#GOD he was so young and optimistic and then it all turned to ash | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

finleycannotdraw · 4 years ago

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Guess what? I’m re-binge-reading Good Omens. And here are some Obervations that I forgot about and some things I might put in fics. Also things I found funny. Basically my dumb commentary on the book.

Crowley actually flees Sister Mary. He doesn’t saunter vaguely away. He flees.

Ligur is rather more thoughtful than he’s portrayed in the show

Anathema likes to read about herself, and her teachers are confused because she spells words like Agnes Nutter

Crowley apologizes

By page 41, it is mentioned at least twice that Aziraphale and Crowley Do Not choose each other’s company for any reason other than that they are constants, that they have an Arrangement, and that they are Friends because being Enemies got boring.

Aziraphale blushes!!!!!!

The Drunk Scene is fuckin hilarious and it’s actually a lot longer than it is in the show, and really you ought to read it. (Book pages 47-50)

My mom (who has a PhD in human development) would probably like to talk to Crowley about upbringing because they seem to agree on how important it is

War has always looked 25, and had a vulture that died of fatty degeneration

Pollution is very cleverly compared to actual pollution

Warlock has Kermit the frog overalls, and Nanny Ashtoreth is described as someone who “advertises unspecified but strangely explicit services in certain magazines”. The tutors are present for about four paragraphs. Warlock is good at math and likes banana flavored bubblegum.

Crowley has a slice of angel cake. Aziraphale eats it. Aziraphale also eats deviled eggs. Hm.

Crowley calls Aziraphale angel casually enough to suggest he’s been doing it for a long time

Some girl at Warlock’s party calls Aziraphale a f*ggot

Crowley glares suspiciously at a gerbil. It is suggested that Hell has, in the past, sent hell-gerbils in place of hellhounds.

“Oh dear,” muttered Aziraphale, not swearing with the practiced ease of one who has spent six thousand years not swearing, and who wasn’t going to start now.

Adam and his friends play in a place called The Pit, where shopping carts go to die, apparently

Crowley is the first one to mention sides in the book!??!? Also Crowley goes on about how humans are more evil than Hell (but he calls himself evil—is he calling himself human already?)

Aziraphale yells “get off the road, you clown!”

“What’s a velvet underground?” *love confession???* “you wouldn’t like it”

Aziraphale is a bit rude to Crowley in the “flashes of love” scene and Crowley is less panicked about it

Crowley glares at the Bentley and it fixes itself

Anathema’s bike is called Phaeton

COULD THEY ACT ANY MORE MARRIED OH MY GOD

Aziraphale speaks like. Like ugh. “FlOUndeR on tHe rOcKS of inEquiTY”

“Thirty seconds later someone shot both of them. With incredible accuracy.” *cuts to a random pleasant story about Mary Hodges* *cuts back to where Aziraphale has fallen into a rhododendron and Crowley licks the paint before he knows it’s paint* dumbasses

Crowley does not slam Aziraphale into the wall

Crowley is actually pretty impatient and doesn’t argue with Aziraphale when he’s worried

“Nothing but dust and fundamentalists” “that was nasty” “sorry, couldn’t help it”

When the radio sings “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,” Crowley sings “for me” and then screams

Crowley asks Aziraphale if he’ll keep in touch, and Aziraphale doesn’t say tickety-boo, and then Crowley says “right” and feels very alone

the international express man is small and has glasses, and wears green woolen socks

The sword, which turns out to be Aziraphale’s, is described as having an aura of hatred and menace, which makes me think of how it could’ve gotten that aura from Heaven or from humanity or from War...

In the book Pepper has red hair and freckles, which makes it a cool comparison to War’s appearance and the defeat of War

Adam is excellent at slouching, apparently

Occasionally, as Aziraphale reads the book, he would very nearly swear

“He wouldn’t have said ‘that’s weird’ if a flock of sheep had cycled past playing violins.”

“If you had told him there were children starving in Africa he would’ve been flattered that you’d noticed.”

“...that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.” (151)

Wensleydale watches David Attenborough programs

Shadwell’s voice is described as “the color of an old raincoat” and seems to fake smoking cigarettes

Aziraphales cocoa is moldy and solidified by the time he calls Arthur Young, and has a thin layer of dust on himself too

Newt says that the walls look like nicotine and the floor looks like cigarette ash, and he suspects both are, actually, coated with these substances

Newt looks a bit like Clark Kent, and people seem to like Shadwell for some reason, much to his annoyance.

Aziraphale calls Shadwell “dear boy” on the phone

Agnes Nutter called God a daft old fool #goals

Adam is wayyyy too good at video games

Smelling Anathema’s perfume makes Newt uncomfortable

Adam suggests that Pepper ought to have Russia cause of her red hair (huh)

Anathema and Newt actually have decent conversations?? Like?? Show??? C’mon, man. The show kinda butchered their relationship.

Trees, apparently, make a ‘vvrooooommm’ sound when they grow very fast

“He suspected that Crowley was from the Mafia, or the underworld, although he would have been surprised how right he nearly was.” Shadwell also thought Aziraphale was a Russian spy. Wow, Shadwell.

Aziraphale calls Crowley and actually says “shut up” to him, and then when the answering machine beeps, he tells Crowley to “stop making noises” and then he swears for the first time ever.

The fuckin’ footnote on page 227

“A sleek computer was the sort of thing Crowley felt that the sort of human he tried to be would have.” I like the word choice here. He’s not pretending to be a human, he’s trying to be one. That’s a really important distinction.

It never actually says what Crowley does to his plants.

Crowley’s flat is very white. Wow, Crowley. It just looks dark because of the lighting. Heaven imagery and symbolism out my ears, goddammit.

Why does Hell say Crowley’s name so much when talking to him?? Honestly, I think that’s an intentional dig at his chosen name, using it in their speech to scare him. Wow, Hell. (And wow, Finn, excellent sentence)

Whenever the book says something is shaped like something, it definitely isn’t that thing. “man-shaped” “dog-shaped” “car-shaped”... makes it pretty obvious they aren’t men, dogs, or cars, huh.

The code to Crowley’s safe is 4004. The year he “slithered onto this stupid, marvelous planet”... and the year he met Aziraphale, of course. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Crowley, my dude.

Crowley consideres sticking Hastur into his car until he turns into Freddie Mercury but then decides even he isn’t that cruel

Actual text that I feel like nobody really agrees with: “Madame Tracy was by many yardsticks quite stupid”

“Do I look like I run a bookshop?” “...imagine me out of uniform, sir, and what kind of man would you see before you? Honestly?” “A prat.”

I’m crying. The fucking bookshop fire scene made me fucking cry. I’m literally crying.

“...on all fours in the blazing bookshop, Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.” “The police and firemen looked at him, saw the expression on his face, and stayed exactly where they were.” “...a crack of thunder so loud it hurt....” *the sound of Finley sobbing into their cat*

The shortest biker in the cafe thing is 6′2, what the fuck

War, Famine, Pollution, and Pop Trivia 1962-1979

“Pollution removed his helmet and shook out his long white hair. He had taken over when Pestilence, muttering about penicillin, had retired in 1936. If only the old boy had known what opportunities the future had held.” HMMMMMMMMMMM

“There were no bitches in Hell either.” I know it’s talking about female dogs, but I rather thought Hell was full of bitches.

“Why are you talking like a poofter?” “Ah. Australia.”

“gOsh, aM i on teLEviSiON?” (Basically Aziraphale gets passionate about stuff and likes to talk).

Crowley is actually an optimist and doesn’t dwell too much on how sucky the world is. He doesn’t go get smashed in a bar. He just finds Aziraphale’s notes in the book and heads to Tadfield. And also, his new pair of sunglasses just... materializes out of his eyes. And he likes to whistle.

“Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking to Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty to Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You’ve Given Them A Good Thumping But Secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People traveled with them.”

“on top of the pile a rather large octopus waved a languid tentacle at them. The sergeant resisted the temptation to wave back.” Honestly dude, if an octopus waved at me I’d wave back.

Wait Agnes was apparently talking to Shadwell and not God when she said yowe daft old foole. I dunno

Madame Tracy: You old silly. Shadwell:

Aziraphale does not know how to get rid of demons. Canonically. “Had never done other to get rid of demons than to hint to them very strongly that he, Aziraphale, had some work to be getting on with, and wasn’t it getting late? And Crowley always got the hint.”

The road to Hell is paved with frozen door to door salesmen, apparently. The question is where it is, because the demons always seem to just stem out of the ground.

“Heigh ho,” said Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway. I love this sentence during that scene.

I bet Hastur gets really mad whenever he hears Aziraphale’s voice from now on

Crowley isn’t breathing the entire burning Bentley scene

ADAM. SAID. “But I reckon you can make your own side” AND WE FUCKIN IGNORED IT?

The temperature above the M25 was simultaneously 700ºC and -140ºC which makes me think of something I read about magenta not being real. The M25 is magenta.

I feel like “Agnes” is just going to become an inside joke between Anathema and Newt at this point, and it will drive Crowley insane because he knows who she is but somehow still doesn’t get the joke.

I’m six inches taller than R.P. Tyler, and apparently according to the back sleeve of the book jacket, I’m very similar in height to Neil Gaiman

R.P. Tyler thought Shadwell was a ventriloquist’s dummy, and then sees cows doing somersaults

“That’s terrific. Much obliged,” said Crowley. — “Funny weather we’re having, isn’t it?” “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” “Probably because your car is on fire.” .... Also the fact that Crowley looks like a young man which I find interesting.

“The Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse”

“Where is Armageddon, anyway?” “I’ve always meant to look that up.” “There’s an Armageddon, Pennsylvania”

Famine is the one that says “that’s one big avocado”, and also, I find it interesting that War, more than once, talks about love. (All is fair in love and war much?)

Anathema threatens the guard with a stick, pretending it’s a gun

Aziraphale, of course, asks Crowley to sort it out because he, Aziraphale, is “the nice one” and then proceeds to sort it out himself. Because of course he does. Because what else could he possibly do.

I just ADORE THIS BOOK OKAY

I’M PROBABLY GOING TO READ IT AGAIN IN A MONTH

Aziraphale and Crowley are so fuckin married I can’t

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years ago

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‘today’s silm vocaloid song: clear sky engine (クリヤスカイ機関) by nyanyannya and hara ft. rin kagamine and zunko tohoku

this one’s about elrond, maglor, and the sudden non-ending of the world. you know that thing where you build an elaborate fandom video in your head for a completely unrelated song, but you don’t have the most basic art skills you’d need to make it a reality? yeah, i square that circle by writing them out. here, have an extremely long songfic/filk/commentary/thing

It was just another day, beneath a black sky

The bustle of camp churned on around me

I wasn’t paying attention to what my hands were doing

Dreaming of a shining star-lit sky

we open on elrond, living in a world about to die. the fëanorians were forced to abandon amon ereb years ago, and now the last of the host ekes out a precarious nomadic existence, raiding deserted villages for food and losing more people they can’t replace with each battle. they’re still doing better than everyone else on the mainland, though. their blades, at least, remain sharp

(the smoke from the fires of angband has risen to cover the whole continent in dark clouds. some of the sun’s warmth still gets through, and on good nights the star of high hope is still faintly visible, but the light-filled skies of old are little more than memory. all the survivors know that the end is near. it’s only a matter of time)

He’d broken a promise he’d made to us

So I was a little more annoyed at him than usual

He chatted with me while I worked to make up for it

And I made all my usual complaints

elrond and elros are at this point... i’d say very early teens? not that they had much of a childhood; the fëanorians are so short-staffed the twins have been doing odd jobs around camp pretty much since it became clear they weren’t going to run away. today elrond is taking stock of the medical supplies, less because he has any interest in the healing arts than because it’s a job that needs doing and everyone else is busy

maglor is hovering within talking distance, doing elrond-doesn’t-care-what. the twins’ relationship with maglor is extremely complicated to say the least, their mercurial hellbeast protector who scares the shit out of everyone else they’ve ever met and who has stood between them and the darkness for as long as they can remember. recently, he promised to stay with the twins while they did something difficult, but he failed to do so for a whole host of reasons, including getting into a two-hour shrieking match with maedhros at the last possible moment. elros shrugged it off, like elros shrugs everything off, but elrond is a simmering cauldron of adolescent rage at the best of times

which is why maglor’s checking on him, giving him an outlet for his anger before it can turn into despair. because what would be the point, in the end? they’re all going to die anyway. one of the reasons maglor’s resisted sending the kids to balar so hard is that no matter where they are, eventually morgoth will sweep down and destroy them all. there’s nowhere safe left, nothing they can do to protect them. none of this is even new, it’s a shadow that’s hung over them all since the twins grew old enough to understand this

so maglor and elrond chat, or rather elrond grumbles incessantly and maglor snarks as upliftingly as he can remember to. it’s a day like any other, nothing about it to distinguish it from the hundreds that came before or however many will come after. that is, until one of the lesser minions comes over, yelling, ‘boss! boss! you have to see this!’

elrond turns around. for the first time ever, he sees true hope on her face

“Have you finally grown tired of us?” I hissed

But in that moment excitement ran round the campsite

And someone cried out with joy

“The hour we thought would never be, the return of the light, has finally come to pass!”

far, far away, the hosts of the valar are landing on the shores of beleriand. disembarking from their luminous ships, clad in radiant armour and carrying blessed weapons, their brilliance pierces the dark fog that has settled over beleriand for so long. shining like the stars come to earth, the hallowed army of valinor begins its long march towards the gates of angband. far above, ships riding jets of light slice open the smog

this news - this unexpected, unbelievable, impossible miracle bestowed unto doomed beleriand, this chance that their enemy might actually fall - is the greatest thing anyone in camp’s heard all century. maybe in more prosperous times the host would have groused about the valar finally seeing fit to get off their asses, but in this world turned to ash any chance at victory is to be celebrated. the minions throw a massive impromptu party, of the kind they haven’t since before sirion. elros is right there with them, singing off-key and laughing as loud as anyone else. even maedhros cracks a tiny relieved smile

maglor watches the festivities from the outside, more genuinely optimistic than he thought he was still capable of. elrond joins him, brow furrowed as he tries to comprehend it all. they talk

“It feels like a dream I’ll never wake up from”

“What are you blabbering about now?”

elrond is voiced by zunko, maglor by rin. the song’s more of a dialogue than a duet, so i’ll be bolding maglor’s lines

The sheet of paper I held in my hands read

“The hosts of the West have come! Our world is saved!”

the letter’s from gil-galad, or at least his administrative apparatus. it’s not even that hostile; apparently the armies of the gods showing up out of nowhere to save them all from certain doom has him in a magnanimous mood. there’s some drivel about surrendering and eärendil and all wrongs being forgiven, but neither maglor nor elrond is paying attention to it

“Hey, do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Love and justice and valour and hope”

“I remember the sea of blood you drowned everything in for them”

elrond didn’t really have any formal schooling - nobody had the time - but he has managed to pick up a lot of stuff from the stories the people around them tell. that the fëanorians came to middle-earth for high noble ideals, and that it was trying to fulfil those ideals that led them into darkness, is something maglor told him once, when he was in a darkly honest mood

“Haha, that’s just details, everybody makes that kind of mistake when they’re young”

“Why are you like this?”

a mood maglor’s obviously not in at the moment, if he’s laughing off the kinslayings like this; elrond knows this isn’t how he actually feels about them. normally elrond would just roll his eyes and move on with his life, but things are different today

The camp was full of laughter, as if everyone had lost their minds

elrond’s not used to happiness. not full, unironic happiness, untainted by the shadow of their inevitable death, not from the fëanorians. the sheer jubliation suffusing camp is fundamentally alien to him, a child of a world about to end. he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge that maybe they won’t all get eaten by dragons. he doesn’t know what to do with the hope in everyone’s eyes

so instead, when maglor wanders away from the party, elrond catches him with a song

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! For certain”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the fears I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine songs I can give to you”

maglor’s been teaching elrond how to do this, how to snatch someone into a world of music and throw your voice at them until one of you can’t take it any more. maglor wins this one, as usual; even if his song is incapable of anything but violence he’s got centuries of experience on elrond, enough to turn the sharp edges of his voice into blades in elrond’s hands. and that is what he’s doing, clumsy and harsh as he is; he’s trying to give elrond a reason to hope

elrond is the one who breaks the spell, dropping the melody, letting the music dissolve into the air. maglor flashes him a grin and walks off, humming merrily. elrond just stands there, still unable to understand

I’ve heard it before, it’s all anyone can talk about, even if I try to avoid it it stabs into my ears

cut past a decade or so, to well into the war of wrath. elrond and elros are in their mid-teens now. they’re still with the fëanorians, but these days the fëanorian warband is effectively an auxiliary unit to the amanyar army, skirting around the edges of that much larger force. for the first time in a long while, elrond and elros have regular-ish contact with people outside the fëanorian sphere of influence, mostly peripheral edain and the sindar who run messages between the camps. it’s different, talking to new people

(the sky is still covered with smog, but it’s gloomy grey, not oppressive black. the sun is faintly visible through it, most of the time. the rain is much less poisonous than it used to be, and on good nights you can almost see the moon. the closer they get to angband, the darker the clouds grow)

“It is as the gods have decreed, soon the darkness will be swept away and the Enemy will be cast down

And after the war in the purified world, we will all live happily together

Building new homes in a land unmarred by evil”

the people outside the host are much more optimistic about the future, for one. the fëanorian minions are happy morgoth is getting trounced but they don’t really talk about what comes after that, like they can’t imagine a world without war. the sindar, and especially the edain, on the other hand, have all these plans about the cities they’ll build, the arts they’ll perfect, the children they’ll raise in a world without danger. elros is super into this; he barely spends time with the fëanorians any more, he’s so busy going between different edain camps, making friends, planning for the future. elrond, though...

Even my twin knows what future to reach out for...

elrond doesn’t know what to do with any of this. the very concept that someday the war will end and the sky will clear and he’ll have a bright future is still something he doesn’t fully understand. even more, he’s defined himself for so long as not-a-fëanorian, now he’s regularly interacting with people who doubtlessly aren’t he’s having trouble figuring out what else he is. he’s stuck between people who are lowkey hoping they’ll die gloriously in battle and people who have been dreaming about what they’d do in a world without darkness all their lives, and he doesn’t know what he even wants, not really, not yet

so he keeps on living, just like he always has. he’s been promoted to sick tent dogsbody and is learning how to heal with song from the last minion who can kind of still do it. he acts as a proxy between the fëanorians and the more timid outsiders they keep running into. when he goes (or elros drags him) exploring in other camps, he keeps track of every new detail he comes across, in case it’s somehow useful later

and he keeps talking to maglor, with anger and spite and sarcasm and whatever other emotion he’s covering his uncertainties with today. maglor always listens, usually offers to help, and sometimes elrond even lets him. the fëanorian camp settles into a rhythm of buildup-fight-recovery-buildup-fight-recovery, so regular it lulls elrond into complacency. he takes the future he still doesn’t quite believe in one day at a time, until suddenly the ground crumbles beneath his feet

You say it’s to ‘fulfill our ideals’ but what you mean by that is ‘to sate our bloodlust’, I know

With their blades and teeth sharpened for battle, the kinslayers broke away from the light and disappeared into the shadows

there’s a whole mountain of reasons why, as they draw near to angband, the dregs of the fëanorian host abruptly peel off from the valinorean army and vanish into the night. they know they're more effective as a stealthy shock ambush unit, they’re somewhat concerned the amanyar will turn on them the second morgoth is no longer a problem, they're making one last desperate rush for the silmarils, all that and more. it’s not the first time they’ve suddenly packed up and left before their enemies can react, probably not even the first time they’ve done it to the hosts of valinor. there’s just one little difference

Leaving us behind? Leaving you behind

they’re not taking the twins. said twins only find out about this, like, the day before they decamp. maedhros’ justification is something about them not being able to support noncombatants on the march, but the twins believe that about as much as they believe that the fëanorians are doing this for any kind of hope. elros, of course, was half-planning on leaving anyway, going off to chase his own ambitions with his new edain posse. he copes with it pretty well, relatively

but elrond’s mind goes blank. once he thought the day they let them go would be the best day of his life, but now it’s come it feels so wrong, and this horrible coldness is seeping into him. in a flash of what feels like foresight, he suddenly knows the people who raised him will never come back. how dare - why - he can’t -

with a sharp desperate burst of sound that’s a surprise to even himself, elrond lashes out a song to catch maglor

“For ten more minutes, one more week, half a year, please, let me stay with you!”

“In a year’s time, ten years’ time, a hundred years’ time, we’ll see the starlit sky together”

“What if one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight times I begged you not to go?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine of your other wishes I’ll hear”

and elrond just stops. he lets the song trail off, staring at maglor. he’s in an incredibly weird mood, with something that could almost be compassion in his eyes

there’s only one way he can find out what’s happening, elrond realises

“In that case - !”

maglor was never really demonstratively affectionate with the twins. it would never have come off as real on his part, and they wouldn’t have believed it in any case. still, he supported them. he let them trail behind them, all but cling to the backs of his legs, in those first horrible weeks when they were terrified of absolutely everything. he taught them to ride and he taught them to read, how to reinforce a blade with nothing but song and close a wound with needle and thread. on the darkest nights, when all the world was filled by the howling beasts of morgoth and the wailing of the unhallowed dead, he held them tight and flared his own fires high, a warm smoky bonfire between them and the void. he answered their questions, and told them stories

and sometimes, he tried to be kind

“Sing me a lullaby like the flat of a blade”

“Which one would you like?”

“I want to see a flower that will still bloom”

“I know just the one”

“I don’t care what kind of monster you are! Just please stay with me, for even one more tomorrow...”

“...I’m sorry”

“What do you mean?”

