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demigod-shenanigans · 2 months ago

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The choiceless hope in grief

Summary: Leo Valdez has lived and died for the gods. Their war has shaped his life since he was a baby. With Gaia defeated, he sort of hopes he can finally rest. He has friends and some semblance of home to return to for the first time since he was eight years old. Just this once, he allows himself to hope the good things might stick.

But the gods aren’t done with them just yet, by the time Leo finds his way back, Jason is gone.

This time, Leo decides he’s done just taking the Fates’ bullshit lying down. If getting his best friend back means striking a deal with the gods and venturing into the Underworld… well, it’s probably not even the most reckless thing he’s ever done.

The caveat of said deal? He has to trust Jason will follow him, or his self-doubt will doom them both.

And after the life he’s lived, Leo is so intricately familiar with self-doubt that he could probably trademark the word.

Or: The only possible way for Orpheus to succeed is if he learns to think of himself as a person worth loving.

Word Count for chapter 1: ~5k

Rating: Teen and Up

So! *claps hands together* I’ve been threatening you guys with my Orpheus Eurydice valgrace fic for a while! Technically I wanted to wait to post this until I’m completely done writing the fic, and I mostly intend to stick to that! I’m only posting this now because I have a minor surgery tomorrow and I’d rather be anxious about fic related things than about the surgery in question. So, take this chapter as a preview of sorts, more to come soon-ish but probably not immediately!

A couple of important notes before we start:

-TW for suicidal ideation. It’s less Leo actually wanting to die and more his canon behavior of “I’m doing something extremely reckless that might succeed but if it doesn’t, my death is an acceptable consequence”, paired with general grief related self-loathing, but if you think you’re not in the right headspace to read about that, come back when you are or at least tread carefully. This fic pics up at the end of The Burning Maze, so especially the beginning is pretty heavy on the grief stuff.

-Since ToA is vaguely canon to this fic, Leo and Calypso are technically dating in the beginning, but they don’t really interact positively as a couple (honestly they don’t interact that much in general) and break up pretty early on. Just be aware in advance that they’re still together for a little bit.

-Fic title is from Talk by Hozier which is maybe a painfully obvious pick but it was too perfect for me not to use it.

Chapter 1: Leo and Piper have an extended sleepover

It wasn’t a discussion between Leo and Piper whether or not to go to Jason’s funeral. They came to the decision that they wouldn’t silently—or as silently as one could come to an agreement when all parties involved were sobbing.

Maybe it should have been a discussion. There was a part of Leo that worried he’d regret this later—his refusal to take this chance to say goodbye and let himself grieve.

But Leo remembered his mother’s funeral. Remembered the way his aunt Rosa had looked at him like she knew his mother’s death had been his fault. Leo couldn’t stand the thought of people looking at him like that again.

He also didn’t remember his mother’s funeral bringing him any sense of closure or comfort. He’d stood at her grave, afterwards, just as desperate and afraid and utterly inconsolable as he’d been before the funeral, except it had suddenly felt sickeningly final. The wound it had torn in his soul had kept bleeding for years, and the scars would stay forever. He didn’t need any of Apollo’s shitty oracles to know Jason’s death would be exactly the same.

At this point, Leo was pretty sure his sanity was being held together by a combination of jokes and a truly questionable amount of duct tape.

Beyond all that, though, Camp Jupiter was a battlefield right now. It would continue to be a battlefield for the foreseeable future.

Leo wasn’t a coward. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go back and help. But one of his best friends was already in a box, and there was no way in hell he’d risk the other.

With how tightly Piper was clinging to him, maybe she was thinking the same thing.

For all his big talk about dragon escorts, Festus did most of the actual escorting on his own, occasionally torching what Leo hoped were monsters and not random public monuments. Leo, for his part, spent most of the journey crammed into the backseat of the car next to Piper, sandwiched between her and a bunch of moving boxes that seemed determined to flatten him into a Leo-shaped pancake whenever they took a sharp turn.

He’d spent so long thinking about seeing her and Jason again.

He’d talked Calypso’s ear off about them the whole journey, to the point where it had clearly started to annoy her. He’d thought about various ridiculous entrances he could make, and the fact that he’d probably get yelled at, but he’d also thought about sitting together by the campfire, sharing nachos. He’d thought about Jason hugging him so fiercely that he couldn’t breathe, and Piper cussing him out while she held him, making him promise never to do anything that reckless again.

Now Piper was actually holding him, and Leo couldn’t feel anything. There was a numbness in his chest. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to ever feel happiness again. Hell, even if he did, what was the fucking point? Every time anything even remotely good happened in his life, it got ripped away from him again.

They didn’t talk a whole lot for most of the drive. They cried until it felt like they couldn’t anymore, clinging to each other like desperate children.

Even if they’d wanted to talk about what had happened, Piper’s dad was right there, and despite the Mist usually working overtime for them, having him overhear seemed like a gamble. Or, well, maybe that was what Leo told himself. Maybe he just wasn't sure he was ready to hear it all. He still felt like he couldn’t think. He was overwhelmed to hell and couldn’t stop fidgeting.

Several hours into the trip, his stomach started grumbling. Piper dug through the bag at her feet and offered him one of her PB&J sandwiches, but Leo couldn’t eat. He hadn’t skipped a meal in forever—he’d been homeless and unsure when he’d even get access to the next meal enough times that it had been all but tattooed into his skull that he couldn’t afford to—but he couldn’t even think about eating without feeling sick. He thought about Jason. He thought about the state he’d left Camp Jupiter in and the fact that they hadn’t even been able to give the dead their proper funeral rites.

Had Leo’s help made any difference at all? Had anything he’d done in his life changed things even slightly?

Leo knew the Fates had intended for it to be fire that fell—for him to burn in a bright, hot blaze and turn himself to charcoal. But he’d refused to stay dead like a good little pawn, and now Jason was gone, and it was all his fault.

He wasn’t sure how Piper could even look at him right now, but he was beyond grateful that she was holding onto him as tightly as she did. It was the only reason he didn’t fall to pieces completely. The cog at the heart of Leo’s machine had broken in a way that made it utterly beyond repair, and now it felt like a matter of time before the whole thing came apart. Piper holding him was the only reason his remaining pieces were still functioning.

It should have been impossible for Leo to fall asleep under these circumstances, but he’d been traveling for hours and fighting before then and he’d cried out his remaining energy, so eventually, the world started to fade around him, reduced to just the sound of Piper’s breaths, until finally, those went, too.

~~~~

It would have been kinder, maybe, if Leo had dreamed up some shitty visions promising violent death and/or the end of the world. That would have been business as usual.

Instead, he dreamed of his time on the Argo II—of one of those early nights when the different groups were still getting to know each other, having a brief moment to breathe between their ridiculous tasks and saving the world.

It had seemed reasonable to catch each other up on what had happened on their end. Percy, Hazel and Frank had talked about rescuing Thanatos, and Piper, Jason and Leo had told them what had happened with Hera in turn.

This would have been a boring intel conversation at best, seeing as Leo had been there for all of their part, but they’d grabbed snacks and sat on cushions on the floor and made it a whole bonding activity. Jason had been wedged between Piper and Leo, and they’d taken turns storytelling.

And Jason had bragged. So much. But he hadn’t even had the decency to brag about himself like a normal human being. Instead, he’d talked about how capable Piper and Leo had been, somehow managing to make Leo sound like the coolest person he’d ever met. Which was ridiculous, considering he’d met everyone else on their team.

And sure, Leo made it sound like he thought he was amazing all the time, but he was exaggerating, which everyone, himself included, knew.

Jason didn’t seem to have gotten the memo, though. He had one arm wrapped around Leo the whole evening, and he got all starry-eyed when he talked.

“Leo took on three Cyclopes by himself. Three!”

“Dude, stop!” Leo had laughed, shaking his head. “I know I’m incredible and you’re blessed to be friends with me and stuff, but you weren’t even conscious for that part.”

“Still happened, though.” Jason had beamed at him. “You’re amazing, dude. I would have died about fifteen times on that mission if it hadn’t been for you. You guys should’ve seen him.”

It would have been easier if Leo had thought Jason was just trying to talk him up to the others to make them more willing to trust him after how badly he’d messed up in New Rome, but Jason wasn’t the type. He’d looked like he honestly believed every single word he was saying.

So, of course, Leo had refused to seriously deal with any of the things that made him feel.

“Sorry, Pipes, but I’m pretty sure your boyfriend is in love with me. It’s the fire powers, I’m afraid. I’m just too hot to resist,” Leo had joked instead, and Piper had untangled herself from Jason’s other side to throw Doritos at Leo, and everything had been right in the universe.

~~~~

Waking up from that, blearily blinking himself awake in the car full of moving boxes and remembering… that was a worse punch in the gut than waking up from most nightmares had been. And Leo should know. He’d had so many of those over the years that he was basically a certified nightmare expert at this point.

Leo wanted to go back in time and spend forever in that one evening, living it over and over and over again until the Fates or a temporal paradox or something eventually killed him. He wanted to hold on to what they’d been back then—the three of them together and happy and whole,back before they’d realized what the prophecy really meant.

He wanted to stay wrapped in Jason’s arm and hear him laugh at whatever stupid joke Leo came up with while he and Piper threw snacks at each other like ten year olds. He wanted to believe he could actually��be the person Jason was bragging about—this invincible hero that could do just about anything and saved people’s lives.

But Leo had never been that hero. Even his sacrifice had been the selfish decision of a coward who wasn’t ready to die just yet. Jason had been their Superman. The guy who could fly and threw lightning and saved people from falling to their deaths. Jason had been the hero. And ultimately, that had been what killed him.

Leo wasn’t exactly sure what he planned to do once they got to Oklahoma. He should have been heading back to the Waystation, to give Calypso the normal life he’d promised. But he wasn’t thinking about Calypso, or the Waystation, and the thought of a normal life had gone out of the window the second he’d seen the coffin. Besides, the Waystation would mean people asking questions, wanting to know about his mission and asking him to talk about his feelings, and he didn’t want that.

The only thing Leo really wanted to do right now was not think.

By the time they got to the house, it was so late that cross-country dragon flight seemed inadvisable for visibility reasons alone, so Leo agreed to stay the night. Festus nuzzled him for a bit, got a fuel snack from the canister Leo had brought and then folded down into his million pound suitcase form for the night.

It took a little under two hours to carry all the boxes inside, which was an annoying amount of time to be carrying boxes but seemed like an absurdly short amount to move the contents of an entire life.

They spent some time in search of the necessities that needed to be unpacked, but the house was still furnished and also had running water and electricity as of a few days ago, so it wasn’t that bad.

While Piper went in search of some ancient camping gear so Leo wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor—this seemed silly to him, the floor was far from the worst place he’d ever slept—Leo asked Piper’s dad if he could help with dinner.

Tristan looked relieved at his offer, actually. He’d been staring at the assorted vegetables with a slightly lost expression, trying to hack at one of the zucchinis with a butter knife. It seemed like he was trying to remember how cooking worked and had just discovered he had absolutely no idea.

Considering how long he’d been an insanely rich guy with a personal cook, Leo guessed that actually might have been a pretty accurate read on the situation.

“You might want to try a sharper knife,” Leo suggested, which made Piper’s dad look absolutely mortified. “Try not to chop off any of your fingers, though. I think Piper’s been traumatized enough for one week.”

The words were out of his mouth before Leo could think to stop them. Tristan didn’t laugh, but at least it didn’t seem like he’d be tossing Leo out of the house over this. Maybe he realized people sometimes said stupid shit when they were grieving. Maybe Piper had just warned him in advance that Leo was like this sometimes.

Tristan just went to find a different knife, which would have maybe been concerning if he hadn’t gone back to hacking at the vegetables a moment later.

“Well, at least this one is actually cutting through the zucchinis. That’s already an improvement.”

“Yeah, I’m basically a cooking expert,” Leo said with a grin, only half-joking. He went to peel and chop up the carrots, and was done with those and about half the mushrooms by the time the poor zucchini had been hacked to bits.

“You and Piper went to school together, right?” Tristan asked after a while of them quietly chopping vegetables for the casserole, trying to make sense of things with information he didn’t have and that, judging from past evidence, probably would have made his skull crack. “You and her and Jason.”

“Yeah. We went to Wilderness school together.” Leo winced, trying not to think too hard of Jason while also trying to remember the lies they’d already told Piper’s dad. At this rate, he was pretty worried his own skull would crack, too. “Then all three of us switched to a different school. Then I was gone for a while.”

Tristan nodded like this made perfect sense, though he mostly seemed lost in thought. That was a little rude, in Leo’s opinion. If he went through all that effort to remember their elaborate setup of lies, the least Piper’s dad could do was appreciate it!

“I’m glad you’re here now, with everything that’s happened. Piper was really upset when you left,” Tristan said, still with that faraway look in his eyes. “The last few months were hard for her. Between the move and the breakup, she really could have used a friend.”

Leo promptly lost all rights to make fun of Piper’s dad and his vegetable chopping skills because at the word ‘breakup’, the knife slipped and he nearly sliced off two of his fingers.

“Fuck! Ow!” he said eloquently, trying to avoid bleeding all over the cutting board in his attempt to get to the sink. “Jason and Piper broke up?”

The question sounded absurd even to his own ears. Why would Jason and Piper break up? They’d been happy together.

Surely, Piper’s dad had to be talking about something else.

To Leo’s shock, Tristan nodded.

“A while ago, yes,” he said, but he didn’t go into details—possibly because Leo was bleeding all over the sink. “We should bandage that. Do you think you need stitches?”

“No, the cuts aren’t that deep,” Leo decided, turning on the faucet and holding his bleeding hand under the stream of cold water. Maybe he should have been more concerned about the injury, but his mind was still whirring at the thought of his best friends breaking up. Unfortunately, the cold water stung like hell. He hissed with pain. “Sorry for making your kitchen look like a crime scene right after moving in. Usually, I at least have the decency to wait a day or two.”

Because the house was a small, cozy place and Leo had not had the decency to curse quietly, Piper appeared in the doorway a moment later, an alarmed expression on her face.

“What happened?”

“I’ve been bested by a stupid potato,” Leo cursed, holding up his bleeding hand and wiggling his fingers for emphasis. He figured out immediately that this was a mistake. “Ow.”

“Stop that, dumbass!” Piper cursed, moving to stand beside him. “Sink was the right call, but you need to use soap or the cuts could get infected. Dad, any chance we have gauze lying around somewhere?”

Tristan didn’t seem to question why his daughter had immediately jumped into emergency medical treatment mode. He just abandoned the cutting board and headed for the front door.

“Not exactly sure what box our regular medical supplies are in, but I’ll get the first aid kit from the car. I’ll be right back.”

“Do we have to do the soap?” Leo whined, because fuck, that stung, but Piper nodded with a scary expression on her face, so he complied. “How do you even know this stuff? Are we sure you’re not secretly an Apollo kid?”

“I know this stuff because I’m friends with a bunch of morons who have zero sense of self-preservation,” Piper cursed, gritting her teeth. “You shouldn’t be around knives when you’re this distracted.”

“I can usually cook just fine when I’m distracted. Your dad was the one who told me you and Jason broke up in the middle of this stupid potato,” Leo said defensively. “Is that the Mist messing with him?”

That was the only explanation his mind had supplied so far that made any sense to him.

Piper shook her head. “We really did break up. That was a few months ago.”

Leo felt his jaw hit the floor.

“What the hell happened? You were together for ages. I thought- you always seemed so happy.”

“I know, but-” Piper broke off abruptly when her dad came back inside with the first aid kit. Demigod stuff, then?

Leo’s mind was racing. The breakup was a completely stupid thing to focus on, considering everything that had happened in the last few days. He knew that.

But it was easier to try and make sense of this than it was to try and make sense of the fact that Jason was gone and he’d never get to see him again.

“Is it alright if we do this somewhere else?” Piper asked her dad, taking the first aid kit from him.

“Of course. It might be easier to patch him up when you’re both sitting down, anyway.” He turned towards Leo. “Thank you for your help, but I think I can take it from here.”

Leo sent a silent prayer to whichever deity was responsible for protecting vegetables—Demeter, probably?—and gave what he hoped was an encouraging thumbs up with his uninjured hand before he followed Piper into the hallway to presumably be reprimanded some more.

~~~~ They ended up sitting on an old bed that looked like it had lived a long, miserable life and was excited for retirement, but the wooden frame thankfully didn’t break down under the weight of the new mattress or the additional weight of them sitting on said mattress. Piper explained that this had been her dad’s room when he’d lived here as a child, and that it would probably become her room now. Then she went very quiet and focused on bandaging his hand, clearly avoiding looking at him.

“It wasn’t because of me, was it?” Leo asked. The thought made him feel ill. “Please tell me it wasn’t something like, I don’t know, you two being unable to stand being around each other after what happened to me. I think I’d actually have to blow myself up again if it was.”

He tried to make it sound like a joke, but it didn’t feel like one at all. The thought that he'd managed to ruin his best friends’ relationship on top of everything else made it hard to breathe.

When Piper shook her head, it felt like a whole boulder was lifted off his shoulders.

“I actually think we would have broken up sooner if you hadn’t gone missing. We leaned on each other a lot after you disappeared. It wasn’t until we realized we wouldn’t find you and things started to settle down a little that I had time to think. And when I did…” Her voice went very quiet, and she still didn’t look up at him. “I realized I wasn’t happy in the relationship. I don’t think I ever was.”

“How did I not know that?” Leo wondered quietly. “I just… you two seemed happy to me. What kind of garbage best friend am I?”

Piper shook her head. “It isn’t your fault. I was telling myself I was happy for a long time. It’s almost- sometimes I wonder if I was charmspeaking myself. That maybe I kept saying I was in love with Jason until I convinced myself I actually was. And with Hera and my mom setting it up… I love-” her voice caught in her throat, and Leo felt like maybe he needed to throw up, “-loved Jason, but not like that.”

“Pipes, I’m really sorry.” Leo squeezed her shoulder. “That sounds like it was super hard for both of you.” Leo felt awful about the fact that he hadn’t even been around to comfort either of them, but it wasn’t like he could fix it now. It was just another item on Leo’s unending list of epic screwups he’d never be able to make up for.

“Jason was… well, he took it exactly like I expected him to. He was surprised, but he didn’t get angry or anything. He mostly seemed okay. Part of me wonders if maybe…” But whatever Piper had been thinking about, she seemed to decide it wasn’t important. “It was hard to get a proper read on him, and as nice as he was about it, things were still super awkward after. I'm terrified he died thinking I didn’t care about him.”

And then she was tearing up again, and Leo thought he would shatter if she cried.

“He knew you cared,” he said as earnestly as he could manage, pulling Piper to his chest again. “You love way too annoyingly for him not to have known. Hell, even I know you love me, and we both know I’m a fucking nightmare when it comes to this stuff.”

“I missed you so much,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his back like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Oh, I’m about to make you regret saying that,” Leo said, forcing himself to smile. “I’ll bring it up each and every time you say you find something I do annoying.”

“You’re annoying as hell, but you’re still my best friend.” He could feel her tears dripping onto his shoulder, and he knew that would make him start up again too. “I don’t know how I’d do this without you.”

And well, passing away from dehydration after crying too much would be a really lame way to die the second time, but everything was just too much right now, so if that was how he went, Leo wasn’t sure anyone could blame him.

