crowned as sole queen, even though Mary and Anne were both daughters of James II and the hereditary right was Mary’s (for her part, Mary refused to countenance rulership without William and never wanted it much, but accepted it in the name of the Protestant cause/saving England from Catholic monarchy under her father). So by the time of Anne’s reign (1702-1714) it was still not at all negotiated how exactly a new (female) constitutional monarch, post-1689 and Bill of Rights, would rule by herself, but Anne did pretty much that. She didn’t have constitutional strife, she took England from the chaos and civil/religious wars/Commonwealth/etc of the seventeenth to its emergence as a major world power in the eighteenth, and George was a-okay with all of this. He declared that “I am her Majesty’s subject, I will do naught but what she commands me,” and they adored each other. George’s death in 1708 absolutely devastated Anne and was one of the reasons that snapped her fraught relationship with Sarah, as one observer wrote:

[George’s death] has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief.She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very momenthis breath went out of his body, and ‘twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailedupon her to leave him.

Sarah and Anne’s relationship had been steadily deteriorating over political differences, Sarah’s domineering personality, and Anne’s affection for a new female favorite, Abigail Masham. Indeed, Anne’s Whig opponents (and Sarah herself) fanned rumors that Anne and Abigail’s relationship was that of lovers, including by scandalous poetry (see pp. 157-8):

Whenas Queen Anne of great RenownGreat Britain’s Sceptre sway’dBesides the Church, she dearly lov’dA Dirty Chamber-Maid….

As Traub points out, Sarah’s accusations are more likely motivated by jealousy at losing her position as favorite to Abigail, and Anne herself never forgave Sarah for insinuating lesbianism (as in the physical act of it, rather than romantic feelings) in their relationship. Again as Traub comments: “It was the result of a transformation in discourse, whereas intimate female friends, including matronly monarchs with seventeen pregnancies behind them, could be interpreted as purveyors of sexual vice.” In other words, the accusations flung at Elizabeth I, the woman ruling alone in the late 16th-early 17th century, had been that she had inappropriate male lovers; now the charges against Anne, a century later, were of inappropriate female lovers, and reflected, as discussed above, the emergence of this entire construction and visibility of same-sex female desire. Accusations or intimations of homosexuality were nothing new to the Stuarts; both William and Mary (especially William) had been painted as having inappropriately intimate same-gender relationships, and William’s Jacobite enemies had likewise gotten considerable mileage out of pamphlets portraying him as a “sodomite.” (Which, again, they had political reasons to do, so there is that, but it’s fascinating, if unfortunate, that this had now become the preferred currency of political slander, as that was not necessarily the case before).

Overall, Anne certainly had strong emotional relationships to women for her entire life, and in some cases, those relationships were accused of being explicitly sexual (reflecting a culture that was, as noted, really hella gay for both women and men, and this gayness was both accepted and reviled in turn) but for the benefit of her enemies (Sarah’s unflattering depiction of Anne was basically accepted as fact until the late 20th century). So in one sense, Anne and Sarah were in a long relationship that ended badly, and Anne was absolutely biromantic. Sex (or the lack of it) is not the only defining marker of a relationship, but if we mean a lesbian relationship in the modern sense of the word (where they are both romantic and sexual partners) then no. Anne and George were known for being devoted and faithful to each other (as noted, not at all the norm in the Stuart court) and Anne’s seventeen pregnancies make it clear they had sex throughout their marriage. Anne herself took the accusation of physical lesbianism with Abigail Masham as an unforgivable slight on Sarah’s part; i.e. the feelings or the rhetoric were acceptable to her, but the action was not. We have no reason to think she was being a hypocrite about this, or willfully concealing/ignoring it. Because, surprise! People’s attitudes and identities toward sexuality are complicated and shifting and partial and evolving, and conditioned by class, time, place, religion, society, etc.

Anyway, since this is another novel: we could definitely classify Anne as queer in the modern definition (having romantic feelings/romantic-if chaste-involvements with women, but lovingly and faithfully married to her husband who was her sexual partner), but probably not actively and certainly not exclusively lesbian. She was traditional in her views and devoted to the Protestant church (and to George), so yes. I would classify her as biromantic with a preference for/sexual activity with men, but whose long relationships with women were both politically and personally influential and absolutely deserve attention within the context of eighteenth-century LGBT history and literature.