“You were given your name because your parents wanted you to see the stars someday”

it was easy for maglor to justify keeping the twins when they didn’t have a future. the shadow of death blotted out the sky, so why not hold them close for whatever little time they had left? no matter where they were, the void would soon claim them all

except it didn’t. in the end they were not forsaken. the sacred light came out of the west to burn away the darkness and finish the war he once thought they could never win. the hosts of the valar have gotten farther in decades than the noldor did in centuries, and soon enough they’ll cast the enemy down and release the world from his terrible maw. and then the future the free peoples dreamed of will stretch out before them, full of possibilities beyond measure

and that’s why maglor has to let them go. the magnificent people that elrond and elros are already becoming will only wither among hopeless kinslayers who have nothing left but the sword. to flourish into their full glorious selves, they need to be with people who dream, who can travel towards the future alongside the twins with light hearts and songs on their lips. maglor refuses to let his own darkness drown the last people in the world he does not hate. elrond deserves so, so much better than maglor is capable of giving him. he deserves to see the stars

hearing all that, there’s only one thing elrond can say

“You can’t even keep one miserable promise! Don’t pretend like you’re my father, kinslayer!”

and that’s the last elrond sees of maglor. the fëanorians vanish in the middle of the night, leaving elrond and elros (and about half a dozen minions who are taking their last possible chance to get out) behind. elros takes up with his edain buddies and starts making contacts and forging alliances. elrond winds up in gil-galad’s orbit, surrounded by people who are very understanding about how awful his childhood was, which just pisses him off more. he doesn’t throw tantrums or refuse to work, those aren’t luxuries he was raised with, but he spends a fair bit of time spurning every bit of sympathy and aid he’s offered and trying not to cry himself to sleep

with time, though, he finds a place. it starts with círdan, the first person who believes elrond about what his time with the fëanorians was like. then he befriends erestor, and then gil-galad starts actually respecting the way elrond feels, and then he gets officially taken on as an apprentice healer. he starts learning about his own ancestors and their peoples, and reaching out for stories he never knew could be his. as the final battle of the iron hells begins, elrond is doing... better

and soon, the hope that no one in beleriand once dreamed would be fulfilled becomes a reality

And then, as if it had never held power, the darkness was cast down...

they win the war. the armies of angband are crushed. the peaks of thangorodrim are torn down. the prisoners of the deepest pits of the iron hells are freed. the forces of evil are scattered to the four winds. morgoth, the fallen vala himself, is defeated and captured and bound with great chains, unable to ever hurt anyone again. the precious remnants of the light of the trees, the remaining two silmarils, are recovered. the dark clouds evaporate, and for the first time elrond can remember, the sky is perfectly clear. the war of the jewels is finally over

elrond has grown so much since the day he first heard that the hosts of the west had come. he still can’t quite believe it

They held a great celebration beneath a star-speckled sky I’d never seen before

“The world is saved and we are freed! Evil has been vanquished forevermore”

The triumphant voices of the generals poured out over the victory feast while the stars shone true above the happy ending

the soldiers of valinor and the people of beleriand (what’s left of them) throw a truly massive party. it’s still tinged with their grief over everything they’ve lost, but the atmosphere is primarily one of ecstatic relief. they’re alive, and they’ve come out the other side. dwarvish tailors dance with high maiar, humans who don’t remember the moon get drunk with elves who remember cuiviénen. even after the official festivities die down and people start hashing out what they want to do next, the general mood remains buoyant and cheerful. at long last, they live in a world without danger

none of it feels real to elrond. gil-galad’s talking about building a kingdom on the other side of the blue mountains, elros and his grand edain alliance are trying to bully the maiar into letting them set up on tol eressëa, and elrond feels so disconnected from it all, like he’s watching someone else’s life. he’s happy the enemy has been overcome, of course he is, but he’s not feeling the overwhelming joy everyone else is. he can’t let his guard down yet, something is still wrong -

Except he hasn’t come back, they haven’t come back, where did they go, what have they done?

The word raced around as fast as the wind, giving me an answer I never wanted to hear -

where is maglor? the fëanorians broke off to fight the war their own way, but the war is over now, where are they? they were so happy to hear that the amanyar had arrived, he can’t imagine them not thrilled to see the enemy they hated more than anything else fall. in the warm afterglow of victory, it feels like even their sins might be forgiven, and they could finally go home. they have nothing else left; why wouldn’t they take that outstretched hand?

but nobody’s so much as glimpsed their flag since some time before the final battle. elrond quietly assumes, perhaps even hopes, that they all died fighting, and yet he can’t shake the cold dread crawling up his spine

elrond has mixed feelings about the silmarils, and doesn’t particularly care to be near them. by the time the news of their theft reaches him, maedhros and maglor have already fled into the night

Still driven on by their oath, they turned their blades on their kin one last time

“And stole away the hallowed light”

Yes, that light which sank all of our lands beneath a deep dark layer of corpses and ash

all elrond sees is the aftermath, the blood sinking into the ground. it’s far from the first time he’s seen people killed, but somehow now it’s all hitting him, all at once. he sees the bodies and it knocks the breath out of him. all he can see is the dead, from finwë on down, the rotting carcasses of every last person who was slaughtered for these gems, a whole continent bleached with death. they call the silmarils the most beautiful things in the world, jewels shining with the very light of creation, but elrond can’t see it for the blood they’re dripping with

that’s the immediate thing that has his hands shaking and his breath running cold. by morning it’s had a chance to sink in a little, and -

He lied he lied he lied he lied

maglor regretted the kinslayings! elrond knows he did! it was never even something he actually said, it was obvious from the way he talked about them. every single one was a complete disaster, nothing the fëanorians ever got out of them was worth what they lost in the process, and afterwards things always got worse in ways they never expected. and maglor hated the person the kinslayings had turned him into, elrond spent enough time around him to pick up on that much! surely he’d do anything to not have to commit another one?

apparently not! apparently all that regret, all that loss, the arguments and the nightmares and the coldly determined efforts to stop them following his path, it all meant nothing! he still gave in to despair or maedhros or whatever, killed yet more people, stole from the army whose return he said was like a dream come to life, spat in the face of his last chance to go home, and vanished! gil-galad’s people were right! he really is nothing more than a monster!

the shock of it all makes something snap in elrond, whatever fragile optimism he absorbed from the people around him draining away until he feels completely hollow. hundreds of years of suffering and death, and for what?

Smeared with the blood of untold hundreds, untold thousands, untold millions of people

Did they buy us peace for even half a year, even a week, even ten minutes?

Noooooooo!

Even the very land we lived on crumbled and drowned

What was the point?! What was the point?! What was the point?!

I feel like I’m going insaaaaaaane

morgoth may have fallen, but beleriand is dead! nothing remains, not the lush green lands of the stories, or even the dessicated forests of his childhood, just desolate earth and the devouring sea. almost everywhere he’s ever known, almost everyone who lived and fought and dreamed there, are lost forever. nothing was saved, everything was destroyed, what good is a clear blue sky when there’s nothing beneath it?! how can they call this a happy ending?!

elrond can’t see any light here, all the great battles and heroic deeds seem absolutely pointless in the face of everyone and everything immolated in the endless grasping for these gems. the hosts of valinor leave the continent they shattered, the remnants of gil-galad’s people escape the raging forces of nature, and the survivors bicker and fight over resources just like the fëanorian minions elrond grew up around. the world is never going to get better, he realises. the dream of a paradise will never come true

and then one night, running a message down the craggy still-turbulent coastline, he hears a snatch of a distant, familiar voice

I can hear a voice whittled away to a weapon singing what could almost be a lullaby -

elrond leaps off the ridge and onto the rocky beach, scrambling over the uneven ground. he’s heard the rumours about where maedhros and/or maglor went - all of them, there’s dozens of them, he didn’t pay any particular heed to the ones where maglor wandered the coast, but if they were right, if he’s here -

his own voice has grown strong over the years, solid and forceful and mature. elrond screams his song into the emptiness, hoping against hope it will be heard

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! Isn’t that so?!”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the griefs I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine days for you to live!”

“That must be it...”

the impression of a hand touching his cheek, the ghost of a smile. for a moment someone else’s voice slips into the ebb and flow of his song, a shadow reaches out to wipe the tears off his face. live, it whispers. you who i held dearest last, live

elrond’s breath catches in his throat, and the song, and the shadow, vanish. it’s just him on a forsaken beach, the only sounds the waves crashing and the gulls calling. the sky is completely overcast, the clouds dull and grey. he watches them drift along for a while, as his pulse slows down and his airways clear up. live, the word echoes in his mind

he waits until his breathing is back to normal and the churning emotions inside him have settled into a form he can handle. then he wipes his face and clambers back onto the ridge

(life. it’s not much, but it’s enough. it has to be. his home is destroyed, but he is alive; his family is broken, but he is alive. he is alive, and they want him to live, as much as he can while he still has a chance. the world he lives in will never be perfect, but he knows how to work with that)

(and besides - elros, círdan, gil-galad, erestor, the other healers, the small knot of elves of all stripes who seem determined to follow his banner. he hasn’t lost everything, not yet, and he won’t let the world take away what he has left. he’ll never abandon those he loves)

the clouds are lightening. soon the stars will be out. elrond takes a deep breath, and starts running towards his future and the person he’s going to be -

thousands of years later, a memory resurfaces

“Two million, two hundred and forty-one thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine days... Ah, yes. I know I forgot to say it earlier, but you did a very good job”

a smattering of notes are lifted by the ocean breeze. they travel inland, across the worn-down mountains, around the weathered hills, above the tangled forests, up the untamed rivers, and finally into the hidden valley

in the gardens of imladris, lord elrond hears a voice he hasn’t for millennia. a watering can slips out of his hands, and suddenly he can’t breathe

It was just another day, beneath a dark sky

The ocean and the wind roared on all around me

I wasn’t paying attention to how my tears were falling

Trying to remember a clear star-lit sky

that youthful dream of a world free from evil never came true. the shadow came back, and it kept coming back, taking his people, his friends, his family, his wife. everything they built after the defeat of morgoth has been reduced to dust by the weight of time, and every year more of it slips through his fingers. elrond doesn’t know how much more of it he can endure. he doesn’t know how much more he can lose

he chases that scrap of music all the way to the seashore

I ran down the path between the rocks and the spray following that voice I never knew why I loved

But in the end I could only stand weeping

elrond searches up and down the coast, scouring the shoreline for clues, asking the locals, listening. sometimes he hears whispers of song, long wailing lamentations that make his heart ache all the more now that he understands how that despair feels. occasionally it’s loud or consistent enough he can track it, trying to pinpoint the singer’s location in the intense storms of bitterness and grief

but he never finds anything

“You fool, he’s already gone. Like he was never there at all...”

all that’s left is a voice on the wind

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blushing-starker · 4 years ago

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Ok but Peter Parker leaving Tony voice messages in a reversal of infinity war? Swinging his legs over the roofs ledge, churro in one hand, mask half on, sugar everywhere and phone by a frail shoulder as he says

Hey. I know we haven't talked in a while and you're, you're probably busy resting or restructuring heavens or wherevers archive system so it's more efficient. But the little old ladys daughter bought me a churro. Showed me a new Chinese place too. It's small, tiny, really. I barely didn't see it until mr barnes saw the cat. You know, the gold one who keeps waving? It drives him nuts, the owner offered extra dumplings if i convinced him to stop touching the cat.

Anyway, it's a nice place, tucked between two skyscrapers, which is weird. You'd think it'd be replaced or something, but the office workers love visiting and take lessons to improve their pronunciation. The owners niece, her names Mulan, and I think that's awesome, got super excited when mr barnes showed up. I swear, mr stark, her english is way better than mine. She comes up, barely reaches my knee so you can imagine how cute she looked next to mr barnes, and pats his hand. Hold on, I've got churro stuck on a molar, shit. She pats him and goes, white wolf! White wolf! And at first, I have no idea what's happening, the owner is dying of laughter, the office workers are going back to their shifts and nobody can explain.

Turns out, when Mr black panther went away (he can't say it yet, the words are right there, he can practically taste the ash alongside the sugar and cinnamon but they won't move past his teeth and this is uncle Ben all over again and Liz and Betty and-) Wakanda kind of adopted mr barnes. He's not black panther, that's princess Shuri.

Ok, right now, hes, um. An Avenger in training, I guess? Like Vision. Besides the Sokovia Accords, they made the Wakanda Declarations and now the team has to, I think Happy said 'kick it down a notch'. Still, mr barnes has gotten famous with the whole pardon and everything and Mulan liked him! A lot! She had the action figure and the black panther poster. Her brother has a falcon bed sheet that's really cool. Redwing glows in the dark if you keep your head on the pillow for a few hours. I told him to put a book on it if he's too jittery to rest and wants to be distracted by the kight. I do the same thing with my Iron Man, um, aunt Mays old bed sheets.

Crap, I'm running out of battery. I just, I wanted, I want to take you there. God, that sounds like I wanna take you on a date, it's not a date. I mean, if you don't mind, wait. Nevermind, wrong choice of words; why would you be interested, it's me. And like I said, I know you're busy and all. Um, I think you'd like it, is all. Yeah, it's something you'd be into. Mr barnes couldn't stand the cat, but I'm pretty sure you might dig it. Although, miss pepper says those things could go either way. If you dont, you'll figure out how to make it stand still. Id bet my life on that.

Well, um, I gotta go. Ned and MJ are waiting for me. We're gonna watch Back to the Future since I leave for mit on monday. I got this roommate, Miles, who just transferred and I'm pretty optimistic about helping him out with his boxes and furniture. It can't be worse than when I dislocated my shoulder. To be fair, I thought Mays fridge would be a lot less heavy.

So, I'm going to stop now. I hope we can talk again soon. We always do when I'm back in New York, though. You won't have to wait a long time, at least. Maybe one day you can head to the Chinese place, upgrade the cat so it has more speed settings. Mr barnes looks funny trying to stop it. Ok, I'm at five percent.

Take care, mr stark. Don't let mr rogers hog the shower. And mr hawkeye owes me an archery lesson. I hope you have fun making weird physics experiments with mr banner and Thor. Loki is teaching Rhodey magic tricks to impress Morgan. It's really fun. I might swing by them, too. Say hi to her and her Iron Man doll. He's a bit ragged now, but still handsome. No worries, there, since it's you.

...

Love you, Ton-

Battery Depleted

(In a different time, he does get to see the place. Tony upgrades the cat. Babbles back at Mulans granddaughter. Orders the White Wolf special. Catches sight of tattered Falcon sheets clinging to a giggling baby, a great niece, maybe. Is comforted by an absurdly old man who reminisces about a reformed supersoldier swatting at a gold cat and a young boy laughing at his antics alongside a crying Tony.)

#i ;;;; dont know where this came from #um #peter parker #tony stark #peter parker x tony stark #ironspider #peter x tony #i am sleepy #starker #sad!starker #au #my writing #sorry????

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it-begins-with-rain · 4 years ago

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Chinese Language TV Recommendations

For my Korean TV Recommendations, click here.

*Contains both Mainland-Chinese and Taiwanese programs.

** Updated 05/23/21 with “Miss The Dragon” & “Word of Honor”

A Love So Beautiful

Can the pure love of 17-year-olds endure through all the challenges of college and adulthood?

Chen Xiao Xi and Jiang Chen are high school friends and neighbors who grew up together. Xiao Xi is happy-go-lucky and doesn’t like to study much but she has a talent for drawing. Jiang Chen is popular for his good looks and high grades, but is cold and indifferent to other people.

Their friends include swimmer Wu Bo Song, who will do anything for XiaoXi, the dorky and over-confident gamer Lu Yang, and Lin Jing Xiao, the most beautiful girl in school (who Lu Yang is hopelessly in love with).

How will the realities of life shape the friendships and love lives of these young adults?

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Ashes of Love // Heavy Sweetness, Ash-Like Frost

Jin Mi is the secret lovechild of the Flower Deity and the Water Immortal, conceived before the Flower Deity suffers a fatal wound.

The deity gives birth to a baby girl (Jin Mi) on her deathbed, and foresees the infant will face a terrible trial by her 10,000th year. To save her from her fate, the Flower Deity gives Jin Mi a pill that makes it impossible for her to ever feel romantic love. Upon her death, she forbids anyone in the Flower Kingdom from revealing the fact that she had a child.

Several thousand years later, Jin Mi is a bumbling little fairy trapped in The Water Mirror- a gilded prison where low-level fairies can live in peace. Jin Mi believes she is a small Grape Fairy, and lives a happy (if not dull) life within the Mirror with her friends.

When a charred bird falls from the heavens into the Water Mirror, Jin Mi decides to eat save the poor little ‘crow’– who in reality is Xu Feng, the mighty phoenix son of the Heavenly Emperor. Her decision to not eat save the Fire God will put them at the heart of plots and schemes, romances and adventures spanning the Flower Kingdom, Heavenly Realm, Demon Kingdom, and the Realm of Mortals.

**Trigger Warning: Contains reference to off-camera sexual assault.**

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Dance of the Phoenix

Feng Wu, a former genius girl in the Junwu Continent, was attacked by her old enemy Zuo Qingluan. In the attack, she lost not only her memories and abilities, but her “phoenix blood” which made her powerful.

In order to save Feng Wu her secret tutor, Master Mu Jiuzhou (a hero thought long dead whose soul is bound inside a ring Feng Wu wears around her neck), exhausted his vitality and fell into a deep coma.

The forces Master Mu Jiuzhou were trying to keep at bay are roiling again, readying for war unless Feng Wu can recover her memories, her power, and survive long enough to release him from the ring.

But if Feng Wu at full power couldn’t stop the evil Zhuo Qingluan’s attack and save herself, what chance does “normal person” Feng Wu have?

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Douluo Continent

Tang San is a hardworking and kind young man who was raised by his single father to be a blacksmith to a small village. His demanding father taught him secret techniques and cultivated unknown abilities while refusing to ever allow him to enter the world of the Soul Masters- heroes who use their inner power to defeat monstrous Soul Beasts and collect their power.

One day, Tang San is attacked in the woods by a fearsome Soul Spider and uses his special techniques to survive, drawing the eye of a nearby Soul Master. The man tests Tang San and discovers that while his Soul Spirit takes the utterly useless form of a common weed (as opposed to say a lion or a wolf), he harbors extreme untapped power and potential.

What only Tang San and his father know is that Tang San is a rare Twin-Soul, in possession of not one Soul Spirit- the Blue Grass- but a second extraordinarily rare weapon spirit capable of being wielded either against foes or in protection of innocents.

Unable to deny Tang San the ability to learn to control his power, his father allows him to leave the protection of the village and embark on a journey to develop his powers and perhaps learn the truth of his parentage.

On his journey Tang San will be joined by the mysterious and naïve Xiao Wu- a seemingly unstoppable and optimistic girl with a rabbit as her Soul Spirit and the ability to absorb the life force of Soul Beasts. They are led by a disgraced Soul Master in Training, Yu Xiao Gang, who was disregarded as a janitor all while studying Soul Masters and developing his own radical theories as to the nature of their power.

Tang San, Xiao Wu, Yu Xiao Gang, and the other friends they meet along the way will become a famous team of heroes known as the “Seven Devils of Shrek Academy”, and be drawn into an imperial struggle for power that threatens to consume their entire continent.

Tang San appears to the world as the master of the Silver Grass Spirit, but once that same world realizes the might of the Weapon Spirit he keeps hidden, he will have to fight with everything he has in order to protect what he holds dear.

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Fairyland Lovers

Bai Qi is a “spiritual doctor” who travels the world to rid spirits of their obsessions and stop them from becoming monsters. Eons ago he himself was at the threshold of becoming an Evil Spirit, and was saved by a Divine Warrior who helped him find a way to move past his darkness before tragically losing her life.

Isolated from the world and alone with a sprig of his lost love’s peach tree, Bai Qi meets the sunny but hapless actress Lin Xia. Not only does the tree come to life in her presence- and not only can she use the tools left behind by his lost lover- she also has the same face.

Curious, Bai Qi enters into a co-habitation agreement with Lin Xia and she helps him cleanse souls before they can turn into Evil Spirits. As their lives intersect, a memory that Bai Qi sealed away for over ten thousand years begins to surface.

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Guardian

Super-Detective Zhao Yunlan meets university professor (and powerful supernatural being) Shen Wei and the two men are instantly drawn together by a past one cannot forget and a future the other cannot guess. As they grow closer, they find themselves at the heart of a high-stakes supernatural battle between unknown enemies.

Will the heroic duo’s unique talents- and special bond- be enough to help them outwit the forces of darkness?

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Handsome Siblings (2020 Netflix Edition)

Hua Wuque is a pillar of righteousness and virtue, the only male disciple of the powerful Yihua Palace cultivation clan. An orphan, he was taken in by the clan leader and her sister and raised with only one goal in life: to find and kill Jiang Xiaoyu, a mighty villain and enemy of Yihua Palace.

So who is Jiang Xiaoyu? Also known as Xiaoyu’er, Jiang Xiaoyu is an orphan himself- the same age as Hua Wuque in fact- raised by the five most feared and hated villains in the world within the confines of the Wicked Canyon. Into Jiang Xiaoyu the villains poured their knowledge, tricks, and ruthlessness, seeking to create the ultimate villain. There is only one problem: As he was raised in the Wicked Canyon and surrounded by nothing but villains, Jiang Xiaoyu mostly uses his abilities to… harm villains and protect the weak.

When Jiang Xiaoyu comes of age and leaves the Wicked Canyon (or rather, becomes too much of a trickster for the villains to handle anymore), Hua Wuque is unleashed to venture from Yihua Palace and hunt down his enemy.

But how could someone kept confined in the Wicked Canyon for the first 18 years of his life be a threat to Yihua Palace? And why must Hua Wuque be the one to kill him (under direction that Jiang Xiaoyu cannot die naturally, be killed by someone else, or kill himself)?