~~~~

For the next couple of weeks, Leo stayed.

Helping Piper and her dad unpack was the perfect way to keep himself occupied and not have to think. Usually, a mundane task like this probably would have driven Leo nuts. But right now, it was a bit of a godsend—if not literally, at least figuratively. Being productive was always so much easier when it was done in order to avoid something you wanted to do even less. There was a reason his spaces in the foster homes had only ever been tidy when he had exams coming up.

He helped cook, too, and Piper’s dad became increasingly less garbage at it the longer this went on—like muscle memory was finally kicking in after years of disuse.

It was mostly good—listening to Piper reminisce about trips she’d taken with her dad and where she’d gotten the weird variety of items she kept in her room. When they weren’t unpacking, Leo and Piper played video games or watched movies or explored the area. Twice, during the night, they took Festus on a little flight to a nearby fast food place. Finding a parking spot was a bit of a nightmare, unfortunately. Leo would submit a complaint about their inability to accommodate celestial bronze dragons the first chance he got.

The first time they tried hiking—Leo didn’t even like hiking, he’d spent enough time outside for several lifetimes, why did he do this to himself—they got hopelessly lost in the woods, and of course, due to demigod bullshit, neither of them had brought a phone, so Google Maps wasn’t an option. It was probably for the better. The last thing that situation needed on top of them being lost was a monster attack.

They were already jokingly planning out their new life in the woods when, thankfully, a girl their age came to their rescue.

“A human being! Thank the gods. The squirrels weren’t talking to us,” Leo greeted her, which had Piper shout “Please ignore Leo!” loudly from the branches of the tree she’d been climbing.

The girl lifted her head, spotted Piper and promptly burst out laughing.

“What in the world are you doing up there?”

“Trying to get a better vantage point,” Piper sighed, making her way back down the tree. “We’re hopelessly lost.”

“Well, nice to meet you, hopelessly lost. I’m Shel,” the girl said, still grinning. Leo decided immediately that he liked her.

Piper had almost made it back down when she somehow missed a branch and fell the rest of the way. In comedic movie fashion, Shel moved before Leo had the chance to and caught her mid-tumble. “That was a bit of a dramatic way to get my attention, but you’re cute, so I’ll allow it.”

“Oh yeah, Piper’s got a bit of a thing with falling for people that way,” Leo commented, and Piper gave him her most murderous look while she got back on her feet.

“You guys need help getting back?”

“Please, yes,” Piper said immediately. “It turns out we’re both garbage with maps.”

“Maybe you just need a tour guide next time,” Shel suggested, winking at Piper, whose face turned scarlet. Leo wasn’t even mad about being the third wheel for once. He’d give her so much shit about this later.

And he did. And then Piper properly came out to him—no label or anything, mostly as extremely confused but sure she liked girls, which also made a few additional pieces click into place regarding her breakup with Jason. She ended her anxiety-riddled explanation by thanking Leo for being so normal and annoying about all this.

Which was how Leo realized he’d apparently never told Piper he was bi.

Or maybe he had, and it had gotten lost along with their other memories of Wilderness. Stupid memory-stealing babysitters.

