#<- only a little doodle but just for the sake of clarity

[artuurle]

aww adorable! If Ban has the shortest, wiggliest tail. Who do you think has the longest? my bet is Vib

Mr. Vibiano doesn't hold a petty grudge about this topic at all, what do you MEAN.

[mintywolf]

A Long Road Home - Page 90

Page 90

I think the point I was trying to make with this plot arc was that the Hells’ meddling in Laudna’s memories had the unintended effect of unmooring her from time, so that she has memories of her childhood from a normal timestream and a version of it rippled by the effects of meeting them in her past and their future simultaneously. Part of her consciousness is still trapped in a German Expressionist nightmare somewhere in the future. (As to how this happened I’m just going to shrug and suggest dunamancy? All the laudanum probably isn’t helping.)

Originally there was just going to be some drawings of Bells Hells on the wall but I thought having them appear as ragdolls would be truer to her character, if a bit more of a stretch of credulity. (She would have either have had to make them herself which is pretty advanced for a twelve-year-old or else her mother must have been very indulgent about her imaginary friends.) Her other doll is her displacer beast whom we last saw her with when she was three. His name is Glue, after a displacer beast cub in my home campaign. You may be seeing him again in a different medium. :)

So the drawings on the wall now are a fancy rat in Regency clothing and a wolf that could be a LOT of things depending on how far you want to believe the time distortion goes, as well as, you know. Just a wolf. (At the time that I drew it it was very late so for inspiration I turned to the things I remember doodling in the margins of my seventh grade notebooks and it was mostly Redwall fanart and werewolves.)

So when I wrote the script (and the beginnings of Remember Us) I decided to have Matilda address her mother as Mama to emphasize both her youthfulness and the warmth of her relationship with her. This was meant to be in contrast to Imogen’s fraught relationship with her own mother, whom for the first half of the campaign she addressed and referred to as Mother. WELL right after I launched the comic she suddenly started calling her mother “Mama” instead. (And to add insult to injury a year+ later Matilda addresses her parents in What Doesn’t Break as Mother and Father.)

It’s not really a big deal because obviously it’s a very common form of address for one’s mother but after I made such a point of in my Fire Emblem Fates fic Nohrian Lullaby out of the kids of the King’s ten (10!!) mistresses all calling their mothers something not only different for the sake of clarity, but indicative of their relationship with them for the sake of characterization (I think there’s even a point made about Camilla being wistful that her sister gets to call her loving mother “Mama” while her own mother, who keeps her at arm’s length, insists on “Mother”) I’m a little bit hands on hips cricket guy about it.

[nobodywritingao3]

Shameful Company [ch 2]

masterpost | previous | next

The village Tommy grew up in was located in a beast's territory, a man eating serpent's. Isolated from the world, all he's ever known is loneliness. When he's forced outside the safety of the town walls he meets a stranger who claims to live beyond the village. They become fast friends despite the fact that the man is clearly hiding something - but can you really blame Tommy? He's never had a friend before.

CW for entire fic: - Wilbur eats people lol - swearing title taken from 'Shameful Company' by Rainbow Kitten Surprise inspired by the talented @beckyu and her story 'My Monster to Slay' (tumblr) (AO3)

word count: 3.5k 🐍 read it on AO3

The routine keeps up for little more than a week.

Tommy is always sent out the same day he comes back. He and Wilbur dick around the forest or relax in the cave until sunset, which they watch from the entrance with warm mugs of tea. They stay up talking and the next morning, they wake up slowly, lounging around until well past noon. Wilbur insists he return to the village and Tommy argues it’s a waste of time since he’ll just get kicked out again. They go back and he’s proven right. Wilbur waits in the clearing and they spend the rest of the day in each other’s company.

It’s actually really fun. It’s the most connection he’s ever felt in his memory, and as far as he can tell, Wilbur appreciates the friendship as much as Tommy does.

Which is why he’s confused (and yeah, okay, a little hurt) that Wilbur sends him back, over and over and over again. Not to be clingy but - for fuck’s sake - at the very least, Wilbur could be a bit less vehement about it.

It’s disorienting too - Wilbur has admitted that he spends around three hours waiting for Tommy, and everytime they meet, his eyes light up and he smiles. The mixed signals are confusing. It’s a complicated layer to the friendship Tommy can’t help trying to mentally untangle.

Like - why is it such a big deal that he leave each day?

The villagers don’t want him - they’re still holding out hope he’ll get eaten in the woods for goodness’ sake. Not only is it pointless to send him ‘home,’ but - Tommy wants to stay, as embarrassing as it is to admit. Not that he’d ever dream of asking to live in the cave, Tommy’s man enough to admit he doesn’t have the balls. Truthfully, he wishes Wilbur would offer.

He hates the village. Everything about it, from the way the citizens are terrified and brainwashed and revere Dream like he’s a fucking god, to its deep and unwavering hostility. People have always regarded him as an outcast, but the shunning has worsened dramatically now that he’s a repeat survivor of the Outside.

He just wants to stay with Wilbur, in the cave in the woods.

There’s a part of him, a self loathing little piece of his brain that tells him there’s something wrong with him. The village sees it, the council sees it. Either Wilbur’s already seen it and he’s too good a person to reject Tommy directly, or he’ll see it soon and he’ll cast him away then.

He tries to shrug it off.

Normally, he can say with clarity where he stands with someone. The townsfolk don’t care for his wellbeing. No matter how convincing they are, or how convinced of their own lies they are, he can see through them. But Wilbur is confusing. He’s nothing like the villagers. He has his own interests at heart, while they’ve had their self preservation and agency stamped out by Dream and the rest of the council. Wilbur’s got his own agenda and his secrets, and he’s a bad liar. He acts like he cares about Tommy, but he does things to contradict that. Like sending him away everyday.

He mulls over these thoughts as he sits on the ground next to the gates, doodling in a little pad of paper Wilbur had gifted him. Tommy’s got another twenty minutes until he’ll be released, and the man is undoubtedly waiting for him in the clearing.

Gravel crunches to his left - footsteps - and he looks up. Dream approaches him, smiling friendly in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Tommy’s stomach starts to twist into knots. “Hello,” he greets casually, “are you here to see me off?”

He reminds himself that Dream can’t hurt him directly, not until he’s eighteen.

He’s safe. He’s safe. He’s safe.

(He’s not.)

Dream looks at him with something appraising and cold in his eyes, though he’s still giving his best smile. “Unfortunately not, I’m afraid I have a meeting in ten minutes with the council, though I wish you luck,” he laughs. It’s soft, and a little dark. But in a way that only Tommy ever seems to notice. He continues affectedly, “but it seems I don’t need to! You’ve shown to be very… lucky.”

There’s a million things Tommy could say. He could tell Dream to shut up with the villain monologue, to just cut to the chase. Or he could go bigger, and scream at him. Tell him he’s a manipulative sadist who feeds on the attention, fearful and loving, of two hundred people because he’s empty and cold and knows no one would ever love him if they saw him for what he is.

But he won’t say those things. It’s pointless. And Dream would just feed on it and use it to fuck with him even more. Honestly, even thinking of comebacks makes him tired.

So he smiles instead. “Indeed sir,” he responds plainly. “I’ve been fortunate.”

Something changes in Dream’s demeanor.

Tommy instantly knows he said the wrong thing.

After a gap of silence, he coolly responds, “Don’t be coy.”

Tommy blinks. He has no idea what to say. Hesitantly, he asks, “Excuse me?”

Dream ignores him. “How did you do it?”

Terror works itself under his skin. Dream holds all the cards. It’s his town, his people. If he’s being openly hostile and not just passive aggressive, then the only way this ends is after he’s gotten what he wants from Tommy, scaring and humiliating him in the process.

He just needs to comply - he just has to let it happen. And then in twenty minutes, he can go. He can see Wilbur. He can leave this behind and pretend it didn’t happen and it’ll be like it didn’t.

“Sir,” he begins softly, “I’m not sure what you mean - ”

“Yes. You do.”

Tommy falls silent, paralyzed in fear.

“How did you survive?” Dream begins. He’s using that voice that Tommy’s learned means he already knows the answer, and is only prying for a confession for the sake of feeling powerful. To knock someone down and rip their dignity and worth and personhood to shreds.

Tommy would let him. He’d offer up whatever he’s looking for if it meant this interrogation would end. He always wins, so why draw it out? But he doesn’t know what Dream wants to hear. He doesn’t know what Dream thinks he did. Tears gather in his eyes.

Dream grows impatient. And he starts talking. “How did you avoid being eaten up by that thing? And after that - how did you avoid the hundreds of other beasts in the forest?”

Tommy brings his knees to his chest and curls his hands protectively around his legs. He doesn’t want Dream to see him shaking. He needs to say something, admit to something. But he doesn’t know what to say, and there’s no way in hell he’s dragging Wilbur into this.

“Come on, Tommy, it’s not that fucking difficult,” Dream insists, “just tell me the truth - I won’t be mad.”

Nothing. There’s nothing.

His tears spill over. All he can do is cry.

Dream heaves a sigh above him. “I gave you a chance.”

Tommy’s shoulders shake with the effort of holding back sobs.

“Seriously? Nothing?”

He desperately swings his head from side to side. He wants Dream to believe him, to just show a little mercy, but he knows that he won’t. He wants to apologize but he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“You met the serpent,” Dream finally supplies.

Tommy’s too distraught to even process the words. He gulps down the sobs and wipes at his face, he needs to respond, he needs to respond before Dream gets impatient -

“Answer me.”

Through sharp sobs, Tommy chokes out, “N - no. I didn’t, of - of course I didn’t, I’d be dead if I - ”

“For fuck’s sake, Tommy, cut the shit,” he curls his upper lip in disgust, “I can smell it - I can smell him - all over you.”

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the -

“Your little friend, or - ” he chuckles humorlessly, turning away in agitation, “big friend, I suppose - he thinks he can just claim you? Protect you? That isn’t this this works,” he spits resentfully, “you’d do good to tell him that. You are mine, you belong to me. I gifted you to him as a meal - not as a pet! You tell him that - you better fucking tell him that.”

Tommy’s mouth hangs open, crying halted in favor of shock. Dream’s always been a bit… loose, but it looks like he’s finally lost his shit completely.

Irritated at his silence, Dream faces Tommy. Rather than get angrier or rant more to fill the silence, it’s like he lights up. And that’s possibly the scariest thing he’s done so far.

“Oh…” he says softly. “That’s beautiful - that’s fucking rich. You didn’t know, did you?” His mouth curls up in a cruel smile and he starts to laugh, wheezes building louder and louder. “Oh - that is too fucking good!” He collects himself. “Well in that case,” he says between giggles, “just forget we talked, yeah? If he wants to play with his food for a bit, I suppose I can’t judge -” he gestures to the town with wide arms, “- I set up camp here, didn’t I?” Dream turns and leaves, still laughing to himself.

Twelve minutes later, the gates open and Tommy is set free.

~

Sitting on one of the beds in the cave, Tommy gives Wilbur a grateful smile as he wraps a warm quilt around his shoulders.  

When Tommy had met him in the clearing, eyes red and cheeks blotchy, Wilbur had hugged him hard and pried for details, listening to Tommy recount the events as they traveled back to the cave. He’d made up warm teas and sweet foods for Tommy to snack on, and he’d practically buried him in the softest bedding around the little home. He promised they were safe here.

Sinking into the spot next to him, Wilbur gently asks, “Did he say anything else?”

Tommy shrugs hopelessly. “No, that was it.” He idly stirs his tea. “I think - I think there’s something wrong with him. Like, medically,” he emphasizes.

Wilbur wears a troubled expression. “And you’re sure he said - ”

“Yes, I am,” Tommy says exasperatedly. “Trust me, he fully thinks that I’m friends with the serpent or something.”

Wilbur nods in acknowledgement and sips at his tea with a funny look on his face. “And he’s your mayor?”

He gesticulates vaguely. “Basically. We’ve got a bit of a weird system in place - I don’t know how much I’ve told you, but we’ve got a council of town leaders, and Dream is the boss.”

Wilbur suddenly gets an odd look on his face, like he realized something. “Tommy…” he asks carefully, “what’s the history of your village? Like - this isn’t exactly a welcoming environment for civilization.”

Tommy smiles emptily. “Yeah, it really isn’t,” he agrees.

He taps the rim of his mug, thinking over the things he’d heard as a child. “From my understanding, the original settlers had been fleeing from something when their navigator took a wrong turn. By the time the group realized, it had wandered into a basilisks's territory and it was too late to turn around. A bunch of people were attacked and eaten. Fights broke out about what to do, if leaving the forest was a viable option or not, that kind of thing. Eventually the navigator took responsibility and promised to start a fortified town in the forest to protect the remaining survivors. He founded the council, we claimed a bit of land, the walls were built up,” Tommy concludes. “Wil, how is this relevant?”

That look crosses his face - the stupid one he gets whenever he’s keeping secrets or about to tell the shittiest lie in history, and Tommy feels a spike of irritation.

He bites down his frustration and looks away. “Nevermind,” he mutters, a little harsher than he meant it. He feels Wilbur look at him in concern, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He clears his throat. “Do you need to know anything else?” he tries to ask as neutrally as possible.

He can tell Wilbur wants to ask what’s bothering him. He bites the inside of his cheek and takes a long sip of tea, hoping he gets the message.

Wilbur eyes him worriedly, but thankfully he doesn’t probe. Instead he asks, “Who was the navigator?”

It catches him off guard. “What?”

“The person who got the group lost, who founded the council. What was his name? Do you know anything about him?”

He searches his memory. That’s so strange. It’s a detail that no one’s ever mentioned or asked for. But it’s also a very central thing - to the story, to the town’s history.