There is a piece of the story Jiang Xiaoyu and Hua Wuque do not know: they are orphans of the same tragedy, in which the divine hero Jiang Feng spurned the love of both leaders of Yihua Palace for a beautiful servant named Hua Yuenu. Hua Yuenu was forced to commit suicide and Jiang Feng killed himself rather than submit to the Ladies of Yihua–

Leaving behind newborn (non-identical) twin sons.

Yihua Palace’s plot is a simple (if OTT) act of vengeance against Jiang Feng’s memory:: Force one brother to murder the other, then reveal to Hua Wuque the sin he has committed and let it drive the boy insane.

Will the truth come out before Wuque finds and kills Xiaoyu, or will the evil Ladies of Yihua Palace finally have the vengeance they have waited for for over 18 years? As Wuque and Xiaoyu’s paths cross more and more they strike up an unlikely friendship, even knowing there is no escaping their dark fate.

**Trigger Warning: Later episodes include off-camera sexual assault and on-camera depictions of near-rape.**

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Hi My Sweetheart

Xue Hai is a kindhearted (and extremely wealthy) but naïve man who has been sheltered by his big sisters his entire life. He decides to go to college in China- where no one knows him- under the name Da Lang and with the image of a poor scholarship student. There Xue Hai meets the dominant, friendless, and rebellious Bao Zhu. Naturally the two fall in love, but after 4 years together, just as he’s going to reveal his identity and propose, Bao Zhu viciously dumps him.

Fast forward three more years. Xue Hai has transformed himself into a handsome but ruthless playboy who treats women as nothing more than toys to be used and cast aside. When he chances across Bao Zhu once more, he decides to launch a campaign to destroy her heart as thoroughly and mercilessly as she did his.

Except Xue Hai is missing one important piece of their love story: Bao Zhu only left him to protect him from her domineering mother, and she has been searching for her beloved Da Lang ever since.

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The King’s Avatar

In the online multiplayer game Glory, Ye Xiu is well known as the undisputed master of professional sports- though no one outside of the professional teams actually knows what he looks like as he hides his face from media and fans. A player since he was a child- and raised largely in professional player training camps- Ye Xiu has no understanding of the outside world.

Halfway through the season, the money-hungry company behind his team, Excellency Era, forces him out and replaces him with an undisciplined hot-shot. Penniless and with nowhere to go, Ye Xiu crosses the street and enters the Happy Internet Cafe. The owner is a diehard fan of the mysterious Ye Xiu, and hires Ye Qiu as an IT manager not for his experience, but for his shared love of the game.

When Glory launches their tenth server, Ye Qiu throws himself into the game once more. Equipped with ten years of gaming experience, memories of an unfinished pledge to a dead friend, and an incomplete self-made weapon, Ye Qiu will rise from the ashes, forge a new team, and take back his crown.

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The Lost Tomb**

50 years ago, a group of Changsha grave robbers known as the “Mystic Nine” dug out manuscripts of the location of treasures from the Warring States period, but soon after almost the entire group was hunted down and slaughtered.

In the present, the young grandchild of the sole survivor, Wu Xie, discovers a secret within his grandfather’s notes as well as half of a silk manuscript that may reveal the location of the lost tomb. But there is one problem- the other half of the manuscript is held by a shady organization of tomb raiders eager to break in and steal whatever cultural relics are inside the tomb.

Wu Xie has a “National Treasure” moment and decides that in order to stop the objects in the tomb from vanishing into the black market he will break in first and recover whatever is inside (’I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence…’).

Wu Xie is helped on his journey by his beloved “Third Uncle” Wu Sanxing, his uncle’s right hand man Panzi, and the mysterious Xiao Ge - a tomb raider who seems to know of traps before they are sprung and whose hand has been mutilated in a way not seen among tomb robbing families in over a century.

They expected to find a lost tomb, perhaps chase away some thieves, and learn about an exciting piece of lost history. What they did not expect was for the tomb to strike back, the dead to rise, and the past to fight and keep what secrets it holds.

Who exactly are this alternate group of tomb robbers? What are they searching for? What exactly is protecting the tomb? Whose side is Xiao Ge truly on? And- most crucially- can Wu Xie survive long enough to find the answers?

** This recommendation is part of a broader series of shows and movies, all adapted from “The Gravedigger’s Notebook” and its sequels::

The Lost Tomb (2015)

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2016)

Time Raiders (2016 movie)

The Mystic Nine (2016)

Tomb of the Sea (2018)

Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (which gets its own recommendation below; 2019-2020)

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Love O2O

** O = letter, not number

Wei-Wei has both beauty and brains. A computer goddess, she aspires to be an online game developer. In her spare time, she plays her favorite online game ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’- where she has made a name for herself as the top female player on the entire server.

After her online husband dumps her, she gets a message from legendary player Yixiao Naihe- asking to become her online husband (marriages in-game offer certain benefits and quest lines single players cannot achieve).

Little does Wei-Wei know that Yixiao Naihe is also her college senior and the most desired man on campus, Xiao Nai.

Will their online chemistry lead to a real-life romance? Yes. Of course it will. It’s in the title.

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Miss The Dragon

As a humble maid, Liu Ying never expected her life to be anything other than ordinary. Content with the world and her place in it, she spent her days tending to injured creatures and assisting her mistress Xia Hou Xue. But when Liu Ying finds an injured little snake and nurses it back to health, she has no idea how her life is about to change.

That little snake turns out to be a thousand year old Draong King named Yu Chi Long Yan. He falls in love with Liu Ying, and decides to repay her kindness by naming her as his queen.

And then Xia Hou Xue is captured by a wolf demon. Liu Ying flips the script- begging Yu Chi Long Yan to repay her kindness instead by rescuing her mistress and then keeping her safe for three lifetimes. Trapped by his word, Yu Chi Long Yan agrees to do so, though he secretly remains by Liu Ying’s side.

Now in her fourth lifetime, Liu Ying is reincarnated as Gu Qing Yan. She slowly becomes aware of his existence in her life- and her past lives as well. After waiting three lifetimes to be reunited with his lost love, Yu Chi Long Yan will fight with everything he has to keep her safe and get the Happily Ever After they should have had three thousand years ago.

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My Roommate is a Detective

Shanghai in 1925 is caught between gang leaders and the European powers colonizing China.

A resourceful young police officer named Qiao Chu Sheng is on the trail of a brutal but devious killer. Realizing that the police force will need some extra help with this difficult case, he decides to form an elite crime-busting detective team. He reaches out Lu Yao, a Cambridge graduate a slick con-man.

Qiao Chu Sheng has learned that Lu Yao has remarkable powers of deduction and a brilliant mind – and believes he can help crack this difficult case. To round off the team, he enlists the help of Bai You Ning, a focused young female reporter for a daily newspaper. A free-thinking, independent young woman, she has a strong sense of justice – and pledges to help catch the killer.

The trio form a small detective squad that specializes in solving strange and unsettling murder mysteries.

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Oh My Emperor

Fei-Fei, a young doctor, is wounded in an accident and finds herself trapped in the ancient and mystical nation of Huang Dao. The people of Huang Dao are ruled by a king born of the stars- the physical embodiment of one of the twelve zodiac constellations. To keep discord from arising among the people, the Twelve Zodiac Masters govern together to keep the peace.

But a thirteenth sign has been forcibly subjugated, it’s Lord executed, and its people scattered to the wind. The lost sign- Ophiuchus- is rising once more- and Fei-Fei is its (unwilling) Master.

It only complicates matters slightly that Fei-Fei finds herself between the handsome and charming Master of Aquarius and his nephew- the cold Master of Capricorn (who is also the Emperor). Can Fei-Fei keep her identity secret long enough to solve the mystery of the Ophiuchus purge- or is Huang Dao doomed to destruction?

**This drama is a showpiece for members of the Chinese pop group X-Nine, do not judge it by the same standards as a traditional drama. Showpiece dramas tend to be a bit silly.

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Reunion: The Sound of the Providence**

Wu Xie, “Fatty” Wang Pangzi, and the quasi-immortal tomb raider Xiao Ge (AKA Zheng Qiling, Kylin, and “Poker Face”) have faced many dangerous tombs together over the past twelve years.

Now, it is time for them to go on their last great adventure as the so-called “Iron Triangle” before Wu Xie sets off on the journey all must eventually make: death. He always thought his end would come in a dangerous tomb, but instead it will be lung cancer that claims his life. With only 3-4 months left to live, Wu Xie hides the truth of his illness from his friends and family, revealing the truth only to Xiao Ge.

Once upon a time, Wu Xie was told that when a man meets his death he must do so with a clear conscience. But something has been weighing on Wu Xie- his Third Uncle’s disappearance at the end of their first adventure. Right on time, a message from his long lost uncle appears, setting Wu Xie on a desperate mission to find him before the cancer eating away at his body destroys him at last.

This will most likely be Wu Xie’s final journey, but he will do anything in his power to make sure his friends and family will be safe long after his time is up. In the final 3-4 months of Wu Xie’s life he will seek to unravel the mystery of the “Thunder City”- starting with the most dangerous tomb he’s ever explored, The South Sea King’s Tomb.

The sound of thunder hides a secret men have killed for, but is there really a way to hear the words of gods within it? Someone clearly thought so, but who? Is Uncle Sanxing still alive, or is someone in the shadows guiding Wu Xie to them?

Wu Xie’s enemies thought he was dangerous before, but now he is a dying man with a mission. There is no telling what lengths he will go to in order to achieve his goals. He might just manage to die in a tomb after all…

** This recommendation is just the latest installment in an entire series of stories adapted from “The Gravedigger’s Notebook” and related novels::

The Lost Tomb (2015)

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2016)

Time Raiders (2016 movie)

The Mystic Nine (2016)

Tomb of the Sea (2018)

Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (2019-2020)

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The Romance of Tiger and Rose

Chen Xiao Qian has dedicated her life to making her dream of becoming a well-respected screenwriter come true. Standing on the production set of sweeping dramas she penned through endless blood, sweat, and tears, Xiao Qian can hardly believe what she is seeing: her work, come to life!

Except it isn’t a set. And her work truly has come to life.

Her script is a simple one: the heirs of two rival cities who seek to destroy one another enter into a doomed romance that will lead to endless betrayals and a war that will kill the male lead, Han Shuo.

There is just one problem- Xiao Qian wakes in the body of Han Shuo’s first wife on the day he will murder her! The only way for Xiao Qian to return to this world is to survive the story, but in keeping herself alive longer the script begins to change, and Han Shuo begins to fall in love with the wrong person.

At first it is easy for Xiao Qian to keep herself alive- just go along with the script! But the story wants to return to the original plot, which means characters who should be friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and Xiao Qian might not live long enough to find her way home.

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The Untamed

On the cliffs of the Nightless City, upon defeating his enemies in a bloody slaughter, the cruel and vicious Yiling Patriarch- Wei Wuxian- threw himself to his death.

Sixteen years later, he is resurrected by a madman and given a second chance to right what went so terribly wrong long ago. Wei Wuxian reunites with the honorable, righteous, and stern Lan Wangji- his confidant, soulmate, and best friend.

How can someone as upstanding as Lan Wangji befriend the monstrous and hated Yiling Patriarch? What turned the happy and popular Wei Wuxian into the man who slaughtered thousands at Nightless by weaponizing the souls of the dead?

And what terrible secret was Wuxian resurrected to unearth?

The past is not always what it seems, and there is no clean line between right and wrong.

**Don’t worry if you’re lost when the show starts, that is by design. Near the end of episode 2 the show will enter a 30 episode long flashback sequence to answer all questions.

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Well Intended Love (Season 1: Drama Version)

Seasons 1 and 2 of “Well Intended Love” feature the same stars playing the same characters, but the storylines are alternate-universes of one another telling the story from a different genre. Each season is wholly independent of one another.

A third-rate actress with leukemia becomes entangled with the handsome but cold CEO Ling.

In order to receive a bone marrow transplant and contniue her career as an actress, Xia Lin enters into a secret marriage with Ling Yi Zhou. Despite the conspiracies and misunderstandings they encounter, the two begin to find true love.

But one question nags at Xia Lin’s mind:: Why did the cold, controlling, and distant Ling YiZhou need her to play the role of wife?

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Well Intended Love (Season 2: Rom-Com Version)

Rising TV superstar Xia Lin finds herself embroiled in scandal after a run-in with business mogul Ling Yizhou at a party. To clear up any misunderstandings the two prepare a joint press conference– where Xia Lin is stunned by Ling Yizhou’s statement that the two are- in fact- an engaged couple.

Ling Yizhou convinces Xia Lin to play fiancee for a period of one year, after which they can go their separate ways. To save face in front of her fans, Xia Lin agrees. She gradually begins to fall for the lovable and doting Ling Yizhou.

Someone works in the shadows to destroy everything Ling Yizhou holds dear- and the closer he gets to the heart of the conspiracy, the more he realizes Xia Lin may have a target on her back as well.

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Word of Honor // Faraway Wanderers

Zhou Zi Shu has served as the leader of Heaven’s Window for much of his life. A once righteous and honorable sect who acted as an elite Secret Service for the royal family, a corrupt prince has turned them into his personal assassin’s guild. With their oaths to Heaven’s Window as nooses around their throats, most of Zhou Zi Shu’s elders and friends have chosen death over continued service.

Wholly disillusioned, Zhou Zi Shu only wants to atone for the crimes he was forced to commit under his oaths to the prince. He endures the slow execution of Heaven’s Window- a process that sees seven nails inserted into the victim and ushers in a slow and painful death that takes three years to play out.

By gaming the system he helped create, Zhou Zi Shu manages to buy himself an extra year and a half of life to wander the world and wipe some of the blood from his slate.

In his wanderings, he is pulled into a conspiracy surrounding a young boy and meets a strange young man named Wen Ke Xing who sticks to him like glue. Zhou Zi Shu and Wen Ke Xing grow closer and closer throughout their journey to find a mysterious treasure that is rumored to give its owner unlimited power.

But just who is Wen Ke Xing? What is he really after? And most importantly of all- can Zhou Zi Shu really trust his new companion?

#tv recommendations #tv recommendation #recommendations #recommendation #cdrama recommendations #cdrama recommendation #mine #cdrama #c drama

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burnsopale · 4 years ago

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Ashen, excerpt 2

Last time was mostly a big tease. This time, Boris returns to the abbey for the first time in years. It doesn’t go well.

Working title: Ashen Characters in this clip: Takao, Kai, Max, Boris and Kinomiya Tatsuya Setting: 7 years after season one, Russia, the abbey Summary: Volkov has escaped from prison, attacked PPB headquarters and taken back Black Dranzer. The Russian boys have been living with the PPB, and were used and hurt in the attack. Yuriy left with Volkov for unknown reasons. Daitenji Kogoro has gathered the troops and sent them to Russia to find out what Volkov is up to. Meanwhile, Kai’s grandfather is on his deathbed, and Kai is struggling to deal with it.

A stray wind mumbled and whined through the colonnades of Volkov Abbey. In that desolate courtyard no summer lived, only barren winter. The stones were black, the shadows cold, and doorways yawned like sucking mouths while broken windows gave a sharp, jagged edge to the scene.

For a while, Takao, his dad, Max, Kai and Boris stood silent in the middle of the open courtyard, a little overwhelmed by the sheer depressive atmosphere, wondering what on earth they were supposed to find here.

“Home sweet home!” Boris exclaimed suddenly, before laughing uproariously at their startled expressions.

A door opened up ahead. Takao vaguely recalled it leading to the mess hall where the BBA had eaten on their first visit here, years ago.

“That’s probably our liaison,” Dad said and headed towards the young woman who had just stepped outside and was waving.

“Hello, everyone!” she said as they came to meet her. “My name is Myrna Lebedev. I’m supposed to show you around this place?”

She didn’t look much older than the boys. With her ash-blonde hair and glasses, turtleneck sweater and long jeans, she seemed a big-sisterly type.

They shook hands with her in turn.

“You worked here after it was shut down?” Dad asked.

She nodded, gesturing for them to follow her down the pillared walkway towards the fat, looming tower where Takao and Zangief had battled.

Where was Zangief now? Takao wondered. Was he happy?

“I was on the team that mapped this place out, initially. Strangest job I ever did. The police had been here and cleared out all the kids and those cultists of course, but when we first went down to explore, someone almost died; there were traps everywhere!”

“Not traps,” Boris said. “Training gauntlets. You had to be ready all the time.”

She stopped. “Oh. I’m so sorry. Were you ...?” She looked at them in turn.

Max and Takao shook their heads and pointed at Kai and Boris. “Not us.”

Myrna looked at them all a little longer. “You are strange. I was told a group from Japan wanted to see the abbey, so I thought you’d be like the usual tourists.”

“This place gets tourists?” Boris asked, and then started laughing again. “Oh god. Can I work here too? I could be an attraction.”

Kai frowned at him. “We’re not here for pleasure,” he said firmly, voice a little hoarse from his long silence in the car. “The man who ran this place, Vladimir Volkov, has escaped from prison and is in possession of an old weapon of his. We’re looking for any clues as to what that weapon is capable of.”

“Oh!” Myrna’s dark eyes grew very big behind her glasses. “I see. That ... wasn’t really in my instructions ... I’m not supposed to let you wander much on your own or ... well, go that deep, but ...”

“If you need to, we can shut you in one of the cells while we look,” Boris suggested, possibly seriously. “If you need an excuse.”

Myrna certainly thought he was serious, and if her eyes grew any bigger now, they would pop out.

“We won’t do that,” Max said quickly. “But we would be very grateful if you’d let us explore a bit. We won’t tell anyone. It’s very important that we stop Volkov from using the weapon.”

She cocked her head to the side. “But why do you have to stop him?” she asked innocently. “Who are you?”

Kai’s impatience got the better of him then, and he strode past her towards the door.

Boris watched him go, his jesting finished. “We are the ones who let him have it in the first place.”

It grew immediately colder as they plunged into the darkness of the abbey, and more so when they began to descend underground. Takao wished he had worn a proper sweater, like Myrna, but Dad had told him to bring one and he hadn’t done it so he couldn’t complain or Dad would say “I told you so”.

Myrna told them a little bit about the history of the place as they walked, how Borg had purchased the abbey from a group of monks that might, in hindsight, actually have been forced to part with it and silenced afterwards, and how these hallways, once cellars for storing food and other things, had been dug out until they encompassed a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels, where Borg could carry out their clandestine plans.

“What does clandestine mean,” asked Boris, and once Max had explained it, he declared it his new favourite word. “Holy shit, we were so clandestine. Clandestine is now my middle name. You can call me Boris Clandestine Kuznetsov.”

“And now it’s lost all meaning,” Max said.

Kai was continually a little ahead of them, and eventually Takao’s dad called after him. “Kai, where are you leading us?”

“To Volkov’s office,” he replied.

“Really?” Boris said. “Then you’re going the wrong way.”

Kai came stalking back. “I am not going the wrong way; it’s down here and to the left. Don’t fucking mess with me, Kuznetsov.”

Boris grinned wickedly. “That’s Clandestine Kuznetsov to you.”

For a moment, Kai’s face was white with rage, but he only turned on his heel and walked on. Takao looked to Max and found him looking back in concern. Kai’s reactions were way out of proportion lately.

“Sorry about him,” Takao said to Myrna.

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She shook her head disarmingly. “It can’t be easy being back here.”

“I don’t know,” said Boris. “I’m getting the warm fussies myself.”

“Are you sure Kai-kun should be down here?” Dad asked Takao in an undertone.

“Leave him to us,” Takao whispered back. “You just look for whatever it is Daitenji-san wants you to find.”

When they caught up to Kai, he was waiting in front of the door which, as it turned out, did indeed lead to Volkov’s office. Myrna unlocked the door with her bunch of keys, and they stepped inside.

It was empty. Not just nobody’s-here empty, but stripped completely bare. It was just a room, panelled in green and beige, with pale squares on the walls where pictures had hung or cabinets stood and preserved the original colours.

Kai made a dissatisfied sound.

“Did you check for hidden rooms when you were emptying the place?” Dad asked Myrna.

“Yes and no. We had the building’s blueprints, and we did find some discrepancies and discover some rooms that weren’t noted, but we didn’t go knocking on every wall to find sliding panels or things like that.” She laughed a little.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Dad said, looking at Kai for confirmation. “Seems the most likely place he’d hide any particularly sensitive information, right?”

Kai inclined his head. “That was my thought.”

“You two do that,” Max said. “Boris can show me and Takao around meanwhile.”

Myrna came with them, and for a while they wandered from room to room. As Boris led them past dormitories, communal showers, training rooms, recreational facilities and secret corners, he seemed increasingly to veer between high and low spirits. He’d stand for a long time staring at the place where his bed had once stood, and then he’d crack jokes while they walked to the next place.

They came around a corner and were faced with a row of rusting cells, some with their doors ajar. Takao remembered Kai saying he had seen Zangief in a cell all those years ago. Maybe it had been one of these.

“I wonder what happened to Zangief?” he said out loud, idly moving the nearest door back and forth and making the hinges scream and creak.

“He was probably rescued by the BBA,” Max said, eternally optimistic.

“Zangief ...” Boris said slowly. “He was lucky. If he had beaten you, he would have advanced, gone to train with Baba Yaga.” As Takao moved on, Boris took over the door he had left, swinging it back and forth, back and forth, creak, creak, creak, creak. “He would have regretted that fast.” A bit of laughter, low in his throat. His face was lost in shadow. “Zangief was weak.” Creak, creak, creak, creak.

“Boris?” Max was watching him warily.

“Baba would have eaten him alive.” The ceiling light glinted off the edge of his sharp, sharp smile. “Then again, they say that’s what she does to the ones in the cells to.” Another laugh, like quacking. Creak, creak, creak. And then he stopped and stood very, very still. Trembling.

