#'the history between us does mean something. its the rage and pain in my hearts' - the master; doctor who

[aenslem]

For the ask game: explain why you do/don’t ship doctor/master (any version)

Doctor x Master are my favorite couple of entire Doctor Who, I absolutely love them, they are one of my all time fav ships ever. Why I ship them? They are everything I love in couples on tv, they are friends, they're enemies, they're lovers, they are trying to kill each other, they never can kill each other because how can they, they also care about each other, they will kill for each other, the drama, the angst, the pain!

they are also fun to watch, I love all of the three versions I have seen, and I am pretty sure when I finally sit my ass to watch the classic who, which I started forever ago and never continued, I will go insane over the other versions of this couple, I already loved Delgado in what I have seen with him, those gloves oof <3

but for now it's those three versions, with Simm, Dhawan and Gomez masters and 10, 12 and 13. They are all fantastic, they manage to get out of each other the worst, and the best, and it's awesome. Nobody does it like them, honestly, show me any couple on tv which is as insane as them, they have centuries of history between them, the friendship older then civilizations and infinitely more complex, and the universe always brings them together. I love it

the only ship of mine which I hear a song and instantly apply to them, I mean, I have made so many edits with some songs and them, none of the other couples made me want to do it :D

[parkersbite]

❛ why didn't you kill me when you had the chance? ❜

@inhcritance // rivals to lovers sentence starters

"You're my best friend, Harry. How could I have?"

The question alone threatens to shatter Peter's heart into a million pieces. No matter what Harry had done, he still couldn't hurt him. He'd thought about it, yes, especially after losing Gwen, but never long enough for it to be a real option.

Best friend, first love. The lines blur.

[spookysmujer]

Piensa En Mi, O. Diaz

Summary: The relationship with you and Oscars suddenly ends after he gets locked up. Now it’s 4 years later..

warnings: HELLA angst, heartbreak 

word count: 1.9K

a/n: I had an itch to write today, thank you for requesting babes! Sorry it took this long to get done. I hope everyone is doing okay these days. PSA: Stop the hate against Asians! Speak up for our brothers and sisters, please. I love you all! Please consider: following, heart/comment/reblog my content! Thank you <)

Requested by @boujee-bitches!

(gif belongs to @merakiaes)

You can remember the day you realized just how much you were in love with Oscar Diaz. It was a few months into dating, he had been in and out of town on Santo business, and yet still was able to check in with you. He even sent you doordash multiple times. And in that one moment, as the doordash driver stood at your door, carrying a bag of your favorite pastrami sub, you truly felt your heart bleed for Oscar. The feelings entirely mutual with him. You can remember that exact moment you felt it, just as you remember the moment your heart had been ripped away. 

The consequence of having such a pristine memory is the ability to remember not only the good days but the hurtful ones as well. Now, after years of being with Oscar, he’s gone. Things had been going so well with the Santos and moving up in the ranks for him. Then in a matter of seconds, all that changed. The moment those handcuffs linked his wrists together behind his back as he was  whisked away in the back of the patrol car was the day everything changed.

Change. 

They always say that change is a good thing. But whoever they are, they were wrong. Change is malicious, it’s life-consuming and does nothing but harm. In the beginning you were confident everything would be okay. Nothing could break this man, he has been through the highest highs and the lowest lows. He has endured things as a young child that no child should. Even when the judge has sentenced him to 8 years, the look he gave you said: It’ll be okay, mamas.

For the first few months, things were good. The money he would send to you, you’d put on his books regardless of his wishes for you not to do so. The phone calls that didn’t last nearly as long as you wanted it to. And the letters, even if you talked on the phone and visited him often, Oscar still wrote you letters, and he always drew something for you. 

But it began to get difficult. When school started up in the fall, your full-time job and now taking care of his younger brother, you started to miss calls, needed to reschedule visits. And when you would answer, Oscar would give you the cold shoulder. He realized that you were beating yourself up for trying to juggle everything. He hated himself for making you so stressed just to make it to him. So on a surprise call that you weren’t expecting, he broke it to you that dating while he is incarcerated is foolish of you. It’s a waste of your time. Please take care of yourself and Cesar, we’ll see where we are when I’m out. But for now, it’ll be just me.

That day replays in your mind. No more calls, rejected visits, ghost letters. It felt like he died, though you would have been notified of it if that was the case. But that was 4 years ago, everything had changed and according to Cesar, it’s about to change again.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” You ask, after holding your breath. Spooky gets out tomorrow. 

Cesar shovels the rest of his cereal in his mouth and gulps down the remaining milk, rushing around the kitchen and gathering his school things, “Oscar. He gets out tomorrow. His sentence reduced to half the time, remember the hearing they had last week?”

Whenever Cesar would talk about his older brother, you would tune it out. Oscar breaking up with you over the phone without a thorough reason, then dropping you as a person all together really broke you beyond repair. But you had no choice but dust off your shoulders and keep going. 

You hum and nod, packing your lunch.Without saying anything else, you head back to your room to get your things ready for work. As you pass by the room that Cesar had taken residency in, you notice the packed bags. “Cesar!” 

But by the time you make it back to the kitchen, he has already left out the door. Was he about to leave? Did he want out now that Oscar will be out? Though the idea was to care for Cesar while his brother was locked up, to know he is already ready to up and leave, hurts you. But you shake it off, Oscar is coming home, shit. 

Your day goes by painstakingly slow. All you could think about is how it would go when you’d see him again, how will you feel? What about him, what will he feel?

“Y/N, did you hear me?” Cesars voice sounds from across the table, the two of you enjoying some take-out. The day has gone from slower than a sloth to as quick as sonic the hedgehog.

He stares at you, waiting for you to respond. “Now that Oscar is getting out, it’s time for you to head on back home. Yeah, I heard you. Just sucks is all, I feel like my daily routine will be all messed up.” You joke to which he grins at. 

The next day comes by in a blink of an eye. Here you are leaning against your car that is parked in front of Oscars house. You can’t bring yourself to walk up those stairs and face him. But he hasn’t exited the house yet, you wonder if he even will. After Cesar gets the last bag is when you hear the front door. He makes his way towards you, your breath getting stuck in your airways. 

Cesar hugs you and thanks you again, you squeeze him and ask that he doesn’t be a stranger. Then there stood, you and Oscar. He stares at you for a long moment, studying you. It’s been nearly 4 years since he’s seen you. You are the same with little differences here and there, “You finally pierced your nose.” He points out. 

You purse your lips and nod, scoffing and looking him in the eyes, “Almost 1,300 days of not talking to me and seeing me…. And my nose ring is the first thing you say to me?” 

It wasn’t the plan to argue, you wanted to ask him to be kind to Cesar and take care of him then be on your merry way. But being in his physical presence now, it’s made your blood boil. How could he stand there like nothing had happened between you? The history you two have was an epic love and heartbreak but by the look on his face, it’s as if you are a stranger in passing. 

He licks his bottom lip and digs his hands into his shorts pockets, “What you want me to say? I said all I needed to that day on the phone.”

Your arms uncross from over your chest and your mouth falls slightly open. But before you can let out the rage that’s been building up continuously over the years, “I miss you, querida.” He watches your face contort to confusion then back to anger. He nearly smiles to see that you are still the hot head you’ve always been.

The words weren’t coming out as you wanted them to. All you could do was stomp past him to leave but he grabs your upper arm to stop you. You look down to where his hand wraps around your arm then up to his eyes, the look you give him is loud enough for him to let go.

“Can you just listen to me? You think I wanted to break things off? That it didn’t hurt me just as much as it hurt you?” Oscar begins, standing directly in front of you and slightly craning his head down. “I fucking hated that I did that to you, mami. The last thing I want in this world is not being with you, to cause you pain and to have done that when I was locked up? I hated it. Every single day. But I needed to do it because all I was doing was holding you back. I couldn’t bare knowing that I was making your life hard.”

An eruption of laughter sounds from you, you hold your stomach and one hand clamped over your mouth, hunching over from how hilarious you find his last sentence. Though anyone else hearing it wouldn’t really laugh, seeing as it wasn’t a funny statement. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. But do you hear yourself? You thought breaking up would be better. I don’t know if there was ever a time during our relationship prior that I made you feel I couldn’t handle something like you being locked up, I am terribly sorry if I had but I thought I proved to you that I was more than in love with you, I was hopelessly devoted to you, I was willing to endure it all, every call or visit. I was ready to work hard to make sure you could make tienda… but what did I do or what did I say to make you think otherwise?”

Oscar feels the chains on his heart tighten with every word you say. He doesn’t know what hurts him more, the break-up or now knowing how worthless it made you feel. He knows you are an understanding person, but his intentions didn’t settle as he hoped it would. 

It takes all his might to resist pulling you into a hug, With how you reacted to his touch just moments ago, he knows a hug would only result in profanities being spewed out. As if a hug could magically glue the pieces back together and fix it all. “You didn’t do shit wrong, Y/N. You were the epitome of a down ass girl. But all I could see was the tiredness in your face when you would visit me because you were playing mother to Cesar meanwhile trying to juggle everything else. Trying to make sure you would always come to see me… so I thought ending everything would be better, I thought you would be better off.”

The rage and ache in your heart fights against each other. He is saying one thing but to you its processing as nothing but an excuse. You want to yell and thrash your fists against his chest so he can feel just a sliver of what you went through. 

“I was better off with you. It didn’t matter to me what we were going through Oscar… If it was something joyous or something scrutinizing, as long it was with you and we were together, I wanted it all with you. I was ready to go through this journey with you. But you just gave up on us like that.” You snap your fingers and blink away the tears that had begun pooling for sometime now. His shoulders cave in and he dips his head down, unable to keep his eyes locked onto yours. 

“Give me a chance to prove that I haven’t given up on you or us.”

You wanted to laugh again. To point and scream how silly he sounds and to catch the circus act before they leave town but the way he says it is the reason you didn’t. How low his voice is, how soft his eyes are and his walls had dropped to below sea level is what made you stand so incredibly still.

Do you take the chance? Should push aside all the vines and roots that have grown over the chest labeled: Oscar, to let him in again? 

taglist: @clemmingstylins0n @fairygardenss @princesstiffxoxo @firebenderwolf @mbaku-babygirl​ @chellybear98 @multiyfandomgirl40 @i-just-wanna-live-gc @roury66 @lillict @tinylumpiaa @prettymya3 @starrynite7114 @aneitii @b3mybunnybaby  @angelxfics  @spookysbabymama @kkim120 @ladylj @vayagrxce @irenne-stans @boujee-bitches @blessedboo @lidumiw @morenokatt @gltrpzy (please let me know if you want to be added or removed!)

[imalwaystiredzzz]

C5: Sisyphus happy. Yan Zhongli x Reader

#genshin x reader

Warning: Yandere behavior, unhealthy relationships

< Sisyphus happy chapters >

Once, from a time long before records and memories were written on ink and paper, Morax walked upon vast lands rich in history, watered by tears of tragedy and love lost. He turns to an old woman who stood before her destroyed village, eyes downcast and hollow on bodies drowned by the war of an unrelenting sea and the mountain that does not bow. 

Morax did not understand, maybe once when he had held a goddess’ body to his own, but to him that was one thing and this is another. This is love of a mortal that does not even know who the child that cried next door nor the man that walked past their door, this is to love a complete stranger and the love that Guizhong once had when she was still by his side.

“What must I do to learn the love of mortals?” He asks, voice devoid of emotion; genuine curiosity and the hope to understand beneath.  

The old woman smiled, warm and full of wisdom as if her short years were thousands compared to the god. “To love mortals, one must sacrifice eternity and learn of the passing time. Of death and partings. The gods have forgotten that they may live long but even you have an end, it is the same thing that pains us yet we find delight in.”

He didn’t understand then, those words ring true and wise as Cloud Retainer’s advice to his ears on leading the people that he had now to care for. Even so, he still finds himself wondering, “What would Guizhong have done?”

In his heart, he knows that she would’ve understood and took a moment to explain; unlike the way time leaves nothing but confusion in its wake, only pondering and no straight answers?

Even as hundreds of years pass, when all that remains of that old woman is nothing but ashes on the soil and the land had been turned to marsh, the people traveling and settling in a mountain, and the war marching on to its bloody conclusion; Morax found that answer to be much like the dumbbell that he may never come to solve. 

But once more, reminiscent of his unexamined love with the goddess had bloomed too late, fate had played him right into its hands. 

Because the answer had come in the form of you- still a child, a bud in the nursery of glaze lilies under the morning sun. You and your small hands that gripped the end of his robes, with teary eyes that looked at the dying people and held these strangers hand in their last breath with as much intensity for a small comfort to let them know they did not die alone.

“Will the war end soon?” Your small voice asked him, even Mountain Shaper had not the stomach to look at a child’s plea for peace and spout lies.

“I am trying to end it, as fast as I can.” 

“Then this is for you.” You reached into your pocket and gave him a dried glazed lily contained in glass, “thank you for trying though we cannot give much back.” You bow, as courtesy knowing that you had just talked to the very god that protected the lands you step on and ran back to the shack that housed the sick and injured, your parents much too busy to notice you had snuck out. 

Blissfully unaware that the god of geo, gripping the gift in between his hands, amber eyes following your form and telling himself that humans have much to learn and yet they surprise him nonetheless, just like as his love used to tell him.

But even answers are confusing, much like a child who asks why is 1+1=2 and the process of it, he didn’t understand till he saw you once more. Not yet a lady but not quite the child that you used to be. Now you are the girl who provides healing, growing up to be a herbalist like your mother and no longer simply holding a basket of them for your father. Carefully, with your mortal hands you comfort the injured beyond salvation as the calamities of gods that hold much power rages on. 

Surrounded by dying men of the war, miasma, curses and death lurking in the air, in his eyes you remained untouched. Unblemished, as if the air in your little bubble had been purified by innocence and unconditional love for the crowd of strangers, neither pitying them for death nor numb to their tragedy. Then for a second he thought he saw her - the glaze lilies and the goddess that he loved so much and he begins to wonder if she’s come back to him through you.

“I should thank you for treating the wounded.” He tells the man before him, the bags of herbs laying behind his form and a sigil in hand, “use this in times of need, when the people are crying and I am away, surely the adeptis are quick to answer and would not turn you away.” 

“My lord, Rex Lapis, there is no need to thank us. Knowing that you protect the people is enough, we are just a family of healers who help the ones in need.” Your father was a grateful man, and he can see where you get your eyes, especially your kind heart who reaches out to those in need, not because he seeks power or his blessings.

“Even so, Liyue will remember your kindness but none more so than I, Rex Lapis.” 

He does not know if you remember him nor what you did, only that when he dons a mortal face to take a walk in the calms before the storm, he finds himself wandering to your garden, mostly on cold nights where you would just sing to the lilies and watch them, with unfading enchantment, bloom. 

In a distant memory of an old lover, he hears the same voice but now there stood you. Now a lady, barely a woman with your innocence and mischief.

And he knows that this is wrong, mortals are fleeting as the dust, that he can never grasp with his two hands. Wherever his heart is on anything, other than Liyue, it only ends in tragedy. And oh, how ironic of it all that if you really were his goddess that had found her way back to him, why this form? Why a mortal who is a flower that will wither compared to a mountain that does not crumble?

“It’s a beautiful song, pardon me for interrupting but may I know where you have learned it?”

“Only if you tell me what the god of earth is doing in a place like this, barely even concealed?” Playful, you smile at him playfully as if you knew all the time that he had spent staring from afar and he was not an immortal that could smite the very life out of those pretty eyes.

“The breeze carried your voice and I wondered where you had learned to entice it to your will.” He couldn’t really put a finger when it began, when your singing had lured him like a siren to the depth of the sea.

“You befriend the wind, unlike the earth, you do not command rather ask of it like a companion,” was your simple answer and he smiles like he has found something long lost. You drown him in your presence, but he is not breathless; rather he sighs filled with curiosity like a child who has more to learn from the world that he had been in for thousands of years. 

You who had rekindled a reason for his actions, much like Guizhong. This love does not ruffle his heart out of his rib cage, the dust settles and it is as calm as you talking about herbs in this small patch of garden late at night and as calm as the things settle falling into place in his beloved city by the gentle waves of the sea.

“What happened to them after?” You ask your husband, the snow falls outside and you are oh so exhausted to the bone as if the cold had taken all your warmth. He smiles and brushes your cheeks that lost their flush and your skin cold as a corpse, his arms glows gold in the intricate cracks, and you know that this is a bedtime story - though not quite for the night but for the long winter.  

The memory scratches at the back of your mind to be remembered, but a part of you warns that you wouldn’t like how it ends. 

“According to the books, the lord of geo took his love to the heavens.” He finishes with a chuckle of the irony in it all, a kiss to your temple as your eyes drop, heavy and slumber dragging you to its clutches.

Then finally, Zhongli smiles to bid you goodnight.

He watches you sleep soundly. Sleep if humans can even call it that with the lack of breathing, as still as a corpse that had died peacefully in bed while he is left to wonder of a future that had things ended the way his winter story did.

War ensures losts. Victories demand sacrifices. And the price to pay was always his love.

Zhongli would like to believe that had you died of a natural cause: sickness, accident or of old age where he would have held your aging body, he could’ve had the strength to let you pass on.

Rex Lapis would have had your funeral handled by the esteemed WangSheng, and took your passing as another promise to meet on the other side.

But Morax knows, he could never really.

Never let you go, even after thousands of years and all that you know had returned to the soil. Even when the truths of history had been forgotten by the people and you are nothing but a distant whisper to this land, a footnote to his folklore.

Not even now, when every winter is a reminder of the way he held your cold body against his chest, “I worry about you.” You told him with a supposed to be parting smile, how pitiful must he be for a dying mortal that had not even lived half their life to worry about him. 

“Why are you saying goodbye, my love? You aren’t supposed to say goodbye, not yet. It’s much too early,” He tells you with a broken laugh, the war is over like you had asked of him the first time. He is an archcon, the land is his to rule and care, and you are supposed to live many many peaceful years with him, but here you are the embers of war digs its claws in your frail body and had robbed you of life.

 Why does the war take and take and take and he who fights only lose things that he keeps to heart? 

He doesn’t relent, even if it means breaking the laws of nature itself.

Even when you wake in spring, and you look at him with those empty eyes and ask who he is. At Least you’re here, still there somewhere and it might take thousands of years and more, when the mountain has crumbled against time, one day he believes that you will wake again with love in your lips and warmth in your hands.

[duskandstarlight]

Embers & Light (Chapter 24)

Notes: Chapter 24 - can you guys believe it?! I have brought you a lot of angst in the last few chapters, but there is a lil fluffy moment in this chapter which I hope you enjoy. Plus protective Cassian (one of my personal favourites).

As ACOSF draws nearer, I wanted to ask you guys a question. I initially was hoping to finish this fic before it came out, but I just don't think it's going to happen. So if you would still read E&L after ACOSF comes out, could you let me know? It will help me to make a decision on whether I need to start wrapping this all up sharpish, or whether I can continue to move along at my current pace.

Enjoy :) And I hope you all are having a lovely festive period.

p.s I’ve been having issues with tagging blogs lately. Let me know if you get a notification?

Chapter 24 Nesta

Nesta was drowning.

Drowning in the dark; in the unfathomable cold that bit at her ankles and dragged her down by invisible, insistent hands and sharp, pointed claws. Down, down, down Nesta went, into the inky blackness that sung of ancient horror, fighting for a breath that she could not take.  

Inside her head, Nesta was screaming; the sound an echo, as if she were detached from her body and she were listening to someone else. It was a scream of rage and unmeasurable pain as her body was torn apart and rearranged: her bones cracking and reforming into solid steel; her ears stretching into points; her limbs elongating. And with that fire a burning cold that was deeper than the gap between stars. Nesta screamed from the agony of it, but cold water rushed into her lungs and stifled the sound. Pain licked at her skin like the flames of a fire, until her blood was bubbling with rage and a thirst for revenge that ran so deep it became woven into the very fabric of who she was — of who she was being moulded into.  

Nesta should have passed out from the pain but instead she fought to remain conscious; wholly awake and wholly a witness as she tore at the edges of the blasted Cauldron. The sides were made of nothing but canvas, Nesta’s nails ripping through it as the Cauldron bucked and shrieked, like an animal caught beneath her paw.  

Bright light poured through the gaping holes, blinding her new born eyes that had not yet seen.  

She felt the power of it, the piece she carved out for herself in fury and with revenge singing in her blood. She made it hers, let that power sink into her bones, her skin, as they snapped and cracked and reshaped themselves…

The Cauldron continued to thrash and struggle. The water took on a thicker quality like tar, but Nesta did not relent. She ravaged that power until it was a part of her; stolen and consumed. Impossible to take back.  

And then Nesta was no longer drowning but falling.

The pocket of air hit her with such force that Nesta found herself with the irony that she could not breathe, even though it was what she needed more than anything in the world. But then her lungs were spluttering, her stomach lurching, and inky blackness — ancient death — was regurgitated onto crystalline rock. Nesta heaved until her stomach had no more and she was gasping for breath — cold, bracing fresh air that tasted like freedom — before she rolled onto her back, her hair plastered to her face.

She shivered from the cold and the unquenchable fury that would not see her yield.

Above her was midnight black, the stillness of what Nesta wanted to believe was sky but she knew was only an illusion. It brought her comfort even though she wanted to hate it; wanted to sob and scream until she was so exhausted that she couldn’t muster any more strength.  

And she should have been terrified but she also felt deathly calm, even as a voice spoke out of the darkness. It was a voice that was ancient; old and superlunary with a strength that whispered of unimaginable power for better or worse.   “I have been waiting for you, Nesta Archeron.”

Words like ice fire. Of steel and reserve. Of power beyond Nesta’s wildest reckoning.

It hurt to move but Nesta scrambled to her feet, slipping on loose rock and craggy stone. The sound that beat in her ears was an insistent, terrified rhythm, and it took Nesta a moment to piece together that it was her heart, throwing itself with a repetitive boom against strips of bone — a flimsy cage for something so fierce.  

Whirling around, Nesta tried to source the voice but found only that endless stretch of deep velvet, and in the near distance, a towering shadow that rose up, up, up into the darkness until it blended into the canvas, like something disappearing into the clouds.

Nesta made herself take stock. Made herself stand still. To dampen the terror and focus on that spiky, deep-set anger that still consumed her. Her back stiffened, her chin rose, and when she spoke for the first time with her new lungs, Nesta did not let her voice shake.

She clenched her fists until her new nails bit into the meat of her palms.    “Where am I?”

A sensual laugh as smooth as marble echoed around her — perfectly rendered. “Do you hear the wind? It moans your name, Nesta Archeron. Your twin can hear it. They’ve always been able to hear it. Your history written into the night sky where you only need join the dots. So easy to ignore until now.” A pause and Nesta felt that being move. Her head snapped around as the voice mused from behind her, “And your destiny: a sacrifice and a gift in the same moment.”

Nesta tightened her fists in an effort to ground herself and willed herself to lean back into   that odd sense of being rather than the fear that was making her heart race. She felt her nails break through her skin with a pop. She scented blood; metallic and salt. She was so cold she wanted to shake until her teeth chattered, but Nesta would not show weakness. She would not break down.

So Nesta rose up tall and made her voice ice cold; strong rather than brittle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another long, sensual laugh. A caress akin to a brush stroking the softest of bristles over her skin. “No, you don’t,” the voice agreed. “Not yet. But you will.”

A moment in time stretched out, the pause pregnant and awesome. Then a soft light in the darkness above, growing in size: a fleck, a star, a luminescent ball of light…

“What do you want, Nesta Archeron?”

“I want revenge,” Nesta replied, her voice full of a sudden vigour as vengeance lashed out on a forked tongue.

Again, more soft laughter that licked over Nesta’s body in a shiver. “You have already got that, have you not? Do you not feel that deathly power in your veins? That hum of primitive power that you have stolen, that has been woven into who you now are.”

“I will end him. I will end everyone who has caused my sister harm.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. But what will that take from you?”

Hysterical laughter wanted to burst forth from Nesta’s lungs, as if she could only feel the sharpest of emotion and everything else were muted.