[aeondeug]

So I’ve talking about my twinswap AU more with @anheliaaescar for whatever reasons and just generally been thinking about it more. Kind of want to write more of it but also like I cannot be assed to handle plot. So it is like urgh. Also not really into writing narrative prose at all anymore so. Yeah. If it became prose it’d likely be a series of chaotically spread about prose poetry oneshots that can be pieced together into a single narrative. Alternatively a poetry collection. Alternatively some sort of chaotic mix of both. I kind of want to just make like a list of like shit that we’ve talked about in regards to like the AU’s Jame because that is just apparently the sort of mood I’ve been in lately. Which is interesting since the AU started out mostly so I could be ungodly focused on Tori. AND NOW HERE WE ARE. ABSORBED INTO THE OTHER HALF OF THIS EQUATION (i didn’t forget about you kindrie i swear to fuck i will get to you i love you you are the goodest boy). So like let’s do that I guess? First some stage setting though is probably needed, especially since I never wrote a fic covering the actual like. Start. Of this. Thing. Let’s just do that now before I get all Drowning Girl here and start arguing about the arbitrary nature of beginnings. So like the turning point is around the same time around when Jame gets thrown the fuck out in canon. However due to Shenanigans Tori has the misfortune of being the target of Ganth’s creepy bullshit. This Does Not Go Very Well At All due to accidental temp blood binding due to Tori being injured because his sister fucking dunks on him when he’s a little kid and she’s not at all gentle in said dunking on. Ganth goes fucking ballistic. Tori gets chased the fuck out after all things are said and done and Jame gets deemed The New Better Tori. Tori ends up being picked up because he is mistaken for his sister. Gerridon’s kind of pissed that he’s got the boy instead but whatever fine FUCK IT YOU GET TO BE MY NEW CONSORT. dance you miserable bastard dance. This leaves Jame with her father. SO LET’S GET A LIST GOING YEAAAAAAH:

Jame gets deemed the new Tori as stated before and is treated as though she has always been her brother. The actual Tori meanwhile, if he is mentioned at all, is talked about as though he is Jame. No one is particularly happy with this set up. Ganth’s mental health is steadily declining more and more, at least one person has probably been killed on account of calling Jame by her actual name by accident once, and Daddy’s solution to “son” asking where “his” sibling has gone are answered with violence.

Jame eventually stops asking about Tori’s actual whereabouts. Not because she’s paralyzed into fear by the beatings and yelling, but because she needs to survive. Part of her suspects Ganth killed Tori. Another part of her refuses to accept that he’s dead but really she has no idea where the fuck he can be.

Jame is very fucking angry and without Tirandys around to teach her she has ended up as a Jame that has learned that power is something to be used. Thus instead of her arc being focused around getting Jame comfortable with her role as a destroyer, her arc is centered around tempering out the destructive sides of her and getting her to care more about consequences. Consequences remains central to her arc in the AU still, just in a different manner.

Ganth is killed by Jame. This goes poorly for basically everyone in the keep. There was no way for it not to. Jame is the sole survivor of the keep.

Jame maintains a network of spies. She hates being kept under people’s prying eyes and under people’s thumbs, however, while her brother has a great distaste for spies in canon AU Jame deems them a necessary evil. A very useful one. What better way to keep out of snares than by knowing where they’ve been set before they’ve been set?

Jame must rules lawyer her way around the fact that she is technically in a constant state of lying. This bothers her quite a bit for a number of reasons. The reasoning she has come up with though is that, since her father outright declared her his “son” and that her name is “Torisen” and that she is in the possession of a cursed “twin sister” named “Jamethiel” it is true.

A great deal of her time as Highlord prior to Tori showing the fuck up is spent avoiding marriage contracts or finding ways to weasel out of having to provide children. No one was able to get her naked.

Once Tori shows up and things settle down regarding the Highlord’s mysteriously appearing sister at least somewhat she immediately sets towards making him her consort. Caldane is extremely fucking pissed and Kally never hears the end of it. This is why Kally hates Tori. Jame knows nothing of that though and is honestly just happy that she now has an excuse to avoid these fucking talks with Caldane.

Her epithet is Oddclaw. A reference to her being righthanded and also kind of really fucking weird. This is an unintentionally fitting epithet given that she also happens to literally have claws. Pereden finds this out the hard way.

Jame always wears gloves. She is never seen without gloves. Ever. There is speculation as to why.

Bane is not Jame’s weird dark mirror counterpart thing in this AU and she has not met Bane. Greshan instead takes up this role and the failure state with Jame is less Bane and more an exceptionally cruel and forceful lord that takes whatever she pleases without thought. She gets the coat from Tori after he snuck out to fix something he saw in a dream. Because he was so adamant about leaving and because she is kind of pissed at him she refuses his requests to destroy the coat.

Jame does not, however, just tolerate all of Greshan’s “advice”. He is a bit of a comforting confidant in a fashion since he is the only one who seems to get anything as well as being one of the few privy to the twins’ secret, but she does get very fed up with him at times. She in particular is disgusted by any suggestion that she bloodbind Tori to keep his ass in line.

Jame’s eventual dealing with Greshan involves her wearing his stupid coat and being seemingly unable to take it off. He villain speeches because of course he does and like a fucking idiot tells Jame that she wouldn’t be dumb enough to destroy him now that she can’t take him off. Jame sets herself on fire and falls out a window. That’ll fucking show you, uncle. Telling Jame that she’s not stupid enough to do something. You do not know who you are messing with! This is the conclusion to the world’s most dramatic and literal telling of a ‘the clothes make the man’ narrative.

Despite everything Jame still has Jorin. He is still blind and a goober. I have no reasoning for where Jorin has come from yet but Jorin is important. Precious. The most vital of all characters. He cannot be separated from Jame in any AU.