Suddenly, Max grabbed Myrna and Takao and shoved them into the nearest cell, slamming the door behind them. Takao shoved at it, but the lock had sprung; it was shut fast.

“Max!”

“Stay there!” he said, giving them a warning look.

Boris had twitched when the door banged shut, and now he turned slowly towards Max.

“Max, why did you do that?” Takao pressed himself up against the bars.

Myrna was going through her mess of keys and muttering stressfully to herself. “Is it this one or this one or this one? Not that one. Okay, this is scary. This one? No, no ...”

“Be quiet!” Max commanded. He drew a careful breath, inhaling and exhaling. “Boris? Boris, please step into the light for me.”

Boris didn’t move, but Takao could hear him breathing now, a harsh whistling sound like he was in pain.

“Mama told me that you usually get a bit manic before an episode,” Max said gently. “That’s how I knew.”

“Max,” Takao hissed. “Get out of here!”

But Max shook his head. “No. Boris, you said you would be okay, and I believed you. I still believe in you.”

Boris’ hand fell from the cell door to hang limply at his side. It twitched.

“What is happening?” Myrna whispered.

Max took a step closer to the other boy. “When I talk to Mama on the phone, all she talks about is you. How far you’ve come, how strong you are, how proud she is of you. She laughs about your terrible jokes. She says you are so clever.”

Boris sucked in a breath. He was trembling all over, hands closing slowly into fists like he was holding himself back desperately.

Max took another step forward. “Boris-”

Boris’ lunged, grabbing Max by the front of his sweater and slamming him up against the bars. The light caught his face and revealed his eyes huge and staring, and a weird, cruel twist to his mouth. Max clenched his teeth and held still as Boris’ knuckles dug into his throat.

“Max!” Takao cried, reaching through the bars, but unable to touch them. “Boris, don’t you dare! Don’t give Kai a chance to gloat about being right! Come on, fight it!” He turned back to Myrna, who seemed to be frozen in shock. “Find the key!”

She startled and began to fumble again.

“It’s okay, Takao!” Max said, straining. “Boris, it’s just you and me. I have Draciel, but I won’t use it. It’s your choice; you can hurt me, or you can come back to us. I already know what you’ll do, because you said you’d be alright, and because I know you want to make Mama proud of you.”

“Make ... Baba ...” Boris muttered, seeming confused for a moment.

“No,” Max said. “Mama Judy. My Mama ... and yours.”

Another hard shiver went through Boris, and then he sank to his knees in front of Max, letting go of him. His face relaxed until he was pale, but calm.

“The stupid door,” he muttered. “The stupid sound. Every night, all night, our metronome from hell.” He stumbled to his feet and moved a few paces away, sniffing and wiping at his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “Kai was right about me.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Takao said quickly as Myrna finally moved past him to put the right key in the lock. “You came back.”

“Let’s rejoin the others,” Myrna said a little hysterically as the door swung open. She hurried down the corridor without waiting for them.

“Would you like that hug now?” Max asked Boris softly.

He didn’t say anything, but lifted his arm, and Max slipped under it and wrapped his own around him.

“She’s your Mama,” Boris said, almost whispering. “But I like her too.”

“I don’t mind sharing,” Max replied, smiling as he let go again. “I already share her with Emily, and honestly she could use the extra practice.”

Takao grabbed them and pulled them into a double hug. “Don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry, Takao,” Max laughed.

#Beyblade #Judin writes #Ashen #Max is a good boy #I had an idea that Boris got overwhelmed by all the affection shown to him by his initial foster mothers #and that Judy's more reserved (read: cold) approach actually worked much better for him #So she kinda took him on #So now Max has even more competition

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kell-be-belle · 4 years ago

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The Metamorphosis

Summary: Following his second trial, Geralt notices something strange happening to his hair that leaves him feeling unsettled. As a new reality sets in, Geralt finds himself grasping to keep hold of the person he was, but fighting against the change is like swimming upstream. The young witcher must let go of the dream of the life he could have had and learn to live with realiy of the one he has now.

Ao3

Eskel is the first to notice the change. They are in the bath house, scrubbing themselves of the sweat and grime collected from that afternoon’s training session, when he traces a circle around the crown of Geralt’s head. Geralt looks up at his brother with an arched brow, clusters of soap bubbles bursting weakly on his temples. They smell faintly of pine.

“Your hair,” Eskel comments vaguely. It has begun to grow shaggy; curling boyishly around his ears. Geralt couldn’t remember the last time it had been cut. Sometime before his second trial, he supposed, which meant a few months at most. Between his recovery and subsequent reintroduction into training, there hasn’t been much opportunity. Not that Geralt was complaining. Haircuts were often handled by Vesemir and the witcher’s prowess with a sword in no way extended to that of its far more domestic cousin. He left most boys looking like hastily shorn sheep.

“Look,” Eskel asserts, pointing to one of the mirrors by the stack of washing basins. Geralt douses himself to remove the last of the soap and pads across the room. The soles of his bare feet make a wet slap against the stone. He swipes an open palm against the mirror, exposing a strip of the glass beneath the steam to bear his reflection. Nearly two summers have passed since Geralt survived the Trial of the Grasses and still the preternatural gleam of his eyes in the haze makes something squirm inside him.

Focusing on the task at hand, Geralt tilts his head this way and that in attempts to discern what Eskel had seen. All appears normal. As normal as things could for a burgeoning witcher. Geralt’s hair is a deep copper, like the rust on a blade left by the battlefield. A coin forgotten in a pocket. Memories of his mother are scarce, but he can distinctly recall the color of her hair. Red, not unlike his own, but a much more violent shade. When she walked, it had shimmered behind her like a trail of fire. The mythical firebird given human form.

Geralt tips his head forward, pushing his gaze so far up it makes his eyes ache in their sockets, but at last he sees it. There, sprouting from the crown of his head like a star burst, is a patch of grey. No, not grey. Silver? He tilts his head further forward, pushes his gaze so much that he can see the ascending curve of his own lashes.

No, not silver.

White. Ashen and blanched as the bark on a birch tree. Fallen snow. Milk in the pail.

With a hand braced against the slick glass of the mirror, Geralt turns to Eskel in search of resolution. Between the effects of the trials and the more general physical changes of a boy of fourteen, Geralt had grown somewhat accustomed to his ever altering appearance. His cheeks had lost much of their youthful fullness along with their color. His nose had been broken enough times to knot with a permanent crookedness. His muscles had begun to swell under the stretch of his skin; a combination of the relentless training and the transition into maturity. Geralt was no longer the child he had once been. That child had been abandoned on the roadside. Literally and figuratively left to the wolves. He understood that much of him had changed and that much still would, but there had to be some limit. A line drawn in the sand that warned to step no further.

Eskel looked at Geralt helplessly, his mouth a hard line across the expanse of his jaw. Of course he had no explanation. He and Geralt were the same, afterall. Unwanted children left with no option other than to persevere. Sailors thrown overboard and beaten mercilessly by the waves. Eskel carefully rearranges his features and comes to join Geralt beside the mirror, pressing a comforting hand between his shoulder blades. “Perhaps talk to Vesemir?” he offers hopefully, though the quaver in his voice is still detectable. He is afraid and doing his best not to show it. The prospect of speaking with Vesemir soothes him marginally, but dread still slithers like a serpent in Geralt’s belly.

Eskel takes Geralt by the wrist and leads him to one of the pools, promising there is nothing an extended soak in the warm, sulfuric waters couldn’t help. Geralt severely doubts that, but Eskel has always been the more optimistic of them. He hopes- perhaps even prays, but to which gods, he does not know- that, that optimism won’t be misplaced.

***

Vesemir had had no explanation for the change in Geralt’s hair. He consulted with the Council of Masters who in turn consulted with the mages who also had no explanation. No other witcher had undergone the secondary trials and lived to be observed. A side effect, they theorized. Geralt was observed meticulously in the following weeks and when nothing else concerning emerged, they went back to overlooking him. They moved onto some other novelty, other design, other torture.

Geralt’s hair is now shoulder length. A curtain he has taken to hiding behind. The white has grown out to cover the majority of his scalp and upon a quick glance, it looks as though he’s wearing some sort of cap. He has thought about cutting it, but every time he thinks of Vesemir’s scissors razing through the rust colored ends he feels his throat tighten. For the time being, he can still pretend that things are as they have always been. The color that flashes at the corner of his eye is still familiar.

There is, however, a problem with pretending.

Geralt cannot stand to look at himself in the mirror. Cannot stand the reminder of reality. He goes to great lengths to avoid facing his own reflection in polished blades and sets of armor; puddles after the rain and the empty plate at the end of meals. The bath house has become his only place of reprieve. The steam on the glass keeps his reflection obscured. Here, he is only the impression of a person. A ghost. Just another of the hundreds of spectres that haunt the halls of Kaer Morhen.

While he can avoid his own reflection, Geralt cannot escape the scrutiny of his peers. The other boys whisper about him as he sits perched upon a stool, scraping the blood and dirt from under his fingernails. They whisper about him constantly. On the training grounds, in the dormitories and dining hall. It is an incessant humming like cicadas in the lush summer trees. They must know he can hear them; the trials have heightened their hearing, afterall. Perhaps that is why they do it. Perhaps they want him to hear just so they can watch the way he curls in upon himself; watch the shuttering of his yellow eyes. Fresh blood mixes with the dried on Geralt’s fingertips where an old wound is reopened by his fierce and careless scrubbing.

Geralt feels numb to it.

Eskel pads up beside him, jovial as ever. He slaps Geralt heartily between the shoulder blades, tawdrily commending him for his performance on the Killer. Geralt smiles sheepishly, gives his brother an affectionate shove. Their love is warm and rough. A caress from calloused palms. He knows that Eskel is distracting him, though he can’t say his praises aren’t entirely misplaced. Geralt has found himself faster these days; stronger and more reactive, too. He is rising through the ranks like smoke to the sky. He will be top of their class soon. Pride swells small and buoyant in Geralt’s chest like a tentative flower blossoming under the ministrations of the sun.

A flower swiftly trodden under the careless traveler’s boot.

“A freak, even for a witcher.” In the cavernous expanse of the bathhouse, the words of the other boys bounce off stone and mist. Omnipresent. “More monstrous than the rest of us.” Their yellow eyes gleam in the haze and he is surrounded by them. A pack of wolves on the hunt. Geralt is closing in on himself again, protecting his most tender parts. “Perhaps one day he himself will need to be slain.”

Geralt hastily douses himself to clean off the worst of the grime. He cannot stand to stay in the bath house a moment longer; not with all the wolves waiting to devour him. He rushes back to the changing room; to the nook where he had stored away his tunic and trousers. His skin is still damp as he tugs on his clothes and the rough cotton drags against him like hungry fingers. It makes his stomach turn.

“Wait, Geralt!” Eskel is there, a towel wrapped loosely around the circle of his hips. A sliver of the pine-smelling soap is still clutched in the cage of his fingers. “Ignore them! Their insults only mask their jealousy.” Eskel is probably right, but still Geralt burns with shame as if soaked in pitch and set alight. It consumes him like a forest fire.

A dampened hand clamps down on his shoulder as Geralt moves to turn away, and in the maddening din of his thoughts, he lashes out. He whirls and shoves his brother away with uncontrolled force. The antithesis to the raw tenderness they had shared mere moments ago; that suddenly seems like a lifetime ago. It is brutal and savage. The desperate strike of an animal trapped. Eskel is sent crashing back against the line of alcoves; the air knocked from his lungs in a hissing rush.

Horror strikes cold and fierce in Geralt’s chest as he realizes what he has done and for a moment he is frozen. His hands clutch uselessly in the folds of his tunic. He wants to apologize, but the words gather thick in his throat like molasses. The shame reignites within him with the ferocity of a dying star and he is burning, burning, burning. It will incinerate him. Not even his bones will remain; only ashes from which nothing will be reborn. Geralt turns and rushes up the stairs from the bath house, his boots slipping on the damp stone and sending him to his hands and knees. He crawls from the depths like the pitiful creature he is and does not look back.

*****

When his senses returned, Geralt regretted his actions towards Eskel. The guilt gnawed in his belly as deep and raw as hunger. He apologized in the best way someone like him could, which wasn’t much. It was nowhere near the apology that Eskel deserved. Eskel, however, seemed to think it sufficient enough and smoothed over the event with an easy smile and good-natured insult. Things shifted back into place, but still they felt changed. It was like a pot broken and fastened together once more. The water still held, but the cracks remained. Geralt feared one day the cracks would open anew and send everything they ever shared spilling out.

He tries not to think about it.

Geralt’s hair now stretches down the center of his back; the sheaf of it swings loosely between his shoulder blades. It hangs about him like a veil. A perverse vision of a blushing bride. The white has surmounted his head; his natural rust clinging to the ends like a brush dipped in paint. When the boys whisper of him now, it is not longer with thinly veiled jealousy, but overt pity. Geralt is sight to behold.

He escapes the main keep whenever he has the chance.

Vesemir is beside Geralt now, puffing away at the stem of his pipe. He and Geralt are perched along the eastern curtain wall of the outer keep. It has long served as a refuge where the two often came to unwind in companionable silence. Kindred spirits. Dusk is forging ahead and with the setting sun the valley below is ablaze in shades of scarlet and ochre. The silhouettes of the Blue Mountains loom against the darkening sky like sentries great and ancient.

“You’re going to have to cut it,” Vesemir rumbles into the silence, exhaling the smoke from the pipe. It smells of foriegn spices and is lost almost instantly to the wind.

Geralt moistens his lips in a bid to gain time to think of his response. “It does not hinder me. I have begun tying it back.” A weak excuse and certainly not what Vesemir meant, but he can think of nothing else.

Vesemir snorts, “Don’t play dumb, Geralt. It doesn’t suit you.” Geralt fists clench where they rest against his thighs. The elder witcher was a shrewd one, indeed. “You will not advance until this business is finished.” Vesemir is rustling through the pack beside him, but Geralt keeps his eyes trained on the sinking sun. Though weakened, the rays of light still piece through his sensitive eyes like needles. Adjusting the size of his pupils would be a simple solution, but Geralt feels no inclination to do so.

The rustling ceases and Vesemir holds the retrieved item out to Geralt. He takes his eyes off the sun and looks. In Vesemir’s palm lay a dagger. It is simply embellished by leather wrappings with a blade whose edge shines molten in the dying sun. Geralt’s heart leaps into his throat and feels himself choke around its girth. He looks at Vesemir desperately, but there is an unyielding in the witcher’s yellow eyes.

This is not something he can help with. This is something Geralt must do on his own.

With trembling fingers, Geralt takes the dagger from Vesemir’s hand. His palm is moist with sweat and the leather feels tacky in his grasp. He turns it over in his hand, momentarily catching his reflection in the high polish of the blade. It is not much more than a sliver, but even that is too much to bear.

Weak. Pathetic. Monstrous.

That is what all of this boils down to. That is the thing that tightens his throat and clenches his heart. Geralt’s hair is more than just that. It is the last connection to his humanity. The last connection to the person he once was; the person he could have been had he only the chance to become him. It is the last piece of his mother and though he loathes her, he still yearns for her in the way all young boys are wont to. Cutting his hair feels like surrendering. Giving up. Resigning himself to the fact that this is now and forevermore the life he will lead.

A witcher. A mutant. No home or family; just an infinite stretch of lonely road with nothing at the end.

Geralt had been taken so young he hadn’t even had the chance to dream of the things he wanted for himself. Nothing beyond the grandeur of adventure and heroics he supposed all little boys dreamt of. If given the chance, what would he have wanted? A modest life in a modest village? A home with a crackling hearth and a companion to keep it warm? Honest work and the mouths of young ones to feed with the coin earned?

What did it matter? Those were things no longer for him. They never would be.

Vesemir’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder. It is not a gentle touch nor an affectionate one, but it has a weight and warmth that is grounding. It calms the tempest of Geralt’s thoughts; weakens them to a dull roar. “There is no going back, Geralt. The only way is forward.” It is not the thing that Geralt wants to hear, but he knows it is the thing he must.

Geralt grasps the dagger firmly in one hand and with the other gathers a section of his bicolored hair. He pulls the strands taught and his scalp pinches with the force of it, but that is his intention.

He wants for it to hurt.

Drawing in a deep breath, Geralt leaves himself no more time to dither. The blade glints momentarily in the light as he pulls it through with rough, halting cuts. Despite the sharpness of the blade, cutting through his hair proves more difficult than expected. The world could have ended and been rebuilt anew in the time it takes him to finish. As he renders the last strands, Geralt is panting heavily; lungs constricted by a combination of effort and emotion. Most of his hair has been scattered by the wind, but a clump remains clutched in his fist. The blood of a wound staunched, but not yet clean. It takes some effort for Geralt to uncurl his fingers and allow the final remnants to blow free, but eventually they, too, are carried away on the wind to places unknown. Vesemir hums satisfactorily beside him and returns to smoking his pipe unperturbed. Geralt appreciates it.

There is a sense of relief in this final surrender and it mingles bittersweet with the already existing ache in Geralt’s heart. There is nothing left of the person he was before and with that change has taken root. At last, there is finality. There is no going back. As Vesemir had said, the only way is forward.

The metamorphosis is complete.

A/N: Look, I just have so many feelings about young Geralt. I want to dive deep into that inner psyche and explore the things that shaped him into the grumbling witcher we know and love today. Hair can be such a personal thing and having it changed against your will seems so profoundly traumatizing (which is in no way related to my own rapidly greying hair despite being in my mid twenties).

#the witcher #geralt of rivia #eskel #angst #young!geralt of rivia #young!eskel #vesemir #kaer morhen #pre-canon #fanficiton #ficlet #geralt of rivia thinks he's a monster

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werezmastarbucks · 5 years ago

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neighboring [2]

previous part

this is a request

I am sorry I’m terrible at time management and utterly lazy and an awful request author

word count: 1319

“You’re not the most talktative, are you?” he asked. You could tell boredom was eating him from the head.

You looked up and down the wall, where Neighbor was examining the dust on the floor. You could see his white palm form a fist and squeeze a handful of grey and brown sand he’s been gathering. Nothing else to do here. Just gather the dust. Seeing you watch his simple hobby, he added,

“There used to be little pebbles here”.

“They took them away?”

A vampire can turn a simple pebble into a bullet. Those people who kept such dangerous creatures here should think about things like that, and, unfortunately, as you found after several days of observing your cell, they have.

“Here. They turn into dust eventually”.

“You know you can somehow use rocks and dust to light up the metal, right?”

Neighbor gave you a funny look.

“What kind of silly nonsense do they teach you in schools nowadays?”

You sighed deeply.

“No, I meant... of course, I meant like... the rock on the metal, bang, spark...”

“And then what?”

You chewed on your lip hard and sat on your knees because your ass was growing numb.

“Then I’ll light you on fire”.

“How nice. I don’t even know your name and you’re planning to kill me already. Talk about losing spirit, eh?”

You winced at his way of speech. Ridiculously, that was one of the harder things to get used to here.

“I’m Y/N”, you said, thinking that it would do no harm to be more than just a skeleton across the cell to him.

“I’m Lorenzo St. John”, he introduced himself.

“Jesus. So...”

He smiled self-lovingly, his dark eyes and hair contrasting with his white, white face. Maybe you were mistaken about him a little. Lorenzo St. John seemed an enigma, inert and indifferent one day, completely out of it the next one, and then suddenly, lively and youthful.

“I’ve heard that last name a couple of times - mainly on vampire tv shows”, you nodded. The vampire cocked his head apprehensively.

“Vampire tv shows? What is that?”

Your mouth gaped open.

“God, you’ve been here... how long? You... oh my god”, you crawled closer to the bars that separated your cell from his, “you’ve missed everything completely. How long have you stayed here exactly?”

Lorenzo stayed at the wall, seemingly unwilling to move and admit his absence in the world. Suddenly you realized the real depth of the picture here; it wasn’t only that he was trapped, tortured and deprived; he was immortal which meant he had a very special way of perceiving the world and history. Vampires are generally known - and now you could say so as one of them, seeing that all that romanticized bullshit is true - for taking interest in the flow of time. The empires fall, so to say, the times, they are a-changing, and the generations die out. But you stay the same. And you watch all that, still the same, except maybe for the hair. As a young vampire, one thing that made you very optimistic about the future was the future itself. That was before you were caught and incarcerated. Lorenzo was not robbed of that future he was supposed to witness from aside, as all vampires do. His privilege, as an immortal creature wise enough due to his transformation and observations, was taken away.

“I told you it’s been nearly sixty years I’ve been alone but I had been captured before that”.

“You’re talking in riddles”.

“I really am not. Better tell me about what I missed”.

“Tell me the year you got here”.

Lorenzo sighed, turning into a frowning statue and away from you. For a minute, you thought he was daydreaming again, or just bitter about your questions. Funny how he was the one who started nearly all conversations - and then was sorry about them half way through. He seemed empty enough not to care about a new, fresh roommate, but got visibly hurt when you tried to speak to him. At the same time you were trying to keep distance not to get infected with lack of hope. Maybe Lorenzo was many things, but not hopeful.

“Hey, are you over me?”

He turned back and pierced you with his eyes, amused a little.

“What a curious way to express frustration”.

“You are pretty frustrating, Lorenzo St. John”.

“I’m sure it’s the place and not me”.

You’re the plant here, you wanted to say but didn’t wish to upset him even more.