“Everything has already been taken from me,” Nesta spat, balling her hands into harder fists, her nails digging into her crescent shaped wounds.

Pain flared, fresh and sharp but Nesta paid it no heed. She was no stranger to pain and she would rally. Every. Damn. Time.

The light above Nesta continued to grow until it became distinct; a fiery palm emerging out of the dark. Nesta did not flinch. Did not scream or back away. Did not bow or yield or grovel. She only let pearlescent fingers close around Nesta’s own, the touch like a near-scalding bath that settled only when your blood thrummed beneath raw, pink skin. 

“So much sacrifice,” the voice pondered, turning Nesta’s hand. Nesta’s fingers unfurled from her palm without her willing it, until her palm lay open, the half-crescent moons bloody tears in her otherwise new skin. “But what about a gift?” the voice asked. “A gift for the girl who lives with such anger and guilt. The girl who sees the world in all its terrible glory and feels too much. What do you say to that?”

“I only want revenge,” Nesta repeated, her mind assaulting her with images of Elain as she was pushed under the inky water, as she emerged drowning and wholly new — wrong.  

No laughter this time. Only that hand rising, fingers coming together until they were pointed and pinching something out of the dark.  

A pearl of pure light hovered millimetres from those shining fingers, as if it were attached by an invisible string. It sung with such radiant brilliance that Nesta wanted to look away: it was the pure, unfathomable brightness of a midnight star. A melody that sung of promise and hope.

“What is revenge worth if it does not emerge from the desire to protect?” the voice asked, letting go of that drop of light. It did not fall like water; it floated down slowly, until it nestled in the crook of Nesta’s palm like a pearl that shimmered as it caught the light.  

Nesta remained deathly still, staring at the drop of possibility in her palm.  

“Revenge is choice, Nesta Archeron. It can be a wish for death and pain or to protect and defend.”

“Both,” Nesta said fiercely. “It can be both.”

“Multi-faceted and complex, as all decisions are,” the voice agreed. “And there are so many strands in you, aren’t there? Already you have felt one of them, although I do not think you have truly placed the puzzle pieces together. But here is another choice; something to cherish and use wisely on those who are worthy. Everything is cyclical. Day and night, birth and death, love and sacrifice…”  

The luminescent hand closed Nesta’s palm, but rather than the drop of light bring dampened by shadow, it sank into Nesta’s skin, until it too became a part of her.

“I don’t want a gift.”

But even as Nesta spoke she knew she did not truly mean it.  

She also knew it was too late. She felt her blood spike and thrum as that light channeled into her, twining around that deathly power that she had already stolen and forced into her remaking.  

A low hum vibrated the ground beneath Nesta’s feet. “Don’t want it or do not deserve it?”

And then Nesta was drowning again with such startling speed that she hadn’t the time to take a deep breath. Terror gripped her, and with it power sung in her blood, the sensation like boiling water, as if her very skin were bubbling with it even though that dark water bit with a cold akin to the fiercest frostbite.

As if fear had summoned it, silver fire began to glow at Nesta’s palms. Water rushed into Nesta’s lungs and with it, that power surged.

Up, up, up Nesta went, like an arrow unsheathed from a bow until the inky black was no longer concrete and colour swam on the surface.

Everything tilted as the Cauldron tipped, jerking the water and Nesta out onto the cold flagstones of reality.  

Nesta took a desperate, ragged breath through the gag that was suddenly back around her mouth, and cast a look around the room: to Cassian who was sprawled unconscious on the ground, his arm outstretched and his wings in tatters; to Feyre who was kneeling in her own vomit tucked into Rhysand’s side...

And on her sister’s face, Nesta could see what she was: ravaging, deadly, awesome. A face and figure to stop males and females in their tracks. A face and figure that would make humans and fae alike think twice.

But that was nothing of the forged steel in Nesta’s bones, in her blood, as she scrabbled across the floor to Elain on her long, unnatural limbs and tore the gag from her mouth.  

It was a steel that no-one could see but that they could all sense as Nesta locked eyes with the King of Hybern, that promise of death still swimming in those mercury eyes that moved.

She would have her revenge. Of that, she was sure.

***

Nesta gasped.

Her hands flailed, her body screamed with agony, her lungs were hoarse and raw, her abdomen set with a pain that went so deep she knew something was gravely wrong.

And through her veins… no whisper of her magic. Not a drop.

It was that which made her thrash, her lungs suddenly unable to breathe from the agony that wrangled through her body.

She heard her name. Again and again; the high-pitched desperation of a female. Feyre. But then something much lower. A caress. A rumble that quelled her fear and kicked the breath back into her with a force that had her gasping.

Nesta’s hand found a rough, calloused palm across the mattress. Fingers curled unbelievably gently around hers. She heard the rustle of wings. Smelt pine and musk and the bracing fresh air of the Illyrian skies.

“Nesta. You need to take your medicine. The morphine has worn off.”

Cassian.

Even with her eyes submerged in the dark, Nesta knew that Cassian had turned his head to murmur something in low tones to her sister — her senses heightened in the wake of the fear that was still bitter on her tongue.

Then light retreating footsteps. The click of a closed door.  A large hand on her temple. A wet rag against her lips. Nesta opened her mouth despite the foul tasting tincture which burned her throat and flooded her tastebuds; swallowing it down, begging it to soothe over the pain which she could not describe for its wrongness, even though she had been told that she would heal.

Frawley had come to visit her the last time Nesta had resurfaced. Had explained why she was there and what had happened. That Nesta had the gift of healing. That she had over-healed Mas's traumatic injuries and moved on to older ones. That she had sacrificed her wellness for someone else’s. That she would have died had Cassian not got her to stop.

Another power Nesta needed to train. As if she didn’t have enough to wrangle under control.

Nesta did not remember much after dropping to her knees at the widows camp. She remembered the click of a lock inside of her; the way her power had flipped from silver to startling, brilliant white. That she had known what to do as she lifted her hands over Mas and started to use her magic for something wholly good.

“What did you feel for your power came to the surface?” Frawley had asked before she took leave.

Nesta had bitten back a whimper of agony as she shifted uncomfortably on the mattress. She had been swamped in heavy blankets and consumed in Cassian’s scent.  His bed not hers. But the scent of him… it comforted her. She was too tired to rally against it. Had woken knowing that she was immeasurably safe even though memory tried to persuade her that she was not.

Eventually, when she realised that Frawley’s second eye had come to rest on her along with ice blue, Nesta had supplied, “I felt grief.”

“And what else?” Frawley had urged, her ice blue eye glowing with intensity.

Nesta had been too tired to answer. Her eyelids heavy from the sedative she had been given, despite the energising tea Frawley had administered to attempt to speed up the act of replenishing her magic. To fight the fatigue one felt when they had been drained of power.

And now she was waking again and Frawley was gone.

Braving the light, Nesta cracked open an eye. Her head throbbed, as if her brain were growing in her skull and it was pressing against bone.

Cassian was hovering over her, a crumpled frown twisting his brow as he dripped the medicine past her lips. He caught her eyes opening a fraction too late and she catalogued worry slide into relief before it was pushed back and a light was forced into those dark irises. When he smiled at her, it was too tight and anguished to ring true. She must have been in a bad way — very bad — for him to lose sight of his tendency to arrange his expression into that casual playfulness. For her sister to still be here, hovering by her bedside unsure how to act or how to behave. For her mate to be in the room next door, his star-blessed magic permeating Cassian’s bedroom even through stone and plaster and wood. She could even sense Azriel’s shadows moving like an agitated fog.

No Amren. No Mor.

Something to be thankful for.

“Mas?” she asked. Her throat was dry despite the tincture and the word came out scratchy and raw.

Cassian pressed a glass of water to her lips.

She drank.

“Mas has left to help relocate the widows and orphans,” Cassian told her. “I had her checked over by Madja and Frawley. She is perfectly fine. Roksana too,” he added when Nesta frowned. “Mas hasn’t flown yet,” he continued. “She wanted you to witness it.”

Something tightened around Nesta’s throat. It was not panic but… deep twisting affection for the housekeeper. It must be agony for Mas not to launch straight into the skies. Yet… Nesta was touched beyond imagining that she would wait for Nesta to witness something so precious. A moment in history that was not tainted in blood and death but joy.

Cassian had paused as if he were checking himself. He had moved away from her, to the dark dresser to the left of the bed. There was a clink of glass which Nesta supposed was him stoppering the medicine. “I know you do not like it here and I understand that. You were given no choice and Illyria is…” he trailed off, as if he were searching for the right word. “It’s brutal, in both harsh reality and its beauty. But the widows and orphans… they will not forget what you have done for them — how you fought for them. Mas has been shackled in so many ways throughout her life, but her wings… You have given her freedom, Nesta. She will never forget that ,and neither will those females who witnessed you healing her.”

When Cassian turned back to look at Nesta, his eyes were glowing with such intensity she did not know what to say. He seemed to understand that, breaking their gaze to stare out of the window.

It was snowing again. The scent of it was in the air and on Cassian’s clothes, from where Nesta imagined he’d been in the throng of it all, establishing order where there was chaos. She imagined that was why his family was here.

“Azriel has some information about the kerits,” Cassian said. He remained staring out of the window, his gaze fixed on the snow falling from the thin sheets of grey cloud strung in the sky. “About where we think they came from. We would like you to be a part of the discussion.” A pause. “If you would like to be, that is.”

Nesta held back a snort partly because she knew it would hurt too much. “I don’t think your High Lord wants me to be a part of any discussion.”

“Rhys specifically asked me to fetch you before we began,” Cassian replied, not flinching at her ice-sharp words. Nesta supposed he had become immune. “You are integral to the conversation.”

Noise caught in the back of Nesta’s throat. “I thought I was just a stain you all wished you could rid yourself of.”

No, not immune. Cassian flinched as if he had been burned, his wings spreading instinctively before he could catch them. He retracted them back in with a slow huff of anger. It was not a disparaging or exasperated sigh, more… defeated, as if it were a remark that brought him pain.

Still he did not turn to her. If anything, his focus became more intent on the scenery outside. At the bustle of Illyrians as they fought against the flurry of snow that promised to kiss everything white at the worst possible time.

Cassian’s jaw feathered. “If I remember correctly, it was always you trying to rid yourself of me.”

Nesta blinked at the coarse words that held no lightness, no mockery, no teasing. That were honest and unhappy. Twisted with a rejection which hit her to the bone.

You rejected me first, Nesta wanted to say, as she watched the taut muscles in Cassian’s back. They were vibrating with an energy that usually told Nesta that he needed to fight with his fists until his body was sated.

“We believe the attacks might be orchestrated,” Cassian continued. “Azriel went to scout the perimeter to see if there was any evidence. He has only just arrived back.” Finally, those amber eyes rested back on her. They were burning with a rage that had been purposefully dialled back, but Nesta knew how much Cassian cared about his people. “Will you come?” he asked.

Shock wound through Nesta at the confession. At the brutality of what Cassian was suggesting. Anger spiked through the exhaustion with such ferocity her magic should have been roaring, but it only remained quiet. Yet… a determination solidified in her mind. She did want to be a part of the conversation. Not just to be useful, but because Nesta cared about the widows and orphans. She longed to hold Roksana close and see Mas fly. To lay the dead to rest, to check in on the injured. To see if she could use her healing magic to mend their wounds. To show that she was not an observer but a fighter - a protector. That she would lay her life on the line to protect the females who had nothing and were helpless against every threat, just as she had once been.

She did not say all that. Instead, she just said, “Fine.”

A short nod as if Cassian understood. “We can do it in here or out there.” Cassian jerked his chin to the living room. “Frawley said you are not to move if it can be helped, but something tells me you’d sooner have died than be crowded on your sick bed.”

There. A small lace of lightness that had not been there before. Forced, maybe, but there all the same.

Nesta scowled. “You thought rightly.”

“It will hurt,” Cassian warned her. “For me to lift you.”

“Then do it gently.”

A soft snicker as he moved off the many, many blankets, and then strong, corded arms slid beneath her body.

Cassian’s voice was rough in her ear. “You’re the most stubborn female I’ve ever met.”

Gritting her teeth, Nesta tried to overcome the sharp, deep-set pain that made her want to cry out.

The way Cassian gathered her to him was pain-achingly careful but it was still too much, her wounds too fresh and Nesta gasped a high-pitched cry, digging her fingers so hard into his tunic that she knew they must have bitten into the skin of his shoulders. Cassian did not indicate that she had hurt him, he only cradled her closer to the hard planes of his body, his huge wing curving around her as if he could partition off the pain and keep her safe.

The glow of the membrane was not unlike that of rusty, glowing embers. Beautiful.

Cassian remained stock still, waiting for the pain to ebb and then, slowly, as if he were hesitant to do it, his forehead came to rest on the top of her head; a bowing gesture that was almost like a confession, folding her into a protective cocoon that smelt of pine resin and warmth.

If Nesta could move without crying out, she would have traced a finger down his wing, following the spider webs of his capillaries. She had never had the opportunity to study them this close up. They were as mesmerising as fire flames as they danced their way up into the sky; as captivating as woodsmoke as it were tossed about on a breeze.

“I thought you were going to die.”

Cassian’s voice was a low, deep rumble that she felt in the pit of her stomach. In her bones. In her heart.

“Not yet,” she replied drily, but the hoarse words were muffled by the embrace.

She knew what he was trying to say. Had felt it before. The way in which history had tied the two of them together. Had made them terrified not just of dying, but without the other. An immeasurable panic that clawed at her throat and tore at her lungs.

To end up on death’s door without her lying over him was unimaginable. They had vowed to go together and even now, when they were separate rather than entwined, she would still lay her body over his broken one and refuse to live.

“Don’t say that,” Cassian clipped, his voice suddenly sharp. Broken.

Even though it hurt to move, Nesta rolled her head to press against his chest, shifting his forehead so it was lower, his lips almost brushing her skin. Nesta could not bring it in herself to care. Cassian smelt just as his sheets had — pine, musk and untamed air. Comforting.

Hesitantly, as if she had surprised him, Cassian’s large hand came to cup her head.

For a moment, they stayed like that, until the burning question that had hung in the back of her mind became too much. “Why am I in your room?” she asked.

“I had to put Mas in your bed,” Cassian confessed. She felt him smile small against her — a promise of mischief. “It’s not the way I imagined I’d first have you beneath my sheets, but I guess I should just be thankful you’re alive.”

A quiet snarl from Nesta had Cassian lifting his head to laugh. The sound was a low rasp which did not hold its usual vigour.

He was still worried. She could feel it. The sensation was relentless as a crashing tide.

“Reign in your worry,” Nesta snapped weakly. “I can feel it and it’s making me nauseous.”

Another laugh, stronger this time, and then Cassian’s emotion vanished, as if it had been carried away on a sea-kissed breeze.

“I’m going to move now,” he informed her. “Best brace yourself for the pain, sweetheart.”

It was agony. The pain so awfully deep that Nesta could hardly breathe, even as Cassian moved as smoothly as possible. She wanted to cry out, to whimper, but she would not show weakness in front of her sister’s mate.

By the time she was settled on the couch, Nesta had broken that vow; distressed sounds escaping through gritted teeth as she panted desperately for breath. With a click of Rhys's fingers, the nest of blankets that Nesta had been swaddled in appeared on the couch, just in time for Cassian to lower her onto the cushions.

Nesta did not have it in herself to be angered that Rhys had helped.

At the sound of her sister's stifled shouts, Feyre rushed out of the kitchen. She was holding a steaming mug in her hands, which Cassian plucked from his High Lady and planted straight into Nesta’s palms.

Feyre allowed him to do it without a word of protest, anxiously wringing her hands as she studied what Nesta imagined to be her too pale face, the sweat that had broken out on her forehead…

They had not spoken properly since the attack, but Feyre had been there, hovering on the periphery; anxious and sick with worry that she did not know assaulted Nesta until she too became nauseous with it. Nesta’s icy guard had been down since she had dropped to her knees beside Mas, and she hadn’t the power to stack it back up. Not when she was as exhausted as she was, her power utterly diminished and her body focussing on healing.

Finally casting a glance around the room, Nesta saw that the flames in the log burner were raging mute. She wondered who had magicked them to become silent. She hoped it was Frawley rather than Rhysand.

Rhys was positioned to the right of the fireplace, and when Nesta’s gaze purposefully passed over him as if he were little more than part of the furniture, she felt his violet eyes flick to her, his expression no doubt hard and unyielding. But Nesta was too tired to battle today.

Cassian was watching her too, glaring with such intensity at her hands that Nesta was surprised they hadn’t moved involuntarily to raise the mug to her lips. Wanting him to stop, Nesta took a slow sip of tea even though it hurt to swallow. It didn’t work; those hazel eyes remaining unwaveringly fixated. He was standing right by her head, scrutinising everything she did, his wings spread as if he were contemplating launching into flight.

Nesta wanted to hiss at him, but then Feyre sat close beside her, and that made her want to hiss more.

At his place to the left of the hearth, Azriel’s lips twitched. He had been standing as still as a statue, like marble carved out of the finest stone, his shadows stolid, but now he shifted to face her.

Nesta guessed the shadowsinger could sense her emotions with her guard down completely.

She supposed there had to be a first.

When Nesta took the last sip of her drink, Cassian’s hands were immediately there, taking it from her, his siphons winking in the firelight. Nesta barely noticed. She only felt an overwhelming sense of relief at the first whisper of silver and brilliant white that twisted through her veins like two coiled serpents; intertwined yet separate.

Easing backwards with the intention of settling into the cushions, Nesta tried to ignore the pain that suddenly stabbed through her as her stomach muscles tensed. A sharp gasp escaped her, her breath knocked out of her lungs, but then cool, shadowed hands gripped Nesta’s shoulders. They took the weight off of her abdomen, slowly lowering her backwards until she was resting comfortably.

Behind her, Nesta heard Cassian’s wings snap in and out, clearly agitated at her pain.

When Nesta turned her head to Azriel, he dipped his head to her in acknowledgement. Black tendrils of shadow whispered back to him, curling around his arms and face, waiting patiently to be bent again to their master's will.

Then  the shadowsinger turned to Rhys, as if seeking the order to begin.

“Thank you for joining us, Nesta,” Rhys said tightly. “Especially given the circumstances.”

Nesta did not reply, could not find it in herself to do it, but she finally stared at their High Lord with unflinching determination.

As always, Rhys was irritatingly immaculate, leaning against the hearth as if he owned it. Already Nesta felt like he was tainting her space — her sanctuary — and although she wanted to spit at him to leave and not come back, she only gave a stiff nod.

It would appear both of them were going to be forced today. Circumstances that were greater than their feud were at work, and neither of them was going to be petty enough to undermine that.

“Feyre allowed me to view her memory of the kerits attack,” Rhys said. “Three males flew over the mountain minutes before it happened. They can’t have been a part of the usual patrol as they weren’t doing the scheduled circuit. Instead, they flew straight over the mountain pass. Do you remember that?”

Nesta frowned, reaching back into the far depths of her memory… The three dots that coursed across the sky, the winking flash of silver from steel.

Sharply, Nesta craned her head to look at Cassian, not thinking of her injuries. She gasped. The movement had twisted her abdomen in a way she was not ready for.

Cassian’s large hands fell briefly to her shoulders before he moved to perch on the left of the U-shaped couch, close to the corner where he had lain her down.

“Ragar—” she started.

But Cassian only shook his head, leaning forward so his elbows were resting on his broad thighs. His wings were held in high and tight to his spine. “Accounted for,” he told her. “And his friends. They were in the sparring rings with Devlon and countless other witnesses.”

His smile was grim. “It’s one of the first thing I checked,” he confessed. “But it made us start to wonder if perhaps the attacks have been orchestrated. One attack can be passed off as a freak accident, but three attacks across three different camps is suspicious, especially given that kerits do not venture into populated areas.”

Nesta’s expression sharpened. “You think somebody purposefully led those beasts to the widows camp?”

Rhys’s nodded. “We think it’s a possibility.” He pinned his brother with those violet eyes. “What did you find scouring the perimeter, Az?”

The shadowsinger’s expression did not physically change, but Nesta felt his shadows chill. “Carrion,” he said coldly. “A trail of it leading to the mountain pass. Morsels of it. Not enough to feed a starving pack, but deliberate enough to tempt them out of the depths of the mountains.”

“This winter has been especially punishing,” Cassian interjected. “I bet food supply has been scarce. They struggle to survive as it is. The sounds they made as they hunted probably alerted other packs who joined the hunt.”

Feyre sat forward so she was hovering on the edge of the couch. “That would be why they were so vicious. They knew they were competing with other packs for food.”

Nesta’s stomach turned as she thought of how the widows and orphans had been seen as as a meal. How they had huddled to the Eastern point of the camp with nowhere to go and no means of defending themselves.

“The carrion was well hidden,” Azriel continued with a nod, his voice as smooth as cold marble. “Frawley examined the remains. They weren’t killed with siphon magic and there were no visible wounds to the bodies. We also found boot prints in the mud; different prints ranging in size in two separate locations within a miles range of the camp. They were fresh.”

Everyone’s expression tightened.

Nesta didn’t ask if the carrion was human or animal. She didn’t want to know.

“Frawley has taken samples to analyse them,” Azriel added. “She said she will show her sisters, as well. To see if they can sense an insignia.”

“So that means the attack was orchestrated,” Feyre said. “Someone deliberately led those beasts to the camp?”

Rhys nodded. “The attack was certainly pre-meditated,” he replied, pinning Cassian with a look. “The real question is who would arrange an attack on three separate camps.”

Cassian snorted. “You know what the lords are going to say. What all of the Illyrian’s at Windhaven are going to say.”

“That it’s an attack from another war camp,” Azriel supplied, his voice chilled midnight.

“War lords usually have no issue in taking responsibility if they played a part in an attack,” Rhys countered.

“I know that,” Cassian interjected, impatience lining his voice. “So will the lords when they stop to see sense, but the moment we tell them that we suspect wrong doing, all hell will break loose. We can’t afford to lose any more lives to petty feuds. We’re still reeling from the loss of males since the war and the Rite is already looming over the camp.”

Rhys nodded to show he had heard. Nesta wondered if he mourned the loss of lives like Cassian did. The High Lord looked tired, as if he had been torn away from his mate for too long. Yet nobody looked as ravaged as Cassian did. Nesta did not know if his brothers knew of his recurring nightmares, but she hoped they learnt of them. Sometimes Cassian looked so exhausted that Nesta vibrated with a concern she could not shake. In the past, she had bitten her lip one too many times to prevent herself from ordering him to go to bed.

Nesta knew how awful it was to force someone to do something they desperately wanted but were too fearful to surrender themselves to.

“We will manage the lords,” Rhys assured Cassian. “We can decide how we are going to play that consul, but for now, we need to get to the bottom of how the kerits managed to get past Windhaven’s patrols. You and I both know how meticulous Devlon is when it comes to security around the camp. Those males shouldn't have been able to pass over the camp without being stopped by the warriors on patrol.”

“Whoever they were, they must have known that Cassian wasn't going to be in the camp today,” Azriel offered, the spymaster in him coming to the forefront. “The only good news is that they clearly had no idea that  both Feyre and Nesta would be at the top of the mountain and able to fight. And," he added after a beat of consideration, "they certainly underestimated Nesta’s ability to slay the pack if she had been alone today.”

If Nesta hadn’t been white from pain, she would have had to freeze the blush that dared to grace her cheeks at the shadowsinger’s compliment.

An abrupt snort came from Cassian. When he spoke, his voice was brimming with anger, “Of course they underestimated Nesta. Even though they have witnessed her fire daily and sensed the enormity of her magic, they still can't fathom that a female could be more powerful than them. It has to be Illyrian’s at the root of it. Only they would be chauvinistic enough to fail to see what is right in front of them.”

“Which,” Rhys interjected, “has worked unwittingly in our favour. Rather than fuel hatred towards the Night Court and cement the growing opinion that we do not protect the Illyrian community, we had two High Fae slaughtering the pack well before any warriors arrived on the scene. And then Nesta brought Masak back to life — someone who the Illyrian males in this camp do not see as worthy to live amongst them.”