Wilbur takes his silence as some kind of answer, mumbling to himself, “Right, well this complicates some things.”

They’re silent for a few seconds, Wilbur solving a mystery while Tommy finds the first clues. He’s tempted to ask what’s going on. It’s unnerving, and something is clearly wrong, but he dismisses the thought out of hand. If it’s connected to the bullshit Wilbur is so secretive about - which Tommy is entirely sure it is - then he wouldn’t share if pressed.

Wilbur breaks him from his thoughts. “Tommy, you said that after the original settlers came in, they couldn’t leave because of a basilisk? Are you sure about that?”

Tommy nods. “Yeah… it’s the one I was worried about when we met, the same one that ate Jared?”

Wilbur falls silent, that guilty look on his face again. Tommy stares at him, trying to pick him apart with his eyes. He’s hiding something again.

He takes a shot in the dark and guesses, feigning surprise -  “Holy shit, it’s a different serpent, isn’t it?”

Wilbur looks up in panic. “What?!”

“You saw Jared being eaten - what species of serpent was it?”

Wilbur stares at Tommy.

“Was it not a basilisk?”

Wilbur breaks eye contact and looks away. “Tommy, that’s - that’s fucking ridiculous mate, I don’t know what you’re - ”

Something breaks inside of him. Maybe years of mistreatment at the hands of his village, or days of Wilbur’s dogshit lying - possibly the confrontation with Dream earlier that day - in any case, it pushes him over the edge and he snaps. “Would it actually fucking kill you to tell me the truth?”

Wilbur moves back in surprise, a hurt look flashing across his face.

“You’re not even a good liar, and I know because you’ve been lying to me since we met. Every day we’ve known each other, you’ve lied to me, or deflected, or avoided answering some basic fucking question about your life. I thought maybe I was the problem, but no - the truth is you’re just a liar,” Tommy rants, breathing hard and blinking back tears.

Wilbur stares at him with a stunned look on his face. “Tommy, I’m… I’m sorry. ” He’s bleedingly sincere.

Fucking good, Tommy miserably thinks to himself.

He sniffles. “If you want to lie about your life - then fine. Maybe it’s traumatic, and maybe it’s personal. I wouldn’t know, and I don’t have to. But this is different, ‘cause it’s a fucked up situation, and I am as in it as you are.”

They sit in uncomfortable, tense silence for a few seconds, punctuated only by Tommy’s quiet crying.

After a moment, Wilbur says softly, “I’ve been a bit of an ass, haven’ t I?”

“Yeah, you have been,” Tommy bitterly agrees.

He seems to physically wilt. “There’s nothing wrong with you, and I’m sorry that I made you feel that way. I’m really, really sorry, Sunshine.”

Tommy’s chin trembles. He can feel tears start to spill over.

Wilbur loops an arm around his torso and gently pulls him in for a side hug. “To tell you the truth - I want to share. A lot more than I do. And I also feel upset that I keep secrets from you.”

“Then why?” Tommy barely chokes out.

Wilbur sighs and presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “Because it’s better that way.” He readjusts the quilt around Tommy’s shoulders. “It’s better for everyone if you just don’t know some things about me.”

Tommy rubs at his face miserably. He knew it would go like this.

“That said, I see where you’re coming from.” Tommy looks up in surprise and Wilbur offers him a sheepish smile. “You’re right about this. This is a deeply fucked up situation and for your own safety, there are things you deserve to know.”

He looks away, thinking. “You were right, there are two serpents… I shouldn’t have lied about that.”

Damn. He wasn’t actually expecting to be right.

“Your village is about four decades old, right?”

He nods.

Wilbur goes quiet for a second. Resignation creeping into his voice, he says, “The second serpent - it’s only twenty-two years old.” He starts to fidget with the ends of his sweater sleeves anxiously. “That’s the one that’s been eating all the volunteers for the past two decades. It’s not the basilisk that trapped the original settlers in this forest - honestly, I didn’t even know of a basilisk having territory here until you’d said something. And I don’t know what happened to it exactly - ”

“But you have a suspicion?” Tommy finishes, voice still a little raspy from crying.

Wilbur nods, a little perturbed.

“Is it a suspicion you’ll tell me?”

Wilbur smiles sadly at him. Tommy knows the answer before he has a chance to say it. “Sorry mate.”

Trying to move past the disappointment, Tommy changes the subject. “How do you know all that about the second serpent? You’re only twenty-something yourself, so it’s not like you could have been around the whole time to see it - ”

“Tommy,” Wilbur cuts in, exhaustion audible in his voice, “please just trust me on this, alright?” He shakes his head slowly, a fond but heartbroken look on his face. “I swear - you’re too clever for your own good.”

Despite everything, the comment starts a warm feeling in his chest. Tommy relents. “Fine, fine. You somehow have all this information - I won’t question how.”

He nods gratefully.

“But I do want to know - what species is the second serpent?”

He figured Wilbur would be a bit cagey about answering, but he didn’t expect - this. 

It’s like he’s imploding before Tommy’s eyes. A look of panic flashes across his face before he has a chance to school it into something more neutral.

Wilbur looks at him. His expression is conflicted. It’s full of barely concealed loss, and guilt, and pity, and it is so, so guarded.

Wordlessly, Wilbur pulls him in for a solid, warm hug. He does nothing but breathe and hold Tommy for ten seconds.

When he pulls away, his eyes are glassy and he’s forcing a smile. “Do you remember what I said to you when I was bringing you back to the village that first day? When you asked me how I’ve survived this long in the forest?”

Tommy nods, confused and a little worried. “You said you’d… ‘tell me your secrets’ when I’m older.”

Wilbur affectionately rubs his shoulder. “And I will.” He clears his throat and stands up.

“To answer your question, the second serpent is… It’s nothing you have to worry about, okay?” He offers Tommy a sincere, pleading look. “Believe me - to you, it’s harmless. Completely harmless.”

~

The next morning Wilbur is in an uncharacteristically good mood. He gives Tommy a soft smile and ruffles his hair before tugging him out of bed and leading him to the dining table for breakfast.

Tommy takes a seat and begins to cut his portions while watching Wilbur curiously. “Wake up on the right side of the bed?”

He laughs lightly. “Something like that. Um - actually, I need to talk to you about something.”

Tommy tries not to let his concern show. “Yeah?”

Wilbur nervously takes a sip of water. “After everything we talked about yesterday, particularly what you said about Dream, the basilisk - I don’t think it’s safe for you to go back home.” He gesticulates nervously and starts to ramble, “For right now, I mean - ! You might be able to go back soon, I’m just worried about you for right now, and I wouldn’t feel very comfortable if I knew you were anywhere near - ”

“Wilbur,” Tommy cuts in, “are you asking if I’ll stay at the cave for a while?”

He nods shakily, a fear of rejection written plainly across his face.

Tommy smiles at him widely. “That sounds great. Thank you.”

~

That afternoon, they don’t send Tommy back to the village.

~ ~ ~

it is simply a staple of my writing that everything i start ends up four times longer than i originally intended...

hope you guys enjoyed

[lepusrufus]

Lil' Mia and Miranda thing since I dragged you guys down the rarepair hell with me~

---

Lab equipment was really not meant to blend well within a lived-in home. And it didn't. The plush carpet on top of wooden floors giving way to the smooth lab flooring that squeaked under boots not appropriate for the setting created an odd contrast. Not that that was uncharacteristic for Miranda, any of her workspaces falling perfectly under the description of an organized mess, with particular emphasis on mess.

With Rose sleeping peacefully in the room generously, suspiciously so, provided by Miranda, Mia decided to stretch her legs by walking around the manor, the baby monitor connected to her phone. The building was relatively big, albeit quite old, tucked in the woods somewhere between the Beneviento house and the factory, with a tunnel conveniently connecting it to the labs running under the town. It had close to no spatial organization, bedrooms and labs and storage rooms alternating by patterns known only by the so-called goddess, or most likely not even by her.

Mia did not trust the woman. Not with the memories of the prison cell and the kidnapping of her daughter for experiments still fresh in her mind. But, the tiredness of motherhood and the odd loneliness that came with being the only two inhabitants of the house that were capable of coherent speech as of now, had her longing for some company.

It was an easy task finding Miranda, the soft cries of Eva guiding her down a short hallway to a lab door left ajar. Inside, the woman was sat at a desk, a laptop with half written reports and notes in front of her, pushed out of the grasp of the fussing infant in her arms. Miranda was far too busy trying to calm her daughter down enough to fall asleep to notice Mia leaning on the doorframe, curiously observing the scene. Oddly human, in her failing attempt to get her child to stop crying, when at any given time she could get anyone to kneel before her and bend over backwards to her every whim. Yet a small infant was giving her so much trouble.

"Need a hand?" Mia offered with a small chuckle. Should she even offer her help?

"I am fine thank you." But a slightly louder wail from Eva came with perfect timing to disprove her words.

Miranda's shoulders seemed to slump ever so slightly as her eyes closed slowly, the usual makeup replaced by dark circles, testimony to the long hours spent going through decades of research and reports while also caring for her newly reborn daughter. It was oddly bittersweet, to see a woman so dignified otherwise all but beg the small child to go to sleep so she could finish her work.

Work, Mia concluded, that was rather essential for the whole place, and also her home for now, to continue existing the way it was. With a sigh she walked up to the desk and gently stoked Eva's short brunette hair. "Here, let me hold her. At least until you finish typing whatever it is you're doing," she said waving a hand in the direction of the forgotten computer, who's screen had turned black by now.

There were a few long seconds of hesitation, but a weary glance at the mountain of files on the other side of the desk that she was yet to go through convinced Miranda to finally allow her daughter slip into Mia's arms. It took maybe five minutes of cooing and a one sided conversation made in silly voices to turn the cries into giggles, small hands trying to grasp at Mia's finger that was ticklishly caressing puffy cheeks. Exhausted from crying, Eva's eyes slowly fluttered shut and she was gingerly lowered into a crib set by the desk, one of the many scattered around the house.

Miranda watched the scene unfold with uncharacteristic softness slipping by the icy mask of her steely eyes. Even goddesses can be caught by surprise it seemed, and whether it was due to the apparent skills that Mia had with calming Eva down or at how she was willing to help despite their precarious position was up to debate.

"Shouldn't you be better at this," Mia asked, pulling one of the chairs closer to sit in. "I know it's been, what, two or three centuries or something but haven't you done this before?"

Her question was obviously poking fun for the most part, but Miranda couldn't help the tired sigh that crawled its way from the depths of her now useless lungs.

"No, actually. I haven't," she responded curtly as she grabbed one of the files and opened it in order to transcribe its contents in a digital file. "At least not on my own," she added upon remembering the numerous subjects she helped raise during her time working with The Connections.

"Oh? Did you have a sweet loving husband once upon a time? Do tell me more," Mia said leaning her chin on her palms as if she were a teenager at a sleepover talking about crushes, although the memory of Ethan clawing its way to the forefront of her thoughts made her grimace slightly, until she pushed it back down in the depths of her mind.

It was foolish perhaps, acting like that around a woman that could, and would with the right motivation, kill her in the blink of an eye. Truth be told though, Mia was bored out of her mind, so what better way to pass the time than push Miranda's buttons, especially when she seemed too tired to retaliate.

The so-called goddess grimaced, at least ten different reasons to find the thought outrageous flashing through her mind and, settling on the most obvious one, looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "I was a nun."

Mia leaned back in her chair, looking at the black head covering hanging from a hook behind the door, together with black robes. She had to wonder if they were the same ancient ones or if she replaced them every once in a while.

"Yeah, I couldn't tell," she chuckled. "A nun turned goddess. How ironic don't you think."

"Worshipping was never quite up my alley. And neither were men," she replied flatly, turning the pages in front of her and typing the relevant information in the file she had open on the screen.

Mia's eyes widened slightly with an amused oh. "So was she raised by the convent then?"

Was this information really to be given out? Mirada did not like talking about her past, or personal information in general. Gods did not need backstories, they simply were.

She sighed. "No, no. Her parents died when she was four and with nobody else to look for her, she was brought to us." Miranda gave a small shrug, pausing to type up decades old results on lycans. "I was the newest there, so the nuns dumped her on me. I was so mad at first, but she's always been such a brilliant little girl, even back then. She would ask for a bedtime story and did not complain when I'd start reading from one of the medical books I stole from the merchant. There was just something about her that made her grow on me."

With the paragraph done, she pushed her chair back, quietly so as to not have its legs scratch against the linoleum floor, and walked to another, smaller desk pushed against a wall. From there, she walked back to the crib where the small infant was sleeping peacefully, a small doll in hand. Doll that Mia recognized immediately, as an identical one was by her own daughter's sleeping form, back in their room. It was a small replica of Angie, plush and soft to the touch, unlike its real life wooden counterpart, the white dress made of delicate silk. Both toys had been made by Donna herself as gifts.

"But as you can guess, she was well past a toddler when she was placed in my care," Miranda finished, leaving the doll just by her sleeping daughter's side.

"So you suck with babies," Mia concluded with a grin. She would have laughed, but had enough clarity of mind to be quiet.

Miranda simply gave her a tired glare before rolling her eyes. She went back to her desk and opened a new file to be transcribed, this one on the reservoir's structure.

"I can care for them," she started, an odd almost imperceptible strain in her voice. "It just gets trickier when it's my own daughter and not an act."

Mia nodded absent mindedly, eyes darting to Eva. To see a woman with such power and ruthlessness, who could level the whole town to the ground if she so pleased, show such raw genuine affection towards the child made some of the notions in her brain crumble to the ground. Miranda was still the same woman who, ironically enough, experimented on more children than she cared to count, but then again Mia was also a willing participant in said experiments so was she really that much better?

