#An Evening Hymn

[utterlyazriel]

whom the shadows sing for — (and the thief's echoing hymn)

a/n: if you have stuck around and waited u are INCREDIBLE thank u so much for ur patience <3 esp cos i'm still testing it with my slowburn lmao + tell me what u think lovelies and as always, enjoy

word count: 4.1k

synopsis: Azriel's shadows find a new way to torment their master. The question of forgiveness follows you. Cassian gets you in the ring, testing out newly learnt skills.

CHAPTER TEN :: SHADOWS

Azriel is a spy by his very nature.

It makes sense; the gift of Shadowsinger is never bestowed so lightly so that it could ever leave any doubt of the user. Shadowsingers are spies, even well before their gifts revealed themselves. Always watching. Always listening.

It was, then, a tad against his disposition to keep his nose out business that wasn't his — as that was precisely what Azriel did best.

But his decision was resolute. Azriel had promised himself he would not be the first to break the distance between you two.

However, for a fae over five-hundred years old, it's quite unsettling to yet again feel the pangs of impatience. Years of practicing restraint and then, in a mere few months, his hard earned patent for patience begins to fray at the ends. You'll be his undoing, he's sure of it.

Like a young and fresh-faced warrior itching for battle, it's almost embarrassing how Azriel can't seem to stay away from you. His feet wander and all paths lead to you.

His shadows are not helping.

Azriel thinks they've managed to get more insistent, which he hadn't really believe was possible. They've proven him oh-so wrong. When he walks the halls of the House of Wind, the dark wisps dart out, as though trying to tug him along.

He had trusted them all of two times before, face flushed and with an ungraceful but thankfully unnoticed exit, he learned just where they were leading him.

They were following the invisible thread between you, taking him to see his mate.

When it became clear he wasn't going to be coerced along, his shadows had only got more devious.

It's a particular brand of torture, Azriel thinks, to be delivered little parcels of knowledge of the person he's not allowing himself to see.

And they're ruthless about it. Whispers about how you're healing and the growing steadiness of your feet, the way you stand a little taller each day, about the tentative trust extended to Cassian.

Gods, that one had made his hand jerk across the paper in surprise, spilling a patch of ink onto the report he was in the middle of.

You were talking to Cassian— no, you were nearly friends with Cassian. The magnanimous hope had ballooned within him before Azriel remembered to stomp it back down.

Mor had teased him for the black stains on his hands during dinner.

He studies them now, nearly washed away completely, before he lifts his head. In the cool air of dusk, Azriel surveils the training ring from the shadows of the door, eyes scanning across the balcony.

It's empty, as expected. The rising moon is his only company.

You've stuck to training in the mornings, of course.

He's relieved and disappointed all at once—then Azriel forces that disappointment out of his system with a frustrated huff.

He is not allowed to be disappointed. Your trust is something he still needs to claw his way back to, to earn, and that required waiting and accepting that.

Azriel would see you... when you wanted to see him.

Despite his resolve, the thread between you still gives a futile tug before he can stop it. Scowling at himself, he rubs at his chest meanly, banishing the feeling. He steps down onto the balcony and heads towards the equipment.

As his scarred hands reach out and pluck one of the training staffs off the rack, his shadows twirls and trill, an almost teasing motion. It takes one pointed whisper, one tug on his heartstrings —they used that one just earlier today— before his hands are glowing warm from the second-hand touch.

His fingers spring apart and the staff hits the tiles with a loud clatter. Even though it's just him out on the balcony, he still casts an awkward glance around him. Gods

If his brothers could see him now, Azriel thinks dryly.

He swats at the shadow that had unhelpfully fed him the information. It dances away from him, swooping down to circle the staff on the ground with its others, a mass of black surrounding it.

Azriel bends down and gingerly picks up the staff, his hazel eyes staring at it for a long moment. Where your hands have been.

After a moment, his fingers curl around it. His marred hands feel like they're glowing again, warm and tingling, even if he knows it's all in his mind. Even so, he swears the golden thread between you hums, just ever so slightly.

He'll allow himself this, just this once, Azriel decides. His grip tightens and he heads to the ring, preparing to train, his hands where yours were just mere hours before.

—

The day after you had met Cassian, as the dawn breaks over sky, you find him on the training balcony before you.

You're a little later than you'd normally be, the sun actually rising before you do. You're moving a little more sluggishly too, but for once it's for a better reason.

Sleep, normally light and fitful for you, had actually been a reprieve last night. You slept deeply, falling into dreamless slumber and resting properly.

When morning crept in, dragging your eyelids up had felt like a mountainous amount of effort. Part of you wonders if it's because of the male across the balcony from you.

Allies, you had agreed upon.

It's a little easier to rest when you've made one less enemy.

Watching him now, stretching his supple and bulging arms, you have to force down the instilled anxiety that festers up, a force of habit that's kept you safe all these years.

You're not in Exordor anymore. You're not keeping any secrets.

Cassian clocks your hesitant stance in the doorway as he turns, a wide grin breaking across his face. His wings perk up, a genuine sign of his excitement. He stops his stretching momentarily to wave.

"Morning!" He calls out, despite the fact the distance between you doesn't require him to do so.

"Ally." He adds pointedly, leaning over to give an over the top wink.

Somewhere buried deep inside you, a laugh almost wants to wriggle free, but it's smothered before you can think too hard. You give him a wry smile instead, the best you can manage, and take a tentative step down onto the balcony. Your wings give a tiny shiver in the passing breeze.

"Good morning," You manage to return, the words sticking in your throat on the way up. It's awkward but nothing in Cassian's friendly demeanor changes to indicate he's noticed. Your feet lead you over towards the weapons rack.

It's as you reach them do you realise your heart is rabbiting wildly, pounding in your chest, stewing you in discomfort. The hair on the back of your neck rises, prickling with unease. Your back is turned to a fierce warrior, one that could very well attack you.

And worse, you'll be training next to him, still not healed, still stumbling on your feet—revealing all the ways to strike you down.

You—you haven't done this, ever. You haven't trained with someone completely as yourself, with no facade to hide beneath. It suddenly becomes incredibly vulnerable.

Your hand trembles as you reach out for the training staff and you try your best to swallow down your nerves.

Cassian has kept his distance, resuming his stretches, but you don't miss how his eyes dance over to you every couple of seconds. For a moment, it alarms you but as you find a place and settle into your stance, you steal another glimpse.

It's more like... a dog wagging its tail, you think faintly.

You press down the urge to smile and begin your exercises.

There's all of ten minutes of silence before it gets broken.

"How do you like Velaris?"

You pause in your motions, huffing to catch your breath as your grip the training staff loosens. You cast a glance over at Cassian who's now picked up one of the broadswords, beginning to throw its weight around easily.

You blink and for a moment, your eyes dart out over the edge of the balcony, to the city teeming with life, so close and yet so far from you. A part of you aches fiercely to see it.

"I... haven't been into the city." You answer honestly. It comes out curt and doesn't exactly answer his question.

Eyeing his sword nervously, your force your aching muscles through another series of exercises. You're a sliver better than the day before but when your ear twinges loudly, you still stumble, a minuscule motion. Your heart lurches up your throat, frustration welling like a tidal wave within you.

"Okay, then how do you like the House of Wind?"

You pause again, looking over to Cassian tentatively, the pain in your ear momentarily forgotten. The rising frustration in you dissipates at the distraction. He waves a casual hand over to the house you've been residing in since you arrived in Velaris and smiles once more.

You swallow thickly. What is his angle here?

"I haven't..." You struggle to put your thoughts into words. It's... different. New. Unsettling. You don't want to say the wrong thing. For all you know, this may well be his home.

Eventually, you find your voice. "I like my room. It's—" Several words ping to the front of your mind. "—big."

You cringe. Some compliment that is. You're too honest even if it is true; you're far too used to the familiar cramped space of your own cabin. Even sharing walls with others is foreign to you and you're incredibly thankful you haven't run into anyone unexpectedly in any corridors yet.

It doesn't occur to you that it might entirely be by design, thanks to Rhys' strict instruction.

Cassian grins. "Yes, I recall Illyria being hardly known for it's roomy cabins."

He swings the sword around with a flick of his wrist, more like an idle motion than anything. Your eyes still flicker down keenly, watching for any threat, just in case.

"So, you haven't explored the house much then?" Cassian continues, feigning a stab forward with the sword, his eyes on his motions but his attention still focused primarily on you.

You follow his lead and swing the training staff again, in an arching whoosh. You shake your head in answer to his question.

"Do you want to?"

"Do you always talk this much during training?"

The words come out before you can think to check them, sucking in a sharp breath as you realise how snappy that sounded. Like you're looking for a fight.

You ready yourself to sink into a defensive stance, before you realise that Cassian has only laughed in response. A curl of his tied back hair comes loose as he shakes his head, the action almost... fond.

"Only when I'm trying to make friends." He grins warmly, eyes flicking up to meet yours. "Sorry, I'll stop prying."

You swallow and nod slightly, hoping it won't be read as rude. Though you'd had a hard time believing it, Cassian had been true to his word; no fighting unless it was in the ring. You hadn't dared to go near it yet.

Readjusting your stance, you prepared to go through the motions once more. It's still a bit more of the juvenile exercises than you're used to—forced back to the basics as you retrain your body—but also because you're solitary training. You're used to sparring with others.

Stealing a glimpse at Cassian, you ponder if—if you might, eventually that is, train alongside him as you had done with Azriel.

Moving the training staff deftly, you thrust it forward and twist your lithe body to dart forward again, a small patter of your feet on the stone.

It's maneuver used for rushing opponents, throwing them off their balance and driving them backwards. It works for you, mostly, but the way your wings cut through the air, the slightest whistle through the holey scars, makes you a little unsteady.

"You fight like you're bigger than you are."

Straightening up, you breathe heavily and peer around the edges of your wings back at Cassian—who apparently isn't done talking at all.

He nods to you, in reference the maneuver you've just performed. "That is a move usually far better suited for someone of a larger stature."

You clear your throat, wings curling in a bit closer around you. "Yes. Azriel, he- he was trying to rectify that. There's only one way to train Illyrians, as I'm sure you know."

Cassian nods again, lowering the sword to hang at his side. "That I do. However, I feel Azriel may have been taking the wrong approach given... the information he was not privy to at the time."

Your brows knit together, something wrong twisting tightly in your chest.

"Because I'm..."

Female.

"Not a male?"

The words come out sharp without meaning to.

Cassian's picks up on your defensiveness, his expression softening. He gives a little so-so motion with his free hand, his wings rustling behind him. "A bit, but not for reasons you may think."

When you don't speak, he continues, his explanation unfurling.

"Your centre of gravity is different to ours. That actually changes the best way for you to fight. More of your strength comes from these—"

He slaps his hands down onto his thighs with a grin.

"—than from your arms. For that reason, there are moves you will be better at than what you've been taught."

Cassian cocks his head, his dark eyes squinting for a moment, deep in thought. "Azriel likely switched your training to agility based, didn't he?"

You nod gingerly. You had no idea if what he was said was true. If there was a fighting style suited to females. That would require... female warriors which, for all you've ever known, is a highly unlikely thing to exist.

Though, being he is the General of the Night Court's armies, you'd likely assume Cassian knows what he's talking about.

He nods, that same easy smile. "He was right to do so. Most camps focus on brute strength and stamina. Makes for good warriors that can take hits and keep going. You can train that way if you still wish but you might find you excel when your efforts are put elsewhere."

It takes a long moment before you realise exactly what his words mean.

An offer. He's offering to train you, to teach you.

Pleasant surprise blooms inside you, warm, curling up behind your ribs like a purring cat. Cassian's eyes are light and friendly, his body language relaxed as though if you turn him down, it'd be of no consequence to him. Merely an offer.

You turn it over in your mind, back and forth. The gentle wind from the mountains caresses across your cheekbones, a warm touch.

Inside, deep in your chest, there's something telling you to trust. To take the step forward, to accept Cassian's outstretched proposal. That you might regret it if you didn't.

"How?" Your eyes skirt up and down on instinct, still on alert for a threat that isn't coming.

Cassian grins infectiously, not even attempting to hide his glee. He rolls his shoulders back and assesses you once more.

"Have you ever heard of the headscissor takedown?"

—

Flesh hits stone, a large shuddering bang that echoes out the courtyard. In the distance, a couple birds take flight, squawking loudly. Pain ricochets through your knees, a warbling and jarring pain that has you gritting your teeth.

"You're..." Cassian's breath comes out raggedly. "Incredible!"

He beams from where he's pinned beneath you and your pain dashes away in a moment, something gleaning and prideful taking its place.

There's a rivulet of blood under his nose, his hair knocked loose, and you know hitting the ground as hard as he did won't have been nice. He continues on as if he hasn't.

"That was perfect form. You're a Cauldron-born natural!"