Well, at least they got to hug about it now.

~~~~

It was strange how normal some days felt when nothing would ever truly be normal again. When in every moment Leo and Piper spent together, the gaping hole that had been ripped into their trio was so blatantly obvious.

The benefit and problem of this friendship was that Leo and Piper were both experts at not talking about things they were struggling with.

This wasn’t exactly news. From what little Leo did remember of Wilderness School, they’d spent months not talking about his mom, or about the fact that Piper’s dad kept canceling their weekend plans. They’d both known there were things left unsaid, but as long as they’d been able to cheer each other up, that hadn’t really mattered. It made sense, honestly. Put two people who hadn’t had a shoulder to cry on for ages in a room together and see what happens!

Right now, this meant they were expertly ignoring the box of belongings Piper had picked up from Jason’s school. It had been pushed so far under the bed during that first night that it was no longer visible, and neither of them made any effort to move it out of its new home since. They ignored the topic of Jason, period, until it inevitably hit them in the face again.

It was mostly dumb shit that set them off. Piper automatically reaching for vanilla ice cream at the grocery store because it was Jason’s favorite—seriously, who in their right mind even liked vanilla ice cream?

Sometimes, Leo would make a joke and burst into tears instead of laughing because he knew it would have cracked Jason up. They found old photos unpacking. One time, Piper’s dad suggested they make tacos and they started simultaneously bawling their eyes out.

Leo had spent a long time exactly like this—pretending everything was normal and okay when it wasn’t either of those things until he inevitably broke down. Then he’d started to actually feel sort of okay whenever he was with Jason and Piper. Now, he was sure he would spend the rest of his life pretending.

His appetite was too used to being stuck in survival mode for him to bow to nausea for long, so he went back to eating properly after a few days. He still cried himself to sleep most nights. He kept dreaming about Jason. The memories wrapped themselves around him like a safety blanket that he knew would get ripped away again in the morning. He always woke up feeling empty. Sometimes, he wished he could just go to sleep and never wake up again.

But other than that, it was mostly good.

Then demigod communications went back up, and everything went to hell.

———

Chapter notes:

Fun fact! I originally planned for this chapter (as well as the next few chapters) to just be backstory in my head and for me to maybe do a flashback or two. Unfortunately for me, Piper McLean waltzed into the room and refused to leave.

I do actually think the fic works better this way, but it will take a second to get to the plot! Hopefully you’ll enjoy the whole journey :)

I may not be able to have Leo and Piper go to Jason’s funeral without seriously messing with the plot of Tyrant’s Tomb, but I could at least pick the most evil reason possible for them not to go!

Side note: I sort of forgot that Hedge and Mellie were supposed to be here according to TBM, but by the time I remembered I already had this chapter written out and, as someone who cannot be bothered to figure out how to write them, I decided to just leave it. ToA is vaguely canon to this universe, but only for the most part. Some details are inaccurate, and I think that’s okay.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading! Comments and reblogs super, super appreciated as always!!

List of people that at some point asked to be tagged when I post this: @poppitron360 @ginnyluna @keefessketchbook (feel free to comment if you want to get taken off or be put on the tag list for future chapters!)

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randomfoggytiger · 13 days ago

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Collector's Edition: cecilysass

To cecilysass: an indisputable talent in the X-Files fic sphere. "Orpheus, not Eurydice" was the first to steal my heart; and your blend of winsome, affectionate, particular humor and dark, prolonged, mature pain kept it. Your work captures such specific moments-- such specific feelings-- that its impact is as sharp and distinct as a rubber stamp on new paper.

@cecilysass's (Ao3, Gossamer)

Still Feeling My Father Ascend (Ao3)

“It’s easy to make mistakes,” his father continues. “Don’t get attached too soon. You’re a… well, you’re kind of an idealistic kid. Soft. Don’t marry the first girl you fall in love with.”

By this point in his life, Mulder has already been in love. He might have gone on to marry her, had she been willing. Had she not broken his heart. His father knows nothing of this, of course. Mulder continues to pack without responding.

“You’re old enough to understand that I made some mistakes in my own life,” his father says. “A man makes a bad choice, and he’s stuck. He’s not … satisfied. For years. I don’t want the same for you.”

A deep well of anger pits in Mulder’s stomach, thinking of his silent and broken mother, but still he doesn't speak.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, Fox, is that there’s no point in trying to be a good man,” his father continues. “That’s a waste of your efforts. There’s no such thing as a good man. The more you try to be good, you only get trapped, compromised. The best thing to do is try … to avoid entanglements.”

Post Beyond the Sea Scully is stranded at Mulder's apartment during a snowstorm. Woe upon woe piles up until they both share their own "other fathers" struggles. That, and Mulder might be in love.

How to Eat Pleasant Holiday Meals With Co-Workers - Chapter 1 (Ao3)

“It’s really best to get real cranberries from the Cape and make your own from scratch,” Mulder says, in a pained tone. “You add some grated orange, some cinnamon, some cloves. Next year, I’ll show you how it’s properly done.”

“Oh, will you?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“Probably not,” he corrects quickly. He forgot for a moment that she will probably be on to bigger and better things in the Bureau by then. “Next year, you’ll be back in the arms of the Scully family, counting blessings.”

Season 1 Mulder changes his Thanksgiving plans-- he had none-- to spend the day with Scully-- who now has none after her and Ethan Minette's breakup. Things are... nice, if complicated.

How to Eat Pleasant Holiday Meals With Co-Workers - Chapter 2 (Ao3)

Mulder has drawn a little lackluster pencil drawing of a turkey on a folded piece of paper, which he places at the center of the table. “See? A centerpiece,” he says. “Makes it more festive.”

“I had no idea you were an artist, Mulder,” she says, with a deadpan version of the enthusiasm one gives to a small child.

“Inspiration hits and I have to go where it leads, Scully.”

They grimly peel back the plastic on their trays. “I feel like I owe last year’s cranberry sauce an apology,” Mulder says sadly. “Because whatever this is, it doesn’t even deserve the name ‘cranberry.’”

Post Firewalker Scully spends another Thanksgiving with her partner-- under different, isolated circumstances, of course.

How to Eat Pleasant Holiday Meals With Co-Workers - Chapter 3 (Ao3)

“Scully?” Mulder, ahead of her, stops to peer back. He is wearing his black leather jacket, the bowl of cranberries in his hands. He frowns in consternation. “What’s wrong?”

She spins. Runs full throttle for the bathroom, the sour taste already coming up in the back of her throat. She collapses over her toilet and promptly pukes her guts out.

It's Thanksgiving... or it would have been, if Scully hadn't gotten the flu-- a flu which reminds both of the lingering, unspoken conversation they need to have.

How to Eat Pleasant Holiday Meals With Co-Workers - Chapter 4 (Ao3)

“Mulder.” His voice sounds broken, like an old man’s.

It’s Lionel speaking. Lionel of Lionel and Reyna, who live in the farm house adjacent to their property. Lionel and Reyna, their nearest neighbors. Lionel and Reyna, his nearest neighbors.

Lionel seems to be asking him to dinner tomorrow. Turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pumpkin pie.

Post breakup Mulder reflects: is there dignity in sadness?

Oblivious (Ao3)

“Can I ask you a personal question, Scully?”

“About what?” Her sideways look was suspicious.

“I have a theory about you,” Mulder ventured. “Call it a profiler’s hunch.”

“What comes out of your mouth next could not possibly be complimentary.”

Post War of the Coprophages Mulder tries to convince his partner that not only was Bambi interested in her, but that many others have been inspired with mouth-frothing intentions.

Orpheus, Not Eurydice

So they leave the store with a container of oats and some bratwurst in buns, as well as a bag of potato chips and two root beers. Scully comments that it’s as though they purchased dinner for a pair of hungry 10-year olds, and Mulder just nods vigorously and bites into his bratwurst, obviously relieved that adult Scully is nowhere to be seen tonight.

There are carved stairs set in the side of the short sandstone bluff that leads to the river. There is a narrow park on the bank, almost entirely empty of people. There is a weathered gray picnic table, the color of bone, where they settle in to eat their juvenile dinner.

The little town hews to the curve of the slow-moving river, which now sits before them, dark green, flat and wide. They are quiet as they eat, even Mulder. All around them the world is verdant, still. The sun has started to sink below the tree line on the opposite riverbed, conferring upon the sky a marigold glow.

Season 5 Mulder and Scully take a moment to sit, feed the ducks, and listen to the local church choir-- to simply absorb.

Unobserved

It really looks like she has been inside the building, which Mulder ... just can’t make sense out of.

Because she wasn’t back at Gibson’s room this afternoon -- or the psych facility at all. He would have seen her. He was there.

With an unpleasant jolt, he remembers that in fact she had called him, just about that time. She … asked him to go to the office. She said she was on her way already, that she preferred to talk to him there. There she had shown him the proof they needed, what they needed to bring to Skinner the next day.

Mulder lets his hands run slowly down the sides of his face, something falling precipitously in the pit of his stomach.

It is unavoidable: Scully had not told the truth. And Scully always told him the truth. Which raises the unsettling question: what reason would she have to lie to him today? He doesn’t like any of the answers that come to mind.

Post The End Mulder is stunned to find security footage of his partner despondent and nearly in tears.

The Kaleidoscope (Ao3)

Scully turns to Ryan. “We should probably be going, right?”

“Our reservation’s not until seven,” Ryan points out. “I was thinking we could go get a drink at a bar around here. Maybe Fox could come with us?”

Mulder can’t understand this invitation at all; he has been pretty rude, or at least awkward. But Ryan is all fluid friendliness, effortless affability, and Mulder recognizes the type: the socially generous popular kid. After all, he has nothing to lose by extending a welcome to Mulder. He perceives zero threat. He already has everything, doesn’t he? A whole evening ahead with Scully. A whole night. Morning.

Season 6 Mulder sits glumly at his desk, trying to figure out where he fits in the complex and continually confounding life of one Dana Scully. One wrong move and he might end up in the wrong ending.

The Boy on the Beach (Ao3)

“She’s not in here, Mom!” shouted Melissa. “That’s weird … I thought she was. She must have gone outside.”

Scully swallowed, breathing fast, feeling hot tears pooling in her eyes. Whatever was happening, that certainly seemed like her big sister outside that door. Very young. Very alive.

There was the sound of a child’s aggrieved sigh. And then clomping, heavy footsteps leaving the room. Scully could hear Melissa complaining as she went back down the stairs. “She can’t sneak off and not help with the potatoes at all,” Melissa called. “That was supposed to be Dana’s job. And what about the boys, Mom? Bill hasn’t done one single thing to help! Do I have to do everything?”

Her voice grew more distant—and was answered, somewhere, faintly, by her mother’s voice, high and young.

Inside the dim closet, Scully didn’t move for a moment, trying to process.

Post Amor Fati-- A sweeping, intense fic that unspools rapidly from present-day miscommunication to lost-in-time, but-perhaps-just-in-time epic. Scully, lost in the 70s; Mulder trying to trace and intercept her progress through would-be impossible polaroids; and a little Mulder and Samantha, clinging to an FBI savior as their only hope.

We’re Not Here To Get Involved in Personal Problems

In fact, Scully has seen many episodes of Cops, a life achievement of which she is not particularly proud. Her brother Bill is the real connoisseur. He has been known to sing along with the theme song and howl in laughter when suspects scream at one another. Bill loves for his sister to watch with him, since he assumes she especially can appreciate law enforcement as entertainment, but Scully herself never really gets it. She questions the officers’ heavy-handed tactics. She is uneasy that the show has a mean sense of humor about the poor and addicted. She wonders why they never, ever show anyone doing any paperwork. But she hasn’t always found it easy to get along with her brother, and she does love his raucous laugh, so she tolerates this sibling bonding activity.

She can’t imagine how it ever would have involved Mulder, though.

“You and I watched it together in the hospital,” Mulder reminds her, shoving both hands in his pockets as they walk. He kicks at something on the ground. “When you were sick -- the chemo. It’s possible that you were a little out of it.”

“Ah,” Scully nods. Her time in the hospital is a blur of surreal, half-remembered daytime TV.

Post X-Cops Mulder and Scully take a fruitful walk around the neighborhood (season of secret sex who?)

Negotiation (Ao3)

“I just don’t want an arrangement,” he repeats meaningfully. “I don’t want a negotiation.”

“I get it,” she says shortly, jerking her hand out from under his.

“No,” he says. “No, you don’t.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t want … what you suggest. I’ve thought about it. A lot. Maybe too much.”

Scully’s mouth twitches at the corners as she apparently absorbs this. “Okay,” she responds. A pause. “Then why not?”

Mulder rubs his temples aggressively.

“I don’t think I could do it without … all of it. I mean, that’s not strictly true. I could do it. I’m only human. But I think it would end … really badly.”

Mulder and Scully, stakeouts and a little miscommunication-- what's not to love?

Gingersnap (Ao3)

“I could help you,” he says.

At that she raises her eyes. There is a look of unmistakable hope there. It surprises him, even dazes him a little. He’d expected her to reject his suggestion out of hand.

“Is that something you’re capable of doing?” she says tentatively. “Baking cookies?”

“No,” he admits. “At least there’s no precedent for it.”

“Sounds useful.” Her eyes are still cautiously on him.

Scully's unsuccessful baking attempts are further thwarted by Mulder's eager, hands-on attitude.

The Gentle Art of Dream Interpretation (Gossamer)

In Mulder's dream, he was a French Jew from Alsace, and he wore a shabby brown coat before a panel of great men.

Angry, standing before the Great Sanhedrin in Paris, he was trying not to shout, but could feel the steady rise of his pitch as he lodged his formal complaint to the Jewish leaders:

"You bend and stretch the halakha as best fits your pocketbook," he was telling them. His hands were shaking. He was speaking French.

Mulder has a complicated dream, which leads to more straightforward revelations in a motel pool in the late-early hours of the morning.

False Front (Ao3)

“Aren’t you the same person who once told me ‘the truth is out there, but so are lies?’” Mulder pushes. “Where’s that Dana Scully?”

She walks to the window and stands in front of it, still hugging herself and looking out into the afternoon light. From Mulder’s vantage point she looks only like a silhouette, an outline of herself.

“I get it,” she says after a heavy beat. “I see what you’re saying.”

Now there’s a melancholy timbre in her voice, a sound of defeat. He hears it rarely, for all of their struggles, and he doesn’t like it.

An astonishingly "lifelike", vivid look at Mulder, Scully, and TLG's conflicted feelings after En Ami's road trip.

Pause (Ao3)

“Your mom is already here. I called her this morning—I thought it better be me that broke the news. It’s kind of a shock. She’s eager to see you. Are you ready to talk to her?”

Scully nods, her forehead creased. She crosses her arms over her chest defensively.

He regards her. “You’re nervous.”

“Of course,” Scully replies pointedly, her voice lowered. “I want her to believe it’s me. It will hurt if she doesn’t.”

Her eyes land on his face in time to see the shadow move over his features, and she regrets saying it. She doesn’t understand the full story yet, why he is so convinced she is dead. But she can hear the raw suffering in his voice as he talks to her mom. Whatever he has been through, maybe she should tread more carefully.

AU-- Pre-Requiem Scully wakes in an abandoned car with no memory of how she got there... and no memory, she learns, of the years that have passed since her and Mulder's almost kiss, Millennium's successful followup, and the blissful months that followed.

Ice Water - Chapter 3

“Gamma," he says, his voice a tiny whisper. He is feeling shy.

“Look,” Maggie says cheerfully to him, as they walk into Dana’s kitchen. “It’s your Aunt Dana, Matty. You’ll see she looks a little bit like your daddy. At least I always thought so.”

Dana has her back to them, pouring water in the coffeemaker, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. Strange she hasn’t made coffee already, thinks Maggie. Strange she isn’t dressed for work.

When she turns around, Maggie has to stop herself from gasping audibly.

Post Without Maggie brings over little Matthew... and notices something is most definitely not right with her daughter.

Opposition And Synthesis

It had been a particularly trying day.

And all because that morning, she had woken up obsessed with the philosophy of Hegel.

Hegel's dialectic. An old concept from college, from her philosophy and German classes. Every important idea in history is a thesis, and is naturally paired with its antithesis. Eventually they subsume one another, combine into something new. That is the synthesis.

Two wrongs, in essence, making a right.

Post This Is Not Happening Scully is continually struck by the holes Mulder left in her life.

All the Dead Mulders (Ao3)

Or maybe he just wants to touch his mom’s gravestone. And Samantha’s. A really selfish whim for him to indulge on week two of being newly undead, not to mention a risky one. He doesn’t even have a valid driver’s license anymore. An overzealous North Carolina traffic cop could really upset the apple cart.

But all that completely, cosmically just doesn’t matter. Mulder knows emotional numbness. He has had experience with several gradients of it before, dating back to early adolescence. But this? This takes the cake. This lack of feeling is a whole new level.

He sees all of the very good reasons not to steal Scully’s car and drive to North Carolina that morning—he understands them perfectly and could articulate them if someone asked—but they’re so far away from him that he can’t touch them, much less feel them.

He’s looking at them from miles above, like he never came back from orbit at all.

Post Three Words Mulder steals Scully's car and drives out to face his experiences head-on-- or, more accurately, to confront the looming shadow of his death.

Shine On (Ao3)

The pizza that Fox Mulder ordered isn’t from a pizza place Jackson has ever heard of, like Domino’s or Pizza Hut, but it’s really good anyway. Or at least it tastes good to someone who hasn’t eaten all day. Jackson eats the first piece really quickly, then he grabs for a second without thinking, forgetting his manners. When he realizes what he’s done, he hesitates.

“Go for it,” the older man says, his eyes darting sharply back and forth between the pizza and Jackson’s face. “Eat as much as you want.”

Fox Mulder has been acting much more intense ever since Jackson told him about the red-headed lady.

What would happen if Jackson had fallen into Mulder and Scully's life earlier? What would happen if he needed them because he was framed for murder, but was afraid to open up to them fully? What would happen if that reconnection was fraught with hope, and angst, and even literal pain? (And what would happen if a formerly abandoned mytharc thread wove its way back into their lives?)

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

Tagging: @poangpals.

#Collector's Edition #cecilysass #txf #xf fanfic #poangpresents2024 #poangpals #fic #Merry Christmas poangpal!#xfiles #x-files #the x files #mine

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reinedeslys-central · 5 months ago

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ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE ARC FOR VALGRACE.

please please please I know this will never be canon BUT LISTEN -

SPOILERS UNDER KEEP READING (if you haven't read TOA)

what's that marvelousspider post about the tragedy of how leo found a way to beat the prophecy (and in some stories, that kind of thing works, reinterpreting the lines into a potential that comes true like how the act of observing forces the electron to 'choose' a path) but in doing so doomed jason? Yeah that's what I'm talking about. obviously jason's in elysium but. BUT.

what if he isn't? (or what if he is)

what if leo doesn't tell anyone what he's doing/planning on doing? (obviously someone finds out anyway, my bet is piper or nico or reyna)

what if that theme of glory repeated comes back here too? (hades is tired after millenia dealing with mortals. hades has a sort of hope. these two facts are not mutually irreconcilable.)

Leo's guilt. Leo's guilt. (To storm or fire the world must fall. Gaea burned.)

The surrounding characters (I don't think calypso and leo would stay together in the canon percabeth golden-couple, partners-in-life-and-crime way. I think they'd grow together and eventually grow into people that weren't partners anymore and be okay with that. would calypso feel guilty? She's a titan, eons old. maybe not. maybe the weight of fate is the same to her as sand on her beaches. Maybe seeing leo break down over it does make her feel guilty.)

Nico's resentment. (over jason's and leo's prophecy debacle, over bianca not getting the same chance, over not being able to reach for her hand, charging into the underworld like leo is, so many more things)

Percy. because percy will have all kinds of mixed feelings over the demigods in elysium, some of them he would say he put there. in the end, though.. percy will understand. (I wonder if he and grover and annabeth would fight about it.) he's understood since he was twelve and more willing to save his mother than any god-given quest.

Quests are in threes. (would this be a quest with a prophecy? or does leo just charge in? is the prophecy given after the events have been set in motion?)

Leo goes alone. (An oath to keep with a final breath.)

One more time. One more oath to put everything into question. One more twist to the prophecy.

--although technically, the prophecy should be done and dusted. Jason's, like, actually dead and in the underworld in this story. it's not like he didn't breathe his final breath or something. it's not like he didn't keep that oath.

#okay Ig I'll just write it then #.....I have no idea how to write it as a post-canon fic though instead of a myth rewrite #im gonna do it anyway #.....after my exams and finishing the three fics I need to work on #uM #anyways #valgrace #valgrace headcanon #leo valdez #jason grace #hoo #orpheus and eurydice #pjo hoo toa #post canon

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hermesmoly · 4 months ago

Note

I just realized that Kaos tried so hard to turn Orpheus and Eurydice into Helen and Menelaus.

That reminds me of how ppl also try to write Hephaestus and Aphrodite as Helen and Menelaus.

(Again, is true love really a boring plot line nowadays? Man, Let Eurydice like her husband.)

Yeah the uh. “Sacrificing Loyal Boyfriend /Evil Cheating Girlfriend Who Doesn’t Deserve it” trope. Done to a couple who in the myths just really loved each other. Boo 👎👎👎

The thing is the premise was a bit promising at the start; Orpheus going to the Underworld for a Eurydice that has fallen out of love for him. While watching them I found myself asking questions like: Would you fight death itself for someone even if you knew they wouldn’t do the same for you? If they didn’t love you the way you love them? The answer being yes is essentially Menelaus’ drive, because to Menelaus, especially to Menelaus, Helen was worth fighting for. It’s why he (all heavily morally questionable aspects of it aside) wages war and all its consequences to get Helen back home. Love is a strong motivator, thorns and all. The only difference between Menelaus and Orpheus is Menelaus wielding a spear and a thousand men to prove it while Orpheus had only his lyre and his words as a great poet.

AND THE POINT, THE POINT of the Orpheus Eurydice myth is even if their love was doomed, even if he knew the ending, Orpheus would have still loved her, he still would have tried to traversed the Underworld for her, and he still would have looked back, because he loved her. Most accounts have Eurydice die shortly after their wedding— they never even had a chance to settle down, to have a family, to grow old together. The grief of that pain to be translated through song was enough to melt a King’s heart.

Eurydice in the myths was worth fighting for. Eurydice in the show however? Didn’t even seem to care about Orpheus at all. Like not even as a friend. The two episodes I’ve watched had Eurydice being so good at faking being in love Orpheus dedicates songs to her. Despite what we see that she never makes an actual effort for Orpheus. How do you sing your heart out for a woman who doesn’t even remember your favorite cereal? It’s just so laughably bad and written with no care.

As for Hephaestus/Aphrodite… I can see the temptation to make them Like That but it just isn’t comparable. Helen leaving Troy (either via force or willingness) leaving Menelaus and Hermione behind is too different from Hephaestus learning of Aphrodite's infidelity by lying to him about Eros’ (and seemingly Harmonia’s) parentage. Helen could have made an impulsive decision, could have agreed to it only to regret it or maybe she wasn’t given a choice, but it's leagues better than Aphrodite lying straight to Hephaestus’ face, even if she regrets it. Just let them divorce!!!

#ok apologies if i went off #but yeah #imagine if paris stayed and had like Hermione with Helen and Helen lies about it to Menelaus #awful right? thats basically Hephaestus and Aphrodite!!#and the diff between Aphrodite x Hephaestus and Zeus x Hera is the latter having the monogamist wanting to stay.#while Hephaestus wants to be free and marry Aglaia #and he’s allowed to do that!#greek mythology #hephaestus #aphrodite #helen of sparta #menelaus #orpheus #eurydice #anyways try as they might Menelaus/Helen are superior

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rosesradio · 2 months ago

Note

For the halloween prompt, heres something i was going to do but got to lazy

So basically, there's a killer at CHB, and everyone thinks it's Nico except his boyfriend (whoever you want it to be) but his boyfriend betrays him and is revealed to be the killer

here you go, warning for general darkfic/suggestive content <33

A soft, tell-tale humming sounded through the trees. Flickering flames.

The scraping of a knife against wood.

Just the other day, Nico thought, Leo never would have caused harm to the nymphs. He had a soft spot for them, always chatting with them as he made his way to the Bunker.

Just the other day was a lifetime ago.

Nico curled in on himself, breath catching in his throat. He trembled where he sat, leaning against the tree that was quickly fading out of existence. The son of Hades could hardly blame her for trying to hide, trying to escape.

