#“cousin” is such an easy euphemism

[leletha-jann]

Headcanon on absolutely no evidence: Violetta is Tarvek's half-sister on "the wrong side of the blanket".

This doesn't put her in the line of succession for the Lightning Crown, because we know Tarvek traces his line of descent through his mother, who has been otherwise mentioned ONCE, in extra dialogue in the second novel. I strongly suspect she died when Tarvek was very young, having successfully produced a male heir and an elder "spare", and that there was no love lost between her and Wilhelm. Not that I'm pointing fingers for murder here. (points fingers) Is it unlikely that Wilhelm Sturmvoraus went off after she died (or before) and had himself an illegitimate kid elsewhere? Just because he could, or because sometimes biology happens? No, it is not.

Tarvek doesn't officially know this, but then he tries very hard to not officially know this. Not even secretly officially. He doesn't know. He doesn't want to know. He isn't asking and would take steps to make sure no one else asked, either. Nobody is allowed to ask this question. If he knows, other people could know. If other people know, Violetta is in more danger than ever before, because that one Smoke Knight, an ambiguously-defined "cousin", who publicly and definitely doesn't like him, is one thing. A sister is a TARGET.

We know Tarvek has a very short list of people he genuinely cares about and can't handle losing, and we know Violetta is on it. Violetta is not allowed to be in more danger than she already is.

(Violetta does not know this, does not suspect, and would be furious if she found out.)

[octuscle]

For vacations I have to go to my uncles house with my cousins, and he lives in a farm, but I’m just a twink gay and I don’t feel confortable there with so many men, so can I transform them into my twink gay best friends and spend summer looking for hunks to have sex with?

I think you are thinking way too complicated. Relax. Go to the spa and get pampered. Oka, there's no real spa here in the middle of nowhere, of course, but Ol' Gus cuts your whole family's hair here. He should know his business.

You take a seat in the barber's chair. With your blond hair and pink tips, you are an exotic here. In general, the only permissible colors here seem to be brown like the wood paneling, black like the leather of the seats, and blue like the jeans of the other customers. Anyway, you've now been persuaded to give Gus a try. So you tell him that he doesn't need to cut at all, you actually just want a foam scalp massage and then have him blow dry it and a little hair wax would be nice.

Gus looks a little irritated. And washes your hair. He asks if you're going to the stadium with your cousins later. Have a few beers and watch the baseball game. Sure thing, you answer. But the beer would be more important than the game. Laughter around you. And any other plans for the weekend, asks Gus. Probably go hunting with my cousins, you say. Gus laughs and asks if that's a euphemism for fucking each other in the ass. General laughter again. You look at Gus questioningly. Could he imagine one of your chewing tobacco hillbilly relatives being gay? All gay, says Gus and brushes the loose hair from your head.

What do I owe you, you ask. Five dollars, Gus replies. Six dollars if you want another beer before you go. You give Gus ten dollars, finish the first beer in one go, take a second and sit down with the other customers.

Obviously, it's worth it to stay here and get the gossip you need. Something to fuck should be easy to find then.

[namazunomegami]

prince!toji x imperial concubine!reader

a/n: Part 3 of my drabble series is finished!! I'm not a Toji simp but writing him was a surprisingly easy process. And for the love of god I just can't finish Gojo it's so hard to handle him in this specific setting.

Sorry Toji girlies but I just can't imagine him as an emperor in the AU, but being a disgraced prince goes sooo well with his character. Hope you'll enjoy this part as much as I did while working on it!

Likes and reblogs are still appreciated <33

wc: 1060, I got carried away with the exposition

cw: Toji is a dick, smut, period accurate euphemism for an orgasm, angsty ending

credits: My one and only @notveryrussian did the proofreading again, thank u darl <33

MDNI, if you do, I'm gonna block you so hard you'll feel it in your next life

When an emperor dies, his mandate dies with him. The death of a god can shake the whole realm, it shakes the whole family. Anomalies start to happen because heaven’s throne shouldn’t stay vacant for long.

Toji almost lost the last bit of his sanity when he was summoned to the capital. It’s sickening that the court wanted him to go back to the palace and pay his respects to the recently deceased Naobito. Another blow to his already wounded pride. They want him to venerate the uncle who cast him out of the family, who banished him to a rural town to live in conditions so unfitting for his rank, with no support on top of all of that. Luckily, he’s familiar with many shortcuts to easy money.

The embalmed corpse of the late emperor is his only delight. The spacious halls and courtyards of the palaces, the carvings, the decorative paintings, thangkas, the ginormous, lush gardens made him yearn for that small house he was sent to. This place just wasn’t home anymore. Those related to him weren’t family anymore. They get through with the funeral rites, the relatives and the officials will settle the line of succession, and then he’ll leave, he has no other reason to stay here. He has no hopes to be chosen as emperor. Naobito and Jinichi already did so much damage to his name. Maybe the rest of the family just want something to gossip about for a few years, that’s why they called him back.

It’s all so tiring. The vigils, the march to the tomb, the prayers the monks recite, the offerings. He has nothing to give, not even an incense stick or a plate of fruits. He endures the rites in silence, he has no pleasant memories to reflect upon or kind words to say about him much to his cousins’ dismay. He wants to tear everything to pieces, burn the whole city down and piss on the ruins because that’s what Naobito always deserved.

After the funeral, the whole palace descends into chaos. Naobito failed to appoint an heir, every one of his kids has an equal chance to inherit the throne and the whole court sits in the Hall of Mental Cultivation to argue about the distribution of wealth, the army, and the provinces between the family. They’re like jackals, bickering over the meat on a rotten corpse.

Before he planned to sneak into the Hall of Three Rarities to look at (and maybe steal) some of the relics, the issue of the concubines was brought up.

You’re a lovely little bunch. Naobito wasn’t a man known for his gentleness, the mutual torment made you stick together, support each other. Just the thought of it makes his cold heart fill with a strange kind of comfort. You’re all so lost, having no idea what will happen to you, who will have ownership over you. You out of all of them pray every night that Naoya will never be crowned emperor. You’d rather escape, beg for money and crumbs of dry bread on the streets before you’d let him touch you.

Maybe your prejudice towards the royal family and your gut feeling was wrong this time. He’s not like any other member of his family. He’s rough around the edges but treats you all with an odd form of kindness. You and the other concubines soon grew to like his company. They await him during leisure time to serve him tea, sing to him, you even dusted off your guzheng to play an ancient melody. With each passing day, the concubines are glowing more and more, melting in his presence. He has them wrapped around his fingers and you start thinking about whether you’re an exception or not.

It’s too late to realize that you’re not.

You walk back to the Palace of Eternal Harmony together after you picked some plums in the gardens. You’re not suspecting anything. It’s already dusk, he just wants to protect you, right? He notices your hairpin, an exquisite and costly thing with dangling pearls and jewels embedded into the flower petals shaped with gold. Naobito must have liked you, he says. You shake your head and confess that you weren’t a particular favorite of his. He has seen you only for a few nights, and you don’t know how but he manages to get all the details out of you. He’s not surprised that Naobito didn’t care about your pleasure, or if he’d caused you any pain and then just threw you away like a used toy.

What a perfect match, a disgraced nephew and an unfavored concubine.

He doesn’t care about the rules in the concubine’s quarters, he lets himself into your small room. You serve him the plums just to hide your own flusteredness. He splits the fruit in half with ease and offers it back to you, handfeeding you. Drips of sweet juice stream down on your chin. There’s depravity and starvation in your eyes. Poor soul, maybe even you can’t remember the last time you were touched. He pities you.

He’s so unlike Naobito.

He has the patience to prepare you, gives you time to adjust to him. This is your first time laying on your back, belly up, every inch of you revealed to him. It makes you feel vulnerable but at least he’s looking at you. Right in the face as your features distort in pleasure. You finally experience what the older consorts called “cloud and rain”. A nice name, you think, but it’s not the right idiom to describe what you’re feeling. It’s like ascension to another plane of existence. A rumble. Rippling warmth. Overflowing joy.

You’re too absorbed in the afterglow to notice how cold he is. The sweat sticking to his skin, the tips of his fingers, everything is so cold about him. But maybe you can warm his heart up. If only he would take you with him after the succession crisis is solved. Get away from this horrid place, let you two finally heal.

But when you wake up he’s gone. He has taken your hairpin, maybe as a memento or to put a price tag on it. The only thing that remains is his seed inside of you. You feel ruined, just like he intended with everything Naobito ever owned.

[ishouldreallybeelsewhere]

I Don’t Dance; An Analysis

By someone with no idea what they’re doing

Can I just say,,, this song slaps. Like, ignore everything,, all the connections, all the subtext, all the whatever, this song (I Don’t Dance from High School Musical 2) is just rlly good. I’ve been listening to it a lot (shocker) and I have to say, perhaps pop isn’t so bad. I’m lying, of course, rock forever, but also not the point. Now, onto what I was actually planning on talking about.

Songs can say a lot, especially when paired with dances, and to see the full meaning of a song, one must look past it’s surface level meaning and dive deep into the subtext. Contextually, the song makes sense as just talking about baseball, but on a surface level only. Look into it for even a moment and you’re sure to find all the queer subtext you need to confirm the theory that High School Musical as a whole is a metaphor for accepting your queer identity.

A quick overview of the song; it starts as a friendly game of baseball between Ryan and Chad, the dancer and the jock. That’s fairly straight-forward, and as they play, Ryan encourages Chad to dance, insisting that he can and should, while dancing in ways that enhance his own playing. I should mention right now, I know fuck-all about baseball. I learnt to spell it, like, 15 minutes ago. It should not be spelt like that. Regardless, I’m gonna do my best to some-what grasp/avoid the thing entirely. Anyway, I’m getting off track. Back to what I was saying, the song is Ryan encouraging Chad to dance, in a somewhat flirtatious matter. The song ends after a dance routine involving the entirety of both teams, and then, in the following scene, Chad and Ryan are shown having a good time, talking and laughing while eating lunch, WEARING EACH OTHER’S CLOTHES!! If someone can give me a heterosexual explanation for that,,,, don’t.

Now, for what I’ve been meaning to get to; what does the song actually mean? (I use the phrase ‘Now,’ at the start of a lot of sentences, sorry in advance.)

Obviously, it’s about accepting your queer identity and living your life to its fullest, not allowing the heteronoramilty of the world hold you back. Anyone who’s ever watched the movie can tell you that, however, as is the way with any piece of explanatory writing, I have to assume that you’ve never even seen any of the movies (heathen).

The plot doesn’t matter. I don’t care about all but four characters, Zeke, Sharpay, Chad, and Ryan. This will primarily be about the latter two, and their own acceptance of who they are.

From the start, Ryan is flamboyant and feminine, the archetype of a gay man, as ‘subtlety’ isn’t really a thing in High School Musical. Less so in the sequel, aside from the sub-text of course, but they had to get that past Disney’s censors. Also, Ryan is one of the ‘villains’ of the trilogy, meaning that he can be queer-coded as much as the writers desire. Off track once again. I apologise. No I don’t. Anyway, Ryan is a theatre kid. The theatre kid, excluding his sister, of course, but as I said previously, Sharpay is not the topic of today’s discussion. Why is theatre so important you ask? Well, not only is the whole point of the trilogy theatre and musicals, but it’s often associated with queer identity, gay men, and femininity. While that is not true, necessarily, it works well as a metaphor and for subtext in the series. Ryan’s theatre/dance-centered personality is made as such because he is one of the few openly gay students in the movie. Theatre and dance, in this context, are queer. And Ryan is incredibly open with his sexuality, especially after he steps out from his sister’s shadow and comes into himself, realising who he is in his entirety.

Chad is on the opposite side of the spectrum. He’s, to put it bluntly, a Chad. Sporty, masculine, ‘straight’, everything he’s expected to be, but, secretly, he knows that that’s not quite true. He’s likely bisexual, as we never recive a label I will refer to him as such, and he knows this about himself. He accepts it, but refuses to act on it, or really acknowledge it, so it is not true acceptance. He is still hiding and suppressing part of himself, dancing only when everyone around him is doing the same, conforming to the heterosexual society that we all must reside in. So much of who he appears to be centered around sport and straightness, but after he is left by his closest friend (Asshole Troy. My cousin stunt-doubled Zac Effron once lol) he’s unsure where to go, and accepts an offer to play a friendly game of baseball against Ryan.

Ryan knows that Chad is bi. He knows that Chad is suppressing and hiding a part of himself, and, on some level, understands what that’s like, and knows how harmful that can be, and takes it upon himself to change that, and the game begins. Literally. And of all games, it’s baseball, one of the only sports I know filled to the brim with euphemisms and gay slang, and let me tell you, I know very little about both things, but I did actaully do research before this.

Chad knows what Ryan is trying to do, and rejects it, insisting that he has to ‘just do his thing.’ He steps up, the batter, insisting that he can be straight, that he doesn’t need that other part of himself to feel whole. Ryan sees clearly that this is bullshit.

‘I’ll show you that it’s one in the same, baseball, dancing, same game.’ In this line, Ryan is explaining that Chad doesn’t need to give up his masculinity or his love for sport to live in his true identity, that dancing and baseball are the same thing, different flavours. He can stay who he is while still being true to himself and stop suppressing a part of himself. He’s also flirting, a lot. Saying that he can show Chad what he’s missing.

‘I wanna play ball now, and that’s all. This is what I do. It ain't no dance that you can show me,’ replies Chad, saying how he doesn’t agree, and has no wish to change who he is, regardless of the consequences. He doesn’t think that the two parts of his identity can live in harmony, and he’s gotten this far in life while suppressing his queer side, he can do it forever. Of course, as you likely already know, dear reader, this is far from true, and Ryan has made it his mission to prove that, through song and suspiciously flirtatious dance.

‘You’ll never know, if you never try.’ Ryan now is telling Chad that he’ll never know if he can be happier as an open bisexual if he doesn’t try to expirience life in a different way, and is also telling Chad he’s dtf.

‘There’s just one little thing that stops me every time.’ Chad is on the verge of agreeing, accepting Ryan’s advances, when it cuts to his team, watching him play. He can’t come out, can’t fully accept himself, even if he wants to, without risking rejection from his team, from his friends, and having to possibly leave behind the world of sports that he so loves. The masculinity is fragile in this one, I must say. But his team not backing him up, leaving him behind, that scares Chad more than anything at that point in his life. Even if it is living his truth, he won’t risk the life already built up around him. In his eyes, nothing would truly be worth it. But Ryan won’t give up on him.

Then the pair go back and forth, arguing over whether Chad has it in him to accept it, risk everything to be who he truly is. ‘If I can do this then you can do that.’ Ryan is telling Chad that if he can play baseball while still retaining his queer identity, then Chad can do the same while dancing. Doing one thing does not invalidate or cancel out the other. He can, and should, do both, to become a more complete version of himself. However, Chad’s team is still supporting him only in baseball, at this point in the song anyway.

‘Hey, batter, batter. Hey batter, batter, swing.’ At this point, no one is actually swinging at the ball, showing that this is not what they’re talking about. ‘Swing that way,’ is often used to refer to whom one is attracted to, and Ryan is telling Chad to ‘swing,’ to come to terms with his attraction to men, and to Ryan himself. While they are singing this, Chad is literally approaching first base, not too dissimilar from the bases in a relationship. Like, any other sport, any one at all, and they had to pick this one. Even urban dictionary agrees it’s gay as all hell.

‘Bases loaded, do your dance. It’s easy.’ Here, Ryan is telling Chad that baseball is almost a dance on its own, it requires movement and coordination like dance, and at this point Chad can’t disagree, because the bases are loaded (I do actually know what that means) and he has to hit the ball and free them up, else something happens (reaching the end of my baseball knowledge sorry).

‘I've got what it takes, playin my game. So you better spin that pitch. You're gonna throw me, yeah.’ Here Chad is admitting that Ryan is distracting him, his dance and words throwing him off his game. ‘I’ll show you how I swing.’ Chad is play-flirting now, not-quite-mockingly responding to Ryan while dancing, ever so slightly, while still remaining in the game. He comes closer to accepting it than he has before, but still refusing to truly accept it.

With Ryan’s line, ‘hit it out of the park,’ we return ever so slightly to the literal playing of the game, and Ryan telling Chad to give it his best shot, showing his support despite being on the opposing team. Moments later, members of Chad’s team begin dancing as well, using the movements to enhance their play somewhat, and, subtly, showing their support for dancing and all that comes with it. Chad, however, has still not reached that point.

‘Lean back, tuck it in, take a chance. Swing it out, spin around, do the dance.’ Ryan’s now explaining how connected dancing and baseball really are, how they can easily coexist, of course playing into what Ryan has been trying to convince Chad of the whole time, that he can accept himself and still remain as Chad-like as he wants.

‘I wanna play ball, not dance hall.’ Chad doesn’t care, instead staying steadfast in his position that sport and dance must stay seperate, but his actions betray his words, as, however mockingly it may be, he does in fact dance along to those lines.

‘I can prove it to you til you know it's true. 'Cause I can swing it, I can bring it to the diamond too.’ Ryan is not giving up. He’s trying his best to say that he’s a dancer, sure, but his skills help him on the field. Were he not a dancer, he would likely not be as good at baseball as he is, explaining that if you are repressing a part of yourself, then you are not living up to your full potential, and not living life to its fullest.

‘You’re talking a lot, show me what you got.’ Prove it, Chad is saying as he throws the ball. And Ryan swings, and hits it, sending it far out over the playing field, proving his point, and with that, Ryan relents. Now, as he says he doesn’t dance, he’s dancing with his whole team behind him. They’re showing their support, and the dance becomes almost making fun of his past stance, and now he and Ryan flirt relentlessly through the song, as they dance.