You huff a breath that might be an actual laugh this time and quickly retract yourself, standing to your feet. You waver momentarily, hesitance poisoning your thoughts, before you decide. Holding out your hand to help, Cassian is quick to put his hand in your own and use it to lug himself up.

When he gets to his feet, his grip loosens but he doesn't let go altogether.

"Hey," He says, more serious this time. His fingers around your wrist, soft and warm, still make your pulse jump nervously. You force yourself to meet his gaze, still friendlier than ever. "Seriously. You're very skilled and you're a fast learner. You've got the makings to be lethal. The Night Court is lucky to have you on our side."

His hand slips back, grazing your wrist, and you wonder if he can feel the way your heart skips a beat.

No one has ever been... lucky to have you. It's so foreign that hearing someone say it aloud makes you forget to breath for one long second.

"I—" The word pushes out before you think about it. "That's... You-"

Praise is not a part of Illyrian training. You fumble with it, feeling entirely out of your depth, feeling oddly proud of yourself. It feels like your cheeks are warmer than usual.

Cassian chuckles, wiping the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. "You're welcome." He says pointedly, making you realise you're supposed to say thank you after someone compliments you.

You flounder for another second, making Cassian laugh again, louder this time. He reaches forward and lightly taps you on the shoulder, a faux punch.

"You'll get used to it." He says. Part of you really, really wants to. "Now, c'mon. Let's go again. Hit me."

—

You think that now Cassian's got what he wanted—the two of you training together, learning the plethora of new moves, stances, blocks he has in his repertoire—he wouldn't have anymore questions.

You're sorely, sorely, wrong.

Two mornings later, the pair of you prepare for some sparring with the swords in the ring. Cassian's purposefully picked one of the heavier ones for himself, broad and long, but he'd put aside a blade for you.

It's smaller, lighter. It reminds you of Heartstriker.

Which reminds you of Azriel.

The mere thought of him has your heart humming, miserable and elated all at once. You're still not sure if you'd like to see him just yet, the confusing twist of betrayal too fresh, but still, some part of you seeks him out, consciously or not.

You want to wander the halls until you find the door to leads to him.

It's because he was your first friend. You reason, as you step up towards the sparring ring. He was the first person you trusted. Was? Is—maybe.

Do you still trust him?

Cassian is already in the ring, waiting as patiently as he can. His rustling wings give him away, even as casual as he looks leaned up against one of the corner posts.

His wings are stretched out, towards the sun's rays that are just beginning to slip over the horizon, trying to steal some of their warmth.

A yawn slips past your lips. The night of restful sleep was an outlier it seemed, the tendrils of a calming, easy sleep stolen away just as quickly.

Fingers curling around the hilt of the short sword, you step gingerly into the ring, eyes casting across to your opponent. You roll your shoulders back, warming up the muscles a bit more, and give your own wings a little shake. A shiver wracks through you in response, the chill of the morning touching on sensitive scars.

"Is there a particular reason Azriel is avoiding you?"

Your head snaps up at the sound of Cassian's voice, cool and calm.

He hasn't shifted, though his wings are tucked back in now. His sword is still relaxed at his side, his worn hand tucked around the hilt of it freely.

The usual chattiness that Cassian has been able to coax out of you these last few days shrivels up. Azriel is avoiding you? You hadn't wanted to see him but this—something curls up inside you, sour and foul. You swallow hard.

"I hadn't realised." You murmur, unable to keep the bitterness from seeping into your words.

Cassian blinks and seems to realise his mistake. He waves a hand dismissively, as if it can scratch away his last words. "I misspoke. I believe he is... keeping his distance."

He furrows his brow, face pinched, picking his words carefully. "For your sake." He adds.

You... don't know how you feel about that. On one hand, you're relieved. It's not by pure chance that you haven't seen him yet, it's purposeful—he's keeping out of your way, giving you peace.

On the other hand, something twined in your chest pangs sorrowfully, mourning the distance between you.

While Cassian's presence as an ally (or perhaps, you'll even admit, a friend) is comforting, you'll admit it does not fill the same shape in you as Azriel does. You miss him, quite terribly so.

"What makes you think he's avoiding me?" You ask.

Cassian gives an little shrug, his head tilting to the side just a bit. He smiles in a way that tells you he knows more than he lets on. Or maybe, he simply knows Azriel far better than you do.

"He usually trains in the morning." He explains nonchalantly. "He's taken to training at night since your arrival."

You frown at the new information. You don't want Azriel to be changing things for you, to bend and warp his routines in his home, just for you. You don't want him to avoid you either, even if you're beginning to think you might never be brave enough to face him.

He left you. He was your first friend and the betrayal of that is entirely too new— but you don't know where to draw the line.

You don't know for how long you're allowed to be upset — or how long you can let this go on before you're punishing yourself just as much as you are him.

Flexing your grip on the sword, you stare across at Cassian and when you open your mouth, the words tumble out with warning.

"He..." Your breath hitches.

Something awful hooks into your chest, remembering the way he had folded himself into shadows, away from you. The look on his face.

"He left me. When I needed him more than ever." You admit.

Your voice doesn't waver but Cassian can still see the slight tremble in your shoulders, rolling in. Your eyes have dropped to study the floor of the sparring ring, seemingly lost in the memory.

Cassian's face softens, his heart aching for you. You don't even notice how your own wings have begun to curl in, a soft, comforting blanket around yourself.

It's clear you're struggling to juggle the myriad of emotions that haunt you and he gets it, Mother, does he get it. It had been hard the first time, during those first tentative months of friendship with Rhys, before Azriel was even in the picture. Cassian had one emotion that served him any purpose and that was spite.

Spite kept him alive. Spite told him who to knock down and who to put down.

Friendships and spite are not the greatest combination. When Rhys had done something Cassian had vehemently disagreed with, it had felt like a deception, stinging as badly as the backhand from Lord Devlon, sneering the word bastard.

It took time to undo the messy tangle of emotions, to learn that not all betrayal fell into the same box. That forgiveness for some people was not weakness at all.

So, Cassian asks. "Did he come back?"

You glance up at him, eyes flickering with emotion at the question. After a moment, you swallow and say. "Yes. He did."

Cassian nods. He stretches his wings out a bit and reaches up to push a stray piece of hair behind his ear.

"Alright. How long do you intend to punish him for that mistake?"

You freeze at that question and Cassian can tell he's hit the right spot. You're unsure how long you should—because all you know is that you're hurt. And when you're hurt, you don't know any other way to deal with it.

There's only one pathway ingrained for when someone hurts you. Cassian realises suddenly, Mother help him, that he must try to be good at the talking side of things. He needs to show you there's other ways you can go.

"Because," He continues, not waiting for your answer. "I can assure you that Azriel will punish himself for far longer and far harsher than you ever will. I've known my brother a long time. If there anyone who understands the gravity of his actions and will torture himself over them, it's Azriel."

A hesitant expression shutters across your face, your brows furrowing slightly. Cassian doesn't need Rhys' daemati gift to understand the conflict that's battling within you.

"You think I should forgive him."

You don't pose it as a question. A little bit more of that iciness has bled back into your voice, on guard again.

Cassian can tell that, like him, you don't take well to being told what to do. That's fine; Cassian has no intention of doing that whatsoever.

"I think that is your decision entirely." Cassian says, letting the words breathe so they truly sink in. He watches as your eyes narrow momentarily and then your shoulders relax, sinking down an inch.

"But," He says gingerly. "If you avoid each other, you might never move past this. Might never move forward. It might be worth considering what you really want at the end of the day."

The sun has properly broken across the mountain ridges, no longer just sparse rays. You turn your face, facing towards the warmth. There's still that scrunch between your eyebrows, betraying your deep thought, but Cassian has said enough for now.

He moves his sword and taps the end of it against the stone, a soft steel ping grabbing your attention. You whip your head back to face him and Cassian grins, raising his sword.

"Enough talking. More fighting."

You smile, a little hesitant but entirely genuine, and raise your sword in response. That's one thing you're sure you know how to do right.

[NEXT PART: FRIENDS (AGAIN)]

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[idanit]

assorted Jeeves and Wooster sketches of various quality from the past six months, part 1

[p4nishers]

hymn to virgil being about hozier changing the story of dante and virgil going through hell together only to have to part at the end to dante saying NO i have gone thru w you so much YOU'RE the reason i did it i walked through hell on living fucking feet for you and STAYING with virgil in hell bc he cannot let him go bc he knows virgil doesn't deserve to be there and he doesn't want to be anywhere else virgil is not welcome and im just supposed to NOT apply that to jayvik?????? ok idiot

[my-name-is-apollo]

I like the versions where Zeus gets more involved in helping Leto during the labor. And here it seems like he's making some arrangements before Leto even goes into labor:

Lucian, Dialogues Of The Sea-gods (trans. Henry Watson Fowler)

Poseidon going "why should I bring this island up, is the earth too small for her kids?" akdjsjs stop your sass Earthshaker. But it's sweet that he is so willing to help Leto, and even seems excited for the birth of the twins (and he called Artemis and Apollo the fairest of the gods <3)

[halipula-aika]

Okay I've seen enough "Christmas should include more existential dread" type posts on my dash to physically need to talk about Heinillä härkien kaukalon and why it is the best hymn ever if you want to feel sad about baby Jesus.

So this epitome of depressing Finnish holiday songs isn't actually Finnish in origin; it's a translation of Entre le bœuf et l’âne gris, a French song from the 16th century. It was adapted into Finnish in 1926. I say adapted instead of translated here, because the Finnish version has an EXTREMELY DIFFERENT vibe.

The first verses are very similar in both French and Finnish. Like, here's the French translated literally:

Between the ox and the grey donkey / Sleeps, sleeps, sleeps the little son

A thousand divine angels, a thousand seraphim / Fly around this great God of love.

And here's the Finnish:

On the hay, in the bulls' trough / Sleeps an innocent Child. The path of a flock of angels / Soon leads to Him / To marvel at the greatest Love

The next two verses are the same shit in both languages. There's "in the arms of Mary/the mother", and then there's "between roses and lillies". The metaphor used for Jesus changes a bit so it rhymes with the verse, and the thousand angels/great love part is always repeated.

And then. The Finnish translation. Pulls the fucking rug from under you.

The French version has two more verses; you've got "Amidst the gentle shepherds / Sleeps, sleeps Jesus who smiles" and "On this beautiful, so solemn day / Sleeps, sleeps, sleeps Emmanuel". Okay, cool, it's five verses of baby jesus. Great.

The Finnish adaptation only has four verses. And I'd like you to imagine what you have read so far with me. Every time I've heard this hymn, it's sung as almost a lullaby. It's about a baby sleeping in his various aspects: an innocent child, the son of God, the Lord of people. Singing those verses as a fragile lullaby makes sense.

And then in the fourth verse, the choir goes all out, the organist gets to flex how loud they can play, and the church echoes as the last verse is sung:

On the cross beside a criminal / Sleeps the purest sacrifice

The path of a flock of angels / Soon leads to Him / To marvel at the greatest Love

Additional fun facts about the Finnish language: the words for "sacrifice" and "victim" are the same, so you could read this as "the purest sacrifice" or "the cleanest victim".

Merry Christmas!

[wiltkingart]

HYMN: extra story

since my rewrite of HYMN is on extended pause, ive decided to extract one of the new scenes and share it here as an extra so that it can see the light of day one way or another. its a look into atom's past when he was much younger, during his final eval for becoming a unity keeper. 3.8k words, the usual violence ahead:

-

On the morning of his final eval, the weather is just warm enough for Atom to wear one pair of gloves without running the risk of frostbite. The sun is a bright pinprick in a pale blue sky. Beside him, Lev's hands are tucked deep into his coat pockets. An icy wind cuts down the residential street and plays with the dark wisps of hair that refuse to be contained under his fur hat.

Lev hasn’t said a word since the two of them got off the metro and made their way here. Atom knows he’s nervous, he admitted so himself that morning over breakfast, but it’s still weird to see him this quiet. Out of the two of them, it’s Atom who often has little to say in any given situation. In the unusual silence, Atom tries and fails to come up with the right words to ease his worries. Pulling his scarf higher up his nose, Atom can't help but feel eager to get the mission started just so they can get this over with and Lev can stop looking like his stomach is eating him from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, Sergeant Milanova exits her armored Keeper vehicle and makes her way over to join them at the foot of a tall apartment building. Metal spikes on the soles of her snowboots noisily crunch across the frozen road until she comes to a stop in front of them.

"Your names?"

Lev stands up straight, raises his chin, and remembers to take his hands out of his pockets. Being older than Atom by 5 months, he goes first. "Lev Lukovich."

"Atom Belov."

Sergeant Milanova grunts in acknowledgement and flips through a thin folder in her hands. Snow goggles cover most of her face and her straight mouth betrays nothing of her opinion of them.