You rolled away and started staring into the corridor. Impatience and exhaustion of not doing anything, boredom that might kill you one day, made it all worse. It felt like you were waiting for something - for them to come and take you to the lab again, or something else. But it was clear nothing was actually coming. You finally started realizing one thing that was probably the scariest - not knowing when it ends and whether it ends at all. Sitting on needles, feeling you’re wasting precious time that you could use to plan your escape. You looked left and right and couldn’t see anything that would help you. Thoughts were swarming in your skull like worms, making you agitated; you didn’t notice Lorenzo side-eyeing you, weighing you, learning you without talking. You didn’t realize you were even more exposed than you thought.

_____________________________

“People went to space”.

“Hmm?”

You were laying on your back, hands behind your head, and looking at the ceiling, imagining blue sky. Pity, just a... week? Month? Century? ago you resented your neighbor for doing that. Now, you found it so easy and natural. You did it many times even before ending up here. End up, a funny phrase. Means that it’s the end.

“People have gone into space, Lorenzo, while you were sitting here”.

“When?”

“In 1961″.

“What’s it look like?”

It was dusty and stuffy in your separate cells shared by the flies and ashes of the previous lodgers.

“I think it’s... vast”, you said gloomily. “Lorenzo?”

He quivered himself, like something in your voice made shivers run down his spine.

“Huh?”

“Am I... are we going to stay here long?”

He sighed, and there was so much in that sigh that you winced when he accompanied it with words,

“I’m really the wrong person to ask, love”.

You’d hoped he’d give you some kind of closure, something. But it seemed he forgot whether he was an optimist or a pessimist.

You sat at the bars and looked inside his cell, discovering that he mimicked your position on the floor, and was staring up, too.

“Can I feel your hand?”

“Why?”

You felt hungry. You tried to scan him, like you usually do with people as a vampire. When hungry, you can’t help seeing the blood underneath their skin, running in small rivers, rushing up and down, you can hear the quiet hush of the flow. It’s the best sound.

“I think I am scared right now”.

He turned his head and looked at you, with his coal-black eyes, as if measuring, calculating. You were far younger; compared to him, you were still very much human. Maybe, if he bit you, you’d even feel a little bit like mortal to his old, dark, thick blood.

He sat up, brushing off the dust from his shoulders, flexible like a snake, a lump of wasted energy. Leaning to the side, he took a breath, smelling you, taking in all your thoughts, your young naive hope, and there was black flame in the mouth as he said,

“That shall pass, too”.

Then he retreated back to the wall and pressed himself to it hard, as if he was trying to become it completely. Hard silence fell down on the floor, and his face expressed resentment, distrust, and complete indifference.

You were so very alone.

#enzo st john x reader #enzo st. john #enzo st john imagine #vampire diaries

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hysterialevi · 4 years ago

Text

Eitr | Chapter 5

Fanfic summary: In an alternate universe where the Raven Clan is wiped out, Sigurd ends up being rescued by the son of a Saxon ealdorman, and is tasked with being the boy’s new bodyguard. Upon meeting the boy’s father however, Sigurd soon realizes that the ealdorman is responsible for his clan’s destruction, and secretly plans for revenge while hiding behind the guise of a Norse pagan turned Christian.

Point of view: third-person

Pairing: Sigurd Styrbjornson x Male OC

This story is also on AO3 | Previous chapter | Next chapter

TWO DAYS LATER

ELMENHAM, EAST ANGLIA

Eivor gripped the weathered bow in his hand and silently gazed towards the bleak horizon, watching as the boat drifted away with the water’s embrace.

She was gone.

She was actually gone.

After what felt like an eternity of suffering, and a heartbeat of saying goodbyes, the gods had finally granted Randvi the peace she deserved, and carried her off into the afterlife.

Apart from Eivor, she had been the only survivor of the attack on Ravensthorpe. Everyone else in the village had either been killed or gone missing, and now, she too joined their brothers and sisters, leaving Eivor all alone in this world.

It felt like a nightmare, he thought, to watch all of this unfold. Within the span of a few short days, his entire life had fallen apart, and everyone he loved had departed from this realm.

Sigurd, Valka, Hytham, Petra, Tarben, Finnr... Randvi. All dead. All ghosts. All nothing more than names that now echoed relentlessly in Eivor’s head, and haunted him in his dreams.

He was the only one left.

Much like all those winters ago when Kjotve cut his father down in cold blood, he found himself standing among the ashes once again, forsaken by the very same gods who saved his life.

“Randvi...” he whispered, his voice trembling softly, “...forgive me. I thought I could save you. I thought that... perhaps there was still a chance. You were always so strong and vigilant that I just refused to believe you would die. But I was wrong. Just like everyone else in our clan, I’ve failed you. I failed to keep my promises, and I failed to protect you when you needed me most. You may be off to Helheim’s gates for now, but it is me who should be in your stead.”

Eivor slipped an arrow out from his quiver and held it to a nearby torch, setting the tip aflame.

“Goodbye, old friend. May the gods guide you across the Gjallarbrú, and may you find the honor that was robbed of you in death.”

Pulling the arrow away from the torch, Eivor drew it back and steadily took aim, letting it loose as it went soaring through the air.

The arrow pierced the boat with a solid thud, and within the blink of an eye, the entirety of the structure had been set ablaze, embracing Randvi in a bed of fire.

Eivor felt numb at this point, after bidding farewell to so many of his friends. Over the past few days, he had watched pretty much everyone he knew be taken away by the grace of the gods -- and with one more soul going to join their ranks, the lone viking wasn’t sure if he could endure it anymore.

There was just so much pain. So much fear. Even though he was confident that he could find allies who would be willing to lend him aid, he had no idea where he would direct them for now.

After all, Eivor didn’t know who was behind the attack on Ravensthorpe. No one had come forth and taken responsibility for the assault, and considering the fact that he was still recovering from his wounds, he doubted he’d be able to scour the remains of his old village without being killed.

He had been trapped behind a dead end... and there was nothing left for him to turn back to.

“Eivor,” a man suddenly said, breaking the silence. “There you are.”

Eivor turned away from the water, looking to see who had approached him.

“...Oswald,” he greeted softly. “Forgive me. I did not mean to disappear so abruptly, but... I wished to be alone for this.”

“No need to apologize, my friend,” The Saxon said. “I know things have been immensely difficult for you lately. I only hoped to check up on you.”

Oswald stepped next to Eivor, linking his hands behind his back as he watched Randvi’s boat float away.

“How are your wounds? Are you feeling any better?”

Eivor glanced down at the bandages on his arms. “Physically speaking, yes.”

Oswald raised a brow. “...And otherwise?”

The viking paused, staring blankly into the rippling water. “I... I don’t know, Oswald. I need answers. I need to know who did this. I need to know why they did this. I... I--”

“--You need closure.” The young king replied.

Eivor nodded slowly, his gaze now lost in the water’s depths. “...Yes. Closure. And justice. For all those who have fallen. The only issue is I’ve no idea where to begin.”

“Well, you can’t go after your enemies without an army. You’ll have to rebuild, regain your strength, prepare yourself to lead. You’ve already forged alliances in Ledecestrescire, Grantebridgescire, Lunden -- and with myself, of course -- but that may not be enough. If you wish to search England for the men who destroyed your clan, you’ll need to pave the way with even more alliances.”

“But how am I supposed to do that when I’m just one man? I no longer have any warriors to fight in my name, nor any resources to spare.”

Oswald remained optimistic. “No... but you do have me.”

Eivor wasn’t so sure about the idea. “But you’re a king now, Oswald. All of England knows your name, and they know of your tolerance for Danes. If you lend your aid to me -- a Norse -- you could risk open war with other kingdoms.”

The young man persisted with his offer. “We’re already at war, Eivor. The moment those people kicked down your door, they became my enemies just as well as they became yours. But... you’re right. I cannot act so blatantly without fear of causing more division. We’ll have to do this discreetly. Away from prying eyes. At least until we know exactly what’s going on.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

Oswald rubbed his chin in thought, quickly putting together a solution.

“...Gjuki.”

Eivor shrugged in confusion. “Gjuki? Who’s that?”

“A friend of Valdis,” he explained. “He used to fight for Rued’s clan, but quickly turned rogue after your assault on Burgh Castle. He’s a skilled warrior, and he knows how to be covert. I could send him to Ravensthorpe if you like. I’m confident he’d be able to find something.”

The other man considered the option. “Tell me about Gjuki, first. Do you trust him? How are you so certain he won’t turn on us like he did Rued?”

“Because he hated Rued. I do not know the reason behind his hatred, but Gjuki was never truly loyal to that man. He only fought alongside him because he had nowhere else to go. But when you launched your assault on the castle, you gave him the chance to break free.”

“And you think he’s the best suited for this task?”

Oswald nodded. “I do. Gjuki’s been in England for quite a few years now. He knows his way around the country, and he knows how to avoid attention. I’m sure he’d be able to find out who attacked your clan -- or at least give us an idea on who to investigate.”

Eivor decided to go along with the plan for now. “...Very well, Oswald. I trust you. But if it’s alright, I’d like to speak with Gjuki myself first. I wish to see him face-to-face.”

“Of course. I understand. You should be able to find him in the longhouse. Just tell him I sent you, and he’ll listen to whatever concerns you may have.”

The viking gave the Saxon and appreciative look. “Thank you, my friend. Truly. Your support means the world to me. Were it not for your help, I would’ve died along with Randvi. I owe you everything.

Oswald frowned sympathetically upon hearing her name. “I’m sorry about Randvi, Eivor. I’m afraid I didn’t get the chance to know her that well, but it’s a shame that she had to meet her maker like this. If it’s any consolation, I’m certain she was grateful to have you by her side in the end.”

Eivor let out a sigh, walking away from the shoreline. “I hope so. She was the only one I could escort into the afterlife. Everyone else in my clan just... fell out of this world before I had a chance to say goodbye. Even Sigurd died without my company.”

Oswald placed a hand on Eivor’s shoulder, attempting to comfort the man. “Do not torment yourself with these thoughts, Eivor. You will only end up feeding your grief. What happened at Ravensthorpe was beyond your control, and I’m sure Sigurd knew that just as well as you do. The most you can do for your brother now is to bring justice to those responsible. Learn their names, study their motives, and then strike them where it will cripple them most. Your battle is not finished yet, my friend, and neither are you.”

The Norse took the young man’s words to heart, giving him a firm gaze. “I understand. Thank you, Oswald. I will heed your advice and speak with Gjuki. I only hope he is more fortunate than I was.”

Oswald removed his hand from Eivor’s shoulder, allowing the viking to take his leave.