She definitely was, Mia concluded, choosing to ignore a small pang at her heart when she watched all the ice in those gray eyes melt into tenderness while looking at her daughter. Instead, she started toying with one of the many pens scattered on the desk.

"Since I'm staying here, I don't mind helping you out with her," Mia said quietly, keeping her eyes on the small giraffe doodle she was doing on a napkin.

It wasn't for Miranda's sake really. She simply wanted the best for Eva, the child completely innocent unlike the atrocities committed by her mother throughout the last few centuries. Besides, it would be nice for Rose to have a friend not unlike herself, given the yet to be understood power both girls possessed.

"There's no need-"

"Consider it a thank you for letting us stay here, without a sniper pointing at my daughter's head at all times," Mia finished, a slither of ire slipping into her tone on the last words, the memory of a rookie agent panicking and pointing his gun to Rose for the unforgivable crime of being a hungry crying child seared behind her eyelids.

Miranda sighed, an odd sense of relief washing over her. After centuries of trying to bring her back, you'd think the she would do anything to spend each and every second with Eva, not letting anyone else care for her in any capacity, but truth be told, the prospect of not facing motherhood completely alone, even if Mia was helping her solely out of some sense of obligation, did not sound half bad.

"As you wish," she finally said, going back to the half written paragraph her mind drifted away from minutes earlier.

[aerialworms-art]

I posted 15 times in 2022

That's 15 more posts than 2021!

7 posts created (47%)

8 posts reblogged (53%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fellshish

@desdemonasarahmckenzie-art

@chapeldean

@kotumari

I tagged 15 of my posts in 2022

#spn - 8 posts

#my art - 8 posts

#castiel - 6 posts

#fanart - 5 posts

#dean winchester - 4 posts

#destiel - 3 posts

#supernatural - 3 posts

#30k dean - 2 posts

#reblog - 2 posts

#i know how this website works i swear - 1 post

Longest Tag: 117 characters

#it's so weird to see my clothes drawn out. like yes i did draw and paint this but like. those are mine give them back

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

URL change

@d-ood-le-bug -> @desdemonasarahmckenzie-art

For clarity’s sake, and also because I kept forgetting the third hyphen in my url and it was getting annoying lmao

I’m just gonna post my art on here. I’ll probably go back and change the watermarks on my art if I can.

4 notes - Posted November 16, 2022

#4

Quick and messy doodle turned profile pic for my main blog @desdemonasarahmckenzie (and my AO3 account, desdemona_sarah_mckenzie, since I’ve always wanted my icons on here and over there to match) :) Yes, that’s me hugging Cas. No, I have no shame.

[Image ID: A brightly coloured and simply drawn self-portrait of me, with short spiky brown hair, glasses, and a blue plaid hoodie hugging Castiel, who is smiling slightly. I’m saying ‘Too precious for this world ❤′. The background is the gay pride flag. /End ID.]

7 notes - Posted November 16, 2022

#3

I drew a little Cas in a comfy jumper to motivate me, have some motivation too!

[Image ID: A biro drawing of Castiel from Supernatural.  He is shown from the shoulders up facing the viewer, and is smiling. He is wearing a knitted jumper. In a speech bubble, he says ‘You can do it!’ The artist’s signature ‘IE’ is written by his right shoulder. /.End ID]

10 notes - Posted March 30, 2022

#2

[Image ID: A cartoony watercolour painting of Dean and Cas with black lineart. Dean is waving a big banner that says ‘30k!!!’ in the rainbow pride flag colours while he leans in and kisses Cas forcefully on the cheek. He’s wearing jeans, a green flannel, and an AC/DC t-shirt. He has his arm around Cas’ neck. Cas is smiling and holding Dean’s hand. His other arm is around Dean’s waist. He’s wearing his usual trenchcoat and suit with his backwards tie. There’s rainbow confetti all around them. /End ID.]

[Image ID: Same as the previous image, only the banner is now a rainbow pride flag. /End ID.]

Woohoo!! @fellshish’s Dean post got 30k notes and I got to make some bonus art to celebrate!!! I guess these two are celebrating too!!!

I painted this in meatspace so I could add a pride flag just for funsies :D 

98 notes - Posted August 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Just cuddling with your homies, nbd...

I caught up on @fellshish’s amazing substack fic Dean Daily (now on ao3!) since it finally ended (I’m only crying a little, I swear!) The Jun 28th entry wormed its way into my brain (they got matching tattoos! and Cas was healing them!!!) and I just had to do fanart! 

I might write a little ficlet, but the headcanon for this image is that they’re watching a gay movie together (y’know, so Dean can see if Cas made his confession in a gay way or if he’s just uhhhhh a real good friend), and Dean can’t tell if the glow of grace is from the TV or from Cas <3 Obviously he’s going to be completely normal about it :)

(ID under the cut)

[Image ID: A digital drawing of Dean and Cas sitting on a comfy sofa, facing the viewer, illuminated by an off-screen TV. The room behind them is dark. Cas has a bee-patterned blanket on his lap and a comfy blue knitted sweater. Dean is wearing jeans, a green flannel, and a Queen t-shirt, which is covered by the flannel so only the Queen logo and the letters ‘QUEE’ are showing. 

Cas is leaning against Dean, who has his arm around Cas’ shoulders. His other arm is resting on his knee and that hand is clenched into a fist. Cas’ right hand is on Dean’s left knee, and his other is holding Dean’s forearm, half-turned towards the viewer. They both have matching black angel wing tattoos on their left wrists. 

Cas’ eyes are closed and he is kissing Dean’s tattoo, and grace is glowing from where he’s kissing. Dean is blushing and has a shocked expression. The artist’s blog name ‘@d-ood-lebug’ is sideways to Dean’s left.. /.End ID]

[Image ID: A partially animated gif of the image described above. The TV light flickers throughout. Dean’s eyebrows rise from a neutral position and he blushes as Cas’ grace begins to shine over his lips and Dean’s tattoo. These all increase until the match the first image. The grace dims, and Dean’s blush fades and his eyebrows drop back to normal. The gif loops. /.End ID]

196 notes - Posted July 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[macaroonkitti]

So

Cried over botw today

Again

So I wrote a thing about one of the memories but in my FS/BOTW AU because angst

Here's a doodle in case you don't want to read it lol. Check below the cut if you want to! It may be a little long

For clarity's sake, I'm using the names they used 100 years before. So Forest is Green, River is Blue, Pyro is Red, and Storm is Vio

Enjoy!

. . .

The sound of a rainstorm filled Vio's ears as he ran, holding his Four Sword in one hand and pulling the princess along in the other. He hardly even noticed the rain hitting his muddy face as he went, only focused on getting to safety.

His teammates were close by. Green was ahead of them, as usual, while Red and Blue were on his flank. Red was looking the most dirty, but he wasn't badly injured as far as Vio could tell.

Then there was Princess Zelda, unharmed apart from her muddy hair, face, and dress. She was trying her best to keep up with Vio, but at some point he felt her hand slip from his, and heard a quiet thump as she fell to the ground.

Vio and the others stopped running, heading back over to her. Had she been injured? Oh, Hylia, please no, Vio thought, worry clawing at him as he tried to catch his breath.

The Hyrulean princess didn't seem injured, but...she was softly crying. She didn't look up as Vio approached her, sheathing his dirty Four Sword. "How..." the princess started, looking to her hands, curled into fists on the ground and caked in mud. "How did it come to this..?"

The four knights were silent. Even Red, usually the most vocal of all of them, said nothing. What was there to say? Blinking to clear the rain from his eyes, Vio got down on one knee in front of Zelda.

"The Divine Beasts...the Guardians...they've all turned against us," Zelda said, sounding like she had just started to wrap her head around what had happened mere moments before. "It was...Calamity Ganon. It turned them all against us!"

Tears stung the back of Vio's eyes, but again he said nothing. His friends...all of their friends were-

Zelda seemed to be thinking the same as him, slowly looking up at him with sad, green eyes. "And everyone--Mipha, Urbosa, Revali, Daruk--they're all trapped inside those things..." The tears that filled her eyes nearly spilled, and she put her face to her palms to cover them. "It's all my fault! Our only hope for defeating Ganon is lost, all because I couldn't harness this cursed power!" she said softly.

Vio wasn't sure if it was the rain or his own tears that slid down his face. He was vaguely aware of Red crouching down on the other side or the princess, wanting to comfort her, but unsure of how.

"Everything--everything I've done up until now...it was all for nothing," Zelda said softly. Vio wasn't sure, but Red looked about as broken as her. Was he crying too? The rain made it so hard to tell.

The princess's hands suddenly fell from her face. "So I really am just a failure!" she burst out.

Vio nearly flinched. He noticed as a silent sob shook Red's shoulders, and even a soft, hitched breath came from Blue's direction.

"All my friends...the entire kingdom...my father most of all..." Zelda continued, the tears in her eyes finally falling down her face. "I tried, and I failed them all..."

Zelda looked Vio in the eyes, not looking for reassurance or kind words as far as he could see. "I've left them...all to die," the princess said, hardly more than a whisper. With another sob, she fell into Vio's arms, crying into his sleeve.

Vio held her there, crying a little himself. What should he do...what could he do? He glanced around at his teammates. Red, who was looking to Zelda with tears in his eyes. It hurt so much to see her like this. Blue, crying softly with his face turned toward Green's shoulder. And Green himself, usually so stoic and almost cold, now almost at his breaking point.

None of them knew what to do. How to help

...how had it come to this?

[woofools]

yinxyuck?

Who accidentally pushes a door instead of pulling/vice versa:

Neither. If Yuck’s in a rage he’ll go ahead and just kick it down, though.

Who doodles little hearts all over the desk with their initials inside them:

YIN, absolutely. But she’ll write out their full names, both since they’re pretty short anyway and also for clarity’s sake. There’s a lot of ‘Y’ names in her town.

(Yuck’ll do something like this too, but when he does it he carves or burns their names into things. Yin knows she shouldn’t approve of the vandalism and should tell him not to do that, but pellets that’s romantic!!)

Who starts the tickle fights:

Yin again, by virtue that a. She doesn’t have an edgy reputation holding her back from doing so, and b. She always wins.

Who starts the pillow fights:

Yuck. It’s all the fun of hitting without the annoyance of getting in trouble for hitting! And Yin’ll actively participate with him! Sweet!

Who falls asleep last, watching the other with a small affectionate smile:

Yin. Yuck has no sense of self-care, and usually tries to avoid sleep because of nightmares. So when Yin finally manages to get him to wind down enough to go to sleep, he konks out fast and hard. As much as Yin likes his eyes, she thinks he looks super adorable when he’s sleeping.

Who mistakes salt for sugar:

Yuck. But if someone tries to correct him he’ll just add more, then eat whatever it is completely straight-faced and maintaining eye-contact with the person who’d pointed it out to him the entire time.

Who lets the microwave play the loud beeping sound at 1am in the morning:

Yuck don’t give a heck—

Who comes up with cheesy pickup lines:

Both? They’re kids, so their idea of flirting isn’t exactly what one would call “organic.” Yuck does it because he knows Yin likes “romance” and that’s as close as he can get at the mo’, and Yin does it because she’s genuinely enjoying the experience. Basically they’re both huge dorks who deserve each other.

Who rearranges the bookshelf in alphabetical order:

BOTH again, and God help you if they simultaneously catch you messing it up. Not that you’re safe if only one of them catches you; neither’s above phoning a friend (i.e. each other) to dispense justice.

Who licks the spoon when they’re baking brownies:

Yuck, because Yin’s busy actually making the brownies (you do not want to taste Yuck’s brownies). Yang probably wormed his way in here too, so imagine Yin happily pouring brownie batter into a pan while Yuck and Yang race to see who can clean their beater faster. (Yang ends up getting his tongue stuck. Yuck laughs.)

Who buys candles for dinners even though there’s no special occasion:

Yin. She doesn’t care if it’s lunchtime on a Tuesday and they’re having heat-and-eat corndogs, it’s gonna be ROMANTIC, dang it!

Who draws little tattoos on the other with a pen:

Let’s assume there’s a pen in this universe that can draw over fur and say Yuck. What he draws isn’t always to Yin’s tastes (it usually involves violence or fire) but she allows it because she wants to encourage his creative outlets.

Who comes home with a new souvenir magnet every time they go on vacation:

Neither. They’d take a lot of selfies at local landmarks and stick all over the fridge.

Who convinces the other to fill out those couple surveys in the back of magazines:

Yin. Yuck claims he thinks they’re dumb and that he only does them for her sake, but whenever she gets a new magazine he’s suddenly right next to her, “casually” asking if this one has a survey she needs him to help her with.