“As you already know, I am Sergeant Danilla Milanova and I will be overseeing your final evaluation today. The two of you will work together in a live field test mission where you must follow a standard takedown order and apprehend an active Target. This type of mission is the most common type of work you will be doing as active Keepers, besides regular patrolling. As active Keepers you will most commonly work in groups or pairs, unless you are promoted into a solitary position down the line. Today I will be testing your ability to work together to take down your Target in an efficient and timely manner.

“This is a live test, meaning your Target is actively wanted. This is not staged. If you fail, your actions will have severe consequences. I am here to observe, not intervene. The only reason I will step in is if I deem the mission a complete failure and have to take out the Target myself. If that happens, you will be sent back to training with the opportunity to retake this test in two years. Is that clear?”

“Yes Ma’am.” Lev and Atom answer in unison. Milanova digs through the pages in her folder until she finds what she’s looking for.

“The Target is Sergei Ivanov. Age 32, Electrician. He lives in this apartment—room number 716—along with his family. He has been found guilty of High Treason. Today is his day off and he is expected to be home all day. He is to be shown no mercy. His penalty is death.” The folder snaps shut in Milanova’s hand and she passes a look over them. “Any questions?”

Atom rests his hand on the sword strapped to his belt and looks up at the apartment building. He hopes it has a working elevator system. If not, at least a heated stairwell. But the smooth, dirty concrete walls don’t get his hopes up very high.

“Treason for what, if I may ask?”

At the sound of his voice, the world drifts to a stop, like the first gentle flakes of a snowstorm. Atom, surprised, looks at Lev. Did he really just ask that? Milanova’s straight mouth twitches and pulls down at the corners, confirming that yes—he really did.

“That is not your concern, Cadet.”

Lev swallows and looks down at his hands. Atom thinks he’s dropped it, and is about to apologize on his behalf, but Lev pushes on before Atom has a chance to open his mouth.

“I think it is my concern if he is my Target. High Treason is a serious offense and I would like to know what he did to deserve—”

“He’s guilty. That’s all you need to know.”

“But what did he do?”

Milanova takes two crunching steps forward to stand directly in front of Lev. She isn’t much taller, but that doesn’t stop her from looking down at him.

“Why does it matter to you, Cadet?”

“My—,” Lev bites his lip. Atom sees that his fists are shaking at his side. Briefly, Atom feels the urge to take them and warm them between his own hands. Maybe he should have brought an extra pair of gloves after all, only so he could give them to Lev. Maybe if he wasn’t so cold he wouldn’t feel the need to do whatever the hell this is.

“I’m sorry, forget it.” he says.

“No. This is important to you, clearly. I want to know why.” Milanova’s tone holds no warmth. Wind whistles down the street, deafening in the silence it demands. Milanova isn’t going to let Lev drop the subject, Atom knows it, as sharply as the sick feeling building in his stomach. He wants to grab Lev by the shoulders; knock some sense into him, tell him to shut the hell up, plead with him to keep his head down and obey like all the others. Like they promised each other they would, over countless nights in hushed whispers with their heads under a shared blanket. Always, with his hand an icy stone in Atom’s fist.

Instead he holds his breath and watches as the unthinkable happens.

“My father was...when I was a kid, my father was charged with Treason and taken from us. My mother and I were never told why. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for speaking out. It won’t happen again.”

Milanova laughs once, without smiling—a quick noise in her throat. “No, it won’t.” Tucking her folder under one arm, she takes another impossible step closer to Lev. “Sergei Ivanov was charged with High Treason for giving aid to other active Targets, and allowing them to escape punishment at the hands of the Law. People like him need to be eliminated for the sake of public peace. The world is a better place without people like Sergei. Without people like your father.”

Lev snaps up to look at her face, and by now his hands are balled so tightly they no longer shake. He sounds confused when he says, “He’s just an electrician.”

“He is your Enemy.”

“No,” he whispers. “No, he’s not.”

Milanova sighs through her nose. The wind screams. There’s a movement, a sickening sound, and the two of them sway. There is a knife in Lev’s belly and Milonova’s hand is on the hilt. She jerks it up, stretching the wound, and pulls out. Lev stumbles back, hitting the pale blue concrete wall. He slides to the cold ground, eyes wide, face white. The hands clutching his stomach quickly turn red—so very, very red. Atom takes a step toward him and Milanova commands him to stay put. Lev looks up at him and attempts to speak but can’t quite manage it. Or maybe he does say something but the ringing in Atom’s ears drowns it out.

It isn’t quick, and Lev keeps his eyes on Atom until the end, until his eyes turn glassy and his chest stops its panicked heaving.

“What a waste.” Milanova’s voice cuts through the noise like a—like a knife. “To make it all this way, dedicate his entire life to becoming a Keeper, only to throw it all away like this." From the corner of his eye, Atom sees her pull out a handkerchief to wipe the blade clean. "Unfortunately for you Belov, that means you’re on your own now."

A deep dark red stains the white of Lev's Keeper uniform. Today was their very first day wearing official whites. Only hours ago, in the changing room, Lev had joked about how the color washed him out.

"Belov?"

Atom blinks, tearing his eyes from the body. It takes an immense effort to look at Lev’s killer.

"Do you have any questions?"

"No, Sergeant."

"Then you may begin your mission."

"Yes, Sergeant."

Atom's feet carry him to the apartment's entrance. When the door clicks shut behind him, everything goes quiet. His own breathing sounds too loud in the vacant hallway. A choking feeling rises in his throat. Atom yanks down his scarf to heave. The image of Lev on the ground burns in his vision, like after looking at a bright light for too long, dragging across his line of sight no matter where he looks.

With effort, Atom pulls himself together before he can slip any further. He pushes himself away from the wall and breathes until the hallway stops looking like it wants to collapse on him. Until the sick in his throat is something he can leave on the floor, at his feet. To be collected after.

It turns out that the stairwell has no heat, but it at least provides shelter from the wind. Taking one step at a time, Atom climbs all seven flights.

He doesn’t know how long he stands outside the door to room 716. Somewhere down the hall a dog is barking. At one point, an elder woman wearing a colorful headscarf exits her apartment and makes her way towards him, but when she gets a better look at his uniform, she turns around and walks all the way to the stairwell at the other end of the hall. Inside his Target’s room he hears music—something slow and crackly, from centuries past. It sounds like something Lev would play from his radio, quietly from the bunk above Atom during nights when he couldn't sleep. The noise would in turn keep Atom up well into the night, but he never complained about it.

Atom raises his fist and knocks, loud and heavy.

The music dies. Footsteps approach, followed by whispers just on the other side. The door opens to a man's face. He looks older than 32, square-jawed with a graying beard. As his eyes take in his visitor his expression morphs from curiosity to thinly veiled fear.

"Sergei Ivanov?" Atom asks.

Before the Target can answer, a middle-aged woman appears over his shoulder. Her eyes are large and brown and framed by silver glasses. "Who is this?" she asks.

"Keeper Atom Belov, acting on the behalf of the United Keep. I am here to speak to Sergei Ivanov."

With a large hand the Target—Sergei—reaches up to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead. His wife's grip on his shoulder tightens. After a moment of silence, she asks Atom if he would like to come inside for a cup of tea. “We can all sit and talk at the table.” she says.

"Honey—" Sergei tries to protest, but she won’t hear it.

"It's okay. It's going to be okay." With visible strain she manages to urge her husband away from the door, forcing a smile at Atom as he steps inside. He follows her to a small wooden dining table and unclips his sword, leaning it against the wall beside his chair before taking a seat.

“Sergei, could you get the teapot started? I’ll stay out here and keep our guest company.” She takes the seat in front of Atom and pointedly avoids looking at the sword. “I’m Katya,” she says. “Sorry about the mess, we weren’t expecting company today.”

From what Atom can see, the apartment is spotless, and smells like freshly baked bread. He hears Sergei in the kitchen to his left and turns to watch the open doorway.

Katya tries again to get his attention. “How long have you been a Keeper?” she asks. Atom fiddles with the knife holster on his thigh. He doesn’t feel like lying, but he doesn’t want to admit to her that he isn’t an official Keeper—not yet—so he says nothing.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you look young. How old are you?”

Atom bites his tongue, but decides to answer anyway. “Sixteen.”

Her chair creaks as she leans back. “Good God.” she whispers.

Atom doesn’t look at her. She stops asking questions and sits in silence until the teapot starts to make noise. Then she excuses herself to the kitchen. Above the whine of the teapot Atom overhears Sergei’s low, pleading voice.

“Take all the money in the pantry and go with Dasha to your mother’s house. Go now, I’ll tell him you went to the store. Katya, please, I want to know you and Dasha are safe. Leave now.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Kat—”

“Let’s sit down—together, and speak to him. He’s just a kid. He has no reason to be here. Whatever this is for, there’s no reason to be afraid.

“Look at me. There is no reason for him to be here. Right?”

But Sergei doesn’t answer. Or if he does, Atom can no longer hear him above the deafening whine of the teapot. One of them finally takes it off the stove and Atom listens to the aggressive clinking of tableware before Katya comes out of the kitchen carrying a tray of warm bread, sliced strawberries, a dish of butter, and tea. She sets the table for three people despite Sergei having yet to show himself. She pours a steaming cup of black tea into a delicate porcelain cup and sets it in front of Atom before slumping back into her seat.

Somewhere in the living room, a clock ticks.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“I need to speak to Sergei.”

“About what?”

But Atom doesn’t look at her again. He pushes himself to his feet and takes up his sword. Katya stands too, nearly knocking her chair over in the process. She calls out her husband’s name in alarm. Atom finds him leaning over the kitchen sink with his back to him. His head turns, just so, when he hears Atom enter the room.

“Sergei Ivanov. The United Keep has declared you an Enemy of the public and found you guilty of High Treason. You will pay for your crime with your life. You can come with me, quietly, and I'll let you say goodbye to your family. Or we can do this another way."

Slowly, Sergei straightens his back. He lets out a shaky sigh. “What is the other way?”

“You die. Here and now.”

Sergei nods, and makes a noise that sounds almost like a laugh. Then he turns around with a large kitchen knife in his large hand.

"Let us see if there is a third way.”

He looks tired, but by no means does he look weak. Sergei is a large man, twice Atom’s age, and they both know there is no way out of this without a fight.

So Atom widens his stance and raises his sword. "So be it."

The Enemy takes a heavy step towards him and the kitchen is so small that there is nowhere for Atom to duck to. So he doesn't. He swings, a clean upward arc, and a scream fills his ears on impact. Bright pure red sprays the walls and ceiling and blooms across white kitchen tiles underfoot. The Enemy’s momentum propels him forward and he lands on Atom with a guttural noise, crushing him against the refrigerator. Atom drops his sword in favor of fending off the knife aiming for his face. Sergei uses the last of his strength to try and drive it through his cheek and manages to break skin. Atom feels the tip of the blade clink against his teeth at the same time that shock seizes Sergei, and he collapses to the ground, dragging the knife down with him.

Atom swears, clutching at the stinging pain in his face. He tastes blood, and the feel of it is slick against his gloved hand. Through a blinding haze of pain he sees Katya on the ground beside Sergei. Her hands, trying to close the large, weeping gash, are red. When she realizes that it's already too late and her husband is dead, she takes up Atom’s sword and stands. It shakes in her hands. Thick blood drips slowly from her fingers.

“You—,” Her eyes are wide and wild behind her glasses. “I let you into my home.” She takes a frantic step towards him. “What kind of monster are you? You—You’re nothing."

Atom lets his hand drop. The blood running down his chin almost feels like he's crying. Slowly, he stands up straight, and wraps both hands around the blade pointed at him. He pulls, and at first Katya resists. Then she catches another glimpse of the body at her feet and wrenches back in horror. Atom turns the sword around in his hands. He exhales.

Outside, the wind screams. It howls and it rages and in his ears he hears Lev pleading, ‘But what did he do?’ and there are two bodies at Atom’s feet.

He feels cold all over. Then the shaking starts. The stench of iron fills his lungs and Atom gags, stumbling from the kitchen. He drops heavily into the chair at the dining table. The clotting, drying blood on his face starts to itch. The clock keeps ticking. He fishes out a radio from his pocket and tosses it onto the table. He touches the still-full cup of tea beside it and feels warmth seep into his fingertips. It feels wrong. He returns his hands to the hilt of his sword.

A pair of eyes tracks the movement from the bottom of a narrow staircase by the front door. When Atom turns his head to look, he sees the face of a young girl staring at him from the shadows. Atom hadn’t noticed her with how still she sat there, but as soon as he makes eye contact, she stutters to her feet.

Atom knows what she sees, knows what he looks like at that moment, but he wonders if she knows that her parents are dead. He tries to say something to her but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is an ugly choked noise. At that, she makes her decision and bolts for the front door.