Jame adores Kindrie and is very fiercely protective of him because he is an outcast and Shanir. He is well treated. She is extremely fond of outcasts in general and has an extreme protectiveness over her Kendar. Fucking with Jame’s people is ill-advised. Brier and the crew are among said Kendar by way of currently unplotted shenanigans.

Jame is also extremely protective of Tori when he shows the fuck up. She’s terrified of the prospect of losing him again. She also tries to get him to talk to her and tends to fail because he is scared of her. He’s not a bigoted little fuck about it, but he is afraid of his sister and still very avoidant. This distresses her. Tori has several dresses and other gifts from her. She gets fed up with him at times and just doesn’t even bother trying to talk with him but in general she’d really rather be able to form a relationship with him. She suspects the reason he fears her is because he’s very aware of what a dangerous and cruel person she’s become. This increases her self loathing and adds more fuel to their rather unstable relationship.

Jame is rather concerned with becoming as awful and mad as her father was. Fear of falling remains a very strong issue for her in the AU and she doesn’t trust her judgement terribly much. Still she’s learned from a young age that violence is the way of the world. She’s not really sure how else to survive in the world. As a result the arc words ‘Destruction begins with love’ and ‘Some things need to be broken’ remain direly important, though in a different fashion.

She is fucking terrifying.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

okay, i'm taking that as an invitation: PLEASE post your annotations for the kencyrath playlist?

OKAY SURE TWIST MY ARM I GUESS

Actually this playlist is...long as hell, BUT there’s only like twelve people in this fandom and I’m in a group chat with half of them, so everything is here but it’s got a cut for length because my annotations are Specific.

THE BASICS (in no particular order)

Can’t Cheat Death by the Ballroom Thieves, for Jame, no further comment, I am Correct

I spilled blood in the water Then let the storm roll in I put my hands in the fire Watched my welcome wear thin Salt in my wounds and spit in my eye I burned the path you walk on And I let none survive

Thistles and Weeds by Mumford & Sons, for Torisen, who is a good leader and also falling apart

Spare me your judgements and spare me your dreams Cause recently mine have been tearing my seams I sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind

Hey Brother by Avicii, for Jame and Tori, in all ways

Hey brother, do you still believe in one another? Hey sister, do you still believe in love, I wonder? Oh, if the sky comes falling down For you, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do

Human by Rag’n’Bone Man, for Kindrie Soul-walker, out of his depth and doing his best

Maybe I'm foolish, maybe I'm blind Thinking I can see through this and see what's behind Got no way to prove it, so maybe I'm lying

Soldier, Poet, King by the Oh Hellos, for the Tyr-ridan (I have considered learning to draw SPECIFICALLY to do a comic of this song featuring Jame as the soldier, Kindrie as the poet, and Tori as the king, but I couldn’t pick a verse because it’s not a very long song)

Home to Me by Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, for Jame and Tori, which I would ALSO do a line-by-line breakdown of as a duet, because I love it for them

(Tori) How dare you love me like you've never known fear When you've got more troubles than minutes in the year (Jame) And a voice like your father's tells you nothing good's for free Well that may be, but you're walking home to me

Dear Wormwood by the Oh Hellos, the ORIGINAL Bane/Jame song, for which I could easily do a line-by-line breakdown cast as a duet between them, the song that I, personally, would set over their last conversation before Bane’s death and over Jame’s flight from the palace, if I was making a TV series, just, you know, if anyone wants to kick me a couple million bucks

I know who I am now And all that you've made of me I know who you are now And I name you my enemy

Glitter & Gold by Barns Courtney, for the Kendar, survivors to the last

Do you walk in the valley of kings? Do you walk in the shadow of men Who sold their lives to a dream? Do you ponder the manner of things In the dark?

Delilah by Florence + the Machine, for Jamethiel Dreamweaver, the first unfallen darkling, the finest weapon and cruelest victim of the Master’s schemes, and for her daughter, who saw more and ran faster

Too fast for freedom Sometimes it all falls down These chains never leave me I keep dragging them around

We Have It All by Pim Stones, for Tyrandis, just...listen to it, I’m right

There's glory ahead, but our love will be forgotten If my heart was still mine, I would go to the bottom And apologise to you until the day it went rotten

Mercy Down by Shayfer James, which is THE definitive song for the entire Kencyrath--half-desperate for their missing destiny, half-terrified of that destiny when it shows up at their door.