Through the exhaustion, anger heated Nesta’s blood. She felt her magic whisper. If Nesta looked inward, she could see the two strands. Could now sense the promise of healing magic in her veins amongst her silver fire. As if she had been granted the key in the face of Mas’s death and she had turned it over in the lock, setting that power free.

Yet, even as Nesta grazed that healing power, it was her silver fire that promised to roar.

“I didn’t do it to stop a Civil War. I did it to protect the females who cannot protect themselves,” Nesta snapped weakly. She was too tired to muster enough vigour into her words, but she was annoyed at the false implication behind her actions. That she had not done it out of love for the housekeeper, but because of politics.

“That may be,” Rhys said, his voice forcibly light, “and what you did was honourable, but we cannot ignore how the Illyrian’s might interpret the action.”

“What Rhys is trying to say,” Azriel interjected smoothly as Nesta’s nostrils flared, “is that the females already respect you. The way you defended them today will not strengthen the dissent, only highlight that there are fae outside of the Illyrian communities who have their best interests at heart. You, for example.”

“You know they like you,” Cassian said quietly. He did not look at Nesta. Instead, he remained fixated at the hands that were clasped tightly in front of him, his elbows resting on his broad knees. “You know they have accepted you since you defended them against the males.”

“I protect them because nobody else seems to bother,” Nesta said coldly. “How many innocent females died because of the cruel intentions of males today? How many were injured?”

“Thirteen dead, thirty plus injured,” Cassian told Nesta quietly. “It would have been many more if you and Feyre not been there. You moved so quickly you managed to slay the majority of the packs before they reached the females.”

Nesta’s expression hardened as she thought of the trailing guts that had glistened in the grey light of day; the way Roksana’s hands had slipped in Mas’s wet, sticky blood, and how she had croaked for help. Her first word aloud since Nesta had met her.

“That is still too many,” Nesta insisted, her voice betraying her — shaking with the anger and horror of it all. “Why would they target the widows first? Why not lead the kerits down the other side of the mountain pass where they would could reach the main camp and weaken Windhaven’s forces?”

“Perhaps the kerits were never intended to weaken Windhaven’s ranks at all,” Rhys mused. “Perhaps they were intended to prove a point.”

A shocked, prolonged pause.

“Are you saying,” Nesta said, her voice shaking, “that you think the rebellion could have orchestrated the attacks. That they might have specifically targeted the defenceless females because widows are seen as disposable, but their deaths would be enough to fuel dissent amongst the camps?”

Rhys stared at Nesta for a moment. His head tilted slightly to the side, in the same way that Cassian’s did when he was trying to puzzle her out. But Nesta barely saw it. All she saw was the twisted body of the kind cook who had fed Nesta every morning… Of lovely Durkhanai, with her beautiful curly hair and bright green eyes. A female who had been dealt the harshest of fates. She had not deserved her end. None of the females had. 

Feyre’s hand crept over the blankets to Nesta’s. Her sister’s slim fingers wrapped around her own. “Surely they wouldn’t kill their own race?” Feyre said, her voice shaking. Nesta wondered if she, too, was thinking of the discarded limbs and pools of blood. “There were children in that camp. The females didn’t even have weapons…”

But her sister did not understand just how harsh the camps were. Unlike Nesta, Feyre had not lived amongst the widows for months. She did not know just how willing the Illyrian’s might be to offer the widows camp as a sacrifice for the sake of politics.

“I would not put it past Illyrian’s to see widows as a necessary sacrifice,” Rhys admitted eventually after a long, pregnant pause. His violet eyes had softened with grief. “If this is orchestrated by the rebellion, I suspect that by targeting the widows camps Kallon was hoping to fuel the anger amongst the Illyrian’s that they are not protected. That the Night Court does not care for Illyrian’s and offers them no protection. The widows would have been seen as a necessary sacrifice. They are outcasts in Illyrian society with no families to mourn their deaths.”

A ringing sounded in Nesta’s ears. The noise tuned out the room around her. It took her a while to realise that it was fury. It burned. It was not hot, but cold - enough to give her frostbite - as if her magic was not replenished enough to fly but was trying its best to rally itself. Inside of her chest, something cracked. It sounded like bone. With it, came creeping fingers of light, reaching towards her...

With all her strength, Nesta clamped down... until shadows ate away the approaching light and the room righted itself.

When she came to, Cassian was growling low in warning, his wings stretching as far as they could without hitting her square in the face. At who, Nesta did not know. Did not care for his territorial display when there were bigger matters to discuss.

“And why isn’t there protection?” she asked.

Nesta’s words were as cold as the chill in her veins. Rhys stilled, and with it, his magic trembled. The growl was still rumbling from low in Cassian’s chest — deeper even — and he sat forward, bracing his weight onto his thighs as if he were getting ready to launch himself at… someone. Nesta wasn’t sure who.

Feyre was still gripping Nesta’s hand tight, her grip firm enough to hurt. If Nesta had cast a look to her sister’s face, she would have seen that tell-tale glaze over Feyre’s eyes. It was the kind of far off look which told Nesta that her sister was speaking to her mate mind-to-mind. Or trying to, at least.

“Why was there no protection around each of the Illyrian camps given that there had already been two kerit attacks?” Nesta continued, ignoring the rumbling sound that had her heart wanting to beat that little bit faster. “I have seen the protective shields the fae used in war — around your City of Starlight. Why is that courtesy not extended to the Illyrian communities?”

A long, drawn out silence of star-kissed eternal and a whisper of ancient silver.

“I have offered protection numerous times to each of the war lords,” Rhys replied eventually, his voice too measured to be casual. “Each of them have turned it down. They see it as a criticism on their duty as warriors to protect and defend.”

Nesta’s snort was harsh but the hard quality to her eyes did not change. “They are stubborn Illyrian bats. Get them to change their minds. Or are you not their High Lord?”

A flicker of amusement passed across Azriel’s face, his shadows lightening the sharp, beautiful angles of his face. “Nesta is right,” he said, causing everyone to turn. “The war lords don’t have the luxury of turning down our help when it looks as if there will be more kerit attacks. There shouldn’t have been a gap in today’s patrol. Windhaven has always prided itself on its security — all the camps do. Have we found the soldiers who should have been patrolling the perimeter? I think it wise to consider that they may have been compromised by whoever tempted the kerits to the camps. Recruited, even. They could well be the males that flew over the mountain pass.”

“Nobody can find them,” Cassian growled. “We have males out looking for them as we speak. As soon as they are found we will interrogate them.”

“Cassian and I will interrogate,” Rhys told Azriel as a rare flicker of surprise fell across the shadowsinger's expression. “I need you to visit your most trusted contacts in the camps and tell them that we believe the attacks might not be random. We need all eyes and ears to the ground to find out as much as we can, not least to anticipate where the next attack might be.”

A tense nod, but Azriel folded into shadow and disappeared.

Cassian’s fists curled into fists on the tops of his thighs. “We need evidence. We cannot assume this is the rebellion without it.”

“Of course not,” Rhys admitted smoothly. “Which is why we need you to try and snuff out as much information as you can when you and Nesta go to the Solstice luncheon next week. Accept the offer to stay overnight.”

Nesta hadn’t thought Cassian’s expression could turn any stonier, but it did. “No.”

“The more time you spend at Ironcrest, the longer Nesta has to pick up any untoward emotion, especially surrounding conversation about the camps. It gives Frawley time to look and identify the origin of the sword, and it gives you and Lorrian time to pry out any information. Insist on you and Lorrian overseeing the aerial and ground units that next morning, it will ease away any suspicion. A trip there is long overdue but it is time to act on this rather than gathering information, which we have been doing up until now.”

Cassian blew out a long, steadying breath. Then he conceded,  “With the Rite meeting been moved forward to that afternoon, it shouldn’t be hard to extend our stay."

Rhys nodded. “Good.” Then his violet eyes rested on Nesta. “You are willing to go with Cassian?”

A raised chin. Defiant. Strong. Despite the pain and exhaustion that wanted to pull her down, down, down. “Yes.”

“Then we have a plan,” Rhys said with another nod. “Azriel will continue to train you. If he is not available,  I will travel to the camps and train you myself .”

At the edge of her periphery, Nesta saw Feyre’s eyes widen. In her stomach, Nesta felt Cassian’s surprise, a sensation which grew as Rhys said,  “Welcome to the Court of Dreams, Nesta Archeron.”

*** 

By the time the meeting was over, Nesta was drained; her eyelids unbelievably heavy, her limbs aching. She desperately wanted to sleep, so she took the tincture Feyre brought her without comment and didn’t protest when Cassian carried her back to his bed rather than hers; agony fogged the rational part of her brain.

She was practically asleep as Cassian lay her onto his mattress. She felt his fingers coax hers away from where they were clutching his leathers. Blankets were pulled over her, the weight a comfort. A sedative was dripped into her mouth.

And then she slipped under.

When Nesta next woke, the taste was still bitter in her mouth but the room was dark; the light having receded even from the gap between the curtains.

In the armchair beside her bed was Feyre, her feet curled up beneath her and her freckled nose buried in Love in Velaris. A bobbing faelight hung overhead, willed by her sister’s magic. It illuminated the pages.

From the dent Feyre had made in the book, Nesta guessed she had been asleep for hours. Beyond the room, the bungalow sat still — the way it did when Cassian was not home — as if it too were sleeping, waiting for its owner to come back and breathe life into the rooms with his presence.

A few seconds passed until Feyre noticed that Nesta was awake. It gave Nesta enough time to catalogue the concern etched on her sister’s pale face; the tight expression which made Feyre’s sharp cheekbones even more prominent.

Nesta did not usually see the similarities between them, but now, as Feyre’s serious steel-blue eyes snapped up at the rustle of blankets, Nesta knew why others had said they looked alike.

“You’re awake.” Feyre spoke slowly — unsure — as she unfurled her long, lithe legs. When Nesta winced as she tried to get into a more comfortable position, Feyre jumped up and moved to the dresser. “Here,” she said, pouring some tincture onto a silver spoon.

Nesta hated the way she needed assistance to lift her head, but she allowed Feyre to do it in a rush of pear and lilac. Nesta was not proud enough to deny that she needed the tincture to smooth away the pain. And whilst the pain wasn’t as agonising as hours prior, it was deep-set enough for Nesta to consider whether she could persuade Feyre to allow her to swallow down the whole damn bottle.

After some water to chase down the foul taste, Feyre stepped back. “How are you feeling? Frawley seemed to think she could speed up the healing Madja did, but you were so sick…” Her sister trailed off, setting back to examine Nesta’s face. “You look a little less pale...”

“I’m fine,” Nesta said hoarsely.

Feyre opened her mouth and then closed it again, as if she were contemplating what best to say. The action annoyed Nesta. She wanted to be alone and quiet. To fall back asleep and wake when the pain was gone and she no longer felt helpless.

“Don’t you have duties to attend to?” Nesta asked tiredly, turning her face to bury it into one of the pillows. It was a few seconds reprieve to calm the irritation that had started to hum through her.

Slowly, Nesta breathed in the scent of pine, musk and air that was so fierce Nesta felt as if she were almost a part of it. She had no doubt this was the pillow Cassian rested his head on. The scent soothed her, smoothing over that spiky, dangerous anger of hers to leave bone-lead weariness in its place.

“I wanted to be here,” Feyre told her. There was a subtle stubborn lift to her chin that Nesta knew Feyre had copied from her at a young age so many times that it had now become a part of who she was. “I wanted to look after you. To make sure that you were healing.”

“Well, I don’t need you to take care of me. You heard it yourself, I should be out of bed tomorrow. I just need to sleep.”

Nesta had intended to say it icily, but she was not well enough to muster the strength.

Feyre’s expression tightened, and for a moment, Nesta thought she might snap. But then she just straightened with determination; her tall, lean body rising to a height that called for attention. “Then let me say what I want to say and I will leave you alone.”

A long, stony silence and a blank, impenetrable mask that Nesta hoped with desperation conveyed the message she wanted to snap: Go away.

Instead, Feyre seated herself on the armchair and reached for Nesta’s ice-cold hand. “Nesta,” she started, the word practically a plea. “I know you and I - I know that our relationship has always been rocky. And you are right, there are many things that I hadn’t considered, not least when I sent you here. But… you almost died today and it’s made me realise what is important: I love you. I don’t think I’ve told you that before, but I always have. Even when we were younger and we were both so angry and bitter at our lot in life and we spent our days fighting. And I know you love me, too. Hiring someone to take you to the wall to find me told me that…”

Feyre let out a long, shaky breath and when she next spoke, her voice turned softer, dropping into a confession, “I forgave you and Elain a long time ago for when we were starving, Nesta. I want you to know that. I don’t — we were children. It was father that failed us, not you. I never saw it as your job to care for me and… I’m sorry that you were there when mother asked me to take care of you…. That must have been a horrible thing to overhear and… well, I would have felt resentment towards me, too, if I were you.”

More silence. Nesta would not allow herself to speak for the barbed words she knew would spill forth. About her sister’s mate and how whilst Nesta had tried to make amends, Rhysand’s obvious dislike of her had not disappeared with Feyre’s supposed forgiveness.

“I also want you to know that what you did in the war — you saved hundreds of lives. I know you witnessed unimaginable death and horror, but fae and humans are walking on Prythian because you struck down the male that promised to wreak havoc on our world. You did all of that and I never thought to thank you. And then I was so swept away by my duties as High Lady and recovering from Rhys’s near death that I did not give you the time I should have-”

Such careful tiptoeing around their father’s death. How Nesta had watched the life bleed out of his eyes, until they were nothing but glassy and wholly unconscious.

It was that which made Nesta cut her sister off. Even now, she had no desire to discuss his death. “I am not a burden you need to add to your list of priorities. I didn’t want your help. I explicitly told you to go away and instead you continued to force me to socialise when all I wanted was to be alone.”

Feyre let go of Nesta’s hand. Something akin to loss flashed through Nesta, piercing through the exhaustion and the pain in her abdomen.

“I think communication has always been an issue for us,” Feyre admitted, not backing down from the conversation. “I have spent time thinking over what you have said and you are right, I have not truly listened to you. But I was so scared for your safety I adopted drastic measures—”

“It is not your place to decide what is best for me,” Nesta said coldly. “I am not yours to command. And,” she continued with as much iciness as she could muster, “I do not think that an Illyrian camp is a place of safety.”

A deliberate pause to highlight how she were in bed suffering from major injuries.

“I thought if you were with Cassian that you would be protected,” Feyre said, her expression anguished. “I thought if anyone were to hold their own in an Illyrian camp it would be you. You are so strong, Nesta—”

“You thought a fae male could protect me when the protection I was promised by males has failed over and over again?” Nesta countered. “He is not even here all of the time. Sometimes he is away for days on end and I am left alone. You banished me to this awful place in front of an audience with no care for my feelings.”

But as Nesta spoke, something scrabbled in the back of her mind. Because it wasn’t fair to criticise Cassian for both leaving her and crowding her. Because Cassian had given her space and yet he had also been there, on the periphery if not right in front of her. Taunting her and encouraging her, but with so much space to grow. He had not made her train with him, dragging her spitting and screaming into the sparring ring. He had not thrown her out into the camp each morning and forced her to work or make friends. He had given her choices that she had more often than not denied over and over. And when she had done that, he had bought her more books or figured out the foods she liked to make the days a little less boring.

Cassian had not just protected her but allowed her to grow stronger. Had given her the space to decide for once in her life what she wanted to do and what she wanted to be. True, she might have been stuck in Windhaven, but she had never felt truly trapped. The skies made her feel unencumbered. The mud beneath her feet rendered her a part of nature rather than apart from it. The craggy mountains were a physical depiction of how Nesta was starting to see herself; sharp and angry but resilient and strong.

Outside the bungalow, Nesta heard the unmistakable crunch of boots in the snow. The low murmur of male voices floated through the bedroom window, which had been cracked open to circulate the stale air.

Feyre’s face crumpled in sudden irritation, and Nesta guessed that her mate had tried to speak mind-to-mind with her mid-conversation. From the way Feyre’s expression quickly cleared, Nesta got the impression she had banished Rhys completely or told him to go away.

The click of the magical lock from the front door rang through the bungalow, but Feyre’s attention was only on her. “Adjusting to the role of High Lady has been… a struggle,” her sister admitted. “Cassian, Rhys, Amren and Mor are my friends as well as my trusted advisors. But you are right, I spoke to you as a High Lady not as a sister when I told you to come here. I thought that using my new status would make you listen because my role as a sister had failed. It was a last resort and I knew… I knew that Cassian would look after you.”

Feyre stared up at the ceiling, as if the memory caused her pain. “As soon as you left I knew the way I had summoned you was wrong.” Feyre looked back to Nesta and sincerity swam in her eyes. “I did not consider that I had imprisoned you. I was selfishly only thinking of forcing you to be well.”

More silence.

Feyre got to her feet, her expression pained.

She waved a hand to the window, gesturing to the scenery outside. To the craggy mountains that stretched for miles and the sea beyond it. To the world that existed beyond Illyria. Beyond Prythian. “When you are healed, if you wish to leave Illyria you can. I don’t want you to feel imprisoned any longer.”

There was a finality to the words that rang true. Her sister meant them, even if it was obvious they caused her pain.  Yet… Nesta did not want to leave. Not now, not when she had promised to attend the Solstice luncheon to see what they could discover about the sword and the kerit attacks. Not when the females here were so vulnerable. Now when they needed help rebuilding their community — to mourn for the losses that Nesta had vowed would not go unnoticed.

“I said I’d help, didn’t I?”

Feyre halted at the door.

“And your help is invaluable,” Feyre said slowly, “but you are not obligated to do it. So if you wish to leave, you can. Just… please tell someone before you do and let us know where you are going.”

Feyre looked weary and Nesta wondered if she had even bathed since everything that had happened. Her body was clean like Nesta’s… but her leathers were crumpled and her hair dishevelled. Nesta’s own body felt like it was covered in a film of oil and invisible dirt. Her skin itched at the thought and she longed for a bath, even though she knew she would not be able to manage it without more rest.

When Nesta closed her eyes, Feyre’s blood-streaked face swam into view. She remembered how Feyre had gripped her hand in the midst of battle and told Nesta to lead the way to the Eastern side of the camp, even though they were in the thick of danger. Her sister had not hesitated or balked. She had only been fierce and unwaveringly brave, ready to put her life on the line for those who needed protection.

For all of their problems, when the two of them had been fighting side by side, it was the first time that Nesta felt as if she truly belonged with her sister. For a brief moment in time, their issues and past mistakes had bled away, as if they were inconsequential.

“I’d love for us to start afresh,” Feyre continued quietly from her place at the door. “We have both made errors, but I do not care about yours. I hope that with time you might be able to forgive me, and if you do, I’d like to start over, you and I, with a blank slate.”

Tags:

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[borat123]

Analysis Pro NH Anti NS

Naruto Manga Part 2

Part 4

Orochimaru taunts Naruto about Sasuke becoming his next vessel and this enrages Naruto. Naruto sees Sasuke as his best friend and hearing about his potential death fills him up with rage. In his three tail rage blast he knocks out Sakura unconsious (Kishi really doesn’t care about Sakura at all does he?). Anyways a little (actually a HUGE) detail about this transformation is that he first turned to three tails and then gradually went up to 4 tails. Kurama took advantage of Naruto’s negative emotions and teased him to use his power. Now when Pain stabbed Hinata, Naruto first transformed into the 4 tails. Then IMMEDIATLY transformed into 6 tails. And then went 8 tails and almost transformed completly into the kyuubi but that’s besides the point (Its literally impossible to top that). My point is that everytime Naruto transformed for Sasuke it was because Kurama took advantage of his negative emotions and teased him to use his power but when he transformed for Hinata he didn’t even think about it/his heart automatically connected to the kyuubi. Means his emotions were so strong for her the kyuubi power leaked automatically.

Kabuto is provoking Sakura and calls Naruto and Orochimaru’s battle ”A battle between monsters”. Sakura cares for Naruto as a friend and witnessing this fierce battle makes her worry for his safety. She has never seen Naruto transform this far after all and the literal landscape is changing because of this fight.

Sakura thinks that Naruto is transforming this far and raging like this because of the promise he was forced to do to her (just like the NaruSaku’s). Now we all know (except for the NaruSaku’s that have their head up their ass) that Naruto is obviously not raging like this for that promise but for Sasuke who he honestly seem to value much more as a comrade than Sakura. But to be fair to Sakura, Kabuto is teasing her into it slightly.

That Sakura thinks he’s raging like this just for her is so narcissistic and stupid and i honestly wish Sakura didn’t think that because i thought she was smarter than this. (Altough running straight into the 4 tails while crying and screaming isn’t very smart to begin with lol).

Naruto also had no hesitation in violently bitch-slapping Sakura so hard that he almost killed her. She was lucky Kabuto decided to heal her otherwise the wound would of killed her like poison. Now i want to adress someting here, look at this picture below here.

It says here that the kyuubi latches on to the hatred in Naruto’s own heart aswell and tries to take over. In the fight against Pain, 6 tails Naruto was able to circle away from Hinata’s body before firing a tailed beast bomb. He even looked at her and was getting more enraged before chasing after Pain. Now here Naruto had no hesitation of hurting Sakura with only four tails and a stronger seal. So does this mean Naruto has hatred for Sakura deep down in his heart? I dont know lets just say there are defiantly some evidence that it might be possible. To further my point why did Naruto say he HATED PEOPLE WHO LIE TO THEMSELVES while looking her straight into the eyes if he ”loved” her. Saying you hate someone so casually doesn’t come out of nowhere, no most likely he already felt hatred deep down in his heart for her. And honestly if someone calls me an idiot 24/7 and punches me so hard that i bleed, i’d probably hate them too.

It’s funny that NaruSaku basically rely on this arc as ”evidence” that Sakura had feelings for Naruto even doe this whole thing is a complete mess and actually ANTI NaruSaku. Kishi was trolling them so hard with this line from Yamato, who by the way doesn’t know the full story behind the teams history (also how Sakura is with Sasuke). When you think about it NS rely alot on other characters opinions even doe the only ones that ”supported” it was a guy that reads books about emotions because he doesn’t have any, a frog and a kid. The ladder two thinking Sakura was Naruto’s girlfriend for comedic effect (Also Konohamaru changed his opinion immediatly and called her an ugly bitch lol). Not even gonna bring up the ”parallels” and i wont disrespect Kushina either.

When Naruto saw Sakura cry (for him), he indirectly insulted Sakura and called Sai a bastard. Sai haven’t even insulted Sakura at all by calling her a ”cow” Naruto came up with that one himself. He seemed more angry at Sai than actually caring about why she cried. Also i guess Sakura is right monstrously isn’t a positive way of putting it either (can you blame him when she always punches him though?) Notice how Kishimoto made this intense moment end like this? It’s like he’s giving a middle finger to people who thought Sakura had ”feelings” for him. So that’s Naruto’s reaction from seeing Sakura cry.

This is his reaction from seeing Hinata cry. He even displayed the kyuubi’s lips and he had to hold in his anger. If it wasn’t an official match Naruto would of attacked Neji.

Here Naruto just said super strength, why is Sakura angry? Regardless there is already building up a theme of Naruto thinking of Sakura’s strength as something negative rather than something he’s proud of or whatever.

Naruto finds out that Sakura was lieing about the wound and that it was actually him that hurt her. He is just shocked. This is not the reaction of finding out you hurt the ”love of you’re life”. When Naruto found out he didn’t hurt Hinata he cried with relief and clutched his heart.