He stands up and manages two steps in pursuit before he stops.

She slips through the door barefoot and runs. Atom holds himself still and listens to her footsteps rapidly growing quieter as she makes her escape. His body screams at him to go after her, quickly, before he loses her trail. Keep your head down, follow your training, do what needs to be done to stay alive. But the smell of blood is still churning his stomach and she is just a child. So he refuses to take another step, despite the sudden spike of adrenaline rushing through his bloodstream, urging him to go and fulfill his duty. Or else—

Scrubbing at the crusted blood around his mouth, Atom spins back to the dining table and picks up his radio. He clicks it on and tunes in to the channel for body collection. After listing off the apartment address and room number, he reports a total of two bodies and sits back down to wait for their arrival. He keeps his back to the door and stares at a single point on the wall and waits.

A team of four shows up, clad from head to toe in stiff white plastic garb. One of them greets Atom and tries to make small talk but Atom only motions to the kitchen and tries not to look at anyone. The rest of them don’t pay him any attention anyway, and get right to the task at hand. They make quick work of it, and in a matter of minutes Sergei and Katya are neatly hauled out of their home in two shiny white body bags. Atom follows them out of the apartment just as the cleaning crew arrives.

Outside, the world is just the same as it was before, and Milanova is still polishing her knife. She looks up at the commotion at the door and nods at him. Atom walks over to stand beside her. She slides the knife into her holster before giving him a stiff smile.

“Congratulations,” she says. “You passed. I’ll get the paperwork started tonight, and by tomorrow morning you should be able to start your duties as an official Unity Keeper. Welcome aboard, Belov.”

Her hand lands heavily on Atom’s shoulder. She gives it a tight squeeze. “Would you like me to call medical for your face, or do you want to catch a ride with me back to the base?”

“It can wait.” Atom musters a shrug. “Just a scratch.”

“That’s going to get infected without treatment.” she says, as a matter of fact. But she doesn’t push it. She takes her hand from Atom’s shoulder and he takes a small step away. His attention lands on the body collection crew as they begin lifting each bag into the back of their van. Four body bags. Atom ticks off the names in his head. Sergei, Katya, Lev, and a fourth, smaller lump.

Atom has to grip the wall behind him to stay upright.

“You passed your test today, but I hope you know that in the future, there will be no leniency for the type of mistake you made. I understand that you were not intended to take on this mission by yourself, which is why I’m willing to look past your error. But for all future missions, from this day forward, you will be expected to take out all witnesses, despite their involvement with the Target, just as you have been taught all throughout training. Do I make myself clear?”

Atom feels numb from the inside out. A bone-deep, chilling numbness.

“Yes, Sergeant.” he says.

“Good. One more thing, I wanted to give this to you. As a reminder.”

She walks over to the back of the body van and presents him with a bundle of white fur. Lev’s fur hat. Atom takes it and holds it. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to leave, he wants to go back to his bed at the barracks, he wants to go to medical, he wants to get back on the metro and rewind this entire day, but the gift works as Milanova intended—Atom digs his fingers into it and knows that there is no going back.

“Blood is the price for peace, Belov. Never forget that.” she says, and Atom—sixteen years old and a killer for the first time in his life—commits those words to memory.

[saiintvalentiine]

I think I threatened this before, but kenwatt regional polycule in a life series setting? (KWW, parrot, or other UU and parkciv characters at your discretion). Do whatever you please in terms of the gimmick, but I do have a particular love for red life bloodlust :3

i know we've already talked a stupid amount abt this AU so idk what to say here, just that i tried my best :') For everyone else: this is a double life au where the soulmate pairs were randomly determined by a spin wheel. They were: Mapicc + Wifies, Egg + Wemmbu, Ken + Wato, Parrot + Seawatt, and Evbo + Spoke. Enjoy!

Word count: 528

Spoke jerks awake and rolls out of his bed, hitting the floor hard. On the other side of their shitty hut is Evbo, eyes ruby red and wide.

“What happened?” Evbo asks, helping Spoke up.

“That bastard shoved me!” Spoke fumes. “My stuff!”

[SpokeIsHere was doomed to fall by Parrotx2]

[Eggchan]: damn those are our second reds

[Wifies]: lol

[Wifies]: wild day

“We're red now though, which means we can get them back,” Evbo digs through their chests, pulling out dinged pieces of armor and iron swords.

“We have to find Seawatt,” Spoke decides as he armors up. “Parrot has my fuckin’ sword!”

“Seawatt's easier to target,” Evbo agrees. “And I think I know where to find him. He was mining near me before I died, I could hear him.”

The red flushes between them strangely, like a cyclical tide— it wanes in Evbo, but rises in Spoke, pure heat, and then it switches, Evbo becoming twitchier, like a resonance that responds to itself back and forth and back and forth. Spoke keeps turning his sword over and over. Following Evbo feels easy, natural, as they duck into a cave system. It takes a bit of following torches to dead ends, but there's the sound of a pick hitting stone eventually.

Seawatt is none the wiser. His hands are dark with coal dust as he hums. Spoke twirls his sword once and then goes charging.

Seawatt shrieks as Spoke slashes his arm. He pulls his own sword out and blocks his next hit.

“Fucking Parrot,” Seawatt grunts, struggling against Spoke. “Can't he pick fights at a better time?”

Blood dribbles down Seawatt's arm. The smell is metallic, sour, sweet. It fills Spoke’s head with cotton, a sugary desire for more. Each strike sounds like bells, the wedding kind, the kind that promises more, promises something hot and vile and—

A spray of blood all over Spoke's face and chest. Seawatt's head rolls right off his shoulders, eyes wide and cast to the side in his final moments. Evbo is standing there, soaked in Seawatt's blood, rusted iron axe in hand.

[SeawattGaming was slain by Evbo_]

[Wemmbu]: lol

[Wemmbu]: thats hilarious

[Wifies]: oh dear

[Eggchan]: lol

[Eggchan]: our third reds

[Eggchan]: all it took was like three days

[Mapicc]: that was fast

The blood dissolves away, and Seawatt's items split between their inventories, but the bloodlust is still there, still clouds the air like a filthy miasma. Wordlessly, they leave the cave to hunt down Parrot and Seawatt.

Far above, crouching behind the treeline, are two sets of mismatched eyes.

“Looks like they're going to try and finish the job,” Wifies mutters, hand tight around his bow.

“Parrot's down on his luck,” Mapicc stands up and offers a hand. “Evbo is a better fighter than I expected.”

“He's got his moments,” Wifies takes his hand and stands up, letting his leg adjust to the weight. “Should we follow them or try to deal with Egg and Wemmbu first?”

“I'm not too worried about Egg and Wemmbu.”

“Right. This situation seems more. . . explosive. Better make sure they deal with each other while we're still yellow.”

They disappear into the foliage.

[ilikedrawingxd]

Did I suddenly come back alive with angst? Yee, yes I did, what a great way to end December possibly right moms? @chickenkurage

(TW: ONLY A LITTLE BRIGHT BLOOD AT THE END EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT FULLY REALISTIC)

(Also rare sighting of Sable oh my gosh?)

[ms0milk]

𝟏𝟏 | 𝐖𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"Being safe from sand and ocean winds doesn’t seem worth it to the Alderan prince, not worth enough to miss the sun rising every morning. How could you die in a place like this? How could you possibly be okay with that?"

no cw unless you’re averse to apprehensive touch between enemies. reader and co recover from last night’s attack in their own ways. two fools stand too close in a cold hallway. three fools finally go to the sea and one of them can’t get you out of his head 6.8k

PREV | M.LIST | TAGLIST | NEXT

Bakugou’s first memory of you is doused in blood. His second is somewhat more pleasant. Just two giant, shining eyes peering at him through a crack in the library door. You’re lightfooted now, sure, but back then he could feel you coming through the floorboards from how excitedly you wiggled at your self assigned post. You thought you were hiding. Him pretending not to notice, and you pretending it wasn’t hours after curfew.

Bakugou liked to do magic for you. Sometimes he waited for the sound of your heart or your twiddling thumbs before he blew out the candles around him and lit the first pink spark on his fingertips.

The prince can’t hear well enough anymore to recognize your heartbeat, so he’s been searching for your bedroom since dawn.

Wretched flashes of you play across his ash lashes like a curse. Of you toppling off a cliff like some psalmic tragedy. The pleading in your grasp but something– something else in the blacks of your eyes on the mages back. Relief? Like the first flecks of ease he’s seen since he made warm magic for your audience. If his fists weren’t drawing blood from his palms as he marched he might have reflected on how long he’s been watching you.

All this work just to wring your fucking neck. Takoba is ill-equipped for Bakugou’s Alderan thunderstorm. Castle marble trembles underfoot.

What the fuck were you thinking?

He’d like to throw your door open, demand an answer and then not tolerate a response. It’s been three hours of his tirade. Of startling footmen and growling at maids, before he finally catches the tailend of someone useful.

“Oi, Cheeks!”

Uraraka isn’t thrilled about this and pauses, considering for a moment, before turning around. She chews her lip instead of rolling her eyes.

It’s just short of miserable where the two of them are standing, freezing in this part of the castle and somehow also stuffy. The only windows are at the long ends of hallways. It smells old. Being safe from sand and ocean winds doesn’t seem worth it to the Alderan prince, not worth enough to miss the sun rising every morning. How could you die in a place like this? How could you possibly be okay with that?

“Where is she?”

“Gods, the pair of you–”

“Where?”

Uraraka, in her padded cotton sparing clothes, sags weight to one hip, “Kats, she’s your guard. What do you mean where is she?”

Bakugou hasn’t gotten enough sleep for this. Up until bitter hours with Aizawa and his men recounting the attack and now stalking Takoban hallways. A perfectly comfortable bed beside a steady fire, ruined by the memory of you.

He spits and pushes past the soldier. Fuck her, fuck it. He doesn’t hate you more than he wants to sleep.

“Last blue door,” Uraraka barks behind him, “and she doesn’t want help. I already tried.” She grins nervously as the prince adjusts his gait, hardly hiding his beeline for the room at the end of the hallway. Fuck sleep. And more crucially, fuck you. You, setting great fires in Aldera’s name wherever you step and bursting at your simple seams to be righteous about it.

A blind man might be more prepared than him. Might remember why he avoided you all week– what he was going to say to you in the gardens those few hours ago, before the mage and blue fire.

Your door is already open a crack when Bakugou approaches with a egotistical lack of decorum. Storming and sauntering. Morning sunlight hardly illuminates anything on this side of the castle. He’s just cold enough, just close enough to the edge of irate that the thought of swinging it fully open with a roar fills him to the brim with grim satisfaction.

At a distance, Uraraka thinks about stopping him, but his wind up, his general air and the tense of his shoulders dies before he can cause the scene she knows he wants to.

Inside the crack, Bakugou deflates as you slip into view. You keep your back turned. Dark blush climbs up the parts of your neck neither hair nor nightgown cover and you stop your gentle drifting at the foot of your bed. Steam from a tub under your window fights with the sea draft. You’re trying to reach something– a ribbon? And your fingers tremble as they graze a tie at the back of your dress. Are you in a hospital gown? Bakugou peers inside silently, completely underestimating the shock of seeing you conscious.

You don’t look right without a sword. You don’t look right at all. Turn around. He can’t see– what did Uraraka say? Help with what?

Bakugou touches golden fingertips to the door’s beveled edges at the same time as you slam your fist hard to one of your bed’s four posters. The prince’s fingers twitch instead of startling but it’s too late because your ears work leagues better than his and you’ve spun right around to catch whoever it is that’s watching you. Uraraka drifts carefully around the corner.

“Wh– Highness?”

Your door rushes open and Bakugou can tell you’re nursing your left arm by the way you reach with your right. Though your frustration deflates with a glimpse of him, it doesn’t shift to something comfortable. He’s not what fills you with ease.

He didn’t expect to be so disarmed by the sight of you alone but now that you’re here, solid and in front of him, he can’t stop remembering the state of you in the gardens. Wet and bleeding, bubbling and burnt to a crisp and still, still swinging a spear. You shouldn’t be getting dressed, you should be dead asleep in the hospital. Bakugou hasn’t thought this far and he doesn’t think he can yell anymore.

“Sir?”

What did he come here to say to you?

You look like a proper wild Alderan this morning like he’s hardly ever seen you. Worn eyes and bed hair, battle scars and a bruise that peeks out from under your collar. It took seeing you for him to remember the last conversation you’d had.

You’re mine.

“Your arm,” he musters instead of thinking harder and tips his chin to your left.

“Do you have business with my arm, sir?”

The shallow cut down Bakugou’s chest has started to scab, the one from your sword in the gardens. His only injury from last night and not because of his skill in a fight. You are battle weary, exhaustion holding your eyes in your head and healing magic draining the life from your heart to keep your arm intact. Shame roils.