“Go in peace, my friend. And may God watch over you in the battles to come.”

~~~~~~~~~~

MEANWHILE

FORANGAL CASTLE, THE CHAPEL

“As I’ve explained to you already, bishop,” Edric said impatiently, “Father’s decision is final. Sigurd is to be our personal bodyguard from now on, and if you have an issue with that, you can talk with him about it yourself.”

Hundwerth crossed his arms. “I simply fail to see how we could benefit from having a Dane in our midst, my lord. We know next to nothing about Sigurd’s past, nor where he comes from, and yet, your father has seen fit to grant him a position next to his own children! It’s preposterous! You ask me, the only place Sigurd belongs is in the dungeon.”

“Well, it’s a good thing no one asked you, then. Do not forget, Hundwerth. You are here to offer our people religious guidance. Nothing more, nothing less. If my father wishes to hear you political opinions, he will summon you. Until that happens though, I suggest you stick to your holy books and save the bleating for your priests. I’ve enough of a headache as it is.”

The bishop scoffed. “Such disrespect from a so-called lord. Perhaps you would do well to spend more time here, Edric. I could give you some of my ‘religious guidance’ as you put it.”

The young man’s tone remained firm. “I’ll pass. I fear I have far more important matters to attend to, starting with this bloody war. You want to preach to me during a siege, be my guest.”

“Your insolence is--!”

Pausing mid-sentence, Hundwerth cut himself off when he heard the sound of the chapel’s doors being pushed open with a creak, leading both him and Edric to bring their attention to the entrance.

There, in the distance, he saw a tall redheaded man approaching them from the opposite side as the sunlight draped over his figure, turning him into a silhouette.

He was dressed in what appeared to be Saxon-made armor, and yet, the man himself was clearly of Northern origins. His skin was marked with many outlandish tattoos, and if Hundwerth recalled correctly, he believed this was the same man he saw in Linette’s infirmary the other day.

“Sigurd.” Edric greeted with a hint of relief in his voice. “There you are. And with your head still attached to your shoulders, too. I’ll take that as a sign that Hundwerth has yet to harp you.”

The bishop scowled in annoyance, eyeing the viking with distrust. “...Ah. The very subject of our conversation. I see you’ve made a full recovery, Lone Wolf.”

Sigurd threw a glare at Hundwerth. “Is there a problem, Saxon?”

“Well, if you ignore the fact that there’s a pagan standing in this house of God, no. None at all. I hope you’ve come to do penance, Dane.”

The man’s expression was flat. “I’ve come to do no such thing. I am only here to fulfill my duties to Lord Edric. Besides, listening to you speak is penance enough.”

Edric chuckled at that. “That’s one thing we can agree on.”

Hundwerth let out a huff. “As I was saying before, Edric, your insolence will be the end of you. You may laugh all you want now, but bear in mind, the Lord is watching. And he is not pleased.”

“I don’t blame him, considering who he’s using as his mouthpiece.”

The bishop shook his head in defeat and decided to drop the conversation for now, storming out of the chapel whilst the other two stayed behind. He was already thin on patience due to the recent events that had transpired in Forangal over the past two days, but to face such defiance from one of the lords themselves brought him to a level of irritation he didn’t even know existed.

“Well...” Edric said as he watched Hundwerth take his leave, “that’s one way to end an argument.”

Sigurd took note of the young man’s tone. “You don’t seem to be fond of the bishop.”

“I don’t think anyone is. He is a man of God, mind you, but I fear he can be... forceful in how he spreads his faith sometimes. There’s also the fact that he’s been furious ever since my father decided to spare you. Let’s just say that I’m glad you showed up when you did.”

Sigurd leaned against one of the pillars. “It’s my job, isn’t it? To protect you from troublesome situations?”

Edric grinned. “I suppose it is.”

Falling into a brief silence, the two of them took a moment to enjoy some peace and quiet as life carried on outside the chapel, causing the muffled sounds of distant conversation to seep in through the doors.

It was a calm day, Edric thought, considering all the conflicts that had risen due to Sigurd’s presence. Even though many of the people in Forangal were in disagreement with Aegenwulf’s decision to keep the Norse around, few of them had yet to actually protest against it. Unlike Bishop Hundwerth.

Edric supposed they simply didn’t want to cause more tension. There were enough fires being sparked in Wedenscire with all the hostile clans threatening their walls, and considering how Gareth’s death had affected the ealdorman as of late, it was probably best if no one pushed him over the edge.

Still, Edric understood the concerns that some people had. Sigurd was a stranger to their lands, after all, and he did not think it entirely unreasonable for them to be wary.

Though, he couldn’t help but wonder how the viking himself felt about all this. Despite his compliance, Edric could tell that Sigurd wasn’t happy. He often carried a sense of despondency to his broody temperament, and even now, the man’s gaze seemed to sag with fatigue.

He was probably still trying to process whatever happened to him before he arrived in Wedenscire. Edric had yet to learn the details of how Sigurd ended up in such an injured state, but seeing as how bad his wounds were when they first found him, he assumed it had been a terrible ordeal.

Who knew how much trauma the man was dealing with right now? Within the span of a few days, he had been torn away from his home and thrown into the middle of a Saxon fortress, surrounded by hostile guards. He had next to no friends in a shire such as this, and with all the people calling for his head, it was no wonder that Sigurd seemed to be exhausted.

Perhaps... it was time for Edric to ease up on the man. Sigurd was to be his protector from now on, and he did not wish to be enemies with him.

“Hey, Sigurd,” he said gently. “Are you well? You seem... preoccupied.”

The viking was clearly surprised by Edric’s concern, but kept to himself regardless. “It is nothing to concern yourself with, my lord.”

“I know you’re technically our servant now, but that doesn’t mean you’re not important. Your well-being is just as crucial as ours.”

“Is it? And what brought about this sudden change of heart, may I ask?”

Edric bowed his head in shame, letting out a deep sigh. “...If you must know, our healer Linette had a hand in it. She gave me quite a talking-to when she heard that I dragged you all the way to the armory without giving you a chance to rest. Also when I made you carry your armor to the smithy. Edlynne and Joseph weren’t too happy about it either.”

Sigurd gave the young man a humorous glance. “Careful, my lord. Keep on like this, and you might actually apologize.”

Edric laughed. “Ha! Well, in this case, it would be deserved. You’ve been to Hell and back these past few days, and I... I have not welcomed you as a true Christian should. You were in a time of need, and I was willing to push you away. I’m sorry.”

The viking didn’t seem too bothered. “You were only trying to protect your people. I understand. If I’m being honest, I can’t say I would’ve been entirely different if it was you who washed up on my shore. But regardless, I accept your apology.”

The young lord beamed at him. “It gladdens my heart to hear it.”

An idea popped up in Edric’s head, causing him to give Sigurd a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Hey, what say you to a quick hunt?”

Sigurd tilted his head at him. “You want to go hunting? Now?”

“Why not? The skies are clear, and the day is still young. I’ve some time to spare before returning to my duties. Besides, I must admit, I am curious to see how a Norseman hunts his prey.”

Sigurd pushed himself off the pillar, eager to take on the challenge. “Very well, my lord. Just don’t cry when I steal your glory.”

Edric smiled in amusement. “Confident, are we? Good. Do not be fooled though, Sigurd, I’ve a few tricks of my own.”

The young man began making his way out of the chapel, beckoning Sigurd to follow.

“Come. We’ll stop by my chambers and collect some gear there. I have a spare bow that you can use, and I imagine a dog or two would be useful on the hunt as well. Have you ever hunted boar before?”

Sigurd nodded, recalling all the times he spent hunting with Eivor.

“Yes, actually. My brother and I often went hunting as a way to pass the time when we were children.”

Edric raised a brow. “You have a brother?”

The viking’s heart sank with grief, and his light-hearted mood vanished immediately. “Had. He’s dead now.”

The Saxon’s expression dimmed with empathy. “Ah. I’m sorry to hear that. It is a pain I know all too well myself.”

Sigurd held his head high. “Indeed. I miss my brother every day, but I find solace in knowing that he is now in Valhalla. He died fighting as a warrior, and I have no doubt that the Valkyries have escorted him to the corpse hall.”

Edric placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Then may he find peace there.”

He stepped back from Sigurd and turned on his heel, leading him away from the altar. “Come on. This way. Let us put our troubles aside for the moment, and take the day to enjoy some fresh air. This war isn’t going away anytime soon, and neither are we.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A FEW MINUTES LATER

ELMENHAM, THE LONGHOUSE

Strolling past the guards that stood beside the archway, Eivor invited himself into the cozy atmosphere of the longhouse as he scanned the area for Oswald’s friend, eager to speak with him.

At the moment, there were only a few groups of Saxons occupying the space inside and chatting happily amongst themselves, seemingly oblivious to the troubles of the war. They smiled, they drank, they laughed, they flyted -- all of them appeared to be trapped in their own little utopia.

It was like the world around them didn’t even exist. As far as they were concerned, now was a time for celebration. Their king had just gotten married to a Dane after a long struggle of fighting for power, and now, East Anglia was allied with some of the strongest warriors in the country thanks to the efforts of Oswald himself.

Everything was going well for the kingdom. Their troubles had been lifted for just a moment in this relentless storm, and with a newfound sense of unity settling into the land, it felt like they could finally breathe. Eivor, on the other hand, felt as though the world had stopped turning.

Walking up to the empty throne, the lone viking spotted Valdis leaning against a nearby wall as she casually observed the people in the longhouse, quietly keeping to herself.

She seemed to be doing well, all things considered. Despite the issues they had with Rued’s attacks and Oswald’s supposed “death,” the woman appeared to be happy in her marriage, and carried a certain sense of contentment that certainly wasn’t there before.

However, in spite of the joy he felt from seeing her again, Eivor couldn’t help but notice that she was alone. This “Gjuki” figure was nowhere to be found, and judging by the absence of any other Danes in the longhouse, the man assumed he probably missed him.

Damn it. He’d have to search elsewhere.

“Eivor!” Valdis greeted happily, smiling at him. “It brings me great relief to see you again. I was worried sick when Randvi first brought you to us. I feared the Valkyries might have taken you already. How do you feel?”

Eivor didn’t share the woman’s enthusiasm. “Well, I’m alive, so I can hardly complain. But I fear Randvi wasn’t quite as fortunate.”

Valdis’ expression instantly sunk. “What do you mean?”

“...She’s dead.” He said plainly. “Randvi succumbed to her wounds yestereve, just as the sun began to fell. I only sent her off to Helheim this morning. Oswald was there too.”

The woman shut her eyes in sorrow, letting out a deep sigh. “...Oh, Eivor. I’m so sorry. The amount of lives that have been lost ever since Ravensthorpe... it’s a tragedy.”

“Indeed. Our völva, Valka, always said that the Nornir weave our lives with a certain plan in mind, but I struggle to understand why they would curse us with such an unforgiving fate. All this death, all this chaos... surely, there must be a reason behind it. It cannot all be in vain.”

“I wish I could say.” Valdis replied. “Unfortunately, the sad truth is that war can be as cruel as it is unnecessary. There will be times when tragedy strikes without reason, and there will be questions that have no answers. However, I do not believe this is the case with your situation.”

Eivor quirked a brow. “Oh? And why is that?”

“Well, look at this way. When everyone else in your clan was killed, you managed to survive. In spite of everything this war has thrown at you, you remain the only man left standing. Surely, the gods must have granted you a second chance for a reason. They see a purpose within you, and perhaps that is why you are here now.”

“...Perhaps. It is all still so confusing, but... your words bring me comfort.”

Eivor decided to change the subject, pushing away his dark thoughts for the moment.

“Anyway, enough about me. I’m looking for somebody. A man named Gjuki. Do you know where I could find him?”

“Gjuki Haldorsson? Yes, he is just outside the longhouse. He shouldn’t be that far away from here, but if you can’t see him, just follow the sound of his lute.”

That caught Eivor’s interest. “Lute? Is he a bard? I was under the impression that he was a warrior.”

Valdis chuckled. “He is, but he is also many other things. You’ll see for yourself once you find him.”

“Fair enough. Thank you, Valdis. I’ll go look for him now.”

“Stay safe, Eivor. And may the gods favor you.”

Taking his leave from the longhouse, Eivor left Valdis to her own devices and stepped back out into the crisp morning breeze, keeping his ears sharp for any music that might’ve been playing.

At first, he didn’t spot anyone of interest -- most of the people outside were Saxons civilians and ordinary guards -- but upon taking a closer look, he suddenly noticed a peculiar man sitting underneath a tree, lute in hand.

He was definitely not what Eivor expected, to put it simply. When Oswald first told him of Gjuki, he had envisioned a large, burly warrior similar to the ones he often saw in Fornburg or other Dane settlements, but this man... was clearly something else.

Gjuki had a rather lean figure that was broadened at the shoulders thanks to the fur cape he adorned, and instead of having a full beard hanging from his chin, he only had a light layer of stubble.

His hair was long, straight, and as black as the void. A multitude of braids had been woven into the thick strands surrounding his face, and poking out from underneath his sleeves, Eivor could see a number of tattoos decorating his arms.

As for the man’s face, he didn’t appear to be that old. He looked to be roughly around the same age as Eivor himself, and had a pair of icy-blue eyes that sat in his skull like two glass orbs.

Both of his sockets had been smeared with some traditional war paint, and due to the dark color of its pigment, his gaze only seemed to stand out more, creating a stark contrast between his eyes and his skin.

He was a distinct looking man, to say the least. And terrifying, to say the most.

“Gjuki Haldorsson?” Eivor called out.

The man came to a halt upon hearing his name and held his fingers between the lute’s strings, glancing up from the instrument to see who had come to visit him.

“Well, well,” he said in surprise, “look who it is. The Wolf-Kissed. I see you’ve finally returned from your grave. What brings you to me?”

Eivor took a seat across from the other man, studying his mannerisms.

“I come on behalf of our king. He says that you might be able to help me with a problem I have.”

Gjuki rested the lute on one of his knees, casually crossing his legs. “Well, that depends. What sort of problem are you dealing with?”

“Before I get into that,” Eivor paused, “there are some things I’d like to ask you first.”

The other man quickly caught onto his tone. “Ah, a man of caution. I suppose there’s a reason you’ve survived for so long. Very well, if that’s what it takes to earn your trust. Ask away.”

Eivor started with the most obvious question. “Oswalds tells me you once fought for Rued’s clan. Is that true?”

Gjuki scoffed in amusement. “Fought for’ isn’t exactly how I would put it. I was sold to Rued many years ago as a slave after being captured by a Norse known as Kjotve.”

The viking glowered at the name. “Kjotve the Cruel? I’m familiar with him. He caused many issues for me in the past as well -- not excluding trying to sell me into slavery -- but have no fear. He’s nothing more than food for the ravens now. I saw to it myself.”

“He’s dead?” Gjuki asked, unable to hide the smirk that spread across his face. “Oh, how gratifying that must’ve been, to bury your axe in his chest. I would’ve loved to hear the scream that broke free from his lips when the gods swept him away from Midgard. You killed a snake, Eivor, and the world will forever benefit from it.”

“Well, as relieved as I am to have Kjotve out of this world, I fear there are many other snakes I must purge before I can find peace.”

The bard set the lute down by his feet. “And who would they be?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I’m looking for the men who attacked my village, but I am at a loss on where to start.”

Gjuki nodded in understanding. “And you need my help to find them. I see.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

The man thought for a moment. “Perhaps, but I’m going to need a lead. Do you have any idea where I should begin looking? Any particular shires, or names, or kingdoms?”

Eivor shook his head. “I’m afraid not. All I know is that they were Saxons, but they weren’t bandits. They ambushed us in the middle of the night, and fought under no banner.”

Gjuki furrowed his brow in confusion. “No banner? Interesting...”

“Why do you say that?”

“Saxons typically fly their colors proudly on the battlefield. It may surprise you, but they are just as proud of their tenacity as we are. It is odd to me that the Saxons who attacked you would hide their sigil. Unless, of course, they were trying to conceal themselves. Which... in that case, tells me they knew they shouldn’t have been there.”

Eivor was beginning to follow his thoughts. “You’re saying that this was meant to be a secret?”

Gjuki held up an index finger. “Precisely. Whoever ambushed your clan is clearly not in a position where they would be able to attack you out in the open. Not without causing conflict elsewhere, that is. Maybe they are from a shire that supports you, or at odds with one of your allies themselves. Whatever the case may be, they knew this assault would not go over well if other people found out.”

The viking shrugged. “So, what’s your plan?”

The bard stood up from his seat, picking up his lute from the ground. “I will travel to Ravensthorpe and see what other clues I can find. Assuming they haven’t cleaned up the carnage already, I’d like to take a look at the Saxons’ bodies; see if they hold any information. In the meantime, I’ll also start spreading some rumors about the attack. It may not seem like much, but if we pay attention to how other shires react, we may be able to find our target.”

Eivor nodded in approval. “I like that idea. I shall go with you. I know my way around Ravensthorpe. I can aid you in your search.”

Gjuki disagreed. “No. You stay here. You must recover if you are to fight against your enemies, and besides, Oswald would have my head if I let you walk out of Elmenham in this condition.”

The Norse chuckled, holding his hands up in defeat. “Very well. You make a fair point.”

“Is there anything else you’d like me to know before I leave?” Gjuki asked. “I do not know for certain when I’ll return, and I’d rather not risk sending a letter to you. Never know who might grab it along the way.”

Eivor pondered the question for a moment. He did have one other request in mind, but was hesitant to say it aloud.

“Well... y-yes. But it is a lot to ask.”

Gjuki urged him on. “Please, speak your mind, Eivor.”

The viking’s gaze fell to the ground in sorrow. “...If it’s possible, could you find out what happened to my brother, Sigurd? The last time I saw him, he had been shot with an arrow and thrown into the river. I never had the chance to retrieve his body. If he’s still around there somewhere, could you bring him back?”

The bard’s tone softened with empathy. “Of course. I make no promises that I’ll be able to find him, but I give you my word that I will try. If Sigurd remains in Ravensthorpe, we will ensure you have a body to bury.”

Eivor gave him an appreciative look. “Thank you, Gjuki. I realize this is a daunting task, but I honestly don’t know what else I can do.”

“Have no fear,” he reassured. “Your assault on Burgh Castle is the only reason I got the chance to escape from Rued and reclaim my honor. The way I see it, I owe you this.”

Gjuki waved a quick goodbye, sauntering away from the tree’s protective shade.

“I will inform you of my progress as soon as I can. Until then, wait here. It is likely that whoever conducted this assault has learned of your survival, and I have no doubts that they will try to finish what they started.”

#assassin's creed valhalla #ac valhalla #sigurd styrbjornson #eivor wolfkissed #eivor wolfsmal #male oc #female oc #sigurd x male oc #ac valhalla fanfic #eitr

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theolddarkmachine · 4 years ago

Text

Imaginary - Chapter Eighteen

Midoriya Izuku’s life was turned upside by fate.

Eri’s life was turned upside down by circumstance.

And Bakugou Katsuki is about to learn that even imaginary friends need to grow up.

Chapter 18 of 19

Also on AO3

A/N: I'M SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. Since posting the last chapter of this, I interviewed for a new job. Got that new job. Had to deal with all the fun stuff that comes with leaving your old job. And have been dealing with the huge change that came with starting a new job lol

So, it's been a bit of a trainwreck tryna figure out a schedule.Good news though, I went ahead and just knocked out the last chapter and epilogue since 1) I'm scared of making y'all wait hella long for the epilogue and 2) the epilogue was not long at all. which would honestly have made waiting suck lol

Anyway, WELCOME TO THE ENDING OF THIS FIC! THANK YOU ALL FOR COMING ON THIS RIDE WITH ME! <333333

**************

The park is beautiful, Izuku thinks, as he watches Eri skipping happily ahead of him holding a fuzzy stuffed fish haphazardly in one hand.

After making his grand declaration that they were going to go out, he had found himself a bit at odds with what exactly they were going to do out. Which was how they had found themselves parked in front of the aquarium before deciding to cap things off at the botanical garden.

Which is how he finds himself thinking about how beautiful the park is.

It truly is, and yet, he can’t help but feel like something is missing.

Like someone is missing.

And there it is. The aching void at the center of his chest, rearing its ugly head yet again to taunt him.

To remind him that while their little family was more than enough, he also could have had just a little something more. Had, in fact, had something more before it had slipped cruelly through his fingers right after the realization.

It made him feel selfish in his desire, which only made his chest ache worse.

“Daddy Izuku?” Eri’s voice is colored bright with her curiosity, pulling him back from his thoughts as he finds himself stopped several feet from his daughter. The same brightness colors her gaze as she looks up at him, her head cocked just to the side as if to further punctuate her questioning tone. Izuku gives his head a small shake to dislodge the feeling.

It doesn’t go anywhere, but it was worth a shot, he supposes.

“Yeah?” He asks, trying to bite back the defeat that threatens to turn his voice bitter as he looks down at her.

“You’re happy, right?” She asks. It’s an innocent enough question, filled with a childish naïveté that Izuku misses, and it hurts. It hurts because, well, that was the question, wasn’t it.

“Of course I am, Eri,” he answers immediately, because he is. In the beginning of it all, he hadn’t been sure he really could be. Had wondered if the decision he had made to become a single father to a young girl who had lost everything had been the right one, for either of them.

It had been though, that he was certain. Izuku wouldn’t change that decision for anything in the world.

And yet that acrid, burnt taste of his bitter selfish want was still tainting the edges of that happiness.

“Of course I am,” he repeats, voice softening as he knelt down to her height. Gently reaching out, he brushes his palms over her shoulders before softly squeezing her arms in what he hopes is reassurance.

“Why do you ask?”

Eri shifts her gaze down to the ground where she twists the toe of her bright pink Chucks into the grass.

“I just thought you might be missing Kacchan,” she says earnestly, her voice wobbling slightly at the admission. Izuku huffs a small sound of surprise, if only to mask the way he winces at the sudden flare of pain that dances along his sternum.

He releases his hold on her right arm to lightly tap her chin upward, lifting her gaze back up to him.

“I’m happy, Eri,” Izuku says before shifting his gaze back and forth around them as if to make sure no one was within earshot.

“But can I tell you a secret?” He continues, voice lowered conspiratorially. Eri’s eyes go wide at the question, her gaze shifting around them before she looks back at him and nods quickly. It takes everything in him to swallow down his laughter as he leans in closer.

“I do miss Kacchan,” he whispers. The confession leaves him easily, taking with it the most infinitesimal weight, and yet he already feels as if he can breathe easier.

“I guess I can do both,” Izuku continues as he ruffles her hair and pulls way. “But I’m more happy than anything. How could I not be when I have you?”

A comfortable quiet fills the space between them for the briefest of moments before Eri’s mouth twists upward into a wide smile.

“I’m happy too, because I have Daddy Izuku!” She exclaims as she launches herself at him and wraps her arms tight around his neck. Heat burns at his eyes as he wraps his own around her middle, holding her close. Another chunk of weight, larger this time, falls from his chest and is replaced by the full warmth of his love for Eri.

This is enough, he thinks as he squeezes her just a little tighter. It always will be.

“You’re squishing me, Daddy Izuku!” She laughs as she tries to tug backward out of his hold. It pushes another laugh from deep within his chest as he turns his head to blow a raspberry on her cheek.

“Alright, alright, I’ll let you go. I just have to give you as many hugs as I can before you don’t want them anymore,” Izuku says before ruffling her hair again.

Eri scoffs as she shakes her head, fixing him with a look of indignation.

“I won’t ever stop wanting hugs,” she huffed as if the very thought was preposterous.

“Okay, I’ll remember that when you’re in middle school,” Izuku says, more to himself than to Eri, as the young girl turns her attention back toward the direction they had originally been heading in.

“Can we go see the butterflies now?” She asks excitedly, any remaining ire falling away in the face of the fluttering insects.

Laughing quietly, Izuku just nods as he pushes himself upward to stand.

“Of course we can. Lead the way,” he gestures forward before pressing his hands deep into his pockets.

A high pitched sound of happiness tears from Eri as she turns around and starts skipping toward the glittering dome of glass situated on the other side of the park.

Standing there, he watches the way she bounds across the grass with the sun tangling itself in her hair. It radiates off her in the very same way as her happiness and he can’t help but smile.

At least, not until he notices that she’s headed straight on a crash course with a power unsuspecting bystander.

Stepping forward, Izuku opens his mouth to call to her, only to feel her name catch in his throat as he hears her cry out a name.

“Kacchan!”

Time seems to slow, almost stopping entirely as Izuku sees the man Eri was about to crash into turn around.

It’s him, he thinks as his mind clumsily trips over itself at the realization. It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.

Katsuki.

And he looks the same and yet wholly different as Izuku watches the way his face eases into something like pure joy as he looks down at Eri. From this distance, he can’t hear what Bakugou says, but he can see his mouth move as he speaks quickly to Eri. It’s as unassuming as anything, and yet something about the ease in which Bakugou has as he talks with her, as if he hadn’t disappeared on them for a month, breaks the spell that held Izuku frozen in his tracks.

Time falls back around him with the suddenness of a car crash as he pushes himself across the distant between himself and the pair, catching up just in time to hear Eri squeal as she jumps up to hug Bakugou.

An aching, burning anger lights his veins as he watches Bakugou return the hug, his face turned into Eri’s hair before pulling away and standing to look at him.

The seconds pass all too quickly and yet all too slow until Bakugou finally speaks.

“Hey, nerd,” he says slowly, unsure, and that’s all it takes to break down the only resistance between Izuku and his roiling, burning rage.

Stepping forward, he reaches out and grabs a fistful of Bakugou’s shirt.

He’s so fucking angry, but also so fucking happy. Painfully so, in fact, as he pulls Bakugou in close. Izuku’s teeth pull back from his teeth in a sharp snarl as he hisses, “what the fuck are you doing here?”

This close, he doesn’t miss the way Bakugou’s eye widen, leaving his own vision filled with their startling scarlet as he fixes Izuku with his silent, open wonder.

“No, you know what,” Izuku says harshly, cutting off any chance Bakugou may have had to answer. “I don’t care. Fuck you.”