Nico was trying to do the exact same thing.

Truth be told, he could have ran farther. If his shadow travel wasn't hindered by his stupid overwhelming anxiety, he could have gotten away.

But he couldn't. Orpheus loved Eurydice, so he looked back. Nico loved Leo, so he stayed. He stayed in spite of what he knew.

"Gotcha, sweetheart!" Leo cooed, scraping around the tree with his large butcher knife just as it completely faded away. He pouted, wiping away green nymph blood on his sleeve. "I never was very good with women," he grinned, eyes lighting up maniacally as he picked Nico up by the sleeve, throwing him against another nearby tree. "But I'm happier playing with you instead…"

Nico coughed as his back hit the hard wood, the air temporarily knocked from his lungs. He whimpered as Leo approached closer, fumbling for his sword, but…he couldn't do it. It all felt like one big game. Any minute now, Leo would snap out of this—his gaze would be soft, his words concerning as he asked Nico if he was okay. Leo would do anything to take care of his boyfriend, to make him laugh and feel better.

But that didn't happen.

Because Nico knew his secret, and he would die with it.

"I don't appreciate how ungrateful you've been," Leo mused, pinning Nico to the tree. A hand wrapped around his throat. He didn't apply any pressure, though the threat was there. Nico stayed deadly still, his face flushing, his breathing heavier.

"I'm supposed to take care of you, muñeco," Leo continued. Underneath his eyes was dark—too many sleepless nights in the Bunker, concocting inventions once used for good.

Nico had seen the contents since. The son of Hephaestus had succumbed to a sick darkness inside of him, creating machines of torture like the world had never seen.

"You and I both know Will was getting too close to you," Leo explained. "He was playing with fire and he knew it, always flaunting around like he'd take you from me at any minute. He was dangerous. And I know you're mad at me, but…" he twirled his knife expertly between his fingers in his free hand, batting his lashes almost innocently at Nico. "When I was innocently going through his things and found a pair of your underwear, well…I had to do something. He couldn't just get away with something like that, sweetheart…"

Nico's lower lip trembled. His eyes stung.

"There were other things you could have done," Nico managed hoarsely. "Other things I could have done…"

Leo hummed, mockingly contemplating the idea before shaking his head. "I don't think so, Neeks. But it doesn't have to end this way. Stay with me! My machines, your power over the dead…we'd be the most powerful lovers in the world…" he leaned in, kissing Nico's cheek. He moved his lips down to his neck, the feeling soft and warm against the cold.

It was familiar. So painstakingly familair, it made Nico's heart ache.

He had lost his mind…but perhaps Nico could help him find it. Roadblocks happened in relationships all the time—what was a little murder when compared to Thanksgiving with the in-laws?

Nico loved him. Leo would surely be sent to the Fields of Punishment, but perhaps Nico loved him enough to follow him there.

#this was supposed to be open-ended but eh #sick bastard mad scientist leo ily <33 #valdangelo #leo valdez #nico di angelo #pjo #tw suggestive #asks

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 3 months ago

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Somehow, Through the Storm

Summary:

Living in the slums of the Warehouse District, Kaz and Inej are struggling to cling on to life through a seemingly unending winter. Wrapped up in a stranger's overcomplicated marriage contract that he is convinced is key to solving the merciless weather, Kaz remains busy and distracted for days on end, putting everything else at risk. So when a storm ravages the city and sweeps Inej into danger, the offer of safety, food, and a place to stay is an overwhelming one - no matter the cost. Terrified of mounting threats, Inej signs a contract - not knowing she would land herself trapped at the Menagerie. Kaz signs a contract that states if he can walk all the way through the city and back to the Warehouse District with Inej behind him, never looking back at her, they will both go free. But this is the Barrel, the darkest part of the city where the rules of physics can change with the stroke of a pen; the journey back will not be the same as journey there…

This is a Hadestown-inspired reimagining of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, casting Kaz and Inej as our main characters and heavily featuring our beloved Crows, set in an alternate version of the Grishaverse with a different magic system based entirely on contracts.

Tags: @lunarthecorvus @marielaure @multi-fandom-bi @igotthisaccountunderduress @thelibraryofalexandriastillburns @devoted-people-hater @spraypaintstainonawhitewall

If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list let me know <3

Warnings for this chapter: implied sa references, slavery references (similar to Kerch indenture contracts), implied imprisonment

AO3 link:

Chapter 4 - Nina

The River Styx is a river of stone. And Hades lays them high and thick, with a million hands that are not his own.

- Epic II, Hadestown

Nina hated Ketterdam.

She lay on her side for almost an entire hour after she’d awoken, staring at the wall and keeping her hands clutched close to her chest in the warm little cocoon beneath her blanket. Her fingertips were cold as she stretched them out to touch the skin of her forearms, as far as she wanted to move for fear of losing her comfortable warm spot and failing to find it again, and ran them over the tattoos hidden under the sleeves of her nightclothes. Nina had three tattoos; two on her right arm, one on her left. Only one of them was important, but she lay and traced her fingers over all of them anyway. Just as she’d done before she fell asleep last night, and just as she would do tonight, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow evening. At night it had become a strange comfort, something in the routine or the motion or the soft, kind touches she could give herself that could carry her away from this city as she closed her eyes, could trick her for a brief moment into comfort, even safety. In the morning, it was just anything to extend the minutes she spent alone, calm, quiet, for as long as possible.

She had to get up at some point, though. Nina sighed as she rolled out of bed and fumbled in the half-darkness for her slippers; dawn seemed to mean little in this city, with its endless winter and relentlessly thick clouds, so even when Nina begrudgingly parted the curtains it did little to illuminate the room. She peered through the slightly misted glass down to the street below.

It wasn’t particularly busy this morning, probably too late in the day for the work rush to be in full swing, but a few strangers in fine suits hurried over the road and disappeared between the buildings. Nina used to have a better view of the city from this window, looking out the Government and Zelvar Districts, her position on the fourth floor even letting her see the distant harbour and a pocket of the True Sea on a clear enough day. Not anymore though. The wall was too high for that by now. A cart trundled by on the street beneath her; an old wooden thing with a half-faded laurel painted on its side, pulled by a tired-looking horse and carrying more tired-looking workers next to the stacks of bricks within. Nina couldn’t see them properly from here but she knew the workers perched atop the cart were wraiths, that their eyes would be glassy and their voices non-existent. The horse plodded along the cobbles, making its way towards the wall even though the driver was paying far more attention to the wraiths huddled behind him than the road ahead. Nina watched them for a moment, until her throat became too dry to breathe and she forced herself to turn away.

What time was it? She must be due at the house relatively soon.

The Red Laurel Enterprise’s property extended down pretty much the entire street, this and the next building being accommodation for the Grisha who wrote the company’s contracts, but the house itself stood at the top of the road, glowering down on it like a castle casting shadows over its crooked kingdom. Nina was to report to the house each morning and if she was needed, which it would be a damn miracle if she weren’t, would complete her tasks for the day within its walls. Let it just be reviews, she thought, eyes drifting back to the window. Reviews were hardly easy, but they were better than drawing up a new contract from scratch. That was the kind of thing that she thought might drive her mad one day.

Someone shouted her name from down the hallway, and a moment later came a hammering on her door.

“Nina!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nina sighed as she shoved her arms into her dressing gown, tying it loosely as she crossed the room, “I’m coming,”

Nina hadn’t been expecting to see Eamon on the other side of the door, but of course it had to be him - why would her luck ever swing in a different direction? He smiled at her and a surprisingly charming dimple creased on his cheek, as though it existed for the singular purpose of juxtaposing the boy’s unpleasant, leering smirk.

“Nice to see you dressed for the occasion,” he said, leaning against the doorframe and very neatly placing his boot in the way of her closing it again. Not that she would’ve done, not matter how much she might’ve liked to trap his ugly fingers in the hinges, “Suits you,”

His eyes wandered up and down Nina’s gown, and she considered giving him a swift kick between the legs.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped, “Because if you’re just here to-”

“Don’t you own a calendar, love?” Eamon smiled again. Saints, he really did look punchable, “‘It’s changeover day,”

Nina felt something tense inside her chest, and hoped that it hadn’t been visible. How could she have let it slip so close to changeover without realising?

“I thought he didn’t need me until this afternoon,” she said, trying to keep her voice as casual as she could manage.

“Well you thought wrong then, din’t you? You fancy hurrying up? I ain’t got all day,”

“Then you’d better move out the way so I can close the door,”

Eamon huffed a small laugh, and for an unpleasant moment Nina didn’t think he was planning on leaving. But then he took a step backwards, and she slammed the door against his nose as quickly as she could.

Changeover day.

She closed her eyes and took a slow, shaky breath, trying to still her shivering hands.

Changeover day.

She’d done it before, and she could do it again.

Nina had been in Ketterdam for almost a year, and in that time had seen herself through three changeovers. She didn’t entirely understand how the deal struck between the Barrel and the Geldin District worked, but she was one of around twenty or so Grisha who officially resided in both areas. Every three months, the changeover came. Nina did not want to go back to the Barrel. But, of course, no-one had asked her for an opinion on that.

She dressed quickly, wrestled hair into a little red ruffle because there was more than one skiv around here who had an unpleasant habit of taking hold of it when it was loose, and shoved her feet into the single pair of shoes she owned. They didn’t exactly work with the outfit, the ridiculous little skirt and blouse embroidered to mimic a Grisha kefta that the Geldin District specifically required of her, but if Jan Van Eck didn’t like that then he’d just have to buy her a new pair. Maybe she should point out how incongruous the clunky leather boots were herself, just on the off chance that it meant she would get something new for once.

Eamon thumped his fist hard against the door again as Nina was washing her face, shouting for her to hurry up. She brushed a hurried line of gloss over her lips, then slipped out the door and ignored Eamon’s grumbling as they walked downstairs.

This outfit really wasn’t suitable for the weather. Goosebumps prickled up and down Nina’s legs as she followed Eamon through the front door and onto the damp cobblestones, a cold and angry breeze catching them the moment they stepped outside and clinging on so tightly that it may have been trying to pierce her flesh and dig right into her bones. Hopefully she would be able to get a seat below decks on the boat - it wasn’t a long journey, but she would gather together every crap of warmth she could for as long as possible. The walk to the Van Eck house wasn’t long either, but Nina was still almost surprised to discover that she hadn’t turned blue by the time they arrived.

They didn’t go in through the front entrance, of course, but were greeted at one of the side doors by a blank-eyed girl in dark uniform, a laurel tattoo on her arm that matched the one on Nina’s. Eamon practically threw his coat at her and Nina more than noted his wandering eyes, but either he wasn’t stupid enough to try anything in the house or he wasn’t stupid enough to try anything in front of Nina. Still, politenesses or none, Nina wasn’t sure she’d have minded withstanding whatever waited for her in the aftermath of beating him to a pulp in the middle of the Van Eck living room so long as she got to do it.

The girl hung Eamon’s tattered coat over the hatrack very much within his reach, then led them down the hallway in silence. Nina always found this house eerily quiet. It was too big for itself, like it was abandoned and ought to be overgrown with ivy and weeds. That might look prettier than the austere panelled walls that glared down at them now. She tried to imagine the carvings, which were mostly stories about Ghezen, the Kerch god of industry and commerce, replaced by leaves and flowers. Maybe they could even grow amongst the gaps between the bricks and tear down the wall. Maybe Ketterdam could fall to something as simple, something as complicated, as a single geranium.

Maybe Nina needed to give herself a firm shake.

The girl gave a quiet knock on an unnecessarily tall door, and a moment later they were inside the office. It was a spacious enough room, home to an oversized, ostentatious mahogany desk, a real DeKappel hanging on the wall, bookshelves that reached the ceiling. Behind his desk, of course, sat Jan Van Eck himself. Ever at his side was Marya, clad in the traditional black dresses of the merchant wives, a dark red rose tucked into her hair the only show of colour in her outfit. Nina had had two whole conversations with Marya Van Eck, and still she was just about her favourite person in the entire city - or at the very least, the only person she could stand. Right now she looked distinctly bored, an expression she was making absolutely no effort to hide from her husband, and Nina thought that was hilarious.

Nina bowed, as did Eamon - not even he was enough of an idiot not to - and waited a moment for acknowledgement. He always liked to make them wait.

“Nina Zenik?” asked Van Eck, glancing briefly up from the list of names laid out over his desk.

“Yes, sir,”

He beckoned her forwards, and Nina rolled her sleeves up as she obeyed. It was the same process every time.

Van Eck surveyed her left arm, where the laurel tattoo lay, first. At his instruction Nina turned her arm each way to show him that there was nothing new, nothing wrong with the mark, and then held herself very still as he reached out and took her wrist in his hand. He pressed his fingers hard into the ink of the tattoo, and in response it darkened and pulsated beneath his touch. Nina closed her eyes as her skin thrummed like something was trying to clamber out; Van Eck’s signature trying to return to him with every contact. Relief flooded through her chest as he released her, nodding his satisfaction, and the hot, rushing pressure vanished from her arm as quickly as it had appeared. She opened her eyes to meet Marya’s sympathetic gaze, and tried to smile - and tried to keep her gaze from drifting to the woman’s gloves. Nina was very much in the minority of people who knew what was hidden underneath them, and she definitely didn’t need Jan Van Eck knowing that she knew.

Van Eck nodded at her other arm, and she raised it up. There were two tattoos on this one; a ring of growing ferns around her bicep, and a lion curled into the shape of a crown sleeping on her forearm. They rattled through the usual questions about them - Where did she do her work for Rollins? The Sweet Shoppe. What did she do for him? Exactly what she did here. When had she signed the contract? The day after she signed the one with the Red Laurel Enterprise. Who had drawn up the contract? She had. And the ferns? A prior contract. With? Matthias Helvar. Where is he? Hellgate prison. Has she had any contact with him? No. When did they sign their contract? A little over a year ago. Who had drawn it up? She had. Did she have the contract? No. Did he? No. Where was it? Lost somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, with no hopes of ever being undone.

Saints, you’d think that they could just write all this nonsense down somewhere. Why did he have to make her say it every time? Though maybe it was good for her. Maybe if she wasn’t forced to stand here and relive everything she had done to Matthias, the memory of its pain would start to fade. She couldn’t have it do that. She wouldn’t let it.

Van Eck nodded.

“Alright then. Thank you for your service,”

It almost took effort not to laugh at that. Nine gave each of the Van Ecks a polite nod.

“Sir, Ma’am,”

Van Eck waved his hand to dismiss them, and Nina bid them good day as she turned around and murmured something she hoped sounded polite about seeing them in three months.

“Oh, I’ll miss you this time, dear,” said Marya, softly, the first time she’d spoken at all.

Her voice was gentle and melodic, like at any given moment she might be about to sing, or like she knew how to shape the world around her into a tune with every word. Nina wasn’t sure if she was supposed to turn back or not, but when Marya kept talking she decided it was probably more polite to look at her as she did so.

“I’m visiting my mother for a few months at…” she glanced at her husband, smiling at him, “well it’s about at the same time, isn’t it?”

His only response was to nod.

“So I suppose I’ll see you in nine months, Nina,”

Nine months? Of course, yes. Nine months.

It took Nina a moment to form words, but when her voice finally answered her she could only wish Marya a pleasant trip, politely excuse herself, and try to hold back the need to run from the room.

Nine more months. Here. In Ketterdam. Right.

Nina stared at her beaten up shoes as she followed Eamon towards the harbour, and the melancholic melody of Marya Van Eck’s voice followed her all the way.

“Have you had any contact with Matthias Helvar in the past three months?”

“No,”

Nina resisted the urge to sigh. Had she not just been through this with Van Eck? This Saintsforsaken system was nothing if not thorough.

“And do either of you have a copy of this contract?” asked Rollins through the cigar tucked between his teeth, leaning back in his chair as he shook out the match he’d just used.

The office above the Emerald Palace was both similar to and completely unlike that of Jan Van Eck. It was dissimilar in its colour - its outright gaudiness, to be frank - and its shimmer had a fake, almost cheap sheen to it even though Nina was sure it had taken a good amount of cash to fill it with all this nonsense. It was exactly the same as Van Eck’s office in that both of them were the most ridiculous show of overcompensation that Nina had ever witnessed with her own two eyes.

“No,” she repeated, through gritted teeth as she tried to argue her impatience deeper into her stomach to hide, “It was lost off the coast of Fjerda,”

“Destroyed?”

Saints, he was making Nina want to bang her head against something.

“Well it's made of paper and it sank to the bottom of the ocean, if you need help connecting the dots then-”

“That’s enough,” he snapped.

Nina bit her tongue, but thankfully Rollins appeared to be done. He waved her off impatiently, and you definitely didn’t have to tell her twice. Besides, now that all of the ridiculous meetings were done she didn’t need to have an escort. She was free of Eamon and she could wander to the Sweet Shoppe in her own damn time - although, in saying that, it was still cold outside and she was still wearing a skirt that didn’t reach her knees, so the walk probably wouldn’t be turned into a long one.

Nina hated Ketterdam. But it was probably fair to say that she hated the Barrel, individually, even more. The Staves were both busy as she moved across from East to West, buzzing and thrumming with the endless sound of brightly-costumed thrill seekers moving through the streets and over the bridges, moving like they were one creature, ebbing and flowing as though the canals had burst their banks and were crawling over the cobbles. As she approached Goedmed Bridge, where most of the bigger pleasure houses were situated, a barge passed along the canal close enough for to see a wraith in purple silks with someone’s arms tight around her. She stared blankly out over the barrier and into the city as he leaned closer, until his lips met her neck and she tilted upwards in response to the movement. Nina closed her eyes for a moment. If she’d thought anyone was listening, maybe she would have prayed.

By the time she arrived, Nina wanted to wrap herself in a blanket and hide away in her room at the Sweet Shoppe for as long as humanly possible, doing nothing and speaking to no-one. But, typically, it was apparently not going to be her choice - the first thing she saw when she slipped into the third floor bedroom was a note on the table in unmistakable, scratchy handwriting.

Boundary stone, 5 bells. Someone you should meet.

Nina was just about ready to rip the note into shreds and scream into a pillow.

Of course Kaz Brekker knew it was changeover day. And, of course, he couldn’t let her have two minutes of something that might have vaguely resembled peace.

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stellerssong · 5 months ago

Note

I HEAR YOU SWAN!!!!!!!!!!

[climbing through your bedroom window in the middle of the night] the thing of it is that the love is the revolution writ small do you understand? the love is the—stop screaming it's just me—it's the revolution in miniature. it would have been enough in its way for orpheus simply to love her and love her well and keep his promises. because if he had he could've kept her alive AND THAT WOULD HAVE BROKEN THE STORY. can you scoot over you're hogging the pillow. yeah perfect thanks so you understand now right? eurydice is the embodiment of the marginalized the oppressed and the vulnerable. the most radical thing you can do on behalf of that class is stand by their collective side and build a new world with them. the most radical thing orpheus could have done would have been to be exactly what he reduces hades to in epic iii—a person in love. not a protagonist not a hero not a mythic figure just someone who loves and hopes to be loved in return. shit i'm kind of thirsty actually. which way's your—down on the right? and cups are next to the microwave? cool. you want me to bring you a glass of water too? right on. but the thing is a person can't BE a symbol and be a person at the same time. when orpheus brings the gods down with his song and makes people of them he and eurydice are forced to take their places in a sense because the narrative demands heroes and villains and a narrative. it's a power vacuum sort of thing, right. and the right thing to do would be to refuse the call and get out of dodge but orpheus having had his worldview shattered is seeking structure and has to fall back on—yeah no you're right i'm sorry i was getting those waters. yeah i'll be right back. don't fall asleep.

#chatter #f: htown #tumblr user rowan-ashtree i feel heard. seen. witnessed even

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im-not-corrupted · 1 year ago

Text

Part 1/6 of my merman Hob au (also on ao3 here!), of which I previously posted a snippet of here. Chapters two and three are half done so far so updates may take a bit? I’m not sure but we shall see!

Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Merman!Hob, Human Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, the fantasy is very vague but like. mermaids., Dream of the Endless | Morpheus has Depression, Grief/Mourning, deals with the death of Orpheus, and Dream and Calliope's divorce, Brief suicidal ideation, Near Death Experiences, Drowning, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, POV Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Arranged Marriage, Dream of the Endless | Morpheus Saves Hob Gadling, Developing Friendships

—————

The first time Morpheus de Endeles steps foot on a ship, it is with the intention of sailing to his wife’s homeland—the place of her birth, the place her parents rule, the place their son once knew far greater than he does now.

Ex wife, that is. They are no longer married now, because he had thoroughly ruined whatever the two of them had. The divorce had been a swift affair, and he is glad for it, despite the uproar it caused amongst his parent’s court and the disappointment his parents expressed in the face of such disaster. Last they saw one another, Calliope’s parting words had been scathing things, weapons made to kill and maim and cause the most damage possible while doing so.

She hates him now. This he acknowledges distantly as he steps on board the ship, feeling a little like he walks towards his own death. More than once, he bore witness to the end of a criminal’s life with the distinct impression that justice had been served, brutally and efficiently. Now he wonders if this is how they felt, facing their own end.

A bleak thought to start the trip off on, but that seems appropriate. If the knowledge of Calliope’s hatred for him is a distant thing, that is only because his mind remains occupied by other recent events. Namely, his son’s death.

The first time Morpheus de Endeles boards a ship, he does so with the intention of sailing to his son’s funeral.

Calliope insisted—over letters, written in elegant, swooping hand that did nothing to hide the sharp edges to her words—that Orpheus be buried in her homeland. And though the knowledge of her hatred is a distant thing, and has been since she spoke her last parting words, there was room inside him even then for the ache that arose as he read that letter.

There was more than enough room inside him for the guilt, too. There still is. You sent our son off to his death, Calliope hissed at him. This, he knows, is true. It is a different kind of agony, this knowledge. To know his son is dead is one thing. To be the one to blame, to have Orpheus’s blood stain his hands however indirectly—well, that is another thing entirely.

It was also this knowledge that prompted him to grant his past wife this wish and agree that Orpheus should be buried in her homeland. It was, he figures, the least he could do. He had subjected her to the same pain that currently sits inside his chest, an agony he thinks he won’t be rid of for as long as he lives. If this would soothe some of that agony for her, then he will gladly make that sacrifice for her.

On this ship is Telute, too. As Morpheus stands by the railing, looking out at the sea and the sky with a sense of detachment he has not felt since dear Del’s death, she stands beside him. She is dressed similarly to him, in mourning regalia. This is not so different to either of their typical styles—black suits them both well, and they each prefer the darker, drearier colours to those Epithumia tends to don.

She places a gentle hand on his shoulder. It is a comforting weight. His shoulders bow underneath it. He does not deserve this comfort—She is dead, he told Orpheus, unsympathetic as he wept for his lost love Eurydice, and yet you live. So live.—but he is a greedy thing, and therefore does not push her away.

She does not speak. She does not move away, either. Not as the sails are raised, commands shouted across the deck of the ship. Not as they begin to leave the harbour, and any sense of familiarity. She remains there, standing beside him, in a show of solidarity as the ship begins to move.