Great galloping fuck, do you ever stop staring? You look through him under the doorframe with huge dim eyes.

“What help do you refuse?”

Whoever said that has said it much too sweetly Bakugou tisks, and you seem to agree because your otherwise tired face sets itself to stone. He pities the person that would speak to you like honey, his kamikaze captain, until he realizes you are looking only at him in an empty hallway and that syrup has dripped like drool from his lips.

“Is that all?”

He would be more upset with you if you were wrong. If he hadn’t actually run out of things to say and couldn’t only focus on staying upright after a night with no sleep.

He sounds like fucking Kirishima. The same shithead who started to cry after cornering a loose-lipped Deku outside of Aizawa’s interrogation office. He might have blubbered on for hours about your injuries if Bakugou didn’t send him on a chore to collect breakfast.

The hospital you must have escaped from healed your wounds but missed more than a few patches of dark blood crusted up your neck and into your hair, and then Bakugou remembers he didn’t come here to stare. Every day of tutoring and diplomacy, every shouting match, every spar, every fist fight is failing him. What did he come here to say?

“Don’t be stubborn.” Not that.

“Is that an order?”

Takoba has sucked the soul from your eyes, day by day. They should be filled with fire. He distinctly remembers fire, but today you hang in the doorway without a weapon and just wait for him to leave. Speak too quickly for him to think. You can’t even stare at him right anymore and it’s pissing him off.

You look like shit, he considers grunting, you smell worse. You gray my fucking hair, run away home. Go die for someone else. The broad prince shuffles his tongue over his teeth when vitriol doesn’t find its way from his mouth and while the pair of you watch each other too close in this cold hallway something so much worse sneaks out.

“It is.” He wants to spit the second the sounds leave his mouth.

“Yes, sir.”

And immediately the word ripples his skin from his bones, his sinews try to tear from his body every time you utter it and he knows now that you do it on purpose. Before Bakugou can recover and growl and kick his way through this cursed castle out of your stoney company, you turn your back to him and wait without moving, “The knot, sir.”

It’s so much worse without your staring. To stand with you alone and out of his mind with exhaustion and for your eyes to be anywhere other than burning holes through his head.

How dare you. Bakugou vibrates as he watches unmarred knuckles reach forward in time to register that his own hand is going to touch you. Even injured, your posture is still perfect, unsettling, and it’s taken twenty years for the prince to realize that you’re no bigger than a sunflower. You carry yourself like a dragon through his castle but it would take two of your hands to cover one of his. And you thought you could kill the flame mage? You thought he was worth your Alderan life?

In the time between dreading the closeness and pinching the bow at your back in his fingers, Bakugou remembers his fury. All the senseless shit he meant to say in the gardens suffocates in the smoke hate tends.

You, who orders your soldiers like an old general and then refuses to eat with them. You who hunt and kill for the queen but stumble through professionalism when it comes time to look at him. Do you smile alone, in your room or with your master? Or is subservience a full time job?

You’ve pulled the tie free of its bow with your stupid struggling and now Bakugou needs both hands to pick at a knot too small for his fingers because you can’t ask for help. You want to die so badly? Do it out of eyesight.

He focuses for one second too long to keep his magic from spiking with his anger like a teenager and with that second he finally pulls the fucking ribbon loose and– and it’s bad.

It’s ugly. You’re not bleeding, they’ve closed you up, but black bruises reach from your shoulder so far down your back he has to blink away when his eyes follow the trail too quickly. The back of the gown begins to open. Turning bruises purple, a scar like tree sap creeps out from under your sleeve, up your neck and down your spin. The burn. A pink scar like sparks in his twilight library.

Shuzenji can only do so much with bruises but this welt? It looks too angry to touch cloth. She couldn’t put in some goddamned effort? You saved her useless queen for all she knows and she couldn’t spare a fucking second to put you back together again?

Creativity given too much platform by your silence, a much worse thought surfaces. Did you escape, or were you discharged half patched like this to make room for more important patients? Royal patients. Blood in your hair.

Bakugou spent fifteen Julys in this Takoban hellhole, every summer for diplomacy or training or vacation, or whatever the fuck his mom decided to call forced socialization that year. He might as well have spent all fifteen years in the hospital for all the trouble he got into by the sea. Pirates and sparring or krakens, whathave you. There was never a broken bone bad enough, a concussion so blinding that Shuzenji couldn’t fix it.

“I’m no god, Katsuki,” she’d murmur even when he was too dazed to hear properly. Always, always she reminded him. How long had it been? How did he forget? “I can only use what you give me. If I take too much you’ll die.”

Your room reeks of the sea even with the windows closed and blue infects its every inch. Even the steaming tub at the foot of your bed tinges green at its bronze lips.

“Highness.” Your voice is a call on the wind when Bakugou realizes how tight he’s still holding your ribbons. You are a subtle source of warmth kissing his knuckles in a cold corridor and he can’t get away from you fast enough. You turn. Your shoulders drop and your gown drops with them, your big eyes catch the corner of your face and where anyone else might be coy you look through him like a hound.

“Thank you.”

The sounds that comes out makes him feel like a hound. Like a bark, tch, “Fuck back off to the hospital.”

“Is that an order?”

Your beautiful golden prince spits at your feet and turns away down the hall.

You wouldn’t have gone back even under orders. You woke up in the surgery the second Shuzenji put her hands on you. Searing wet pain and a thousand stitches and where her magic used to feel bubbly, this night was just fire. Blue fire, Takoban fire.

You were the only collateral from the attack. It should have filled you with pride that you protected not only your prince, not only a queen, her heirs, her champions, and guards, but her entire castle. Still, alone in the hospital with a rum cloth jaw clenched to keep from screaming– in the seconds or hours it took to hammer you together again– liquor was a welcomed distraction from the taste of mageblood.

Shinsou was there in flashes looking over you on the table and then in a blink holding someone back from the door, red hair like Kirishima, and hatred like molten sugar spilled from your every sweating pore on the operating table. Where was he? Your prince’s champion left him alone in a hostile country with only one guard and the incompetence of Takoba to keep him alive. If wrath could send letters, your Mitsuki would be inundated.

“C’mon miss martyr, head down please.” Uraraka’s smiling more than you’d like as she runs a sponge across your back. The bathwater is a touch too cold for you and still so hot that her arms have gone pink in the space where she’s rolled up her sleeves.

“I can wash myself.”

“Kats didn’t send me in here to watch a pretty girl wash blood out of her own hair,” the pink guard chuckles and you hate to waste this comfort filled with fury.

Before Shuzenji could wrap any part of you in bandages, a knock at the hospital door took her from attention. Shinsou had long disappeared so you slipped from the bed and through a door at the end of the room.

Footmen and maids balked as you whisked through the halls half-dressed and bloody. The guard stationed maddeningly at your bedroom door didn’t hesitate when you burst from the darkness and growled for hot water. You wouldn’t give your prince the satisfaction of sauntering through the castle nearly naked again but you had been stripped of your padding and armor, your weapons, and a generous serving of blood. The prince had to wait.

“I won’t really wash your hair if you don’t want me to,” Uraraka murmurs this time instead of laughing and you are back in safe company.

The smell of the sea makes you sick.

A change of clothes she brought for you from her soldiers' quarters lays nervously across your bed generally afraid to be worn. Rife with silver bits and baubles, limp where your Alderan uniform would be imposing. You’ll look like a doll and suddenly you’re angry all over again.

Uraraka is gentle when she rinses suds off your shoulders but the itch over the new skin there is deep and welcomed. The brush of Bakugou’s knuckles in the hallways left streams of goosebumps that still won’t fall and that you refuse to think about. Not his hands, never again.

“Do you like looking like this?”

Uraraka leans forward so you can see her expression and gestures vaguely to the room with her elbow, “Like what?”

“Like,” you slip your good arm over the edge of the bronze tub and water platters on rugs, “this.” You're both eyeing the Takoban uniform now.

“Do I like looking beautiful?”

“Like decoration.”

“I am decoration.”

Salt carries on a breeze through the room that persists even with the windows closed and your arm drops from the lip as you settle back down in your bath. That’s right. A few weeks away from home and suddenly you’re playing Royal Captain instead of war fodder, too good for a borrowed pair of greaves.

“Alderan uniforms are beautiful too,” the guard offers, but you rest your head a bit too limply in her hands as she brings water up your nape.

Your voice is tired, “Do you like giving orders?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“I like having a bed and sending money home to my parents.”

“Do you like fighting?”

“I do.”

Your queen is as fiery as her son, but did Jeanist have to tame her first? Or did she have to break him into a shape she liked to look at? Was it an honor? After hardly a month of travel together, Prince Bakugou had pulled up the edges of your identity like a bored child with cheap wallpaper. Fifteen years without so much as three words, then three weeks of torture and still somehow the thought of returning to Aldera where he won’t so much as growl towards your post makes your stomach ache. Where you will never be allowed to raise a weapon against him. Being decoration never bothered you before.

“I like free food and looking pretty,” Uraraka steadies her hand at the base of your neck and holds you tight, “I love my master, I love my friends, I love my city and my people. I miss my mom, I’m afraid to die, I can’t budget, I’ve never been in love,” her fingers pulse warm over your new skin, “I think I’m lucky.”

You think so too. You bring your knees closer in the water, “You look like a chandelier.”

Uraraka tilts your head gently towards the seashell uniform, smiling, “We look like chandeliers.” And then there’s a knock at the door. Your heart beats golden for a second.

“Y/n? Please tell me you’re in here.” Kirishima and his unmitigated gaul. Blood turns red again.

As you sit up properly, your pink guard shouts before you can find a weapon, “She’s in the bath!”

“Come back to the hospital, Y/n. Have you eaten? I brought breakfast, please can I come in?” Doors are made of shit driftwood here so you can hear his ragged breath even through the walls and gods, you start to sweat again.

You’re stiff, not bedridden. Your shoulders can roll again and a scar can’t keep you from raising a weapon, “You’d better arm yourself if you want to speak with me, Champion.”

“Y/n please–”

“Ei, go eat without us!” Uraraka plants her hands on your shoulders when you draw your knees under yourself to keep you from rising fully, “Go on, it’s okay I’m here.”

You don’t like how slowly it sounds like he’s moving. Kirishima rests something on the floor with a click and then clears his throat, “I’ll– I’ll tell the others you’re okay.”

“You do that,” Uraraka chirps for you again. She rinses her hands in the water beside your ribs as awkward footsteps pad away from the room. You settle back down on your hips and long for hot water. “What’s your problem with the champion?”

Your body is a rusted machine and it’s too hard to find words for your anger. Her Takoban champion threw himself off of a cliff to save you. Your champion ate dinner for a few hours too long instead, presumably because he was staring at Lady Mina. An Alderan embarrassment. Another knock.

This one is much too loud and in no way enunciatory. Your door flies open this time with Bakugou attached to the knob.

“Shitty Hair!” He howls over the edge of the door and down the hallway, “Almost wore this breadbowl as a boot, pick up your motherfucking food!”

Uraraka’s hands go limp at your back and she must be staring as blankly as you are because your prince only looks normal– milky and ferocious– until he turns inside to speak. It’s almost endearing how quickly his shoulders and scowl drop into a look entirely foreign on his face as he takes in the scene in front of him.

The first thing you’ll do when you get home is have tea with Master Jeanist under your favorite Saturday tree and laugh over the many expressions of your hellfire prince, for he dearly loves to gossip. He thinks the Bakugous are the most beautiful family in the country, and he’s right, and it’s infuriating in a thousand ways.

The prince clears his throat, hand still tight on the doorknob, “I’m going to the sea.” And he speaks to the bed because something has stopped him from looking at you. The veins in his hands dance. The air might as well be frozen.

With one movement he blinks to the window over both of your heads and steps backwards into the hallway, door closed and absolutely uncharacteristically silent as morning air.

Uraraka’s knuckles crack when her fingers twitch but that’s the only movement or sound either of you are allowed before your door flies open one more time and Bakugou, fuming frowning and bursting with something to say, explodes inside again. This time one slippered foot is deep in a shepherd's pie. Not even your bathwater stirs. Not a single sound comes from his clenched teeth, not even when his lips part to speak.

Six and holding your hands, eleven and soaked in a fruit filled hallway, all grown up and full of hate, always making magic in the library.

“I can ride,” you spare him, and Bakugou manages to look at you for a beat, to stare with jeweled eyes, before closing the door again.

A faint smell of meat and potatoes permeates the fresh air even with a new pair of shoes on. Bakugou huffs in his saddle. Todoroki doesn’t notice. The Takoban prince is too busy tacking your horse while his grooms watch on nervously.

“Just let them do it for her, get on already.”

“Certainly not.”