It’s getting mythical now You better pick your weapons up And throw your mercy, throw your mercy down

THE EXTENDED STUFF (loosely sorted by topic)

Control by Halsey, for Jame, heir to the Dreamweaver, Snare-of-Souls, and learning to dance and running away

They sent me away to find them a fortune A chest filled with diamonds and gold The house was awake, with shadows and monsters The hallways, they echoed and groaned

Little Boy by Barns Courtney, for Torisen holding the bones of a little girl who died at the same age as his long lost twin sister

Little boy inside my chest Breathe some life into my bones I've been lost and wandering Down and out and missing home

The Draw by Bastille, for Torisen and the shade of Ganth and the promise of madness on a sleepless night

Don't listen to your friends See the despair behind their eyes Don't listen to your friends They only care and want to know why

Carry Your Throne by Jon Bellion, for Jame and Tori at their best, kissing in the ashfall and dancing in Tentir

Two crowns and a gold cup And they're coming for the throne, love But if your heart is a dog fight Then I'm ready to go to war like

Coming Down by Halsey, for Jame and the twin she loves, who is always, always running away from her

Every single night pray the sun will rise Every single time make a compromise Every single night pray the sun will rise, but It's coming down, down, coming down

Graveyard by Halsey, for Jame and Tori and dreams and the soulscape and running and chasing and trying

I keep running when both my feet hurt I won't stop 'til I get where you are Oh, when you go down all your darkest roads I woulda followed all the way to the graveyard

Thick as Thieves by Shinedown, for Jame and Tori, who can barely have a civil conversation but still manage to be each other’s answer to the concept of ‘home’

Evidently, we can't work it out I guess that courage ain't allowed Evidently, you're not in the mood And everything I say just bothers you

The Horror of Our Love by Ludo, for Bane and Jame, and blood and binding, and shadows crossing continents

I'm a killer, cold and wrathful Silent sleeper, I've been inside your bedroom I've murdered half the town Left you love notes on their headstones I'll fill the graveyards until I have you

Irresistible by Fall Out Boy, for Bane in Tai-tastigon, a prince of the city and a monster in his beloved’s kitchen

Too many war wounds and not enough wars Too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores Too many sharks, not enough blood in the waves You know I give my love a four letter name

Hellfire by Barns Courtney, for Bane, giving your soul to the wrong person, and the Lower Town

Run in an alleyway Through a dead end street Murdering promises That I just can't keep

Punch Drunk Grinning Soul by Flogging Molly, for all the Kendar who keep surviving disasters while their people fall all around them, and especially for Marc and Brier

But these tired eyes are crashing down on me While the paint never dries on these four walls that now suffocate me But tonight, maybe tonight all will be free

Sleepsong by Bastille, for soulscapes and locked doors and armor and hidden gardens and a whole race with a collective unconscious who still manage to be awfully lonely

Oh, in the strangest dreams, walking by your side It is the hole you impose upon your life When you're out, loneliness, it crawls up in the ground It's what you feel, but can't articulate out loud

Bad Decisions by Bastille, for Tentir and all the children there who thought they were immortal

Do you remember what you said to me? 'Cause we lost track of time Yeah, we lost track of time You always let me down so tenderly So live fast and die young and stay forever numb 

For The Departed by Shayfer James, for every Kendar who’s ever sold a soul, broken under Honor’s Paradox, died in service, and gone unremembered

So dry your eyes and count to ten They'll have me on the pyre by then Forget the man I used to be You'll move along more easily

Bones by MS MR, for death banners, and for the dead of Kithorn, and for Dalis-sar, depending on my mood

Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone Let her find a way to a better place Broken dreams and silent screams Empty churches with soulless curses We found a way to escape the day

I Am Stretched On Your Grave by Dead Can Dance, for sisterkin, for the massacre of the Knorth women, but especially for Brenwyr and her ghost and her maledight madness

Calling out to the air With tears both hot and wild Oh I grieve for the girl That I loved as a child

NFWMB by Hozier, for Brenwyr and Aerulan (and could be for Jame and Tori but he’s, you know, an ostrich with his head buried in his own trauma)

Ain't it a gentle sound, the rolling in the graves? Ain't it like thunder under earth, the sound it makes? Ain't it exciting you, the rumble where you lay? Ain't you my baby, ain't you my baby?

Church by Fall Out Boy, for everyone who’s ever fallen in love with Jame, from Dally to Torisen

Oh, the things that you do in the Name of what you love You are doomed but just enough

Renegades by X Ambassadors, for the good times in Tai-tastigon with Dally and Canden

It's our time to make a move It's our time to make amends It's our time to break the rules Let's begin

Breath of Life by Florence + the Machine, for everyone who’s ever fallen to the Knorth glamour and paid dearly for it

But I needed one more touch Another taste of heavenly rush And I believe, I believe it's so

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Tori as Cinders and Jame as Briar Rose. That, thats a great concept. Tori chasing after his sister for thirty years (unlike canon) just gets me.

RIGHT????

Okay, so, some other thoughts I’ve thunk about this.  Obviously I would call it “oh my love (as the cities you were razing)” because that line fucks.

Obviously Tori is both Cinders and Snow/General White--he blames himself for not saving Jame (as all versions of Tori must) and so on his mission to find her, he starts rallying the resistance.  He assumes Jame is dead, at first, while he and Burr and Rowan and Harn and Rose and a couple others escape on a sabotaged ship.  Rose bleeds out from her wounds while she’s pumping oxygen, but with one less person burdening the system means they live to make landfall.  They go into hiding briefly, but then...