The swaying motion leaves him feeling ill. He pushes it down insistently. It is a feeling he must bear—a punishment, for all he has brought upon both his own family and Calliope. The disappointment in Nyx’s eyes, the rage in Cronos’s, and Calliope’s final words are not things he is likely to forget. He holds them close to his chest, a reminder of his own failures and regrets. Perhaps this way, he will not make them again.

A foolish thought, that. He has always been particularly resistant to the idea of change.

”It’ll be alright,” Telute tells him softly.

It is not a comfort. He nods stiffly anyway.

The two siblings remain standing for a while, silent and still as statues, and the feeling of dread doesn’t leave him for the duration of the trip.

+++

It is a quiet affair, the funeral. The hushed air, the grief that seems to live in it, do not disguise the looks he receives from both Calliope and her sisters. They hate him too. He does not begrudge them this, and tries his best to ignore them.

They are not his concern. His concern is Orpheus—his dear son, whose eyes were the same lovely brown as Calliope’s, whose raven hair curled at the nape of his neck. Orpheus was a joy, with a grin made for laughter and a voice made for singing. His affinity for music made things all the brighter back at home—there was no way to be miserable, even under the shadow of his parents, when Orpheus sang or played the lute. It was his own joy that made it so lovely, Morpheus thinks. It had been infectious. He had been made for music, and that became apparent with every string he plucked and note he hit.

This reminder made the funeral all the more painful. It is spent mostly in silence, broken only by the weeping of immediate family members and speeches made by Orpheus’s Calliope’s family. Not himself—he adamantly refuses when Calliope offers him the chance. It disappoints her, he sees it in her face, but how is he supposed to put words to the grief he felt over his son’s death? How is he supposed to speak and remain composed while reliving the death of one he loves more than he has loved anything or anybody before?

The silence is a mournful thing, sorrowful and weighing heavy. He thinks, for a moment, that he should’ve liked to hear Orpheus play at least once more before his death.

He does not cry. He is too scraped raw for that, for tears to come to his eyes. (Later, Calliope admonishes him about it. They are the last two standing before his grave, the sight o the name Orpheus carved into his headstone a knife in his chest. You did not even cry, she murmurs, her voice a terribly brittle thing. And Morpheus stands there and wishes he could turn back time, that the names they were given meant something more than abstract concepts. You do not even care.) He wants to cry. He wants to shed tears over his son’s death, to rage and agonise and scream at the sky. It all seems terribly unfair.

Telute remains by his side. Their arms are interlocked, now, his sister’s hand on his arm, and he is glad for her. For the steady, comforting presence she offers—for the ability to lean on her, to let himself succumb to despair while she remains the strong one. He has always looked up to Telute, to his dear sister Death, and he is more grateful than he thinks he can ever put into words for the fact that she didn’t leave him to face this by himself. He does not know if he would’ve coped otherwise.

She leaves him eventually, as those gathered begin to disperse. “You should say your own goodbyes,” she tells him, head tilting towards Orpheus’s new grave. Calliope sits before it, a motionless study of sorrow and mourning.

She is wise, dear Telute. He knows this. He knows this well. Always, she has had the answers, the right words to say. She is right about this, too.

But he stares after Calliope and yearns. Yearns to reach out, to offer a comforting hand on her shoulder or his own shoulder to cry on. Neither of those are things she will welcome. He does not blame her for this, but the yearning does not follow any kind of logic he knows of. They are nothing now, their relationship little more than ashes between them. His memories of their time together is soured by grief, by frustration and rage aimed at this entire damned situation, the hopelessness he feels so keenly.

He loves her still. Would offer her comfort despite it all, if he knew she’d accept it.

”I should,” he agrees softly. He doesn’t move. He isn’t sure he can. Grief has made his heart a cold, hardened thing. He is chilled with it, his blood like ice in his veins.

Telute offers him a terribly sympathetic look. It grates on him, makes him clench his jaw. He does not need pity.

Yet he would not dare say such a thing to his sister, and so she ignores the affronted expression he knows he wears and urges, “Go.”

He does. Calliope speaks to him only once, and it is as painful as the funeral itself. (I care, he wants to tell her. He wants to scream it, wants to make sure she knows. I care. He was my son, too.) She leaves him standing by their son’s grave.

He does not cry even then. He leaves a flower atop the gravestone instead, knowing it will be a while until he sees it again, and returns to Telute. (His eyes sting as they make their way back to their accommodations. He cries then. A single tear, but it is something.)

+++

The second time Morpheus de Endeles boards a ship, it is to return to his own homeland. It is to turn his back on his son, on the woman he once called wife and still loves as one despite her thorough abandonment of her. (There is a slowly rising anger there, too, as he thinks of her hardened eyes, once so gentle, as she accused him of not caring. Does she not know him better than that? Did their five years of marriage amount to nothing, for her to know him so little?)

It is also to face his first storm at sea, and to nearly drown.

It happens after a week and a half on the sea. They are nearly home, the captain tells him. He is a prideful thing, this captain, sure of himself and his abilities. I have not steered this ship wrong before, my Lord, he says, and this is enough for Morpheus, who only wishes to return to his home and immerse himself in the library so he might escape the horror of the last couple of months. He finds himself too tired to ask further questions, and simply leaves to return to his own cabin. His body has mostly acclimated to sea travel now—his stomach no longer feels like it is about to betray him at any given moment, and he is able to walk steadily.

A day later, they are hit by a storm.

It is a brutal, savage thing. At first, it is just the rain—the sky opens up above them to drench them in rain, the event so sudden it comes as a surprise. The skies were overcast before this, yes, but not bad enough for a storm so terrible, surely.

The sudden winds rip at them fiercely. The tides, which had been gentle for their journey so far, turn violent, larger than he ever imagined the sea capable of. His own fault, that—there are many stories about the brutality of the ocean, the fury that hides within its depths. He simply forgot about them, distracted by the beauty of the sun glistening on its calmer waves and the knowledge of why he stands atop a ship on the sea. He chose to see the beauty instead of the danger—he knows, in that moment, that he will not do the same a second time.

If he lives to see a second time. He is suddenly unsure he will—both sea water and rain drenches the deck. The crew hurries to obey the captain’s shouted, panicked orders, only just heard over the roaring winds. The ship tips and rocks and sways precariously. Morpheus grips onto the railing, tight enough his palms ache, and finds himself filled with a loud, insistent fear.

People die in the ocean all the time. The sea is not kind—it is full of rage and it is vengeful, determined to drown those who try to conquer it. He knows this. He knows this and yet he had let himself be distracted. And now he will die here, so soon after his son’s own death.

It is not that idea that terrifies him. Death does not scare him. He does not think it ever has. He believes not in any kind of afterlife—death, he believes, is simply nothing. To die is to no longer exist. There is beauty in that, he thinks. He is tired of existing already, and the grief that only swells within him makes that exhaustion all the more unbearable.

He does fear for his sister, though. His sister, whose eyes shine brightly, who treated his son kindly. Who had been there for him during his younger years, when misery clung to him like a parasite and sucked him dry of all desire for life. She does not understand him properly and often says the wrong things, but Morpheus doesn’t think that’s the point. She tries. She cares, offering him soft, fond smiles that are sometimes exasperated. She loves him, and even made this journey for him.

He thinks she does not deserve to die. He thinks, too, that he would do any number of things to ensure she makes it out.

There are shouts on the air, growing more urgent by the second. This is, surely, proof that this storm is far stronger than the rest of them, and he grits his teeth. Insistently, he surveys the crew as they rush back and forth, only—only he cannot see Telute anywhere. She doesn’t seem to be on the main deck, or perhaps he isn’t looking hard enough. The ship rocks and sways and his stomach lurches with it—he is not used to so much violent movement, and it is distracting.

But he steels his spine and stumbles across the deck, shouting as loud as he can, “Telute!”

”My Lord,” somebody says behind him, and he whirls—too fast, for his stomach lurches and he fears then that he will throw up, which would certainly be a reaction to have here and now—to find Lucienne standing behind him, her expression panicked and concerned. “My Lord, we must get you onto one of the boats.”

”No,” he denies immediately. The worst of his nausea dissipates but his voice still feels weak. He looks past Lucienne, ignoring the rain drenching his clothes and his face and his hair, and tries desperately to find Telute. “No. I must—I must find my sister.”

”My Lord, Jessamy is looking for her,” Lucienne informs him. When he returns his attention to her face, there is a quiet devastation there, and he regrets how harshly he spoke to her. She is a patient advisor, dear Lucienne. She does not deserve his harshness. Not now and not ever. “You must come with me now.”

He would trust Jessamy with his life, if it came to that. There is nobody more steadfast, nobody more loyal, than her. If she searches for Telute, there is little chance that she will stop until she inevitably finds her. Her stubborn streak runs bright, as does her loyalty to the Royal Family.

It is enough to inspire relief. Enough to make his shoulders slump for a moment—and as he says, “Very well,” he sees Jessamy escort a rather worried-looking Telute, who glances over her shoulder frantically, desperately. She will be safe, then.

“This way, my Lord,” Lucienne urges him, and he makes to follow.

He takes nothing more than a single step before the ship crests another wave violently, the winds driving them in the wrong direction, and it suddenly tips.

There is nothing for him to grab immediately, save Lucienne. Only, as he loses his footing and watches as Lucienne quickly regains hers, he doesn’t think that would be fair. If he falls—and he is, he realises belatedly, he is falling and falling and the violent, beautiful sea has never seemed quite so close—if he falls, he knows he would only drag her down with him. He is unaccustomed to this, to being upon the sea like so. He was not made for this. He was made for a throne to sit beside his parents’, and then beside his elder brother when his time eventually comes, just like the rest of their siblings. If not that, then marriage to another kingdom, to keep their ties strong, to keep trades between countries going. His fate was never supposed to be this.

He loses his footing and he falls and there is railing behind his back, digging in, and panic flares inside his chest. The ship is righted quickly, only to be assaulted again, and he does not cling tightly enough to the railing behind him to stop himself from falling overboard.

Then he is in the ocean. It is frigid, freezing, and he gasps loudly when he breaks the surface. It is the kind of cold that could seep through to bone, that could freeze him all the way through until he is nothing but ice.

He never really learned how to swim properly, but he knows enough to keep himself afloat. The winds whip his hair, soaked through with rain and sea water both, into his face, and he is not sure how he can make it out of this. The ship he fell from is being pushed away from him, the winds terrifyingly strong, despite efforts of the crew and the captain. With some deep-rooted instinct, he tries to swim forward, cursing inwardly at himself and his younger mind’s insistence on finding pleasure in things other than his lessons.

For a moment, it seems like he may be capable of making it back. It seems like he could truly do it, could make it close enough to the ship they could help him back up, or close enough they might be able to pull him back up.

Then a wave crests behind him, shadowing him, a great, looming giant, and falls atop him without a care in the world.

He is pulled under the surface of the ocean and holds his breath intently. It is dark down there. The sea pushes him from seemingly every direction, with the same ferocity as the storm, and try as he does to push against the currents, he is unable to do much at all. The surface remains terribly distant, and that distance seems suddenly insurmountable. He knows, with abrupt and perfect clarity, that he is not making it out of there.

Morpheus de Endeless does not often contemplate death. Not truly.

There are thoughts, of course, that sneak past his own defences. They boil down to this: If I were to die today, I do not think I would mind. Ultimately, that is easy to ignore, to push away. He does not truly want to die, the way he knows some people do. He has his duties to his family, after all. He simply would not mind if death caught him in its clutches.

Now, with his lungs burning and his frantic struggles against the damned ocean proving futile, he thinks this may be preferable. Beneath all the pain of oxygen deprivation as he stubbornly refuses to try to take in a breath only to swallow the ocean into his lungs lies the grief, the ache, the knowledge that he so thoroughly ruined everything good he somehow managed to make his own. His Calliope. His Orpheus. His loves. One hates him now. The other is buried in the ground at only nineteen, hardly an adult and far too young to lose. His parents’ disappointment is an easy thing to conjure up in his mind, and he hates that just as much as he does his losses. What is there left for him, above the surface? At home?

When he frames it like that, he thinks—he thinks it would not be so terrible to face death. He thinks it might be better than rising another day only to remember his son is gone, to see another sunset and acknowledge the fact that Orpheus will not get to see one again.

When he thinks about it like that, it is remarkably easy to stop struggling. Involuntarily, he tries to suck in a breath only to choke on ocean water, and now he is stuck in an endless cycle of pain as he slowly drowns. His head feels…fuzzy, his vision full of little black spots. Distantly, he knows this isn’t good. Knows if he doesn’t do something, he will not make it out of this alive.

He does not want to. The ocean is not violent, he realises now. It is kind, and offers him a reprieve as his body slowly sinks, weighed down by the rich fabrics he wears, as his vision grows hazy and dark and keeping his eyelids open seems like an insurmountable task.

Before he closes them properly, he thinks—he thinks he sees something in the water. A figure, moving towards him. A person, perhaps, only—only that looks like a fish’s tail, fins and all.

Then his eyes fall shut, blocking out everything around him, and he loses himself to the void and the cold and the blissful, welcoming nothing that waits for him beyond.

+++

He awakes with a gasping, heaving breath. His lungs are greedy things, sucking in air with desperation, and he presses a hand to his chest. Beneath his palm, his heart races. Adrenaline and panic both fill his veins and his hand shakes. His lungs feel full, but as he coughs mostly involuntarily, nothing comes up.

It takes a bit for him to calm down. When he does, when his lungs stop heaving and he stops coughing and he is left with nothing but an ache in his lungs, his head and a rawness in his throat, he looks around himself.

He sits on a beach, the sands golden and kissed by the sun. It shines down on him, blessing his face with its light. His clothes are soaked through and no doubt ruined, and before him—before him is the ocean.

It holds none of the fierceness he saw earlier, and he stares at it blankly. It looks as welcoming, as lovely, as it did the day he stepped on board the ship. His mind had been occupied then, yes, but he had enough awareness to acknowledge the sea’s beauty.

Not enough awareness to acknowledge its dangers, though. He remembers in startling clarity the coldness of its waters, the ferocity with which it drowned him, the storm that waged and threw him overboard.

He should’ve been more careful.

It is not just the ocean that lies before him, he realises after a moment, but a man, too. A man, staring at him with honey-eyes that catch the sunlight as though they were made for it, with a curiosity on his face that, if it weren’t for the sudden anxiety twisting his all-too empty stomach, would’ve endeared him immediately. His skin is tan, golden like the sands, and some distant part of his brain wants to press his lips to that skin and find out what it tastes like for himself. Like ocean salt and sweat and the sun itself, he thinks, and then considers the possibility that he may have suffered some brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.

It takes him a bit to find his voice. During that time, the man—sitting in the ocean as though he belongs there, ignorant of its gentle waves lapping at him—continues to stare, head tilted like a particularly curious bird.

“Who are you?” Morpheus asks, wincing at the hoarseness of his throat. It feels scraped raw, and he thinks he would like to simply not speak for a while, only—only this is rather strange, isn’t it?

The man’s shoulders shake with laughter. He is a beautiful creature, this man, with chestnut hair framing his joyful face. Laughter, and amusement, becomes him. Distantly, Morpheus is aware that he should probably take offence at the man’s laughter, only—only he doesn’t really have the energy. If anything, he thinks he’d much rather sleep. “The one who saved you, obviously. Or did you forget you nearly drowned?"

He has half a mind to scowl at the strange man in the water, but only just has enough energy to narrow his eyes. "You saved me," he repeats dumbly. In his defence, he did nearly drown, and sleep calls to him now, an alluring song. Nearly drowning is, apparently, rather exhausting. "We were in the middle of the ocean. We weren't even close to any land. How did you—"

Come to think of it, he can't recall whether he has seen this man's face before. Though perhaps that's explained easily. He was distracted on the ship, after all, and it wasn't like he went out of the way to remember the entire crew. Both Telute and Lucienne always said he should try to interact with people a little more than he does, but he thinks recent events made him exempt from that rule these last few months.

Still. The man's statement doesn't really make sense. They were in the middle of an ocean, and in a storm no less. It would've been impossible for the man to save him then, at least not without a boat or ship of his own.

Thinking of it makes his head hurt more. For a moment he feels ready to simply shrug and accept the nonsensical answer as truth in the hopes that maybe the man would leave him to rest. Logically, he knows that isn't what will happen at all. If this man knows who Morpheus is, if he recognises him, then there will be some kind of demand. A boon for saving Prince Morpheus de Endeles’s life.

He can't do anything about that now, though, and the idea of laying on this beach and letting himself wither under the sun's heat seems very appealing. He doesn't even know where they are, or how close he is to his kingdom. How he's supposed to make it back in this condition, he doesn't know. The task seems impossible, in all honesty.

The man does not leave him to rest, not even when Morpheus simply nods stiffly and says, "Sure. Saved me. Alright." He remains in the ocean actually, the waves lapping at his torso, and continues to stare at him expectantly as though waiting for something more. Eventually, he rolls his eyes—Rude, Morpheus thinks, but hardly cares in the moment–and moves a little closer. It looks almost like the ocean parts for him, but that's ridiculous.

Then—well, then things get even stranger. Which also seems impossible, but—there they are. The man shifts in the water and brings what looks like a tail out of the ocean, all golden scales and fins. Beautiful, he thinks, knowing he's staring but unable to help it. Of course the man's tail would be golden. That only makes sense when the rest of him could've been carved from sunlight.

A little belatedly, he realises just what he's staring at. Which is the man, who has a fish's tail instead of legs.

Hallucinating. He is hallucinating, then. That makes sense. Still, he can't help but laugh quietly—it makes him wince, his lungs still raw and tender, but the pain is temporary and certainly doesn't matter much if he's hallucinating—and says, "You're a merman."

The statement is ludicrous. Morpheus wonders just how much damage nearly drowning can do to a person, and then figures he doesn't want to know at all, actually.

"That is what you call us, yes," the man agrees easily.

Sure. Why not? "Why did you save me then?"

He shrugs softly. “Too pretty for death,” the—the merman, of all things, tells him. It sounds almost petulant.

He is losing his mind. He had swallowed a lot of water. A merman. “One can be too pretty for death?” he asks weakly, his throat hoarse and his chest tight with pain. The ridiculous nature of the question at least makes that pain easy to ignore. It will get him later, he knows that much, but he lets himself be distracted by his amusement at the situation for a while.

The merman blinks at him, expression ever-serious. “You are.”

”Right.” Right. Of course. Too pretty for death. That makes sense. As much sense as a merman fishing him out of the water does, anyway.

Whatever energy allowed him to carry this conversation leaves him suddenly and he falls onto his back on top of the sand, his elbows failing to hold him up any longer. The sun glares down at him and he gazes back up at it blearily. Exhaustion clings to him just as the beach does to his sea-soaked clothes. Sleep seems like a wonderful, bright idea.

He let his eyes fall shut. It isn't very effective for blocking out the sun’s rays—it remains insistent, and closing his eyes doesn't give him the satisfaction of darkness that he dearly wants. Still, while that would’ve been a problem any other time, his body yearns for the void, to let the dark take him. It would be easy to simply lay here and wither, until either the tide takes him or someone finds him. Whichever comes first. He doesn’t mind either way.

Then the merman speaks again. “Are you dying, pretty one?”

It takes a great deal of effort, but he grunts, “No.”

”Are you sure?”

He is not, actually. But that is no concern of this mermaid, and he merely answers, “I am certain.”

Silence follows that statement. Morpheus lets himself relax, lets himself hope this is it. He can sleep now, he thinks, and the thought is almost blissful—and then he is quickly proven wrong, for the merman states, “You look like you’re dying. Does anybody look for you?”

He hardly cares. Distantly, though, he thinks Lucienne might be. Jessamy and Matthew, too, maybe. “Perhaps,” he says after a couple of minutes pass, when he realises he has not yet replied. "I would like to sleep now."

The merman makes a considering noise. "I do not know much about humans," he says slowly, and Morpheus can practically feel the concern in his voice now, "but I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea. I'll stay and talk to you until you're found."

"Must you?" he asks, a desperate edge to his voice. The merman's voice is pleasant enough, yes, but rest is the preferred option here, regardless of what he says.

"Yes," he confirms. Morpheus's eyes are still closed so he can't actually see but he can imagine the smile on his face easily enough.

He sighs heavily and wonders what he did to deserve this. Then figures this is some weird, twisted kind of punishment for all that happened with Orpheus and Calliope and resigns himself to his fate. "Very well."

The merman talks, almost endlessly, until the sun is low in the sky. It is truly an impressive amount of talking. Morpheus doesn't remember much of that afternoon. At some point, he regains just enough energy to sit up, to listen more attentively. The merman, whose name he doesn't learn, seems to appreciate that. And just when despair begins to eat at him—I will not be found, he thinks and despite his inaction while he sank into the ocean, the idea panics him, I will die on this beach—there are calls of his name from behind him. They are voices he recognises and his heart picks up its pace when he turns around to see Lucienne, Telute and Jessamy walking down the beach towards him, each of them looking a little rough but all of them alive.

When he turns back to the ocean, the merman is no longer there, and Morpheus wonders if he dreamt the whole thing up. He does not mention it as Jessamy helps him to his feet, as Telute pulls him in for a hug, as the three of them begin to make it back home, to their duties, but he does not forget the kind eyes of the man who saved him from death at the hands of the ocean.

#the sandman #dreamling #dream of the endless #hob gadling #morpheus dream of the endless #dreamling fic #the sandman fic #merman au #eris writes things #death of the endless

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aingeal98 · 1 year ago

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hello hello! i saw your post and need your thoughts and verdict (hypothetically) for yhk in the last chapter. what would yjh and hsy do once kdj woke up, what if he never woke up and remains unreachable to them after all the effort?

thoughts on doksoo/ joongdok centric and which (poignant) scene makes a neuron lit up and go ah, them. and makes you go crazy, like, every single scene might as well an orpheus and eurydice-d, such as that "cancel your skill, kim dokja"

DHGFVJDFGV sorry you're just such a joy to read on the tags as you go through the story on tumblr since the yhk tags are most often then not, lifeless

Aaaaa thank you for this it's a fun ask! :D

Personally I believe Dokja woke up. Both because I want a happy ending for them and because I wouldn't put it past yoohan to track down and kill everyone who read orv and imagined a sad ending. But also I think him waking up is only the first step. There's no way things aren't complicated afterwards because Dokja will feel guilty for putting his friends through the trauma of losing him and his friends will try and convince him that he deserves love and they don't mind but at the same time the trauma is real and it's there. So it's going to be a long road to helping him forgive himself even if they all have done so already.

I feel like YJH would be pushy at first. Like this is the guy who became a terrorist rather than try therapy. He wants to find meaning through Dokja, to ask Dokja how he's supposed to live now, and that's a lot of pressure that none of the others will want to fall on Dokja's shoulders. Which I think will be good for HSY because it let's her fall into the comfortable zone of yelling at YJH for being terrible at expressing himself and ignoring her own terrible emotions as much as possible in the mean time. So I kind of see it like:

YJH & HSY: Screaming clawing kicking biting each other outside the hospital because HSY thinks YJH is being too pushy with Dokja and YJH thinks he's helping both of them by asking Dokja for guidance and HSY is getting in the way of his recovery.

Sangah, calmly pouring herself and Dokja tea inside his hospital room: So I spoke to your mother today and she'll be here soon! Oh don't worry about those two they'll probably only break a few bones.