He knows it’s pointless but he would still rather work himself to fury with feather-brained Todoroki than sit with the image of you. Propped up in the bath with your hair down, a huge handprint scar wrapped around your bicep.

“Almost finished.”

Bakugou agonizes at the pace, but as his airhead companion finally secures the billet strap under the chest of a mottled cream gelding, Uraraka leads you into the stable. She knocks to announce your presence like that would do anything to dull the incessant shock of seeing you on two feet after just last night, wiping mageblood and tears from your cheeks.

You look insane. A black Alderan tunic you must have had tucked away somewhere and bright white Takoban riding pants. Blue strings poke off your hips at odd intervals like you’d ripped some of the baubles off but there are plenty more gems and silver seashells to catch the eye.

“Y/n,” Todoroki is animated when he says your name and Bakugou realizes he’s been staring. The Takoban prince rushes to meet you and your escort and crumples immediately to the ground.

Bakugou groans, head fully back, “Fucking– again? C’mon half n’ half, up.”

“Y/n, please accept my deepest apologies.” Todoroki always sort of sounds like he’s mumbling but this time he’s pressed his hands and face to the ground. You, with the quick wit, look between the prince and Uraraka at a loss for what to say. “You are a guest and to be injured on the grounds is unforgivable. The rogue mage will be caught. Captain Hawks has returned and his men patrol the city at–”

“Y/n!” Another voice, this one less grating, booms through the open air. Kirishima rounds the corner, startling staff, and Bakugou’s no psychic but you don’t seem thrilled. His champion rushes you– idiot– and stops just out of arm’s reach still in his bedclothes. He’s gotten more sleep than both of you combined but looks significantly shittier for it. “A soldier picked this out of rubble, I’m so sorry.” He opens his fist and perched in his soft hand like a pearl is your broach. White dragontooth. “We couldn’t find your halberd.”

There’s a moment of stillness for all involved, Todoroki on the ground, Kirishima and Uraraka beside you, before you turn sharp and stare directly at your prince. You are a painting. You’re always steadying an invisible weapon at your hip even in a nightgown, and where the fire in your eyes has died something hungry and possessive replaced it. Black like the ocean. Infinite. The jewelry in Bakugou’s ears begins to burn.

Todoroki raises his head curiously and muck and hay stick to his forehead. Groomsmen rush to wipe him off as you turn back and offer him a hand. Your bad hand, Bakugou notes from his high horse, and frowns with your next words to him. “Highness, please don’t muss yourself for me.”

One more movement after pulling Todoroki up, smooth like water– and it is so obvious that you are trained to kill– you pluck your broach out of Kirishima’s palm and fasten it to your chest as you spit at his feet.

Takoba is not endearing and Bakugou is on hour thirty-one without sleep. Everyone else might have forgotten but he surely hasn’t, the reason why Alderans are here at all. The observatory, a ball, the Takoban King and diplomatic relations. Bakugou sat through more meetings this month than the sum total of his life, in twinkling cold offices and throne rooms without fireplaces. Hardly time to breathe alone. He wraps his horse’s reins in his fingers in case he falls asleep with its canter over city cobblestones.

“Highness, there are too many blindspots.”

Bakugou opens his eyes with your words as he’s done for the whole afternoon, and frowns when he realizes for the thousandth time that you’re addressing Todoroki. The three of you ride at leisure down the central roads of the Takoban castletown. Every rocky step they take he looks forward to you, expecting this bump to be your last. Expecting you to finally slip sideways off your gelding in exhaustion like he so dearly would like to do. You don’t. You only bark at civilians to keep their distance or direct them away with tilts of your head. You are simply you again, riding tall and alert with no suggestion of the mage-eater you become in blue light. No hints that you have ever shed a tear in your life.

He shakes his head free of the thought. Citizens gawk, but generally don’t stop their errands to do anything more than watch as you all ride past.

“Astute. What do you recommend, Officer?”

Bakugou doesn’t need to open his eyes to know you hate being called an officer. He can hear it in the way you pause before responding, and then he growls through a laugh at the back of the caravan when you find the right words.

“I recommend not touring the town that potentially housed a fugitive.”

Todoroki probably planned this tour for Bakugou weeks ago, excited to show him all the developments to the city in the years he’s been away. He’s not one for change. Shinsou knocked him unconscious to keep him from fighting last night and the first thing the blue prince did upon waking from a terrorist attack was ask Bakugou to confirm today’s agenda.

“Is there a more private area included in this tour, Highness?”

“Yes.”

There’s a beat of silence and Bakugou snorts again.

“Could you please take us there?”

“Of course.”

The Takoban prince seems unaware of his dazzling presence as he guides his horse’s white head at a sharp turn to the west. Bakugou too, in his exhaustion, doesn’t realize how much attention he’s drawn from a city he’s so familiar with. A city so safe, its blue prince doesn’t need a guard.

“Oi,” you hiss on Bakugou’s other side and faster than he’s able to turn, you’re already pulling back on your reins to sidle around him. Your horse doesn’t seem the least bit disgruntled with the maneuver and flashes of consciousness pour between Bakugou’s eyes as he remembers bits of the night you arrived here, bleeding, begging. “Hands to yourself.”

Something pathetic like a dog whimpers below him and your prince peers over his thigh towards the cobblestones where a child is frozen between reaching out to touch his silver stirrup and staring in horror at you, a dark cloud behind them. The child, in modest warm clothes, backs away and flinches when your good arm jerks across your chest with your attention.

On his right, an older kid yelps and falls flat on his ass with two little hands clutching his head. Bakugou considers laughing out loud at this, husky and full of sleep; when he looks back at you, your hand hovers over your saddle’s grain bag and it becomes apparent you’ve walloped a child in the street with horse feed.

Everything feels insignificant when you’ve missed a night of sleep.

He has spent thirty one hours thinking of you. Watching you shoot, skipping lunch to hide, finding the words to speak to you. Being filled with so many things and then twisted excitement against your blade. Dread. Recounting your every step to one hundred officers. Searching for the hospital. Searching for your room.

You have spent those same thirty one hours awake, furious, burnt, bleeding, and then fully dressed on horseback. You are an exceptional guard. You are professional to a fault and it should drive him insane.

“You’re terrible with kids,” Bakugou rumbles as he rips a silver bauble off his vest and tosses it over his shoulder to the twerp flat on cobblestones.

You ride past him to follow Todoroki, “I manage you well enough.”

It doesn’t. Not even when you feign stoicism at the edge of the sea, not for a second. Because when Todoroki’s obnoxiously white horse leads the three of you past castle guards and down a private beaten path– under Bakugou’s favorite marble archway and out onto the beach, something hums in your black eyes.

It is the loveliest stretch of coast in the world, because it is protected by evil. On one side a steep grassy hill that bleeds into the marble castle, on the other, golden sand dotted with black volcanic rocks. The rocks tumble still and algaed into the blue sea, daring ships to beach there. Today the water rolls over itself in tiny frothing peaks as it does before a storm but the color is cold and charming and you have never before been so close to the edge of the world.

As your three horses trot onto soft sand, you turn your head to watch waves making their music and Bakugou can see your face outlined by the late sun. Your wide eyes. It will set soon. You are so much more adept than he is at hiding inside of yourself.

“The observatory,” Todoroki pipes up in the lead and points towards a white spire Bakugou’s never seen before, jutting like a mushroom off the side of the castle above you. In one movement, the blue prince dismounts from his horse and turns back towards his guests with an arm outstretched. “Come.”

Bakugou knows this beach. It’s broken his bones. He watches it every morning from his bedroom window.

Ahead of him the blue prince offers you his arm as you swing a leg over your saddle. Your body doesn’t hint to injury but you nod thankfully at the gesture and salt water rises in Bakugou’s throat.

“You were attacked in the old gardens last night,” Todoroki, standing too close, points up high towards the castle on the cliff, “All the way on the other side. The castle curves around the bend with the beach– although, it’s only cliff on that side.”

You stare as high as the sun will allow, “It’s a huge property.”

“Marble deposits in that cliff helped build the foundation. My family has lived here for hundreds of years.” Todoroki turns from your side and he is always so cluelessly pretty it’s irritating, to call out to Bakugou who’s frowning at the braids in his horse’s hair, “Katsuki did you k–”

But four syllables in and your prince is already waving his hand dismissively, “Fuck all the way off half n half. Give the captain your shit tour guide speech and leave me out of it.”

So you follow Todoroki, who nods, to the edge of the sea.

“Whose garden was it?” You murmur in casual interrogation.

“My mother’s. A long time ago.”

Bakugou knows exactly what question you’re holding back and so does Todoroki, “The king,” he offers. You nod again. You can hide but you’re no liar. Something sours for just a second.

As Bakugou pulls a knapsack off his saddle to use as a pillow while the two of you fuck around, you walk too slowly over the sand beside your tour guide and his first thought is injury until your lips part with timid breath. You move like a soldier, undeterred by uneven footing and fresh wounds, but you stare like a doe.

“Have you touched the sea before?”

You shake your head at the Takoban prince already a length ahead of you and tugging off his boots. The autumn air is warmed by the sun, but getting wet would make a miserably cold ride back.

“You should take off your shoes first,” he smiles. Bakugou spits over his shoulder and unsettles the horses.

You oblige the blue prince like you would any royal but you don’t do it quite so lifelessly as usual. Todoroki gives you his arm again for balance as you tug off one boot then another and bend at the waist to try and pull your pants legs away from the impending surf. You should look like a toddler, your prince should be laughing, but suddenly the sun has started to set and instead he realizes that somehow an entire day got away from him.

Bakugou formed his own opinions of the sea years ago, but he can’t remember the first time he saw it. Stepped foot in it. He reclines on the beach frowning, warm with sleep, and watches quietly.

You are mesmerized. Between black rocks you approach the water and stare. You bite your lip when you’re thinking this hard and the sun’s at just the right angle to reflect dancing shapes onto your chest. The frothing surf twinkles. It reaches for you with limp blue fingers. Two more times before you let it touch you and then your shoulders hitch.

Todoroki smiles, “Cold, isn’t it?”

“It’s alive.”

Do deer freeze in the first drops of a rainstorm? You aren’t made for the sea. You’re meant to hunt and make fires and sit under forest trees and eat plums in warm quarters. You shouldn’t have come.

Bakugou closes his eyes in the golden warmth and midnight pictures of you in the library come before sleep. Six years ago when curfew let up, you started eating alone in the library under the Great Oak and entirely ruining his time at peace to study wild magic. Sometimes you wore your uniform, sometimes a nightgown and cloak, and always he watched from the hallway above. Noting the nights your guard assignments kept you posted elsewhere. The sight of you sores something in him.

“Y/n!”

Bakugou’s eyes fly open when the cool-headed Todoroki actually raises his voice and the first thing he dreads is a half-dead mage rising from the waves you threw him into. He’s already up on an elbow to rise, but the blue prince has raced through the shallow water to where it hits his hip and grabs your arm– your bad arm– again. You’re mid sea-strong stride and many meters farther out than before your prince closed his eyes. Your riding pants are fully gray with wet. What are you doing?

“I saw something.”

Todoroki urges you inland, “What?” But you shake your head.

Your body rocks with the rhythm of strong tides like you’re dancing. Waves roll gently through you from the left and right and even with your back turned to him, Bakugou knows exactly what kind of face you’re making. What did you see? He was right this morning and cocky this afternoon, you should be in the hospital.

“You’re not strong enough for the tides, Y/n,” Todoroki starts, and your prince also knows a lecture from anyone other than your queen is going to whistle right through those fucking ears, “The shallows drop out just past that break, and you’ll exhaust yourself before the rip current releases you.”

Bakugou can see the scene play out like a script. You’ll acquiesce for no more reason than the Takoban prince outranks you, but before you do as you always have, sunset catches the corner of your face and something bright blinks in the blacks of your eyes. Something like candlelight.

“I’m alright, Highness.”

Bakugou twitches.

“You’re injured.”

It’s just a second you take to glance over your shoulder across the horizon and in that second both eyes blaze redhot like they’ve eaten your candles whole, and die black again just as quickly.

Then you nod, “Yes sir,” and accept the guidance of Todoroki’s arm back towards the shore while Bakugou watches propped on a tense bicep, studying his ache. You are a nightmare. A nightmare the sea wants to swallow, because as you’re led to shallow water two waves meet and a new break forms behind your thighs. The strength of the sea kicks yours and the Takoban prince’s feet uneven in the sand and the pair of you are sent backward a step and then forward by the hips into a beaching wave. In the setting sun the sea grows darker.

You resurface in just a second from clam shell surf silent and wide eyed, but Bakugou is already up. He should be laughing, especially as Todoroki rises from the water with a halo of foam blinking just as dumbfounded next to you. Seawater drips from your lips.

“Y/n, we are certainly not swimming now.”