[two-spoof-enigma]

Random Character Headcanons #3: The Classic/UT Twins (Bunnie & Kitten)

(I made this with some help from @redtomatofan )

[[I’m going to give separate info for the stuff they both do together and the stuff that they do independently; their personal hobbies and stuff💠 Strap in this gets a little wordy✨]]

Both of them are absolute puzzle lovers, they both love creating and designing new puzzles, traps, mazes, etc., you name it! Its mostly because of the fact that they’re incredibly intelligent, its just that however they’re just wa~y too nice and forgiving… Also don’t think for a second that just because there’s two of them, that they’re not going to join the Royal Guard, actually in fact because there are 2 of them Undyne has twice the work cut out for her💦 She still teaches them how fight so they can defend themselves but for the most part she just teaches them how to cook (very poorly, I might add), so that way they can have more personal life skills they can use to take care of themselves and Sans. But that’s mostly because Undyne can’t bring herself to induct them into the Royal Guard, for 2 BIG reasons; 1) Since she knows that, because of how nice they are, that they’ll try to befriend everybody and even if they can’t they’ll somehow figure out how to convince everyone to stop fighting (or get mauled to death trying to stop everyone from fighting). 2) Sans… He’s her second reason, because she knows that if anything bad happens to them on her watch, she’s a goner…

Both of them can somewhat see into the timelines, but just not with the same clarity as Sans. They get like glimpses and visions, some of which are intertwined with their danger-sense (which is why they’re ATK/DEF, changes in the Neutral/Genocide routes). They also can summon Gaster Blasters, but sadly they’re not quite as powerful as Sans’ are (but that only reason behind that huge power gap is because of his Karmic Retribution ability, if he didn’t have that ability, they’re blasters would have a power yeild that would be a little closer to Sans’, but not quite there, close but not the same), plus they have a weird and innate ability to slightly defy the laws of physics or at the very least figure out how to make it work to their advantage??? But even though they may be similar in a sense, it doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same. So here’s where their differences come into play♥

{{-Papyrus/Bunny/Bunnie: The oldest of the twins (by a couple of minutes) and the more confident/outspoken of the two, despite their name sake. [Distinguishing items: Loves the Bedtime Story “Fluffy Bunny” and wears a pair of Magically-powered Animatronic Rabbit ears with a matching tail that can be worn around the waist; Designed by Alphys]}} Bunnie’s prefered type of puzzles are 3D based puzzles, for example; mazes, switch based puzzles, traps, etc., you name it! This also couples well with their artistic abilities, for they enjoy sculpting, so they usually make a lot of 3D model mockups of all of the puzzles (with concept sketches made by Kitten) that they want to create and try out on all of the other monsters (Bunnie would ask Kitten and Sans for help with testing their puzzles. But they know that 3D puzzles aren’t Kitty’s strong suit and they know that Sans is just a bit too lazy to do a puzzle that involves exercise, but in the end they’ll usually find their puzzle with a “good work” style message written in comic sans♥).

Bunnie’s a talker, they can sit for hours just rambling on and on talking a monster’s ears off, but because of this it makes it slightly difficult for Bunnie to make new friends because of this. Luckily, they’ve got Kitty and Sans, who will take the time to remind Bunnie that they need to sometimes be more considerate of other monsters and sometimes let other monsters speak their minds.

Bunnie immediately took interest in cooking with Undyne, Unlike Kitten who prefers just drawing, Bunnie absolutely got swept up in Undyne’s passion in the kitchen! They would be so enthralled by each other’s fiery energy, that they’d just absolutely get caught up in the heat of the moment! Even up until the point where Undyne’s house burns down… Again…

Bunnie’s ability to manipulate the laws of physics, allows for them to be able to manipulate the amount of gravity their bodies are subject to. Meaning that they can manipulate the height of their jumps, the distance as well, they can also fall from almost any height with only a little to no damage, along with manipulating their body weight, to the point where they could almost fly, almost… Because of this, they’re able to leap over other monsters, jump and flip out of windows in a single bound, etc., though they only really do this so that way they can up their “cool” factor, as they think it makes them look a bit more like Undyne✨

Though while, yes they can also summon Gaster Blasters (which usually are stolen by the Annoying Dog), Bunnie’s act likes puppies and are very excitable and love meeting other monsters, though they have to teach them not to blast everything, but thankfully Sans and Kitten are there to help out.💠

Papirus/Kitty/Kitten: The youngest of the twins (by a couple of minutes) and is the shyer/more reserved one of the two, despite their name sake. [Distinguishing items: Loves the Bedtime Story “Fuzzy Kitten” and wears a pair of Magically-powered Animatronic Cat ears with a matching tail that can be worn around the waist; Designed by Alphys] Kitten’s prefered type of puzzles (vs Bunnie’s) are patterned based, for example; piece together the picture type puzzles, 2D mazes (on paper), Junior Jumble, color tiles based puzzles, pattern switching puzzles, etc., you name it. This also couples well with their artistic abilities, for they enjoy drawing, so they usually make a lot of concept sketches of all of the puzzles that both Bunnie and themselves want to create and try out on all of the other monsters (Kitten, like Bunnie, would test them out on other monsters, but sadly Kitten’s a little too shy to ask for another monster’s input. So they usually ask Bunnie and Sans for help with designing/building their puzzles. But again Kitty knows that pattern based puzzles aren’t Bunnie’s strong suit and sometimes feels guilty for waking Sans up for his opinion since they know he doesn’t get much sleep thanks to his nightmares. But then they’ll usually find their puzzle solved with a “good work” style message written in comic sans♥).

Kitty’s a really good listener, they can sit for hours listening to someone ramble on and on, but because of this it makes it slightly difficult for Kitten to get a word in edgewise, which lead to them being stuck in conversations with topics (or people) they don’t like/are uncomfortable with. Luckily, they’ve got Bunnie and Sans, who will take the time to remind them that they need to sometimes be more assertive and let other monsters know how they feel.

Contrary to Bunnie’s interest in cooking with Undyne, Kitten prefers to draw, doodle and design things for their friends and family. But that doesn’t mean Kitty doesn’t enjoy watching and sketching Bunnie’s and Undyne’s expressions as they just absolutely get into the heat of the moment! Even up until the point where Undyne’s house burns down… Again… Though luckily, because Kitty’s on the sidelines they’re the first ones to notice that everything is going to catch fire so that way they can get everyone out to safety!💠

Kitten’s ability to manipulate the laws of physics, allows for them to be able to manipulate the rate of their decent, how quickly they can move across a surface/manipulate the amount of friction their body gets subjected to, along with their body weight, to the point where they could almost fly, almost… (Just like Bunnie, but not quite) They’re able to leap over other monsters, jump and flip out of windows in a single bound, etc., though however they’re able to do flips and tricks wa~y more skillfully & gracefully than Bunnie can. But that’s mostly because Bunnie goes more for the “superhero” feel, while Kitten goes more for the “prima ballerina/magical girl” vibe. [For an example of this for Kitten—> https://youtu.be/yOrfhH77ynY]

Though while, yes they can also summon Gaster Blasters (which usually are stolen by the Annoying Dog), Kitty’s act likes guard dogs (though not as aggressive as Sans’ GB, believe me!) and are very protective of Kitty, but they only act that way towards other monsters other than Sans and Bunnie.♥

[valorant-reverie]

Fireside - The Herald and the Inquisitor

Also available to read on Archive here! Please drop by to give us any thoughts or kudos, as it all means the world to us - http://archiveofourown.org/works/13799823

Written by @thursdaysshepard and myself, about our slightly canon-divergent characters Arahiel and Mahinnah Lavellan. Hopefully there will be more little doodles like this to come, sooner or later.

The clan they had found past the outskirts of the Exalted Plains was far more approachable than anyone had been expecting. Dalish here tended to keep to themselves, Mahinnah told the Inquisition. In a place so crowded with history, most of it tainted by anguish, many of the elves still couldn’t see beyond the ghosts of Orlais’ long-gone march. Bitterness lacing the infrequent transactions of elves and shemlens was not uncommon across the scarred landscape. In recent years fewer Dalish wandered the Plains in favor of lands with more profitable resources; those who stayed here were hardened, their trust not easily given.

It had taken months of careful approach to win the acceptance and eventual admiration of the clan. Small favors led to bigger endeavours in an effort to prove reliable. After a time, the approach of their party would be met with a welcoming gleam in the eye of the clan’s Keeper. There was little motive to their interactions, save for a chance to forge new connections where none had been in such a long while.

Mahinnah and Arahiel saw it was a chance to breathe easy among familiar settings for the first time in just over a year. The human’s Herald and their army’s Inquisitor were not regarded so highly in the beginning, but stilted honorifics gave way to softer adorations in the elvish tongue after a time. The clan wasn’t as large as the one they knew best, yet it still felt homely.

Some weeks after the final foray into the abandoned forts of the dead, the party were nursing new wounds around the Dalish campfire. The corpses they had fought were not the only concern. Bands of Freemen still roamed the Plains, apparently having nothing better to do than attack whatever and whoever they came across. A surprise ambush of eleven to four had left them all in a sour - but otherwise glad to be alive - mood.

Mahinnah takes a sweeping look around as he slips between the aravels. The sun is finally beginning to set overhead. A pleasant smell of something unidentifiable cooking in the near distance fills the air. At this point, it could be roast mabari and he’d still eat it.

“Lethallin.” he says quietly as he approaches Arahiel and the others around the fire. He sits gingery on the earth beside his clan mate, favoring his left shoulder. Healing magics from the Keeper here had taken most of the sting away but a dull ache lingered.

“Still won’t let you take that off?” he says, gesturing to Arahiel’s face with a poorly concealed smile. A bandage wrapped around the other’s head, covering most of one eye, definitely should not have looked as funny as it did, especially when the vision of Arahiel getting whacked in the face with a blunt club was fresh in his mind.

Arahiel hums, adjusting the wrapping where it’s clearly annoying him. “Awful lot of fuss over a little head wound. I’ve done worse to myself sparring. Still, it would have hit Varric if I hadn’t leapt in, heroically as always.”

“I appreciate it, Snowflake.” The dwarf himself replies, looking up from a letter in his lap, from the Merchant’s Guild probably, or one of Hawke’s other associates.

Arahiel shifts his gaze from Varric to Mahinnah, smiling warmly, even though only one eye is visible in the expression. “How’s your arm, da’len? Has the bruising gone down any?”

“Greatly,” he says, thankful. “It’s a shame Varric had to be the dwarf in distress, otherwise you could have leapt heroically in for my sake.”

Varric grunts in disapproval, though a smile flickers about his face in the firelight.

“I would argue our Inquisitor’s leap could be viewed as reckless,” Dorian says from the otherside of the circle. He sits with his staff across his lap, an assortment of books beside him. No one could quite gather where exactly they had been procured from.

“Then again,” he adds cheerily, “recklessness only adds to the odd charm you Southerners seem to have.”

Mahinnah rubs his arm, glancing away from Dorian’s not so discreet wink.

“You should be more careful, you know.” he says to Arahiel. His concern was not reproachful, but still plain to see.

“Don’t you worry, Hinnah. I’m made of sterner stuff than most - namely our squishy, though undoubtedly attractive, northern companion.” Arahiel replies, grinning back at Dorian playfully, “Besides, as long as there is a Herald to serve and an ancient blighted magister to overcome, I’ll be around. That’s what necromancy is for, after all.”

“I’d rather it didn’t come to that. After a while you’d start to smell dreadful.” Dorian says, cringing at the thought.

“And you wouldn’t be nearly as charming with half of your face starting to rot away, Inquisitor.” Varric chips in as he adjusts the reading glasses on the end of his nose.

Cassandra makes a quiet noise of disgust as she nears the fire. “Must you all be so morbid? I’d rather avoid conversation of death, even if only for a while. We did well today; we must remember that.”

“Our Lady Seeker is right, as always.” Arahiel agrees, smiling with delight as a blush fills her sharp cheeks. “We did very well indeed. The Freemen are starting to hold back. We’ll teach them not to mess with the Dalish, or the Inquisition. Or in our case - both.”

“I feel a little guilty.” Cassandra admits, “If I had been there to help—“

“Nonsense.” Arahiel insists, “We left you to defend the clan. You did just that, and quite impressively. The Keeper has assured me that they’ve never felt so safe, even surrounded by shems.”

He casts a mischievous look at Mahinnah; somehow referring to humans as shemlens to their face always gave him some kind of childish thrill, like cursing had done for them both as young boys.

“Easy,” Mahinnah leans in to whisper in elvish, his humor obvious. “Cassandra still takes some strange offense to that one.”

“Not so much anymore,” Dorian says with a lazy flip through the pages of one of his books.

In the odd silence that follows, Mahiannah stares, incredulous, across the circle.

“You’ve learned elven?”

“Learning,” Dorian corrects with a snort. “How else am I to keep up with Andraste’s Herald and Inquisitor in all their adventures if I can’t eavesdrop on their little private conversations?”

He leans up to accept a small bowl of steaming stew, offered by a younger elf. Amidst the small circles clustered throughout the camp other members of the clan were distributing dinner among themselves.

“I’m full of many marvelous and hidden talents,” Dorian adds, raising a brow as he takes a sip of the stew.

Mahinnah accepts two bowls for himself and Arahiel to the tune of Cassandra’s quiet, disgusted huff.

The conversation comes to a companionable lull as they each focus in on their food. The warmth seems to settle into Mahinnah’s skin, easing some of the soreness from earlier, and the taste is simple but familiar. After meetings with dukes and the associated feasts therein, or bare rations foraged from fruitless battlefields, he had begun to miss flavors like this, of home.

Around the camp the overall noise begins to fall as well. Everyone was enjoying the meal in earnest; save for two small figures at the edge of the furthest campfire, sequestered off in the fading light. Curious, Mahinnah gently bumps his arm against Arahiel’s, motioning in their direction.

A human or dwarf would perhaps have to squint in the dark to make out the figures, but elves with Ari and Hinnah’s keen eyes saw more than others. The two people are different in size on further examination; a mother and a child, it seems. The young boy, sits sniffing at his mother’s side as she strokes his hair, their still-steaming bowls of stew forgotten momentarily.

It is not immediately audible, but it soon becomes clear that the boy’s mother is humming a lullaby under her breath as she caresses her child’s head tenderly. The boy stops sniffing and leans into his mother where they sit away from the clan’s fire. As Arahiel and Mahinnah watch on, experiencing a strange familiarity from this exact scene, more mothers drift from the glow of the flames to the shadowy spot away from them. Following them are children, mostly young girls; daughters and sisters. That’s when the voices lift through the dark, reaching the ears of those seated at the fire in a haunting, soothing choir.