But then if he never did wake up... I don't think either of them would be able to truly move on. I think they'd keep hoping that he would get better and the longer he doesn't the more the likelihood grows that one of them snaps and comes up with another reckless life threatening plan to increase the odds of his recovery. I'm not sure what it'd be but I like to think HSY is the one that snaps first this time. Just goes up to YJH like "hey are you ready for me to subject you to more horrendous torment for the slim tiny chance that it could make Dokja wake up" and YJH is like "naturally".

Whether they actually succeed or whether their plan is so terrible and hopeless that Sangah has to step in and force them to accept he's gone (an impossible task but she'll push them as close to the acceptance stage of grief as she possibly can.) I'm not sure. Either way it'd be fun to read about. I haven't looked into the side stories yet but I'm curious if they might make me change my mind about any of this. For now this is how I imagine it going down anyways.

Doksoo are insane and they consume my every waking thought. Reading the webtoon after the novel is so crazy because HSY really shows up as this random villain and no one including her has any idea that she's one of the three most important people in the universe. Like she's just a little fella. A prankster who's pranks sometimes involve murder. And the way she and Dokja are so unimpressed by each other and have no idea how much they'll end up loving each other... I feel like rereading any early doksoo interaction is going to come with extra loud clown music like even Dokja calling her a plagiarist and Sooyoung being like ugh you're such a cliche like oh you dumbasses. You have no idea.

I enjoyed both doksoo and joongdok's early banter a lot like it always added a ton of energy into every scene. But the moments it really clicked for me was the whole reincarnation island arc for doksoo. Like reading his narration about Sooyoung it's like ohhhh my god he's down bad. He's as in love as I am. He doesn't even realise it but he is so enamoured by her. Like that was the moment I could see the potential for them to become as important to each other as they did. The foundation and foreshadowing was done so well, not one bit of their relationship progression felt unearned.

And then for joongdok I think it was their divorce era that really got me on board. Like they were fun in the early stages but once Dokja is convinced there's no going back and is actually emotionally vulnerable and honest with YJH and YJH gets to vent his own frustrations about being nothing more than a character... It really solidified their bond for me. It brought Dokja down to YJH's level rather than the reader he was trying to be to YJH's character. Plus we get HSY dying and traumatising Dokja for once instead of the reverse. It's what they deserve.

Also punisher and transfem YJH and everything that's implied in the novel and how that would add to to her dynamics with doksoo. Haven't gotten any solid thoughts on that yet but the concept is slowly taking a grip on me.

So yeah after the reincarnation island arc I was so fully on board with this ot3 and every single Orpheus moment that followed hit right into my heart.

Sorry this is so long and barely scratches the surface alsjsjdhdh. I'm still processing everything but man. What a story. What a trio. Wretched mirror soulmates with toxic codependency my beloveds.

#orv #orv spoilers #orv rambles #yoohankim #yoo joonghyuk #han sooyoung #kim dokja #asks

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yanderu-deredere · 1 year ago

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a/n: to commemorate the beginning of october (which his halloween month), i've decided to write this little cute thing! hope you guys like it hehehe

what they yanderes would wear as halloween costumes

warning: gender neutral reader, absolutely no mentions of reader being a specific gender, mentions of reader being sexy LOL, mentions of costumes that might not conform to reader's gender/crossdressing

eun-jeong yoo ★ profile

beauty and the beast lmao

eun-jeong would really want to do an animal cosplay with you doing a matching costumes

so like beauty and the beast, werewolf and red riding hood, wolf and sheep, etc etc

he'd be the type to like buy pre-made costumes but then he'll see how badly the pre-made costumes are and do the costumes up a little bit more LOL

he wouldn't do a good job of it but he'd try to make it look better

liam arieh ★ profile

mans is nothing if not a mythology freak

he'd be the worst date to take to a halloween party becos he'd do some obscure shit and then be a bit annoyed or arrogant when people can't guess who the two of you are dressed up as

think persephone and hades, aphrodite and ares, orpheus and eurydice, achilles and patroclus, pylades and orestes, etc

most people will just guess that you're a greek couple LOL

you could probably convince him do do an angel and devil couple

gavin byrne ★ profile

no jokes, he'd wanna do those like stereotypically sexy halloween costumes LMAO but like the both of you have to do the same one

like for example: two sexy nurses, two sexy black cats, two sexy demons, etc etc

and it'll be like exactly matching LMAO no matter your gender (if you're comfy), you guys would be wearing female nurse outfits or sexy witch outfits

and the worst part is that like he'd 100% buy them from spirit halloween or the local party store so they're not best quality either

ayaka yamato ★ profile

would die to be able to do a j-fashion lolita outfit with you LOL

she's always wanted to dress up that way but it's hard to go around in lolita fashion and also it's something that immediately sticks out so she's never done it

but yeah, it has to be something cute and frilly

she'd pay attention to detail a lot and commission some renowned tailor or something to do the outfits

they have to be the same colour scheme so that it's obvious the two of you are matching

ryuunosuke yamamoto ★ profile

anime couple, anime couple, anime couple--

it can literally be any anime couple you want but it has to be from an anime that both of you have watched together/that both of you really love

he's a professional-level cosplayer so like he'd take over (but will let you help if you really want) and the cosplay will literally turn out so so good

he won't shy away from like armour or mech suit type stuff either

fujio watanabe ★ profile

won't really wanna dress up but you can force him to LOL

will only wear a costume if the costume is really easy to put on

like it has to be as easy to put on as regular clothes. it has to be something like a shirt, pants, maybe head gear but like nothing too complicated so it has to be either a headband or a hat

so like you're stuck with really boring costumes like cowboy? police man? stuff like that LOL and they'd be the cheap kind you can buy

gawain byrne ★ profile

vampire, vampire, vampire--

but like not dracula vampire! oh no, it'd be like period specific vampire with the loose white ruffled long sleeve shirts and tight pants LMAO

very victorian gothic style

and you have to also wear victorian gothic style. you don't have to be a vampire tho but i think gawain would just have a lot of fun putting on fangs hehehe

he'd want your costume to include like two red puncture marks tho LOL to signal that you're his vampiric snack

ryouta watanabe ★ profile

not to be repetitive but like video game couple, video game couple, video game couple--

would totally dress up as mario and princess peach or luigi and bowser if you'd like LOL

as long as it's like a video game that both of you love to play

he'll also do a cosplay of more detailed outfits like something from league of legends or overwatch or valorant

he's also a seasoned cosplayer so it'd be easy peasy for him to make a cosplay for both you and him

yeong-bae kigal ★ profile

GOD I KNOW I JUST SAID IT BUT video game couple, video game couple--

but yeong-bae would want it to be a bit more cutesy? so definitely like cookie run cookies, pokemon?, mario characters? something like that

would shy away a little from more complicated outfits like mech armour or video game outfits from more fight-y games. not becos he doesn't like them but becos they really want to look adorable and cute with you LOL

yeong-bae is literally in charge of a lot of the outfits the band wears so like he'd be really great with making the halloween outfits

he wouldn't be professional level though and he'd ask a little help from their stylist

soren kumar ★ profile

BORING BITCH

he'd wanna do something work related or uniform related lmao like a police couple or like a nurse and doctor? it definitely would be the type of outfits that are readily available and would be low effort for him

also low-key just wants to see you in uniform LMAO not that it's a kink or anything but just that he thinks it'd be sexy

and it's very! heteronormative! nasty man! he'd wear the man police uniform and (regardless of gender) he'd want you to wear the woman police uniform (cus it's sexier!!), etc etc

you can definitely argue with him abt it loool and he'll relent

would get them from spirit halloween or some cheap store though

emm fiala ★ profile

would want to dress up as something where she can utilize her burns. think freddy kreuger, jason, deadpool, frankenstein's monster

would want you to be her victim if she dresses up as a slasher or maybe be the spiderman to her deadpool? or even better, be the bride to her frankenstein's monster?

she'd definitely be all over you, doting on you, if you decide to dress up as her bride LOL and then you, casimir and her can be a trio! (frankenstein, his monster and his monster's bride!!)

would want to be more hands-on with the harder stuff of the costume like masks or weaponry but is absolutely useless when it comes to finer detailing like sewing together the clothes

casimir fiala ★ profile

desperately wants to dress up as a mad scientist LMAO just becos he already has the lab coat right so might as well?

would love for you to dress up as his deranged patient or as frankenstein's monster? or as his science experiment?

the outfits would be very home made but casimir is good enough and sewing. he's also very resourceful about things and can figure out how to make a decent enough costume

mel lowell ★ profile

honestly would want to be a wolf and something else couple LOL and no, the irony does not escape him

so something like wolf and red riding hood, wolf and pigs, wolf and sheep, etc etc

would buy the costumes becos he can't really control his shift enough to not freak people out if the two of you go to a party or something

he'd definitely buy online though and he'd make sure they costumes are really durable and can last a long time just in case the two of you want to save them for something else? or for next year

isamu lowell ★ profile

doesn't wanna dress up LOL but not becos he doesn't like halloween! it's becos he wants to go as himself for halloween

unlike mel, he's very eager to just go as a werewolf!

but, like mel, he wants to do a wolf and something else kind of cosplay! honestly, at this point, you might just become three wolves and a lowly sheep group cosplay LOL

like i said before, he won't need to really buy his outfit just becos he'll transform into it LOL but, for your outfit, he'd want it to be the highest quality he can get his hands on becos he wants you to be comfy

leonard lowell ★ profile

honestly, leonard wants to go with the flow so whatever you want! but be warned that he'll be very critical of the outfits LOL

the costume has to be high quality and, if it's not, he'll nag you or just take the costumes and try to do them up a little bit so they're more comfortable

he'd be willing to do a wolf cosplay if you want to go with whatever the other wolves want LOL but he'd be like a very anime-fied sexy werewolf, yknow what i mean?

might even throw in a thick leather collar in there to be extra sexy LOL

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seldnei · 6 days ago

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Taking stock of the writing: 2024

For any new followers: this is my annual post about my writing in the past year. This is purely for my own mental health–the tag says “seldnei is tired of feeling like a slacker” for a reason. Please feel free to skip.

2024 was an interesting year that feels like it lasted 2 months, and those 2 months were October and November. We had goal-changing for the kids (Z no longer wants to do theatre for a living, is considering library science, and is planning a gap year while he reassesses; Q has found that school just isn’t their thing right now and is job-hunting); the entire family has decided, between politics and hurricanes, that we’re moving out of Florida; we’re making major procedure changes at work; The Fucking Election … yeah.

But through it all, I wrote.

So, reflection and goals, here we go.

Stories/poems, etc.

“It’s Dangerous to Go Alone,” a short story monologue type deal about the contents of a shop that sells fantasy sidekicks, for FUCKIT. I am very pleased with the miniature boy band.

“The Innumerable Trunks and Thick Boughs O’erhead,” a weird little poem set in the same place as ‘The Forest Speaks of Secrets and the Dead,’ for FUCKIT. Not entirely sure how I feel about this one, but the framing poem about Mr. Brown was just going around and around in my head until I got it out on paper, so.

“The Modern Eurydice: Hecate’s Children,” also for FUCKIT. I love this one. Everything in it should be taken literally. I immortalized all our dogs, up to and including Miss Snoots.

Also wrote some TMA fanfic and had a ball doing so—I got to play a lot with structure and narrative and all that good stuff. Wrote some poetry in my notebook—I’m thinking about maybe doing a chapbook of poetry for the husband at some point.

I blogged about once a month, on average.

I did not get the podcast scripts done, nor did I write any other short fiction (see below for more on that).

Books!

I started self-publishing!

So I’m using Draft2Digital to make the files and handle distribution; so far they’ve been good! I have a hard time understanding the royalty statements? Not sure if that’s me or them, but I’ll be pulling all the reports together for taxes so we’ll see if it makes sense then.

I published a short story collection, The Stars; the Silence, and the first Teachout novel, Cobbler’s Hill.

Cool stuff: my book is in the local library, and not-local libraries have it in their e-collections! It’s in Hoopla! Someone on Goodreads gave the collection 4 stars!

I did not break triple digit sales, but I did sell more than just 3 copies to some friends, so for the first 9 months? I think that’s okay. I learned a lot.

I’m working on the sniper witch book—I think I’m going to break it into 3 novellas instead of one book with 3 wildly different tones. I made a plan to have this all done by June so that I could publish them over 6 months with an omnibus at the end of the year, but the more I consider that, the more I go Price, why are you trying to kill yourself? So that will likely be re-vamped. I would like to have the bulk of the writing and revising done by June, and have the first one, at least, out this year, but we’ll see.

In 2025, I want to do more promo for CH, possibly hire an editor for sniper witch, and enjoy this thing I’ve started doing rather than pushing myself to produce like the oligarchs want. And keep writing for FUCKIT so my short writing skills don't disappear.

Thoughts on 2024

It took me a while to really settle into the idea that the short things I’m writing are really going to be only for FUCKIT because novels take a lot of time and effort. It felt strange to realize that, even though novels have always been my goal.

I definitely had my moments this year of “Oh god, I’m a failure!” But just about every time I would get like that, there would be a story about trad publishing: AI, lack of promotion, lack of money, general crappy behavior. I am too old and too tired for that. For the first time ever I’m writing while knowing those words are going to be published, and it’s lovely. I am not too scattered to make it happen, even if my plans have changed three times since I first made them and will probably change three more as I go.

I am still not sure what it will do to my taxes, though. (Probably nothing, but a girl can hope.)

Goals for 2025

Promo for previous books

Finish sniper witch

Start outlining Teachout 2

Editor for SW?

Revise/publish vol 1 of SW?

(Some of this depends on how the whole "moving across the country" thing goes, as well.)

#seldnei is tired of feeling like a slacker #seldnei writes things

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demigod-shenanigans · 23 days ago

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Summary: The quest to earn Jason’s first college recommendation letter had gone almost too well. The second one was currently trying to make up for this by being a massive pain in the ass.

After trips to three different sacred libraries and hours of stumbling through a cave system in the dark, Piper should have wanted nothing more than to have this stupid quest over and done with.

Except, well… the completion of their quest required them to find the Mnemosyne—the Fountain of Memory. And considering no one had ever bothered to fix the mess that the Mist had made of Leo and Piper’s memories, or the mess that the Queen of the Heavens had made of Jason’s… maybe there were things Piper wanted just a little more than going home.

Word Count: ~6K

Rating: Teen and Up

I did hope to eventually do at least some key moments from Jason’s college recommendation letter quests, so here’s one of them! So so stoked to finally be sharing my @lost-trio-week fics with you guys! I’m really excited about the event, I cannot wait to read everyone’s works and look at people’s art!!

This was technically written for the Wilderness prompt, but did end up a little nod to the Nickname prompt, too.

There’s some valgrace in this, but it’s relatively minor. This is, first and foremost, a fic focused on both the lost trio in general and Leo and Piper’s friendship specifically.

———

As they approached the third hour of stumbling through the dark underground tunnels, still looking like varying degrees of drowned rat in their drying, muddy clothes, Piper decided that this quest was much worse than the previous one had been.

For all that had gone wrong on the quest to earn Jason’s first college recommendation letter, it had been clear Apollo had at least intended to give them an easy win as an apology for temporarily getting Jason killed the previous year.

Mnemosyne had clearly had no such restraint. It wasn’t that the Titaness had been unkind—she’d been nice enough when they’d spoken to her—but she’d taken one look at them, decided they seemed competent and given them a quest that was a massive pain in the ass.

They were looking for the Mnemosyne—the Fountain of Memory—which had the exact same name as the Titaness for maximum confusion.

One of the children of Moneta, Mnemosyne’s Roman aspect, had been involved in an unfortunate Lethe-related incident on their last mission and had since had a worrying amount of memory problems. This would have been disturbing enough for your average demigod, but considering that poor kid’s whole power set revolved around memories, they’d taken things really badly.

The three of them had immediately agreed to help—honestly might have even if it hadn’t been for the college recommendation letters. They were all uncomfortably familiar with the concept of demigod memory issues and wouldn’t have wished that on anyone.

Piper still stood by that decision, even as they continued to stumble through the dark with only Leo’s fire lighting the way, as a little dip in an underground river had utterly wrecked their flashlights.

The issue Piper had with this mission didn’t come from what they were trying to achieve. It came from the fact that they’d gone through three different sacred libraries in different parts of the country in search of a flask that could hold the black waters of the Fountain, only to learn afterwards that the main part of the Fountain was in the Underworld.

Maybe this would have been fine, but no version of Eurydice in the myths had ever lived to touch the sunlight again, and none of them had been all that eager to find out what might happen if they took Jason back into the Underworld.

Unfortunately, this meant they had to deal with the only other place they knew that might still hold the water of the Fountain, if they were lucky: the Bluespring Caverns in Indiana, aka the residence of the Oracle of Trophonius.

As in: the very same place that Lester and Meg had partially blown up as a precaution about a year ago.

Originally, the Fountain had been above ground. But whatever explosive had been used to destroy the caverns had done its job so thoroughly that it had taken the waters with it, which made them much harder to find than they’d initially hoped.

The cave system was as vast as it was currently unstable, and it made for quite the experience. Several times, Piper had found herself wishing they had Hazel with them.

When, after hours of wandering around semi-aimlessly, the cave in front of them widened into a cavern and they could finally, finally hear the sound of running water that sounded more like a stream and less like a river, the three of them let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Wow, that stuff really is pitch black,” Leo concluded, holding his flaming hand over the river so he could take a proper look. “So, how do we find out if this is really the Mnemosyne and not, like, the grimiest stream of all time? Because, as the guy who has the most experience with Titans between the three of us, trust me, if Calypso had sent me to find magic memory water and I’d presented her with a bottle full of mud instead, she would not have found that especially funny.”

Before Piper could suggest something really foolish—like how one of them should try drinking the waters and seeing if it fixed the holes in her own memories, which she’d been secretly hoping to do ever since they’d gotten this mission—a figure took shape in front of them.

“You’ve come to the right place,” the Titaness confirmed before she’d even fully taken form. Her dark hair blended nicely into the general darkness of the cavern. Her luminous white robes, which were almost startlingly bright, were still covered in black words like they’d been the first time they’d met her, which definitely did not help her beat the walking e-reader allegations.

The words seemed to have shifted. Maybe someone had skipped a few pages on her cloak since the last time they’d seen her.

“How’s Zac doing?” Jason asked immediately, clearly worried. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know this kid. Of course he was worried about them. He had first-hand experience with having his memories utterly shaken out of him.

“They’re still very confused.” Mnemosyne sighed. “But the waters will help.”

Piper tried not to be annoyed. If the Titaness could have appeared by the stream any time she wanted, why hadn’t she just taken the waters to her child herself?

But she knew by now that things were just like that in their world. There were rules, and gods didn’t do their own quests if they could send random demigods to fetch their magic items instead. That wasn’t ever going to change.

“So, did you just pop up here to confirm we’re not about to gather mud water?” Leo asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No.” The Titaness eyed the stream, then looked between the three of them. “I wasn’t sure how much of the Fountain would be left after everything that happened here last year, or I would have made you this offer much sooner. But if the three of you wish to have your own memories restored, you may drink.”

Piper’s body went rigid, and she could tell Leo and Jason were just as affected. Apparently all three of them had had the same thought for the entire mission—that this might be their one chance to finally get back the memories that Hera and the Mist had taken from them.

“How- how did you know-” Jason asked, startled.

“I’m the Titaness of memory, child.” She smiled at him. “I never forget a story, and yours is quite unique. I’ve heard it told many times, and I remember each version in detail.”

“That sounds like a massive headache waiting to happen,” Leo muttered.

The Titaness laughed. “Perhaps. It can be both a blessing and a curse. But I knew you three have had parts of your memory taken from you, and it was not hard to guess you might wish to regain it. Memory is powerful. It shapes us into who we are as people. Mortals aren’t made to retain all memories, of course, but losing too many can utterly reshape their being.” She eyed Jason with a curiosity in her eyes that Piper really did not like. “I’ll admit, part of the reason I offered you this quest was that I wanted to meet you, Jason Grace. I was intrigued to see who you’d become, with so much of your sense of self stripped away.”

The way she spoke wasn’t unkind, but it was a tone Piper was used to with most gods—one that suggested demigods served mainly as a source of entertainment for higher powers, with no regard for how it made them feel.

“And? Happy with the results?” Piper snapped.

Even in the dark, she could tell Jason was trembling. She moved to stand beside him. Apparently, Leo had had the same impulse—within a moment, they were flanking Jason.

“The path he might have carved with his memories intact would have been very different from the one he carved with them gone,” Mnemosyne said, tone gentle. “It’s important for me to reflect on this, every now and again. The way forgetting can be just as powerful as remembering. Lethe and Mnemosyne balance each other out for a reason. Your friend served as an excellent reminder.”

“I understand that Juno did what she had to do, at the time,” Jason said quietly. He squeezed Piper’s hand. They hadn’t been dating for more than a year, and they were better off for it, but their natural instinct for comforting touches had stayed. “I wouldn’t change what’s happened for anything. But now that the camps are united… is it selfish? To want to remember?”

“Not at all. Being the Titaness of memory, I may be slightly biased on the matter, but wanting to remember has always seemed like a natural instinct to me.” She smiled at him. “The waters could return your memories. Restore what was yours. But you must know that it will restore all of them. Memories can be a heavy burden, sometimes.”

“Is it safe? Drinking from the stream?” Piper asked hesitantly.

“For you and Valdez? Utterly.” Mnemosyne confirmed immediately. “The memories you’ve lost are still within you. A single sip is all you’ll need.”

“And for Jason?” Piper probed, not liking the fact that he'd been left off the list one bit.

“He’ll need to drink more deeply than you two. It’s not without dangers. The memories may overwhelm him.” Mnemosyne turned towards Jason again. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help my child. You will have your recommendation letter regardless of whether you choose to drink. But know that if you choose not to regain your memories now, it’s likely you never will. The more time passes, the greater the dissonance will be between the person you were in those memories and the person you’ve grown into without them. Even now, there’s no telling how well you’ll handle this fact. Waiting longer… it would simply be too dangerous.”

Piper knew Jason wouldn’t reject the waters just because it was risky to drink them. He’d gone through two quests assuming he was destined to die. He’d never been as scared for his own well-being as would have probably been good for him.

Besides, she’d heard the way he talked about Reyna. He’d forgotten so much—felt so detached from the memories he didhave—that only the shape of loving her remained. And for all of Piper’s insistence that that shape could be filled with new memories, she knew that it had never felt like that was enough to Jason.

She knew what he’d say even before the words left his mouth.

“I’ll do it.” Jason wrung his hands. “I want to remember who I was. All of it. Even the bad parts. It’s a burden I don’t want to keep living without.”

The Titaness seemed to like this answer.

“I’ll leave you to the privacy of your memories, then,” she announced, disappearing in a swirl of letters.

Piper wasn’t sure there could be any real privacy, considering she was the Titaness of memory and this was her stream, but she appreciated the sentiment.