Then the Banes start turning out, in huge numbers, slim and lethal soldiers with clawed hands and silver eyes, and black curls shorn down to their scalps.  Tori understands the very first time he sees one, looks into his sister’s eyes, his eyes, and doesn’t see a goddamn thing looking back.  The Bane hesitates, though--not a flinch, just.  An extra moment in raising its arm to shoot him.  Tori shuts his eyes and puts a bullet through its heart, and rips off his glove without thinking, to see the ring on his hand.  Its stone is as white as snow, and he breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and then he reloads his gun and starts shooting Banes.

They are not Jame.  They are not.  He repeats the words until he can shoot them with his eyes open, looking into those silver eyes as they go dim and still.

(Jame, dreaming, sees her own hand rise, holding a gun, pointed at the other half of her soul, and screams no, helpless in the grip of a nightmare, one of the thousands upon thousands of nightmares she sees in fragments, and the hand--hesitates.  And then Tori shoots her--it--them--and she’s gone, snatched away to the infinite mind of a Behemoth, rolling across a planet like a storm front.)

(Her body, the real one, frowns faintly in her glass coffin.)

Tori leads from the front, as General Black.  This is why it’s rather important that he wears all black, you see--the Banes are armored in steel grey with the red crest of the Master for an accent, and an apology wouldn’t bring their general back, if you shot him by accident.  He ignores the way his own people flinch, if he comes up on them too suddenly.  He’s not here to be their friend.  He’s here to be their fixed point, the star they all navigate by, and to follow his ring as it slowly, so slowly, tints darker with each inch the resistance creeps toward the heart of the Master’s power.

Torisen wears his ring on a chain around his neck, after the first time it’s nearly lost in a fight.  He can hide it, that way.  Not everyone is eager to know that their general is seeking the woman they’ve been killing all these years.

(The Banes don’t flinch from him, not quite.  It’s not enough to be noticed as anything more than good luck on his part.  But Tori doesn’t often get shot, either.)

Grimly goes by the name Red Hood and brands his virus the WOLF, and Gorbel and Lyra overthrow their planet’s Snow King and pick his Mirror chips out of their skulls to give the resistance a home base, and the fearless general Aerulan and her wife and guardian, nicknamed Brenwyr the Beast, become known for their gift for evacuating planets before the Master’s forces can hit.  Kindrie, the best healer in the resistance, always knows when someone is going to die, and he’s given the nickname Godfather Death for his talents and his bone-white hair.

The anthem of the resistance is written about Pereden, who slew a Bane Behemoth--except, of course, that he didn’t.  He ordered his people to fall back and then he was never seen again, and Tori didn’t argue when the resistance hailed him as a hero, dead of his wounds.  He needed the support of Pereden’s father, Ardeth, commonly called the Cat.  He kills Pereden quietly for his treason, orders Harn and Burr to burn the body in secret, and bites back the guilt when he replaces Pereden in Ardeth’s affections, as the new Marquis de Carabas.  The resistance needs the money.

(The boy who really did kill the Behemoth died without anyone seeing him, in that same battle, after he brought down the Behemoth through pure dumb luck.  A child, too young for war, really, mourned by only Torisen and his closest advisors, those who knew the truth of Pereden’s treason.  The only witness to Donkerri’s death is the Bane who kills him, and the sleeping soldier watching through its silver eyes.)

The first Bane, the Bane that went wrong and got wired into the Master’s defense grid, is also the Bane whose mind has touched Jame’s the most, in the thirty years of their dreaming.  She knows him inside out, knows that there’s a whole person in there, knows that he’s full of broken glass and hate and the need to kill.  He has some of her memories, some of his own.  She presses the face of her brother, their brother, Torisen, the other half of her soul, into his mind whenever she can, tells him I love him, lived for him, would die for him, protect him.  The Shadow Bane, as he’s been nicknamed by the resistance, coughs out stasis fluid on his knees as Tori’s soldiers pull wires and tubes from the ports on his spine, and then grins, through drenched black hair.

It’s Jame’s face, but she could never wear a smile like that, Tori thinks.  It’s been thirty years since he could feel sick, but he feels the memory of it as the Shadow Bane rises to its--his?--feet.

“So,” he says, standing on shaking legs and ripping the last of the wires away with his own hands.  “You’re the one she loves.”

“Sir?” Burr asks, casting a glance at Tori, as if to ask if they should, maybe, have just shot him.

The Shadow Bane steps forward, wavering, and his starved frame looks nothing like Jame, doesn’t even have her claws, but he has her bright silver eyes and Tori stands his ground.  One of the damp fingers raps him on the chest, where the scarlet glow of Tori’s ring can be seen through his shirt, and the Bane’s voice is low and rasping from disuse, utterly unfamiliar, but the laugh is still bright and cruel when he says, “You’re closer than you think, brother.”

“Take me to her,” Tori says, keeping his voice carefully even.

“She says it’s my choice,” the Bane drawls, tracing his hand up to Tori’s throat, as if considering trying to crush it in his hands.  Tori thinks he might be able to stop him, depending on how much of Jame’s strength is in those fragile-looking hands.