They repeat their banter, all while dancing, and they come extremely close, closer than anyone else in the court, coming closer and closer to first base.

‘You can do it.’ It’s Chad’s team now, dancing behind him, showing their support for him, and insisting that he can dance, he can accept his identity in its whole, and they will still be behind him, still accept him for who he is. Chad and Ryan dance across from each other, back and forth, all of both teams and the crowd, all of them showing support.

Even as it returns to Chad batting, he does so bouncing on his toes to the music, and as he scores a home run, clearing the bases, each of his team members who are on the bases reach home with a flourish, a dance move of their own, even though they themselves are straight. Likely.

However, during the whole song, Ryan and Chad were openly flirting, the song is many things, as Chad knew his sexuality, he just wasn’t comfortable enough to admit it. At first the flirting was jokingly, on Chad’s side anyway, but tensions rise as the song continues, and Ryan makes sure Chad understands that this isn’t a joke, he means it. And that takes a few minutes for Chad to truly accept. The song is about self-acceptance and the chemistry between the two characters, more chemistry than literally any other characters, including Troy and Gabriella.

As the song ends, and Chad scores a home run, winning the game, the two fall over each other at the home base, and it’s over, the scene is anyway, and with the end of the game comes the end of Chad’s suppression. He can finally accept his bisexuality with the knowledge that his team will stay behind him and that he can be happy with a man just as he could with a woman, something that prior to this song, he didn’t truly believe.

And then, in the next scene, Ryan and Chad are wearing each other’s clothes, talking about the game in a far friendlier manner than any previous interaction. Together, they have hotdogs and good conversation, and the swapping of their clothes, including hats, implies that they totally fucked. Not to sound insensitive, obviously, but please, if you can think of any other explanation, please enlighten me.

Now, how does this tie into the rest of High School Musical? I should mention now I’ve not seen the third one and can barely remember the other two. However, I believe I know enough for my point to have some grounds. In this movie trilogy, theatre is queerness, as I have already explained, and conforming to society is heteronormativity. The path of Troy accepting that he loves theatre and basketball at the same time is one of accepting himself in his entirety. While I don’t personally believe that the character himself is queer, it is still a path of acceptance that still resonates with much of the LGBTQ+ community who would watch this movie.

The whole idea of the series is rejecting the status quo and living your life without rejecting any part of yourself. This is taken to another level between Chad and Ryan, someone who has accepted himself completely, and someone who doesn’t want to give up the life he has. There is little else to be said on the matter (LIES! I could talk about this for so long) so it appears time to wrap it up.

I don’t care that much about High School Musical. That may seem surprising, but before this weekend, I couldn’t tell you the character’s names. It is a strange feeling to fall so completely into something that you ignore all schoolwork to write an analysis (strong word) of a clip of a movie. I downloaded the Osu map (after finding it by accident) and played it until I got an S, even tho I’ve had the game only for a couple weeks, barely ever play it, and the easiest version of the map was 2.3 stars. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to it, and I had to finish this piece of writing so I could have some semblance of peace, as all my friends are tired of hearing about it but I need to get my thoughts out. Perhaps now that this is done I can pay attention to the science class that’s been happening around me. I think I’ve said all I can, and I hope that is enough to satisfy my mind. And I am well aware that there is someone out there who has done this with fewer and better words, but I don’t really care.

TLDR; High School Musical 2 is gay, and even more gay than that is Chad and Ryan. Thank you and goodnight.

[sirphillipcranestanaccount]

Okay how about 10 for franchel?

Hello Darling, here I am 3 weeks later with the story! Once again in the L&F AU

Francheal- Skating

Michael was sitting in the open trunk of his SUV waiting for John and Francesca to arrive. It was a beautiful day and he was excited to see his cousin and do an activity that they loved as kids.

He looked down at his roller-blades. He wouldn’t admit to Fran and John that he had gone out and bought a new pair just for this occasion. In fact, he now was retracing his mental steps as to how the three of them had decided on the activity.

“Michael!” he heard a sweet feminine voice shout. Francesca came rolling up to him on a pair of white roller-skates with pink wheels. She was breathtaking. Her hair was in a messy bun and the sun kissed her auburn hair in the most beautiful way. Also, the combination of the shorts she was wearing and the skates did wonders for her legs.

He tried to distract himself by looking for his cousin.

“Hey Frannie, where’s John?” he said.

“Oh, he got caught up with something at the office and can’t join us today.” Francesca replied.

“Oh,” Michael said, trying to hide his anxiety, “that’s too bad.”

“Yes, I’m afraid all you’ll have is me for company” she joked.

“If only you knew,” he thought. Michael found it easy enough to distract himself from the admiration of his cousin’s wife when John himself was around, but when it was just Michael and Fran, he felt completely bewitched.

It didn’t help that Francesca showed an interest in his conquests, and would no doubt ask for every scintillating detail of what happened with the girl she had seen him take home from the bar the other night.

“Are you ready to roll?” she asked, tilting her sunglasses down showing her gorgeous blue eyes,

“Uhh, yeah, in a second” he said, scrambling to put his roller blades on, “I’ll be honest with you it’s been awhile since I’ve been on a pair of blades.”

“I’ll be sure to go easy on you,” she smiled as she skated with grace, doing small spins while she waited for him.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Michael asked with curiosity.

“I did figure skating when I was a kid and roller derby in college,” she said.

“You did roller derby?” Michael said, “That makes no sense and a lot of sense at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I mean, when I first met you, I thought you were like, a delicate girly-girl, but you’re actually a competitive monster.”

“Okay, I changed my mind, I’m not going to go easy on you,” she said.

“Vindictive too,” Micheal joked as he stood up.

Francesca replied with a punch to his shoulder.

“Ouch!” Michael cried.

“Oh come on, that wasn’t even that hard, you big baby” Francesca said, “come on, let’s roll.”

Michael pushed off and was doing much better than he thought he would. The movements and engagements of his muscles were coming back to him rather quickly and he was able to keep up with Francesca.

“So, Mike,” Francesca said, slowing her roll so they could converse more easily, “what happened with that blonde from the other night?”

Micheal gulped and put on an unaffected air.

“You mean Trixie?” he said.

“Oh my god, is that her real name?” Francesca laughed.

“That’s what it said on her driver’s license.”

“Oh that’s too good, did she tell you what she does for a living?” she asked.

“She’s actually an aerial artist with Cirque Du Soleil” Michael responded. He looked over at Francesca to see her smile and eyes wide with delight.

“So she’s pretty flexible?” she asked.

“She sure is,” Michael said looking down, somewhat embarrassed.

“Oh come on Micheal, don’t be shy, I want to hear everything.”

Micheal took a deep breath and looked ahead, trying to think of ways that he could tastefully allude to the flexibility and prowess of his most recent conquest when he saw something on the trail ahead of them.

Oh no.

There was a small child tottering across the trail chasing a ball and they were coming up too fast to break without Micheal running into the kid and Francesca falling flat on her face.

“Frannie, look out!” Micheal said, quickly swerving, taking them both off of the trail. The second their skates hit the grass they went tumbling down the small hill off of the trail.

They were rolling for what seemed like a full minute before they came to a stop. Michael was on top of Francesca. And it was only for a moment, but he looked down at her, and his chest ached. The feeling of having her underneath him, breathing heavily, her hair mussed in the most beautiful way possible, was something he would never get to experience outside of this very moment. He wanted it to last longer, but he knew it couldn’t. She was his cousin’s wife, his best friend’s wife. He pulled himself away, practically jumping off of her.

“I’m very sorry about that,” he said in short tones, “there was a little kid on the trail.”

“Yeah I saw him right before you moved us out of the way. Thank you.” Francesca said, gathering her breath.

Micheal needed to be somewhere else as soon as possible. He didn’t know where he needed to be, but he needed to be somewhere that Francesca wasn’t.

He stood up and helped her back on her feet and back to the trail, but then he decided to put on an act.

“Oh,” he said, looking at his phone, “speak of the devil, Trixie is texting me.”

“Really?” Francesca asked with excitement, “what did she say?”

“Uhhhh, her cat is stuck in a tree,” Michael said, thinking he wouldn’t be teaching improv classes any time soon.

“Is that some sort of euphemism?” Francesca asked.

“No, her cat is really stuck in a tree,” he said, “she needs me to help.”

“Isn’t she an acrobat?” Francesca said.

“That doesn’t mean that she can get her cat out of a tree,” he snapped.

Francesca looked taken aback.

“I’m sorry, I just have to get going and help her, I’ll see you later. Give John my love,” he said, and he skated off leaving Francesca a little bit frustrated and very bewildered.

[edmund-valks]

Ilandreline - Just One Cookie

(( Part I: The Call ))

(( Part II: A Compound Beginning ))

If you listened closely enough, you could hear the emptiness breathing.

It was fascinating to consider, or would have been if it weren't also slightly terrifying.  There was no reason for this space to sound like the lungs of some unutterable beast, yet it did.  Everything she knew about the Shadowed Path said it was empty, that nothing dwelt here and nothing could.  Perhaps nothing did.  What if the very substance of the Path was alive in some fashion?  The implications were-

Not important right now.  That was her mother's voice, reminding her that there would only be time for later speculation if she lived to do it.  Smart folk did not dally on these roads, even those who knew how to walk them.  They were treacherous, and Ilandreline did not mean their terrain.  She'd lost a distant cousin to them more than a century earlier, and supposedly even the one who'd known enough to open the First Tree to the darkness at its roots hadn't known enough to come back.

But they were fast.  She'd used them to get to Kalimdor in a few days, or to get from Tirisfal to her family's lands in an hour.  Time and distance worked differently here, or perhaps they worked exactly the same and locationality was the odd one.  There were multiple frames of reference to choose from, but they all boiled down to the same result: travel here was vastly more efficient than on Azeroth.  Which is why you need to get moving instead of standing around!

Her feet started moving again, picking their way over what she assumed counted as "the ground".  It was definitely dirt-like, and there were… grassish things… to either side, but it didn't smell quite right.  Not for nature, at least.  Most plants didn't smell so strongly of iron.  No, not iron.  She sniffed again, trying to place it.  Ah, right.  Blood.  Fresh blood, at that, before it dulled to a brown stain on the stones.  She wondered what this place would look like in sunlight.  Would its appearance match the sharp scents?  Could it even exist under such harsh light?

Despite carrying no torch, Ila was grateful for the sun's absence.  Her sensitive eyes could remain free of the goggles for a little longer, taking in all the subtle variations of shadow that were lost in the harshness of day.  She hadn't noticed how much she'd missed living with naked eyes until she'd started visiting with Granny Laine.  The Respite was a lot of things, but even Silverpine gloom didn't compare to the tranquil shade of their forest.  When she’d left the Ghostlands a few years ago, she’d felt like she had no home; now it seemed she’d found two.  Ilandreline smiled at that, letting her mind wander as much as her body.

Time definitely didn’t function normally in the space.  The pocket watch she’d made in her early days with the Fence told her it had been an hour, but her legs said it was much longer than that despite only feeling like fifteen minutes had passed.  She pushed on, digging into her snack bag to put some energy back into her muscles.  An hour later by internal reckoning -- and half that by the watch -- she stumbled out of sheer exhaustion and decided maybe it wasn’t time to get back up just yet.  Had it been two hours or twelve?  How far had she gone?  Why were her first days’ meals gone already and how was she still hungry?

Her eyelids were heavy, far heavier than they should’ve been.  “Fuck it, nap time.”  The words came out slurred.  It was a struggle just to move her pack beneath her head, to use it as a pillow.  Before she drifted off, Ila stuffed one of her grandmother’s cookies into her mouth, figuring there was no better time for some homemade coziness than immediately before passing out to sleep entirely unprotected in the nightmarish wilderness-phase running tangent to her plane of origin.  Aurelaine often joked she’d baked quite a few dishes with a lot of love in her younger days, where love was a euphemism for any number of exciting poisons.  As she swallowed the last of the cookie and drifted into the deeper darkness of sleep, Ilandreline was quite positive she could taste some of that same love now.

***

Waking up felt surprisingly pleasant and not at all terrifying.  Granny Laine was there, looking amused, and a vine had grown over her, but otherwise everything seemed… fine.  Good, even.  Ila stood and stretched, yawning, considering the last time sleep had left her so refreshed.  Never?  That sounded right.

"Couldn't help sneaking a treat before bed, eh?"  Her grandmother's voice was mock-chiding, the only good kind of chiding to receive from her.  "I should've known."

The vine tried to slither back around her leg, so she kicked it.  "You didn't give me cookies to not eat them.  It was lonely and I thought a taste of home would be nice.  Didn't expect it to, I dunno, summon you or whatever."

"Is that what you think they did?"

The young elf shrugged, gathering her gear and preparing to get back on the road.  "You're here, aren't you?  Shall we?"

Her grandmother made an indeterminate noise in her throat but began walking beside her nonetheless.  It was nice, really.  They'd gone for a few strolls back home, but there were always people around to cause trouble.  Not here.  It was just the two of them and an entire ecology built on what sure seemed to be carnivorous plants.

They walked in silence for some time, only pausing for Ilandreline to sip the water she'd brought, trying to get the leftover tastes from the night out of her mouth.  Everything, even the air, had an unusual taste; not of decay as she'd expected.  Instead it was something remembered from childhood, one of those memories that hid if you looked straight at it.  She'd have to sneak up on it by pretending to be interested in something else.

"So is this one of those things where we walk and you point out little things I need to know to survive or grow or whatever?"

She saw the cryptic smile from the corner of her eye.  "Something like that, perhaps.  Do you still need me holding your hand?"

"What?  No!  I just… not all of this comes easy, you know that.  I'm fine with making things up as I go, but that's really dangerous with… this stuff."  Ila gestured broadly, encompassing their entire surroundings.  "I like to have the numbers on my side.  There aren't any numbers here, no science.  It's all, I don't know, epistemological gradients or something."

Aurelaine laughed, a gravelly sound bordering on coughing.  A chortle!  That's what one sounds like.  "You're not wrong, child.  I'm only along to observe.  Maybe I can point something out that helps; maybe I even will.  This is your journey, though, not mine.  I've had my share already, paid the prices."

That made sense.  They continued, once more quiet, moving too fast and too slow at once, causing everything around them to be in perfect detail as it warped under the effects of tunnel vision.  The metallic taste remained in the back of her throat, tickling the corners of recollection.  She refused to focus on it, knowing that to do so would ensure she never remembered the answer.

Everything changed from one blink to the next.  The landscape was even darker now, near blinding to her gifted sight.  Her nostrils flared, the distinct aroma of blood foremost in the air, enough to make one hungry.  Or perhaps that was unrelated; journeys required food.  As she went for her trail mix, something caught her wrist, stopped it entirely.  Frowning, she glanced down to find a rubbery tendril wrapped around her arm.  "Fuck off," she said, getting no reaction.  The next best idea would be to cut it, but the only knife she had at the moment was not one she was willing to risk on a simple tentacle.  She looked over to her grandmother instead.  "Any chance you can do something about this?"

Grey eyebrows arched as eyes flicked from Ilandreline’s face to the appendage and back.  “Of course I can.”  She paused then deliberately added, “I won’t.”

Should’ve expected as much.  “This one of those ‘your journey, your problem’ moments?”  When Aurelaine nodded, she sighed.  Time to figure it out then.  There was a way; she was supposed to find it.  Trial by fire and all that.

“If I go solving your problems,” the predictable lecture began, “you’ll keep expecting me to give you the answers.  We both know that’s not how you learn.  You want to see the whole process, derived from first principles.  That way you can extend the logic as far as it goes, come up with your own hypotheses.  It also ensures you aren’t limited by the pace of your teacher, doesn’t it?”

The fraction of her consciousness paying attention laughed.  “Sure does.  Saves them the trouble of trying to answer all my ‘why’ questions, too, so it’s really a service when you think about it.  Don’t have to ask why if I’ve already done the math.”

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware that you’re infuriating, Lina, you don’t have to remind me.”  Dry humour ran in the family even if it skipped a generation.  “Getting back to the matter at hand, I’d simply remind that little pest about the order of things.  It’s a remnant, a cast-off, a weak afterthought of a failed god’s stray thoughts.  A pale imitation of the majesty to be found in the Great Dark, yearning to be more than it ever could.  I’d simply banish it and move on.”

That was one possibility then, banishment.  And how did banishing work?  Ila tried to dredge up the memories of mostly futile arcane schooling, seeking the bits that had remained.  Summoning circles… banishing circles?  An inversion of process, though the commanding nature remained constant.  How did that work for her, though?  She knew how to draw the runes, but had never been able to power them independently.  Blood would work, of course, had she prepared the circle already.  There had to be another way.

She rolled back through the words, sifting through them more by “feel” than analysis.  Hunches were the backbone of discovery; you felt something would be the answer, so you thought through the possibility.  What else had been hinted at?  Remnant.  Afterthought.  Failed.  Imitation.  Yearning.  Afterthought-Imitation-Yearning.  Was there something there?  She ran her tongue along the backs of her teeth, tasting iron and arsenic and something more as her mind kicked into gear.

The order of things.  These paths were bored through the near-realms of Azeroth by the so-called Old Gods, the entrapped dwellers-between-stars her grandmother held in such low esteem.  A trapped god was no god at all, for a proper god could not be limited.  That meant any of their leftovers were inherently inferior to the powers receiving her family’s offerings.  Not that creatures spawned from the lesser entities recognized Glimmerbow authority, but they should have.  There was that connection, like distant cousins where one is heir to a throne and the other is a cast-off from some hedge knight.