Arahiel goes rigid as Mahinnah’s body shrugs into relaxation, his head turning from the sight of the clan singing their soothing lullaby to the glowing embers at the base of the crackling fire. His uncovered brown eye stares, unseeing and unfocused, his mind lost in the rising voices of the clan.

Countless years, it seemed, had passed since they last heard that song. It was old, but not uncommon. Mahinnah could remember his own mother singing it to him during moments like these, past sunsets and calm nights he could no longer visualize with any perfect clarity. Nostalgia runs deep in the pained look he hides behind a quiet dip of his head. The ancient words come easily to his lips, but this moment doesn’t belong to him, and he restrains them in favor of listening without interruption.

Cassandra, Varric, and Dorian watch with interest, eyes narrowed as they peer through the evening dusk. Cassandra looks strangely touched as the chorus progresses, such a soft expression rarely seen on her features. Varric sits completely still, another rarity in itself. He faces away from the gathering, a curious smile barely visible in the low light.

Dorian stares neither at the clan nor towards the fire; he meets Mahinnah’s gaze instead, both wondering and reverent. On any other man, one might have called it humility.

It takes a long moment for him to look away.

“Ari.” Mahinnah says softly, the nickname almost unfamiliar for how long it had gone unused aloud, “I’d almost forgotten what that lullaby sounded like.”

“So had I.” he replies, barely more than a whisper, his focus still lost in the base of the fire. He no longer felt comfort from the warmth of its flames. Instead visions came to him - a sight he knows he could not remember, of burning aravels, the heat of vicious and unforgiving fire. The screaming and crying of innocent elves rattles around in his brain, and somewhere among it all, a woman’s voice that he is sure he knows echoing the self-same words of the lullaby, like a mourning spirit wailing over the site of a massacre.

Arahiel is overwhelmed by the sudden urge to get away, before this strange pseudo-memory consumed him. His stew flies from his lap as he suddenly stands and marches away. He has no direct goal from this point; nearby the rushing of a river calls to him. The water is shallow - the Plains have a longer dry season than most temperate areas in Orlais - but he wades in until the water laps at his knees, his bare feet consumed in the icy dark stream.

Voices call for him, urging him back, but he ignores them. Conflicting desire gnaws at him; one half of his brain clutches to these parts that he thinks is memory, and the other forces it away out of his reach, begging him not to go near, almost in the sound of Istimaethoriel’s own voice when she was younger, when she used to plead for Arahiel to concentrate or behave…

In frustration, Arahiel yells and kicks the water. The camp behind him falls silent. Many stare on at him, and he can feel the weight of their gaze on his back like the survivor’s guilt he had almost forgotten which now bares down on him all at once.

It is Cassandra who reacts first, rising from the fire, her own stew forgotten and going cold at her feet. Across the way Mahinnah sees her fingers flicker instinctively towards her side where a sword is not currently present, as if the cool touch of a weapon would allow her some means to fix whatever is wrong. He is familiar with the feeling, as unproductive as it might currently be.

One or two murmured conversations begin to pick up as he stands, holding a placating hand out towards the Seeker. She looks to the lone figure in the water. Confusion echoes through her and in the faces of their other companions, but neither Varric nor Dorian speak.

After a brief moment of hesitation Cassandra nods and stiffly takes her seat once more, abiding by Mahinnah’s silent request. He mouths a brief ma serannas and begins to pick his way across the landscape towards the water glinting in the rising moonlight. Behind him, he hears the lullaby pick up once more, fainter this time.

Arahiel is still, unmoving as the statues that loom over old Chantry sites in the Emprise. Mahinnah wades through the gentle current to stand beside him, shutting out any lingering eyes of the others following his progress.

“Lethallin?”

“I’m sorry.” Arahiel murmurs, and it’s not immediately clear even to himself if he means those words for Mahinnah. As he turns, his attempt at an embarrassed smile is tampered by the fact that it does not meet his unwounded eye. He drops his head and stares at the ripples around their ankles. They bump and glide over one another, making room for each other. Much like he and the other elf at his side. Accommodating, part of the same whole. It restored the sense of belonging he had lost for a moment.

“It was too much.” he admits as he continues in a lower voice than his apology, so only Mahinnah can hear him. “We used to hear it as children, I know, which ought to have been a good memory. But there was something else, a different version underneath it all. And that, with the fire, and the fighting today, it was just…. too much.”

Arahiel glances up, focusing on his companion now, his expression drawn into a confused and frustrated frown.

“I thought I heard her voice, Hinnah. I thought… I thought I heard my mother. My real mother, from before the Lavellan clan found me. Perhaps it’s because the Veil is thin here, but that’s never happened before. It scared me, lethallin.”

How could you hear what you hadn’t ever known, Mahinnah thinks, but doesn’t dare speak it. Arahiel was a Lavellan in everything but birth and the topic had gone largely undiscussed for most of their lives. There wasn’t anything to discuss, really. Most clans adopted city elves and foreigners often enough for it to become widely accepted without question. Few had circumstances as strange as Arahiel’s, however.

“It’s possible you could have.” he says thoughtfully. “What we know of the Veil encompasses very little of what we could hope to understand.”

He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “What exactly did you hear?”

“Screams.” Arahiel says bluntly, once again not meeting Mahinnah’s eyes, “”The crackling of fire, but not from the camp. I saw burning aravels -- I felt the heat of them on my face. And over all that, just audible in the chaos, a woman’s voice, and that lullaby.”

It sounds ridiculous, he is well aware. After all, even if it was because of some sort of connection to the Fade, Mahinnah was the one with the Anchor. It’s true that Arahiel had felt more connected to the other side of the Veil than he had been aware of before the Conclave, but that didn’t explain his visions. Perhaps he was just tired. The day had been stressful for everyone, for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps it would be best if he just called it a night, settled into his tent to sleep, and see if the vision lingered on him come the morning.

“Solas or Dorian might have a better answer than I.” Mahinnah offers after a long moment of silence. Nothing was worse than the sensation of helplessness, especially when concerning someone close, but he truly could offer little explanation. Shouts through imaginary fire were clouding his conscious. If he listened hard enough, perhaps he would hear the lullaby too.

“I know that probably isn’t helpful,” he adds with a weak smile. “We could always leave in the morning, if you wished? Or now, in fact. The others could catch up with us tomorrow. Unless you’d fancy to see shems blindly following us in the dark?”

Arahiel turns over his shoulder to their friends, who are trying their best - and failing - to not seem as though they are watching on with concern. The frown lines fade from his brow and his expression is replaced with one of amused and grateful appreciation for their fellows. Cassandra had not always looked kindly upon the two of them, but she had grown into a close companion over time. Varric had hit it off with them right away. And then there was the mage Dorian - Mahinnah had found love in this charismatic man, and Arahiel himself a good friend as well.

“No, we’ll stay the night. It’s been a tough mission for everyone. I’ll be alright, da’len.”

He pats Mahinnah reassuringly on the shoulder and leads them both back to the fireside, clearly wearied by his experience but determined as ever to not let the cracks show. They knew the stakes placed on them; any sign of fragility or weakness, even in front of those who did not believe that they were chosen such as the Dalish, could affect the strength of the Inquisition as a symbol for all in times like these. They had to maintain strength and determination, and the dedication of the Inquisition would follow. In time, they might come to believe it of themselves too.

[strawberrycola]

portal portal au EH?

im. so angery. i had paragraphs typed out. PARAGRAPHS. oh well. at least i have my thoughts straightened out a little bit. okaY so. henlo. im RLLY into this portal portal au. like. if you have been following me for a while youd know i have a big ol special interest in portal itself, considering my 184 hours in 2. so @portalportalau pls take my thoughts i beg u. THIS GOT REAL LONG SO IM PUTTING THIS UNDER A READ MORE.

okay so this is MAINLY about nikki and neil. but ill go into my own timeline for this au for the sake of clarity, and to straighten things out. SO HERE WE GO.

so portal 1. the story with nikki and neil begins when DaVID tries to cheer max up with friends. so out pops neil and nikki from a dispenser ingrained in the ceiling. level 8. i just spent like 15 min doodling refs for this so those'll be at the Bottom. the act of them dropping causes them to activate. the level goes as normal. they hang out in one of rattmans hidey holes. they talk. max grows attached because fuck man this is one of the first truly positive and genuine near-human experiences hes had since this shit started. however once they get to the end of the level (ive opted that david wouldnt make max burn his friends alive) theyve realised a flaw in design. they cant go through the grill. theyll die. with tearful eyes max promises to find them. turns out it's the opposite way around, fortunately for max, after escaping from david whose personality got set to Murderey, perhaps at the fault of someone? hm. after the events of level 19, max stumbles upon nikki and neil while navigating the guts of Campbell Science. they get through it together, but they must part ways once more due to the grill at the doorway of davids lair (muahahahaha) fight occurs as normal, with cheering on behalf of his friends.

cue the events just before portal 2. neil and nikki are trying to find their friend max, after buzz goes through the facility of the most stubborn test subject being hidden somewhere. they find a personality core whose supposed to be watching the humans. they ask about him. "he's gonna escape! he never EVER gives up!"

the core's eye widens.

and short circuits them. that'll give daniel some time to use this knowledge to his advantage. at the point near the beginning of portal 2, i refuse to believe the test subjects dont show some aging. they age VERY slowly, but they still age. so at this point id peg max around 19, (no particular reason for the number, the repetition of 9 in the beginning gave me the idea). so he gets woken up by daniel, and the game runs par the course. this time, come level....10? i think it's 10 ingame, it's only neil. they go through the level, and neil promises to find nikki. in this sense, theyre like wheatley, sans the face heel turn, major ulterior motives, as well as complete unhelpfulness.

AHEM. once again, game runs par the course. yadda yadda yadda. however during the underbelly scenes of Old Aperture, max learns a bit of backstory. at this point, im feeding into the fan idea that not just glados was originally a human, that all a.i.s were once human employees. so max finds some paperwork, written by a certain science GEEK. turns out neil was once a young scientist, thrilled to witness major science breakthroughs. he was assigned to a particularly tricky test subject. one that just KEPT GOING. wild curly green hair kept back in an unruly ponytail. nikki is basically this universes chell. both thrilled to be working in the growing business of Portals. (one of nikki's particular favourite things, neil noted, was the blue and orange gel tests. she go FAST)

with this knowledge in the back of his mind, max carries potato david through the old buildings, deadset on giving daniel a piece of his MIND. (sidenote that this segment of the game was and will always be my FAVOURITE part. i love the design of old aperture sm.) so we have blah blah blah wheatley science fight wheatley been there done that. as max lays passed out on the floor of the chamber after getting exploded many times and almost sucked into the cold depths of SPACEEEE, a bot comes in, dragging a robot behind him. he gasps at the sight of his friend passed out, and inquired whether he'll be alright. he tells david that he and nikki are friends w max, and to Please Reactivate Nikki she is Very Heavy. david does so quickly, any friend of his son is a friend of his. after max wakes up, they have a long talk.

max wants to find their bodies.

and this leads me to a modified version of portal 2 co-op. with max on the sidelines cheering them on. nikki absolutely trolls the hell out of neil. blah blah YAY THEY HAVE THEIR BODIES BACK WOO HOO MAX HAS HUMAN FRIENDS HIS AGE HELL YEAH. and thus they live in Campbell Science, since the earth is kinda decimated (fkign black mesa) and neil works on science and nikki gets to test, which makes david happy. max enjoys making concerts with the turrets. hes happy. this got FAR TOO LONG. here are the sketchie sketchies. and thus, i nap. ta daaaa. please feel free to talk to me about this or add on i obviously could write for HOURS.

lil robaps.

a nikki, being RECKLESS.

and a neil, who is constantly Terrorised by this green haired DEMON.

[imagine-that-haikyuu]

akkaksisjjdu /sobs now that I know you're cool w soulmate aus I gotta do this. you know that soulmate au where whatever you write/draw on your skin appears on your soulmate's skin? can you write one for tsukishima? 🌚🍟

are you sure about that, anon????? also, i have to apologize because thisisn’t exactly what you asked for but many elements in this resembled what wasalready in what I had written for the soulmate!au and decided in the end thatthey should be combined (unless you also requested soulmate!au)

but i’ve mentioned before that i took a differentapproach to this and i have a lot of notes about this that i think are relevantbut this would get long and i cannot just put some of them here and others in the tags, so i’m probably going to put them in the separatepost so anyone interested in them can read my notes about it

since i’m combiningtwo requests here, it makes sense that this is long, i suppose

EDIT: the notes are here

There’s a logic to everything in life; the worldfunctions as one large system made up of smaller systems. Tsukishima Kei knowsthis much to be true, and from a young age, his way of thinking molds aroundthis line of thought.

Also at a young age, Tsukishima met his soulmate.Everyone went on about how he was one of the lucky ones, about how rare it wasfor someone to find their match before they turned ten. He wasn’t so sure aboutthat.

His mother had taken him shopping at a department store onthe day he met you. He was five-years-old. When he got restless, she droppedhim off at a play center to keep kids occupied under supervision whiletheir parents shopped. You were there too, seated at a brightly-colored plastictable with two other kids. They happily colored away, the markers squeakingwhen pressed too hard to the page. Your page was already full, however coveredin words both real and nonsensical for the sake of rhymes, and with no freshpaper in sight you decided to make your arm your new page.