~~~~

They gathered some of the water up in a flask. It was far more than Zac would need—Mnemosyne had said that a gulp or two should be more than enough to fix them right up—but they figured it couldn’t hurt to have extra, just in case the usual shenanigans happened or someone else might need the power of the waters in the future. Who knew how long this stream was going to stick around here. It was pure luck that it had even still been here at all, linked as it was to the destroyed Oracle. There was a good chance it would shift and reappear elsewhere in the future, and who knew how soon they’d be able to find it again when that happened.

Once Leo had safely stored the flask in his tool belt, the three of them kneeled side by side at the bank of the stream.

Jason was trembling, staring intently into the water but making no move to touch him.

“Whatever happens, we’ll be right here with you, okay?” Leo said gently, one arm wrapping around his boyfriend’s shoulder.

“It’s just… what if I remember who I was and decide I don’t like myself?” Jason asked, voice suddenly small. There was clearly more he wanted to say. Piper could tell he was afraid.

But Jason had never been good at letting himself be vulnerable.

Thankfully, Leo had the situation handled. He elbowed his boyfriend, raising an eyebrow. “Are you implying I have a terrible taste in men? Because I cannot let that stand.”

He leaned forward and kissed him.

Jason laughed, despite everything.

“You always manage to make me feel better. I don’t know how you do it,” he said, voice full of fond awe. He took Leo’s face in his hands, sighing contently. “I love you so much.”

“Aw, I’m dating a complete sap.” Leo grinned. He flicked Jason in the head and kissed him again.

Maybe Piper should have felt awkward watching them. Third-wheeling your best friends when you were newly single would probably not have been most people’s favorite activity.

But Piper had spent the better part of a year grieving Leo and three months with the gaping hole Jason’s death had left in her chest. Seeing them alive and well and so genuinely happy together after everything that had happened made her heart swell.

This didn’t mean she wouldn’t give them shit about it, though.

Piper whistled, grinning widely at them.

“Hey lovebirds! We should probably get a move on with the memory stuff if we want to make it back to the Waystation before dark.”

“Buzzkill!” Leo complained, chuckling.

“That is my job description as your best friend, yes,” Piper confirmed, pulling them both into a tight hug. “No matter what happens next, we’ll handle it together. We’ve been through much, much worse.”

~~~~

Jason gulped down a handful of stream water and was out like a light within three seconds.

This just left Leo and Piper conscious on the bank of the stream.

Maybe it would have been smart to take turns with this—have two of them drink and the third stand guard until the others woke up—but as difficult as this place had been to find, Piper doubted any random monster would be unlucky enough to just wander in here.

Besides, she was itching to touch the waters herself. The thought of getting her Wilderness School memories back almost made her vibrate out of her skin with excitement.

No more random flashes of Jason where he hadn’t been. No more fake memories overwriting the friendship her and Leo had shared. She couldn’t stand the thought of waiting even a second longer.

“Hang on,” Leo said, grabbing her arm before she could reach into the stream. “I mean, obviously I get why Jason needed this. But are we sure we even want to remember?”

Piper’s first instinct was to protest that they’d wanted this for so long—that they’d spent forever mourning those first few months of their friendship, thinking they’d never get a chance like this—but the look in her best friend’s eyes gave her pause. Apparently, Jason hadn’t been the only one of them who was afraid.

She put a hand on Leo’s shoulder, squeezing it gently.

“What are you worried about?”

“I’ve been thinking, and… what if all of it was fake? What if all the memories we have of Wilderness School were Hera just making things up so we’d do her stupid quest?”

“You think maybe we weren’t really friends before that day at the Grand Canyon?” Piper asked, heart clenching at the thought.

Over the past two years, she had gotten occasional flashes of Wilderness School memories with Leo that hadn’t featured Jason, and she’d always assumed those were her real memories. But what if Leo was right? What if that had just been a second layer of Hera-induced nonsense? What if she’d spent this whole quest hoping to get memories back that didn’t even exist, and the reality of Wilderness School had just been them being lonely and miserable in separate corners of the school?

“Yeah. Maybe we didn't even know each other aside from being classmates,” Leo mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck and refusing to meet her eyes. “Or worse, maybe you, like, hated me or something. What if you get those memories back, and you suddenly decide that you do find me annoying?”

“Hey,” Piper said, pulling him into a hug. “I think you’re plenty annoying now, but that’s never stopped me from wanting to be your best friend,” she teased, squeezing him tightly. “And if Wilderness School Piper really did hate you for whatever reason, I’m just gonna have to tell her off for having shit opinions about my best friend. End of story.”

“Okay,” Leo said shakily. He buried himself in the embrace, squeezing back just as hard. “Okay. I just… you’re my best friend, and I…” he trailed off. His voice was watery.

“I know. But whatever we were back then can’t take away what we are now. Trust me on that one.” Piper rubbed his back soothingly. She could feel herself tearing up, too. “If you originally thought Wilderness School Piper sucked? Tough luck. You’re not getting rid of me ever again.”

“Sorry. I’m getting better about this, I swear. I know you guys love me so much. I just- I don’t want to lose you, ever.”

“I get it. The feeling is very much mutual.” Piper gave him a watery smile.

“I don’t really want to spend my whole life wondering if we had memories together from before,” Leo continued, voice growing steadier. “If we were friends back then, I want to remember every moment of it. And hey, maybe I actually do want to remember it even if I did think you sucked at first. I was really good at keeping people at arm’s length back then. Remembering how that changed with you and Jason… maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

They kneeled next to each other at the pitch black river, leaning down to gather up a small handful of black water each.

“Ready?” she asked, glad to have Leo by her side for this.

He smiled more genuinely now. “Bottom’s up.”

They drank—a small sip, and no more than that.

The water had no taste, but the feel of it was intense. It was a numbing kind of cold that reminded Piper of the anesthetics she’d been given when she’d broken her arm as a child. She remembered the doctor asking her a question or two. She remembered giving nonsense answers.

In a few seconds, the world had faded into nothingness, just like it did now. The cavern surrounding her disappeared, turning as black as the water of the stream.

*******

Remembering felt like walking into a dream and like waking up all at once.

Piper was fifteen again, staring intently out of the window of her Wilderness School classroom and tuning out the teacher. Suddenly, the door had banged open, and there he was—Leo Valdez. He had his arms spread out and bowed mockingly, a cheeky grin on his face. She’d known immediately that this boy would spell trouble.

“You’re fifteen minutes late!” the teacher had protested, which had just made Leo’s grin widen.

“Hey, I figured if I was going to join the class mid-semester, I might as well make a grand entrance. Punctuality is bad for grand entrances, you know.”

The teacher had looked at him in displeasure. Then she’d said the words that were about to make her own life significantly worse, and Leo and Piper’s lives significantly better.

“You’re sitting in front with McLean, where I can keep an eye on you.”

He’d rolled his eyes, but dropped into his assigned chair regardless, not bothering to unpack his bag.

They hadn’t really talked much during that first class they’d shared. Leo had spent the whole time tinkering with some unidentifiable object made of screws, bolts and rubber bands.

Piper had pretended it didn’t bother her. She hadn’t felt like anyone at this stupid school wanted to be her friend since she’d first arrived there, and she’d convinced herself she was fine with that.

It wasn’t like she’d ever really managed to make friends who were interested in her as a person rather than her celebrity dad. That was never going to change.

Except, well… Piper’s pen had gone out of ink, and a moment later, the new guy had wordlessly pushed one of his pens in her direction.

“Don’t give her your stuff,” someone in the row behind them had warned Leo in a stage whisper. Piper had known instantly that their classmate had wanted her to hear every word. “Piper’s here because she’s a klepto. You’re never getting that pen back.”

Piper had been fuming, getting ready to retaliate, but the new kid had been quicker on the draw than her.

“Good. I fucking hate that pen.” Leo had smiled at her, then whirled on the person behind them, speaking loud enough that the whole class heard. “And what are you here for? Because, unlike me, you’re clearly not at risk of getting arrested for your winning personality.”

The girl’s face had gone as red as her stupid hair. Several of the kids around them had started snickering, Piper very much included.

“I can deal with these idiots by myself,” she’d told him afterwards. “But I do appreciate the sentiment.”

“Noted. I just can’t stand people like that. Would gladly watch you take her down a couple notches from the passenger seat sometime, though.” He’d grinned at her. “The name’s Leo, by the way.”

“Piper.”

She’d known they would be friends, then.

~~~~ The roommate thing had come as a surprise to both of them. Wilderness didn’t really do co-ed rooming.

But Leo had apparently managed to piss off three roommates in just as many days, and since they’d chatted a few times in class and sat together at lunch twice, someone in the faculty had apparently decided that, if nothing else, Piper was at least very unlikely to beat Leo up.

“What did you even do to piss Tyler off that much?” she’d asked, allowing Leo to sit on the bottom bunk that had belonged to her for the past month while he pressed an ice pack to his face. “I mean, I know the guy’s got a short fuse, but usually it takes him longer than a few hours of knowing a person to flip his shit like that.”

Leo had shrugged. “Apparently he liked his previous roommate. Came as a shock to me, too—I didn’t think he liked anyone.”

”Just that?”

“Okay, admittedly, the 3 am tinkering probably didn’t help,” he’d amended. “Fair warning: I don’t do well with sleep. Or silence. Or most things, really. If you get sick of rooming with me—which I’m sure you will—don’t worry. I won’t bother you for long.”

~~~~

Leo had tried to make good on that promise less than a week later, when Piper had woken up to him noisily breaking their window lock at one in the morning.

“What in the world are you doing?” she’d asked, eyes wide. She’d crawled out of her bunk to see Leo standing in the dark with a backpack slung over his shoulder and a makeshift tool that looked a little like a torture device in his hand. “You’re leaving?”

The memory was vivid now—the way her heart had dropped into her gut at that moment. It had startled her, then, just how much the thought of Leo leaving had terrified her when they’d barely known each other for a week and a half.

What right did she have to feel this level of attachment to a guy she barely knew? Sure, they’d talked, and she’d made the teachers cut him some slack about homework a few times. Sure, they’d sat together at lunch for all of the past week.

But there was so much she hadn’t known about Leo at the time. So much he hadn’t known about her.

They had, for all intents and purposes, still been strangers.

But they’d been less strangers than any of the other people she’d met at this school—or, honestly, most people she’d met in the years before that. Leo made her laugh. Being around him was the happiest she’d felt in months.

The thought of him leaving her…

“I’m just going up to the roof,” he’d told her. “It’s kind of stuffy in here, and I really need to stretch my legs. Realized earlier that the fire escape outside our window goes up, too, so I figured why not?”

A lie. Piper knew it now like she’d known it back then.

She couldn’t have asked him to stay. Not under those circumstances. But there had been something she could do.

“Can I join you?” she’d asked. “The view’s probably pretty great, and you did wake me up, so might as well make the most of it.”

At least admit you’re leaving, she’d thought. At least tell me goodbye.

Leo had hesitated for a moment, but then his face had softened into a small smile.

“You know what? What the hell. I guess I wouldn’t mind company.” He’d looked her over. “You might want to change into something that isn’t pajamas, though. Unless, of course, your goal is to freeze to death so you won’t have to go on that stupid survival trip we’ve got scheduled tomorrow. Which, you know, would be completely understandable.”

Piper hadn’t pointed out that Leo was only wearing a t-shirt and shorts himself. She hadn’t known he couldn’t get cold back then.

They’d spent the whole night lying on the roof, just talking about a whole bunch of nothing for hours and hours. Piper had pointed to some of the constellations her dad had taught her when she’d been little.

Her dad… she still didn’t know entirely why she’d done it, but when the moon had started to dip towards the horizon, she’d told Leo the truth about her father.

“Hang on. Tristan McLean like the movie star?” Leo had looked at her with wide eyes. “I thought having that kind of money got you out of just about anything. What in the world did you steal to still end up here?”

“Technically, I didn’t steal anything,” Piper had said quietly. She hadn’t expected him to believe her. No one ever did. “I did get a car salesman to lend me a BMW, though.”

Leo had laughed wildly. “You may be the craziest person I’ve ever met. And trust me, that’s a compliment.”

“Gee, thanks,” Piper had told him, but she had let out a small chuckle of her own.

Then, Leo had done something that had really surprised her. For the first time, he’d shared a little bit of himself.

“I’m a tragic orphan, personally. I’ve been through a bunch of foster homes since I was eight.” He’d shrugged. “I’m not really great at sticking around. That’s how I ended up here.”

You stuck around tonight, she hadn’t said. “They can do that? Stick you in a correctional facility for running away?”

“Apparently.” He’d shrugged again. “I’m kind of jealous. Your backstory is much cooler than mine.”

They’d declared that roof their secret hiding spot after, using it to stash snacks they weren’t supposed to have and skip gym whenever Hedge was being particularly annoying. It was the first place they’d ever carved out that had truly felt like theirs.