That’s the end of this part. Check out the other parts here

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5

[wolf-and-bard]

@winter-fir: Sofia, my darling, this was written as a birthday present and with you in mind. Thank you for being such a delightful, funny, mad scientist genius friend, I love you. I wanted to give you some Arnaghad/Erland fluff and it didn’t turn out fluffy at all, it’s a rambly mess and I’m sorry. It did turn into a continuation and a prompt fill, I hope you don’t mind. 😂 I also hope you ate a lot of cake today ❤

Steal My Heart Again

Prompt: Isolation

Relationships: Arnaghad/Erland of Larvik

Rating: E

Content Warnings: apocalypse-appropriate sentiments (aka hopelessness), explicit sexual content, swear words, minor character death (past)

Summary: This is a sequel to Drown With Me If You Can. Erland and Arnaghad have made it to the safety of Kaer Seren’s cellars and have to face life during the apocalypse. They cope in different ways. In which: Erland wallows some more and Arnaghad wants cuddles. 

Word Count: ~3k

AO3 Link I @witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo​

In the latter years of the 1130s, a conflict between the Northern Realms of Redania, Kaedwen, and Kovir and Poviss sprouted up in which Kovir and Poviss petitioned to gain sovereignty.

Erland pauses to ponder his next words and in that pause, becomes aware of something stirring.

Witchers usually sniff and listen before something breeches their line of sight, but with his beloved bear, it’s even more intense. Erland can hear the giant’s footsteps pound in tune with his own heart as soon as Arnaghad rises from his meditative perch at least four rooms down the hallway. Erland can smell the endorphins that chase each other through Arnaghad’s bloodstream as soon as he calls out for Erland, still far away. They have a different scent for every person and witcher picking up on them.

For Erland, Arnaghad’s contentedness smells like toasted white bread and strawberry jam. Conversely, Arnaghad is reminded of the concoction of oils and herbs he treats his old bearskin with so that it retains its texture whenever Erland smiles. Everything about Arnaghad is intense, as is the emotional knot Erland carries tucked between his lungs, the one that is made up of strings of the past and present that have become inevitably entangled. There is no easy emotion here and so Erland shoves them all aside in favour of putting down his next lines.

It came to pass that, under the supervision of the Hierarch of Novigrad, then Walter Beda, the rulers of the three countries met to negotiate the agreement. King Radovid III of Redania and King Benda of Kaedwen sailed on the Redanian flagship Alata to Lan Exeter where Gedovius Troyden, then Earl and later King of Kovir, met them, accompanied by his wife Gemma. Thus, the First Treaty of Lan Exeter was forged, and Kovir and Poviss gained the right to call themselves a kingdom.

Erland blows on the ink and the smell intensifies so much that his mouth waters. He glances to the side to see the bear appear in the hallway.

“There you are,” Arnaghad rumbles when he arrives at Erland’s small chamber which used to be a storage for barrels in need of repair. He shoulders through the narrow doorway without knocks or ceremony, and his bare feet slap against the stone, warmed by an underground pool of water which is suffused by heat from the earth’s core. With the White Frost raging outside the keep of Kaer Seren - in whose basement they currently reside in - even that heat will fade and freeze, but it has not been touched yet. They have not been touched yet, they made it to the safety of this hidden hearth and it nearly cost them their lives. “What are you doing, birdie?”

“Writing,” Erland says absent-mindedly and growls when Arnaghad’s hulking form blots out the light of half the torches as he approaches the makeshift desk. It’s a splintered plank of wood propped up on two empty barrels, a third one – overturned – functioning as the chair. The rest of the room is bare save for the rusted grates in which the torches reside and a wicker basket full of half-rotten corks. The griffins used to collect them to fashion floormats for the baths with. The griffins that now lay buried under rubble, only a story or two above Erland’s and Arnaghad’s heads. He tries not to think about that as he writes, writes, writes.

“Why, thank you dearest beloved, I had not figured that out for myself.”

Erland shrugs and bends further over his page. He is halfway through his account and he has to keep going while the words still come easily and his hand hasn’t cramped up. It tends to do that a lot these days, whether from writing, shovelling endless masses of snow or from stroking Arnaghad’s oversized cock. The first one is a need to preserve what might otherwise get lost, the second a necessity so their one exit from Kaer Seren doesn’t get blocked completely. The third activity is all pleasure and indulgence and re-learning the body of a man he thought lost to him for so long.

Arnaghad, the obnoxious idiot, steps closer and squints over Erland’s shoulder which truly sucks up the rest of the flickering illumination. His burly hand comes to rest on Erland’s head – now freshly shaven into his preferred undercut again with his hair woven into complex patterns Arnaghad yet remembers from his home – and his chin presses against Erland’s temple.

“’Kovir’s Independence and the First Treaty of Lan Exeter’,” Arnaghad reads out loud from the top of the page. “The fuck does this have to do with you? Are you trying to write a world history?”

“You forget where we are,” Erland murmurs and finishes his sentence, placing a small asterisk with a number ten atop the last word for yet another footnote.

“I haven’t.” Arnaghad plucks the feather from Erland’s hand and rises a little, takes the bent fingers into his own and strokes along them to straighten them out, one by one. Erland sighs and sags against the bear, letting fatigue wash over him, wash away his ambition for the day. “You forget where you are. Who you are and who you are with.”

“I might have,” he admits sheepishly and closes his eyes, listens to the faint gurgle of Arnaghad’s stomach. It’s a simple, well-crafted lie. Erland never forgets and how could he?

“I understood the journal,” Arnaghad says. “Well, I wasn’t willing to give my life for it as you were, but I understood why you wrote it. The ice might melt, the beasts might return and for that, whoever is to inhabit this world may need the information you captured. But this is unfathomable.”

“Of course, it would be to you.”

“What is that supposed to mean? Are you calling me stupid?”

“No,” Erland says and melts as Arnaghad’s hands let go of his to gently massage his shoulders. It’s only when the static pain slowly ebbs away that Erland realizes just how long he’s been sitting hunched over his notes. Each word an investment with so little parchment leftover.

“Then what? Why are you doing this?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Erland sighs and ducks out of his lover’s grip to get up and pop his joints. Avoiding Arnaghad’s gaze, Erland extinguishes the torches with a flurry of precise Aards and makes to leave the room.

The bear wouldn’t understand in a million years why Erland writes the chronicle, would probably call it a waste of energy and resources. There is utility in writing a bestiary, there is only sentiment in writing a history. And perhaps a flicker of hope that whatever civilization rises from the rubble of the Ice Age will not repeat their forebearer’s mistakes. Except no. Erland may be an idealist at heart, but not enough that this hope has a chance of threading through the fabric of his motivation.

His motivation is woven in entirely selfish materials. It’s distraction, it’s occupation, it’s indulging in self-pity and nostalgia, melancholy and pride. It’s to keep himself from spiralling into depression and forgetfulness, to keep his brain from deterioration. Between fucking and eating and sleeping, Erland needs mental stimulation more than exercise.

Arnaghad, on the other hand, spends his hours in meditation and weapon-less drills, doing push-ups by the hundreds, handstands by the hours, pull-ups by the thousands. His massive body, in spite of the lethargy and sluggishness his form might suggest, needs constant movement. To prevent muscle atrophy and to keep himself alert and strong for whatever they have to face.

For now, what they have to face is endless isolation. Just the two of them, a slowly but steadily dwindling supply of dried meats and herbs, pickled vegetables and fruit, and barrels upon barrels of ale. Most of them brewed with the recipe Keldar perfected over decades of teaching young griffins to hold their alcohol alongside their swords.

Keldar.

Erland tries not to think of the old griffin master, especially tries not to think about how they found his body, a frozen statue before the crumpled gates of Kaer Seren, half-buried in snow by the time that Arnaghad and Erland fought their way to the keep. He’d survived the avalanche, had stayed at the school, and Erland had abandoned him. Him too.

Dear old Keldar, dutiful to his last moments. It was what every griffin would have done, every one except for Erland it seemed.

“Birdie,” Arnaghad says, tapping the side of Erland’s skull where his griffin tattoo decorates his shaved skin. They walk side by side, down the endless winding corridors of Kaer Seren’s basement system towards the centre where the heat is the most intense. It’s also where they set up their meagre bedroll, a heap of old linens with Erland’s quilt and Arnaghad’s bearskin on top. “You’re getting lost in your thoughts again.”

“What were you saying?” Erland asks and pushes open the door to their bedroom. Slap, slap, go Arnaghad’s feet as he enters while Erland’s follows after him. He wears both their socks, still more prone to the cold even down here.

“Nothing,” Arnaghad says. He stops in the middle of their room – all grey brick cast in flame from the torches Erland managed to keep perpetually burning. It’s a trick he perfected back when the signs where first developed where he can attach the power of a sign to an object. So, he tethered an Igni to each of the torches, and he did not tell Arnaghad that this constantly pulls on his own energy. The bear would worry and call that too a waste of resources. But Erland would rather be tired by firelight than wide-awake in perpetual darkness, calculating in his head the days that remain to them. “Come here, you look fatigued.”

Erland catches Arnaghad’s steady gaze, darkened by his heavy brow and chiselled face, a small smile tugging on his oh so stoic lips. His hair is neatly bound at the base of his skull, two ceremonial mini-braids framing his cheeks to either side. He wears naught but a simple set of beige linen clothes these days, linens that tug and pull at his bulging muscles. He’s more than a brick wall, he’s as unmoving as the very ground they stand on. Arnaghad cannot be taken apart with brute force, it takes more subtler means of attack to undo him. Erland knows them all intimately and perhaps that is exactly why Arnaghad opens his arms to him then. Erland sighs. He has the rest of Radovid III’s reign to chronicle and his stomach is still on fast-mode. The only reason he came here in the first place was… to… Erland sneezes and the torches flicker. He knows when he’s defeated.

“I am tired,” he admits and crosses the distance between them. If ever there is such a space, unbridgeable at times, invisible at others, it is because Erland put it there. Not intentionally and not always happily, but if things went Arnaghad’s way, they would be close always. The man that envelops Erland in a tight hug has a constant hunger for touch and affection, and Erland has trouble having that piece slide into the greater mosaic he has constructed of his lover over the past centuries.

‘You’re getting old and sappy,’ Erland said to him once, three orgasms into the night and Arnaghad still insisted on holding him close. ‘Sappy and cuddly. I do not recognize you.’

‘Nor I myself,’ Arnaghad replied. If they were other people they might have attributed it to love, how it had overcome everything, how, here at the end of all things, it was them against the apocalypse. How they needed to hold onto each other for there was nothing else to hold onto. But Erland is an idealist, not a romantic, and Arnaghad a pragmatist, not an intellectual, and so that was where the conversation died then.

“You should rest more,” Arnaghad says.

“What a waste of time,” Erland replies and rises to the tips of his toes, uses Arnaghad’s bull neck for purchase to pull himself up. They’re barely eye to eye, but that doesn’t matter when he can finally tilt his head and kiss the tiny frown from Arnaghad’s face. It’s a matter of last resort as well as personal pleasure. Erland is in no mood to argue about his newfound hobby and he does want. Wants so much, so deeply it aches to the core of his bones. They’re still working through their differences – and that, he suspects, will take longer than any written history might – but with each day, Erland can allow himself a little more. He can allow himself to slot their lips together and push his tongue deeply into Arnaghad’s mouth, can allow himself to melt into his bear’s arms and let his rumbling groan rattle his skeleton. Erland smiles at the zealous manner in which Arnaghad’s whole body responds to the kiss. His hands, splayed across Erland’s shoulder blades, tighten, his cock stirs when Erland licks and sucks and adds a moan of his own, his shoulders rise. He’s so passionate, has so much to give, something that Erland has trouble keeping up with.

If half of this witcher had been the one leading the bear school, where could it have climbed to? What could it have accomplished if the abysses between its members hadn’t been quite so gaping? Erland tries not to wonder, tries not to rewrite the course of time in endless thought spirals, but it’s so hard. It’s another reason why he has to focus on the actual past. Because if he doesn’t remind himself that it is set in stone, if he doesn’t capture it with his own words, he starts to trail down the paths of forgotten ‘what ifs’, of unforgettable ‘what ifs’, of the ‘what ifs’ that are neither forgotten nor unforgettable, that are too daring to even consider. Erland loses himself in thought and it is then perhaps a blessing that he can lose himself in Arnaghad’s embrace instead.

“Do you think we could have dinner tonight?” Arnaghad asks after they part, even though he knows the answer. It’s worrying, a true sign that not even Arnaghad has an endless reservoir of energy. His hunger is much more vicious than Erland’s and it’s getting harder and harder for him to wait the intervals they settled on in order to stretch the food as long as they can. Usually, he doesn’t ask. Usually, his voice doesn’t sound so small. Fuck. It’s heart-breaking.

“Not yet, big bear, I’m sorry,” Erland sighs and noses along Arnaghad’s jaw, then sinks back down to his feet and presses his face into the crook of his neck. Wraps his arms around Arnaghad’s middle. Is proud when he doesn’t do the mental math right then and there. No, he won’t torment himself and he won’t succumb to the slight growl Arnaghad gives. Whether it’s from his throat or his stomach doesn’t really matter. The sound pierces Erland’s armour, but it doesn’t shatter. He’s still strong. Can still be strong. “Do you want me to distract you?”

“Ah, birdie, didn’t we just talk about how you’re tired?”

“I’d make a joke about being hungry myself,” Erland mutters, then licks over Arnaghad’s pulse point insistently. “But last I checked, your sense of humour is still as barren as the Korath desert.”

Arnaghad chuckles and the motion slightly shakes Erland where he rests against the bear’s chest. He lets his hand slide down to gingerly palm across Arnaghad’s half-hard cock and it rises to the touch, firms up. He closes his eyes and sucks on his own bottom lip. So easy to please.

“Says the man who thinks fun is a torture device,” Arnaghad retorts on a sigh and as such, it lacks an edge. Erland deftly plucks at the fastenings of the linen trousers and slips his hand into them. Arnaghad’s flesh is hot and solid, too big to wrap his fingers around.

“Alas,” Erland murmurs against the skin of Arnaghad’s neck, cranes his own to nibble on the bear’s jawbone, tracing it with his tongue. “My hand is tried from writing all morning.”

“All day more like,” Arnaghad grumbles.

“Even worse. It’s of no use now.” And with that, he gently guides Arnaghad to the corner where their makeshift bed is, bids him to sit down and takes his own place in Arnaghad’s lap with his belly pressed to the warm floor. Propped up on his elbows, Erland peers up at Arnaghad. From this low, the man seems taller than a mountain, his eyes far away, half-lidded and hazy and Erland smiles. He is tired, yes, so very tired, and that means he is sloppy. Sloppy as he descends over the head of Arnaghad’s massive cock which tastes salty and musky and he laps it all up he goes with lazy drags of his tongue. His lips are loose and his hands looser as they fondle Arnaghad’s cock at the base, toy with his balls.

Before long, spit leaks out of the corners of his mouth and runs down Arnaghad’s length and the low moans of the bear thunder through the hall, echo off the walls, loud enough to raise the dead, Erland thinks sometimes. He wishes he could revive his brothers and sons by cock-sucking alone, but the world has never been that simple. And it won’t ever be now. But if he can give Arnaghad pleasure and himself something to get distracted by then that should be enough.

Erland gets drunk on Arnaghad’s cock, chokes on it as he ruts into the floor without shame. They come within seconds of each other and Erland drinks up what he can, lets the rest spill over Arnaghad’s lap, then cleans that with his tongue too. After, he falls asleep there, curled into a ball in Arnaghad’s lap and it is enough. For now.

[baoshan-sanren]

Chapter 21

of the wwx emperor au that still doesn’t have a damn title

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 Part 1 | Chapter 8 Part 2 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 Part 1 | Chapter 15 Part 2 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Time becomes fractured and uneven.

Wei Ying is pressing his hand to the wound, the arrow in between his fingers, slick with blood. Dozens of hands are descending around him, attempting to help. A-Sang is clutching a handful of his robes, his fingers cold against Wei Ying’s skin. His face is snow white. The delicate flesh under his terrified gaze is bluish gray, the color of an overcast sky. Wei Ying knows he is screaming for Wen Qing, but he can hear nothing over the roar in his ears. He sees the flash of Jiang Cheng’s robes out of the corner of his eye. A wad of purple cloth is being pushed underneath his hand, blood immediately coloring it black.

People are trying to move him away, but he refuses to let go. Only when Nie MingJue takes a hold of his wrist, does he relinquish the pressure on the wound, letting him take over. He sees Wen Qing’s red robes, and her tight, furious expression. She is shouting orders he cannot hear. A-Sang is being lifted. He is being carried inside.

Jiang Cheng is in front of him. He does not speak, but Wei Ying knows. That expression on his face, the thunder and lightening, the eager fury, his fists clenched so tight that the skin is red from strain. He knows what Jiang Cheng wants to hear.

“Find them,” Wei Ying says, “Kill them. Bring me their head.”

Between one heartbeat and the next, Jiang Cheng is gone. There is a trail of blood leading to the palace entrance.

He does not remember following the blood. He does not remember crossing the familiar halls, but he must have done so, to find himself in A-Sang’s chambers. A pale hand clutches his, short nails digging into his flesh, breaking the skin. He can feel no pain.  

The arrow had gone almost all the way through. It has to be pushed further in. The tip has to be broken. A-Sang’s screams are blood-curdling. The moment he finally loses consciousness is almost a relief.

He sits on A-Sang’s bed and holds him, while Wen Qing cleans the wound and sows the skin back together. It is devastating, how light he feels in Wei Ying’s arms, as if all of his bones are hollow.

Wen Qing says he will be fine. She says nothing major was damaged. She says he was very lucky.

No one, not even Nie MingJue, is addressing the obvious. A-Sang was in Wei Ying’s seat. A-Sang was hurt because of him.

Wei Ying thinks, disconnectedly, that A-Sang will be furious he only got to wear these robes once. They are utterly ruined. He wants to cry, but he cannot. There are too many people here, watching him carefully, waiting for something.

“Your Majesty,” Nie MigJue says, “we cannot delay any longer.”

He has not the slightest idea what those words mean. Had the man been talking to Wei Ying all along? It feels as if everything around him is happening under water, muffled and slow. The only thing that is starkly present, inescapable, is the bandage around A-Sang’s shoulder, blood already seeping through.

His blood is everywhere. A smear of it on the pillow, on the bed covers, on the delicate silk canopy.

Wen Qing touches his arm.

“You can let him go now,” she says gently, “Granny and I will get him cleaned up. Let him rest.”

Is Granny here? Wei Ying had not noticed her arrive. He sees her now, putting away the needle and the thread, folding the unused bandage.

Wei Ying swallows heavily. His throat feels raw.

“His sleep robes are in the trunk at the bottom of the bed,” he rasps, “He likes the gray silk with the green flowers. When he does not feel well.”

“I will take care of it,” Wen Qing says, “They need you outside. Go now. I will come and find you if anything changes.”

It takes him a few moments to be able to stand up, but Nie MingJue waits patiently, hovering right by his shoulder, in case he cannot manage on his own.

Now he can feel pain. His ribs are throbbing. Every muscle in his body feels too tight, as if on the verge of tearing. There is a dull pain at the back of his head.

A-Sang’s receiving chamber is crowded. Shijie and uncle are there, and Nie ZongHui, and ten men of the Emperor’s guard. Inexplicably, Jin GuangShan is there as well, Jin ZiXuan and two other disciples by his side.

And all three of the Lan Sect members, all three kneeling, their heads bowed.

“What--?” Wei Ying says.

He is still covered in blood. He can feel a streak of it drying on his face. Shijie looks as if she wants to cry.

He should have cleaned up before letting her see him.

Nie MingJue is talking, and it takes Wei Ying a few moments for his mind to catch up. Instant fury rises in his chest, sharply clearing the fog.

“Ridiculous!” he snaps, interrupting the man mid-sentence, “They are not at fault. Get up.”

“Lan QiRen has inspected the arrow,” Jiang FengMian says carefully, “He has admitted that it belongs to the Lan Sect. The spiritual signature of the arrows forged in Cloud Recesses cannot be duplicated by an outsider.”

Wei Ying is not listening. He is reaching down to lift up Lan Zhan, but his hands are still covered with blood, and Lan Zhan’s robes are still white and spotless.

“Get up, Lan Zhan,” he says instead, “Sect leader Lan, please stand up. Lan XiChen. None of you are at fault.”

“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Jin GuangShan says, “the Lan Sect has a history of assassinating the rulers of Shan Dynasty. Is your decision to absolve them a little too hasty?”

His fury is a dark mass in his abdomen.

It would be so easy, to give in. So easy, to have Jin GuangShan removed from his presence forever. One order, two words. Nie MingJue would not hesitate.

“The Lan Sect knew,” he says, voice tight with suppressed rage, “long before the competition started, that the Emperor was not going to be in his seat. They knew exactly where the Emperor was going to be, and they could have had him killed a thousand times over without anyone noticing. Someone is clearly trying to eliminate the Lan Sect in any way possible, and your stupidity is helping them.”

Jin GuangShan’s face turns white. Wei Ying does not know what the man reads in his expression, but he seems to realize that this time, he has gone too far. In the next moment, he is folding to his knees.

“Please forgive my impertinence, Your Majesty. I meant no harm. I was only worried about Your Majesty.”

Jin ZiXuan and the two disciples are kneeling as well, and Wei Ying wonders about the political repercussions of individually kicking each one until they are forced to crawl out of the receiving chamber on their knees.

“High Councilor, since Sect Leader Jin wants to be helpful, please find him something productive to do. Somewhere that is not here.”

Jiang FengMian hastily pushes the Jin Sect out of the receiving hall, but Wei Ying does not see them leave.

Lan Zhan is standing in front of him. His cool expression, usually so difficult to read, is no longer there. In its place, there is a mix of worry, and sadness, and inexplicable guilt. For a moment, it looks as if he may reach out. His fingers twitch, then settle.

Wei Ying feels his fury shiver apart, fracturing into a thousand sharp pieces. He wants to take Lan Zhan’s hand. He wants it almost as badly as he wants the head of the man who had hurt A-Sang.

“Your Majesty,” Lan QiRen says, “If I may have a moment of your time. In private.”

Wei Ying exhales heavily.

He wants to sit somewhere in silence, and just breathe. But he cannot.

He can hear shijie asking MingJue if she can go in now, to see A-Sang. She touches Wei Ying’s shoulder lightly as she passes by, both a warning and a comfort.

“Nie ZongHui,” Wei Ying says, “Please escort the Young Masters back to the Peach Blossom Pavilion. Double their protection. If someone looks at the Lan Sect in a way you deem suspicious, arrest them. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Wei Ying turns to Lan QiRen the moment the others are out of earshot. The man pulls out a small piece of folded up paper from the sleeve of his robe, and hands it over.

“This was waiting at the Peach Blossom Pavilion the night we arrived,” Lan QiRen says.

Wei Ying unfolds the paper, leaving bloody fingerprints over its surface.

The note is simple and straightforward:

“The Young Masters are in danger. Leave the Immortal Mountain.”

He frowns at the script. The characters are clumsy and crooked, as if written by a child.

“Why did you not bring this to someone’s attention earlier?” he asks.

“Your Majesty,” Lan QiRen says dryly, “If I brought each threat against the Lan Sect to your attention, you would have no time left to run the Empire.”

Wei Ying gapes at him. Was that a joke? Out of Sect Leader Lan?

He looks around, but no one else is there to witness this. No one will believe him.

“I would like the permission to take my nephews back to Cloud Recesses,” Lan QiRen says.

Wei Ying feels his heart plummet.

He folds the paper carefully, and tucks it in his own sleeve.

“No,” he says.

“Your Majesty--“

“No,” he says again, his stomach twisting, “the danger may follow you there, and if you leave, I cannot protect h-- I cannot protect you.”

“It is likely that your attention has caused the danger in the first place,” Lan QiRen says, his voice hard.

Wei Ying swallows heavily, his throat raw.

“You may be right, but the answer is still no. It has been a long and trying day for all of us,” he says, before Lan QiRen can offer any other argument, “You may go now, Sect Leader.”

Lan QiRen looks furious, but he bows, and leaves without another word.

[eva-novakov]

“This is a love story?” Eva lifted her legs automatically when he reached the couch so he could sit down as close to her as possible. She pulled the edge of his shirt back down her thighs when her bare legs dropped onto his lap.

“Is that bad?” 

“No…I like love stories.” She thumbed through the book, until Isaac quickly inserted a hand between the pages. 