There wasn’t any point in coloring if there was nothingelse to draw on, so Tsukishima made his way over to the bins of toys across theroom. It was only when he reached for one of the dinosaur figures from one ofthem that he noticed black lines appearing on his forearm. In the next fewmoments, the lines came together and he recognized the kanji enough to know itsaid, “sky.”

Even though his glasses never remedied his peripheralvision, only a quick glance out of the corner his eye was enough to catch thatyou were drawing on your skin with a black marker. That, and the word rhymedwith the words you had written on the page that he saw before.

At first, he liked the little drawings and writings thatwould appear on his arm during school. Sometimes, he drew or wrote somethingback. You two had lots of play-dates since your first meeting, but somethingabout this form of communication was a little thrilling. It reminded him ofwhen Akiteru would puncture the bottoms of paper cups and thread a stringbetween them so they could whisper to each other and still hear each word withperfect clarity. Sure, anyone could see what was on his skin if it was visible,but whatever was there was only meant for him.

The novelty gradually wore off.

It first started when he was eight, and had to dress up for aformal family event. That afternoon, you decided to cover your arm from wristto elbow in an aimless stained-glass pattern. With paint, of course. The colorsbled onto the sleeve of his white button-down. Tsukishima had to wait while hismother called yours to have her wash the paint off your arm. It didn’t matter,though. The shirt couldn’t be salvaged after that, and Akiteru had to lend Keihis sport jacket to hide his stained sleeve.

From there, you didn’t draw or paint on yourself anymore.In fact, the only time either of you’d see mysterious markings on your skinwould be accidental. You’d find the tips of your fingers a muddy turquoise whenTsukishima got paint on his during art class. He’d wake up on a Sunday morningonly to find doodles on his face because you were the first to fall asleep at afriend’s house the night before.

In middle school, you began writing. It started withwords at first, and then sentence fragments. Tsukishima often found themscrawled along his arms. They were almost always some strange, abstractdescriptions and often disjointed in nature. After sometime doing this, you called him.

“What do you think?” you asked. 

Tsukishima stared down at his arm and read the words overagain. There wasn’t any point in trying to understand them; he never would.They didn’t follow any line of logic as far as he was concerned.

“I don’t get it,” he said. After a huff, he added, “Whatare you doing?”

“I’m writing a poem! I found this book in the library andit was really weird and a didn’t make sense, but I kind of liked it. I wanted totry and write like that poet.”

He looked down at the words again, brows furrowing.“Couldn’t you just write it down on paper?”

You hummed. “Well, the only paper I had on me had mynotes on it from class and I didn’t want to forget it. And…”

“And?” he urged when your voice trailed off.

“And, we haven’t talked or seen much of each other in awhile,” you sighed. “It seemed like a fun way to reach out to you.”

The first part was true. While play-dates had been aregular thing in the past thanks to your parents, those kinds of arrangements were unnecessary once you moved up to middleschool: you both were old enough to make your own plans, granted you wouldstill have to ask permission beforehand.

Now that you weren’t little anymore, Tsukishima concludedthat the two of you were just too different. At age five, every whimsicalfantasy you had as a kid was normal at the time. At age eight, those absurd“what if” questions you’d ask him were normal. At age thirteen, these thingswere not normal. Even if you were trying to be funny or cute with them, itwasn’t coming off right.

For the past few months, he wondered exactly how you hadended up being his predetermined match. It could have been a blip in thesystem. It wouldn’t have been the first time; there’s billions of people inthis world, after all. While the idea of soulmates is inherently romantic, thereare plenty of reasons at why someone’s soulmate wouldn’t necessarily be who they’dend up with.

But even then, they’re supposed to be the person whounderstands you the most. Whether or not you understood him didn’t change thefact the he didn’t understand you. To Tsukishima, you were a box full of puzzlepieces from completely different puzzles and he couldn’t put you together even if he tried.

“Kei, did you like the poem I wrote for you?”

That enthusiasm that you would have normallyhad when you’d ask that kind of question wasn’t there. You weren’t askingbecause you wanted to boast something you were proud of and wanted your pridestroked a little more. It was quieter and more concerned. Maybe even a littlescared.

He didn’t answer your question at first. If he wanted tobe honest and say no, you’d probably ask him a lot of questions after about whyand he didn’t feel like answering them. If he wanted to lie, it wouldn’t matterbecause the fact that he hesitated before answering said enough for him.

He decided to not to answer it at all.

“I have to go now, ___,” was all he said before hangingup the phone.

Two years go by. High school begins. Attendingseparate middle schools only exacerbated the idea that you were incompatiblewith each other. The distance made it excusable to not bother trying to figureit out. But going to same high school and being in the same class on top ofthat made it painfully obvious how even being in the same room did nothing toforce either of you to address this.

Finally, one day after summer break, you wrote a word uponyour wrist again for the first time in a very long time.

The word you wrote was, “edges.” A week later the word, “hammer”appeared on his arm before lunch. He decided he was just going to end it there.

Tsukishima approached your desk and spoke to you for the first time in years.The much higher voice you were used him having was gone. The almost bored tonereplaced the brightness it once held from his childhood–although it startedfading not long before you two stopped talking. Even though he’d been called on plenty of times to answer questions in class, you still couldn’t adjust to it.

“Please stop writing arbitrary words on us. I’ve gottentoo many questions about whether or not I really had ‘edges’ tattooed on myforearm last week. Even more when I bothered to explain it.”

You looked at him rather stone-faced, but then turnedyour attention out the window. After taking a deep breath, your expressionshifted, looking more forlorn than anything.

“They’re not arbitrary,” you mumbled. “They’ll make sensein the end.”

You couldn’t see his face, but you took his silence as amark of confusion.

“You remember the first word I wrote, right? The firsttime we met?”

Of course, the word “sky” couldn’t leave him. How manypeople swooned over it when they found out that was how you two found eachother? Well, he supposed it could have been something stupider, like one ofthose words you had made up that day. He answered affirmatively in only a word.

“Good. And you also remember last week’s word. Rememberthis week’s word too. I don’t know when the next important words will come tome, but don’t forget them when they do.”

“Is this supposed to be a game or something? What are youdoing?”

“I’m writing a poem.”

The conversation sounded awfully familiar.

“If you want to write a poem, that’s fine. You can dowhatever, but stop writing it on me.”

You reflect on his words briefly, and your lips tugupwards into what could be a smile. “Do you mean ‘on’ as in physically on or‘on’ as in ‘about’?”

Tsukishima’s eyebrows knitted together. If circumstanceshad been different, he might have laughed at that and teased you about that beinglame play on words. Instead, he begrudgingly gave in. “We’re getting nowhere. Just do whatever and I’ll roll my sleeves down until yourdone with this.”

He turned to go back to his desk.

“After you memorize each word, right?”

This question also went unanswered.

However, he was not immune to the white bear problem:when one tries not to think about something, they inevitably are forced tothink about it. Such was the case whenever a word appeared on him. Either way, it wasn’t particularly bothersome or difficult forhim to memorize one word at a time in a list of unconnected words. The factthat they would appear in sporadic intervals, but never less than a daybetween them sometimes, helped in that way.

The inconvenience was that it had to show up somewhere onhis body. There wouldn’t be any warning from you either. One night he went tobed and woke up to find a new word scrawled across one of his wrists. By thebeginning of October, you wrote the last word you wanted him to remember. That was it for now. Assuming the words hadcome to you in the order you intended, he couldn’t string together anythingcoherent from them.

Sky. Edges. Hammer. Light. System. Black. Tick.

“Well, those are only the key words from it. One day, I’llshow you the rest,” you explained.

“One day” came in about eight. His hand was bandaged and a little bloodystill from the match earlier that day, but the words appeared well enough belowthe edge of the bandages for him to read each word clearly. Maybe Akiteru told you whathappened and helped you figure out where on your arm you should start writing.

No. You had been there to watch. He didn’t know for sure,but it felt exactly like something you would do. He rolled his jacket sleeveback down so his teammates wouldn’t see, but uncovered it when washing his handsin the bathroom. Only the first word, “sky” was contained in the four lines oftext.

On the bus ride home, seven different lines appearedwhere the first for had been. “Edges” and “hammer” showed up in them, and afteran hour or those lines were scrubbed off and replaced by the next set. Thiscontinued until nightfall.

Tsukishima stared at the last set of words on hisforearm. For the first time in a very long time, you had written something tohim that made some sort of sense. There was still a clear attempt at the abstract, but it was accessible enough. It was a small one, but he smiled. This wasthe first time you made him do so in five years.

The next day your doorbell rang. It was unexpected but at thesame time, expected too, that you found Tsukishima in the doorway when youanswered it. Neither of you said anything, but you let him in. You lead him to siton the walkway outside like you used to do before the chasm between youappeared. You’re not sure how much time passed—it was at least ten minutes, youwere sure, or it felt like that—until you finally spoke up, voice quiet.

“I asked Takeda-sensei one time if he knew anything aboutincompatible soulmates,” you started.  Abrief glance in his direction was enough to see the almost undetectableconfusion on his face. “Well, it goes without saying that Modern Literature ismy favorite subject and he’d become my favorite teacher. I bring my poems tohim to workshop a lot.”

“Oh,” is his only reply. It wouldn’t have been hard forhim to figure out, but he never gave it any thought until then.

After a brief moment of silence, you continued, “He saidit was uncommon but also not unheard of. That there are times that thingsbetween soulmates just don’t work out, sure, but also that not every set of soulmatesis matched up for the same reason. Sometimes you’re not paired with the person whounderstands you better than anyone else, but rather the person who forces youto think in a different mindset and to look at things other than how you wouldhave on your own. They’re the person who looks at your first draft and asks ‘Well,what if you did this instead?’ because they think it will push you into creatingsomething spectacular.  They may not be yourother half, but they are the person who ends up bettering you.”

There was another long silence between you two, but not as long as before and certainly not as tense. With a soft laugh, you placed your palms behind you on the walkway and leaned back onto them.

“It took us a while to figure that one out, huh, Kei?”you asked. “It was something sosimple the whole time.”

You glanced towards Tsukishima again, to find his gazefixated on the ground. His arms were crossed loosely in front of him, elbowsagainst his thighs to prop him up while he leaned forward. The hand injuredthe day before, rested on top of the opposite arm.

“It…makes sense,” he said. “Your poem was still somethingyou would write, but I was able to grasp most of it. Maybe because I knew aheadof time that it was going to be about me, or maybe because you tried to make itobvious.”

“Yeah. But it won’t come together the same way if someonewho didn’t know anything about you read it. Writers aren’t supposed to tell youexactly what they want you to get from their work, but I’m starting to learnthat there’s someone I need to make exceptions for.”

“But this is only the first draft,” he said. “You’remissing a lot from the third system that I’d have to fill you in on. Afterthat, there’s a fourth system and it’s just starting now.”

He smiled. It wasn’t the big grin you remembered seeingas a child, but you can’t remember the last time you saw him smile at all. Inturn, you beamed right back at him. Whether or not you were lucky to have foundeach other at such a young age was moot. Maybe it took too long for either ofyou realize that you’d have to work at this, that it wasn’t going to clickinstantly. Most people around your age were only first meeting their soulmatesnow, so maybe it wasn’t unusual that it would take around ten years to findyourselves at square one along with them.

And that’s okay.

~*~

You said to meonce, “The world is systematic”That may be true butI remember youcame to me from the sky.Your wings weren’tarms, no feathers on your back.

The first system:We started withoutorder only to be sculpted by edgesFrom the worldaround us, left out in the sun to bake and take shape.

I know that ahammer came down on you—Not a hammer really, but a dimming light(with an albatross around his neck)—andShattered what youknew yourself to be.

I didn’t see it, didn’thear the noiseAnd only learnedwhy from the hushed voicesOf the stars thatsaw it all and from the light himself

There weren’tdirections on how to put you back together.It wasn’t my placeto anyway.System number twobroke downQuietly,In the same wayfireflies float at night.

System three washalf-working when you found it.It went somethinglike this:

You’re worriedyou’ll get stuck in the rain, or take a shower,Only to find thewater running off your body turns black.This is not a badsign and you know this.You know there’smerit in being a well-oiled cogAs long as the clockneeds you to tick tick tickThe problem is theimages of unused gearsPiled high in theback of your mind when the firstGraying dropletsstart pooling at your feet

Because systemthree can be fixedBut not by you, youdecided.You decided thisbefore you knew of it.Maybe it didn’thave to be system three.It could be thetenth system, the twenty-third,All broken too, butyour mind was already made up.

 And from a listwithout order, this is what it tookTo change that:The sunThe stars who sawyou shatterA flock of crowsA cat and an owlThe dim lightthat’s starting shine again and trying to put system two back together (the albatross flewaway)An eagle

To you, this ispainfully obviousBut I did forgetone:

A firefly circlingaround the moon

Now it’s learning howto turn the unpredictableInto logic and lines,it can comprehendFind gaps in the process, anticipate them tooBe the cog that stops the stuttering hands of a clock

To shine again and fly with the wings that were missingWhen you fell from the sky before meNo. That’s not right.They had always been there.

System number four is still a work in progress.The cogs understand they don’t meshBut they want to.Especially as the clock stutters again,When fingers first intertwine,When arms first embrace the familiar unfamiliar body,When lips meet for the first time.

This is normal for the fourth system.The cogs understand they don’t mesh.But they find that they can file their teethRe-shape them just enough thatEven a drop or two of oil will turn the wheel with ease.

They’ll make up for lost time.