Oh, is that it?  Connectivity?  Like to like?  The tendril tightened, squeezing her bones.  It was starting to hurt.  If she waited too much longer, she might have to finish her trip with a shattered wrist.  Time to see if I learned anything.

Ilandreline focused the entirety of her consciousness on the wriggling mass, willing her vision to bore through the layers to see down to where it was no longer a physical appendage.  Deep down, it was a thoughtform, a psychic remnant, a projection, and she needed to see that.  How long it took to finally happen, she didn’t know.  She was drenched in sweat, and shaking from the effort, but she could see it clearly.

Banishment would require antithesis, but… that’s not what this is.  We’re the same, aren’t we, cousins from the same blood?  I can’t banish myself.  So what if…  She turned most of her attention inward, leaving only enough out to keep firm mental grasp on the essence of her assailant.  There was this dead-end creature left behind by one of the Four… and then there was her.  They were different, except where they weren’t.  Similarity was what she needed now.

She burrowed into herself, pushing through the layers of supposed sophistication.  On the lowest level she was not an elf, or even something shaped.  She was an extension of the universe’s primal forces, a conduit of the Eternal Dark.  At that point, she was what the tentacle thought itself to be.  Letting herself dwell entirely in that space, she lost her self and called out to this distant cousin.  See me, her mind cried, know me for what I am!

Their sameness was her focus, to establish communion.  Something resonated -- somehow -- drawing the psychic echo toward her.  She could feel its alienness, the oil-slick of fractal madness in its relict consciousness, just as surely as she knew her own essence was vastly more potent.  What others would call the taint of her heritage was a strength here; she formed a pseudopod of self, vibrating midnight purple, and whipped outward.  The sensation of startlement rippled across her mind, followed immediately by the primal panic of something being drawn to its inexorable demise.

The tendril was swallowed within her, its corrupt form dissolving within her purity of faith.  A priest of the Glimmerbows was an architect of dissolution, a bringer of endings to foster the chaos of the new.  What she hadn’t expected was the way it became a part of her.

Ila had never been at war in her own mind before.  This severed piece of a dead un-god struggled with all its might to avoid being broken down, flailing every which way.  For a moment she worried she might lose and end up a prisoner in her own flesh.  Then reason reasserted itself, and the flexibility of mind her grandmother had praised made clear its value.  She bent without breaking, absorbed the harshest assaults, returned to form without permanent deformation.  And then she swallowed it whole, allowing the thing to be torn apart and joined with her essence.

Shaking so hard she couldn’t have written a single legible letter, the elf opened her eyes.  Her grandmother faded from sight, though her approving gaze lingered.  The overlapping flavours of multiple poisons lingered, dancing over her taste buds and scratching at her throat.  She had no idea where she was, though she knew she had been walking all this time.  The ligature marks of the tentacle remained on her forearm, though, proof that something had happened, that she had conquered the smallest challenge.

Several deep breaths later, the shivering stopped.  Her whole body still tingled, the aftereffects of an adrenaline overdose, but that was manageable.  She took a swig of water to put moisture back into her body, then pulled the “map” from her inside jacket pocket.  It was more algorithmical than cartographical, but she read it as easily as Thalassian.  There was… a place to be, and she was much closer now than when she had started.

Through an act of will, Ilandreline set her legs in motion again.  There would be others, she knew.  This realm was made from the dreams of god-corpses, an afterimage of what they’d tried to make real.  But she had proof they paled before the strength Aurelaine had cultivated in her.  Let the dead gods try their worst.

Stretching out through the mental channels her hallucinations had opened, she tasted the planar gradient and turned toward her destination.  Plum was home and nightmare was the enemy, but blood and bone and leaf and light showed the way.  Not entirely certain the poisons had actually left her system, Ila climbed toward her destination unaware of the horrific grin on her face.

[drunkcnsunlight]

--- promise me, that we will always be together? in those days, it had been so easy to make his sister those promises. as a little boy, and even as a young man, jaime’s loyalties did not need to become divided. he’d been taught the same as his other two siblings--- the maintenance of the HOUSE LANNISTER was all that mattered, and all of their efforts needed to go towards safeguarding their lands, titles, and members. back then, nothing but CERSEI mattered to him. he was hers to command, and he would do as she said without pushback. but his life became vastly more complicated, as he came to care not only about donning his WHITE CLOAK, but about deserving the role that it represented. as he realized that people of other houses had HONOR. as he grappled with all of the terrible things that he’d done. ser jaime had a moral conscience, and he felt all that he did quite deeply. he’d pushed a little boy out of a window, crippling the child for life. he’d strangled his cousin with his own hands. he’d slain too many innocents to quantify, and his victims’ bones were buried under the battle grounds that he crossed, without batting an eye. so much of it had been so that he could protect HIS SISTER--- their relationship. reputation. love. CHILDREN. but eventually, his reserves ran dry, and he could no longer defend the horrible decisions that he’d made. some in her name, and some in his own. jaime was meant to be a BETTER MAN than the monster that he made himself into. tyrion believed in his potential--- his little brother believed that he was a good man. as did brienne. as had the members of HOUSE STARK, for a brief amount of time.

ever since he’d arrived in this new world, pain and grief greeted him as old friends. of course, there was nothing friendly about them, but... the man was in no mood to alter his euphemisms. he’d spent the last few nights crying. feeling lost and alone in the world. unable to raise his youngest children. knowing that the woman who had once been the love of his life was engaged to another. jaime had not always known that he and cersei would not marry. the targaryens wed BROTHER AND SISTER for thousands of years, the pair of siblings would whisper to each other during the nights when they were tangled between the sheets with each other. why can we not do the same? the memory left a bitter taste in his mouth, as jaime tried not to think about CERSEI at this time. as he tried to remind himself that what he’d done.... he’d done for GOOD REASONS. none of it was meant to be a betrayal to his sister. no matter what he chose, he was going to LOSE--- one way or the other. but even as doubts filled his mind, he reminded himself of one truth--- it was one of the few that he knew with confidence. he never would have forgiven himself, if he had not RODE NORTH. if he elected to hide himself behind the high walls of the RED KEEP, while men, women, and children died for him. for his sister. for their unborn babies. jaime was sitting alone, beneath a tree, when the visage of his sister’s lover entered his view. jaime swallowed hard, no longer interested in the sandwich that he’d placed at his side. “taena of myr,” jaime began, refusing to meet her gaze, as he attempted to keep the pain out of his voice. the distaste, the disdain that he may not have deserved to feel. JEALOUSY. regret, remorse, rapture. “i did not expect to see you here,” the man said simply, before he stopped talking. he did not trust his heart--- or his tongue--- not to betray him at this moment. all he felt was pain, and he knew that if he showed an inkling of it to HER, then his sister would find out promptly. she was the victor--- she’d already won. no matter what he did.... or did not show.... SHE’D WON. 

@goldenghosts​

[empressofmankind]

The Outcome Justifies The Deeds

Fandom: A Song of Ice & Fire / Game of Thrones

Character/s: Tywin Lannister, Gerald Lannister of Lannisport

Location/s: The port city of Lannisport

Premise: There were better ways to go about proposing this betrothal but then Tywin wouldn’t be Tywin

Mood: Schadenfreude

Warnings: Tywin being Tywin, I GUESS

NOTE: Set ca. 289 AC, a few short months after the Greyjoy Rebellion, and thus 10 years before the start of the books

O   O   O

Lord Gerald Lannister of Lannisport was quick to rise when Ser Elbrand, commander of his household guards, entered, with the tall figure of Lord Tywin Lannister following close behind. Gerald frowned. The patriarch of House Lannister wore an asymmetrically cut, burgundy gambeson and a riding cloak the dark taupe of gathering storm clouds. The cloak’s leather-reinforced shoulders were covered with a fine pelt the same shade of pale ochre as his sideburns. His finely worked gorget with its rearing, gilded lions, was the only concession to his identity. The Lord of Casterly Rock had dressed down for the occasion and was unaccompanied by household guards of his own. He’d come here alone. Gerald’s frown creased deeper with concern. He had the unquiet suspicion he wasn’t going to like what Lord Tywin had to say.

“Gerald.” Tywin inclined his head minimally, by way of a greeting.

Gerald made a gesture towards one of the comfortable chairs in front of his desk. “Tywin. Please, sit. Elbrand, you may leave us.”

“My Lords.” Elbrand gave a curt bow before turning and leaving his Lord’s study, the other household guards in tow.

Gerald took care to sit down a fraction later than Tywin did. By all counts, they were second cousins and peers, both of them Lords by lineage and holdings. However, like every time he found himself before Tywin, his stomach lurched as he stared at the socio-political chasm between them which felt as insurmountable as the cliffs of Casterly Rock itself.

Tywin’s hand rested on the gilded pommel of his longsword, the precious metal winking between his fingers. “There is a matter of some import that I wish to discuss with you.”

“If it concerns the shipping revenues-.”

“No. It concerns your daughter.”

Gerald's gaze snapped up. His daughter?

Tywin’s face was inscrutable.

A few years previous, Gerald’s eldest daughter, Loren, had wed Maron Greyjoy, second son to Lord Balon Greyjoy. The match had been made in an attempt to secure peace on the high seas as well as resolve that unfortunate matter with the Stark. Not five months ago, Lord Balon had tried to secede from the Iron Throne. Loren had fled the Iron Isles and returned home, unharmed, praise the gods. When word of her return reached Gerald, he’d implored his cousin they find his eldest daughter. They had found her soon enough but instead of coming home, she’d insisted she take part in the further repression of the rebellion. Tywin had humoured her. Had she drained that leniency already? If she’d crossed him they were all in for a very sorry time.

Gerald sighed as he rested his hands on his desk and laced his fingers.  "If Loren has given offence, I sincerely apologise on her behalf."

Tywin pursed his lips. “I have a betrothal proposal for her, now that her previous marriage is null.”

Gerald frowned, his fingers lacing tighter. She had offended him, then. They needed - he, needed - to rebuild Lannisport. The option to wed Loren to one of the merchant Houses and thereby secure their allegiance was vital in assuring the port city would return to its former prominence. There was no way Tywin hadn’t deduced this for himself. “I don't understand. Jaime is in the Kingsguard.”

Tywin shook his head and Gerald thought there was a hint of amusement ghosting his hawkish features. It was terrible to behold. “No, not to Jaime.”

Gerald feared what he may say next, that he might suggest wedding her to his dwarf son.

“To myself.”

Gerald stared at him, his fingers unlacing. “Beg your pardon?”

Tywin pulled his head back, like a horse about to balk the reigns. “Did I stutter?”

Gerald frowned, swallowed, and frowned deeper still. Tywin was their liege lord and already kin. Loren’s marriage to him would net them nothing they didn’t already have. Worse, it would lose them their one assured means to binding a prominent ally their support to them. Gerald tried to keep the disbelief from his voice. "You, wish to wed Loren, yourself?"

The thin line of Tywin’s lips managed to become thinner still. "Yes."

How. Why. Gerald had so many questions, none of which he dared ask. Ever since Lady Joanna’s death, the Lord of Casterly Rock hadn’t so much as feigned an interest in other women. In fact, he’d become so infamous for his blunt refusals that the ‘perils of lion hunting’ had practically become an euphemism. The ladies of prominent Houses had kept up trying in spite of it for an admirable amount of years. Until Tywin had resigned as Hand and retreated from court and that was that. What had changed?

“You cannot be serious,” Gerald said, even though Tywin seemed as serious as the grey plague. He’d laced his fingers again, kneading them against each other. He had to dissuade him. Somehow.

Tywin pursed his lips. “I can assure you, I am.”

Gerald shook his head. “It pains me to say it but Loren is unsuitable. She’s wilful and disobedient-.”

Tywin leaned back in his seat, rubbing his fingertips past his chin and lips. "And pregnant."

"What?!" Gerald exclaimed as he rose, his fists hitting the sturdy wood of his desk. "Those damnable Greyjoys!"

Tywin regarded him calmly, amusement lingering in his pale green eyes. It curled one corner of his thin lips just so. "No. Not by that Greyjoy wastrel."

Gerald frowned, opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He sat back down and laced his fingers once more. He had realised Loren must be pregnant with Tywin’s child. He looked up at him. “How dare you.”

Tywin crooked an eyebrow, unimpressed. "I am here to arrange our betrothal, aren't I?"

Gerald clenched his jaws, his fingers tightening.  "You cannot do this."

Tywin’s second eyebrow rose to join the first.  “I can and I will.”

Gerald squared his shoulders. "No."

"No?" Tywin repeated, his lingering amusement snuffed like a candle. His hand dropped from the pommel to the hilt of his longsword as he fixed Gerald in place with his gaze.

Gerald lifted his chin and forcefully resisted the urge to cower. "Arrangements are already under way for her to wed Willas Tyrell, son of Lord Mace Tyrell.”

Tywin’s wry expression made it clear he rather pitied the crippled young man already. The Tyrell boy was soft and a decade Loren’s junior, she’d wipe the floor of Highgarden with him. Regardless, she was a woman grown and had made her decision concerning this matter which so happened to align with his own. “The Tyrells won’t wed their precious heir to a daughter pregnant with a bastard."

Gerald bristled. "Your bastard."

Tywin pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing with displeasure. "I am certain I have no idea as to what you’re insinuating."

It was then that Gerald realised that Tywin would do as he pleased.  His visit here was a formality, a civil pretence to the proper way of things. He hadn’t come here to ask him anything, he had come here to hand him his decision. Its only courtesy was that he told him himself instead of making him hear it in the street. If it was true, and Loren was indeed pregnant, he’d come out looking the benevolent Lord too, taking her to wife.

Tywin picked up Gerald’s quill and pulled a parchment from the neat stack on the corner of the desk. "I will make it easy for you, Gerald. If you agree, I will wed your daughter, she'll become Lady of Casterly Rock and her son will be my heir. If you don't, this conversation will have never happened, I'll have never seen her and the boy will be born a Greyjoy bastard. No House will want her, she'll never marry and your trade importance will fade into insignificance."

Gerald ground his teeth, his laced fingers clenching into a joined fist. “You fathered a bastard on her.”

“I’d rather the boy be my son, don’t you?” Tywin dipped the quill into the ink jar and held it out to Gerald. "Shall we draw up the betrothal, then?"

O  O  O

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dentistry's evidentiary vacuum allows profiteering butchers to raid our mouths for millions

Dentistry has always been medicine's poor cousin, lower in prestige and funding, with much less definitive research; this means that it's harder for someone to point at a procedure and definitively say, "That was unnecessary."

At the same time, better oral hygiene and fluoridation has increased our overall dental health; and as that was happening, dental school tuition was mounting alongside all other forms of student debt.

You can see where this is going: dentists are graduating from university buried by punishing debt; dental patients need a lot fewer money-generating procedures, and it's easy to get away with performing unnecessary procedures. What coul possibly go wrong?

Though this is something of a perfect storm of grifty, late-stage capitalism, the lack of evidence-based standards is a huge piece of the problem. While we're pretty sure that dental sealants are really useful for kids (though few dentists use them because they take a long time and don't generate a lot in billings), and that fluoridation is also good for kids, there just isn't enough evidence to say whether fluoridation benefits adults, whether flossing combats plaque (it is good for your gums though), whether you should have your wisdom teeth removed, etc. And the evidence for other common procedures is really poor or even nonexistent: everything from seeing your dentist twice a year (most people can go once every 12 or 18 months, assuming good oral hygiene); replacing metal fillings with resins, etc.

Incredibly, some of the most invasive, painful and expensive procedures have not been studied in any depth, including whether root-canaled teeth should be repaired with fillings or crowns.

What is increasingly being studied is whether dentists engage in "overtreatment" (a euphemism for unnecessary procedures). For example, 50 out of 180 Zurich dentists in one secret trial recommended totally unnecessary fillings for minor cavities.

The Atlantic's Ferris Jabr's 7,500-word longread about the problems of denistry are hung on a truly ghastly news-peg: in 2012, dentist Brendon Zeidler bought a San Jose, California practice from John Roger Lund, who was retiring. As Zeidler began to see Lund's patients, he realized that Lund had performed a shocking amount of dental surgery on his patients, at enormous expense. Lund was arrested in 2016 and is facing criminal prosecution, though he maintains his innocence.

Jabr is at pains to point out that most dentists are honorable and compassionate, which is undoubtably true. I've had very few bad expenses with dentists (though I was shocked by US dentists' aggressive attempts to sell me tooth-whitening services, often during a medical exam, blending a sales-pitch with the medical advice they were giving me). On the other hand, my mother and her family had most of their teeth drilled out in the 50s and 60s by a dentist who is widely believed to have been a butcher who lined his pockets by mutilating his patients' mouths.

https://boingboing.net/2019/04/18/open-wide.html

[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 7

In which I realize Hiccup’s potential as the white girl in every horror movie ever because oh my god��

AO3

“Well, you didn’t sleep,” Ruffnut wastes no time in announcing her assessment of Astrid’s appearance when she sits down across the table.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, really?” She raises an eyebrow, and usually Astrid would be embarrassed. Usually she’d deny whatever Ruffnut was implying, because true or not, feeling read when she doesn’t want to be is unwelcome. “I meant it in the ‘you look like a still warm corpse’ way, but do you mean it in a fun way?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“I’m sure it’s normal, you can be kind of intimidating when fully clothed,” she snickers.

“No, I’m being serious.” Astrid folds her hands on the table. “Do I scare easy?”