“I know what you’re doing. Stop it.” 

“Okay, I read the ending first, one time.” She peeled his hand away but flipped back to the beginning, glaring at him over the top of the book. 

“Sure, if one time means every time.” He smiled and smoothed a hand over her leg, turning to his nightly reports in the other.  Her smile was hidden behind the book. “It’s fantasy though, so not very accurate standards when it comes to love.” 

“I wouldn’t know.” She snorted. 

“What?” 

She sighed and lowered the book onto her lap. “I’m almost thirty years old and I’ve never been in love. How big of a loser does that make me?” Her laugh drifted into silence when she found him studying her. “I think I might have been once. But that ended badly. But you should definitely know right?” 

“Yeah, you’ll know.” 

This time it was her turn to study his face. “Have you ever been in love?” 

“Yes.” He said the word without hesitation. 

“Is it too personal to ask why it ended?” 

“Nothing is too personal for you to ask, Eva.” He focused on the hand that was sliding from her shin to her thigh and back again. “She died, a very long time ago.” 

Eva’s heart dropped into her stomach as she inhaled. “…Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-.” 

“It’s alright. It feels like a completely different life now.” 

“I’d like to hear about her someday.” 

“Whenever you want.” He gave her a small smile, brows knitting together. “What about the time you thought you were in love, that ended badly?” 

Her sigh was deep and heavy this time. “I’ve never opened that door for anyone.” 

“You don’t have to tell me.” 

He waited patiently, while she debated whether the journey back through that particular past was worth it. It wasn’t, but he was. 

“I thought we were going to get married one day, that’s why I thought I was in love. And looking back, there were signs that I either didn’t see or I ignored, maybe both. There was always a side of him that just… didn’t feel right. I was so young and he was only my second boyfriend so I was naïve as hell. I was already scarred when I met him, but he was just so confident and imposing, probably too charismatic. He had our whole class charmed, and he just set his sights on me and didn’t give up until there I was, letting someone in once again, past all the warning bells in my head.” 

“Anyway, it was the last day of our N7 test. There were only three of us left at the end. Somehow, the two of us found each other. In the moment, I thought it was fate. Now I realize it had to have been something else. Either way, we were almost out of it, it was almost over. I don’t remember a lot of it. This was the third day of no sleep and hardly no food or water. I remember...civilians that needed protecting. I remember the wave of enemies that were sent at us. I remember screaming at him, when he left me to defend them, by myself. I remember he didn’t even look back. And that’s the last thing I remember before I used the last of whatever was in me to throw  a shield around the civilians, then everything went black.” 

She glanced at him and appreciated the rage flashing in his eyes. “I don’t have to tell you how it works, the hostiles and the civilians were a simulation, the board sees everything, judges how you perform, etcetera. What they told us, is that the first person to make it to the drop zone would graduate. We were all supposed to be separate, not find each other. So I guess he was doing what he needed to, he just happened to think that using me as his own personal wall to victory was the way to go. The irony is that they purposely didn’t tell us that only the first few people who dropped out wouldn’t graduate. So he didn’t even need to do what he did, the rest of us ended up graduating anyway.” 

“Wait.” Isaac held up one finger and Eva had never seen his features display that much anger.  “That test is supposed to be accomplished in an ‘admirable and effective fashion’. That should have ended his career.” 

“I don’t know what he told the board. I don’t know if he threw my name in the fire or if he was fucking one of them or…I never could find out. And they didn’t let him graduate, but they let him try again the next year, and he passed. I went that year, to graduation, because I had friends that had achieved their N7. He wouldn’t even look at me. It was like I didn’t exist. Jackson Vance. Specialization: N7 Asshole.” 

Eva recognized the slow, focused breaths that Isaac was taking as the same ones she took when she needed to not kill someone. Maybe that’s why she kept talking, she was afraid of what he would say when she stopped. Maybe it was  because she wanted him to realize just how damaged she was before he got too deep.

“You know how we’re all required to sit so many therapy hours at ICT, just to make sure we’re holding up against the mind fucks you have to go through while there. Well my therapist told me I had ‘attachment issues’. To which I replied no shit.” She breathed a humorless chuckle and rolled a strand of still damp hair between her fingers. Anything to concentrate on besides his eyes. She chewed on her bottom lip, surprised and angry at the sudden emotion burning in her throat. She tried to breathe through it, but couldn’t stop the single droplet that found its way out of her right eye and she quickly brushed it off of her cheek. “Because in my brain, when something like that happens and your own parents didn’t want you, who will?” 

“Eva.” His hand found her cheek, stroking where the tear had been. She still couldn’t meet his eyes but she could hear the pain in his voice. “You deserve love, you know. You’re worth love.” 

Her fingers curled around his wrist, pulling his hand away to entwine her fingers through his, deciding to barrel through the door before it slammed shut again. “I need you to know I have a history of pulling away. When things get too good.” She shouldn’t have looked, because the emotion in his eyes made her swallow down another lump in her throat. “My job has been both a blessing and a curse. It rips me away from anyone that might want to keep me, but it allows me to run from anyone I might want to keep. All I can ask is that you be patient with me and don’t give up on me if I need to take it slow.” 

“I’m not going anywhere, no matter what speed.” The words slid earnestly through his lips before meeting hers when he tugged on her hand, pulling her up to meet him. “Thank you for telling me.” 

“I don’t know why I told you all of that. I don’t talk about my things. Keep whatever black magic you used to pull that out of me to yourself, sir.” 

“Now who has been reading too much fantasy?” He pulled her hand to his lips as she laid back down onto the couch. “I like it when you tell me your things.” 

“Okay well.” She sniffled, twirling the same lock of hair around a finger. “Can we not talk about sad things anymore?” 

“What do you want to talk about?” 

She saw him visibly collect himself before her eyes drifted shut. “Tell me more about the pink sand.” 

There was silence, then there was nothing but his hands on her and her favorite sound in the world. He told her about the places he had been, about all the shows he still wants her to watch, his favorite books. Her blood leveled, her heart beat slowed and her brain went quiet as she listened to him, sure that she could listen to him talk every second of every day and never tire of it. 

At some point Eva playfully pulled his hand up her thigh and he squeezed it, bringing a smirk to her lips. Later on in his rambling she pulled it up further and she knew they weren’t playing anymore when his words started to falter. She gasped softly when his fingertips slipped past the fabric covering the most sensitive parts of her. He was utterly silent and she writhed as he played with her, his finger brushing over her folds, thumb sweeping over her clit, simply feeling her. Her leg dropped off the side of the couch, spreading her legs and whispering his name. Her bottom lip poked into a pout when his finger stopped and she was jostled as he moved. Her eyes flew open when his mouth replaced his finger, her eyes falling to see his head between her legs. He pulled back just enough to remove her panties and then she threw her other leg onto the back of the couch and tangled her fingers into his hair as he devoured her. His fingers dug into her thighs and she moaned long and deep when his tongue slid inside her. His ministrations on her permeated the silence and she decided she could have more than one favorite sound. 

“Fuck…don’t stop.” She knew he wouldn’t, but she said it anyway in an effort to hold back as long as she could. She faintly wondered if it was possible for him to do this for the entire night and still do his job the next day. Finally one hand untangled from his hair to slap against his shoulder and she was unable to make a sound. He knew by now when she went silent she was close, and he latched onto her, sucking hard as she came around him. 

“I want more of you.” She pushed him out from between her legs and into a sitting position when she finally stopped shaking enough to move. 

Her – his – shirt dropped onto the floor as she moved to straddle him and his hands immediately went to her nipples, leaning forward to capture one in his mouth. Her chin rested on the top of his head, letting him suck on an entirely different part of her that made her shiver and shake in entirely new ways. He was already hard before she started to grind her crotch against his. When he moved to the other nipple, his tongue flattening against it before it disappeared into this mouth, she reached between them and pulled his length out of his shorts. His mouth hesitated, resting motionless against her skin when she started to stroke him. He sat back when she lifted herself slightly, helping her position herself over him. They both moaned when his tip pushed into her, until her mouth found his and they kissed away each other’s sounds when she sat fully onto him, his hard flesh disappearing inside her. She kissed him the entire time she rode him, bouncing on his lap, her hands in his hair and his hands everywhere. 

It was when she pulled away, leaning back with her hands moving to his knees so he could see her breasts move and see him sliding in and out of her that she heard the whine. She looked at him, mouth open with hard breaths, not sure she heard what she thought she did. Until he whined again and she came back to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and fucking him harder at the sound. She could definitely have more than one favorite.

“Isaac.” She stopped lifting herself up and down and sat on his lap, rocking her hips to grind him inside her. Her hands held his face, lips inches from his as she clenched around him. She was close, and she knew he was close. “If I try to run…please don’t let me.” Her entire body shook and she moaned against his mouth as she came, wanting all of him. 

He gasped for breath as he gave her everything. “I’ll never give you a reason to.”

[metellastella]

Oneshot: Injury by a Firebender: The Dragon of the West and the Avatar

“Don’t touch me.” the monk said sharply. 

Iroh’s bronze eyes blinked in bewilderment at the harsh reprimand from the lighthearted airbender.  He had gone in to hug him, because he was clearly upset after their training session. The boy had been burned before, and this one had been simple enough for Katara to heal. So he wasn’t sure what had suddenly caused this shift in mood. 

“Are you all right?” the fatherly man asked with a tinge of panic. 

The boy was silent. 

His silver eyes cut into him. Iroh began churning up thoughts, trying to puzzle out what might be wrong, as he had when Lu Ten had gotten into moody episodes or angry fits.

“Aang,” the man said with a choked noise, “I am so, so sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” But the words were not forgiving in tone. They were hard. They projected ‘I understand this, but my feelings are very different from welcoming you back into my space right now.’ 

“What can I do to make it up to you? To make you feel better?” 

Aang’s shoulders screwed up. 

“Just . . .”

He breathed three times. 

Iroh recognized how he expanded his diaphragm as far as it would go, sucking in all the life-giving air his lungs could stand, and then releasing slowly like a leaking gas tank. 

The words from tutors from his own boyhood spoke to him, 

‘Picture you are drawing in the prana, the life force around you, and with each breath out, imagine you are cleansing yourself of fear and weakness.’ 

“You don’t normally act angry or forceful like Zuko,” the airbender analyzed. “But you do have your rare moments. If you could just . . . be extra quiet for the next few days, that would be a spiritsend.”

“Of course. I will be totally silent, if that’s what would help.” 

The monk relaxed further.  “What made this one worse? Was it something I did specifically?”

The monk opened his eyes and gave him a strained smile. “Toph and Zuko see you as the father you never had, Sensei. Or,” he corrected, “Does the Fire Nation use Sifu?” “Either is fine.”

“Or do you prefer Master?” “Aang, it really doesn’t matter. You insist on this formality, even though I’ve told you it’s not necessary.” 

“You see it as formality,” the monk bowed his head. “We saw it primarily as affection.” 

“Ah! Well then I am honored.”

“It is not a sign of dominance or status,” the monk went on. “But, like ‘Uncle,’ from Zuko, a friendly honorific.” “Like -chan! Or -san.” “Exactly. Like family.” 

The boy was silent for a few moments, and his brief happiness vanished.  “I had my own gurus, so although I want to see you as a parental figure, it feels as if I am betraying the dead by doing so.” The words dropped on him with all the force of the boy’s ten ton bison slamming into the ground. 

Tears gathered in the old man’s eyes. 

“It’s not your fault,” the monk said again, much gentler this time. “I want to like you, Master Iroh. But, the man that you, as a boy, kowtowed to as respect to an elder? He brutally murdered my elders.” 

Iroh couldn’t breathe. “Katara complains at me how ‘Zuko reminds me of my dead mother, and how am I supposed to deal with that,’ well.” The preteen laughed harshly. “I have to go meditate after she says things like that, or I will end up saying some very nasty things to her. She is like a noblewoman who complains that it is too hot, while fanning herself. I am the peasant out in the fields, toiling away to serve her up her dinner plate.” Iroh was convinced that he was having an out of body experience. He hadn’t felt this completely flattened by confusion since Mahimata, the Earth Spirit essentially mentally tortured him. 

“Nobody seems to understand exactly how much pain I’m in.” The boy went on in a monotone. “When we started out our journey, I would cry almost every day, as a normal person grieving their entire extended family’s death would. Sokka totally understood. He’d hug me, and rock me. Katara on the other hand, could not handle it. Grieving periods for one person are usually about at least a year, the monks would say. We had a couple of elders join the Spirit World, during my lifetime. So. If we were going to do some simple math here, how long would I need to grieve just every single one of my boyhood playmates, aside from an entire population of my people?” Iroh was beginning to feel faint from lack of oxygen. 

“Katara could not see me like that. It drove her insane. She’d let Sokka handle it. And I didn’t understand why at the time. I was hurt. I was beyond hurt. She acted so motherly all the time, and then when I needed her most, she abandoned me? I didn’t say anything to Sokka about it. I just cried. And tried to do what the monks said, look for the gratitude in the situation. A way to look at things from a positive angle. Impossible task, surely. I’d like to see the Mechanist be good enough at problem solving to unravel that one. After several meditation sessions, I finally ferreted out a way to look at it differently. This was ‘good.’ His macho attitude didn’t extend into berating a younger boy to ‘be more manly’ as you might expect.” 

He repeated the deep breaths. 

“Because, if both of them, my new family, had been unable to comfort me . . .”

The stab through the veteran’s heart was more painful than any blade that had ever gotten through his defenses and sliced into him. 

“Katara saw me as the savior to the world,” the monk said distantly. “So, not only was she hurt by my pain, because her empathy is strong. Every time that would happen, she would think that the world was lost, that we really couldn’t do it. I was too broken to be able to do this. Later on, she said, ‘Aang, we can just run away. You are only one person. You can’t solve this. There’s too much history. Too many people involved. I’ll bet my soul to some wicked spirit, that when the Avatar was established, the elder spirits never expected him to have to do something like this!! This was all a mistake. A slip of Fate. Surely, we need to just let you talk to them, and they’ll say the same thing!’” 

“I was very tempted by that offer,” the Bridge Between the Worlds said ponderously. “What if I just found some secluded spot for a couple of weeks, in order to go into deeper meditation trance states, and negotiate my way out of my responsibility? Were the spirits that merciful? Maybe.” 

He shrugged. “Maybe I should ‘have faith’ that the spirits would be fair to me, a poor little boy who did nothing to deserve this.”

Several more breaths, and Iroh could feel the wind around him reacting this time around. 

“I had a dream, where Roku spoke to me. He apologized for how he acted. That I needed more empathy from him, too. That he was not just my Guide, but also my elder who loved me.” 

A loud sob escaped him, and his element whooshed in response. 

“And now, when I sleep, I am in his arms. Like a baby who sleeps next to their mother. Sokka doesn’t have to do it so much, although he is still completely willing, and reminds me daily. Katara has gotten a little better.”

His next breath out was like a release valve, preventing overload from a too-full tank. 

“Nowadays, Roku murmurs things to me like, ‘It’s ok if you fail, Aang.’ ‘Just try your best.’ ‘That’s all any of us can ask from you.’ ‘You won’t be penalized by the Spirits.’ ‘You won’t even hear a harsh word from any of us Avatars.’ ‘And we most certainly will be there to comfort you.’ If I die, whether by disgruntled protestors, or by assassins trying to re-ignite the war, then the Air Nomads will truly have left the world. I try, during my meditations, to rein in that all-encompassing, all-too-likely scenario. Meditation is meant to quell anxiety after all,” he said a bit bitterly, “and all its attendant visualizations. I guess I am just lucky that, although my anxiety is centered on the entire world, I also have more powerful meditation states than the average person as well. It is suited to the task.” he said flatly. 

His silver eyes glanced around his surroundings. 

“Had I been born somewhere else than the Air Temples, where meditation for bending is not taken so seriously, I’m not sure what mental state I would be in. I could be catatonic, for one. I’m sure I would’ve hurt or killed people in fits of rage by now, Avatar Spirit involved or not.” 

He paused. “There has never been a child Avatar in the Spirit World. Ever. None of the spirits I have talked to in dreams knows what will happen if that comes to pass. Will I be a child in perpetuity? Some of the more feminine ones cluck over me like a mother hen and say, ‘You poor dear, you will feel very lonely here, should you die.’ ‘You will be the only one of your kind here, just as you are on the Material Plane.’ ‘We will lavish you with attention, little one.’ ‘You deserve paradise after death, probably even more so than any human who has ever existed.’ ‘Don’t be afraid.’” His tears drew tracks down his cheeks. 

“‘You’ve never had a mother, have you, love?’ ‘Your gurus were so mastered in their minds that they could provide that feminine touch to you.’ ‘We don’t mean to disrespect their culture, dear, but it seems terribly sad to us, still.’”

He let out a broken chuckle and quavered in a slightly otherworldly voice, “Roku, you brute, you had better take over as the next Avatar’s Guide if that happens. Expecting a child who had barely begun to live to mentor a sixteen year old? The fire fields will freeze over before we let you off the hook.’” The boy wiped his eyes. 

“I have lots of ‘people’ rooting for me. Not only rooting for me, but allowing the possibility that I will fail. And that, is what every boy and girl in the world needs.” 

[retroateez]

Prophecy - Chapter Eighteen

length: 2k

taglist: @hewwo-from-the-other-side

prophecy masterlist

In all his years of being the king, Hongjoong had never once been this stressed. Not even when San and Mingi had gotten into a massive argument and refused to speak to each other one week before last year's annual ball.

But now, as he paces back and forth in his study, he's so stressed he thinks his head might explode.

"Why don't we just explain to them calmly?" Seonghwa asks sheepishly. "Invite them here and tell them that they have the wrong end of the stick!"

"Are you crazy!?" Hongjoong bursts, slamming his palms down on his magnificant desk so loudly it makes the kingsguard jump back in shock. "You want to invite them directly into the heart of a kingdom they have already have reasons to attack?"

"Well... I-I thought it would prove to them that there was no magic here-"

"But there is magic here, Seonghwa."

"You said there wasn't!"

"I lied." Hongjoong casually brushes off his comment with a wave of his hand before he starts to pace again. "With the mage, the elf and the girl here there is undoubtedly some form of magical presence. Although I thought it was detectable only when using spells."

"Then what are we going to do?" Seonghwa throws himself dramatically into the chair on the other side of the king's desk.

It's been almost a full week since the ball, since Seonghwa nervously informed Hongjoong of Seventeen's intentions. It had been almost a full week, and they were still no closer to a conclusion.

"We do nothing." Hongjoong says suddenly, with a shrug. "We tell them that they're being ridiculous, and that there's no need for secondary actions."

"And what if they don't believe us?"

Hongjoong stays silent, turning his back to Seonghwa and staring at the lit fire behind him.

"Hongjoong? What if they don't believe us?"

The king clears his throat, and turns back around to face his best, and possibly only true friend.

"Go and tell everyone else what has been happening."

"Hongjo-"

"Now, Seonghwa."

-----

"I just don't understand it." Yeosang sighs, having quietly listened to the kingsguard relay the recent events to him. "Wooyoung and I haven't used any magic since we got here, who could they possibly be detecting?"

You sit silently behind him, chewing nervously on your bottom lip as you ignore the guilt creeping into your blood.

"Neither do I, but that means we have nothing to worry about. Seventeen may just be looking to pick a fight, I hear the politics in their kingdom has been rather shaky recently." Seonghwa replies, running a hand though his unusally messy hair.

"Shaky?" you echo.

"Yes, the thirteen heads of the state have been arguing as of late, or so I hear."

"Imagine splitting the leadership of the kingdom between thirteen figures." Wooyoung scoffs. "A ludicrous idea if you ask me."

"Thirteen? Then why is the kingdom called Seventeen?" you ask.

Yeosang rolls his eyes, as if he's been asked the same question over a million times today already.

"Nobody really knows," he begins to explain. "The main theory is that the kingdom was originally founded by seventeen families, but four of the bloodlines fizzled out over time."

"Murdered by the remaining thirteen, you mean."

"Or that."

Yeosang, Wooyoung and Seonghwa continue to talk amoungst themselves about the ups and downs of the Seventeen history, while you turn your gaze to stare out of the stained-glass window of the study. Rain, falling rapidly, slaps against the glass, reverberating throughout the room.

How easy it would be, to be water.

To flow effortlessly, to be undying and without a care in the world.

Instead you were human, burdened with the responsibilities of knowledge and living.

"Are you okay, my love?" Wooyoung sits down beside you, gently wrapping his arm around your shoulder and rubbing your back soothingly. "You've been awfully quiet."

You turn to look at him slightly, your heart doing somersaults at the sight of his amethyst eyes looking at you softly, burning with care and affection. You notice too, that Yeosang and Seonghwa had left the room.

You want to tell him everything, you truly do. From meeting with Yunho and stealing his book, to practising magic in secret and possibly getting everyone you care about in serious danger.

But the way he looks at you...

Why would you ruin that?

"I'm fine." you lie through a fake smile, guilt piercing through your heart when he nods and kisses the top of your head.

"There was one thing though, now you mention it."

"Of course." He looks upon you with such intrigue, so much genuine interest in what you have to say. "Can I help?"

"I found a book in the library the other day, it was about magic, I think, I just wanted to ask you about it."

"Well, Yeosang knows more about magic than I do, Iris. Why don't you ask him?"

"Because it was about elven magic..."

There's a flash of something behind Wooyoung's eyes, something that you caught, but something unintelligable.

"I see. What was it?"

"There was just a bunch of spells written in it, written on the back cover by somebody else, one of them said something like feinn ichaer and another one-"

Wooyoung's body shoots up from beside you, darting up so quickly he almost knocks you over in the process.

"What did you just say?" he demands.

"Feinn ichaer?" you repeat. "Aevon bleidd was another-"

"Stop!" he practically screams at you. "S-stop saying those words!"

"Why? What do they mean?"

"Where is that book?" Wooyoung glares at you, angry, crimson fire bursting through the usual calm lilac of his eyes and for the first time since meeting him, you're scared.

"I-I do-"

"Where is it, Iris?!"

"I don't know!" you cry. "I just left it somewhere and it got tidied up!"

The elf exhales shakily, running his hand over his face and keeping them over his eyes for a few moments.

"Feinn ichaer, Aevon bleidd" the elf says after some time.

So that's how you say them.

"Sun blood and river wolf. They are two of the most dangerous spells in the realm of dark magic. In the hands of corrupt people, well, you could conquer entire planets with them."

"What does it feel like? When you cast them, I mean." you really were pushing your luck now but Wooyoung was probably too shocked to care.

"I've never used them myself, but," he looks up to meet your gaze, his eyes glistening, but not burning brilliantly like they usually do. "Feinn ichaer feels like a forest fire rages through your veins. Like your heart has been plucked out and replaced with the sun itself, or like the air you breathe has turned into scorching hot lava... It's like physical hell, apparently."

Interesting.

"You stay far away from those spells, Iris. Do you hear me? And if you find that book, give it to me immediately, okay?"

You nod weakly, only watching as he informs you he has to go, and he promptly leaves the room.

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.

There wasn't room in you anymore for guilt. The way you were feeling before completely overshadowed by the disappointment in yourself.

How foolish you had been, to think that you could get away with something so stupid. To betray those who had taken you under their wing.

In that exact moment, you resolve to get rid of Yunho's book. Whether it was to burn it, to give it back or simply throw it out, you didn't care. You would find a way to get rid of it, and to put the wrongs you had made, right.

You put your plan into immediate effect, getting up and racing into the library to dig the book out of its hiding place. Hurriedly, you throw all your weight against the grand wooden doors, rushing in and closing them behind you without looking around.

"Iris? Fancy seeing you here." you whip around at the smooth drawl of a voice.

"Hello, San."

He takes a couple of cautious steps towards you, and then you realise what he's holding. He notices your gaze, and smirks.

"Oh, this? Just some light reading, you might enjoy it actually, it seems right up your alley." San sticks out his right hand and mimics the hand motion you had spent so long perfecting. "But of course, something tells me you've already read this, haven't you?"