The words push through his lips with a hissing contempt, each one biting into his own skin in the very way that he hopes they’re biting into Bakugou’s. Pausing to search the blonde’s stare for any hurt or shame, he bristles as he’s met with the same brazen awe.

As if he’s seeing something beautiful. As if he’s finally found what he’s been looking for.

That damned look sparks something bright and wanting within him, and it only pushes him further toward anger as he jerks Bakugou just that much closer.

“Actually, no. I do care. Because what the fuck, Katsuki? I said I-” Izuku stops, his next words falling away like ash and coating the back of his tongue with their dry taste.

Swallowing around the lump they’ve created, he pushes on, ignoring the way his voice wobbles around its edges.

“You just left. And then I have to find out that somehow, impossibly, you were Eri’s imaginary friend? And what? You thought we should just have to deal with that?”

“It was the job,” Bakugou finally says, and god, had Izuku’s memory not done his voice justice at all. It rolls over him, like thunder, cascading through him and cracking the hardened weight clinging to the center of his chest with the bright flare of hope at the past tense that he uses.

Pushing the optimistic feeling down, Izuku holds onto the vestiges of his anger as his knuckles ache with the tension in them.

“I don’t care what ever the fuck it was. A job, a game, whatever it was that wasn’t what it was to us.”

He pauses, breathing in, then breathing out before he continues, his voice lowered as he flicks his gaze down just long enough for his confession to drop between them.

“That wasn’t what it was to me.”

Glaring a hole into the center of Bakugou’s chest, he breathes again, counting each inhale and exhale before he slowly shifts his attention back up to the blonde’s face. Astonishment still colors Bakugou’s stare, his expression still schooled in a look of softened disbelief. It stays there, frozen, as if he isn’t sure what to say.

As if he can’t say anything at all.

“Tell Daddy Izuku what you told me!” Eri says, her voice shattering whatever spell had come over Izuku as all the sounds of the park around them come rushing back into his ears. His grip on Bakugou’s shirt loosens just slightly, but he doesn’t shift away from him.

He can’t.

“About how the brat after you was nowhere near as cool?” Bakugou asks, words nothing but hard, rough edges as he replies to Eri without shifting his attention from Izuku.

Giggling loudly, Eri softly kicks at Bakugou’s shoe.

“No, silly. The other part!”

Deflating slightly, Bakugou continues to hold Izuku’s stare.

“Oh, that part,” he says lowly. So low that Izuku suspects he would have missed it if he wasn’t so close. Gritting his teeth, he swears he hears his jaw creak.

“Spit it out, Bakugou,” Izuku pushes out.

The order earns him a quick, sharp tsk as Bakugou cuts his gaze down toward the ground between them.

“I was wondering if maybe I could stick around for awhile,” he mutters, his bangs falling across his eyes, shading most of his face as he keeps his stare turned downward. It does nothing to stop Izuku from catching the flush of pink that runs itself across his skin and over his ears.

His gasp punctuates the short quiet as Izuku pushes back every so slightly from him, but still not letting go of his shirt.

“Ya see, I’m a bit unemployed at the moment,” Bakugou continunes, “and a lot more visible.”

Shifting his attention again, Bakugou drags his stare behind Izuku’s shoulder, as if to stress that latter fact. Quickly, he raises his hand in a placating gesture toward what Izuku can only assume are some bystanders they’ve undoubtedly attracted.

That alone makes Izuku’s stomach roil.

Disbelief, and happiness, and anger, and exhausted content mix themselves at his core until they fizzle and crack like popping candy. He feels the way all the emotions creep up his chest and tickle the back of his throat as he tries to push back the burn at the edges of his eyes.

He’s so, so angry.

But god, is he so fucking happy too.

“Well, nerd?” Bakugou speaks up, the question colored with a hopefulness that seems foreign for him.

Rearing back slightly, Izuku watches the way Bakugou’s eyes widen as he snaps his head forward. It isn’t until the very last moment that he slows his momentum, softening the blow so that their foreheads tap together gently.

“You aren’t allowed to disappear anymore,” Izuku mumbles as he presses gently against him. The soft brush of Bakugou’s relived sigh tickles across the bridge of his nose.

“As long as you both want me, I won’t be going anywhere,” he assures with a low chuckle that Izuku feels vibrate through both of their chests. Dragging a slow breath through his nose, he can’t stop the high curl of his lips as he pushes up onto his toes to capture Bakugou’s own.

The kiss burns through him, colored by the sun that continues to dip down into the horizon. It fills him, and chases away the lingering ache just over his heart as he feels the way Bakugou presses closer into him.

It’s a good kiss, one filled with a honey colored promise.

“Daddy Izuku!” Eri cries, her sudden exclamation cutting quickly through their haze and finally pushing them apart.

“Stop hogging Kacchan!” She continues, mouth turned into a pout as she reaches a hand out to Bakugou. His laugh as barking as he steps back from Izuku’s hold.

“We’re going to see the butterflies! C’mon!” She says, stretching her hand out closer to Bakugou, impatience thrumming vibrantly through her small form as she waits for him to take it. Izuku doesn’t miss the way his gaze slides between him and Eri, or the way his lips twisted slightly upward at their edges in a small, secretive smile before he takes her hand.

“Alright, shortstack. Lead the way!” Bakugou says loudly, barely finishing his sentence before Eri takes off with him in tow. Her voice lingers behind them as she begins to fill him in on what he’s missed.

Watching as they move toward the butterfly enclosure, Izuku lets his mouth part around his own bright laughter before he follows behind them.

**********

#midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #bakudeku #bkdk #technically the last chapter! WOO! epilogue to follow in like 3.5 seconds lol

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la-fille-en-aiguilles · 5 years ago

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Bjorn Ironside x Female Reader: Skjaldmær

A/N : This is what I get for watching the Vikings before bed. A story based off a dream that I had a couple of nights ago, featuring Bjorn and a badass!female reader. Part 2 may be in cards for this one if anyone’s interested? Let me know. Also I have like a million messages to respond to, I promise I’ll get there. Please, bear with me? WARNINGS: Gore, violence, blood - the whole package.

This wonderful GIF ain’t mine. “This is a suicide mission”.

Your brother, Jonas, finally spoke, ever the optimist. With your eyes fixed firmly on the vast expanse of the open sea, you embraced the feeling of the salty wind brushing through your hair and caressing your cheeks. Your horse, Morning Star, grumbled impatiently underneath you, showing his excitement at what was to come. Animals, they simply sensed this kind of stuff - that, and well, he probably smelled dried blood and fire smoke, even from afar, that unmistakable odour of the others.

Your people called them the Vikings, the Norsemen, the Pagans - depending more on who was telling the story, than on the narrative in itself. Their reputation preceded them - half of your father’s counsel, or whatever was left of it, now that he went to war with the French, told you to leave everything behind, and move further into the country. That being said, none of them really believed that you’d be able to outrun these animals - it was written all over their faces, even if they refused to voice their thoughts - but you had to give it to them, their advice actually made sense.

It all started out a week ago, when a little farm boy called Jimmy ventured all the way to the sea front, trying to push the stubborn cattle back to the open fields. Something caught his eye as he tried to shoo one of his goats, who must have felt especially adventurous, from the edge of the cliff and back to safety. A series of little black dotes littered the horizon, growing bigger and bigger with each passing second. Jimmy might have been a very terrestrial creature, he knew a ship when he saw one. He told as much to his father - and from there, the word had traveled fast.

When you were still a little girl, you father had made a point out of teaching you to reserve any kind of judgement based upon the words of others - but now, right at this moment, looking at the long, sleek ships cutting through the veins of the deep blue sea like razor blades, you could easily believe all those stories of bloodshed, violence and rape, surrounding the Vikings. The boats - maybe fifty in total - looked menacing under the dark grey sky, heavy clouds pregnant with unshed tears for those who would perish at the hands of the Pagans.

“You should have left with the others”, Jonas spoke again, licking his dry lips as he, too, stared at the horizon. “You’re King Ipswich’s only daughter. Can’t imagine what those animals would do to you if they learn”.

“Now, now, they’d have to get their hands on me first”, a ghost of a smile lit up your features for a fleeting moment. “And if they do, I’ll be dead long before they touch as much as a hair on my head. And God be my witness, I will not go alone. If I go down -“

“You’ll go down swinging,” Jonas finished for you, a warm smile gracing his features for the first time since he learned about the Pagans coming.

You watched him, unblinking, basking in the glow of his smile, making sure to take a mental picture of every little detail - the curve of his lips, small crinkles in the corners of his eyes…

For you weren’t sure you’d ever get to see that smile again.

***

One calculated swing of your elegant curved sword was all it took for a giant Viking to collapse on his knees, choking on his blood. You watched him grasp his neck with both hands, his eyes wide and surprised as he stared at you, unblinking.

Even with your armour on, all leather and metal, you knew you looked far less menacing than their women - sporting long braids soaked in blood, and black elaborate designs inked into their scarred skin. Yet, if anything, you considered this prejudice an immense advantage - your face stinging from the hot Viking blood spilled all over it just went to show that your skills had taken them by surprise.

Sitting on the throne alongside your father for the last couple of years, you’d proven yourself to be a just yet merciful soon-to-be ruler; on the battlefield you were ruthless, baring your pearl teeth as you sliced another Viking’s head off.

What was an hour ago your people’s elaborate, beautiful lacquered houses was now a pile of burning wood, spitting black smoke into the air, thick with the odour of blood. Your eyes stung, tears forming in their corners, as you looked around, searching for your brother. You’ve been separated a while ago (minutes? hours? you’d lost count) by a group of Vikings with tattooed faces. You’ve killed three of them in a brutal fight - the last one managed to cut a side of your face, splitting your eyebrow - blood rolled down your cheek freely, but you refused to pay mind to the injury. Jonas was nowhere to be found, and with a clenching heart, you prayed to God he managed to get away...

An agonizing cry resonated over the noises of the battle - the sound pinned you to the ground, making blood freeze in your veins. Panic hit you like a hurricane as you recognized your brother’s voice, cursing the Vikings’ entire race to eternal damnation.

It all happened so fast - and yet too slow - for the love of God, you felt too much, and nothing at all at once!…

A deafening gasp left your bloodied lips as you turned your head in Jonas’ direction, the world around you coming to a screeching halt. You could feel your messy and bloodied strands of hair hit your cheek as your lips fell open, a terrified scream burning the back of your throat.

It lasted less than a second, yet still long enough to haunt you forever.

Two Vikings, tall and proud, their faces scarlet with blood, towered over Jonas. Your brother - your everything - stood, vanquished, on his knees by their side. Your heart nearly giving out at the sight, you lurched forward, yelling your brother’s name at the top of your lungs.

All it took was a caress of a blade.

A slight, almost lazy flick of a Viking’s wrist.

Your brother stared at you wide-eyed, blood pulsing through the neat cut on his neck, streaming down his chest in a red waterfall. Choking and gurgling, he pressed one of his hands to his throat, as if trying to keep the flow in, just to say one last word.

“Sister...” he managed, reaching out to you with his other hand, broken, bloody and bruised.

He fell down on his face there and then, his eyes glassy, his bloody mouth giving up the ghost of that radiating smile of his - it was now gone, gone for eternity.

You were screaming like a wounded animal as your feet took you to these barbarians. An hour before, you were a force to be reckoned with. Now you were deadly. Unstoppable. You couldn’t care less if you lived or died anymore. All you had now, all that made sense, was the fire in your chest, burning your heart to ashes, and a place you needed to reach.

Your features distorted by a mask of rage, you charged at the two Vikings, your sword held high and ripping through the wall of smoke. The cry you let out sounded like it tore your throat on the inside. Swishing your blade, you made both men recoil in surprise; your movements fast and precise, you cut one of the Vikings across his chest, glad to see him bleed. Growling, he stumbled back. Swinging the sword with a circular movement of your wrist, you gave him a twisted smile, all bloody teeth... right before you dug your fingers into the cut on his shoulder, pulling him in. Your sword pierced his chest squarely in the middle, as you pushed him onto it, his blood splashing all over your front and cheeks. Gripping the handle of your weapon tighter, you twisted it around, your eyes never quitting the Viking’s face - not until you saw the light go out in his watering eyes. Sliding your sword out of his hollow chest with one sharp move, you let his body drop to the ground as you looked around, your eyes searching for the deadman’s accomplice.

A bitter laugh pushed its way through your lips as you saw the man stumble back at the sight of you - could you blame him? You probably looked insane, pain of loss and hunger for revenge taking over every fiber of your body. You cocked your head to a side as you took a step towards him, studying his face. He was young - maybe even younger than you. Among the usual attributes of those other men - long braided hair, strong jaw - you saw fear flash in those turquoise eyes of his. That elicited another smile out of you - and it was enough for the man to go into the attack stance, his sword aimed at your chest.

“Hvitserk, no!”

Intricate sounds of the foreign dialect tingled through your body. Their echo gnawed at your earlobes, scratched your neck and caressed your shoulders, pulling you in.

As your eyes searched for the man who’d spoken, you wondered whether it was the dialect or the man himself - you’ve heard the Norse before but it had never sounded so rich and tantalizing. Every minor change in the atmosphere, every breath, every clash of the swords on the battlefield - your body seemed to vibrate with terrible energy, adrenaline still pumping through your veins. That voice - that raw and guttural arrangement of notes - shook you to the core, leaving a pulsating sensation behind.

The man standing before you - Hvitserk, you presumed - hadn’t moved. He stared at you unblinking, from the looks of it paying no mind to the powerful tenor. Your wicked smile grew wider as your gazes locked again; when suddenly, a torrid movement caught your eye behind Hvitserk’s back.

The owner of that voice looked like the very definition of a Viking; he moved like one, too. Tall, ramroad straight, broad-shouldered and rock-jawed, he slid his sword out of a man’s chest, and squeezed its blade lightly between his arm and his ribs, wiping the blood on his clothes. Bear-like, his neck muscles drumhead tight, he sank his cerulean eyes into your frame, a content smirk playing upon his thin lips. Your breath caught in your throat as the man yelled something to Hvitserk again, something you didn’t make out; your heart clenched in your chest - much to your surprise - when the stranger bared his teeth like an animal - like a starved bear - as he headed towards you, ground trembling beneath your feet.

“Her Majesty is mine, brother!” he roared, wild and uncontrollable, quickly closing the distance between you.

He knew.

Realization struck you like thunder, your brother’s face flashing before your eyes.

...You’re King Ipswich’s only daughter. Can’t imagine what those animals would do to you if they learn...

You growled until the sound grew into an angry holler - with your heart crushing hard against your ribcage, you squeezed the handle of your sword...

And started to run - to meet the bear-like Viking halfway. *** The desperate crunching of snow beneath your feet barely registered, as you zigzagged between the bare trunks of trees, now more than ever looking like old bones. Your ragged breaths almost blocked the ringing in your ears, the mocking whooping from behind you urging you to run faster. There was no point in hiding, you knew it all too well - the Vikings were the perfect hunters, probably capable of smelling their prey. Gritting your teeth, you jumped over a trap at the very last moment, nearly stepping into it.

Because that’s what you were now - their prey. The Vikings were hunting you, not for the fun of it, no. They were in it for a kill.

A nasty sort of satisfaction flashed through your feverish mind as you heard the trap close on someone’s leg close by behind you, the man crying bloody murder. You allowed yourself to look back, if only for a moment, - and instantly regretted it.

Your stomach flipped at the sight of the bear-like Viking - the one with the cerulean blue eyes and a long blond braid - the one you’ve almost slaughtered during the fight. He was now mere meters away from you, so you swore a blue streak, forcing your legs to move faster. Your eyes also caught a growing crowd of the Vikings behind his back, all shouting in a wicked kind of anticipation, their faces smeared with blood.

If you were honest with yourself, this was indeed a very unfortunate situation as it was. Your chances to get out alive diminished by half, however, when you saw the archer in a chariot pulled by a strong white horse, rush in your direction. That sight alone would have been enough for you to singlehandedly impale yourself on your sword, had you not lost it in the fight...

...When you and the bear-like Viking collided back on the battlefield, your swords connected with such a force, sparks shot out in every direction, and you found yourself thrown back from the impact. Instead of rushing back in, you quickly assessed the situation: you could never win this fight, not by facing the man head-on. He would use his brutal force, his powerful body, to his advantage. One punch or a swing of his sword would be enough for you to go down in history as yet another ruler fallen at the hands of the Barbarians.

This simply wouldn’t do.

You were faster. Lighter. And certainly less rigid than this mountain of a man. You just had to find a way to use these differences to your advantage.

And so you did.

A rowdy crowd of Vikings gathered around the two of you, encircling you completely, urging the bear-like man - their commander in chief with eyes bluer than the skies on the sunny day - to kill you. Your breathing deep and calculated, you blocked them out. Balancing your body weight onto your toes, you jumped back and forth, throwing your sword forward at different angles, trying to get the Viking to follow your motions, to lose his focus. When you saw an opening, you dashed under his arm like a dancer, slicing a deep cut into his ribs. The Viking howled, surprised rather than hurt, even though the gash in his side looked deep and bled profusely. He barely even blinked - stoic as they come, he spinned around to face you, his sword narrowly missing your neck. You dived down just in time, using your position and your blade to slash his thighs open.

The roar that escaped his lips was raw, angrier this time. Still on his feet - how, in God’s name, did he manage to stay upright after that?! - he bolted in your direction, his sword clattering to the ground. His massive shoulders crashed into your chest, knocking the breath out of your lungs. Both of you fell back, the Viking’s body pressed tightly to yours, pinning you to the ground. It took you a while to gather your spirits - you hit your head hard enough against the frozen ground to see stars. When your eyes were able to focus again, you zeroed in on your enemy’s face as he hovered over you, shifting his weight to his hands, pressed into the ground on each side of your head. Bare inches separating your faces now, you stared into his cerulean eyes, watching you with... amusement?

You frowned, wincing at the throbbing in the back of your head, and when you looked back up at him again, you found that the Viking on top of you hadn’t moved, mirroring your expression.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think...

Was he concerned about you now?!

You must have hit your head harder than you thought.

Biting your lip so hard it hurt, you chucked your head forward, your forehead landing on the Viking’s nose. He hissed in pain, rolling off you - the weight of him gone, you suddenly felt naked, his warmth leaving nothing behind.

Scrambling back on your feet as fast as you could manage, you picked up a sword from the ground - too hefty and too long for your liking, engraved with the Norse symbols. Realizing you’ve picked up his sword and not finding the strength to care anymore, you searched for the bear-like man with cerulean eyes, knowing you had to finish the job. Knowing it was either you or him.

He didn’t go far. He stood right there, weaponless, that amused look back on his face, topped by a growing smile on his thin lips as he gazed at you.

This was your chance.

Using both hands to hold his heavy sword above your head, you could already see its blade bury itself in his shoulder, cut through his chest... When suddenly a sharp pain shot through you, forcing you to cry out.

The handle of the sword slipped from your grip as you stared wide-eyed at the arrowhead, sticking out your chest just below your right collarbone.

Dark droplets dripped from the tip and onto the ground, warmth spreading across your torso, as your clothes slowly soaked up the blood. Your vision blurred as you threw a lost glance over your shoulder, noticing a Viking in a chariot still holding his bow.

Silence fell upon the battlefield - thick and leaden, save for the sound of your blood falling onto the ground; there was a certain rhythm to it that felt like a countdown.

The loud and lonely cheer that reached your ears from behind had an almost ceremonial quality to it. You didn’t have to turn around this time to know it came from the archer. A hushed and indecisive murmur rolled over the crowd, when your eyes flicked back to your enemy, the bear-like Viking you’d almost killed.

His cerulean eyes sparkled in the light of the dying fires, his expression serious.

“Run,” he urged you, his voice barely a whisper.

Your eyes growing wide, you pressed your fingers around the arrow piercing your body. Blood trickled down your hand now, leaving a burning trail in its wake, your legs already taking you away.

The countdown over, the chase began...

...Just when you thought you could run no more, the sight of the archer in the chariot gave you just enough of a scare to go on. Your survival instincts must have kicked back in - you ran faster now, your hectic heartbeat echoing in your ears.

You knew where you were headed. Just like you knew there was no chance in hell you were getting out alive. Still, you reserved the right to choose the way you’d go down.

Swinging, your brother’s voice resonated in your head, a frantic sob raking your body.

If you were to die tonight, you were sure going to take with you as many of them as you could.

Frozen lake’s surface shimmered in the stark red rays of the sun, setting on the horizon. Speeding down the hill towards thin ice, you nearly laughed in joy, relief washing over you like a final blessing. The end had never been so close before, yet you had never felt so alive.

“Ivar!” the familiar deep voice filled the air around you, the bear-like Viking’s anger reverberating in between the trees. “No!”

You refused to look back, your eyes set on the lakeshore, so close...

And yet so far.

Before you knew what happened, your legs gave out, pain pouring out of your throat into a hopeless scream. With your hands stretched out, you collapsed onto the ground, your blood painting the snow red.

Biting on your lips, you squeezed your eyes shut, feeling every inch of the arrow that tore through your thigh.

Swallowing hard, you propped your maimed body on your elbows, half-conscious, pain slowly dragging you into the darkness. The sound of the victorious hollers and general commotion slowly faded away, while your mind struggled to find something - anything - to hold on to.

“Sleep it off, skjaldmær. And then we’ll face each other in a battle again.”

Feeling your body being lifted from the ground, you let out a moan, the end of it muffled by the armour protecting your enemy’s chest.

Bjorn, your mind provided helpfully. The bear. The bear-like Viking.

The thought of fighting him was not as tempting as reuniting with your brother, yet somehow…

Somehow his promise turned out to be enough for you to live to see another day.

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herenortherenearnorfar · 5 years ago

Text

Three Swords Bàoshān Sànrén Brings Home With Her (And One She Never Will)

on ao3

Bùjiàn <不见>

To the world she is a ghost.

No one of merit (if you define merit as the great cultivators do) has seen Bàoshān Sànrén in over a century.

Even before she retreated from everything, she was of a hermetic nature. She preferred the company of stone to that of people, preferred her own thoughts to the demands of society. For a while she lingered with the Lán because out of all the sects they best understood what it meant to be world weary. For a while she even thought she had found a match, someone who could pull her out of her shell, make her corporeal and real, someone who made issues of clan and family seem worthwhile.

Then Lán Yì fell to recklessness, and Bàoshān Sànrén disappeared again.

That night in balmy Wú was the last time she drew her sword.

The little girl she once was, before the title Sanren or the name Bàoshān, named it Not-Seen because it sounded like Not-A-Sword and that appealed to her childish sense of humor. In the dawn of cultivation, when there were a dozen emperors and a hundred little wars, the ability to laugh was a blessing. Besides, her classmates had always mocked her for her withdrawing nature. Wasn’t humility a virtue? Wasn’t introspection, self-reflection, an invaluable quality?

The sword smith was a simple man, whose works would not go down in history, whose gifts were not exceptional or rare. He gave careful attention to each new blade, however, and for her he took especial care. Perhaps a god came to him in a dream and told him this sword would outlast all his others. Where the blades he made for her classmates would rust away on battlefields, Bàoshān Sànrén’s would endure.

Plain black and grey trappings, shagreen leather and camphor wood, a refrozen-ice fuzziness to the metal that made all reflections in its surface waver. A simple sword. A forgettable one. One for the ages but not for the story books.

It is dependable, it serves well, and in some lost years it is the only living creature she knows.

When she first gained wings so many years ago it lay in front of her, a companion in her meditations. When she decided to stay on earth, keep her unchanging body and remain a differentiated object (a long lasting one, preserved by the flow of energy and the knowledge of the universe) rather than a sylph, invisible to men, she chose with her blade in her hand.

Now she is a teacher, on a mountain far from the wars of others. Now she keeps her sword hidden in an old tree trunk, where her students can not find it. They do not need to learn of swords or killing, they can practice with wooden facsimiles and never hear the song of steel. Sometimes she’ll use it to beat carpets or stir their laundry. There is more use for sticks on her mountain than for blades, and she is so proud that she has made it so.

When she does step foot off the mountain (to gather up those unfortunates she can bring away) she sheathes it in a walking stick and never draws it. A precaution that never needs use.

There is enough blood shed in the mortal world, why contribute to it? No thief or highwayman poses a threat to her. She no longer associates with those few cultivators who might be able to match her. Their way of life makes her tired.

Bùjiàn stays hidden, its blade growing dull, its spirit sluggish.

The sword is not a sword. Bàoshān Sànrén disappears.

Mínglíng <冥凌>

Yānlíng Dàoren is the first of her students to wish to rejoin the world that threw him out and she is so, so proud of him.

She invites a sword smith she knows, the greatest in the province, to visit the immortal’s peak and make a blade for her fledgling soon to fly.

All the children, young and old and withered (too many of her students live and die on her mountain, for immortality is not a bar many can reach) gather round as the master builds a blast furnace out of clay and fills it high with charcoal and stones. The spritely ones take turns on the bellows, eager to help their brother, who is meditating deeply in front of the forge.

The blade takes shape slowly, by cold blast and icy river water, until at last it sits in Yānlíng’s hands.

He thanks the swordsmith profusely, as is only right, and when asked for a name for the weapon pretends to give it ample thought. It’s a silly show of contemplation when Bàoshān Sànrén knows he’s had a name in his heart for weeks.