And something entirely new happens. On your knees, soaked through, you stare at the blue prince for a beat and then drop your head back in laughter. Your tunic clings helplessly to the curves of your chest, shaking and expanding with your breath. The sound is starlight. Another wave, smaller, climbs over your shoulder while you sit in the surf and washes over your head. Your hair is made of seashells.

“You’ll get sick!” Snorting on water now, Todoroki tries to help you up but the receding tide sucks sand out from under you both, knocking you gently into one another, giggling together, and doused again. The sunset frames your wide grin. You are no longer in the library, in fact you are nowhere to be found.

“Give me your hand.”

The corners of your eyes are red from salt and crinkled with a smile when you tilt your head up towards Bakugou in the pinking sunset, wet to his knees above you with a strong arm outstretched. You shiver. You without magic. You with nine lives. Him staring at your seashell crown through messy blond hair.

He draws breath through bared teeth. It’s an ill joined feeling, how quickly your new smile drops, how quickly the stars hang themselves back up in the sky at the sight of him. You aren’t a doe, you’re a dragon. Quiet pertinacity bleeds black from you into the sea.

“You’ll ruin your pants, sir.”

And he’s no longer sure he could stop you from anything without killing you first.

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[legionofpotatoes]

funny how the more dramatically clear and thematically sound and just generally well put-together a story is, the sillier bioware's dialogue system looks in the middle of it. what do you mean I get to make that choice in harding's personal quest lmao are you fucking joking haha

[utterlyazriel]

whom the shadows sing for — (and the thief's echoing hymn)

a/n: here we go honeys. when me and aly (<3!) tossed this idea around months ago, this was the big question; how to do the reveal and what comes after. naturally it was as angsty as possible tehe <3 cw: canon typical violence

word count: 4.2k

synopsis: Azriel mourns a mistake that will haunt him for eternity as he races back to you. You play the leading role in one of your nightmares, but you can't seem to wake up.

CHAPTER SEVEN :: MATES

It's too loud and he can't think— that's the only coherent thing that Azriel can seem to grasp as he stumbles forward in the snow.

His shadows burst into a wild frenzy as he staggers towards the cabin door. It's not snowing here but the wind current is fast and wicked, tunnelling over the hilltop. His breath locks in his chest and even as he gasps, he can't seem to catch it.

It's too loud, too much— every single thought and feeling within him is just climbing over one another, overlapping, melding into each other so he can't tell where one ends and another begins.

Sadness, misery, torment, upset, anger. His emotions are thrown together with yours, a thousand afflictions all battling for his attention and he can't fucking think.

He shoves the cabin door open, falls through it, and it slams shut behind him.

Like a puppet getting its strings cut, all at once the noise... stops.

As though the very action of closing the door had managed to silence the bond between you and Azriel.

A different, very real fear suddenly burrows deep in his heart.

Still gasping for air, he shoves a hand against his chest and searches within himself desperately for that tether, his eyes crushing shut. For a moment, his heart hangs in the balance, teetering on the edge of agony.

And then— there.

Golden and rooted in his very soul, the bond that connects him to you. Only once he's found it does he release the breath captured in his lungs. He breathes an audible sigh of relief and shudders lightly, his knees giving out slightly.

He lets himself slump back against the cabin door as his scarred hand slips from his chest, his wings curling forward around himself. His head swims with the overload of new information, the first dregs of it only just sinking in.

You... were not the person you said you were.

...Was that such a bad thing?

Still breathing hard, Azriel's gaze turns to stare hard at his hands, their delicate scarring paining him nearly as much as the memory does. He thinks back to their origin.

Thinks back to a space too small for a growing boy, thinks of the darkness. He thinks of the never-ending misery that seemed to torment his life in a way he feared he would never escape.

It had taken a very long time for that fear to diminish in size; or perhaps, Azriel had just learned to grow around it.

But the cruelty of those mountains and the Fae that resided there was something he was intimately familiar with. The world up there, between the pines, was kill or be killed. Rise to the top of the food chain or spend every waking moment trying to figure out how to survive.

Isn't that what you had done? Learnt how to endure the conditions, to withstand the brute force of the winter and the merciless Illyrian way?

And wasn't that what he had done, all those years ago? Perhaps, the two of you weren't so different.

But his mind keeps snagging: liar, liar, liar.

Some vicious, prideful voice in his head makes a different point— he did it the right way. He didn't deceive anyone.

He fought for all he had, trained harder than any of his camp-mates to overcome every wretched obstacle in his way, earned his place at the top of the Blood Rite by being better, by working harder and winning.

Even with his... set back with learning to fly, he had still conquered it. He'd earned his place.

But… no, that wasn't right, was it?

He'd earned it, yes, but only because there was no other choice.

He had been kicked down at every possible chance, stalked for being born from a father who detested him and none of it was his fault. He'd earned his title as warrior but he had done nothing to reap every extra hurdle to get there.

Azriel had endured a great many terrible things in his life—and it took effort to recall that it wasn't fair. That it was an injustice he shouldn't have had to bear.

Sometimes, he hated how deeply ingrained the Illyrian way was within him. How it had changed him in the most unsavoury of ways, giving him an Illyrian pride that overtook his rationale at the worst of times.

It echoed out in the most unfamiliar of ways, like a hidden piece of himself he'd forgotten about— forgotten the person he'd needed to become to survive those camps.

So when Azriel thinks of the lie you've been hiding it, protecting yourself, the forgiveness is already there. It always was there. He could never had truly held it against you.

You had lied, yes, but as if there was any other way to survive. As if he could fault you for picking the option that let you fight, let you grow strong, let you keep your wings.

He remembers your words suddenly.

Please, I- I just wanted to keep my wings.

A sinister horror creeps up his throat and Azriel lurches forward, his forearms slamming against the cabin floor as his body forcibly retches. His stomach clenches tightly and bile floods his mouth but nothing comes out but his ragged breath.

How young had you been?

He knows to make your lie feasible it had to have been too young. Nine years old? Eight? He tries to recall the age that Lord Mylind said you started turning up trouble but it only succeeds in fueling the harrowing feeling that was running through his veins.

Azriel sags forward, his eyes drawing closed as he presses his forehead to the cool wood of the ground, trying to contain his growing dread. Still curled around himself, his wings quiver in the wake of his revelation. His shadows try soothe him, whirling down the planes of his neck.

You were pleading with him.

And... he had left you.

His stomach heaves once more, his breath a mixture of raspy pants.

It's impossible not to recount every single interaction you've had over the months, turning over every memory and seeing the other side of it with startling clarity.

The lone cabin, the outlier to the group. The tenseness in your shoulders when asked about the Blood Rite or your absences from training that Lord Mylind had spoken so crudely about.

Your drive to train and learn; the utter disappointment at the inadequacy of your tonics.

You had so much on the line, so much more than he ever could have imagined.

Azriel bites his cheek meanly as he recalls the conversation in which he asked why you hadn't completed in the Blood Rite. It makes perfect sense now; the exposure of the challenge was far too big of a risk and as a bastard, you would automatically be a target.

Even if you managed to succeed, which he had no doubt you could, the tattoos... removing your shirt...

All dead giveaways.

Your voice echoes in his mind.

Azriel, please, you have to understand—

You had begged him and he left you, he left you.

His body gives another awful retch, the horror of what he had done beginning to truly settle in. Gods, in a thousand ways you had been more trusting and vulnerable that he had ever known. Allowing him into your shelter, into your life...

Letting him get close to you, knowing that the closer he got, the more your secret threatened to reveal. And you let him anyway.

Azriel lurches to his feet, swaying for only a moment, his head reaching a clarity he so desperately lacked earlier.

He needs to go back. He should have fucking never left.

Somewhere between his ribs, there's an wallowing ache on the bond. A jolt of sharp pain.

Hand flying to his chest, Azriel stares at it and desperately prays to every god he can think of that he isn't too late to fix this. His eyes flick over to the Siphon on the back of hand, dim and lifeless. Drained.

Fuck. He snarls in his frustration. He can't even winnow back to you.

Turning and pressing back out the door, his boots smash through the snow outside for only a few steps— til he beats his mighty wings and takes to the skies.

Whether the bond had snapped for you or not, it didn't stop him from gripping that thread tightly and pouring every sincere intention down it. I'm sorry. I’m coming back. I’m sorry. I never should have left. I'm so fucking sorry.

He could only hope that you somewhere on the other side, connected to the same red string of fate, you could feel him coming back to you.

—

He's taking too long.

It's the thought that's stuck on loop, like a record that keeps skipping, repeating the same part over and over again. He's going as fast as he can and still, he knows he's taking too damn long.

As his wings strain from the long journey, the endless labyrinth of trees whirring past beneath him too fast to see, Azriel glimpses down at the siphons atop his hands.

They're still gleaming in that lacklustre way but there's more of a shine to them now. He can feel it too, the well refilling with a slow drip, the build up of his power.

His keen eyes scour the landscape, narrowed as he analyses the distance between here and Exordor. It's still far— it will stretch the reserve of magic that's barely begun to replenish but Azriel doesn't care. He'll do anything to reach you.

He squeezes his eyes shut, brow furrowing, and folds the fabric once more. The world spins as he pushes through the fabric of it, feeling the strain in his bones. The snowy entrance to your shelter comes into view.

He lands with a sickening crack, his knees bending to catch himself as he touches down, one heavy motion into the snow which spins up in a flurry. It's raining heavily, the drops coming down with a vehemence, creating a thunderous applause against the frozen ground.

Around him, the trees groan and shudder as they bow to the powerful energy. Birds take flight, cawing as they do. In the distance, there's a loud snap, carried with the wind.

Azriel stares right into the cabin.

His stomach threatens to lurch again at the sight. The door to your shelter is wide open.

His mate, where is his mate?

Stretching out the doorway, there are obvious signs of a struggle. The muddy snow has been kicked around, the boards nailed to the inside of the door are fresh with splinters, and... and...

The blood. Crimson, scarlet, fucking red blood coats the floorboards, a ghoulish splatter of it leading from your bed out the door, turning the slurry of melted snow a soft pink. He knows from the pull in his chest that you're not here.

This isn't just some attack. They haven't just ambushed you, they've... found out.

Where before he had felt terribly ill, bile rising, there is only icy and raging fury. In the distance, another snap sounds and his shadows beg him to pay attention to it, their whispers kissing at his cheeks. Water soaks his dark hair, stray raindrops rolling down his face.

Azriel ignores them and stumbles forward one, two steps and stops, his heart soaking in the reality of what had happened.

He had left you and they had taken you.

They found out and they hadn't killed you, they had— they had—

The snap in the distance. This time when it sounds, it yanks Azriel's attention, his head whipping towards where it's coming from. It's towards camp. Dread curdles up in his gut, latching onto each notch in his spine and burrowing deep.

Every instinct in his body roars into overdrive as he realises what it is he can hear in the distance — the crack of a whip against skin.

—

One of your nightmares has come to life, dragging from the murkiest parts of your mind and taking the treacherous form of Brudam.

You keep begging yourself to wake the fuck up.

It can’t be real— this can’t actually be happening, you think desperately, none of this was ever supposed to happen- you had- it was- you secret was something you guarded with your life.

"Wake up," You plead to yourself deliriously. Your wrists are already feeling chafed from where they're bound against the wooden pole, the steel that binds them cold as ice. The rain has soaked you to the bone.

"Wake up," You all but sob, trying futilely to pull against the restraints on your wrists.

It only succeeds in tugging on the stakes driven through your wings, a searing, fiery type of pain the ripples along every nerve in them. A sob scrapes up your throat, answering the pain's call. It hurts, it hurts, it fucking hurts in a way you haven't known before — everything, every cell in your body, is being tortured.

A shredding deep in your gut as though you've taken a fistful of claws to the stomach makes you seize, your vision flashing wildly. Even now, your cycle continues its bloody rampage. You can't stop crying, can't stop your body from convulsing in pure agony.

Somewhere behind you, your ear pick up the shifting in the mud, Brudam preparing to strike again.

Even sobbing, you tense up, unable to stop yourself—instinct drives you to hastily try tuck your wings, trying to pull them from their spread position. They catch on the stakes pinned through them meanly, the delicate flesh tearing with a sickening squelch and sending rivers of pain up into your body.

You cry out a strangled gasp, your head bowing further forward, trying to escape what's to come.

The blow rains down onto your unprotected wings all the same.

It's pure fire. Like they've doused the membranous skin of your wings with oil and set them ablaze, fiery hot pain licking at the tendons, tracing all the way up to your bare back. Your teeth grit to contain your scream. Tears streak down your face, lost in the thrum of the rain.

"Wake. Up." You demand to yourself again, panting heavily now.

You can't take much more pain or you'll be unconscious soon and some awful part of you knows, that's when they'll take your wings. You'll wake up midway to the worst nightmare of them all; the splintering sound of them cutting them off your body.