Then the Bane moves, lightning-quick, and Tori remembers that this was their first attempt, known for instability, who wiped out a moon, and then--

The kiss draws blood, maybe his, maybe the Bane’s, spilling iron and salt across his tongue, and their lips are both stained red with it, when the Bane pulls away, a feral light in his silver eyes.

“A blood price, then, for our sister,” the Bane says, bright and mad.

The Bane, mad and cruel and as dangerous to his allies as his enemies, lives three days in freedom, before he dies to save Jame, newly released from her glass prison, so that she can kill the Master.  Jame kneels over Torisen, holding his bloodied chest together as she shouts for the resistance, shouts for a medic, and gives the Bane a nod of gratitude as the light goes out of his silver eyes.  

It’s only her long hair, falling almost to her waist, that saves her from being shot on sight, when Kindrie and the survivors of Tori’s original seven storm into the throne room.

“Who are you?” Kindrie demands, holding up a hand.

“I’m--” Jame’s voice fails her, looking at the Banes dead around them, the one in black, the many in silver and red, her hands covered in gore with her ring ablaze on her finger, and then she says, “I’m Tori’s sister.  He needs help.”

Kindrie presses his lips together, hesitates, and then says, “Arrest her.  I’ll see to the General.”

Jame is still in chains, sitting at Tori’s bedside, when he finally wakes up nearly two weeks later.  No one can look at her.  Only a few can bear to speak to her.  Tori reaches blindly for a gun, when he comes around, and then he blinks and sees the long black hair bound back into a braid, the shackles around the slender wrists, and he says, “Don’t tell me they chained you up.”

“I’m afraid so,” Jame says with a wet laugh, and she shakes her wrists to make her chains clink.  “Hello, brother.”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

aeondeug replied to your post

“Tag Game: Post the last sentence you wrote and tag as many people as...”

MASS EFFECTYRATH???

So when I play ME sometimes my partner hangs out in my room with me and I commentate to him, and he was hanging out with me while I was doing the Reaper IFF mission in ME2. And if you click around during that mission you can find the journal fragments from the scientists who boarded the dead Reaper and fell under its indoctrination, which features one of the most DOWNRIGHT CHILLING lines of the entire series: "Chandana said the ship was dead....but even a dead god can dream. A god--a real god--is a verb....it's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does."

And I paused the game, abominations and husks all over my team, and turned to my partner who knew nothing about the Kencyrath, and said very intensely "I AM GOING TO WRITE A KENCYRATH AU OF THIS WHERE TORI IS SHEPARD AND THE REAPERS ARE PERIMAL DARKLING AND JAME IS THE VANGUARD OF THEIR INVASION WHO BROKE FREE AND RAN, AND I AM GOING TO TITLE IT 'EVEN DEAD GODS DREAM'"

And now I am doing exactly that. Some high points below the cut, in which I approach Mass Effect canon with my usual tender disregard for the rules and Kencyrath with an uncommon disregard for spoilers.

High Councillor Gerridon was one of a long-extinct, broadly human-like alien species, looked to as brilliant scientists and the creators of the mass relays and the Citadel by the current Council races.  His people, the Shanir, were wiped from existence mysteriously about fifty thousand years ago, and no one knows why.  The truth of the matter is that Gerridon betrayed the previous Citadel to the Reapers in return for immortality.  He sort of got it--he's the heart of the Master, a Reaper made from the genetic material of his people.  Jamethiel Dream-weaver was his twin and consort, who aided him in the annihilation of the Citadel and everyone aboard by using her species' natural biotic abilities to hold the entire populace in thrall until the Reapers came.  For this service, and for the potential she showed to be a weapon in future cycles, she was spared.  However, this massive expenditure of power began to erode her control over her abilities, and in turn her mind, and so Jamethiel was placed in stasis when it became too much for her to bear, until the next cycle came to an end and the Master decided to try a new method of harvest.

The new method of harvesting a cycle is named Jamethiel, for her mother, and when she's seven years old, the blood of her mother's ancient race finally comes to full bloom.  Jame sees her father, the disgraced general of the First Contact War who has been court martialed and drummed out of the Alliance for his recklessness that obliterated the Fifth Fleet, point a gun at her nursemaid's head, and without help, without an implant, without anything, she throws up a suddenly clawed hand and hurls Ganth into a bulkhead with a biotic shove.  The explosion of power is gone as quickly as it appears, and when Ganth picks himself up, he drives his daughter out into the void in an escape pod.  Aliens are less than animals, in Ganth's opinion, and while lashing out against him might be an unforgivable betrayal, it's the new, strange claws on Jame's hands that earns her exile.

Jame hasn't lost all her memories entirely, although they're horrifically hazy for the first decade and change after her escape pod is lost in the black.  Something about indoctrination at such a young age seems to have eaten away her ability to form memories at the time, although she's retained quite a few skills whose origins she's not quite sure of.  Somewhere in that fuzzy time period, she was given a biotic implant lightyears more advanced than anything the Council races can boast, so that she could focus her abilities with more ease--the splice of human and Shanir is dicey at times, and she seems to have gotten all the power and none of the biological road blocks that would normally keep her from becoming a living supernova.  It took a long time, the labor of years, for Jame to pull herself out of the endless black water of indoctrination.  One breath at a time, building biotic walls around herself.  It was impossible.  She did it anyway.  Then she heard that the latest cycle was almost ready for harvest....