“Not where I would have hoped this was going, but you knew it was a gamble—"

“No, answer my question, Ruff. Do I look like someone who gets scared of a bump in the dark and huddles against a guy and then kisses him on the cheek before he leaves?”

“On the cheek? Is that a euphemism?”

“I kissed him on the cheek.” Astrid wonders if saying it out loud could enable her to rewrite that part of the past but she isn’t sure she wants to. Maybe she wants to be convinced into it, to be reminded what a bad idea this all is.

Maybe she should have called Fishlegs.

No, he was surprisingly excited about her stupid midnight tour. Maybe she should have called Officer Jorgenson, as he’s reliably been the only one volunteering to talk sense into her.

“That’s kind of cute,” Ruffnut wrinkles her nose, ordering a mimosa from a passing waiter.

“No, it’s not. I’m—he’s basically harassing me, Ruff, he’s giving tours to my apartment.”

“Including private tours that you agree to go on?”

Astrid bites her lip, avoiding that obviously rhetorical question and debating whether to bring up the scream or not. She feels bad for how little she remembers it, how it feels like a ghost from a nightmare she chased off well enough to fall back asleep. She knows it was real, she felt it in her numb fingertips, her sinking stomach, and she’s not someone who loses a moment like that to a stupid, awkward kiss. Worse even, a kiss on the cheek of a guy who shines laser pointers in her apartment window but won’t walk through the open door without an invitation.

“He was excited to read Tuff’s stupid binder,” she sidesteps the end of the tour as best she can, “it’s what he deserves for making me read that Admiral Haddock nonsense.”

“Right, making you.” Ruffnut rolls her eyes, “you know that you don’t just have to read every book that crosses your threshold, right? You could use the next one to fix your coffee table so that it stops wobbling, even.”

“Usually I’d be offended, but the Admiral Haddock book is bad enough I’d consider it,” she lies.

Maybe she would have before Hiccup told her about his dad. The open way that he talked about self-professed trauma is sticking with her alongside screams and stupid kisses.

“You know it’s ok if you had a good time with him, right? Even if he has awful taste in hats, you could still like him, even.” Ruffnut prods, unusually gentle, and Astrid looks at the TV above her head.

“He didn’t wear the hat.”

“Bummer.” Ruffnut focuses on the menu then and Astrid focuses on the news, the narrow alleyways in the broadcast almost familiar after last night.

“In the early hours of the morning, the body of a woman was found, all signs pointing to foul play…” The news caster drones on in an unfeeling monotone and Astrid recognizes one of the buildings behind her as the building that Hiccup pointed out for replacing Catherine Whittaker’s murder site, right near where they were when they heard the scream. The scream and the thud and the deafening, heavy silence that followed.

“Oh my god,” she fumbles for her phone, frantically shooting off a few too many texts at Hiccup.

“Good mimosas, right?” Ruffnut nods, “I love that we no longer, as a people, have to choose between chicken or waffles. It’s both now. The future is here.”

“I have to go,” Astrid stands up, calling Hiccup and pressing the phone to her ear even as Ruffnut complains about being left alone at the table. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

“Hey, Astrid. Hi, Astrid—”

“Did we hear,” she lowers her voice when she notices the hostess looking at her suspiciously, “did we have anything to do with what I just saw on the news?”

“That’s a really long story,” he laughs but the sound is heavy and tired.

“Well, I think given the circumstances, I can clear out my schedule to hear it,” she hisses, sitting down on the bench by the restaurant’s front door.

“Ok, that’s umm, I need an hour? Can you meet me at the Ripped then?”

She checks the time on the clock above the hostess stand, “I’ll be there.”

“What was all that about?” Ruffnut asks when Astrid sits back down and picks up her menu. She’s too scattered to read so she decides on the first item she sees.

“Nothing.” As ready to bury a body as Ruffnut was when she first moved in, it’s not an offer she’d actually ever take her up on. “I have to meet Hiccup in an hour.”

“Have to? So much obligation already, sexy.”

“It’s not like that,” Astrid fidgets under the scrutiny. She’s not good with being judged for other people’s actions, and she’s even worse with secrets.

00000

Hiccup is waiting outside of the Ripped Tavern when Astrid gets there, chatting with Snotlout, who is almost unrecognizable out of uniform. Plain clothes or not, though, he’s still a cop and she feels stupid for texting Hiccup written evidence of what they’d heard.

“Hey,” Hiccup waves when he sees her, his energy frantic in comparison with the circles under his eyes and the sallow tinge to his face, like he didn’t sleep either.

“You!” Snotlout points at her and she takes a step back, “you were there, you can tell him.”

“I was where?” She shakes her head, “what are you talking about?” Was Hiccup stupid enough to tell his cop cousin that the heard something and didn’t report it? That’s the quickest way to involve themselves in whatever happened.

“You were at your apartment when your friend thought I was a stripper, Hiccup doesn’t believe me.”

“Oh, right, I’m sorry about that.” Astrid hates that she has to apologize for Ruffnut, but if Hiccup did open his big stupid mouth, she doesn’t have much of a choice aside from groveling, “Ruffnut is…something, I don’t know what got into her. I never do.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he looks back at Hiccup, “see, I told you?”

“Wait,” Hiccup frowns, green eyes boring into Astrid’s like he’s trying to see through an obvious lie, “your friend called Snotlout a stripper? Really?”

“Entirely unprompted, I don’t know how she’s survived this long.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and glances at Snotlout, trying to ask the question she needs to without saying it, “are you staying? Or…”

“Nah, I’ve got to get to work, I just needed to prove a point.” He pats Hiccup on the chest, “told you so.”

Hiccup waits until Snotlout is across the street before speaking, hands in his pockets, “so did you plan an elaborate scheme with Snotlout so that he could brag at me about someone thinking he was a stripper?”

“Not at all, my friend is really that stupid, I thought she was going to get us both arrested,” she laughs, relieved in a way that doesn’t make sense given what she came to talk about with him. It’s the same calm she felt the night before, like being closer is better than further away.

“Right, like Snotlout would arrest you, especially for what he weirdly perceives to be a compliment.” He laughs, shrugging a bouncy shoulder at her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know, because umm,” he waves a hand at her, “because you’re so—you know, because you look like…you happen to look.” His sallow cheeks are suddenly bright red, highlighting a sprinkling of winter pale freckles on his cheeks, and Astrid realizes she hasn’t seen him outside in the daylight before.

“That’s not particularly ethical,” she mumbles.

“Well, uh, neither is Snotlout sometimes. I guess.” He laughs, “want to go inside?”

Maybe it’s his awkward, hopeful expression or because this is so different than the usual midnight, often intrusive situations where they run into each other, but she digs her heels into the cement before answering.

“You remember what I’m here to talk to you about, right? This isn’t a date—”

“Honestly, I could use a drink to avail you of my last twelve hours of adventure,” he opens the door.

“Ok, but should we talk about this in public?” She looks over her shoulder, half expecting Snotlout to be listening or someone to see the actual meaning behind ‘this’. Murder. The murder that they heard happen, more likely than not.

“Don’t worry, no one will bother me in here,” he grins, quietly, cryptically reassuring as he waves her inside.

The Ripped Tavern is as hokey as always, but more depressing given the time of day and the fact that the brunette behind the bar glares at Hiccup as he walks in. There’s a strip of police caution tape across the side door where Hiccup’s tour starts, and he chooses a table at the opposite corner of the bar, under a rack of Viggo Grimborn tee-shirts for sale, ten percent off. A busboy takes their order and Astrid sticks with soda, still sober from the news at brunch and wanting to stay that way until she has answers.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Astrid snaps after Hiccup has painstakingly cleared all of the foam off of his beer, staring pensively into the glass and spinning it slowly in his long fingers.

“Yeah, I just—trying to figure out where to start, I guess.” He chews on his lower lip with crooked teeth and glances at the caution tape over the door that might as well be purposeful décor.

“How about you start when you left my place?” She rests her elbows on the table and leans forward, conscious of eyes on the back of her neck.

“Because that route ends in me explaining how I got arrested, and I’m not sure I can pull off the kind of bad boy charisma I’d need to get away with that.”

“You got arrested?” Astrid hisses and Hiccup starts rubbing one of his wrists, bringing her attention to a faded red line across the bony point of it.

“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” his floppy hair hangs over his forehead as he stares into his beer, “I told you I’d check out what we heard—”

“And I told you to get an Uber.”

“Well, I didn’t, and I went to check it out—”

“The scream, you mean,” she hugs herself against the chill running up her arms, even under her jacket.

Hiccup shrugs, seeing something in his memory that makes him pale, “yeah. And I stumbled across, well, I—right out there,” he points at the caution tape, “and I was right on time, of course, the cops found me standing over a body.”

For someone who delightedly hands around crime scene photos, he looks upset, and she thinks back to the night before when he said he doesn’t like to focus on the gore. Apparently, that wasn’t just a really weird line.

“Are you ok?” She reaches reflexively across the table to rest her hand on his.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine.” He shakes his head but doesn’t move his hand, like he thinks she doesn’t notice what she’s doing and he doesn’t want to alert her. “But it looked pretty suspicious, I’ll give that to them.”

“Another round?” A voice interrupts and Astrid jumps back, unsure when she got so close.

“No,” Hiccup points at his mostly full beer with the hand Astrid just abandoned, “I’m good, Heather.”

The brunette bartender lingers then, pursing her lips before setting her empty tray on the table next door and squatting down next to Hiccup. She’s beautiful, in a sharp sort of way, and she looks at Hiccup like she wants him to be aware of her jagged edges.

“Can I talk to you?” Her green eyes flick to Astrid for a judgmental second. “Alone.”

“Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of Astrid.” Hiccup rolls his eyes, his previous certainty that no one would disrupt him here obviously overblown.

“I can give you two a minute—” Astrid starts to stand up but Hiccup follows.

“Oh, we’re leaving? Sounds good.”

“Fine,” Heather huffs, looking suspiciously at Astrid one last time, “did you hear what happened last night?”

“Hear about it?” Hiccup rolls his eyes, “you could say that.”

“What do you think?” Heather looks at the side door, “it was right by the storm drain, from what I saw from the back door.”

“You saw it?” Hiccup is pale again and it makes Astrid want to get up and leave, knowing that apparently, he’ll follow.

“Yeah, and the placement of the intestine—”

“Let’s not talk about intestines right now, God, Heather.” He wrinkles his nose, “I had the split-second Mary Johnson thought too, but that’s because we give tours on it every single night.”

“Well, there’s no way no one else is going to think it when those pictures get out.” Heather cocks her head, weighing what she’s about to say, “I’m just saying there’s reason to think there might be an uptick in business around here—”

“A woman died—”

“I’m not ignoring that,” Heather stands up slowly and Astrid can’t help but glance up at the Grimborn shirts for sale. No, she isn’t ignoring that women died. She’s working somewhere that profits on it. “It’s awful, I know it’s awful, I can’t wait until the cops catch and lock up whoever did it but I’m trying to pay rent here and we’re going to lose a couple weeks of tours, at least.”

“And you want me to come back and do the nine and eleven,” Hiccup rolls his eyes and chugs the rest of his beer, “and tell everyone about the ghost of Johann, resurrected after over a hundred years and striking again?”

“You can use your own script, Hiccup, I’m just asking a favor—”

“Not a chance,” he stands up, nonchalantly offering Astrid his hand and pulling her to her feet, “put these on my tab, alright?”

“You don’t have a tab,” Heather’s face is hard again, irritated with an argument she’s lost before.

“I know for a fact that Dagur still keeps my tab,” Hiccup waves over his shoulder as he leaves through the front door, dropping Astrid’s hand as soon as they’re outside. “I hate it when she’s right,” he grumbles at his phone and Astrid frowns.

“What are you talking about?” She doesn’t like feeling behind, and it’s worse that Hiccup seems to be so good at leaving her that way.

“I have to cancel my tours for tonight, the crime scene is at the very beginning of my route.” He types something and presses send.

“How do you know her?” Astrid tucks her hands in her jacket pocket, leaning away from him slightly. She should be asking more about last night, about the murder, about him being arrested, but he keeps flinging mysteries at her faster than she can parse through.

“Long story.”

“You’re full of those, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes it feels that way,” he looks up at the winter sun, jaw casting a shadow on his neck, “here, I’ll walk you home, if you want. I don’t have a tour to wait around here for.”

“You just can’t go a single day without seeing my apartment,” she sighs but starts walking slowly anyway, waiting for him to fall into step beside her. Usually, she’d insist that she doesn’t need anyone to walk her home but being this close to the site of a murder she overheard is making her unusually wary. Not scared, but wary enough to embrace the fact that she feels more comfortable next to Hiccup.

“What can I say? It’s a nice place.”

“It’s a shitty apartment,” she reminds him with a level look and he shrugs, “so, Heather.”

“You know, I wasn’t kidding when I said she usually leaves me alone,” his smile is barely there and about as close to cruel as she thinks his face can get, “must mean she’s really hurting for money.”

“She owns the bar?”

“Her brother does, technically, and they both own Berserker Grimborn tours, where I used to work until Heather stole all of my notes on Trader Johann and started preaching them as truth in her tours.” Hiccup looks at Astrid, ravenous curiosity tinged with blatant respect, “how’d you learn about Johann anyway? I keep meaning to ask.”

“He kept showing up in interviews and his bible advertisements got bigger in the paper after the second murder, like he was making money off of them or something. And it lined up and I hadn’t heard of anyone else suggesting the theory,” she shrugs. The archives feel worlds away, along with the downright aggressive effort she made to solve the Grimborn case and make Hiccup reroute his tour. She blames the lack of sleep and trauma of overhearing a murder for the fact that she’s suddenly so ok with him walking her to her doorstep.

“And the ‘All Safe’ message?”

“I told you, it’s Al. I,” she corrects, “the murder in my apartment wasn’t connected.”

“I love that you have a theory,” he grins and bumps his shoulder against hers, comfortable when it’s about Grimborn, like he had been the night before. It makes her want to ask about him about himself again, just to throw him off. “But I mean the picture, where did you find that?”

“I have a part-time work-study job in the archives.”

“And you just spent a bunch of time combing through Berk Enquirers to find a mythically rare picture?” He’s a tour guide now too, she realizes, weaving the conversation in and out of goalposts on the way to its original destination. He’s not avoiding what he saw last night, he’s leading her to it slowly. She doesn’t like it anymore now than she did on his original tour, she’d rather have all the information at once and work through it herself.

“You don’t get to tease me about that, considering how many hours you put in wearing a top hat and touring special drain locations.” She pauses and gives him her best stern face, “so you got arrested for finding a body?”

“So, you’re back to that,” he runs his hand through his hair, “and I wasn’t teasing you, for the record, I’m honestly really impressed and I’d like to see the original picture at some point, if that’s ok—”

“Maybe, if you’re not in jail for murder since you got arrested for being found with a murder victim.”

“Is that a promise?” He hits a crosswalk button a few extra times. “You’ll let me come see it if I stay out jail for murder?”

“That’s a pretty low bar, but sure, tell me how you plan to accomplish that.”

“The number one thing I have going for me is that I definitely didn’t kill anyone.” He numbers on his hand, “but the number one thing going against me is that the detective on the case happens to be the very same guy that Snotlout has been antagonizing for months, and he didn’t seem to like me very much.”

“That’s worse than being found with the body? I would have thought that would be the number one thing against you.”

“You have met Snotlout, right?” He laughs, leading her to the right and down a street she hasn’t explored yet. It’s not an alley though, thankfully. As safe as she felt last night she can’t say that a recent murder really makes her want to dive back into Berk’s architectural underbelly.

“Barely,” Astrid thinks back to his surprisingly reasonable texts, “and honestly, from my first impression, he’s one of the least crazy people I’ve met since moving back here.”

“I give a daily tour about one serial killer and suddenly it’s ok to call me crazy. Ok, I get it.”

A man steps out of an alley ahead of them, adjusting a dirty backpack over his shoulder and zipping the outermost layer of muddy raincoats he’s wearing. Hiccup doesn’t seem to notice or care, but Astrid pauses, looking back at the nearest crosswalk and debating turning around.

“What’s up?” Hiccup stops a few paces ahead when he realizes she isn’t next to him.

“Nothing, I just…I’m fine,” she brushes off the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Hey Dave!” Hiccup calls out when they get a little further along and the man stops and waves.

“Hiccup, what’s up?”

“I just wanted to let you know that I have umm, a hunch that there might be a bit of increased police activity in the alleys,” he winces as he says it, avoiding ‘murder’ like ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.

“Your cousin tell you that?”

“Something like that.”

“Like I don’t have enough to do avoiding those watch force assholes,” the man shakes his head, “thanks for the heads up.”

“No problem, how’s the leg holding up?”

“Way better than what I had before,” he pulls up his pantleg to reveal a metallic shaft where his lower leg should be, “thanks again, man. He’s a really generous guy,” the man winks at Astrid and she flushes.

“Oh, sorry, I’m being rude. This is Astrid, we umm—she went on some of my tours.” He luckily settles on an explanation that doesn’t falsely proclaim her interest in Viggo Grimborn.

“Nice to meet you,” Astrid nods and Hiccup chats about the weather for another moment before telling Dave he has no cash and continuing their walk back to her apartment. “So, is he a…friend of yours?”

“Not really,” Hiccup shrugs and pauses to pull up his own right pant leg, stunning her with another metal rod. “He’s a couple inches shorter than me and my mid-pubescent leg was a decent fit for him, and it’s not like I was using it.”

“Oh,” Astrid stumbles over her words, “I guess you didn’t reveal your whole tragic past.”