~~~~

Piper remembered venting to Leo about her dad and his stupid assistant—something she’d never, ever gotten to do with anyone else before this. She’d complained about the last birthday present she’d gotten: a makeup kit that had clearly been picked out by her dad’s assistant, along with a card that misspelled her name as “Pipes”.

She remembered Leo joking that clearly he should be Pipes, because he was smokin’—a joke that was made even worse by the fact that Leo had fire powers, which she hadn’t known at the time.

“What about you?” she’d asked eventually. “When’s your birthday?”

“I don’t do birthdays, Pipes,” Leo had said, smirking at her. Was that where the nickname had come from? “Tragic orphan, remember? Besides, I ended up here for being a serial runaway. No way in hell I’m sticking around until my next birthday.”

“Then there’s no harm in telling me.”

“I guess. If you really want to send me a birthday card from juvie, I suppose I’ll let you know what bridge to address it to ahead of time.” He’d paused. “Sorry, stupid joke. Rich girls don’t go to juvie.”

But he had told her. He’d done it claiming it wouldn’t matter, sure. But Piper knew him now, in a way she hadn’t back then. Saw the slight change in his posture. The way his smile melted into something a fraction more vulnerable. That she’d wanted to know had mattered to him.

As much as Leo spoke of leaving, she’d never woken to him halfway out the window again after that.

~~~~

The memories kept crashing over her. Weeks upon weeks of sitting together at lunch and late night conversations and passing notes in class. Of playing stupid pranks on their classmates as well as each other. Of carefully letting down their walls, brick by brick, until they could at least mostly see each other past their respective barriers.

There’d been a lot they hadn’t talked about back then, but even when they weren’t talking, the fact that they’d had someone to sit with and say nothing to had been a welcome novelty for both of them.

Piper remembered her dad not showing up on the weekends he’d promised to come visit, and how Leo had never pointed it out, but had always made backup plans so they’d have something fun to do to distract her.

She remembered how down Leo had been on what she now knew was the anniversary of his mom’s death. She hadn’t known exactly what was up with him, at the time—just that something was. She remembered roping him into a kitchen heist. She remembered sitting in their shared room afterwards, laughing, handing the tub of strawberry ice cream back and forth until they both felt sick.

She remembered coming down with that stupid cold in late November that had left her bedridden for a week, and how Leo had skipped class and gotten himself in trouble just so he could sit with her, rambling excitedly about some projects he was tinkering with and how they could be misused in the next pranks they’d planned. She remembered being snuck several cups of chocolate pudding in an attempt to cheer her up—which had tasted strangely better than the one the cafeteria usually served.

Back then, Leo had claimed her taste buds were probably just wonky because she was sick.

She realized now that he’d probably made it for her.

~~~~

Piper remembered the meteor shower—gods, the meteor shower. The memory that she’d spent forever thinking of as her first date with Jason.

She remembered Leo dragging her up to their spot on the roof, his whole face alight in excitement. Remembered them sitting together on a picnic blanket for hours, watching light streaking across the night sky.

“You were right, by the way. About what I was up to that night I broke our window lock,” he’d told her quietly, when it was already late into the night. “I was going to leave. I’m still not sure why I didn’t.”

“Do you regret it?” she’d asked. “Staying?”

“Pretty much every time Hedge makes us run laps.” He’d grinned up at her. “But then I look back to see you eating my dust, and I think, hey, maybe this isn’t so bad.”

“Aw, you like being around me that much?” she’d teased, and- oh. Oh no.

Piper felt the mortification of that moment slam back into her as the rest of the memory hit her like a truck.

“Maybe,” he’d said, looking up to meet her eyes. “Hey Pipes? Can I do something really stupid?”

“Past evidence suggests that you very much can,” she’d told him, feeling weirdly shy all of a sudden.

And then he’d leaned forward and kissed her.

She’d thought about kissing him before that moment—about how she’d never loved anyone like she loved Leo. If there was any boy in the world she’d want to kiss, it had to be him.

She remembered the exact moment it had hit them both that this wasn’t it. They’d jumped apart so abruptly that Leo had nearly toppled backwards off the roof.

“Careful!” Piper had yelled, and Leo had gone rigid where he stood, thankfully unharmed. “Jeez, Leo. The kiss was bad, but throwing yourself off the roof over it seems a little dramatic.”

Relief had unspooled in her chest when she’d seen the grimace on his face and known it hadn’t just been her.

“Nope, that was completely warranted,” Leo had told her, wiping at his mouth, her own relief mirrored in his expression. “Sorry, Piper, you’re really great and I love you to death, but let’s never do that again.”

“Gladly,” she’d agreed without hesitation. “If I could forget this ever happened in the first place, I would.”

Current Piper wanted to smack herself a little bit for tempting fate like that, despite the fact that she sort of shared the sentiment. That was the one memory she wouldn’t have minded losing permanently.

*******

When Piper woke, it only took a second or two more for Leo to jolt awake next to her, which made sense, seeing as they’d been reliving the same memories.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she teased, trying to find a sense of normality in all the things she was feeling right now.

“Well, this is officially the most embarrassed I’ve ever been about something I did over two years ago,” Leo groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Why did we do that?”

“You ended on the memory of the kiss, too, then?” Piper asked, cringing.

“You should have just let me fall off that roof,” he joked, shaking his head.

“Death isn’t getting you out of this friendship. You’ve already tried that, remember?” She pulled him into a tight hug—this stupid fool that she’d never, ever wanted to kiss, and that held half of her soul regardless. Her face felt wet. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this fragile and vulnerable and utterly whole. “I don't regret getting my memories back. I can’t believe all of that was you. I can’t believe we almost lost it forever.”

Leo held her just as tightly.

“Yeah, I-” He sniffled. “That would have really sucked, hm?”

If there was any merit to the myth that humans had originally been two-headed, four-armed, four-legged beings that Zeus had split in two, there wasn’t a flicker of doubt in Piper’s mind that Leo had been hers—the half she’d spent her whole life searching for.

Their love didn’t need to be of the romantic variety for that to be true.

~~~~ For the longest time, they stayed like this, just holding each other.

It took much longer for Jason to wake up. This didn’t really come as a surprise to either of them. Piper and Leo had only lost a few months of memories, and regaining those had knocked them out for almost half an hour.

Jason was missing the majority of his life.

They sat with him the whole time, each of them holding one of Jason’s hands between their own to remind him he wasn’t alone—to lead him back, if necessary.

“He’s got this, right?” Leo asked anxiously. “I don’t know what I’d do if-”

“None of that,” Piper interrupted him. “I’ve warned you both what would happen if you died on me again. He’s not going to risk that. He’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Leo wiped at his eyes. “Okay, you’re right.”

“What would you do without me, hm?” she asked, grinning at him.

“Steal much less cars, probably,” he said, grinning right back.

“Fuck off,” Piper told him, laughing. “I’ve returned almost all the cars we’ve borrowed for demigod emergencies, and I’ll have you know that we’re using an actual rental this time.”

“Somehow, the thought that someone would let you rent a car is even scarier. I’ve seen how you drive.”

“Shut up.”

Before she could think of another, wittier remark, Jason started to stir between them.

He made a confused noise, looking up at them with a hazy expression.

Leo leaned down to press a kiss to his boyfriend’s forehead. “Hey, Superman. How are you feeling?”

“Leo? Piper?” Jason’s eyes slowly started to clear.

“That’s us,” Piper agreed, trying to ignore the growing unease in her chest.

The way Jason spoke sounded different—a little more stern. Something about the look in his eyes was different, too, though she couldn’t quite pin down what it was.

When he sat up, his movements seemed stiffer. More controlled. It reminded her of the Jason they’d met all the way back at the Grand Canyon, and not in a way she liked.

She tried to remind herself that this was to be expected—he’d just gotten the vast majority of his memories shoved back in his head after living without them for more than two years. Of course he was different. It would have been weirder if he hadn’t been.

This didn’t mean that he wouldn’t still be their Jason.

But then he opened his mouth again, and her blood turned to ice.

“Get up. We need to move.”

He said it like a general giving orders to his troops.

———

Fic notes:

Someone please take Piper McLean away from me, I cannot bring myself to shut my darling girl up (I do not mean this, don’t you dare take her away from me actually)

Yesterday this fic was 2k words long. It’s now 6k words. I have spent all day on this and am now feeling thoroughly unwell. So glad you’re here to feel unwell with me!

If you’re wondering what the hell is wrong with Jason at the end there, the answer is getting his memories back, including all of the traumatic ones, mayyy have messed him up a little. Are things going to be okay? Well, wouldn’t you like to know! There will be a sequel fic to this one that’s from Jason’s POV, but that one isn’t written yet and isn’t a lost trio week fic, so you’ll have to wait a little longer before you get answers on that one. Sorry!

For now, I’ve got lots of fun stuff planned for Lost Trio Week, though! The fic for tomorrow’s prompt is going to be late, though I will at least tease that it’s a Star Wars Crossover and shall be posting a snippet on here tomorrow, if nothing else!

Most of the other fics are already written and just need to be edited. I’m very excited to share them with you all.

Thank you so much for reading! Hope you enjoyed! Comments immensely appreciated as always!

I’m having so much fun with this event, and I’m hoping so is everyone else!

#Lost trio week #the lost trio #piper mclean #leo Valdez #jason grace #platonic liper #heroes of olympus #hoo #leo and Piper #valgrace #Pjo fanfic #my writing #Leo pjo #Piper pjo #Jason pjo #ao3 link

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little-engineer-who-cant · 9 months ago

Text

Jason confronts Bruce

Part 5 of Sirens Scream Names Forgotten by Tomorrow, Laid to Rest in Infinity

(also posted under cut)

“You cannot create a monster and then condemn it, hate its ugly features, its terrible gait. When I look into the mirror, I do not see myself but all of you who made me.”

- David Jones

(Shoot him.)

(That’s not the plan.)

(Fuck the plan. Shoot.)

(You’d have me waste all this?)

(It’s what you want, isn’t it? No one walks away.)

(Ideally, I will.)

(You’ve been dead for how long now? No one is walking away.)

(I-)

(It was never going to be you.)

He’s staring down the barrel of his own gun at the man who should have been his father when he finds the truth.

(You came back from the dead. You were never making it out alive.)

(No one walks away.)

No one walks away. He’s cheated death to ensure it.

(Reaper made flesh.)

(Pull the trigger.)

So he does.

—

There are burns on his arms. The hair singed right off. He reeks of smoke and despair, cloaked in failure as he hunches over the metal railing. He aches of broken bones that are healing, of bruises on his ego, his body, his memories, his everything. But that’s nothing compared to the sting of failure. Of all the times to grab me, old man, it had to be now? At least if Bruce had let it all happen, Jason wouldn’t be alive to care about the aftermath. He’d be back in the ground-

(where you belong-)

-making nice with the worms and decay.

But that’d be too easy. That’d be nice and neat, a pretty little bow on the tragedy of Jason Todd. Born to die, again and again, until he finally got it right.

(Maybe you’re still trying to be the perfect son.)

(I can’t be. I’m not Dick.)

(No. You’re not even Jason.)

It’s an old truth. That doesn’t make it sting any less. What’s really fucking with him, running in incessant circles in his already insane mind is the why. Why did Bruce grab him? It wasn’t like he was Bruce’s son anymore.

(When a man puts a dead thing in the ground, he expects it to stay there.)

But he’d clawed his way back out. And like every warning sign on the way up from Hades, he hadn’t come back right. Would Eurydice have been the same, if she ever broke the surface? He’d done that, come up from the water, reborn and remade. Jason Todd, Talia and Ra’s had christened him. A dead man.

(You’re not making sense.)

(Isn’t that what you wanted?)

It’s easier not to think, to let his body turn and twist and ache in whatever direction it decides to take him. It’ll make sure he’s safe, that instinct is too ingrained to ever die. As long as his mind is blank, he’s not thinking about Bruce.

The Pit stays quiet. No use trying to drive a man towards a cliff when he’s already leapt off the edge.

Jason has never fucking once wanted it to talk more than he does in that moment. Just for a reminder that he’s not alone.

—

Weakness, plain and simple. When he comes out of his haze, he’s staring at his worst weakness in the form of her bedroom through the window. Perched precariously on the concrete sill, he leans his forehead against the pane and watches his breath fog it up until he can’t see inside. Can’t see if she’s home or not. Can’t see if she’ll see him.

(Weak.)

But the voice is weak too. It can’t goad him over something he’s already accepted, something he already knows. She’s his pressure point, the chink in his armor and it’s all because she-

Click.

The window unlatches and he leans just far enough away that he won’t tumble when it opens to reveal her, the off-white hue of distant neon light catching in her dark hair like a halo of starlight.

“Hey,” she whispers, leaning her elbows on the still and looking up at him, seeing the dirt and blood, smelling the smoke and sulfur, hearing the sirens that herald emergency vehicles screaming towards that fire.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he mumbles, resting his head against the rough brick exterior, the edge of her window digging into the back of his mask.

“Come’ere.” She holds out a hand.

“I shouldn’t be here.” It’s the one thing he knows for sure.

“I don’t care.”

“They can find you.”

“Let them. I’ve faced worse.”

“You shouldn’t face what’s after me.”

“If it means keeping you, I’ll welcome them all with a smile.” Her stubborn expression hasn’t changed. Hasn’t even flickered. “I’ve lost a lot of people that I’ve loved. I’m not losing you too.”

“You’re insane.”

“Maybe. What a pair we make.” He takes her hand, she pulls him in the window and they press their foreheads together. Her fingers come up and gently, carefully, reverently undo the clasp on his mask, peeling away the vengeful Red Hood to show the exhausted man underneath. And he is exhausted.

“I let him get away,” he confesses, like a bullet to the gut. “The Joker- I-” Her fingers rest over his lips, silencing him.

“It’ll take time, but he’ll get his due.”

“You say that like you know.” Her smile is full of teeth, knives gleaming in the dark as her blue eyes flash through with the soft pink of an unknown power that absolutely terrifies him. Carefully hidden away, only to be drawn out to hamstring someone without warning, to hobble, to cripple, to destroy.

“For you? I won’t give Fate a choice. And he’ll beg for one.” Was this how Paris felt when Troy burned for Helen? Like any price was worth paying to keep those eyes on him with all that promise, that devotion, that dedication to do anything. Her fingers stroke down his jaw and he follows those streaks of heat like he’ll die if they leave his skin.

It’s an incredible dichotomy, the violence of her words mixed with the gentle affection in her touch and it’s more intoxicating than any drug he knows.

“I don’t want you in danger,” he protests, but it’s weak in the face of a woman stubborn enough to defy gods.

“And I don’t want you to get hurt. But here we are.” But here we are. With him hurt and her in danger. “Come to bed, the world can wait.” There’s so much he doesn’t understand, so many questions he needs answered, but in this moment, he can’t ask. Can’t be reminded she belongs to other people too. He needs to pretend, just for one more night, that she’s no one’s but his.

—

It’s quiet and dark and he loves it here, curled around her in a cocoon they’ve made of blankets and their bodies. It’s quiet and dark and he cares more about that than the fact that he’s overheating under the blankets. If he got rid of things he loved for the sake of his own comfort, he’d be in a very different place in life. He’s got the quiet and the dark and her, he’ll endure any discomfort to keep them.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she asks, voice a bare breath that stirs the room and him towards a semblance of life. But he doesn’t have any right now, none that he can speak. None that she can hear and live to see another day.

“I can’t say what I want to,” he admits in the silence of her room, breathing that truth into the back of her neck.

“Hm?” her head twists, trying to look at him, but he digs his forehead into the nape of her neck to stop it.

“I can’t say it,” he repeats, arms banding more tightly around her, clutching her like a child holds their most comforting toy. “Or you’ll get killed.”

“Jason, let me turn around.” He clings harder, petulant, pressing a kiss to her spine and tasting salt. “Jason.”

“Silena,” he growls, curling further, squishing her more firmly into the circle of his body while he tries to shut the world away.

“Can I at least look at you?” He shakes his head. He likes it here, in the dark of her room, buried in the softness of her hair. Childish of him, absolutely, but right now he can’t face the thought of seeing her eyes pick him apart. “Fine, then…” she grumbles something under her breath in what sounds like Not-English but he’s not concentrating enough to tell exactly what dead language it is. “Give me.” She pries at one of his hands with that ever surprising strength of hers.

“Silena-”

“Please can I hold your hand at least?” That he can do. He can keep her like this with one arm, that’s not a problem. So he gives her a hand, letting her pull it up and towards her face, what is she-

She presses each one of his fingers to her mouth, kissing the calloused tips, her breath warm and grounding. The sensation hits him like a pile driver, tears welling in his eyes as he buries his head deeper. Maybe not seeing her was a mistake, maybe then he could have stopped her before- Her mouth presses delicately into his palm, a gentle and reassuring hum vibrating against his skin.

“I love you too,” she whispers into the hand that has taken hundreds of lives, destroyed thousands more, a hand that could so easily smother her with just a bit more pressure but she puts her life in it again and again- “I love you too.”

#jason todd #bruce wayne #the joker #silena beauregard #my writing #ao3 link #batman #percy jackson and the olympians

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