Back on Ganth's ship of exile, Torisen grows up.  People die.  Torisen is not a biotic, is not an alien, is nothing like his sister.  He is a loyal and obedient son.  Until he's not.  Torisen Talissen, possessing the clothes on his back and not a single credit more, finds the turians before he finds the Alliance, and it's Primarch Adric Ardeth who sees to it that this young boy doesn't starve before he's old enough to become a soldier.  It's also Primarch Ardeth who gets him into the Alliance.  There are more strings on that arrangement than Torisen knows.

His father's name is Torisen Talissen's greatest secret, when he finally reaches Earth, the Alliance, because Ganth Knorth is a war criminal whose methods in the First Contact War were notoriously brutal, whose final stand with the Fifth Fleet cost thousands upon thousands of lives and left every ship under his command shattered and drifting.  Only a small handful of his commanders know the truth, and then Torisen is hand-selected for N-7 and half his life is classified anyway.  He's not a biotic, he's not an alien, he's a good soldier and the most stubborn bastard any of his comrades have ever seen, and the mystery of where he came from fades under the glamour of his exploits.  The Urakarn colony is the one everyone knows about.  No one questions why Torisen fights tooth and nail to take Burr, his most trusted lieutenant, and Rowan, the medic he dragged from the sand, everywhere with him, after Urakarn.  Even when he's assigned as XO on the Gothregor, second in command to Captain Sheth Sharptongue, they go with him.  

On the Gothregor's maiden voyage, they're assigned to Spectre Ashe, no last name given, an asari that Torisen knows as a friend of a friend (the friend is Harn, he's already on board because Ashe requested some muscle), and orders to take her to Eden Prime.

While the Gothregor plots her jump to the first mass relay, Jame steals a data chip and her armor and the first assault rifle she gets her hands on, and runs, not stopping even when she blunders into a Beacon that the Master has been experimenting with.  Her shuttle's navigation doesn't survive her rather explosive escape from the Master, so she slaves the thing to the first geth ship she sees and hopes for the best.

The geth ship is headed for Eden Prime.

Other highlights:

Tori actually super is a biotic, don't tell him, Shanir bloodlines allow limited biotic use without an implant and he's been unintentionally using it for years

I wanted Harn to be the captain of the Gothregor before she's given to Tori, but then I realized that the Best Outcome here is that Harn and Marc are both krogans but on diametrically opposed ends of the Self Control Spectrum.  Harn is your classic krogan berserker, Marc is a really good cook who is also prepared to fuck you up with a shotgun if you mess with Jame.  Also I just.  Really love Sheth and wanted him to be here.

Pereden is Saren, the Ardeths are all turians, you know I'm right

Torisen is the first human Spectre

The first narrative arc here (the contents of the first game) mostly feature Tori's in-group as squad mates, ft: 

Lt Burr, a sniper/assault rifle specialist

Kirien J'ran, an asari biotic who specializes in the history of the Shanir

Harn Griphard, a krogan mercenary whose record is actually pretty legit, shotgun specialist and berserker

Lt Cmdr Donkerri Caineron, disgraced grandson of an Alliance admiral, assigned to the Gothregor as a spy, pistol/shotgun specialist, he dies on Virmire

Grimly nar Weald, an upbeat quarian machinist, a friend of Tori's who's been on his Pilgrimage for a bit, a shotgun/tech specialist

Not a squadmate, but in the whole first arc the pilot of the ship is very quiet and unwilling to talk but over the course of the narrative Bel-tairi warms up to people a little

Jame is not a squadmate, she and Tori are both main characters in the first arc and if this was a game you'd have to take both always, but Jame is a biotic powerhouse and Tori is an assault rifle/melee specialist, don't question me

Tori and Jame stop Sovereign the Horde and still no one believes them about the Reapers, even though they make Torisen a whole-ass Council member and Jame a whole-ass Spectre (she doesn't even HAVE a military rank, she's not even PART of the Alliance, everyone on her ship calls her "boss" or "Jame")

It somehow does not improve things, re: Jame and Tori's relationship, to be more or less imprisoned on a ship together fighting the geth, and they'd die for each other but also everyone learns real quick to keep their heads down when they start fighting, until....

The Gothregor is destroyed not long after the Horde, and Jame Knorth (Tori and Jame take their real last name again, after everything, might as well redeem the family line while they're at it) is one of the casualties, killed saving Bel-tairi.  Tori has two years to become intimately familiar with the fact that he may, actually, have fucked up.  Then his sister shows up in his office with a new ship called the Tagmeth, new scars lacing her face and shoulder, and new horrible information about the fate of the galaxy.