“That’s not tragic,” he brushes his pant cuff back down, “how uncomfortable you were with Dave kind of was, what was up with that?”

“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” she moves closer to the edge of the sidewalk, ignoring curious eyes on the side of her face, “I’m just not used to…people choosing to live in alleys.”

“You can say homeless people,” he scoffs, “it’s not a bad word, but I wouldn’t call it a choice either.”

“I mean, instead of worrying about avoiding some watch force, he could get a job.” Astrid only hears an echo of her dad’s reasonable worldview until Hiccup laughs, unoffended in a way that makes her feel instantly naïve.

“I am not the favored audience of the old ‘get a job’ speech.” He takes another right and she sees the back of her apartment building at the next corner.

“Did you take the scenic route back to my building?” She stops short and crosses her arms, willing herself not to blush when he does.

“We had a lot to get through,” he shrugs, and she should be irritated but she’s not. Ok, maybe she’s a little irritated that he keeps leading her through convoluted mazes without telling her first, but this one in particular is…endearing. He wanted more time with her but didn’t know how to ask.

“I don’t think we did a very good job,” she glances at his leg, “there’s a lot unanswered.”

“Absolutely,” his smile is more cautious than she’d like it to be, “maybe two or three more of these little walks and I’ll actually give you a chance to talk.”

“Oh, you know how to let other people talk? I wouldn’t have guessed that,” she deadpans as they cross the alley behind her building, hoping that her key is going to work in the back door.

“Guess I’ve got to say out of jail then to prove it,” he grins and she’s glad that the door opens when it does, because the lack of sleep is really catching up to her now, making her think she should keep talking to him. That doesn’t make sense at all, especially with him respecting the threshold to her building like he should respect alley gates.

“I hope you’ve got your own reasons for that.”

He shrugs and she’s worried about him again, because he apparently he exists on a constant precipice of doing something really stupid. What she doesn’t understand is why she’s so sure he shouldn’t be allowed to do it alone.

The knock on her door a few minutes later doesn’t surprise her. Astrid assumes it’s just Hiccup following up on coming by the archives or bringing her another awful book. She opens it ready to tell him that, no, walking her home after the slowest, most drawn out explanation of stumbling upon a murder scene does not count as a date, but instead of Hiccup’s nervous face, she sees a badge.

“Oh,” she steps back, taking in the man in an official looking black suit with a narrow tie, tattoo on his chin entirely out of place on his reserved, professional expression.

“Are you Astrid Hofferson?” He asks in a firm, British voice and she nods dumbly, “I’m Detective Eretson with the Berk PD investigating a recent murder case, do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” she waves him inside, glad that Ruffnut isn’t here. Something tells her Detective Eretson would be less understanding of assertions that he takes off his clothes for money than Snotlout apparently was.

“This should be quick, ma’am—”

“Ma’am?” For some reason, that’s funny, forcing a laugh out of her even as anxiety bubbles up in her chest. She’s read too many bungled case reports to trust dealing with cops, and she didn’t enjoy it to begin with.

“Miss,” he clears his throat, suit jacket tight across rigid shoulders. “My apologies—”

“What do you think I have to do with a murder investigation?” She doesn’t know whether she should offer him a seat or take it herself. That and she’s kicking herself over not asking Hiccup whether he told Snotlout about what they’d heard or not. All that Grimborn research was enough practice in keeping a story straight without real life application following it up.

“Do you know Hiccup Haddock?”

“Know might be an overstatement, I know of him.” It’s not a lie, she didn’t know until today that he’s apparently missing a leg. She knows his favorite Grimborn theory, sure, but in what world does that equate to knowing someone?

“Where were you last night?”

“Home, why?” She crosses her arms, leaning back on her heels.

“This morning we received a copy of some closed-circuit security footage from a nearby development,” he pulls a video up on his phone and plays it. The time in the corner reads 4:12am and the grainy black and white footage shows two people in an alley, standing facing each other.

They jump simultaneously at 4:13, the taller person tucking the shorter into his chest, arms protectively around her shoulders.

“If you were at home last night, this isn’t you in this footage, is that correct, miss?”

“You asked where I was last night, not where I was very early this morning,” Astrid uses Hiccup’s line of reasoning and it feels hollow and stupid.

“So, this is you with Hiccup Haddock?”

“Yes,” she admits, “how did you get my name from that grainy video?”

“This morning while in custody, Mr. Haddock claimed that he came across the victim’s body when he was on his way from this address to his house, if this is you in this video, that places him nearly two blocks away at the approximate time of the murder.”

“That doesn’t explain how you got my name, this building has other units in it.” The video is playing on repeat on Eretson’s phone and Astrid keeps glancing back at it, seeing herself step into Hiccup’s arms again and again.

“This is the only unit with a woman’s name on the lease.”

“That would narrow it down.” She watches the video loop one last time and it hits her. The video has no audio, so there’s no way to tell that the scream made them move.

It looks like a date. An awkward date she now suspects is technically trespassing, given the security footage, but it doesn’t tie them to the occurrence of the murder. The lack of recorded scream makes sure they’re only tied to a location adjacent to but not on top of where the murder was occurring.

A minute ago, she wasn’t sure if she was willing to keep a story straight for Hiccup and now, whatever she says next will either confirm an alibi or make him look guilty. What’s even worse is that she could look guilty too, just by proximity, as she’s seen happen so many times.

“Hiccup was giving me a private tour of…the city, I just moved here.” She raises an eyebrow, “but I bet you saw that on the lease.”

“What happened after this footage was taken?” He says ‘footage’ like he feels awkward asking her about a hug, and she’s thankful for that.

“He walked me home and then headed home himself soon after.”

“Alright,” Eretson makes a note in a small notebook and tucks it back in his jacket’s internal pocket, along with his badge. “Thank you for your time, Miss Hofferson.” He hands her a business card, Detective E. Eretson inscribed on the top edge of it in shiny, official blue ink. “If you remember anything else, feel free to let me know, I’ll be in touch if I need anything else from you.”

“Ok,” she opens the front door for him and he nods at her on the way out. “Wait,” she follows him into the hallway, stopping short when he turns around.

“Is there something else?”

“For—were we trespassing? In that video?”

“The development can’t technically press charges, their contracted security force put up cameras watching the borders of their properties without notifying the police.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying yes, but you’re getting away with it, isn’t it?” She crosses her arms and something that could almost be called a smile tugs at the corner of Eretson’s mouth.

“Yes, it is.”

“Ok, well…thanks.”

“Let me know if you think of anything else,” he takes a step backwards and then pauses, “oh, and just be aware, the police should be fully aware of all development border monitoring cameras by the end of the week.”

“I’ll pass that along.”

[theashesofthefirststar]

Here it is! The prologue for my "What if Keith's Mom Stayed" Klance fic.

Pairing: Keith/Lance

Summary: His peers at the Garrison always joked about how mysterious Keith was. Well, they weren't exactly wrong.With a neck always cover in splotches of black hair dye, boots always thick with mud, and a mom that no one has ever seen because, uh, reasons, Keith, part time guardian of a magical blue lion, is understandably hard to get close to.At least, he thought so, but then how does Lance make it look so easy?

....

                                                     Prologue

Keith was six years old when it happened.

His mom reached over the emergency brake that divided them to tug the hood of his red raincoat firm atop his head. He looked at her with a question in his eyes as she pulled back. He waited for her to explain why they were there, but she just smiled.

At the time, he was too young to articulate how that smile made him feel or just what about it was so different. So, he smiled back.

His mom made a motion for him to get out the car, but Keith just stared wide eyed out of the window in an attempt to see something. The rain was hitting the side of the truck in sheets, making everything look shapeless beneath its veil.

At that age, Keith didn't like the rain. It had never been anything but an inconvenience, something that kept him inside when he all he had wanted was to go out, and always at his moms insistence. She had seemed suspicious of the rain, as if unsure about what would happen if it touched her. His dad had thought that was funny for a reason Keith wouldn't understand until he got older. But at time, her skeptical attitude towards the rain was all he knew to act on. So Keith didn't move, just fisted the lap of his raincoat and wondered why his mom was asking him to go towards something she had only ever hid him from before.

“Its okay, Keith. There's a cave just a few yards that way. We’ll-” She paused, tapping a finger against the steering wheel. “What's that euphemism your father use- Oh! Make a run for it.” She smiled again, playful in a way he was more use to seeing from his pops. “Are you ready?”

He nodded yes, because why wouldn't he? This was his mom, and he had always felt the bravest when by her side.

Keith jumped down from the cab of the truck, swinging the door shut. He squinted against the rain, forcing himself to move forward with a blind certainty until he felt a hand gripping his wrist. His eyes kept forward, but there she was. A grainy vision coming in and out of his peripheral, familiar like the static of their satellite T.V. on rainy days.

He let her guid him until their entering the cave. The mouth was arched with cycle shaped rocks - limestone, his pops had called them, dripping like jagged teeth. It reminded Keith of other caves he'd explored with his parent's, of the way his pops made a game out of them jumping pass the threshold before the mouth could snap close and gobble him up.

He pulled a flashlight from the pocket of his raincoat an flicked it on, gaze wide and spanning.

Then Keith ran towards the cave wall, because he was impulsive even back then. More so. It was like the chicken pox he got right after his fourth birthday. An itch everyone told him not to scratch, but he did anyway. He came to realize that that feeling never goes away, but only gets harder to please. It was just simpler back then. Investigate that cave, read that book, climb that tree. It was a life with straightforward goals and a clear tradictory.

Until it wasn't.

On the wall there were drawings, blue marks made opaque by dust. Keith reached out and swiped a hand over what seemed to be a cluster of stick people looking up at a falling rock. He fanned the light down the wall to see more images in a continuous timeline like fashion. A lioness figure. Rising waves. A mysterious oblong spacecraft, each depiction seeming loosely interconnected like jumbled up dots that Keith's mind attempted to arrange in the right order.

And he just stood there, silently agape, stuck in the possibilities. At least, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“They're interesting, yes?” His mom said.

“Yeah,” he rasped, still racking the walls with his eyes. “I wonder who lived here? I bet we could find some clues if we go deeper into the cave.”

Up until then, Keith had never seen anything like this. His pops had told him stories, about how there were people who lived long before them, how there were pieces of these people living beneath the rocks - in fossils - and painted on them too. Keith would listen to these stories with a far off sorta wonderment. The idea that there were whole worlds beyond the desert, beyond him and his parents, here but not here at the same time, was exciting, and yet ultimately just a concept. Nothing like actually seeing it.

“You're right, there is something special in this cave.” A pause. “Several somethings, actually.”

At that, Keith turned to her. “You've been here? Without me?” His teeth gritted, biting against the nasty feeling he had no name for. All he knew was that exploring caves was something they all did together, and he didn't like not being a part of it.

“This cave is different than the other one's,” his mom explained evenly. “You were too young to come here before.”

Keith huffed, looking past his mom with an angry pout and muttering, “Not too young.”

She hummed, almost seeming amused. That just made Keith more upset. Later, he'll realize how petulant he was being, but at the time, to six year Keith, this was the biggest part of his life.

“Well, not anymore. Which is why you're here. Now, would you like me to show you what lives in this cave or would you like to stay here making faces?”

Keith - begrudgingly - flung out a hand for her to take, but continued to glare into the shadowy hollow of the cave, determined that he could do both.

Then she was guiding them again down a path that she was obviously familiar with. Keith kept his flashlight fixed towards their destination, to egar and focused to look at the walls that tunneled around them. As they went further, their descending track grew steeper. Which only made Keith want to speed up. He would have to, if not for the warning glare of his mom paired with a squeeze of linked fingers.

He made a hmp sound, but continued at the pace she set. That was until she said, “Before we get to where we're going, there's something I need to speak to you about. Something your father and I had a long discussion about last night.”

“Is this about the dog we found!” Keith asked, feeling hopeful enough to look away from the trail and up at his mom. A couple of days ago him and his mom had seen a dog nosing it's way through their trash. He had looked matted and sickly thin, so they had decided to bring him some leftover pork chops from their diner the night before. Or at least, they were until his pops got home from work and immediately ran inside to grab his shotgun. He hadn't hurt the dog, but he did chase it away, despite Keith's insistence that the dog was his friend. This had lead to a one day hunger strike and a lot of tearful fits that always ended in a dramatic exit whenever he'd inevitably be sent to his room.

“That wasn't a dog, Keith. It was a coyote,” she said, though by the just there twist of her lips, Keith could tell she was mildly disappointed. “And your father insist that their dangerous.”

“Not dangerous.” He muttered. “Probably just lonely.”

Keith felt something pull against him, restricting his steps. He turned to see him mom had stopped walking, so naturally, he stopped too, squaring his feet so that he was stable against the uneven ground.

“Are you lonely, Keith?”

Keith felt himself frown. The flashlight he held was pointed past her, yellow projecting against the cave wall at her back. Her face was thick with shadows, carving out an expression that none of Keith’s six years of life gave him a context for. It was his mom, but not. A little sad. A little unfamiliar, and it was that jarring sense of uncertainty that made him all the more aware of where they were at, underground and squeezed between two lengths of darkness. Which should of been fine. He’d been in caves like this before, but there was still this feeling, this wrongness pinching at him.

He glared at his feet.

“No. Why would I be lonely when I have you and pops?”

She didn't answer right away, and after a few long silent seconds, he peeked up at her.

Seeing herself be regarded, she stood a bit taller. “Your father left this morning to enroll you in school.”

“School?!”

“Yes, you know, an establishment where-”

“I know what a school is mom! But-but I don't understand. Why can't you keep teaching me at home?!”

Keith felt something warm and tight swoop in his stomach, burning frantically in his fingertips. This was wrong. All wrong.

“Your father and I think it's important for you to start spending time with other kids,” she said, her face hardened with a sternness that was only a relief in its familiarity. “It's not good for a boy your age to be by himself so much.”

Keith would later come to realize that kids often feel things that they won't comprehend until hindsight. Their frustration lacks self awareness. There's no eloquence in the voice they give it. But beneath that wall of callowness, there is reason. A reason six year old Keith kept grasping for, like the minoes he spent the summers trying to catch, too small and too slippery to really hold onto.

Because he did want to make friends. He’d even sometimes watch old t.v. shows with his pops just to see how all the kids would play in groups and talk to people who weren't their parents. Keith couldn't help but to compare them to himself, someone who had never even spent time with another person that wasn't his mom or pops

Older Keith knew what younger Keith was only vaguely scared of. That most kids had extended families, whole communities even. Most kids played sports or took piano lessons. They had cousins and aunts and neighbors who came over for diner on the weekend. Most kids didn't have vibrant magenta hair or a large “birthmark” on their face or a mom with purple skin and yellow eyes. Older Keith knew what younger Keith was only vaguely scared of. That years of semi isolation and secrets put a barrier between him and other people that only got thicker with time.

Krolia knelt down in front of Keith, and he pushed down the urge to squirm away.

“Sometimes we have to do things that are hard, because if we don't, those things don't leave. They just become bigger, until there so big that they get in the way of us living our lives.” She cups Keith's cheek and he can't help but to lean into her warmth. “I don't ever want to get in the way of you living your life.”

A part of Keith wanted to be defiant, but his moms presences was just so nice, and he didn't want to fight it. She had always guided him after all, never had lead him anywhere he didn't want to be. Why should this time be any differently?

“Come on,” She said. “There's something up ahead that I think will help you understand.”

But it didn't, not at right away. His first thought when seeing a giant blue mechanical lion certainly wasn't ‘Ah yes, everything makes sense now’. That was okay though. His mom had stood back and allowed him to process.

His first real thought that wasn't just the long confusing beep of a Please Stand By screen was ‘woah cool robot lion’ which sent him hurtling towards the thing. He slowed too late and had to brace against the barrier, both hands landing flat. Keith didn't care though, he just looked up at the lion with a grin, one that quickly lost it's edges the longer he stood there and nothing happened.

His hands curled into fist. “Hey! Open up!” Keith demanded. “I want to be your friend!” No response, then suddenly, “Are you trapped? Don't worry, I'll get you out!”

Keith began banging his fist against the barrier. “Come on you stupid shield,” he muttered, kicking at it in frustration. He was about ready to find a large rock, when his mom said, “That won't work, Keith. She's not for you.”

Keith whipped around, alarmed. He had practically forgotten he wasn't alone.

“She's waiting for her Paladin. Her chosen one. And she won't put that barrier down until they find her.”

Keith didn't understand. Chosen one? As soon as he'd seen the lion, he felt a tug. Something instinctual that told Keith they were meant to meet. Did she not feel the same way? The idea that she didn't took all the warmth and meaning from his belly and pulled it to his throat. It sat expanding, that misplaced connection, until it forced its way out. He just couldn't swallow some thing that didn't belong to him.

Looking back, that was the first time he felt it; Rejection.

“I know you're confused, Keith, but once I explain everything, I promise this will all make more sense.”

And so she did.

From a satchel that rested against Krolias hip, she pulled out a throw blanket and laid it against the damp ground. They sat cross legged and face to face, knees bumping as she explained everything. He sat and listened as she confirmed what a part of him already knew on some level; that she, that they, weren't the same as everyone else. With a firm and leveled voice, she spoke uncompromising truths. She told him about the Blade, about her mission. She told him about the lore of Voltron, and hardest of all, she told him about the war, about exactly what they were protecting there in that cave.

Some people might judge his mom for the steely way she told him about the death that loomed between the stars. But it was something Keith would come to appreciate, the commander in her, because if she could stay calm living beneath a sky on the precipice of collapse, than maybe so could he.