[astrxd]

hey! so I guess you're pretty busy and i hope things are going find and wish you nothing but good luck ☺️☺️. I have a prompt! Im watching s3 of rtte and an idea just came to my brain. When Heather arrives in ep 7 of s3 Fishlegs says that she's staying with Astrid, what if at night Hiccup is like overwhelmed by thoughts, totally forgets abt that and decides to go to Astrid's hut and the two of them have to make a silly excuse or you know

A/N: Hello! <3 Thank you so much for your kind words, and for this lovely prompt! I sincerely appreciate it, and I hope that what I’ve whipped up suffices. Please do feel free to send in another, my dude! :’) (*Note: Takes place during 03x07. Not S4 compliant.)

Emergency (Alternatively titled ‘Future’)

Hiccupwas seated at his desk with several pieces of parchment spread outbefore him: one depicted the immediate waters surrounding the Edge,while another was a census of Nadders, organized by time, flocknumber, altitude, and direction. The third, however…

Thethird was simply a myriad of scribbles and doodles and scribbled-outdoodles, all completed while he made fruitless attempts to connectdisparate dots and mismatching puzzle pieces. Hiccup stared down atthe map and furrowed his brow, glancing between two documents, tryingto make sense of the numbers--

(He tapped the metal of hisprosthesis against the wooden floorboards of his hut. He drummed hisfingers on the surface of the table. He cast his gaze toward thecorner of the room, momentarily letting it linger on a slumberingToothless… Before scrubbing a hand down his face as he rose fromhis seat.)

--Even after half an hour of trying to analyze thedata, the figures glaring up at him still didn’tmake sense.

When the Nadders passed through the area earlierin the year to make their return, there had been many, many moreofthem. Granted, it was entirely possible that he may have justmiscounted the populations of the herds, or the other groups tookalternate routes, or simply were just delayed,but Hiccup was still worried -- reasonably so, too, what with thepotential things that may have caused the discrepancies between thedata he and the other riders collected.

Maybe they weren’teven delayed. Maybe some of the Nadders ended up--No. No,he refused to believe it, for the sake of his own sanity. Regardlessof how plausible it was. The thought of an entire group -- or evenmultiple flocks -- of Deadly Nadders in the Hunters’ clutches broughta sick, twisting feeling to his stomach. Frustrated, Hiccupdismissed the prospect with a huff and started to roll up the sheetsof parchment, if only to pry his eyes away from the numbers. He knew,deep down, that he was being just a littlebitparanoid, but no matter how many times he tried to reassure himselfthat things would be okay… The safety (and frightening, heartbreaking lack thereof) of every dragon out there stillmanaged to fray his nerves. They all knew what Hunters put DeadlyNadders through -- Stormfly especially -- so with all of the quills anentire flock or two would provide for them… It wasn’t themost pleasant thought, and he was basically powerless. Basically -- butnot entirely. And that’s what hurt the most.Hiccup knewthat he could do somethingtohelp; he just… Didn’t know what.Hislegs moved on their own volition. Before he could truly register it,he found himself beneath a canopy of stars and walking the pathtoward Astrid’s hut -- a walk he’s completed many a times. It’sonly when he stands outside of the side door that leads directly intoher room that he processes where he is, but at that point, he doesn’tfeel like staying in his hut -- a place where he knew that he’d becompelled to lash out. At himself, no less. Toothless didn’tneed to be woken -- not after the long day they both had.Aheavy sigh was drawn from his lips and his shoulders sagged, allwhile a sudden wave of fatigue that he wasn’t initially aware ofweighed down on him. In the midst of everything happening, Hiccup hadneglected to catch up on lost hours of sleep spent trying to figureout their next move, and a shorter temper and an inability to thinkvery rationally were both results of his carelessness.(Thatwas the ironic part. He cared so much, he’d become careless.Whenwould it end? All of the crippling irony and the mind games and thereverse psychology?)The prospect of Astrid’s company becamemuch more appealing by the moment. At least with her, he could placehis trust in her straightforwardness -- in how direct she was with him.Hiccup resigned himself to dropping his forehead against the woodendoor in surrender to his sudden wave of tiredness, and if it hadn’t been for thecool breeze sweeping across the nape of his neck, he certainly couldhave fallen asleep right then and there. A dry thought of howhilariously compromisingsucha position would be if he slept through the morning crossed his mind,but like the wind, it was gone in an instant. Withoutconsideration of how late it was, Hiccup rapped his knuckles againstthe door in a rhythm that was engraved into his heart. Sure, it waspossible that Astrid was asleep -- but it’d be fine. He just… Hejust needed to know that he wasn’tcompletelylosing his mind.That, and, with everything that happenedearlier that day, it almost felt as if he hadn’t exchanged anythingmore than a few words with Astrid. That simply wouldn’t do.Hedidn’t wait for a response -- neither of them ever did, not when itcame to their evening rendezvous, both impromptu or planned. “Hey,”he greeted, having only cracked the door open the slightest bit tofurther announce his arrival. “I really needed to--”Hisactions didn’t strike him as dire mistakes until he fully slippedinside… Because that was when he found that Astrid wasn’t in herhut alone. Sitting with her on her bed was Heather. Heather.Odin’sbeard,how did he forget?“Hiccup,”Astrid announced, blinking blankly. “Astrid,” Hiccup managed, clearly a little stunned. “He-e-ey,Heather -- hi. Aha. Hey. You’re -- hi. Heather.” “Hiccup?”Heather repeated, leaning forward a little. In the light of the room,he could see the incredulity on her face (squinted eyes and knitted brows) -- as if the pitch of hervoice wasn’t enough. Hiccup flinched at the accusatory tone andoffered a nervous laugh… And an even more nervous wave. Then, afrantic glance in Astrid’s direction revealed her half-amused,half-mortified expression to him, but quite frankly, he didn’t knowwhich side he agreed with more. Before he could stammer out anexplanation or an apology, Heather turned back toward Astrid. “That’sa door?”Hiccupmuttered a swear under his breath. He couldhavejust taken the opportunity to dip out of the hut and leave the twogirls to themselves again, but that would most likely raise morequestions. Instead, he stood his ground -- if “standing his ground”roughly translated to clearing his throat and casting his gazeelsewhere.

“It’san emergency exit,” Astrid replied -- rather smoothly, too. He was proud of her for how nonchalant she sounded, seeing as he was standing at the “emergency exit” with flushed cheeks and fidgety fingers. “Yousound surprised, Heather. Why wouldn’tIhave one of those? There’s are hatches and ladders above and beneath my bed,too. Who do you think I am?” It was as if she werecompletely nonplussed by the fact that he justwalkedinto her hut in the middle of the night with a set of quiet knocks ashis only preamble. When worded like that, it didn’t sound that bad…But when Heather sent him a wolfish smirk, Hiccup’s spine wentrigid.“Sothis must be an emergency,”Heather drawled, already about to stand up. Astrid beat her toit -- she set a hand on Heather’s shoulder and stood up first, thoughHeather rose to her feet anyway. After that, it was almost as if hedidn’t exist for a couple of exchanges.“Heprobably just needs to talk. Not an emergency.”“Oh, please, Astrid. Why else would he use your emergencydoor?”“Because,well… Well, I don’t know. He’s Hiccup. He does whatever hewants,” Astrid shrugs, her response sounding a the tiniest bit curtunder Heather’s rapid-fire retort. He would have butted in at that, and he was prepared to, but a moment of contemplation brought clarity to her statement -- it was kind of true, actually.“Validpoint,” Heather laughs. “Still, your front door was working justfine when Iusedit.”“LikeI said -- he’s Hiccup.”“ImplyingHiccupgetsto use your emergency door whenever he wants, even in the middle ofthe night?”“Well,yes -- I mean, no. Ijust, I guess I forgot to tell you? That we… Do this.These -- evening debriefs, and -- and reports! About what’s happeningon the Edge, and such. Just so we’re all on the same page, should acrisis arise.”Heather arches a brow at her.“Pardonmy asking, but I guess I should just know for future reference, ifI’ll be here a while -- are these debriefings,” Heather seems to snicker at the word, and Hiccup reddens a little when he connects the dots, “with Hiccup private, or does Snotlout or the twins of Fishlegs sit in on them?Because, you know, I can give you two your privacy--”Okay. He’dbeen a little amused by the back-and-forth taking place before him,mostly because his presence had gone momentarily forgotten, but thatcomment was a little too close to comfort -- what with the chance for Heather to make assumptions thatHiccup would rather not give the potential to start tocirculate.“Aha,haha, ha -- um, no, nothing like that, I just needed to tell Astrid… Something?” Hiccup finally interjected, lifting one hand, eventhough he already spoke out of turn. Heather snorted and set eitherof her hands on her hips; Astrid sighed and folded her arms, allowinga brief moment of silence to wash over the three of them. It’sthen, and only then, that Hiccup really notices the fact that Astridlacked both her usual braid and her armor, leaving her in but woolleggings and a lengthy tunic he’s seen her uses as night clothes -- while it’s not as if seeing her in such astate was foreign, it still felt a little… Strange. What with thecompany of a third party who was making rather suggestive comments, alongside the fact that he’s only everbeen able to see Astrid Hofferson in such a state when they werealone....Nonetheless,the wavy cascade of pale gold framing her face created an image thatwas nothing short of mesmerizing. He would have continued to stare,if not for her speaking up and slicing through the quiet.“…It’sthe Nadders, isn’t it?” Astrid guessed gently; softly -- correctly, too. Thecurious gleam in her eyes seemed to fade when he nodded, even thoughhe had confirmed her suspicions a little hesitantly. Granted, Hiccupshould have known that his worry would be painfully obvious toAstrid,of all people, but even so, he deflated upon seeing concern flood herexpression. Ah, yes. The pros and cons of being like an openbook in Astrid Hofferson’s eyes -- a pro being she could figure outwhat he was feeling or thinking with just a single glance, and a conbeing exactly that, too. While it wasn’t as if there was anythinghe needed to keep from her, nor was it as if he didn’t trust herwith his life, sometimes… Sometimes, Hiccup would feel morecomfortable knowing that it wasn’t thateasyfor her to start worrying about him. She had her own problems -- thoughmany overlapped with his own, it still didn’t always feel like thegreatest thing in the world to throw his baggage onto her shoulders,too.Then again, he also supposed that that was why theyjustworked so well: every burden was, in essence, a burden shared.Andthis was just one of them, then.“Thenumbers are concerning,” he finally states, filling the gap ofsilence that had settled between all three of them before casting abrief, apologetic glance in Heather’s direction. The slightsmugness in her expression hadn’t fully dissipated in the presence of her own tinge of worry, but she was alreadystepping away to… Give them that privacy, maybe? Her next words hadthat sort of implication, at least.“That…Sounds like an emergency. So, I’m gonna go check on Windshear,”she announced, before pausing in her steps to look over her shoulderat the two of them. “Using the frontdoor.”“Youcan stay,” Astrid assured her instead, rather quickly. She seemedto have caught herself there, and elected to then clear her throatand step forward to stand beside him, pivoting on her heels to do so.“I’ll head to Hiccup’s hut so you can get some rest.”Theentire time, Astrid hadn’t dropped her gaze from Hiccup. On onehand, the concern swimming in her eyes was maddening, but her eyesthemselves were also… Maddening.It was a little strange, since Heather was still in the room, thoughHiccup didn’t look away either.“…No,no -- if, if anything, we can just -- talk in the morning and--”Beforehe could finish, the sound of a door thudding shut had cut him off.All that remained of Heather was a memory of an impish upturn of herlips and her belongings amongst Astrid’s.“--Aaandshe’s already gone. Great,” Hiccup sighed, shaking his head. Theurge to drag his hand down his face was strong, but he opted for justrubbing his temples instead. “Now -- now, Heather thinks I just,barge into your hut in the evening using some secret side door toavoid being spotted by the gang. That’s definitely notgoingto be seen as an, an invitation, of sorts, for them to question ourprivacy.”“Yousay that as if it’s nottrue,Hiccup. If you haven’t noticed, that’s kind of exactly what youdo.” She smiled gently and took his hand, and a smile in return wasimpossible for him to deny her. “Besides, it’s only Heather. And, well, hey -- if it makes you feel any better, your expression was kind of priceless.”She laced her fingers with his, her eyes brieflyrevealing her concerns as she tugged him toward her bed. The bedframe creaked quietly as they sat down, hip to hip, shoulder toshoulder, hands still joined. Hiccup wouldn’t have wanted it anyother way.

“Ha,ha. I’m glad oneofus is getting some amusement out of this,” he drawls, causingAstrid to nudge her elbow into his side. “Me,too, babe,” she quips, laughter still in her voice -- but only for amoment. There’s a significant shift in the mood of the room, andher fingers tighten around his. “So… The Nadders?”Hiccup’sexpression falls. For a moment -- just a few -- the situation at hand hadleft the forefront of his mind. He could feel his heart race withworry, and a knot form in the base of his throat, rising and risinguntil he could hardly get out a single word without his voicesounding strained. Astrid had taken to tracing idle circles on hisknee with her free hand, which was slightly distracting… But onlyslightly.“There’sless,”hefinally manages, expression steely. “A lot less. And I don’t likethinking that--”“Iknow,” she says hurriedly, saving him from having to even utterthewords. Furrowed brows and all, he gives her an appreciative littlesmile, but it’s quick to fade.“--becauseit makes me feel like--”“Youand I both know that--”“--likeI, somehow, failedtokeep all of those--”“--noneof this--”“--Nadderssafe from--”Hiccup faltered there, so Astrid’s words wereall he heard. She lets go of her hand to wrap her arm around hisshoulders. He lets her, and conforms to the way she tugs him in,eventually leaning his head against hers. He finds unwavering comfortin the position; in her presence. “--Noneof this is your fault.”The tone of her voice was gentle andfirm; reassuring but resolute. It’s terribly Astrid,and he knows that there’s truth to her words, but he’s stillhesitant to believe her. Not when Viggo has potentially gotten hishands on innocent dragons, and not when it’s possible that Hiccupcould have probably done moretoprevent such an outcome. “…Butit feels like it is.”“It’snot,” she repeats. At this point, she’s gotten up from her seatbeside him to stand in front of him, and she’s placed her hands oneither side of his neck. Instead of remaining standing, however, shecups his chin and stoops toward the ground, making it so that she’sthe one looking up at him.