"What do you want from me?" you spit.

"You and I both know that the magic Seventeen is tracking is, undoubtedly, you."

Somehow, San's statement stings. Even though you knew it was true, despite not wanting to accept it, deep down you wholeheartedly knew it was your fault, it still came as a painful blow.

"So, I want you gone. I want you to stop putting this castle, and this kingdom in danger."

"And how exactly do you plan on doing that, fool?"

"Simple, I'll just tell the king exactly what you've been doing. Or, better yet, I'll tell that elf boyfriend of yours. I bet he'd love to hear how you're using his ancestors magic against him."

"You can't do that-"

"Can't I?" San silently paces closer towards you, close enough for you to see the flecks of amber in his dark eyes and to feel his sweet breath fan over your face. "What exactly is stopping me from marching into the king's office right now, and telling him every little thing you've been up to?"

"Well- I-"

"Just as I thought." he scoffs. "You're nothing but a filthy, conniving little street rat."

"That isn't true! I've-"

"Is it not? Then what have you done to prove otherwise? After all, you've stolen, decieved and lied your way to where you are right now. Seems very street rat like to me."

"Are you going to tell them, then?"

"I'll give you a week to tell them yourself. If you don't, then I will."

"Can I have the book back? I'd like to return it."

"And let you learn more of these silly elf spells and kill me in my sleep? Absolutely not."

You glare at his towering form, wishing for nothing more than to punch that stupid smug off his face.

"Fine. A week."

"Pleasure doing business with you, street rat." San beams. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd quite like to see what is so special about this book. Smell you later."

And with that he saunters out of the library, leaving you standing in the middle of the room one second away from a breakdown.

How on earth were you going to tell them? How would Wooyoung react? Worse, how would Yeosang react?

You take a deep breath, throwing yourself into the cushioned seat by the library window and fixating on the rain drops tumbling down the glass.

Everything would be okay. You'll tell Yeosang, and Wooyoung and they'll forgive you. And you'll tell Hongjoong the full truth and he won't kill you.

Probably.

[alchemabotana]

Shamanic Identity

Today I’m taking the time to write this post about something so personal and dear to my heart: Shamanic Identity.

You’ve probably seen it too: people with no right to the word Shaman using it liberally to describe the work they do. I’ve written several other posts about shamanism, its history, and my personal practice here on this blog, but that’s not exactly what I’m writing about today.

The word “appropriation” doesn’t begin to cover this topic, although it is a word that applies to the concepts I’m addressing. The concept of Shamanic Identity is actually not a complicated one at all: a Shaman is an intermediary between the Spirit World and the Physical World, between the multiverse and dimensional realities that are unseen and the seen world. These people do so by simply existing and taking up space. There are Shamanic Practices, Shamanic Techniques, Shamanic Ceremonies, and Shamanic Rituals, but that’s NOT Shamanic Identity. These things are simply words and labels we’ve developed as Shamans to describe categories of actions that we take in the world, not our Identity.

For example, if I stopped offering healings, making medicine pieces or altars, performing rituals or ceremonies... I would still be a Shaman, because that’s who I was born to be. I know Shamans who drive trucks for a living, are maids, trash collectors, incarcerated, or in a mental hospital: but they’re still Shamans. They don’t need to take a special class, tell you their genetic lineage, or practice a specific modality to be a Shaman.

So what has created the Shamanic Identity crisis that is so widespread in this current age? What it boils down to is The Cultural Iceburg. 

The Cultural Iceburg is the concept that what we see when interacting with an individual is not all there is. When people think of Shamanism they associate it with our Customs, Language, and Music. But they mistakenly ignore Values, Priorities, Assumptions, Body Language, Stories, Manners, and Space/Time Concepts of our LIVED EXPERIENCE.

This is why it’s so easy for someone to put on the headdress, get a rattle or drum, and start claiming that they are a Shaman. Why do these people do this? Primarily to gain a position in some social group or setting they’d like to belong to (usually not the cultural group they are appropriating from, but others in their racial/social/socioeconomic/class structure). These individuals are also highly motivated by FINANCIAL GAIN.

I want to take some time to talk about financial gain and Shamanism. I’ll be frank, I don’t know any rich Shamans. I don’t know any Shamans who feel completely comfortable charging a fair price for their services, and I know a lot of Shamans who have gone hungry and homeless because they don’t feel right about charging money. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay a Shaman the fair price for their work (services or goods). Just as you would pay someone a fair living wage for hours worked, you ought to pay a Shaman for their work. It’s that simple.

But there are many clear examples, unfortunately many of them in my hometown community, of people taking Shaman Schools or Shaman Certifications or Shaman Classes (usually online - not that there aren’t authentic shamanic online courses) in order to claim that they are a Shaman or to show “proof” that they are “qualified” to be a Shaman. I ran into this when a local hospital approached me about coming on board as a Shaman in their clergy. It became very obvious that their department had no real clue what a Shaman does, as they asked for proof of my schooling and accreditation as a Shaman. When I told them I wouldn’t provide those materials because it is not culturally appropriate, they asked me for the names and qualifications of my teachers. My teachers also did not have the qualifications they were looking for, and I REFUSE to play the “show me your identification card” game which is insulting to our elders. 

Are you starting to get the picture?

Shamanism is a complex identity structure. It requires a person to have certain prerequisite gifts. That’s not something you can give a person or teach a person in a course or school. Some will argue that you can transfer gifts, but I will argue that you have to be a Shaman already to receive them. In my experience as a Shaman it has often been necessary to teach other Shamans how to manage their gifts so that they would not be overwhelmed by them. Shamans have to deal with a complex cultural stigma against their very identities: don’t talk to dead people, don’t listen to voices, don’t communicate with spirits, don’t you dare see one or you’ll be labeled insane. If you’re a Shaman of BIPOC origin, just go ahead and layer institutional racism on top of it, and you’re in for a flurry of misunderstanding and bigoted response to your very identity out there in the “real world.” Shamans have to learn to navigate incredible barriers to basic human rights when they take the steps to seek help for mental or physical health issues. Some of those issues have nothing to do with them, except that their care providers are too ignorant on complex cultural matters to be good advocates for their care. This is why the great majority of Shamans that I have taught, studied with, or been in the care of, have tragic stories of healthcare gone wrong & wrongful incarceration/mental institutionalism. I really don’t know a single Shaman who doesn’t struggle with a mental health diagnosis, complex PTSD, or Epigenetic Trauma.

For those of us born of family lineages, we have to navigate Epigenetic Trauma as well. We have to face a healthcare system that was built on experimentation on our ancestors, and overcome major trust issues to receive treatment for conditions that most average citizens of the US suffer from as well: anxiety, depression, PTSD, domestic violence, sexual violence, etc. Except, when a Shaman goes to receive help they have to explain why they see spirits and their whole cosmology before someone takes them seriously around conditions that have nothing to do with their Shamanic Identity. Sometimes Shamans feel they HAVE to be honest about their experiences with these providers, even if it hurts them. They have most likely been abused for their Shamanic Identity, and aren’t so much sharing their experiences to seek help for the woo-woo, but help navigating abuse.

But those without real Shamanic Identities just take off the label Shaman whenever it is convenient. They do not have to bear the burdens of Shamanic Identity, but receive the financial benefits of associating themselves with the term. These are the folks who come to me desperate to associate themselves with me as a student, so they can claim they have met the “requirements” to be a practicing Shaman for their business profile. It’s been incredibly hard for me to navigate this within myself and not respond immediately with rage. Instead, I try to educate people tactfully - some are more responsive than others. For example, I had a student once inquire about my Shamanic Mentorship - a mentorship program I offered pre-pandemic in which I explicitly stated the purpose was to receive mentorship from a Shaman. Nothing more. This particular individual had a yoga studio and wanted to “Add Shamanism” to what they offered. I tried to explain the impossibility of such a venture, especially with me as their token Shaman who would bestow this identity on them, so they could monetize my cultural and identity for their benefit. I never heard from the person again, although they do still own and operate a studio in my hometown, they have taken no actions to support our Shamanic work on any level. My hope is that they realized the futility and ignorance of their request, although I’m certain they had no intention of ever supporting us at all. 

You’ve probably seen this kind of “shamanism” online on instagram posts, influencer pages, and people who are what I call “shamanic curious”. All these individuals have done nothing to truly commit to alleviating the pains and sufferings that they’re causing by appropriating someone’s actual identity. They feel like they have the best intentions: “Omg! No!! ONLY LOVE AND LIGHT SIS!” (eye roll). However, they tend to be completely ignorant to the damage and stress they cause to real Shamans through their selfish actions. “Being curious is ok right? I mean, I have the right to explore my identity through yours and see if it gets me friends, likes, follows, and MONEY, RIGHT?” No. Go home. Think about what you are doing when you try on someone’s identity and put yourself out there as the face of that identity. Would it behoove you to consider that Shamans themselves have had to strenuously defend their identities to others? Would it perhaps be a real act of love and light to give up your curiosities and turn over that experience to an actual Shaman? Have you considered that you cause real physical, spiritual, and mental harm to Shamans, and clients that you take on in your exploration of Shamanic traditions, rituals, and ceremonies?

If you don’t truly have a Shamanic Identity I encourage you to stop what you’ve been practicing right now, sit down, and ask for forgiveness from the Spirits, as well as living Shamans and their Ancestors. I would go to a real Shaman and pay them properly to remove the slew of crazy toxic attachments you’ve definitely been accumulating, and release you from the karmic debt you are certainly incurring. If you can get a job doing anything in the real world sector that doesn’t involve you crawling up into someone’s energy stream, I would suggest you take that job and step out of a sector you know nothing about. It’s amazing to me what people think they can make-up about themselves and others because deep down they also believe that Shamanism is made up. If it’s all made up, then you can do anything you want with no repercussions and still make money off someone else’s identity. And you still think you’re not harming anyone? 

If you’re a Shaman you know that you can’t fake it til you make it. There’s no faking the Spirits, Guides, and Ancestors. There’s no faking a spiritual or psychic attack. There’s no faking the spirit’s communication to you, or their visible presence. And when you go out into the world, no matter what you do, people are going to find you for your Shamanic Identity.

For example, I once worked at a test grading facility one summer marking up EOG exams. While at this job at every break an elderly woman would come up to me and share her stories, always with the caveat “I don’t know why I’m telling you this but...” and then go into a story about how her deceased father was contacting her at her home. He would do so by knocking things off tables and moving things around. I asked her what he thought he was trying to tell her. She eventually concluded that he wanted her to move from her house, but she didn’t feel ready for that. I suggested that she tell him this next time he made his presence known. Next time we talked she shared that she had spoken with him and that the incidents then stopped. After that she didn’t come up to me to talk, and someone new started talking to me. My boss brought me photographs from her time in AZ as a young woman, depicting petroglyphs that matched my shamanic tattoos. She said “you know that means you’re a shaman right?” I laughed and nodded. At one point everyone in my grading group was feeling very ill, one of the proctor overlords had decided to crank up the AC and everyone was freezing cold. I brought everyone blankets and stones. One gentleman later asked me what the stone meant. I told him, “it’s a piece of quartz, it doesn’t have to mean anything, it can just be beautiful”. He said “No, I mean - they mean something. I know this sounds crazy, but some really bad stuff was going on with my family: financial and health problems. But when I brought that stone home, everything changed immediately. I need you to know that.” I acknowledge him and told him yes, this can happen - the stones heal who they want to, that’s just part of our understanding of them, but we don’t expect others to believe the same way. He said “I don’t need convincing, I experienced it myself”.

No one article can even begin to truly communicate the issues surrounding the theft, appropriation, and misrepresentation of Shamanism in our world, let alone the internet. I mean, the Q Anon guy called himself a Shaman too and the media just ate it up. Why? Because it is exotic and ignorance makes for good press, and good press makes for money. 

And I don’t write this to depress or discourage anyone, especially others out there with a Shamanic Identity. Instead, I hope that this encourages you and helps you advocate for yourself in this crazy world. I hope you stand up for yourself to people trying to take advantage of you, especially people in the medical field. I don’t believe that our medical field is based on true healing practices, and I can’t really get into that rant here, but I also don’t believe our doctors mean to be “bad people” or wallow in ignorance: they’re just products of their own cultural issues as well! 

However, if you’re a Shaman struggling to receive mental or physical healthcare because someone in your family or caregiver team is purposefully using your Shamanic Identity to paint you as crazy, please feel free to show them this article and demand that they use DSM-5 to evaluate you. You deserve nothing but the best treatment. You don’t need to feel ashamed for feelings of paranoia, terror, anxiety, depression, or PTSD. People who aren’t Shamans deal with it too, so don’t be afraid of those words. I don’t know many Shamans actually disturbed by their gifts. They aren’t actually suffering mentally from seeing or hearing spirits, but from the reactions of their family, friends, colleagues, and health professionals to their actual identities. These Shamans aren’t afraid of the Spirits or Ancestors, and have had to be put in the position where they rely on those spirits to provide the care and discernment of truth that should be provided by the health and wellness systems. It’s time for the gatekeepers of the medical industry to acknowledge their bias, their systemic failure of these individuals, and the exploitation of in-need Shamans. Once that has happened, real care can be provided for issues not caused by a Shamanic Identity inherently, but by external forces of society that come against a Shaman. 

This article is dedicated to the sweet Shaman who visited my shop today with only $2 to exchange for altar work. She shared her story in great detail of how the medical industry was abusing her in the ways I’ve outlined before. She was discouraged by it, seeking information to provide to herself and her care team so that she could get real care. I was happy to provide her with the shamanic goods she needed and gift it to her as a birthday present. I tried my best to give her free resources to access for her healthcare and talking points to share with her medical team. Sister, this is what I promised you on my blog, and I hope you enjoy it. Also, I wish you the Safe Passage you’re so willing to offer others, as well as the brightness of your spirit back to you. I hope that things resolve quickly and you get the respect you deserve, because I honor your Shamanic Identity, and I appreciate you honoring mine.

[emerald-amidst-gold]

A little exercise (Part 1/?)

(I’m trying out a new process to help me with my writing and to get me out of the block I’m currently in. I find that analyzing preexisting personalities and ones of my own devising help me better understand how characters will interact in my writing. So, I started small and outlined some of Fane’s major relationships. I’m eventually going to go down the whole list from family to Inquisition members, but right now, I just focused on family.)

Relationships:

“Friendships are like roses; you tend to their delicate petals, nurture their roots, and provide them with water, sunshine, and fertile soil to keep them satisfied, all so they may flourish with life and love. But what happens when the rose bush flowers from an innocent bud to a crimson bloom, bringing thorns in its wake? You bleed, you hurt, and you regret ever planting the seeds. So, do I desire a literal garden of people with thorns as sharp as glass? Not at all.”- Fane Lavellan regarding companionship

Clan Lavellan:

“Fane is brash, volatile, and temperamental at the best of times, Spymaster. You do not wish to see him at his worst. Many of our clan and the outlying forests have been met with his ire. Even so, he is not a bad child. None of his actions are vindictive or of ill intentions. Fane is simply misunderstood, like so many others. So, if you must demand more of him, then you must tread lightly. That is my advice to you and your Inquisition.” - an excerpt from a letter from Keeper Deshanna sent to Haven after the explosion at the Conclave regarding Fane’s demeanor

Fane is exceedingly slow to warm up to people, even with those of his own kind. Among Clan Lavellan, Fane was seen as an anomaly; his two toned eyes and stark white hair breeding fear and wariness in his clan members, as well as his unusual physique. What’s more, many of the clan avoided him for fear of triggering his volatile rage which, when at its peak, would render aravels or trees completely obliterated. So, as far as friends go, Fane never had many among his clan; only communicating with his sister, and at times, the Keeper. Fane’s disinterest in cultivating relationships also stems from his desire to keep the evidence of his father’s abuse away from prying eyes and ears. This did not stop him from attempting to bridge the gap between him and his people, however. At a young age, Fane proved to be an adept hunter; stealthy and graceful despite his hulking frame. Sadly, his effectiveness to provide did not win the hearts of his clan, since many of Fane’s methods were unorthodox to the Dalish. When such a simple attempt was ineffective, Fane took one last step to try and wedge himself into belonging; his vallaslin. Despite not believing in any of the elven gods (another pit that distanced him from the Dalish, as Fane is and was not shy to voice his opinions regarding them), Fane opted to have the vallaslin of Sylaise tattooed onto his face at the age of sixteen; only a year after his father’s magical experiments on his body began. Once again, this did not do what Fane had hoped for, since the ritual and implementation of the tattoos barely registered a flinch or grimace from the elf; his mind and body already so scarred and traumatized by the use of magic and physical tools that Fane merely viewed the sacred act as another experiment in which his father’s rules of “No crying, no screaming, no telling anyone” played on repeat within his head. Due to that stoicism, his clansmen simply began to view him as unfeeling and cold, some going so far as to call him a ‘snowy haired demon’. From that point on, Fane severed all association with his clan, and attempts to win favor were replaced with complete indifference. Interactions were kept to scouting missions and group hunts, and such things like gatherings or holidays, Fane spent either alone within the forest or with his sister. It may have been this rift of association that spurred the Keeper into choosing Fane for the mission to spy on the Conclave, or perhaps it was a way to help both Fane and the clan from anymore turmoil. However, when the explosion at the Conclave completely shifts his small world on its axis, Fane is more or less forced to traverse a battlefield in which he is outnumbered in both strength and personalities.

Mhairi Lavellan (Sister):

“First mother, then father..I can’t lose you, too, brother. I have no one else besides you for family.”

“Hmph, don’t be so dramatic, My. Even if something were to happen to me, the clan would still be here for you. The clan’s your family as much as I am.”

“The clan is your family, too, brother. Why do you think they don’t care for you like I do?”

“Because they don’t. I’m a monster, remember? They’re all probably breathing a sigh of relief that I’m leaving.”

“Would you stop that?! You’re one of the people just like any of the others! More than that, you’re my brother! So, don’t talk as if you’re nothing. You are everything to me, Fane. Everything and more.” - a conversation between Mhairi and Fane before he leaves for the Conclave.

Mhairi and Fane’s relationship is much like any siblings; occasional bickering, unconditional love, and patience with each other’s oddities. However, unlike most siblings, whose likeness of personalities tends to breed contempt, Fane and Mhairi are, by all means, anathema to each other. Oil and water. Fire and ice. The sun and moon. All these things describe the two’s odd relationship. Fane, while holding a deep well of his love for his sister, has difficulty showing such platonic feelings, opting for simply watching Mhairi with an attentive eye and merely giving stern guidance to the younger when necessary. Whereas Mhairi is more bubbly and easygoing, wishing to help her brother bridge the gap that he had created with the clan and constantly reasserting to him that he is loved and cherished. Such attempts at reconciliation have only thus far vexed Fane, but the message from his sister is not lost, even if he does not outwardly show it. However, like with the rest of the clan, Fane has kept the actions of their father a secret from Mhairi; the only secret he has ever kept from his sister (besides the information of him being a dragon. Fane himself is unaware of his heritage until after Adamant. Even after he understands this information, he does not tell her until at least around the time of the Exalted Council.). Fane has gone to great lengths to keep the brutal past of his abuse from his sister. Such actions include: hiding his acute sensitivity to magic, which is the hardest since Mhairi is a mage, his night terrors that leave him sweating and hyperventilating in the morning, avoiding any and all physical contact from his sister or others since his body still harbors phantasmal pains from the abuse, and dismissing any questions or concerns from his sister when she zeroes in on his pain. Despite these actions on his part, Fane still gives in to his sister if she is particularly persistent or if she is on the verge of tears. In these moments, Fane will endure the pain on his body for a light hug or give a vague response to a question of concern. In conjunction, Mhairi is always trying to find ways to bring back the person her brother was before the experiments began, much to Fane’s dismay. She will oftentimes gift him with sentimental items such as; flowers (primarily Gladiolus since it is a flower the two have an emotional attachment to), handmade pendants, a history book (knowing that he is secretly curious of outside society), and his favorite foods (mainly chocolates). All attempts are usually met with soft refusal or awkward shuffling on Fane’s part, but internally, the misunderstood elf screams with joy every time such a thing is bestowed upon him by his sister. 

Eloris Lavellan (Mother):

“Cerulean eyes like the deep lakes in the forest. Sunlight glistening off of golden strands like wheat. Shimmering, rippling across the surface with gentle strokes. Calm and patient even when I’d yell. Never scolding. Never hating. Her words hang upon my mind like her hand when she would guide my own across the page. ‘A summer breeze. A winter’s gale. All things are natural if you allow them to unveil.’ Her words. Her lesson. ..You were angry?”

“Yes, I was. I can’t even remember why now. But, she told me it was nothing to be ashamed of. She said all emotions were natural just like the wind and trees. I just had to..let them out.”

“Who was she?”

“..My mother, and that is all I’m saying about it.” - a discussion between Fane and Cole about Fane’s mother. 

Fane’s memory of the relationship with his mother, Eloris, is one of the few things he cherishes, and is one of many things he does not openly share, even with Mhairi. Before she died of a wasting disease when Fane was fifteen, Eloris guided Fane throughout his earlier years, teaching him how to write in both the common tongue and elven, as well as speak and read. Fane describes her as ‘the gentlest soul upon a fragile landscape’ since never once did she harshly scold him or yell in anger at his prickly demeanor, which Fane had even as a child. Instead, Eloris taught Fane the wrongness of his actions with poetry. After outbursts or moments of frustration, Eloris would sit with Fane under a tree or in a clearing, and simply read to him, recounting tales and lessons through elegant scripture. Such a technique had oddly proved effective, calming Fane and cementing delicate lessons of patience and open mindedness, that to this day, while slightly more difficult for him to keep, still connect him with his deceased mother. These tiny memories of his mother’s poetry were something that helped Fane through much of his father’s abuse. So much so, that Fane himself began writing and collecting different forms of poetry after his father’s disappearance, and throughout his time with the Inquisition. This odd fixation also reflects in Fane’s way of speaking, and sometimes his versed tongue has to be deciphered by someone more familiar with him or those who understand cryptic dialogue. At times, it even causes him frustration. Even so, Fane keeps the memory of his mother with him wherever he goes, and secretly endeavors to keep the promise that he made to her. The promise to protect their family, no matter the cost.

(I’m still working on Fane’s father, so he might be the last one I touch on in the list. Anyways, this is just a little exercise to finally cement Fane’s overall character. All of the dialogue is just stuff I thought up on the fly, so take it with a grain of salt in reference to canon.)

[aenwoedbeannaa]

The Red Death | Geralt x Reader One Shot

Summary: Your life has never been peaceful or comfortable, but it has never fallen apart quite this way—as in, everyone in your small district in Novigrad are taken by the Red Death. You are sick, but you know that no help is coming. Your district is poor—cut off from the rest of the city and left to die. You’ve accepted your fate, not expecting a silver-haired Witcher, a philanthropic Higher Vampire, and maybe even destiny, to come barreling in at the last second.

Word Count: 3,078

Warnings: There are some descriptions of the Red Death, or what I imagine it would be—a viral hemorrhagic fever. So, if you’re extra scared of viruses and pandemics right now, probably skip this one.

A/N: I really don’t know why I wrote this. Quarantine Day 4 has me losing my mind. But I mean, I did want to be an epidemiologist until I learned I was terrible at chemistry. So. Here we are. Also maybe I’m channeling my real-life fear into fanfiction, who can say?

If you enjoy my work and want to check out more of it, you can check out my masterlist, and if you’d like to be added to any of my taglists, comment or message me and I would be happy to add you 😊. Also, I do have a ko-fi page now, and I would really appreciate if anyone is able to give a little; it would really help me out with this whole career change dream & the whole not working and not getting paid amid this disaster thing. But of course, the best way y’all support me is just by reading and sharing my work. I appreciate it more than I can say.

The Red Death & Destiny

Novigrad’s seedy underbelly, feared by most, has been your home all your life. As a half elf, you land at the very bottom of the social ladder. To the humans, you are not human. To the elves, you are not an elf—and that’s just how it’s always been. You’re used to it.