He walked in the footsteps of her composure, finding them too big, but listening all the same. The words didn't seem real though. They steeped in him, and he felt his mind ach in resistance, the change leaking in a bit at a time until he was trembling against his pops  later that night, begging him not to tell his mom how terrified he was. Because he finally understood. The danger was everywhere. And it was coming for him and everything he loved.

But his pops, who had only ever wanted Keith to have a normal, happy life, told him something that stayed with him in a way the exact details of him and his mom's conversation did not.

That one day, when Keith was ready, it would be the danger that trembled.

[illuminating-dragons]

Kith (5/?): Signed, Sealed, Delivered

                Viktor Krum was in love with Hermione Granger, but he knew that she loved Ron Weasley. He knew it even before Hermione did.

                He knew he had two options: he could move on, or he could pine over her forever, denying himself any chance of happiness with someone else.

                The first was hard, and the second was easy, but Viktor didn’t want to make the easy choice. That wasn’t what good people did.

                So Viktor went back to Bulgaria and played Quidditch. He wrote to Hermione frequently, because he still enjoyed talking to her, and he kept in touch with Fleur. It hurt him that he couldn’t keep his promise to Cedric, the promise they made before the maze.

                “Promise we’ll keep in touch?” Cedric had asked. “It’d be nice to be friends after the competition is over.”

                Viktor would have kept that promise. Being a celebrity Quidditch player was much lonelier than people imagined, and making new friends was rare.

                Cedric was dead, though, and without his help Krum never reached out to Harry Potter. He had a reasonable amount of respect for the boy, but they didn’t know each other well enough.

                Viktor spent the next year playing Quidditch, writing letters, and getting into duels with people who claimed that Voldemort wasn’t back. Viktor saw the terror in Karkaroff’s eyes, saw the worry in Hermione’s writing. He’d seen Cedric’s dead body. It was real, and Harry Potter wasn’t lying.

                When the war started he wanted to rush to England and fight, killing everything that might hurt Hermione. So what if her parents were Muggles? There was nothing wrong with that—he had Muggle relatives on both sides. She was still beautiful, still amazing, and the idea that anyone would call her inferior, anyone would cause her harm…death seemed no small thing.

                With Karkaroff gone, Viktor thought Durmstrang might have shifted back into something calmer. They were all drawn towards the darker parts of magic, but that didn’t make them evil.

                But his Muggleborn cousin wrote pleading for help, and Viktor took a year off from playing professionally and went to teach Quidditch at Durmstrang. He kept his ear to the ground, and he knew that there was trouble brewing.

                The teachers who’d taught Viktor when he was younger were showing their true colours now. And the decent ones had no support, because Karkaroff was still Headmaster until he died. It wasn’t until after word came of his death that a party went out and dragged back a pregnant woman to be the Headmistress by virtue of the child in her womb. Viktor felt genuinely sorry for the woman, who was barely three years older than him, who had to pick up after her cowardly lover. Karkaroff had always liked them young.

                Irena Vaskoff was pregnant, twenty-five, and alone. Once the child was born, she would still be in charge, but only until they were of age. After that, she was useless.  

                And of course, there had been times when a child was born an orphan, its mother murdered before it had time to draw a breath. Already several of the Darker teachers were circling her, trying to be supportive, promising that they could give her child a father.

                Viktor wasn’t stupid. He knew that she was in terrible danger, because all it took was one wrong person in the delivery room, and Irena would die, her child snatched.

                Irena was trying so hard to hide her fear, and she was doing a decent job. But she knew what was coming, and the defences around her office became more secure by the day.

                One night Viktor was patrolling, and he saw that her light was on, and that one of her shields was down. He was going to fix it, but then doing that might seem like she wasn’t capable. Instead, he knocked on her door.

                Irena opened the door, tears running down her face, and a potion in her hand. Viktor recognized it; he’d made it for his cousin a few years ago.

                “Is that the choice you want to make?”

                “What is it to you?”

                “It’s your choice,” Viktor answered. “But I don’t want you to do this because you are afraid.”

                She let him in.

                Irena sat down, the potion still clutched to her. “I don’t want to bring this child into a life like this. As long as the Dark Lord is powerful, she will be at risk. Not only from inside this school, but the rest of the world.”

                Viktor bowed his head. “You could run. I can help you run to France. My friend Fleur’s family is there, and they would shield you.”

                “They’ll find me. And then your friend will suffer for my stupidity.”

                “I could take your child and run,” Krum said. “As long as she is alive, you would be safe.”                

                Irena shook her head.

                “I know it must be hard to imagine being without her—”

                “I don’t want to be a mother,” Irena interrupted.

                Viktor didn’t know what to say.

                “Not to this one, nor to any other. I never wanted that, but Igor wouldn’t—he wouldn’t listen! He said I’d get used to it, he took all my ingredients away. And now he’s gone, and I have them now, but I’m too much of a coward to do this.” Irena slammed the bottle to the ground, so hard it shattered. The bright liquid oozed over the floor.

                “He was wrong to do that to you,” Viktor said at last. “You gave him your choice, and he took it from you. That is a crime that is punishable by death in my family.”

                “Really?”

                “That’s why my mother is dead. She—” Viktor closed his eyes. How could he say those hateful words, the words they covered with euphemisms. But Irena deserved the truth. “She abused and raped my father, and my aunt killed her for it. We lied and said it was the Cough.”

                “I’m sorry.”

                “She was no kind of mother if she was willing to do that to an adult. What would she do to a child? Instead I had my father, and he’s all the parent I ever needed.”

                Irena buried her face in her hands. “I don’t want to stop this fetus from having life, but I cannot raise them. That isn’t fair. But I cannot leave Durmstrang in the hands of those monsters.”

                Viktor pressed his palms together. Irena was right; if the line was broken, there would be nothing to stop the teachers from participating in a mass duel for the position, the first such one in over a hundred years. There would be corpses come the morning, and the students would either conform to the new leader or die.

                “You will always be this child’s biological mother. But they don’t have to be here to keep you in your position.”

                “What are you suggesting?”

                “I will find a family to protect your baby. They will raise them, and while the child—”

                “She’s a girl,” Irena interrupted. “I may as well say that, if I know she is going to live.”

                Viktor nodded. “Then the couple will raise her, and until this horror show is over, her being alive will be enough to keep you in position and safe. They will not find your daughter, I swear to you.”

                Irena hesitated, but finally she nodded. “This is quite the risk, Viktor. For me?”

                “I want to help you,” Viktor answered. “I feel helpless most of the time. This is something I can do.”

                The next few months were an agony of keeping up appearances, keeping the teachers away from Irena, looking for a family to take in the baby when the time came. Viktor had standards; the child would be loved as well as being safe. That was always going to be important.

                He finally found Isaac and Wren Scamander. Fleur’s mother directed him there—they lived among a Veela settlement, studying their language and how it compared to other fantastic beast speak. They wanted a child but Isaac wasn’t able to sire one, and they happily agreed to take in Irena’s daughter.

                “She’ll be safe with us,” Wren promised, her silver-blonde hair showing her own Veela roots. “No one would dare come near here, and we will give her a wonderful home.”

                Krum flew back to Durmstrang, elated. It was only a month until Irena’s baby was due, and by then they would have a perfectly safe plan in place to take her there.

                Naturally, when he got back Irena was in labour.

                The six hours it took for Irena to deliver her daughter were the longest of Viktor’s life. His cousin stood guard at the door, but there was no way to get the mediwitch to Irena without alerting half of Durmstrang. Viktor held her hand and counted contractions, praying that woman and child would come through.

                But the end of the six hours was worth it,  because a tiny squalling baby was tied to Viktor’s chest, ready for the return flight. Irena was exhausted, but she put a hand on the baby’s head. “Name her Rita,” she said. Then she looked at the now-quiet child. “Good luck, Rita. I wish you all the best love in the world. I’m sorry I can’t give it to you.”

                Krum took off the next moment, flying as fast as he could without hurting the baby. To his relief, Rita slept the entire four hours back to the Scamanders, who woke up in some confusion, but mostly delight. When Viktor handed Isaac Rita, and watched him cuddle the baby close to his chest as he wept, weight lifted off his shoulders.

                Viktor removed the sling, which was modified with an Undetectable Enlargement charm.

                “There are supplies in here, and letters from Irena. One to you, and one to Rita. She wanted…she wanted to give her daughter that story.”

                “Of course,” Wren said immediately, taking the sling. “We’ll tell Rita the truth, and leave contact up to her and to Irena.”

                Viktor nodded. “I must return before anyone grows suspicious,” he said.

                “Viktor,” Isaac called. “Will you be Rita’s godfather?”

                Viktor was touched. “Of course I will,” he answered.

                Isaac handed Rita to him—his goddaughter, of all things—and Viktor kissed her head. “Fly high, Rita. I will see you again.”

                Viktor didn’t hear from the Scamanders for several months. The war intensified in Britain, and all letters stopped. That was alright though, because it was all Viktor could do to keep his head above water at Durmstrang. The tension rose to breaking point between the Voldemort supporting teachers and the rest, with the students trying their best to stay out of the way.                                                                       And finally, right before Durmstrang was set alight by one side or another, the war ended. Viktor got a letter from Hermione—the first one in a year—telling him all about it. It was tearstained, and Viktor’s tears made it worse, but the most important part was that his friends were safe, and Voldemort was dead. The Voldemort supporters left Durmstrang in a hurry, and Irena declared it to be a holiday. She baked dozens of cakes and all the students sat together in the Hall, happy and safe for the first time.                 Viktor only stayed for one piece of cake, because he had somewhere to be. He got on his broom, and flew to the Scamanders’ home.                                                                                                                                                                 Rita was five months old now, and she could even sit up. Viktor picked her up, searching her face for her father and mother. She had her mother’s strong chin and her father’s dark hair, but other than that she seemed like a completely different person. Her big smile was definitely hers alone.

                Viktor left Durmstrang that summer. Irena had things well in hand, and there was no further danger to Rita. He spent a month in Britain and stayed with Bill and Fleur, going up to Hogsmeade one weekend to visit with Hermione. Perhaps the war had changed things, or maybe Viktor had finally succeeded in moving on, but he could look at her the way he looked at Irena—a dear friend, and nothing else.

                When the visit was over, Viktor returned to Bulgaria. He rejoined the Quidditch team, but instead of the team dorms he bought a small cottage near to the Sacamanders so he could see Rita every day. They became fast friends, and it wasn’t unusual to see Durmstrang’s Tri-Wizard Champion and national Quidditch player obediently being a two year old’s ‘horsie’.

                Viktor kept in touch with everyone in Britain—Harry and (to his great shock) Ron became new penpals, and so did Arthur Weasley—and his days were happier now. He had friends (Isaac and Wren were brilliant, and he made friends with several Veela, including one of Fleur’s distant cousins), he had his goddaughter, and he had Irena.

                There were times when all of those good parts of his life came together. Irena began to visit Rita when she was three years old, taking her out to get ice cream or just talking to her. At first that made Wren and Isaac nervous, but Irena reassured them. “She’s your daughter, not mine,” she promised. “But I would like to be in her life, just not as a mother.”

                She kept her word when Rita came to Durmstrang, where she acknowledged that Rita was her biological child. “Rita is the heir to Durmstrang, if she wishes it. But for now, she needs to be a good student and keep up with her homework.”

                And Rita, who helped Irena write that speech, just laughed.

                Viktor retired from Quidditch the year Rita was thirteen, and when he came to visit the Scamanders for New Years, Irena was there, and she brought a new man with her.

                Derek Kovachev had a grown-up son named Milan, and he had a booming laugh that made everyone else want to join in. Irena held his hand the entire night, and for the first time in thirteen years Viktor actually felt a pang of longing. There’d been a few women along the way, and a brief relationship with Lee Jordan, but they always ended in friendships, in more letters and less intimacy. Viktor had grown to accept that.

                But now Irena was seriously courting Derek, and Viktor wondered if it was maybe time to try once more.

                But Rita took up a lot of his time, because she was dealing with being thirteen, and she was old enough to understand her father’s legacy, and deciding whether that was something she wanted to accept at all, and Wren caught spattergroit and was laid up for three months, and Isaac’s research was unfortunately taking him away from home to more remote Veela settlements…so when Rita needed to talk to someone, she always wrote Viktor. He had to be ready to answer letters at all times.

                As his years visiting the Scamanders had given him some immunity to the Veela’s charms, Viktor could work with them. He became the front man for a bookstore that dealt with books for magical peoples and books written by magical peoples. It was surprisingly popular with the locals, who were curious about the worlds of people they’d been raised to call fantastic ‘beasts’ (not something the Veela enjoyed, and they credited Newt Scamander because they weren’t in his book).  Still, the majority of their business was done through the post office (after all, Mer couldn’t get to the middle of Bulgaria easily).

                So Viktor’s primary job was going to the post office. He went to send off orders and pick up new ones (owls didn’t much like Veelas, so they wouldn’t deliver directly to the store). It meant two trips a day so they could fulfill orders as quickly as possible, and Viktor eventually got a box there so that letters from his friends and goddaughter could be picked up while he was walking back and forth.

                Because of his frequent visits he got to know the post office quite well. Stefan and Andrei Florakis were in charge, and their daughter Marta, a year younger than Viktor, looked after the owls. Whenever Viktor came in she was wearing a dress covered in feathers (but never bird shit, somehow), and chatting quite seriously with the owls as she tied packages onto their legs.

                At first Viktor enjoyed talking with Stefan and Andrei more. Stefan came from Greece, and he had dozens of stories about the magical settlements there. Andrei was quieter than his partner, but he had an extensive memory of the packages he’d seen in his time. “You’d be surprised how many people come in here with their partner’s belongings and get them boxed up and sent to Timbuktu,” he chuckled. “Really, I suppose you’d be surprised by how often people tell you what they’re sending and where and why. I really only need to know the second, but I appreciate the stories.”

                Marta would listen to the stories too, but she rolled her eyes at some of the more outrageous ones. “I don’t think my father understands that people lie,” she confided in Viktor one day. “I don’t think some of those stories are true.”

                “Maybe not,” Viktor replied. “But they are good stories, and that holds some power.”

                “Tell me a story then, Viktor.” Marta’s eyes danced. “And embellish if you need to.”

                Obviously Viktor couldn’t spend all of his time at the post office; he had work to do. But in the first few months of his new job he ended up spending several evenings there. Stefan cooked beautifully, and soon Viktor joined the family for dinner each Saturday night. They ate a feast, and then they would gather around a table with a magical map. They took turns telling stories, pointing at the places they began, continued, and ended.

                (Twenty years later, the table would be replaced with a far more detailed one, crafted by Al and Scorpius).

                Andrei’s stories were centered around stories of delivery, both of packages and people. “I started out as a ship captain,” he told them. “But I got tired of the sea when I met Stefan on my hundredth voyage, and we came back here together.”

                Stefan had travelled extensively in search of good food, and he could remember details of recipes he’d tasted decades before. He pointed out the best restaurants, and the worst, in a different town or village or city each Saturday.

                Marta, like her fathers, had many stories of travel. “I was a dancer,” she explained. “We performed across the continents.” Her stories were full of colour and light, dazzling heights and tense moments. Viktor often let his food go cold listening.

                He was nervous the first few times he shared his own stories—all he’d done was play Quidditch, nothing so wonderful as the Florakis. But it grew easier to talk, and soon he could tell stories as well as they could. He told stories about travels, about the thrill of the game and the roar of the crowd, about quiet days in the bookshop and all of their customers, and about Rita. He could talk for hours about his god-daughter, always could.

                Viktor’s favourite story came two years later, when Derek proposed to Irena, and she accepted. They were married at Durmstrang, and in the ceremony Irena named Derek Headmaster, as was custom when the Head of the school married. But what Irena did next wasn’t traditional at all.

                She summoned Rita forward, who at fifteen was taller than both of her mothers, and asked if she was willing to give up her position as Heir to Durmstrang. To shocked murmurs, Rita assented, and Irena named Milan as her successor, as the ‘son of the Headmaster’.

                It was cunning, it was clever, and it was exactly what they all wanted. Irena didn’t want to burden her biological daughter with the responsibility of her blood, and Rita wanted to leave Durmstrang and travel to Paris. She wanted to work with Gabrielle Delacour in fashion one day, but that wasn’t something she could do without breaking the line.

                Milan, on the other hand, wanted very much to be a teacher. He was already married, and had infant twins, with plans to have more children (he and his wife ended up with eight, four sets of twins in all). He was willing to take on Durmstrang, and was grateful to accept the title from Rita.

                But that wasn’t the only reason that it was Viktor’s favourite story. His goddaughter’s happiness was wonderful, his friend’s relief was great, and he was happy to see his old school get new blood.

                No, that would always be his favourite story because it was the first night Marta’s food grew cold as she listened, the first time Viktor truly saw the way she looked at him. It was the first time he realized that she might love him, and it was the first time that he realized that he loved her back.

                And he told that story many more times in the years to come, including at their wedding (held at the post office, of course—Stefan and Andrei wouldn’t hear of anything else). He told it to many people, all their friends and family; he wrote it down, he told it aloud, and he even learned to sign it from Wren Scamander.

                He even whispered it one night to his infant son Cedric, cradling him as Marta rested from her labour. The baby was so small in his arms, so much smaller than Rita, but his eyes were so intense—he was such a little person.

                Which is why, for the first time, Viktor ended the story with a truth he hadn’t dared to speak.

                “And in that hall, my son, when I heard that, I felt afraid for a moment. Irena didn’t need me anymore, and neither did Rita—she was acknowledged and she was safe. I worried that with my usefulness over, my story may have ended.”