Adeliberate move. A tactic she’s employed time and time again overthe years. Hiccup knows what it means -- it means she’s serious, andhe’s being unreasonable. …As per usual, anyway. Astridangles his chin toward her, offering him the slightest of smiles whenhis eyes find hers. There’s a kiss somewhere there, and while hewas a little too lost in his thoughts to actively return it, Astridisn’t deterred by any means. When they part, her fingers arecarding through the hair at the nape of his neck and he’s hunchingover a little more, if only to be closer.“Iwasgoingto drop by yourhuttonight,” she confesses, “but I don’t think Heather would sleepthrough even mesneakingout. So maybe we both get up early instead? See if there’s anystraggling Nadders, patrol the island, keep an eye out forships? It would help to have Stormfly out there with you.”It’s a proposition he can’t refuse, so he smilesin confirmation and brushes his nose against her own before the bothof them stand up. By now, he’s comfortably settled either of hishands on her waist, and she’s got her arms looped around his neck.Hiccup boldly presses the slant of his lips to her own, kissing herquite thoroughly, before laughing a little -- for the first time thatevening, no less.“Or,”he starts, grinning, “you could just say it’s anemergency.”“Hardy-har-har,”Astrid sneers, not mean-spiritedly, as she gives him a peck on thecheek then a gentle shove toward the door. “I love you, too,” she adds, knowingly. “Nowget out and get some sleep, Haddock. Before Heather really gets an idea of what we get up to at night.”

“Edge defense fortification plans?”“Get out of my hut.”

He complied with a broad grin, butwhen he looked back… He wasn’t looking ‘back’atall.Lookingbehind him -- at Astrid -- was the equivalent of looking at his future.

[kjack89]

The Way I Am, Pt. 3/4

I’ve gotten it back to four parts. Literally no one will be excited about this but me, but there we are. Preemptive apology if there are more typos than usual in here -- my computer was being super glichy while I was writing this.

Penelope AU, ExR modern AU with some magic mixed in.

Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Musichetta leaned against the bar, smiling at Grantaire with something close to sympathy in her eyes. “How are you doing this morning, champ?” she asked.

Grantaire squinted up at her, his eyes ringed with exhaustion and heartbreak. “I thought you went home,” he managed, propping his chin up with his hand.

“I did,” Musichetta said, raising an eyebrow at him. “I slept for eight blissful hours, fixed breakfast for Bossuet and Joly and kissed them both goodbye.” She nodded at the half-full pint of beer in front of Grantaire. “You need a refill?”

Grantaire shook his head slowly, trying desperately to think of where the last eight and then some hours had gone. The only thing he had to show for it was a half-doodled sketch of a handsome blond man on the napkin next to his beer -- half-finished, because he hadn’t drawn a nose. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I think I should go home.”

At the other end of the bar, an older gentleman chortled. “He’s still got beer,” he said dismissively. “He’s not going anywhere.”

All Musichetta had to do was narrow her eyes at the gentleman for him to fall silent and turn away. She looked back at Grantaire. “So what’ll it be?” she asked. “More beer, or are you going home?”

Wordlessly, Grantaire picked up his beer, drained it, and stood, shrugging into his coat as he left the Musain, his mind far from the bar and in a mansion across town. He’d love to say it was some kind of moment of clarity, of realization that he couldn’t keep wasting his life like this. It wasn’t.

But it might just be the start of something.

Enjolras pulled the red scarf he had found in his dad’s coat pocket tighter around his nose and mouth and looked both ways before darting across the street toward the bar whose neon lights proclaimed the Café Musain. He cautiously opened the door and looked inside. The dark-haired bartender looked over at him, pausing from where she was wiping off the counter. “Well, come in, love, we don’t bite.”

“Not unless you want us to, anyway,” a curly-haired man sitting at the bar called, winking at Enjolras in a way that he assumed was meant to be sexual but was more funny than anything.

The man sitting next to him sighed and adjusted his glasses. “Christ, Courfeyrac, don’t scare the poor guy. Not everyone finds your humor as compelling as you think they do.”

The curly-haired man, Courfeyrac, waved a dismissive hand and patted the bar stool on the other side of him, beaming at Enjolras. “Well in that case, come sit by me and I’ll buy you a drink to make up for my inappropriate sexual advances.”

Almost against his better judgment, Enjolras crossed the bar and sat down next to Courfeyrac, who offered him a hand to shake. “I’m Courfeyrac and this is Combeferre,” he said, gesturing to the bespectacled man next to him. “What are you drinking?”

“Um, can I get a beer on tap?” Enjolras asked, a little hesitantly.

“Sweetheart, you can have anything you want,” Courfeyrac said, fluttering his eyelashes at him and gesturing at the bartender.

Combeferre rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake. One of these days, someone’s going to haul off and deck you one, and I won’t do anything but laugh.”

The bartender set a beer down in front of Enjolras. “Ignore them,” she told Enjolras with a winning smile. “They’re always like this, at least, they are when they’re not busy trying to overthrow the government. Can I get you anything else?”

“Um, yeah,” Enjolras said, glancing down at the beer. “Can I get a straw?”

For a moment, the bartender looked taken aback, but then she grabbed a straw off the counter and popped it into the beer. “There you are. If you need anything else, just holler. My name’s Musichetta.”

She sauntered off to take care of another customer and Enjolras turned to Courfeyrac and raised his beer in a toast. “Thanks,” he said, before slipping the straw under his scarf and taking a sip.

“So, are you hiding from the law or just hiding a bad nose job?” Courfeyrac asked, propping his chin on his hand as he smiled winningly at Grantaire.

Combeferre elbowed him in the ribs. “You can’t just ask someone if they’ve had a nose job,” he hissed.

Courfeyrac scowled at him. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to ask someone why they were white!” he protested. “No one ever mentioned anything about nose jobs.”

Enjolras snorted. “It’s fine,” he reassured Combeferre. “And yeah, I suppose you could say it’s a bad nose job, for lack of anything better to call it.” He took another sip of beer. “So what did Musichetta mean, when you’re not busy trying to overthrow the government?”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchanged glances. “We’re what you might call, disturbers of the peace,” Courfeyrac said glibly, raising his martini in a salute.

“No justice, no peace,” Combeferre muttered darkly. “We started a political activist organization when we were in university, and we’ve been trying to grow it ever since. We led the hunger march last year in the park--”

“--And the sit-in in the mayor’s office,” Courfeyrac added helpfully.

“Right, and now we’re trying to organize some kind of rally or protest or something in regards to the latest police murders,” Combeferre said. “City Hall thinks they can cover it up, but we won’t let them. We’re just...not sure how best to address it.”

He shrugged and took a sip of wine, while Enjolras leaned forward, his eyes alight with a fervor he hadn’t felt in years. “It’s fucking bullshit,” he said passionately. “And I don’t see why you can’t just take to the streets and tell it like it is -- fuck the pigs!”

Courfeyrac grinned slowly. “I knew I was going to like you.” He raised his glass for a toast. “Fuck the pigs!”

“Fuck the pigs!” Enjolras and Combeferre said in unison, clinking their glasses against Courfeyrac’s.

Courfeyrac drained his martini and beamed at Enjolras. “Of course, when you’re marching with us, shouting, ‘fuck the pigs’, people will understand you a lot better without this scarf muffling everything you say.”

Before Enjolras could even figure out what he was doing, Courfeyrac leaned forward and tugged the scarf away from Enjolras’s face, his hand falling away when he saw what was underneath. “Oh, shit,” he said, eyes wide. “That is a bad nose job.”

Enjolras flushed and quickly pulled the scarf up, but the damage was already done. Both Combeferre and Courfeyrac were staring at him, and Enjolras looked away, mentally bracing for them to run away like the rest of everyone who had seen him. Instead, Combeferre just raised his eyebrows and took another sip of wine. “Well, that face plus the message ‘fuck the pigs’ is pretty much guaranteed to get out picture in the paper.”

Enjolras chanced a look up at them. “And that’s a...a good thing?” he asked hesitantly.

Courfeyrac grinned at him. “It’d be more publicity than we’ve gotten in the past four years.” Slowly, he reached out again for Enjolras’s scarf, this time pausing until Enjolras nodded his permission slowly. “See, that’s better,” he said, pulling the scarf away once more. “And this way, you can drink your beer without a straw, because we have a friend who would absolutely kill you if he saw you drinking beer with a straw.”

Enjolras smiled slightly. “So...fuck the pigs?”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac both smiled in return. “Fuck the pigs.”

“Your paper, madame,” the butler said, offering Enjolras’s mother the newspaper folded on a silver platter.

“Thank you, Porter,” she said, grabbing the paper and unfolding it. Her eyes widened as she gaped at the headline which read, ‘Pig Protests Pigs’, splashed above a huge picture of Enjolras, snout shown for all to see, shouting in the face of a horrified policeman.

She promptly fainted, the newspaper fluttering to the ground next to her.

Across town, Grantaire stared down at the newspaper, his mouth hanging slightly open in shock before slowly curving into a smile. He stood and stretched before slowly crossing the room to the blank canvas propped on the easel in the corner. He picked up a paintbrush and tapped his chin thoughtfully, eyeing the canvas as if he knew exactly what he wanted to paint.

In the Musain, Enjolras was trying his best to hide behind his glass of beer, but it was to no avail. Total strangers kept coming up to congratulate him, or introduce themselves or just to gawk. Combeferre and Courfeyrac ran interference as much as they could, eventually dragging Enjolras to the back room of the bar. “Do you see how many people showed up?” Courfeyrac asked Combeferre, hanging onto Enjolras’s arm as they pushed through the crowd.

Enjolras rubbed the back of his neck embarrassedly. “Sorry about all this,” he muttered, but Combeferre cut him off.

“No, no, it’s a good thing,” Combeferre assured him with a smile. “We’re always trying to get more people involved with Les Amis, and sure, some are probably just here to stare like a bunch of creeps--” He shot a nasty look at a girl who had just slopped her drink all over herself and was openly oggling Enjolras. “--But we may actually get through to the rest, and that’s the important thing.”

A few minutes later, as Enjolras stood up in front of the assembled group to give the speech he had spent all day preparing on his vision about next steps for Les Amis, as he gazed out at the sea of people who were staring at him for the first time in his life not in revulsion but with interest and excitement and even, in some cases, affection, Enjolras couldn’t help but feel that maybe Combeferre was right.

After the meeting, Enjolras made his way through the crowd to lean against the bar, gesturing Musichetta over. “Can I just get a glass of water?” he shouted over the crowd.

“If you keep bringing this many customers in, you can have anything you want,” Musichetta called back, sliding a glass of water over to him.

Enjolras grinned at her in thanks and turned to head back to the back room, stopping in his tracks when he saw Grantaire standing in front of him, his hands in his pockets and a cautious smile on his face. “So you made it to the Café Musain,” Grantaire said, and Enjolras’s hand tightened on his glass of water as he barely controlled the urge to throw it in his face. “And you look...you look really good. Really happy.”

Enjolras lifted his chin slightly. “Thanks,” he said, his voice cold. “I am.”

The words ‘no thanks to you’ hung unspoken between them, and Grantaire flushed slightly, dropping his gaze to the ground. “I just...I wanted to let you know that you inspired me. Doing what you did, taking off on your own, turning your back on everything expected of you -- it made me want to be better.”

“I have to go,” Enjolras said, almost numbly, and he pushed past Grantaire, not seeing the look of hurt that flashed across Grantaire’s face as he watched Enjolras walk away.

But Combeferre noticed, his smile fading as he watched Enjolras make his way back to him and Courfeyrac. “What was that about?” he asked.

Courfeyrac followed the line of Combeferre’s sight but completely missed Grantaire, seeing only an atractive woman standing near him. “Someone sexy want to date you?” he asked cheerfully. “The perils of fame, my friend.”

Enjolras laughed, though it was without humor. “It’s nothing,” he said, brushing it off. “I’m just...I’m not really ready. To date, I mean.”

“Well, why not?” Courfeyrac asked. “All these people, there must be at least someone who catches your eye.”

Enjolras just shook his head and avoided meeting Courfeyrac’s gaze. “Actually, seeing as how I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to get on of the exact kind of people that I hate to marry me…” He trailed off, having already filled Combeferre and Courfeyrac in on the overview of his life, and Courfeyrac sighed.

“I know, I know, and I realize it must have been very hard for you, what with all the rich and handsome men throwing themselves at you,” Courfeyrac said, aiming for a joke.

But Enjolras didn’t smile. “Well, it was made a lot easier by all of them fleeing the moment they saw my face,” Enjolras said dryly.

That shut Courfeyrac up, and Combeferre, who was ever so slightly more perceptive of the two, asked quietly, “All of them?”

“Well, all but one,” Enjolras admitted. “And I thought…” He trailed off. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

Courfeyrac perked up. “So just so I’m remembering this correctly, you need to marry a blue blood to get your inheritance and break the curse, right?” Enjolras shrugged and nodded. “Well, listen. I may know a way to make that happen.”

“How?” Enjolras asked skeptically, and Combeferre frowned and echoed, “Yeah, how?”

“My former roommate, Courfeyrac said, a little smugly. “Monsieur Marius Pontmercy. Grandson of a baron. And owes me a hell of a favor.”