What you aren’t used to is the eerie quiet that has settled over the overcrowded, poverty-stricken district where you’ve rented a small apartment for the last three years. Even the screams have died down. You’d thought hearing the constant groans of pain floating through the shuttered windows and the thin walls had been the worst—but it doesn’t even compare to the silence. 

The blankets are soaked in sweat, partially due to the stifling air in the room and partially from the fever currently raging through your veins. You bones feel like they might disintegrate from the heat. Still, you refuse to lift the blankets—you don’t want to see what your body looks like underneath; don’t want to see the angry red lesions marring your skin. 

Red Death, indeed.

You can’t help but smile bitterly; of course Catriona’s Plague would make an appearance in Novigrad, and of course it would hit your small, already poor district. Once the first case had been confirmed, the district had been placed under strict quarantine—no one went out, and no one came in. Perhaps if it had been a wealthier district, they would have sent doctors in their robes and masks, or called for mages immune to most of these things, but it was a poor little district filled with undesirables.

So they just leave us to die.

You have a feeling, based on the suffocating silence, that you are the only one left. You’d tried helping your neighbors when it began, but most didn’t want you near them. Even here among outcasts, you are an outcast—one of the only elves.

Less susceptible to the disease, yes. But clearly, you are not immune; not that there is anyone left to see.

You’d ignored the symptoms first, then you’d gotten angry, slamming yourself against the door to your apartment building over and over and over until you had no strength left. Once that happened, you trudged back up the stairs and slid into bed. That was two days ago, and all you’ve managed to do since is take a few sips of water and stagger over to the bathroom.

So this is how it ends.

***

“Remind me why we came to this gods-forsaken city again?” Geralt huffs, taking a long draught from his mug of ale.

“Jaskier’s performance,” Regis answered in that way he always does, making a simple fact sound profound and thoughtful.

Geralt just nods, knocking back more of his ale. He had, in fact, told Jaskier he would be in the city in time for the grand reopening of the Rosemary and Thyme—or whatever he was calling it now. It wasn’t that he had a problem with coming to see his friend perform. No—it was simply that this city, once the jewel of Redania and now just another one of Nilfgaard’s cities, disgusted him.

Nilfgaard promised plenty of things to its citizens, namely safety and security, but from what he was overhearing, those promises were not being kept.

“The whole district was cut off… They say everyone is dead.”

“Good riddance.”

“Albert, how can you say that? There were children living there!”

“Children who would’ve grown up to be beggars and thieves. I say burn it all down, and take the plague with it!”  

“Cheers to that, friend.”

Geralt winces, shaking his head. Regis studies him intently, cocking his head to the side.

“Catriona’s Plague… Highly contagious. It leaves its victims almost completely defenseless. It’s as if it were from another land, another world—“

“Yes, yes I know,” Geralt mutters, waving a hand at his friend. “I don’t need a history lesson.”

Regis just smiles softly before continuing, “But of course, Witches are immune to its effects. And I… Well, I’ve got herbs to protect against it.” He smiles knowingly at the Witcher, who lets out a deep, long sigh.

“We have to go.”

Regis nods intently, as if he’d been expecting exactly that. Perhaps he had been—he’d been Geralt’s friend for long enough now that it was easy to guess when Geralt would go involve himself in something. And, with less and less monsters roaming the wilderness, searching through a deserted

Geralt and Regis in Novigrad. Regis hears about the quarantine and wants to help. Geralt is convinced to come with—fighting tiny, invisible monsters is just as hard as fighting big ones. Maybe even harder.

***  

Faintly, you hear the sound of footsteps. It pulls you out of the fitful half-sleep you’d been stuck in. You heart, despite its weakness, speeds up, and you find the strength to pull yourself into a sitting position on the bed. It is exhausting, but you manage to push yourself up onto your knees so you can peer out the window through the slats in the wood. Of course they’d boarded up your window, you were on the first floor, and you could have escaped through it and into the streets.

Between the slats, you see two men walking. One is larger than any man you’ve ever seen—wearing leather armor and carrying two swords on his back. He has long, silver hair that is pulled back halfway. The man next to him looks considerably older, but not ancient. He is wearing a brown robe, like some kind of Apothacary. Both walk with such calm confidence that you are utterly thrown off-guard.

What the hell are they doing here?

You see the swords on the man’s back, and the pouch tied around the waist of the other. Your eyes widen—perhaps they are here to burn the whole district to the ground, as you’d heard whispers about for days. They must have taken the silence as a sign that everyone was dead.

No no no no no no.

You had resigned yourself to the Red Death, not being burned alive.

“Stop!” Your scream sounds hoarse, just about how it feels—like every breath and every word is being ripped from your throat, and costing incredible energy to do so.

Instead of listening to you, both men turn their heads sharply in your direction and head straight for the window. Your heart continues to race, somehow even faster now as they approach the window. They shouldn’t be coming closer… They could be putting themselves and thousands of others at risk. They can come back tomorrow, or maybe the next day, when you’re gone—when the virus is gone.

“Don’t come closer!” You try again, fingers turning white as you grip the windowsill to keep yourself upright. “I’m infected.” 

The last words come out as more of a sob than words. They had to get out, they had to go now.

But the bigger man continues to approach the window, the older man hanging back only slightly. If they are here to burn the place down, he might only be approaching the window to ensure that the last host is burned along with it. Your breath comes out in short gasps.

But, time slows nearly to a halt.

He reaches the window in a few short strides, and actually grabs one of the wooden planks haphazardly nailed to the wooden walls and rips it off with his bare hands. It is only then that you notice his eyes—the eyes of a cat, almost. Liquid gold. 

He is a Witcher. Witchers are immune to the plague. All of a sudden, your brain short-circuits, your pleas changing. They’re not here to burn down the district—they might be here to help. There had been no talk of that; none at all. But you don’t have to question the hows and whys of the Witcher and his old companion’s presence.

“Please… I’m the only one left. Help me.” Your eyes lock on the Witcher’s amber-gold ones for a moment, and he nods. Relief floods over you—not relief that you will live, necessarily, but relief that you won’t have to die alone.

And then the world goes black as you fall back onto the bed, body too exhausted to do anything else.

*** 

Your sleep is blurred with strange dreams, as you’d come to expect now with the fever raging through your body. You dream of a man, strong but gentle, carrying you somewhere—you don’t know where, but you know that the next bed you find yourself tossing around in smells of freshly washed linen; so much so that it soothes you into sleep. Or maybe it is the strange liquid you only half-remember being given that does that.

From there, more dreams. But these dreams are even stranger than the ones you’ve been having. Now, you dream of strange cloud, weaved together of the grays and blues of a calm evening and laced with glittering starlight. It pulses with some kind of magic, like nothing you’ve ever seen.

“He is your destiny.”

It takes you several moments to realize where the voice is coming from. It seems to emanate from the cloud, going straight to your head, like the words are being spoken out loud but only you can hear them.

“Destiny?” You respond, voice strained and whisper-quiet, the way your voice always seems to sound in dreams. Of course, you have no way of knowing that you’re speaking out loud as you lie eerily still on the bed—no longer tossing and turning from fever thanks to the sedating draught Regis gave you along with several other herbal mixtures he and Geralt had quite the time convincing you to ingest.

Regis looks from you to Geralt, who has hardly left your side since they’d found an uninhabited apartment a few blocks over, one of his all-knowing glances that Geralt found both infuriating and comforting at the same time. Geralt, on the other hand, turned to look at Regis, eyebrow raised in confusion—only to be met with that look.

Geralt had bathed you as best he could, dressing you in a clean linen shirt of his own while Regis tended to washing the bedclothes. You’d shivered in his arms, and he’d whispered over and over, “I’ve got you. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Regis had tended to the angry red marks that marred your skin in several places, covering them in some kind of thick poultice Geralt had never seen before, but he’d sagged with relief when he saw the way your face seemed to relax, no longer in a constant look of pain, as Regis bandaged them up.

“Its… fever dreams,” Geralt attempts, glancing back to Regis for confirmation.

“If you say so,” Regis responds in that way of his that told Geralt that he was utterly wrong. Your fever had broken hours ago, after all.

But, trapped in your dream, you have no way of knowing any of this, or that your responses to the mysterious starlight cloud were being spoken aloud, in the world beyond your dreams.

“Yes, my lost girl, your destiny.” 

“Destiny is bullshit,” you respond, a little stronger this time.

Outside of this dream-world in your head, Regis tips his head back and laughs, and even Geralt smiles. You sound just like him, how he’d once sounded.

“Destiny has brought you to him, it matters not what you believe.”

“Brought me to who? Why?” It is hard to keep the curious urgency from your voice now.

“To Geralt of Rivia; the one you’ve been waiting for since the day you were born.”

“Geralt of Rivia… Is my destiny?” You hadn’t even considered that you had any destiny beyond a miserable life in a miserable part of town; one likely as not to end early. One that almost had ended early.

But the voice does not respond, and you watch in mystified silence as the cloud vanishes to nothing, as if it hadn’t been there. And with it, everything is enveloped in black. A silent, dreamless sleep. 

Meanwhile, both Geralt and Regis stare in somewhat of the same mystified silence, before Regis says matter-of-factory, “You never told her your name.” 

***

You float back to consciousness slowly, the world full of vague shadows. You feel a soft breeze, cooling air from outside. Before daring to open your eyes, you move your fingers gingerly as if testing if your hands still work.

Apparently, they do. You feel the sheets beneath them, soft and cool and clean. They aren’t the same sweat-soaked ones you’d been tossing around in earlier. Even the air smells different—not the stuffy, stifling smell of sickness and death, but the cool, crisp smell of clean outside air. And there is the smell of herbs, sharp but not unpleasant.

“Look.” You hear the hushed voice of a man, an the memories of the two strangers walking straight into your desolate, death-filled piece of the city without a fear. Hearing the voice is enough to have you flickering your eyes open.

You are in a room somewhere, likely still in your old district. There is no way the guard would have let the two men—even if they were both apparently immune to the virus—leave with one of the sick. But this room is more spacious and definitely cleaner. You try not to think of who’s home it might have been and why they were gone. You suppose that doesn’t much matter now.

It takes only a moment for the Witcher to appear at your side, crouching down so that he level with you. Your eyes lock on those amber ones again, full of questions that you can’t bring yourself to ask, unsure if you are capable of talking. Your body still feels exhausted.

“You’re safe,” the Witcher says in a voice that is deep and gravely but calming. “I’m Geralt, and this is Regis.”

“T-Thank you,” you force out, eyes darting between the two men.

The robed one, standing a few feet behind the Witcher, speaks next, “You were nearly dead when we found you, but with a combination of Witcher’s remedies and my own herbal ones, your body was able to fight the virus.”

Your eyes open wide, in wonder and surprise. Regis talks as if he’s been alive for a good few centuries, centuries spent healing and curing people. But he can’t be more than sixty years old; or at least it appears that way.

Finally, you let your eyes drift to your own body, were you see a few bandages wrapped in various places, but you feel no pain. You even notice you are wearing clean clothes, and your skin no longer has the grimy, filthy feeling you’d grown used to in those last days. You blush slightly, wondering how exactly they’d managed that.

“How long have I been asleep?” You finally ask, surprised to find that your voice seems perfectly alright to speak.

“Three days,” the Witcher answers, eyes boring into yours. You can’t explain it, whatever is drawing you to him. Though, perhaps the fact that he’d saved your life is part of it. “It was better if you were sedated,” he explains.

“Three days…” You mumble, hardly believing it. You hadn’t expected to live. Most people didn’t, but these two had just appeared out of nowhere just as you were on the brink of death? You can’t help but think of your mother’s words—the ones that she’d always spoken to you when you were a child.

There is a reason for everything; we cannot know what web destiny has woven for us.

You’d always thought it was bullshit. But this… It was all too much of a coincidence. Though, the words brought with them a surge of guilt—what about all of your neighbors? Even if they were not kind, they didn’t deserve to die. If destiny was weaving some web for them, it had clearly fucked up royally.

But at the same time, the thought of destiny brought up some murky memory, probably of some fever dream you’d slept through over the last few days. A cloud, laced with starlight… A voice. But your mind can’t seem to conjure up any more than that.

“You spoke in your sleep,” Regis says as he hands you a flask of something that smells truly terrible. You sniff it gingerly before deciding that whatever they’d been giving you so far clearly saved your life, so you decide not to argue. You knock back the liquid, wincing as the bitterness of it slides unpleasantly down your throat.

You cough a few times before collecting yourself enough to ask, “I spoke?”

Regis, taking the flask back from you, nods with a slight smirk, glancing down at Geralt, as if he should be the one to tell you what you said. Your heart rate starts to speed up, but you can’t exactly place why. You remember a conversation… with the cloud? None of it makes any sense, it is too incomplete of a picture—so you just look at Geralt, eyes wide with curiosity.

“You spoke my name,” he says finally. “Have we… met before?”

It all hits you at once, then. The cloud, the starlight, the strange magic, and the voice. The voice going on about destiny. It is the first time you realize that he indeed hadn’t given you his name, not until after you’d woken up.

Your mind is about a million miles away as you mutter, “Holy… destiny.”

His amber eyes snap to yours, and somehow the almost electrical impulse that flows between you makes perfect sense, even though all rational thought would tell you otherwise. Time seems to freeze there, as Geralt tentatively reaches out a hand that is large enough to cover both of yours.

He doesn’t pry, doesn’t ask what you dreamed of; perhaps because he knows it would be difficult to believe, even if you tried to explain, or perhaps because he feels this same… feeling that you are feeling now. Though, he does have one question for you. 

“Destiny didn’t deign to share your name with me.” He cocks his head to the side, flashing a grin that feels like home, that feels like you’d been looking at that same grin for centuries.

You can’t help but grin back, “My name is Y/N.”

 Taglist:  @fairytale07 @geeksareunique @jesseswartzwelder @haru-ririchiyo @unnamedmaincharacter @lazilyscentedwerewolf  @valkyriepuff @comicbeginning @alwayshave-faith @hp-hogwartsexpress @curlyhairedandconfused​  @superconfusedandreadytorumble​ @keithseabrook27​ @p3nny4urth0ught5​  @sinnamon-bunn​  @sallyp-53​ @superconfusedandreadytorumble​

[thewritingstar]

Enchanted For A Moment: Reds

Pairing: Blossom x Brick (Reds) 

Fandom: PPG 

Rating: Teen and up..slight cussing

Royal Au

Im literally dying for this au and i dedicate this to all the lovely people in our discord and im in love with our fandom. 

I know I know ive been on a ppg high lately but im riding this one out for a long time. Also I did little to no research, idk the time period but its old so have at it. I hope that you enjoy!

Chapter One: Golden Doors and Spider Silk 

She hated this castle, this stupid kingdom and all above, her. Princess Morbucks. The girl was so spoiled that her father, the king, named his daughter Princess as if she wasn’t going to be addressed like that otherwise. She didn’t know why she kept coming back to teach her these lessons. French, English, History, she didn’t bother to learn or practice in the slightest.

“Princess, not many women know how to read and write. Imagine how extraordinary that would be to be such a diverse leader.” She had told her, but at last, she never listened.

The only thing that could interest her was gowns and gems and of course the many suitors who came begging for her hand in marriage. Pathetic. She never believed that a love like that could be real. Affection starved from greed and looks was not something she wanted, nor should anyone. Maybe that's why this life of luxury disgusted her. Yes living in a giant palace with the fluffiest pillows and the freshest fruit sounded lovely, beats her small bedroom that she shares with her sisters, but was it worth it? Okay maybe she would become a royal for the library, maybe.

Her thoughts came back to her as Princess slammed the book shut. If she bends that book I swear. “I am done for today.” She huffed.

“We started ten minutes ago.” Blossom sighed and smoothed the headache that was starting to form. “Let's do history, today is about the different types of clothes and fabrics. Maybe you’ll enjoy this.”

“Why would I?”

“Because if you see something you like, you can have it custom made, plus i'll tell you where the most expensive silk is.” Got her.

Princess stared at her. Even though she was older than her by a year, she seemed to resemble more of her students she taught at the schoolhouse. Aka she was a brat.

“Fine but make it quick, the newest batch of suitors is coming today and I want to see my options.”

Blossom rolled her eyes. Princess was turning 20. She should have been married off at 18 but after complaining about wanting to have a little more freedom, dear old king daddy gave in. She always got what she wanted, those poor men.

“Okay well. Let's make a deal. I’ll leave you these two book, don’t make that face they are mostly pictures, and I’ll leave you for today. However when I come back tomorrow, you better be able to tell me five different fabrics and where they are from and we won’t have class for the rest of the week that way you can focus on the ball that's been held on Friday?”

The smile that grew on Princess' face was wicked. “Deal!” She stood and took the books. “I’m just happy I won’t have to see that hideous outfit for the rest of the week.” She pointed at Blossom's gown.

It was a light brown skirt with  leather belt and a white blouse, Blossom thought it was rather lovely considering her little sister Bubbles had made it.

“Alright then.” She rolled her eyes, gosh she hated her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Princess was already out of the door before she could blink, but she didn’t care. She turned and placed the rest of the scrolls and books on the proper shelves of the private library. The king, who had never spared a single expense in his life, made sure that practically every title written was stuffed inside the room. And he gave Blossom personal access to any of the books since she was one of the few who could read and bothered to do so as well.

She skimmed the shelf, her fingers tracing over the many velvet blinds. So many stories to be read. She grabbed three different ones before slipping them into her satchel. She blew out the candles and pushed in the chairs before leaving the grand room.

The king had offered her a key to her own private quarters but she would rather stay with her father and sisters than let Princess yell at her at any hour she decided. Yes, much rather.

-- Princess could hardly contain herself as she stood next to her father in the courtyard. Before them,a dozen or so carriages were pulling up, each one containing a handsome suitor. Some are princes, others are men from rich families. Either way, they were all lining up to see the Princess and hopefully marry her.

“I don't know why we are here.” Boomer complained.

“Why the fuck do you care?” Butch asked. “You’re the youngest, you are off the hook.” He laughed.

Boomer laughed. The carriage stopped as it was in line to enter the gate. Boomer grabbed the handle and opened it up, ignoring the protests from his brothers. “Sorry boys but I’m going to ditch the collar and go see the local girls.” He winked and strolled off.

Butch propped his feet up on the empty space. “So big bro.” he slapped the back of his brother. “You think you’re gonna be the hot piece of ass to win the princesses heart?” He laughed. Brick rolled his eyes as the carriage rolled forward.

“She is rich.” he mumbled. “I mean I'm probably the best candidate.” Arrogant.

The carriage stopped once more and Brick looked to his brother who was impatiently tapping his leg. “You can go too. It's probably best that you don’t embarrass us and the entire kingdom.”

“Thanks bro.” Butch wiped a fake tear from his eyes. “My lady said she was docking at these ports so im gonna go try and get some by sundown-”

“Goodbye Butch.” And he was shoved out of the carriage.

Brick could finally take in the piece and quiet. They had only been traveling for three days and it was a miracle he hadn’t killed his brothers yet. Sometimes he hated this lifestyle. He was no prince but he and his brothers were adopted by an extremely rich guy who wanted to make a name for himself and create three prodigies. In the end he created a walking disaster who breaks everything and wolf whistles at anything with long legs and the other one is like a puppy constantly running around and yapping constantly. For Brick he is just an arrogant asshole who actually does what she's told, if there's something in it for him.

Which is why he was on his way to try and get married. He didn’t want to be because frankly, no woman ever met his standards. They could be beautiful and nice and chatty but there was something missing a certain depth. But with a princess at stake, he was hoping for a lady who was well off and smart.

--- He was wrong. She was nothing like he thought. Sure she was pretty but she was mean to her staff, which he understood cause he could be a pain in the ass. But her voice, that high pitched squeaking, he was sick of her already. The moment he stepped out of the claustrophobic nightmare of a ride, she was in his face already fanning over him.

Those bright yellow dresses clashed with her hair and the light beaming off of her crown almost took out his eyes. She had said about forty different things to him but he was done. He wanted to grab his brothers, turn around and escape this hell hole.

After a short conversation and her rushing to the next dopey guy, he was shown to his quarters, of course Princess, who names their child Princess? Was their tour guide.

“And this is the library. It's plain and boring but if you ever need a quiet space or to watch me brush up on my French, you are more than welcome to go there.” Her arm was looped between two men and Brick was happy he was at the back of the pack, what was there, twelve, ten boys? He was really doubting his chances but at this point, he didn’t care.

They began to pass those doors and as the last one there, they opened. The group ahead had turned the corner but he was taken down by that massive door. He fell with a thud and was about to scold the living daylights out of whoever dared to do that.

“What the hell is your-” he looked up. Pink. Vibrant pink like the sunsets and soft like a rose. He gulped as he lost his voice completely.

“Oh I am so sorry!” the woman said as she helped him up. “Usually no one was in these halls but perhaps I should be more careful.” She began to ramble.

All that hostile rage had dissipated as he watched her lips move. She was much different from Princess. Her hair was ginger like hers but it was softer and had more copper tones. She was taller than her too and matched his height better. Her voice, it was like butter and she spoke in such a way that he couldn't describe.

He looked down to see books laying there and picked them up, handing them to her. Why would she have books? Especially these titles, even from the looks of them they were difficult to read, even for him.

“Do you read?’ he asked. Of course she didn’t.

“Oh yes. I am actually Princess’s teacher.” She said but didn’t seem thrilled.

He was in awe. She was already something more than that damn spoiled brat. She didn’t wear anything special like the maids did. In fact they were more like commoner's clothes than anything.

“You don’t look like you belong here.” He blurted out and she scoffed.

“I beg your pardon.” She crossed her arms. She was used to Princess insulting her any chance she got but it would be a cold day in hell before she would allow someone else to do so. “Do you not think I could possibly be the royal teacher?” He felt her words like a threat.

“No it’s just, this is a high piece of literature.”

“It’s a simple book really.”

Oh. So she could read. Read well.

“Well yes but-”

“But nothing.” her words were like ice as she grabbed the books from his hands. Blossom looked at his badge. “I am so sorry I didn’t realize that you were a man of importance.” She sounded bitter. “I shouldn’t keep you. I wouldn't want the princess knowing that a peasant interrupted time with her boy toy.”

She turned and stomped off. Even as the pout sprouted onto her face she looked, dare he say stunning? The sophistication and elegance rivaled that of Princess and even though she had just destroyed his ego for a good few moments, he never felt more alive and thrilled. A woman standing up to his level when everyone was beneath him? Never heard of before but this new piece that has entered his game, he was loving every second of it.

He turned on his heel and found his way back to the group. He wasn’t here for the crown anymore.

-- Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she just left. Run away from this village and go see the world. Of course that's what her sister did. Kinda. She was a captain of one of the kingdom's ships, basically her job was to travel and trade with other places, she liked to call herself a pirate. Blossom gave up trying to change her mind.

She could join her sister but she hated ships anyways. Plus Buttercup had gotten hitched last year to some random guy she met at a port stop, Blossom had met him once before and thought she was crazy for marrying someone. But after a delightful five minute conversation, she decided that he was best for her. If anyone could handle her rebellious lifestyle and the seven seas, then he must be good.

She was thankful that today would be her last day with Princess, well until the next week, but she could catch up on reading and maybe take her students to the docks or the forest for a lesson. Her mind was wandering to far off places and before she knew it, she was entering the library.

She furrowed her brow as she noticed the chairs arranged facing her table. She dismissed whatever thought that was and began to set up Princess’s test as promised. She had pictures, drawn by Bubbles of course, and she placed them on the table.

“This should be easy.” And soon the doors opened. Blossoms eyes widened as the Princess walked in with that snobbish strut as a group of men followed behind. “Oh no.” Blossom whispered to herself. She agreed to test Princess, not the entire population of suitors.

“And this woman right here is my teacher. She's a poor peasant girl so ignore her scrap of clothing.” The room erupted in laughter as Princess’s annoying voice trailed through her ears. Princess was already testing her patience, who makes fun of someone with less money? An awful person that's who.