                Viktor leaned down and kissed his son’s forehead. “I don’t mean death, Cedric, because death isn’t the end of a story. But I wasn’t going to be needed anymore, and I was set in where I was. I am so happy to be wrong, dear child. I got to have so many more stories, and I look forward to the story I will have with you.”

[backtomylakearearootsstory]

S1E17

[SUNDAY EVENING SUMMARY-The couples have checked out of the hotel and are reunited with their children, Clarissa is preparing her lecture for the following day and working on a new podcast. After dinner, Malachi manages to get in contact via IM with a cousin from Louisiana, while Aundrea is thinking about the rough draft that she’s submitted for her Reading class. She’s got a tryout for volleyball while Malachi is going to try out for track. QJ has already asked if Justin came come over at some point, he enjoyed himself at the sleepover with his parents happen he made it back in one piece]

Monday morning is going relatively smooth for QJ, however in the middle of class during the afternoon, he’s called in to the office. “The guidance counselor wants to see you" the Principal said with no explanation.  "Why?" a concerned QJ asked to which the principal responded "You'll find out when you go in". Reluctantly, he walked over to the office where he was greeted by an African American woman. She had a dark to medium brown complexion, one could describe as Coffee. She was in her mid 50’s and dressed as a pants suit.

“Elaine August” she said as she reached out to shake QJ’s hand.

“Quincy James Martin Jr, My friends call me QJ”

“The principal, from my understanding, wants you to see me for one per week for the next two weeks. AI figured if you visit with me today for 15 minutes with Friday off. I know it’s probably the last place you want to be at this point, however I want to make this as easy and as comfortable for you as possible. Nothing we talk about will be discussed without your consent.”

“Okay…….”

“So tell me about yourself”

“Well, my name is Quincy. I’m in the third grade. I’m named after my dad actually, but all my friends and family call me QJ. I have an older brother and sister, they’re both in the sixth grade. Twins. “

“How about your parents?”

“Well, my mom is a teacher and my dad recently retired from the Airforce.”

“Your mother is a teacher?”

“Yes ma’am, she teaches English and History. She’s also writing a book, it’s supposed to be out next summer.”

“About what?”

“Reconnecting with her Louisiana family. My grandma, her mom, is from Louisiana. She’s from a town called Lake Charles? She went down there this summer for the first time in like years. I’ve been once in my life, but I was a baby so I don’t remember anything”

“I know of Lake Charles, are you familiar with the singer. Nellie Lutcher?”

“No ma’am”

“Well, she’s a soul and jazz singer who is from Lake Charles who later on moved to Los Angeles. You know, it wasn’t unheard of for black people. Particularly black creoles to  head out this way for a better life. Black people fled the south to escape Jim Crow.”

“My mom is actually creole, she’s an Arceneaux. My mom is fair skinned, but not to the point that I’d mistake her for white.”

“Right, but you’d be surprised at the ones who tried to pass….any way I digress..let’s get back to your family”

“My brother is the golden child. He almost never gets in trouble. He’s been an A student since preschool. I like school, don’t get me wrong and if you talked to my teachers, I would hope that they’d say good things. My sister…….let me say that she’s the one who likes it least. We all pass. Our mom being a teacher and an English teacher wouldn’t accept us not trying”

Elaine then looked at her watch. “We’ve been in  here 20 minutes. I need to send you back to class”.

QJ went back to class where they were in the middle of the reading lesson. Not quite understanding the point of the meeting he agreed for the sake of avoiding a suspension. He pulled out his notebook and began copying the homework assignment down. Afterwards he pulled out his reading workbook to catch up with where the class was. Later that evening at dinner he brought up that he had to see the guidance counselor.

“I’d actually like to meet her” Deja said as she took a bit of stir fry. “Is she nice”

“Yes, she is. She actually asked about you”

“What did you tell her?”

“That you were a teacher and that dad was retired Military”

“I have my first job tomorrow” Quincy said. “I am going to be mystery shopping while I look for work”

A curious Deja asked “Is this one of those bogus wiring money schemes?”

“Nope though someone attempted to fool me with that. I went to Volition.com and then applied at a lot of companies. I have to do an automotive shop tomorrow.”

Malachi asked what he’d have to do. “Well, I have to go to a dealership tomorrow and pose as someone looking for a new vehicle”

“What about you Aundrea?”

“Well I got a B on the rough draft of my book report”

“Good job”

“Thanks”

After eating dinner, Malachi went to his room and wrote a new journal entry.

[TUESDAY MORNING-QJ KNEW HE’D MISS PART OF THE MORNING, HE HEADED DIRECT FOR THE COUNSELORS OFFICE]

While QJ was meeting with the guidance counselor, Deja was lecturing in an English class.

“Today we are going to look at several pieces of literature and analyze them. I am still grading essays. So far, you all have some interesting things to say.  I am not grading these overly tough; however, the literature essay will not be as easy. Do not worry about it right now, that’s later in the year.  Today we are going to identify certain things that you will be quizzed on at the end of the week.” They defined terms such as simile, personification, iambic pentameter, imagery, diction, allusion, epigraph, euphemism, foreshadowing, metaphor, point-of-view, and structure.  During that time Deja received a text from Quincy “I’m about to go complete this, pray for me”

At the car dealership, he managed to get the attention of a salesman with the scenario that he was planning a vehicle purchase within the next month. He spotted a navy truck that he like. “Wanna test drive” the salesman asked.

“Yeah I do!”

They drove for 15 minutes, around the block. He went inside with the salesman and obtained a business card and signed up for the dealerships newsletter. He went home and completed the report. He managed the complete his first mystery shop. He also managed to secure three gas station shops later in the week. He was happy to be working again even if it wasn’t a conventional job. If he could obtain enough shops regularly in the competitive market of Los Angeles, he could earn as much as $100 extra per week.

Meanwhile, Malachi and Aundrea were leaving ELA when running into  Brianna in the hallway. “Hey, this is my brother, Malachi”

“Hey” Malachi said.

“Hey. I hear you like to read”

“Yeah”

“It’s a form a stress relief for me”

“She’s coming over today, we’re gonna work on our final drafts for our book report”

“Cool”

Malachi then headed to his math class where the teacher announced that they would be learning to solve equations. “Turn your book to page 30” He looked down with a blank stare as his classmates groaned. . While going over the lesson, she assigned some practice problems for homework. It was getting close to the end of the day and for some reason the last couple of hours seemed to drag. When they got to the end of the day, their dad came and picked them up.

“Guys, I managed to pick up a little work. I’m going to be going to certain stores and stocking products. It’ll be during the day. Tonight, we’ll be having brinner”

 [TO BE CONTINED WITH EPISODE 18]

[janeaustentextposts]

I love reading your answers to Jane Austen related questions, and I've finally come up with one of my own. We often see characters from that time period saying things like "she has entered her confinement" and I've inferred what it meant for the most part. But I'd like a more specific answer if you know one. Also, pregnancy seems like something barely mentioned in most books of that time. What was it like being pregnant in those days? Was it shameful or inappropriate to talk about?

Confinement is a practice which goes way back in many cultures, and in some continues to this day as a period of time for the community/family of a pregnant person to support them around the time of their giving birth.

In European history, back to medieval times, nobles would enter this confinement in the latter stages of pregnancy to provide quiet and calm before the birth. (Given Austen’s own darkly snarky comment in a letter: “Mrs. Hale, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband...” we know that even in her own time people believed shock could have a disastrous effect upon a pregnant person.)

(That dead baby joke, though...Jane, please.)

This period of time was also known as one’s lying-in, as it could often involve bed-rest, and confinement to one’s chambers in comfort and ease would result in more informal dress as the expectant person would be attended largely by their ladies-in-waiting or female family members. On average, the confinement period would extend about a month following the birth, though this can vary depending on local custom or personal needs. Recovery from a birth takes however long it takes, but standard practice would support the new parent and baby for the crucial first month. Consider nowadays how in European/American cultures new parents often have professionals, friends, family, and neighbours help them out for a little while, whether it be lactation consultants or dropping off a casserole or doing some laundry while the new parents catch a much-needed nap. Our human needs for these things still exist--the practices simply used to be more socially formalized and even a little superstitious.

In some Asian countries, confinement is a term for a modern practice of this kind of familial and community support, and there are confinement centers in some cities where pregnant and postpartum people may book accommodations to rest and bond with their babies, with supportive women-only staff on-hand, special traditional baths and herbal/massage treatments available, and catered meals with offers of special post-natal diets. (Men may not be permitted to visit, which is not ideal for some.)

In Austen’s time, confinement might also be known as accouchement, a French term which literally means time spent lying on a couch--it just sounds fancier, I guess. Much like how a lady might be more delicately referred to as being enceinte, rather than pregnant. (The word actually literally means ‘enclosed’ as in a fortified building, so again, hearkens to the notion of being confined and protected.)

Pregnancy was certainly all around women in Austen’s time, regardless of whether it might be appropriate to speak openly of it in genteel novels by A Lady. Austen’s letters to her family and friends certainly show that she was by no means ignorant of where babies came from, even if she was a spinster. People could not help being aware of pregnancy--and it was an interesting condition for many, being fraught with dangers for both mother and child, as far as health went, as well as with the dependency of estates and titles upon the bearing of healthy male heirs. With no practical methods of birth control available, babies were everywhere. (With infant mortality rates being very much a thing, perhaps even more babies and pregnancies than older children, honestly.) On hearing that her sister-in-law’s sister had recently given birth to her eighteenth child, the unmarried Miss Jane felt justified in writing that “[she] would recommend to her and Mr. D. the simple regimen of separate rooms.” (Mr. and Mrs. D would ultimately have twenty children in total.)

While pregnancy was not shameful nor inappropriate--and could hardly be so, when it was everywhere--the messier details would certainly not be discussed in polite company as frankly, perhaps, as they would be with close female friends or family, or in the letters exchanged therein. So, yes, chat about it in the kitchen with your cousins, but only veiled and polite vague references at her ladyship’s dinner-table, please. In the 2009 adaptation of Emma, Mrs. Weston is clearly in the latter months of her pregnancy by episode 3, though she is still going out and socializing and there is no scandal in her being in company with unmarried young girls like Emma or Harriet, or socializing with all their neighbours when Mr. Knightley calls at Randalls--it’s all just a part of life. She even walks along while they all go to Hartfield, though Mr. Weston holds her hand as much because her balance might be off as because he’s a lovely husband. But by the time of the strawberry-picking party at Donwell, or the outing to Box Hill, Mrs. Weston is absent (and Emma starts to run her mouth about Miss Bates under Frank’s wilder influence towards crueler wit,) so the heat, the more strenuous exercise, and the advancement of her pregnancy all likely combine to prevent her attending. Later, Emma is summoned to her when Mrs. Weston must break the news of Frank and Jane’s engagement, but in the text this is said to be due to Mrs. Weston’s desire for discretion, and to not alarm Mr. Woodhouse in case Emma should take the news very badly. In the adaptation this is less clear, and Mrs. Weston sits at home in a very simple maternity gown with front laces which may be loosened for easy wearing in what must be the more uncomfortable stages of carrying a child--but in the novel she is still going about her life and paying calls in Highbury, so she’s not entirely shut away, even in the final days of her pregnancy.

In Georgian and Regency times, pregnancy was common enough that healthy women could be out and about in society pretty much up until the moment labour began, unless a doctor might recommend otherwise. The Victorians might have been more squeamish about such things, but for a genteel lady in Austen’s time, life very much went on, with everything in moderation, and confinement was more to do with post-partum care than hiding away the sight of a pregnant belly from the aghast eyes of delicate and innocent girls.

Austen’s writing speaks of women’s “safety”, that is, their survival of a birth and the dangers of the days immediately following, where infection and haemorrhages may be as likely to cause death as childbirth itself. While polite euphemism might abound, the practical anxieties and joys of pregnancy and birth were everywhere, and no real secret from anybody unless one really strove to uphold general ignorance of such matters.

[hiruma-musouka]

Of Magic and Masonry

@fandommaniac2401​ asked me almost two months ago for my thoughts on a HMC/Naruto fusion. I hadn’t replied because after reading her post and remembering past discussions on @blackkatmagic​‘s blog about just such a verse, I had a lot of thoughts of my own and I meant to sit down to write it.

Well, I finally made myself do just that this week, so here’s a late Winter Holiday or early New Year’s present to everyone.

Title: Of Magic and Masonry [AO3 link] Series: Naruto, Howl’s Moving Castle fusion Summary: In which the Royal Witch Mito Uzumaki has a professional request for Wizard Madara and sends four of the king's retainers to convey it.(aka: In which Kagami can be partly faulted for their presence on this expedition, and Torifu begins to understand why the man is never taken aback by any tale of eccentric relatives.)

"I've heard that he eats people's hearts," Torifu said bluntly.

The four blue-clad soldiers stared up at the castle sitting near the northern mountains of Folding Valley.

It should have been almost picturesque really. A gleaming river wound its way through the foothills of the fertile valley. Trees were just beginning to turn gold and red with the advancement of autumn. Upper Folding sprawled across the land downstream, straddling the river at a sufficient distance to obscure the less lovely facets of a human town. Market Chipping was even farther off, barely visible as chimney smoke on the horizon, and the castle overlooked it all from its pride of place, settled high among the hills like a bird of prey alighted delicately on a branch.

Of course that perception required one to overlook the unnatural facts that this castle belonged to no lord, had none of the proper roads which a functioning castle would rightfully require, and, oh yes, had been twenty miles west of its current position this very morning.

It had certainly been something to witness a fortress made of countless tons of stone and masonry raise itself up under the influence of some black-orange hellfire which permeated the mortar and streamed from some unseen chimney. It was only made more unnerving by dint of its manner of relocation - which had involved four semi-translucent legs spontaneously manifesting from that same magic and carting it off. Even as they warily eyed the castle, its legs shifted slightly as if seeking greater comfort where they were folded sedately along its foundations.

The sight explained quite nicely why their horses had hours ago rebelled a mile past Upper Folding's outermost farmland and refused to carry them further.

"In fact," Torifu continued in a casual tone, interrupting the second round of Hiruzen and Danzo's lowkey disagreement over whether it was chicken or fox legs attached to the castle, "I've heard the wizard embeds his name on people's hearts, manipulates them as puppets, and then eats them."

"I'm certain he can't be as bad as rumors portray," Hiruzen said from the front of their group, standing next to Danzo and staring consideringly at their goal. He had thus missed how Torifu (who was standing behind him) had made all his statements while staring unwaveringly at the side of Kagami's head. "You know how gossip among the working class gets out of hand. They don't even get the gender of the Wizard of the Wastes right and he has occasionally been present at His Majesty's court."

"We should go up in a smaller group," Kagami suggested from his seat on the ground, panting heavily from the long climb. "We wouldn't want to- to give the wrong impression and cause offense if Wizard Madara mistakes us as a show of royal force."

"He has a patriotic duty to the country," Danzo said disapprovingly, glaring up at the enchanted stonework. "He is bound to offer his assistance when called upon."

Kagami and Torifu exchanged a look built on long familiarity before Kagami waved a hand towards their companion, smiling winsomely up at the older Akimichi. The other man sighed soundlessly but refocused on Danzo.

"It would be more diplomatic to politely request that he add his skills to the attempts to locate Prince Indra," Torifu advised. "If you'll recall, Witch Uzumaki was quite clear that we were to secure a solid agreement for that assistance before pursuing Lord Nara's alternative order. And nothing good comes out of making a great magician feel like they're being pressured, Danzo."

Especially when we are trying to conscript them into a service contract to the Kingdom.

Not that anyone would bother saying that to Danzo. He and Hiruzen both believed, from the bones outward, in personal service to a higher cause and the value of sacrificing for it. Which wasn't to say that Kagami and Torifu didn't value public service —Kagami had been the first of his family line to join the Royal Military Academy in decades and Torifu's noble house had valued military service for longer than many cities in Ingary had existed— but Danzo in particular found it difficult to accept that other people held to standards divergent from his ideals.

It made him something of an asshole at times.

"That's a good point," Hiruzen affirmed, turning halfway towards them. "Kagami, if you'll wait here along with Torifu, Danzo and I will make our way up for an initial introduction. If things go poorly, hopefully the two of you will have more luck speaking with the wizard or letting His Majesty know there's been a complication."

Kagami gave a wordless salute from the ground while Torifu nodded.

The two men watched their fellows climb up the steep hill. Coincidentally enough, as soon as they'd moved far enough away to be outside easy listening distance, Kagami stopped breathing so heavily.

Torifu sent him an unimpressed look. "Finished recovering are you?"

Kagami rolled his eyes, bracing his arms on his knees before wincing, stretching out his spine, and leaning backwards on his elbows. "Did you want to traipse up the hill with the friend I personally vote most likely to offend a magic user into cursing us? Oh, and Hiruzen too."

"Speaking of which," Torifu said, knocking a foot against Kagami's outstretched ankle, "and I mean this in the most platonic and offensive manner possible: fuck you and your big mouth sincerely, Kagami."

"Torifu! You're breaking my heart here." Kagami frowned with false hurt and genuine annoyance. "Besides, I wasn't the one who lost track of our thick-headed friend and his weirdly specific inadequacy issues in time for it to all bite us in the ass once again. You were supposed to keep Danzo out of my curls and away from Witch Mito long enough for me to get Hiruzen set up for this assignment."