There's a boot pressed suddenly to your lower back, pressing meanly.

"Oh no, this isn't a dream," Brudam taunts as he leans down, all too happily. His tone shifts to something harder with his next words, nearly spitting the words. "I knew there was something off about you, you mutt."

His voice climbs to a shout, addressing the crowd gathered around you. "I always knew you were a FUCKING TRAITOR!"

There's a roar from the crowd, lead by the antsy group of warriors you've grown up and trained beside. All of them are eager to see justice delivered for your lies. None of them are pleased to have been duped, much less by a female.

They know, everyone knows. There's no coming back from this. Even if it weren't from the scent of blood from your cycle, your bound chest—revealed through your cut away armor— is proof enough.

Another convulsion rocks your body, the pain from your cycle making itself known. You're burning hot from every laceration on your skin and freezing cold from being bare in the icy rain. Your defence gets swallowed up in your pitiful whimper.

The mud behind you shifts again, Brudam no doubt winding up for his next hit.

You hold your breath, capturing the next sob in your throat. Your wings tug inwards, despite how you beg them not to, and your wrists ache as you try to wrench them free fruitlessly.

A sense of finality sinks in. You're going to die here.

A part of you feels like maybe you'd always known it would end like this, one way or the other. It's tired. So fucking tired of living in your intricate lie and spending each and every moment of your miserable existence on alert. On defence. Waiting for a break that never seems to come.

It's that part that can't, in any capacity, be truly upset at Azriel.

You can't resent him for leaving when you're the one who lied.

You can't regret him finding out, without regretting ever meeting him—and that means... regretting all the happiness you've truly felt.

But there's also an anger swirling within you, a rage that is as icy as it is hungry for vengeance.

Inexplicably, it feels unknown. Not your own. It starts somewhere in your chest and it only feels like it's getting bigger, growing in size, glowing hotter.

In the drone of the rain, blackness swims before your tired eyes as they begin to slip shut— only, no, they haven't closed.

The darkness is real and in front of you. It's surrounding you, curling up from under your captured arms. Despite the loud protests from your anguished body, you lift your head shakily. You're still quivering, quiet hiccups pushing out your lips.

"What are you doing, witch?" Brudam snarls from behind you, his boot on your back digging in harder. You wince, the motion dragging your wings against the splinters of the stakes. You shake your head, unable to form words.

It isn't me, you want to say.

But you're not entirely sure that's true either. The black plume is only around you, rising as though it is coming from you. Protecting you.

"Brudam!" A loud voice cuts across the rustling, nervous crowd, cutting through the din of the rain clear as night and sounding as deadly as venom. The courtyard falls into silence.

Your heart lurches up your throat. You know that voice.

Something within you cleaves in half, torn by opposite forces. On one side, there the mountainous evidence of your miserable life, of every thing that's worked against you time and time again. Of the fact that things don't work out for you, they never have. You're a fool to believe that would change now.

The other side... is a terrible, feeble hope.

Because he came back.

"Shadowsinger," Brudam greets with a sneer. The boot on your back shifts and then retreats, the warrior turning away from you. Agony tears through your body again and you hold your breath, shuddering through the silent pain with gritted teeth. A dangerous hope starts to cling to your heart.

"One chance," Azriel growls. The hair on the back of your neck rises at the promise of violence in his voice.

"Let her go."

Brudam snorts unattractively, forcing a bitter sounding laugh out. You focus on trying not to throw up as the pain fogs your brain, bile filling your mouth.

"Not fucking likely."

"Walk away." Azriel snarls his demand, sounding angrier than you've ever heard him.

"Over my dead body, bastard," Brudam spits back, the mud shifting as he digs his feet in, preparing to fight. His hand tightens around the whip in his hand.

There's a moment of silence, the wind carrying a whistle, the trees swaying as if leaning closer to listen in, two warriors sizing each other up in the pouring rain. Your ears strain for Azriel's response.

"Gladly."

And then the courtyard is doused in pure shadow.

—

Azriel moves without hesitation.

Illyrian warriors are fiercely trained to fight through every type of conditions, battling in the harshest of all seasons. Snow, sleet, rain, shine. They're disciplined to go days without sleep, to fight and win, even with one arm pinned behind their back.

But what defence is there against losing your sight?

Azriel hadn't even known his shadows were capable of such a thing. Their usual whirling expands in a blink of an eye, spreading out into a storm-cloud of blackness that drapes itself across the landscape. People murmur and bleat in fright as it creeps out deathly fast, snuffing senses and blinding everyone in the courtyard except him.

Like Rhys' own cloak of darkness, of midnight — but no, it's not night, it's shadow.

Azriel doesn't dwell on it, doesn't hesitate. Not when there's still territory, still enemies, in the space between him and you.

There's a ripple of unease from the warriors but Azriel's already advancing, the shadows beneath his boots silencing the shift of his feet. Through the darkness, Brudam gives himself away with an animalistic snarl and leads Azriel exactly to his his target.

He swings powerfully and Heartstriker does what it does best—aims true.

The bones in Brudam's shoulder makes a horrible sinking crack as the blade pierces it through, the brute giving a fiendish cry of pain.

Azriel drives it all the way through, his anger aiding his strength as he swipes out Brudam's feet. Heartstriker buries itself deep into the mud, driven by the weight of Brudam's body as it hits the ground.

All Azriel can think is that he should fucking gut him, should skin him alive. He should pull that blade and drag it forward, force it through all the muscle and shatter every bone on the way, until it pierces his awful heart.

The mating bond within him roars at him to do so, every inch of his body, of his soul, enraged at the state he'd found you in, the agonising hurt bestowed on you by this male—but it's not his kill. Azriel knows that.

So instead, he draws the Truth Teller with deft, deadly accuracy and then sinks it in deep into Brudam's groin, til the tip reaches mud on the other side.

Brudam howls, his whole body twitching as it tries to curl up against either blade unsuccessfully. Between the rain and the shadows, he's too incapacitated to do anything except wail.

Azriel doesn't waste a second, already moving. There's a warrior approaching on every side but between the gift of sight and silence in the shadow, he's devastatingly lethal.

One goes down with a slice across his throat, crimson soaking his front. The next crumbles after too many jabs of Azriel's dagger land in his torso, too slow to block them when he can't see them coming. The next, his head cut from his shoulders in one mighty swing.

Their cries join the thunder of the storm but somehow, through it all, all he can hear is the softness of your weak breath. Wounded. Fading.

Azriel's vision goes red. He moves expertly, his kills efficient until the burning rage in him gets too much and then he's slashing with pure malice, teeth gritted in hate, as he cuts down any warrior who stood by and watched. All he can feel is the thread between you and him, nearly torn from how much they've hurt you.

When the clashing of steel stops, the last foe dead, only the din of the rain remains.

Like a vacuum has opened somewhere in the sky, the inky cover of his shadow is sucked away, leaving only his sluggish moving shadows and exposing the bleak day. Carnage lies all around him. Bodies upon bodies of warriors.

Azriel can only see you.

You're still strapped to that torturous pole, your beautiful wings forcibly spread out and pinned, like you're being laid out for dissection. Across the flesh of your wings is a sickening number of thin, scarlet lines, gently bleeding.

Beneath you, in the mud, is the remains of your armor and Azriel can trace the scar that'll be left on your back from where it was cut off. The binding on your chest remains, now stained with blood.

You aren't moving.

He sprints without thought, without reason, following the bond. He finds the thread within his chest, grasps it tight, and tugs desperately. You don't even flinch.

A fear mounts inside him, more heart-wrenching than he's ever felt before. A glance down at his siphons reveals their still dull appearance—fucking useless to him.

Azriel staggers to his knees as he reaches you, his scarred hands reaching up to pry off the steel that binds your wrist to the wooden pole—ripping out chunks of the wood at the same time with his rapid, panicked motion. Your hands fall limply to your sides. He feels sick again.

"Y/n?"

He's scared to touch you, scared to do more damage that he's already caused, so so frightened that he just found you and you might already be gone.

He doesn't know what he'll do if you die. He can't—the thought is suffocating in itself, like a black hole that opens and starts pulling in his entire world— you can't die or he'll— he'll- nothing will matter anymore.

RHYS. He throws the plea out desperately, nearly delirious at the sight of your unmoving body. The words sound like a sob, even in his own mind. You have to help me.

Where are you? Rhys' voice fills his mind in an instant.

Then... a haggard breath sounds, like drawing through a mouthful of blood. You cough lightly, barely audible, and murmur, "...Azriel...?"

Something explodes inside Azriel, a burst of pure energy that fills him with relief so overwhelmingly he could cry.

Exordor. He barely manages to think properly, to even respond, beyond the staggering emotion. Come immediately. Please. I need you to- she needs—you have to help her. Please.

I'm on my way.

[NEXT PART: STRANGERS (AGAIN)]

tags below!

@strangerstilinski @janebirkln @itsswritten @mischiefmanagers @hnyclover

@waytoomanyteenagefeels @idkitsem @illyrianbitch @jeweline16 @fightmedraco

@iamjimintrash @maendering @spideytingley @aneekapaneeka @cassianswh0reeee

@viciane @astarlitsoul @mybestfriendmademe @archiveofcravings @reputaytionn-13

@bionic-donut @chessebookgirl @itseightbeats @littleblackcatinwonderland @twsssmlmaa

@fanworrior @skysayhi @vintageoldfashion @tequilya @fabulouslyflamboyant5

@rhysandorian @laughterafter @brieftriumphnightmare @hirah-yummar @some-person-somewhere

@scooobies @sfhsgrad-blog @cherry-cin @bookloverandalsocats @megscabinetofcurios

@doodlebugsblog @landofpetrichor @acourtofdreamsandshadows @florabelll @tanyaherondale

@aomi-recs @letmejustreadthanks @problemfinder @sevikas-whore @doodlebugg16-blog

@meandmysillywriting @justingnoreme @krowiathemythologynerd @hanatsuki-hime @sunny747

@coffeebeforewater @kalulakunundrum @marina468 @moonbirde (i'm so sorry! u asked me to tag u right at the beginning and i've forgotten this whole time! forgive me pls <3)

[persephoneism]

"In ancient Greece, mortals suffer under the tyranny of the gods—forced to sacrifice the food they depend on, their worldly possessions and even each other at the whims of the Twelve" STOP 👏 BEING 👏 SO 👏 FUCKING 👏 BORING 👏

[catherine-sketches]

When I learn that an actor can sing my mind immediately goes “oh! So this character can sing then”

Which brings me to the sad thought of:

Does Aegon know he can sing?

Does Alicent know that her son can sing?

Does anyone know?

[my-name-is-apollo]

Wikipedia edit history can be a funny place sometimes

[wren-writes-things]

Because I’ve been thinking about it all day and I have never explained it on here, the Hymn AU. Basically, it’s very loosely based on the mythology of Persephone, Demeter and Hades.

Note it is loosely inspired, all familial relationships in Greek mythology have been ignored and backstories have been adjusted to explain this. This also has a lot of things that do not line up with the Hymn to Demeter or any other related mythology, but if you ever want to know about the actual mythology you should ask me. It’s a favorite research topic of mine.

Anyway! A bit of an overview: we have Persephone! Anne, Demeter! Sasha and Hades! Marcy.

Following the murder of the her followers, the Plantars, Anne travels to the underworld. Her go:al convince the god of the dead to release them so that they could have another chance at life. A plan that goes about as well as one would expect it to, her request is denied, after all the dead just aren’t meant to leave the underworld.

However in the process she meets Marcy, the aforementioned god of the dead, who takes sympathy on her and offers to let her stay in the underworld with her the Plantars. Anne will have the chance to move on and who knows maybe she’ll even be able to help Marcy improve her realm.

Meanwhile in the world of the living, Sasha is dealing with the aftermath of Anne leaving. And also the aftermath of her own poor choices: turns out smiting your girlfriend’s insignificant mortal followers is a bad idea. She is giving her space, kind of. She is worried though, and at some point this spirals into jealousy and then to just assuming that Marcy kidnapped Anne. A train of thought that goes so well and by that I mean, Sasha travels to the underworld, further destroys her relationship with Anne and then starts the apocalypse.

Around the same time, Marcy and Anne are growing closer: they’re friends, they’re going on dates, Anne has been helping Marcy communicate with the souls of the underworld, overall they’re just genuinely happy. There’s just… one tiny little issue: Marcy’s fear of abandonment/intense fear of anyone leaving the underworld. Specifically that Anne will leave, and soon unless somehow she manages to keep her here. And so she surprises her with a gift, an offering if you will, the first pomegranate they’d grown. And once Anne eats it she’s trapped in the underworld forever.

[unityrain24]

still can't believe mormons turned "scotland the brave" into. "Praise To The Man Who Communed With Jehovah." Literally wtf is wrong with you people leave scotland out of this T^T