Blossom bit her tongue as Princess took her seat. The rows of men were now staring at them, whispering. She let her eyes rake over the small crowd when her eyes landed on a familiar pair. The man she hit with the door. She completely forgot that he was here for marriage purposes. Blossom shook her head and slammed a book shut, capturing everyone's attention.

If Princess wanted to be a bigger brat than usual, fine, she could play that game.

“Alright your majesty, are you ready for your test.” Blossom turned towards the group of men. “You see I believe it is important that a leader understands even the simplest things about other countries, especially the ones that could be potential partners. So this fine lad is incredibly bright so her test is simple. I laid our pictures of fabrics from many different places, some even from your own kingdoms. I have no doubt that she can match all twenty five.” She turned on her heel towards the princess who looked angry, good.

“You said five!” Her tone laced with fire.

Blossom was one good actress. She paused and took a step back, masking her voice. “Yes five for a warm up but you my soon queen, you must be able to name all of them right? I did teach you them after all.” She smirked. “But if you can't, that's okay, why don’t we do your five and the rest of these fine gentlemen can finish, after all, a leader should know these things.” If they wanted to be rude, then a challenge they must complete.

“Princess go ahead and match five and then will have the rest join.” She looked at the men. Scared looks were on their faces except for one, door man. He seemed relaxed and had a poker face on.

Princess huffed and walked up to the table. She recognized a few of the easy ones and placed them. Blossom watched as her hands shook and she looked up at her as she placed one down. Blossom saw she was moving to the wrong one and decided to play nice.

“Emerald kingdom is the same as the jewel.” She whispered and the princess moved the name towards the green one. She took a step back and smiled proudly.

“See easy peasy.” And she returned to her seat.

Blossom clasped her hands together. “Alright then, if any of you would like to try go for it, but if not, then you may be excused.”

None of the men stood and Blossom's polite smile fell. “Very well-” She watched as the door man, she should learn his name, stood and walked over.

“Quite a shame you could only name five your highness.” He said towards the princess who was now staring at him with a gaping mouth. Blossom raised her brows as she could not believe he would disrespect her like that. He quickly took the names and placed them in record time before their matching pictures.

He turned to see Blossom watching him. Her eyes held this twinkled that he couldn’t quite place and he made sure to switch two of the names last minute.

“Care to check my work Miss…”

“Blossom.” She finished and walked over to him. She stood next to him and looked over the table. She could feel his stare but unlike the others, she didn’t feel small or meak. She smiled softly as she picked up two of them.

“Very impressive but Camilla has velvet and Widows Valley has ivory silk.” Her eyes met his. She almost let out a gasp as she stared at a breathtaking deep red. She had never seen such enchanting eyes before.

“Silk like a spider. Forgive me for my mistake.” He took her hand and placed a delicate kiss to the top of her hand. She felt the flames rush to her cheeks and heard a gasp come from Princes mouth.

Her eyes shot open and she took her hand away fast and returned to her teacherly poise. “Yes well that is alright but very good. Princess you should learn something and apply yourself more, I'm not going to tell you again but a promise is a promise so i will be seeing you next week for your next lesson.” She quickly walked to the other table and grabbed her bag and shoved everything in it.

She knew the princess was going to throw a fit. How could he treat her like that? In front of Princess nonetheless. She was thankful to hear the sound of feet exiting. Someone had come up behind her and whispered in her ear.

“You’ll be lucky if you make next week you meddling whore.” Princess sneered and Blossom turned around to yell at her but the group of men were waiting by the door just watching to see the peasant girl slip up.

“I have no interest in your games Princess, maybe if you tried harder, you wouldn’t have to rely on your crown or body.” She could play dirty and the princess turned with a scoff.

“No man would ever love a woman like you, even if you can read, you are no prize.” She stomped off and let Blossom with a clenched jaw and matching fists.

The door slammed shut and now she was alone. “Stupid bitch.” She sneered. She rarely used foul language but in times like theses, she allowed it.

“She sure is.” Blossom dropped her book and her head snapped left.

Brick was still standing here as if he never moved but she swore she saw him leave. “I-I would never-” He held his hand up.

“I see the way she treats you Miss Blossom, it's okay to curse out the villain. And my apologies for causing such a scene.” He said bluntly.

“Somehow I don’t believe you.” She narrowed her eyes. “You seem like you know what you’re doing, no matter the consequences.”

He bit back a laugh and moved closer to her. “Oh I am. I have no interest with that spoiled girl. Not one maiden has ever impressed me enough to care.”

“How insightful.”

“That is until you.” he smirked and she felt her cheeks flush for the hundred times. He was showing his arrogant side. The one many girls fawned over because they mistook it for a form of lust but it rubbed Blossom the wrong way.

“Me correcting your simple mistake is not very impressive.”

“Who said I made the mistake? I know very well that Widows Peak is silk, that is my home base after all.” he stepped closer until he leaned on the desk with his arm. He peered down at her, almost like a challenge but she stood strong.

“Well unfortunately, I’ve never met a man who could qualify my own standards.”

“Never?” he leaned closer but she refused to give up. Their noses would touch if he came closer.

“Never.” She stated and they were now in a showdown. Red to pink. Pink to red. Never had the other met a more worthy opponent.

“Well Miss Blossom, I think that I should prove you wrong with a date.”

“No thank you.” He blinked. Wait what?

“Excuse me? Do you know-”

“No I don’t and I simply do not care.” She snapped.

Blossom went back to her bag. “Like I told Princess, I have no interest in any of these men. Especially not ones who would stand by and let another belittle another. No thank you, i am quite happy on my own but there are a bunch of other fine maidens who would probably love your company.” She passed him and he grabbed her arm and spun her around, dipping her. The bright red ribbon holding her hair into a fine bun had unraveled and now fell to a long ponytail. 

A small scream let her lips as she was now being held by her waist over the ground. “What are you.” Her eyes darkened.

“Brick. Call me Brick, none of that sir or lord crap either.” He brought her closer smoothly. His smile was large and his eyes narrowed as her cheeks puffed out and she looked a little angry. “You did hit me with a door and I don’t think the royal pain in the ass would appreciate it if she knew. So Miss Blossom, would you accompany me to the ball on Friday?”

No. no. no. no. Princess would kill her. Absolutely murder her with a strand of pearls. She could lose her job, her livelihood. The rumors she could spread. She would destroy her reputation for sure. Her mind was screaming telling her to push him away and tell him to go bother another lady.

“Fine but I demand to be wooed.” she spat and he smiled and returned her to the upright position. She felt flustered and in shock but also introduced. No one had ever dipped her or held her so gently.

“Oh you shall be wooed M’lady.” He winked and turned away to walk out the door.

She let out the breath she was holding when he was finally gone and pulled out her fan. “He is the...worst.” But she didn’t fully believe it. ---- Wednesday found herself in the school yard with her students. She was ecstatic to now have a bunch of little girls added to this year's class. After convincing many mothers that their daughters' futures could be brighter with some knowledge, they happily agreed. She was thankful that her own father taught her the basics and she tried to teach Bubbles and Buttercup how to read and write but you could only keep them interested before a pretty dress or a sailboat distracted them.

“Bye bye Miss Blossom!” Her students waved as they left the yard to return home. She loved and adored her students. Their bright minds and curious thoughts, she could never get sick of them and they were much better students than Princess ever was.

“Miss Blossom there is a fancy man in the classroom.” Robin's small hand clung to her dress.

“Fancy man?” She whispered to herself before sending Robin off towards her mother. She entered the room to find Brick leaning against her desk.

“May i help you?” She asked with her arms crossed. “I do believe Friday is the meeting time.”

He shrugged and handed her an arrangement of flowers. Her mouth fell open as she gazed at them. They were wrapped with a ribbon of fine quality, and was probably worth more than her own outfit.

“I am well aware of that but I never said i wouldn’t see you before.” he glanced at the flowers then back at her. “Have you never received flowers before.” he asked like it was a dumb question.

“Oh no.” She took them carefully and placed them in the vase that held a few flowers her students had picked, and they were dying.

“I'm genuinely surprised that men aren’t knocking on the door for your hand.”

He saw her eyes dull. “Not too many men are keen on a lady being smarter and taller than them.” She shrugged and for some reason that made him mad. She was a beautiful woman no doubt, her beauty could be that of a princess but she didn’t have that royal aura about her. No she was better but didn’t know it.

“A man threatened by a lady is no man at all. If he can not see that then he deserves nothing.”

She took in his words. Maybe this was his way of apologizing without out damaging his pride, she would probably do the same thing but she wouldn’t let him off so easily.

She hummed. “So Brick just the flowers or are you going to actually impress me?” She matched his cocky attitude and it has been a long time, or the first since he had ever felt frazzled by a woman. He was used to catching him off guard but even by her everything nice charm and sophisticated posture, he was certain that she would be the death of him.

Even though he had just met her, he was certain they were made for each other. Butch would kill him if he every said that out loud though. He smiled before taking her hand. “Then prepared to be impressed.”

--

I hope you enjoy and part 2 shall be up tomorrow 

[aion-rsa]

Vikings Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Vikings season 6 part two.

Vikings has always been concerned with legacy: that of the Vikings themselves, and of Ragnar and his sons. It’s clear from the show’s coda – Ubbe and Floki side by side on a distant beach, contemplating existence as the sun glows down upon the endless stretch of ocean before them –  that the two ultimately are inseparable. Bound up in this spider’s web of myth and mayhem, too, is the fate and legacy of the show itself. How will it be remembered now that it is gone? In a word: fondly. 

Creator Michael Hirst has left us a show for the ages, one that transcends the war, blood, and murder that first drew audiences to its story. The closing run of episodes is at turns thrilling, stirring, chilling, harrowing, heart-breaking, savage, sensual and ethereal, and is capped off with a mesmerizing, mytho-philosophical finale that retroactively elevates everything that came before it, all the way back to the moment when Ragnar first asked Floki to help him sail west. So how does it achieve this greatness? And what does it all mean? Let’s break it down. 

Groundhog Deity

One of the central themes of the show is the cycle of violence and bloodshed in which Viking society finds itself mired, and the battle between those who seek to perpetuate it, and those who seek to break free from it. It’s a dichotomy that burns down through the wick of the show, and often rages within its characters, most notably Ragnar, Lagertha, Floki, Bjorn, and Ubbe. Season upon season, each promise of peace is swiftly pounded into the blood-soaked earth by the vengeance, skulduggery or megalomaniacal ambitions of a chaotic individual, faction or rival; the old ways refusing to cede ground to the new. But still the dreamers and visionaries struggle, against themselves, against the furious roar of tradition, again and again. This rise and fall happened so frequently throughout the show’s run that its rhythm caused some sections of the audience to grow weary. This repetition, though, this sense of helplessness, is largely the point (not to mention an accurate portrayal of the brutish life endured by most people in the Dark and Middle Ages), and one that’s made more explicit than ever before in the final stretch of the season. Like the characters themselves, we the audience must feel – truly feel – the suffocating hopelessness of it all before we can begin to appreciate the burst of light at the end. 

All throughout the series the Vikings’ thirst for war and conquest is cloaked in the language of fate, destiny, glory, and the Gods. In a telling sequence half-way through the final ten episodes, these justifications are stripped away to reveal the dark, very mortal truth that lies behind them. Ivar, Hvitserk, and King Harald reunite in a calm and peaceful Kattegat. All three are burnt-out, frazzled, and dissatisfied. There’s a real sense that “the age of the Vikings is gone” and that this is “the twilight of the Gods”. Harald and Ivar admit that there is no pleasure in being a King, despite it being a title both men have dreamed of and longed for, and for which they’ve lied, cheated, betrayed, and killed. In the final analysis, we can see – and finally they can see, however indirectly – that the great cycle in which the Vikings are trapped has been perpetuated not by the Gods – those great scapegoats in the sky – but by bored and angry men seeking in bloodshed distractions from a cold and brutish world whose quotient of misery has only ever been increased by their actions. It is especially sad to see Ivar churned back into this mill given the growth he experienced throughout this season, not only in being a caring, surrogate father to the Rus heir Igor, but in becoming an actual father after his body asserted itself just long enough to plant his seed in Princess Katia’s belly. 

Ivar witnesses two men in a public gathering-place squabbling over a trivial matter, and extrapolates from this that war is a necessary state for the Vikings, because in peace they fight amongst themselves. It’s patently obvious that the lesson Ivar pulls from this incident says more about his pain and psychopathology – his hatred, his emptiness – than it does about society at large. Ultimately, it is he, and Harald, and Hvitserk, and a million other men just like them, who need war. They need external conflict to distract them from their own internal conflicts and inadequacies. Never-the-less, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Ivar’s facile supposition is all that King Harald needs to hear. Before long, the three men and a ready-made army are heading back across the sea to England for a final confrontation with King Alfred and his Christian Saxon soldiers. 

“The Twilight of the Gods”

This climactic confrontation is, on one level, less a battle between two armies and more the continuation of the chess game Ivar and Alfred once played as children, as their fathers – King Ragnar and King Ecbert – cut deals and hatched plots in another room. 

In many ways, Ivar was always marked for monsterhood. He grew up with the fierce love of his mother, Aslaug, which she wrapped around him like a blanket made of steel. By over-compensating for his condition and physical fragility to such a suffocating degree, she left him isolated, conceited and angry. His father, Ragnar, was absent for most of his youth. Though Ivar had Floki to teach and guide him in the ways of the Gods, Ivar didn’t realize quite how much of himself had been missing until Ragnar returned and took him under his wing. Ragnar was one of the few men who seemed to have faith in Ivar’s abilities; who told him that he could be something other than a liability, a cripple, a joke. They journeyed to England together with conquest in mind, but when a storm sank most of their boats, Ragnar swiftly refocused the purpose of their visit, enlisting Ivar’s aid to kill the surviving members of their party (to remove all evidence of their initial intent) and surrender themselves to King Ecbert. 

Ragnar tells Ecbert to deliver him into the hands of King Aelle, so that Ecbert will not be blamed for Ragnar’s death, and the full fury of the Vikings will be directed at their mutual enemy instead. However, Ragnar has instructed Ivar to return home with news of Ecbert’s duplicity, so that both Kings will become the targets of the rage-and-grief-filled Viking horde. Ivar is the perfect capsule for this incendiary message, as Ragnar gambles, quite correctly, that King Ecbert’s sense of fair play, filtered through his Christianity, won’t permit him to harm or imprison a poor, harmless crippled boy. Ragnar thus succeeds in turning the Saxon’s Christian compassion into a fatal weakness, while at the same time teaching his weaponized son that love, violence, deceit, and death are so intimately connected as to be almost indivisible. 

When Aslaug died at Lagertha’s hands, soon after Ragnar’s death, it removed his only other source of love, cloying though it was. He took that love and turned a mutated version of it upon himself, imbuing himself with delusions of Godhood, something his fury at his parents’ deaths only served to magnify.

In the first dramatic round of the final battle against Alfred, Ivar repeats his father’s tactic of weaponizing kindness. He orders traps to be set in the forest with which to painfully ensnare the first line of Alfred’s advancing soldiers. The hope is that Alfred’s Christian compassion will compel him to send the next few lines of soldiers to assist their wailing brothers, allowing the Vikings to ambush them like lambs to the slaughter. And so it proves. Many lives are lost. The fighting is kinetic and savage; the pervading mist and gloom only enlivened by the occasional eruption of fire, like a melding of Valhalla and the Christian conception of Hell. King Harald is killed, finding some solace and peace at last with a dying vision of his brother, Halfdan, whom he’d killed in a previous battle. 

After this, there is a lull in the fighting. Alfred and Ivar meet under a white flag to discuss terms. Alfred will not yield. He will never again reward Ivar for his unprovoked attacks, nor fall into the trap of trusting his word. He tells Ivar to leave his kingdom, leave England, and never return; entreats him to save his people from further pointless bloodshed.  He goes on to declare: “My God is the God of peace and love. Your Gods are savage. They demand sacrifice. They do not know human love.” The final fight that follows is as much the culmination of a struggle between two competing religious and cultural ideologies as it is a battle between Ivar and Alfred; and by the end of this final episode the matter is settled, at least in a thematic sense. 

Alfred and Ivar cleave to their God and Gods on the battlefield, looking to them for guidance and answers. As the situation becomes ever more desperate, both leaders soon find themselves deserted by their Gods, their imagined connection to them severed. 

“What am I supposed to do?” Ivar shouts to his suddenly deaf and mute Gods. “Answer me!”

“Speak to me, please. I’m afraid. Speak!” Alfred beseeches his lord Jesus. 

Stripped of their Gods, both men are forced to acknowledge in whose image they’ve truly been forged: their fathers’. What they do next will decide if history is doomed to repeat itself, and also settle the question of whether it is their own wills or the wills of their fathers that are the stronger. Ultimately, it is love and compassion, in both instances, that proves to be their guiding light, leading Ivar to reject his father’s ways, and Alfred to embrace his father’s – his real father: the monk Athelstan, who was once a friend and confidante of the great Ragnar Lothbrook. 

All You Need is Love

Ivar watches the battle from the side-lines. Hvitserk has long been a tormented, tortured and fractured man, but in combat he’s whole, screeching and roaring through the flames like a mythical demon. But one man can’t best a whole army, and it becomes clear that Hvitserk isn’t long for this world. Ivar’s eyes shine an electric blue, a physical indication known since childhood that his brittle bones are about to break. Ivar knows his actions in the next few minutes will serve as his last will and testament, the means by which the world will remember him. Ivar watches Hvitserk – the brother he’d many times mocked and tormented, whose life he’d tried to ruin, who’d long forsworn to kill him – and charges onto the battlefield to take his place, submitting himself to the same forces of compassion he’d spent a life-time deriding and subverting.  

“I could never kill you,” he tells Hvitserk.

“I love you. I love you brother,” Hvitserk replies tearfully.

“Now go. Go!” hollers Ivar.

Ivar’s rage and defiance seem to shake the very earth around him. He is at one with his army. He fights and lives through them. In the midst of his last stand a young soldier, shaking with fear, approaches him from the mist.

“Don’t be afraid,” says Ivar, an almost Christ-like evocation at this, his moment of sacrifice. The soldier stabs him repeatedly, and, as Ivar falls, his bones snap and break. Hvitserk runs to him and cradles his dying body, while Alfred calls for the fighting to stop. “I am afraid,” Ivar splutters, words no-one thought they would ever hear from Ivar the Boneless. And then there are three more; his final words: “I love you.”   

Ivar has thus broken the cycle. He has sacrificed himself not for hate, as his father once did, but for love. He was finally able to know and to feel human love; and crucially to demonstrate it instead of demanding it, even if it was right at the end of his life, and only for a few moments. Already Ivar had begun to demonstrate humility. On the eve of the battle he told Hvitserk: “Hundreds of years from now, someone will be proud to find my blood is in their body and my spirit is in their soul.” Maybe part of him realized that in becoming a father he’d finally achieved the immortality after which he’d always hungered, and it was enough.  

Hvitserk is carried away on the back of a wagon. We’re given an aerial view of this, lending Hvitserk the appearance of a corpse returning from battle. In many ways he is. Hvitserk is dead, in a sense. The merciful Alfred baptises Hvitserk, allowing him to be reborn with a new name: Athelstan. 

We know from our future vantage point that the loving Christ Hvitserk has now embraced is destined to eventually, and irrevocably, defeat the old Norse Gods. Not only that, but there will be a millennium of distinctly non-loving conquests, wars, decimations, genocides, enslavements and cultural destructions carried out in His name, all of which will make the exploits of the 8th and 9th century Vikings look like the tantrums of naughty children in comparison. But Hvitserk doesn’t know this. All he knows is that he has found peace by rejecting war and embracing love. He has finally found a way to honor his father – or at least the part of his father that loved Athelstan, and came to see Christianity and Paganism as two sides of the same coin. Love and mercy, then, are the instruments that Hvitserk and Alfred use to break free from the ‘endless cycle of suffering and war’.     

Out With The Old

The show’s themes converge, coalesce and crystalize in the New World, too. The journey from Iceland to Greenland to North America is one fraught with danger and death, but characterized by faith and hope and sacrifice. And it is Othere, the Christian wanderer once known as ��� appropriately enough – Athelstan (no relation), who leads them there. 

 “This is everything [Ragnar] was searching for,” Ubbe tells Othere, in their new land of milk and honey. “And I found it.” Othere cautions Ubbe against behaving in the same ways that he did before – the old ways – lest this land become just like the land he left behind.

They are not alone. The Vikings discover that the land is occupied by a tribe of indigenous peoples they refer to as Skraelings. The tribe welcomes them warmly. Ubbe soon discovers they have a friend in common: Floki, who somehow reached these same shores from Iceland, alone, and now lives on the periphery of the Skraelings’ land as a revered mystic. If it wasn’t for the Skraelings’ kindness, Floki would have died on arrival. They showed him mercy and kindness.

Asked why he left Iceland, Floki says it was because he was ‘imprisoned in sadness’. 

“What made you so sad?”

“I don’t always remember,” he says, with a wistful smile.

Floki here represents the past of the Vikings as we in the modern world have come to know it, a patchwork of tall tales and omissions. Floki embodies how time will continue to wash away both the Vikings’ history and their legend, until there’s little difference between them, and nothing much is left of either. Floki also embodies the idea that the golden age of the Vikings is gone; he remembers that he once was a Viking; he remembers Ragnar, the sons of Ragnar and the people who were important to them, but little else. There was a time when Floki was the greatest soldier of and preacher for the Gods, but he has now let them go, shed them like a dead skin. “I called to them and no longer heard their voices, or they didn’t make sense,” he tells Ubbe. Again, entropy, evolution, death, re-birth, legend, past, future: all suffused. 

The old ways make one last effort to re-assert themselves, even here in this paradise, and Ubbe gets his defining moment – just as Ivar and Hvitserk and Bjorn before him got theirs. One of his party murders the son of the Skraeling’s leader while ransacking the leader’s home for gold. The Skraelings – clearly more civilized than the Vikings ever were – hand this man over to Ubbe to decide his fate. 

This is a pivotal moment for the series. Where once we were encouraged to see Ragnar as the hero, even when he was killing and pillaging his way through innocent peoples, here we perceive this man, this murderer – who has simply acted in accordance with how the Vikings have always acted – as a dangerous savage. We, the audience, have already made a choice about who the Vikings are now, or who they should be – and so has Ubbe.

At first the murderer is to be publically blood-eagled, a particularly savage and painful form of execution that never-the-less guarantees its sufferer entry to Valhalla. At the last moment, Ubbe changes his mind, and slits the man’s throat instead. 

“Valhalla is not for you, my friend,” Ubbe tells him, mere seconds before carrying out his sentence, “Let me put you out of your misery.” Ubbe does not say this to be cruel, to rob the man of his place in the afterlife. He simply doesn’t want to inflict unnecessary pain, and is showing mercy. But it’s deeper than that, too. Valhalla doesn’t seem to matter to him anymore. Ubbe has come to understand that life can be lived without the old ways and their Gods, and be all the better for it. 

On the beach, Ubbe seeks Floki’s advice and counsel. Floki smiles. “You don’t need to know anything. It’s not important. Let it go.”

It’s fitting that Floki is there at the show’s end. Without his innovation as a boat maker, Ragnar would never have sailed west and discovered Saxon lands; would never have met Athelstan. Without Floki, the Vikings would never have discovered Iceland, or Greenland, or the New World on whose shores they now sit. Ragnar is the one who will be immortalized in legend, while the world will slowly forget Floki. He has already started to forget himself. Perhaps that is the point. Warriors live on in legend and infamy, while the people who built the world around them and at their backs fade away. But wasn’t it ever thus? Legends change the world; love saves it. And here we see that love is the more important, and more enduring, force of the two, even if we’re sometimes too proud to acknowledge it, or too blind to see it. 

“I love you, Floki,” says Ubbe, as they stare across the ocean, at their past, at their possible future, at eternity. 

What a beautiful, and truly surprising, sentiment for a show as blood-soaked as Vikings to bow out on.  

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Of course the status quo clings on in Kattegat, and I guess this will be picked up in the spin-off series. Set 100 years after the events of Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla is reportedly coming to Netflix sometime next year.

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