"You don't have any curls; you have a mop," Torifu countered, ignoring Kagami's blithe claim of blasphemy at the insult. "And it would have been helpful to know that in advance if you had actually wanted Danzo distracted rather than shoving him at me with a 'introduce him to women for me before he gets married to his own sword.' I am never forgiving you for that mental image."

Kagami stared at Torifu blankly until the Akimichi raised his eyebrows meaningfully. It was obvious when Kagami finally got the euphemism too because he snorted with a disgusted wrinkle of his nose. "That's your own terrible fault not mine, ugh. Ugh. Oh that's wretched. You have just— You have ruined so many things for me, damn you, Torifu. You owe me good liquor for this."

"I owe you nothing. If you hadn't tried to set up Hiruzen so he would be landed with this duty, we wouldn't be here alongside him."

"Hey," Kagami defended, pointing accusingly up the hill at the distant figures. "That is entirely Danzo's fault for butting in unexpectedly. I had told Witch Mito —rightfully!— that Hiruzen was the most charismatic among us who had any experience with magicians. Danzo somehow persuaded her to send the lot of us instead of just that guy and Homura!"

"Did you happen to wax poetic about Hiruzen while speaking with Lady Uzumaki?" Torifu asked rhetorically.

"Why did you have to phrase it that way? We are supposed to be friends, Torifu. Never say that again and what do you think I did?"

Torifu sighed, shaking his head and sitting down on the grassy hill next to Kagami. He removed his cap and gloves and ran fingers through his hair, welcoming the slight breeze from the east. "Well that explains why Danzo felt the need to involve us in this endeavor. Now why were you so determined that we do otherwise?"

"Look at this," Kagami gestured grandly, arm outflung to indicate Upper Folding and its environs. "Look at this quaint, charming, backwater beauty filled with nature and quietude, countryfolk, cow pies, and curses! And all for the very reasonable price of far too long on bloody horses and a guaranteed blemish on our reputations when we fail the King's request. What's not to love?! Especially in comparison with remaining in the capital where we could enjoy Kingsbury's accommodations while pursuing an investigation into that murder spree of minor practitioners. Why, I'd even rate it above traveling to Porthaven to make the same request of Wizard Jenkins—" There was an oddly cynical emphasis on the name "—and that's also bound to failure. However, I suppose being consoled by days on horseback while listening to our dear friends is much preferred to visiting a few of my hospitable relatives who've settled in that seaside village."

"I take your meaning," Torifu said, slapping his cap against the buttoned front of Kagami's wool uniform, stopping the torrent of drama. "Now without prevarication, explain why you're certain we'll fail."

A slight pause. "Well you can't expect success when the man's ignored all messages from His Majesty's Royal Witch before, now can you?"

Torifu yawned, fanning himself with his blue cap and bracing an arm on his knee as he stared at Kagami.

It took a few minutes before Kagami sighed, glancing over his shoulder towards Hiruzen and Danzo's position before looking skyward. "He might... be a cousin of mine."

Torifu considered that. "You are related to Wizard Madara of Folding Valley's Moving Castle?" he asked, seeking confirmation. Kagami shrugged, rubbing the nape of his neck. "You inherited a remarkably modest portion of the family sense of drama, haven't you?"

"Oh ha. You haven't even met any of my family outside my mother. We definitely don't have the same drama surrounding us that perfumes your noble house's politicking, Heir Akimichi," Kagami countered. "Madara's mostly an outlier. He, his foxfire demon, and his new freaky live-in tenant don't count."

"You do realize that Hiruzen at least will notice your family resemblance immediately once the man answers his door?"

Kagami looked terribly unconcerned as he laid down fully, arms folded behind his head. "That requires Madara to actually be there to answer the door, doesn't it?"

"Kagami," Torifu began slowly, temper beginning to surface. "Did we just journey across half the country because you wouldn't tell us the man is traveling elsewhere?"

"Exactly how was I supposed to let you know that without Witch Mito - and the royal family through her - learning that my extended family produced a wizard of Madara's caliber?" Kagami asked skeptically, unperturbed and unrepentant.

"There's no shame in that. Magicians are of great status and use to—" Torifu cut himself off, realization dawning as Kagami stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "Ah."

" 'Ah', indeed!" Kagami exclaimed. "You are perfectly correct that magicians are of great use to the crown! They have such respect and influence that King Hagoromo had to entice the Uzumaki to immigrate to Ingary in order to find a magician willing to take his endorsement as Royal Sorcerer after he finally locked up his lunatic mother!"

Kagami shuddered, blanching a bit at the thought of what his grandmother —frail or not— would do to him if it got out that the Uchiha still had magicians sprouting up here and there. It may have been forty years since the crazy Queen Mother had last had a magician disappeared to do... whatever horrors it was she inflicted on them before their murder, but she was only in seclusion, not dead. The backstreets of the capital still had persistent rumors started by frightened maids that Kaguya looked as young as the day her sons had dethroned her.

If Kagami ruined all of his grandmother and her siblings' past work at getting the magic users of their family to bend to using pseudonyms, he'd be up a creek without a paddle. At best, he'd never hear the end of it. At worst, he'd end up ostracized or turned into some sort of farm animal and left to an undignified life in a pasture or pen owned by one of his mess of cousins.

Kagami had too much to live for to end up as poultry or pork.

"Anyway!" Kagami said, waving a hand and hurrying to move on from the unpleasant topic. "What's done is done. We're all here, Madara is safely off visiting a newborn niece or nephew, we've got some fresh air and sunshine, you'll please never mention this to anyone, and all will be well."

"Fine, but you're getting your lazy self up," Torifu informed him, rising to his own feet. "I'm not clear on why you faked exhaustion to avoid knocking on an empty door but..." Torifu shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted up at the castle. "I thought you said the wizard was absent? They just entered through the front door."

"He is," Kagami confirmed, brushing off his pants. "The creepy cursed tenant must have stayed behind as I expected he would. And for your information, that's why I didn't want to knock rather than laziness - the hill isn't that steep, thank you."

"Cursed?"

"That's what Hikaku says and my cousin's apprenticed under Madara." Kagami shoved his hat back on, folding his arms. "Apparently it's some nasty piece of work - woven through every last wrinkle and hair on the elderly man's body. Lord knows how the fellow actually hiked his way up to the castle. Anyway, Hikaku's got a deft touch and Madara's, well—" Kagami motioned to the enormous, bespelled castle "—he's Madara, but neither of them can pry the curse off the guy or even off his voice box. The first attempt sent him into heart palpitations serious enough that Hikaku's pretty sure it's a death curse twisted from its purpose. Although it's beyond me how a mutated death curse could throw Hashirama Senju back out the door from twenty feet away."

Torifu frowned at that. The Wizard of the Wastes certainly wasn't a lightweight by any means. Torifu had only met him the once when the man had started paying court to Lady Uzumaki, but no one who's trying and beginning to succeed in the ludicrous endeavor of recovering The Wastes into fertile, arable land could be minor hedge wizard. "Could it be related to the Kingsbury murders?"

Kagami started to shake his head but abruptly stopped, licking his lips. "We're halfway across the country," he said slowly, "and the man's supposed to have red eyes which would throw out eye color as a second commonality among the victims. But that's all I know of the case from Homura and Koharu unless they mentioned more details to you...?"

"Just that they all had a touch of magic," Torifu said as he started to climb. "This tenant has magic, right?"

"He has something creepy at least," Kagami muttered behind him. "Hikaku doesn't start drinking so he can falsely complain about reanimated spines crawling up the stairs and dead mice walking themselves into trash bins while teacups instantaneously transport to the creepy man's elbow. I have no idea how he and Madara live wiTH—"

Kagami choked on his words, grabbing the back of Torifu's jacket and shaking him violently. Torifu spun, caught sight of Kagami's aghast expression directed towards their right, and then looked for himself.

The... thing that was squirming up the footpath might have been a scarecrow once upon a moon. Might. Whatever it qualified as now was some bastardized melding of that and something living. Unnatural shifting lumps were half hidden under its tattered, royal blue suit jacket. Vines swung and curled from the cuffs of its ripped shirtsleeves. Thick mobile roots emerged from its jacket in place of a scarecrow's wooden shaft, carrying it swiftly towards them in an undulating movement.

And in horrifying pride of place, replacing the hay-stuffed sack that should have served as its head, a twisted pink bud grew, sharp leaves engulfing its base and wrinkled petals contorted into a distorted face.

The stink of cursed magic wafted off the warped sapling-scarecrow like a chamber pot as it ran at them. They both lunged off the path and out of its way, nearly falling down the hill in their urgency.

"What is that?!" Torifu demanded.

"Why are you asking me?! I don't have magic!" Kagami yelped.

"Your cousin—"

"Distant cousin, distant! And Madara sets things on fire and triggers dramatics with gunk and shadows when he gets aggravated! He doesn't do whatever thoh shit..." Kagami breathed, eyes widening.

Madara's Moving Castle, regardless of the absence of its master, had apparently taken note of the approaching malicious construct. It didn't look too happy about it either, which was not a thought Torifu had ever imagined having about a building before. Numerous windows on the upper levels of the towers had lit up blindingly with the same unnerving magic that was propelling it up onto its crouched legs once more. However, the windows were backlit by a bleeding luminous red glow rather than a black-orange shade, and two openings were left dark in the centers of the glass clusters like gigantic pupils on artificial eyes.

The castle door opened onto sheer nothingness.

"DOWN!"

They both dropped flat to the ground as a fiery tongue-like protrusion shot out of the entrance. It wrapped around the scarecrow and then hurtled back inside with its captive, recoiling at lightning speed. The door slammed, reopened onto the vague image of an entryway, illuminated by the same black-orange light, and with a malicious inhuman cackle that echoed among the hills, three balls of magic were catapulted across the sky.

Two of the fireballs were screaming as they flew towards the horizon. They sounded familiar.

The castle door stayed open for a brief moment as Torifu and Kagami stared wordlessly. There came the faint sound of an old man yelling disapprovingly from inside —something about hospitality and respect— but it was barely audible over the laughter that seemingly emanated from the stonework itself.

Eventually the door snapped shut, but the snickers continued, an undertone of foxlike yips and crackling wood in its voice as the castle casually meandered away.

With caution, they stood up.

"I don't suppose," Torifu started calmly, still staring at the departing castle, "that the sibling your wizard cousin is visiting happens to be nearby?"

"Izuna, uh, Izuna lives nearby in Market Chipping to the south," Kagami replied numbly, staring after the fading smoke trails, two of which had to have been Hiruzen and Danzo. "But it's one of the others having the babe. I don't remember which but they're not here. Do you... do you think it would be faster to return to the capital and ask Witch Mito to borrow those Seven-League Boots prototypes she's working on?"

"Can we track them through the sky?" Torifu asked, pulling his uniform straight.

Kagami eyed the castle's previous location, traced the path the different magic spheres had taken through the sky, and squinted into the distance. "... probably," he conceded.

"Then we'd be better off getting started. You start walking; I'll fetch the horses."

 (Review and reblog if you enjoyed yourself - AO3 link)

[myownsuperintendent]

Fic: “Support System”

Season Nine AU fic.  It’s Dana’s decision, but Monica wants to at least give her the space to make it.  Gen, rated G, also here on Ao3.

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Monica makes three calls before she takes the phone off the hook. She calls Skinner first, and then Doggett, to let them know she’s not coming in today.  She says it’s a personal issue.  She doesn’t particularly like the term, because it always makes her think of an old co-worker who used it as a euphemism for cramps, which makes her wonder if they think she’s calling out for cramps, which makes her think of high school gym class.  But it’s vague enough to both encompass the truth—helping your friends is personal—and not imply anything that’s not her business to share.  She thinks Skinner might guess where she is; there’s a hint of something in his voice when he says, “Okay.  Take care of yourself.”  He doesn’t ask, though, which is just as well.

Her third call is to Dana’s mom.  This one is trickier.  She’s not sure what she should or shouldn’t say, how she can assure Mrs. Scully that she shouldn’t worry if she can’t get through on the phone while also keeping her from worrying about the reason that she’s taking the phone off the hook in the first place.  If Monica tells her that, she will worry.  Quite reasonably.  Monica’s worried, after all.  She manages the call, though, somehow.  “She’s very tired,” she offers, and even if it’s not the whole truth, it is true. She’s never seen someone so exhausted, and she’s not just thinking about bodily tiredness, although of course the two are connected.  “She needs to get some rest,” she says, and that’s true too, even if it’s far from the only thing Dana needs.  But she hopes it’ll be a start, at least.  She finishes the call.  Leaves the phone on the table, sitting beside its cradle.  Then she picks up William.

“Hey,” she says softly to him.  “We’re going to hang out for a little while, so your mom can get some rest. That okay?”  He makes some kind of sound, and she wonders if she’s supposed to know what it means.  She’s not exactly a baby person—she likes them fine, but she always feels more comfortable with kids who can actually talk to you.  Less margin for error there.  But she figures she can do a good enough job with William for the rest of the day, while Dana gets at least some of the sleep she needs, with any luck enough to make her take a step back and think and reconsider this idea.

“Are these your blocks?” she asks William, pointing to some that are laid out on the carpet.  “Should we play with them?”  He makes another sound, which she decides means he’d just as soon play with the blocks as not, and she settles him on the carpet, taking a seat beside him.  She stacks a few blocks.  William mostly seems interested in trying to put them into his mouth, but they’re big enough that he can’t swallow them, so there doesn’t seem to be any harm in it.  She doesn’t think Dana would get him blocks that were a choking hazard or had toxic paint on them or anything else that was dangerous to babies, which seems like everything sometimes, if the way her cousins who have kids talk is any indication. And things like blocks—those are just the mundane things.  Monica can understand why it’s scary, why Dana feels like she’s lost control.  But there’s always so much in life that you can’t control.  You can only try your hardest.  Monica thinks about her cousin Teresa, the way she always fastens her daughters’ bike helmets tightly before they go for a ride.  She thinks about the blocks spread out of the carpet before her, the way they are properly sized and brightly colored.  Blocks chosen by someone who cares.

Of course she knows that Dana cares.  She cares so much that she’s not thinking about herself or her own happiness—she only wants to do what she thinks will be best for William.  Maybe “wants” is the wrong word, because she didn’t get more than a few sentences out before starting to cry; Monica can’t imagine that losing her son will make her anything other than desperately unhappy, and yet she insisted that she had to give him up to keep him safe.  But Monica wonders if he would be any safer elsewhere. The dangers might be different but still present.  Right now he’s with someone who loves him and cares about him, who carefully selects his blocks and faces down conspiracies that would harm him, who sings him to sleep and crosses the continent to protect him.  Who’s wanted him for so long.

That’s the part that Monica keeps coming back to: how much Dana wanted William.  She doesn’t know the whole story, but she knows enough.  And this is about Dana for her, not some abstract notion of what a mother should or shouldn’t do.  Not every woman is meant to be a mother; it’s not something Monica herself craves.  She had an abortion her sophomore year of college, and she’s never thought of it as a traumatic decision.  She didn’t tell her own mother, didn’t tell the guy; the only person she did tell was her roommate, Crystal, who picked her up afterwards, made her soup, and spent the evening sitting on the couch with her. That’s the part she remembers best. She never felt questioned.

Thinking about that, Monica wonders if maybe she shouldn’t be questioning Dana now.  Maybe she should have let her make her own decision, instead of insisting that she get into bed and take something to help her sleep and let Monica take the phone off the hook and watch William for the rest of the day.  Maybe it’s her job to be supportive, not directive.  

But then she’s not sure what it means to be supportive in this context. The situations aren’t exactly analogous, after all; Dana wants to be a mother, likes being one, even if she feels like she can’t right now.  She keeps thinking about Dana’s tears, and she can’t decide if she’s giving her friend a much-needed opportunity to reconsider or just some additional time to spend with her pain.  William knocks down a stack she’s made with the blocks, babbling as he does so, and she scoops him into her lap and studies his face.  She remembers the sadness she saw on Dana’s face as she looked at him earlier today.  The joy she’s seen there so many other times.  There aren’t any easy decisions.

But she’ll try her best.  If nothing else, she wants Dana to know that she’s here, that she’s her friend. She doesn’t know how much Dana’s willing to admit it, but she thinks she could really use one.  And if being her friend means letting her do this…Well, she just hopes it won’t come to that.  She knows even as she thinks it that she’s avoiding taking a direct look at the situation, which isn’t exactly productive, but she really doesn’t know what she would or should do.  Fortunately, William gives her a respite from thinking about it, making fussy noises and tugging on her shirt with his small hands.  “Are you hungry?” she asks him.  “Or something?  Something like that?”  He whines again, and she lifts him up and carries him towards the kitchen to look for milk.  This is already tiring.

She keeps him alive and reasonably content for the rest of the morning and afternoon, though, which she’s willing to consider a small victory.  She’s sitting on the couch, holding him as he starts to doze off, when she hears quiet footsteps.  Dana’s making her way into the room; she comes and takes a seat on the couch next to them.  “Hi,” she says, and her face doesn’t show what she’s thinking.

“Hi,” Monica says.  “How’re you feeling?”

A movement of the shoulders that could mean anything at all. But then she holds out her arms for the baby, and Monica places him there, carefully.

“I…”  Dana’s looking down at William, pressing him close against her.  “I just…”  A shallow breath.  “I don’t…I just miss…but I couldn’t…”  Fragmentary words and pauses.  Nothing to latch onto, nothing that Monica can really answer or solve.

She just puts a hand on Dana’s arm, lightly.  “Take your time,” she says.  “I’m right here.”  Dana lets out another breath, long and slow this time.  She cradles her son without speaking, and Monica doesn’t speak either, just sits there watching.