Admiral Caineron is not actually running nearly as much as he thinks he is, he is being puppeteered by Matriarch Rawneth of the asari, but he's the one bankrolling the Tentir program and technically speaking Brier and Rue are his spies.  In the second arc, squadmates include:

Marcarn, an unnaturally calm krogan mercenary who's an intermittent presence in the first game and takes an intense interest in making sure Jame eats regular meals, shotgun specialist and Local Tank

Brier Ironthorn, genetically engineered perfect soldier, stolen from her father by her mother at a young age, orphaned not that much later (Tori brought her mother’s tags back to her), Tentir officer assigned as Jame's XO who turns on Caineron pretty quick-like, biotic mostly specializing in your standard push/lift/slam assortment rather than Jame's more intense reave/warp/singularity skillset, she refused to place a control chip in Jame's implant during the resurrection

Rue Mindrear, Tentir officer and self-appointed quartermaster of the Tagmeth because Jame has no idea what she's doing, assault rifle/tech specialist

Bane, ex-prisoner with unusually erratic biotic abilities (Jack, okay, he's Jack, Ishtier tried to replicate legends of Shanir biotic powers and Bane hates/loves Jame enormously even before they figure out that they're related, he dies on the suicide run no matter what)

Grimly again, he and Jame are kinda tight by now and she politely pretends not to know that he's keeping Tori elaborately posted on their activities

Timmon Ardeth, grandson of the Primarch, looking to prove his father's ultimate innocence, sniper/electronics specialist, insufferable due to constantly hitting on Jame

Kindrie Walker, not a squadmate but the new medic, who grows a spine over the course of a year of yelling at Jame to sit down and let him look at her broken ribs, Rowan got a job at Huerta so she could be close to Torisen

Aerulan, a geth mobile platform named after the quarian word for Legion, sniper/electronics specialist

Probably some other people but Jesus this is long already

Tori comes back to the Tagmeth for the third arc, after the Reapers start to hit hard, because he's in some minor-to-moderate hot water with the Council on account of using his accesses to help Bel steal the Tagmeth and break his sister out of her own trial.  This is also where they finally get to make full use of the datachip Jame stole waaaaaay back at the beginning, because the Reapers are here and she is the only person in the galaxy who has a record of previous cycles, including some odd schematics they can’t unravel.

They find a Shanir in stasis, his name is Terribend, and while he's too weak to fight for them, he might be able to help decode some of those schematics...especially the one labeled as the Ivory Knife.

The third game includes a Greatest Hits squad assembly of those left living and also features Jame and Tori actually functionally working together for once.

Um...I have no idea if I'll ever write this whole thing because I’m realizing it would be forty bazillion words, but I'll probably yeet snippets of it into the void from time to time.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Also we all knew we were going to end up here, so here are the broad strokes of the Official Kencyrath Archives AU:

The Archivist: Torisen Talissen, who fled to the Magnus Institute after the depths of Ganth’s artifact-induced instability began to be evident, and who was almost instantly tapped as the successor to the previous Archivist.  He’s 27 when he gets the job, but everyone who sees him thinks he’s much older--too much exposure to the ex-residents of the Bender Library, including the one that killed his twin sister, has shot Tori’s hair with silver and lined his eyes and left latticework scars all over his hands in fractal patterns.  Everyone has nightmares, okay, everyone has them, anyone who took all the statements he takes would have them, it’s fine.

Head of the Institute: Adric Ardeth, the Watcher, the dedicated chessmaster, who saw to it that Torisen was given a position despite his youth and lack of actual credentials, who Torisen trusts implicitly, and who has summarily fed Torisen to the Eye with very little compunction.

Archival Assistants: Rowan, Burr, and Rose Ironthorn.  Rose falls to the NotThem.  Her daughter has Polaroids to prove it, although those are much too late in coming.  Rowan sacrifices herself to stop the Unknowing and the last words Torisen ever hears her say are “It’s okay, boss, I’ve got this.  I forgive you.”  Burr sells himself to the Lonely to save the Archival staff while Torisen is not-dead.

And last but not least...

Hunter: Jamethiel Talissen read the original version of Jabberwocky when she was seven years old, and when her father shouted at her for touching a delicate artifact, she shouted back, eyes flashing in the dim light of the library and hands curled into claws.  With the blood left on the floor, staining the corner of the page where Jame left the journal open, it’s no surprise that Torisen believed it when Ganth claimed the book had killed her.  She snicker-snacks her way back into Tori’s life when she storms the Magnus Institute, on the hunt for an avatar of the Stranger that has, by the report of one Brier Ironthorn, replaced her mother.  She makes it inside just in time to see the Archivist she’s heard so much about smash a table.

Jame is not, all things being equal, shocked to see Torisen.  She’s been trying to get into the Institute since she heard about the new Archivist, but the Hunt and the Eye aren’t always on the best of terms, and she couldn’t get onto the grounds without a good damn reason for her Power to back her.

Torisen, on the other hand, about passes out cold when a slim black-haired form comes barreling out of the tunnels and tackles him just in time to save him from NotRose.  The tackle isn’t the shock.  It’s the snarled “Come on, brother, our father taught you better than this” that gets him, just before his long-lost sister jumps to her feet and hauls him with her.