The Chǔ Cí has always been his favorite text. There are few books on the mountain as visiting the booksellers has not been highest among her priorities for the last few decades. In the long winter months her students learn to recite those texts they do have access to out of boredom as much as duty. The little ones chase each other around, tripping over lyrical verse, and Yānlíng holds them upside down and corrects their pronunciation for he is the cleverest young man she’s ever known. Out of all the poems, he likes Guóshāng the best, a fact that worries her though she knows she can do nothing to change his nature.

Respecting his teacher’s sensibilities, he chose his sword’s name from the Dà Zhāo, the Great Summons. A good song about beauty and the joys of the world, the pride of which is softened by the fact that it extolls a kingdom long destroyed.

The name however… the name concerns her.

He names it Deep Ice, after the thick sheets of permafrost that coat the mountain they have made their home, after the river caves he loves to explore and the cold that never bothers him. (What cruelty that her adopted children all hold a bit of Lán Yì’s character, and that Yānlíng Dàoren bears the greatest part.) It is a bit of affectionate narcissism as well, the first character means underworld where the second character of his name means tomb, and the last characters of both are homonyms. Shǎngfá would have been more authoritative, Guīlái more optimistic, yet there’s a presumption to both that feels off putting. Of all the choices in the Summons, Mínglíng is the strongest. It fits.

It worries her how well they are suited, heavy name and heavy boy. She doesn’t like to send him away with a sword bearing the name of the underworld. She doesn’t want him to be destined for cold caves and poor choices. It exacerbates the dread that has been building since he came to her and said he wanted to go and put the world on a better Way.

The doom that sits upon her students has not yet been made clear to her. Old and experienced as she is, premonitions still creep up on her long before Yānlíng finally bids farewell, his black-ice sword in hand as he bows his last.

Against his white robes it looks like a gash, like a slash of ink cutting through his pale back.

As a way of discouraging her students from returning to the world, the depravities of which she knows too well, Bàoshān Sànrén has told them that if they leave her and her mountain they may not come back.

With her edict in mind, she does not expect to see him or his disquieting sword ever again.

Long after the stories of his ruin and death have come and gone, after she has mourned once and moved on from the student she could not save, it comes back to her in the hands of a Lán disciple who claims he has been searching for this mountain for a long time.

She makes it a point to not let any of the great clans know where she lives, and she is going to have to move after this, but she doesn’t mind too much. With him, he brings her students ashes and his blade, blood-rusty and battered and still a piece of his spirit. The white scabbard and patinated metal trimmings, the delicate engravings of ancient warriors locked in battle, the details are obscured by damage but still visible if you know what the original looked like. When she tries to draw it she finds it sealed against her hand.

“We thought if anyone could put his spirit to rest it would be his teacher,” the Lán disciple says. “Soul settling rituals were performed but our grandmaster says it is best not to underestimate a student of Bàoshān Sànrén.”

He does not say, “This is a gift, because you love our clan once and it has only been three generations since then. Some people still remember.”

The Lán are still foolish, like the rest of them, but they are kind.

Burial rituals are simple among her students. They ensure the ghost is settled and all the manifold spirits of the body find their proper place with talismans and small rituals, burn flowers and incense, and pile rocks to keep the animals away. There’s no need to linger on the dead when those who die in Bàoshān Sànrén’s care usually do so as part of a grander spiritual plan.

Yānlíng’s death is sudden and messy, cannot be reversed with great magic or healing that borders on resurrection. His body was cut by a thousand swords and he was burned in the presence of dozens of cultivators. Any spirit that remains would be a furious, resentful thing, ill-inclined to cooperate with the gentle coaxing of her usual rites.

As her students pack up their lives, she makes her way down into the deep, cold caves he loves. When she reaches the fast flowing underground river full of transparent blind fish, she knelt. Bit by bit, careful not to overload the delicate chemical balance of the water, she feeds in the ashes, lets the river take them away.

The sword she keeps on a high shelf above their book collection. It’s so solidly sealed in it’s scabbard that even the most mischievous student couldn’t get into it, and it serves as a warning to those who might think the world wants them.

Her sorrow when she looks on it is for her pupils, past and present and future, and for the troth that was betrayed. When he left he promised not to return.

Jīngdōng <經冬>

Cángsè’s sword-name doesn’t come to her attention until after the woman is dead.

This student, the second to leave her, the first who she knows for certain will come to no good end, walks off the mountain armed with only a stave. There will be no more swordsmiths in Bàoshān Sànrén’s glade.

Instead she gives her a recommendation for a good weapon maker nearby, and tells her to stop there before proceeding to Cloud Recesses. It has been many years but if she’s lucky the Lán will still have some respect for Bàoshān Sànrén’s name.

Her darling, brave girl bows, then embraces her tight, then turns and walks away.

Many years later rumors of Cángsè Sànrén’s death reaches the mountain and Bàoshān Sànrén goes to confirm them. She makes her students swear not to return, she makes no promises about not following after them. It’s not about salvation, she tells herself, it’s about resolution. Cángsè’s fate is out of her hands but at least this time she can make a reliable account to her brothers and sisters, so they know how their wandering sibling fell. At least this time she might be able to bury the body before it’s burned.

Parents aren’t supposed to bury children, but they are not truly her sons and daughters and she’s an immortal. Any filial duty they might have to outlive her is nullified, and she is left with a grief somewhat assuaged by laying them to rest. Though she is empty of desires that doesn’t mean that she’s empty of regrets, or of love.

Staff in hand she follows stories of Cángsè Sànrén southeast, between Yílíng and Méishān. There she hears that Cángsè and her husband (she married some years before) and son (a newer revelation) stopped in town for the season to cleanse the ever tumultuous region. Burial mounds do not make for good neighbours. After a particularly dangerous band of bandits had been spotted in a nearby farming village, they stopped coming to buy groceries. No bodies had been found but there were hills near the village where law-abiding living humans dared not walk, so there had been little real investigation.

Bàoshān Sànrén knows when something is being hidden from her. She pushes harder with her questions and eventually a smalltime peddler in a pub cracks and admits that the donkey the couple kept trotted into town, half dead and carrying a criminal with a slit throat. They’d thrown the body in a ditch and kept the donkey.

“What of the child?” she asks, because even if she can’t save Cángsè she can help her son. Orphans are in Bàoshān Sànrén’s purview.

“Dead or ran off, we haven’t seen him. He was a quick little thing and knew the roads so he might have made for the city.” The man’s eyes make it clear he cares little what happened as long as it is no longer happening in his town.

Saving that information for later, she goes to explore the hills.

It takes some hours to find the bandits hideout, deep in the foothills of Yílíng, though all she has to do is follow the traces of resentful energy that hover aromatic in the air. They have, had, a well disguised and well supplied cavern that reminds her of the burial mound’s landscape a few miles away. Maybe all places filled with dead men look the same. Instead of the handful of desperate men on the run she’d been warned of, she finds three hundred corpses, a small army of evil-doers hiding behind the reputation of Yílíng, disguising their crimes as the attacks of fierce corpses and hungry ghosts, living off the shunned land as well as the terrified people. To aid in their deception they have a handful of ghouls chained in wicker cages or locked in talisman pots. Clever. They’d need some cultivators among their number for that.

Cángsè and her husband’s heroics would have cut them off, made them desperate, until they were driven out into the open. Realizing that they were facing humans but not fully grasping how many their enemies were, they had charged forward recklessly.

They died for it, had bled out surrounded by enemies, lacking even the comfort of each other. Bàoshān Sànrén discovers their bodies on opposite sides of the cave, facing each other but separated.

Perhaps if they’d faced only normal bandits they could have survived but there’s at least one Niè saber pulsing furiously among the bodies and the man (what was Cángsè’s husband’s name? Wèi?) is caught in a spelled net. Exiles, rogues, and wolf’s heads. Cultivators taught their magics recklessly, and good people paid for it.

It will take a while to put all these bodies in the ground, even with her skill, honed over centuries, at burying bodies. This close to Yílíng, they’d only make trouble though, so Bàoshān Sànrén rolls up her sleeves and goes to work.

She saves her student and her student’s spouse for last. After washing and straightening the bodies, she sets their swords by their sides.

The man, a servant of one of the greater clans if she recalls correctly, has an easy enough blade to identify; the purple tassel matches the purple stripe on his robes and the pommel bears dragonflies and lotus flowers.

Cángsè’s blade surprises her. To start with, it’s pinning a dead body to a wall. How lethal her child became, out here among the howling monsters. It looks different than she expected too. Whenever she imagined her errant student she had privately conjured up pictures of a sword like Yānlíng’s, or Bàoshān Sànrén’s own. Stark, neutral colors and clean lines. When she moves Cángsè the scabbard she discovers beneath her corpse is lacquered a bright, new green. Too vibrant to be called jade and too pale to be mistaken for foliage, it reminds her of the newest buds on a pine tree or the sticky color of a caterpillar. Enamel insets of the same hue dot the guard, pops of springtime in a setting of silver. Engraved into the base of the blade, below a branching needle pattern are two characters; Enduring Winter.

(“Away from home, I was longing for news”)

Now it’s summer and Cángsè is dead.

Swords have spirits, it’s true, but they rarely communicate as humans do. There are many things that are alive and do not speak, or do not think in the manner of people. Like a wild horse or a barn cat, they follow their own rules. Unlike an animal they do not tire or grow old, or mourn the passing of the years. Their loyalty is absolute, however, and their intentions are easy enough to read if you know the signs.

As she goes to lay the blade in the open grave next to her student, she feels it shiver in her hand. “Not eager to be buried then?”

There’s no answer. It’s a sword.

“I suppose I can take you back up the mountain.”

It has been too long since Yānlíng. Too many of her students are curious about what happens in the places they left. A reminder of their sister, dead before thirty, and the live steel that took her to her doom will serve them well.

She vacillates over whether to leave a grave marker. When you have lived centuries, such motions seem pointless. A stack of stones, a carved plank, how long do they last? All tombstones are quickly swept away especially when you die as Cángsè did, alone in the woods, with few people to wonder where you went.

Let memory and the records of history fall where they will, cast her as a villain or a heroine, or forget her entirely. Bàoshān Sànrén bowed out of that world long ago. She won’t provide fodder for the grindstone. She won’t do anything.

She does look for the boy. To spirit away the abandoned is a course of action she’s long stood by, because in the end they too are forgotten. With Bàoshān Sànrén they can live long lives away from those who discarded them.

A week of searching proves pointless. She doesn’t even know his name and there are too many lost and hungry children in the towns around Yílíng.

With the spring green sword strapped over her back and a promising orphan girl from Xiāotíng (who has Cángsè’s eager smile and mischief) holding her hand, she begins the journey home.

Shuānghuá <霜华>

It’s many years before she encounters Sòng Zǐchēn again. He is polite enough not to return to her mountain after his surgery and recovery. Even when she hears word of a tall cultivator in black asking desperately after Xiǎo Xīngchén, he stays away from her doorstep.

Time passes, the rumours ebb and flow, and she learns in bits and pieces what a terrible fate befell the latest of her delinquent disciples.

Poor Xīngchén. His nature was so very good, more trusting than Cángsè, more forgiving than Yānlíng. The first of her pupils to surprise her with his determination to go out into the world, the first of her pupils to betray her (because he loved too much for rules or promises). Bàoshān Sànrén knows the spirit is hardy and the soul can never be truly broken. She’s lived with ghosts and raised the dead, she knows that Xiǎo Xīngchén carries on. Shattering is still a painful ordeal. It doesn’t take Lán spirit songs to know that the part of him that remains is diminished and suffering.

She can grieve for that. She can grieve for all her laughing winter children, who went to lower altitudes and melted away. Though the water they were made of has only changed shape they are beyond her now.

Even hurting for Xiǎo Xīngchén she doesn’t seek his friend out. They are both immortal now, or so she’s heard, and they’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other. Why force meetings that are already inevitable?

Inevitable it does prove. A decade after Xiǎo Xīngchén leaves home for the second time, she comes across him in an abandoned house by the side of a mountain road. When the hailstones outside finally drive her to shelter, she discovers him already settled inside and huddled by a fire. Understandable, without blood to warm the body a corpse would have to be more careful of frostbite, whereas she has not felt cold in many years.

They are both travellers, her intermittently, him full-time, so it’s not extraordinary that they should stumble over one another. It is lucky that it should happen here, in private, rather than in the bustle of a city or a roadside inn.

If there were other people around, people of modest means, they might feel they had to keep their voices down.

He has harsh words for her, and she bears them. She doesn’t make him face his regrets, even though he wears them openly. It falls on the older of their pair to demonstrate restraint. Neither does she hide her expressions (it’s been years since she’s worn any face except the one she was born with) and after he accuses her of driving Xiǎo Xīngchén away, driving him to his death, her grief shows clearly enough that he falls silent.

Sòng Zǐchēn never seemed like a man much given to loud rage. His outburst is an exceptional event, driven by their forced proximity and the anguish that threatens to overfill him. In the aftermath he apologizes, helps her settle by the fire, and offers some of the scant rations she carries.

It’s not difficult to respond in kind, to be cordial to a polite man whose eyes she ripped out of his skull. What does prove troublesome is how her own eyes keep drifting to the white sword strapped to Sòng Zǐchēn’s back.

The story of Xiǎo Xīngchén was also a story of his sword, stolen and misused and rescued too late. She learned its name long ago. Shuānghuá. Her own fault for raising children on the clearest mountain peaks and then being surprised when their first thoughts are of the cold.

When Xiǎo Xīngchén came to her, returned to her desperate and carrying his friend, she paid the sword little attention. Now she cannot help but note the elegance of the piece, the clean lines and floral details. Swords like this are made for the young lords of the cultivation world, chased with silver and spells.

“May I?” she asks, and Sòng Zǐchēn knows what she wants. He unsheathes the sword in one clean motion and hands the bare blade to her.

There is no protest from the sword but no recognition either. Anything she taught Xiǎo Xīngchén was far outweighed by what the world showed him, pressed on him at knife point and painted on him in blood. By the time he died he was a far cry from the hopeful boy she raised.

“It’s a lovely sword. Do you mean to keep it with you?”

“Until I can give it back to Xīngchén,” Sòng Zǐchēn says, voice flat (though perhaps that is the insensitivity of vocal cords long dead).

She hands it back. “Thank you. For taking care of him.” When I could not, when I would not. Given the difference in age between them it would be improper to bow but she does incline her head.

After what has been done to her children, it’s good to know this one lies in safe hands.

The logs in the fire shift, sending up sparks. “... His soul? Could you mend it?”

“Not anymore than I could keep him from walking off the mountain. Be patient,” she advises, “You are a more permanent fixture in the world now.”

“Like you.”

“Yes. It is not a happy path but it can be peaceful. When you understand what you cannot change and acknowledge what you have always known, you find yourself at one with your surroundings.” Seeing friends make terrible mistakes until it can no longer be borne. Collecting children. Collecting legends. Collecting swords. Never calcifying but never exerting undue influence. Knowing that all things are part of a whole.

Sòng Zǐchēn is well on his way to being a proper earth immortal, albeit by a roundabout route, and Bàoshān Sànrén is glad to have his company, glad to have another person to settle swords on.

She leaves Shuānghuá in safe hands.

#baoshan sanren #cangse sanren #xiao xingchen #song lan #the untamed #fanfic

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heathenarmyimagines · 5 years ago

Text

Title: The One He Chose

Pairing: Ivar x Reader

Summary: The married life of a violent Viking and a meek nun.

Part One

Part Two

Taglist: @ubbesgirl, @shewolf2000, @tis-itheapplepie, @atequila, @demoncrypt1066, @greennightspider, @badbitsh13, @fireismysaftey, @minarawr, @laketaj24, @hvitserksgirl, @blahblahcookiesdoma, @fabulous-peasent, @sforsammmmmi, @minmiin1d, @courtrae89, @letsloveimagines, @tomarisela, @titty-teetee, @beyond-the-ashes@elenawrit, @mblaqgi, @whenimaunicorn, @chuflisworld, @mystruggledlife, @moose-squirrel-asstiel, @syreni-dea, @trashqueenbitch, @alykatv, @mbaku-babygirl, @perfectus-in-morte, @beyond-the-ashes, @neeadinghugs, @readsalot73, @triumphantreturnofpies, @anarchy-is-coming, @tephi101, @alicedopey, @ivarslittlebadgirl, @jtrstp, @nejijjeoroo, @charlylama, @ivartheblessed, @captstefanbrandt, @fabulouschrissi, @ivarsrideordie, @3x5gurl, @the-writer-appreciation-blog, @lolabee9, @captainfoxy22, @young-ugly-god, @im5ftbutmythroat66, @bribyyy, @irishhiggins, @cadetomlinson, @keclleon101, @slutforragnarssons, @ltkeke, @meeeeeeeeeps, @lille-kanin, @opalscarab, @ssraven7, @ivarandersen, @concretewaywardangel, @funmadnessandbadassvikings, @sharon-is-tired, @cadetomlinson, @mystruggledlife, @chuflisworld, @justmarissa97, @lol-haha-joke, @weirdly-randomly-awesome, @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanim, @idonthavehusbandsihavelovers, @alexa040004, @buckythetinman , @burntmythroatskullingmytea,@jorunnravenslayer, @two-unbeatable-beaters, @buffy-the-vampire-blogger, @arses21434, @ltkeke, @captainfoxy22, @chinduda @letsshamelessqueen-m @my-soul-is-the-moon @we-are-transcendent

Part One

Part Two

It had been two years since Ivar had decided to keep you.

Gone were your days of doing chores in the church, and enjoying your fellow sisters. Now you were in a foreign cold country surrounded by complete strangers that followed a religion you wanted nothing to do with.

If the physical displacement wasn’t hard enough to adjust to you also had to come to terms with the fact you were now married to a very violent heathen.

At first you had tried to be optimistic; you would still have your religion and faith, your beloved kingdom was safe and maybe you could even learn a few things about these pagans. Those had been your hopes but they were foolish and downright naive.

Even before you had set foot on the boat Ivar made sure you knew that he wouldn’t tolerate your faith at all. He threw your cross into a fire and would scold you like a child no matter who was present.

Ivar had also made it clear that he was in charge, he planned the wedding and did not ask your opinion on a single thing. He told you what would happen and what you were expected to say and do and that was the end of it. What a nightmare your wedding was, your dress wasn’t modest in any sense and blood from a lamb was poured on you.

Your wedding night had been even worse.

Despite how you had tried to explain that you were a woman of the church, in other words a virgin, he did not care at all. He was rough and completely ignored your protests and cries.

All of that horror had happened after he and his brothers had killed King Ecbert and before you had even arrived in his kingdom, Kattegat.

Once you arrived Ivar lead you to his estate and assigned you a servant who would teach you his language and the stories of his Gods. He forbid you from leaving his home until you were able to speak Norse fluently.

In your time of learning Ivar wasn’t exactly patient with you, he would often call you stupid for taking so long to learn. Ivar didn’t care who was around when he would berate your intelligence; be it his brothers, visiting Earls and Jarls or even just the thralls who kept the house.

When you finally were able to leave home to carry out the wifely duties that Ivar had placed on you the whole of Kattegat was already aware of how you were treated. You almost hated the looks of pity more than the looks of smugness from people who thought you deserved the abuse because of your faith.

Ivar was truly horrible, you sometimes thought his name should have been Ivar the Horrible, not Boneless.

If all Ivar was to you was abusive it would have been easier, then you would know exactly what to expect with him, but Ivar was not an easy person to understand.

He would humiliate and verbally abuse you all day, then at night he would climb on top of you and have his way with your body, but after he was something else.

After he had satisfied his primal needs he would lie beside your bruised body and speak to you in a soft voice about his mother and how she had always wanted to see all her sons find wives.

The first few times he had done this you were touched and you thought maybe he wasn’t the monster he appeared to be, but it didn’t take him long to sour that as well. When he would catch you praying he would speak on how his beautiful mother would have hated having you as a daughter in law.

He would say that so much that at some point it stopped hurting, then one day you looked up and you found that you were now accustomed to this horrid life that you lived.

You would wake up alone, be dressed by thralls and then walk into the dining hall to have first meal with Ivar where you would refrain from praying over your food, then Ivar would go off on his business and you would run the household. After the last meal you would retire to your bed chamber then sometime later a drunk Ivar would come in to mount you then whisper his soft words until he fell asleep.

Everyday it was the same, walking on eggshells trying not to provoke your husband’s anger and taking whatever abuse he had to offer that day.

There were times, when you would sit outside and sew, you would think about just walking to the docks and climbing onto a boat but you knew you never could. Ivar would take it as a great offense and would take his anger out on your kingdom.

So you stayed.

Now you are in the great hall at the high table with your husband, brothers in law and their wives.

Tonight there was to be a sacrifice to pray that the harvest be rich this spring, and your stomach was far too uneasy to eat.

Ivar was having none of it.

‘Why do you not eat? Do you want people to say I do not feed you?’ he hissed.

‘I am simply not hungry, my husband.’ you mumbled.

‘Eat, you are making me appear to be a cruel husband.’ he said angrily.

Not that Ivar noticed, but the cheerful atmosphere of the entire high table was immediately altered by the tone he used with his wife.

None of them agreed with the way he treated you, but any attempts they made to speak to him ended with him being even angrier with you for days on end because you made people think ill of him.

‘I am sorry.’ you said softly as you picked up a piece of bread and took a small piece.

Ivar went back to his drink and found that everyone was staring at him in distaste, and like always it angered him.

‘Good. Now the night has been soured before the sacrifice.’ he snarled.

You again apologized for spoiling the mood and offered to retire so that he and his family could enjoy the feast and festivities, you had no desire to see the sacrifice any how.

‘No you will stay and watch the sacrifice, do you not want us to have a rich harvest? Does your Christ God say that we should starve this year?’

‘Of course not, but if my presence is spoiling your mood then I will leave if you wish it.’ you tried to placate him.

‘What kind of husband doesn’t want his wife by his side? You will sit here, you will eat and enjoy the sacrifice. Am I understood?’ he threatened.

‘Yes.’ you submitted as you lowered your head.

The rest of the family turned back to their own conversations, except Ubbe.

He was more like his father than the rest of his brothers in the sense that he didn’t hate the Christians. Ubbe saw no point in being overly violent with the Christians when they went out on raids or even with the Christian thralls at his own estate. He really didn’t like how horrid his younger brother treated you at all, but he saw trying to tell Ivar this only made him worse.

Even he as the eldest couldn’t tell another free man how to treat his wife.

For the next hour or so you nibbled at your plate and tried to be as invisible as you could, speaking to no one, not even raising your head to look around the hall.

At last Bjorn stood and announced that it was time to step out into the courtyard for the sacrifice to take place.

Everyone else hurried out but you had to wait by Ivar as he stood up on his braces and crutches, he was still getting used to them. You were genuinely happy when he first showed you his new mode of transportation, but in the end it too made your husband irritable. The pain of the metal braces would make Ivar complain, and any offer you made to help made him think you saw him as weak.

Once Ivar was on his feet you followed behind him as he made his way to the front of the crowd, he wanted to be sure that he, and you, got a good view.

You took a small comfort in the fact that no Chiristians were ever sacrificed to the pagan Gods, the heathens felt their Gods would be insulted by having a non-believer sacrificed to them.

Still you hated the human sacrifices, no matter how many of them you had seen you still didn’t like to see another human die.

This time it was a man, you had seen him around town buying things for his family. You didn’t know him but that didn’t make watching him die any less horrible.

Bjorn gave the usual speech, asking the Gods for their favor, then he raised his ax and with one swift swing he ended a life.

You tried not to flinch at the sound of it but you couldn’t help it, you didn’t need to look over to know that Ivar was smiling. You kept your eyes closed as the crowd cheered in celebration, and felt Ivar move toward the blood bowl and took a sip like always and dipped his fingers in before he walked over to you.

‘May the blood of this sacrifice allow you to bear fruit as well wife.’ he said before flinging the blood onto your face.

You felt sick to your stomach and wanted nothing more than to wipe off the human blood and just go to bed and leave this day in the past.

‘If I may retire to the estate my husband, I do not feel too well.’ you requested.

Ivar rolled his eyes in annoyance but eventually he nodded and dismissed you with a wave of his hand.

You hurried off away from the festivities waiting until you were sure you were out of sight completely to wipe the blood off your skin.

As you walked you strayed from the trail back to your estate and into the woods, you had found a small clearing not long after you had began to explore your new home. It was in the spot perfectly between Ivar’s lands and Ubbe’s so none of the thralls Ivar had spying on you traveled out this far.

You used this space to pray whenever you could get away from your husband.

Like usual you kneeled at a tree stump and brought your hands together for prayer.

‘Dear Father, how I have missed speaking to you like this. I wish I could pray to you everyday as I once did, but my husband will not allow it, even now I disobey him to speak with you.’ you started.

‘My Lord, everyday I find it harder to live on this earth with that man and I ask you as a mere servant… please give me some sign of your presence here. Surrounded by such horror and paganism it is becoming harder to have faith, and now my faith is all I have left. I fear that I can’t survive this world without my faith.’ you sobbed.

You soon began uncontrollably crying as two years of sadness hit you all at once, you could barely get it together enough to stand up and be on your way back to the trail.

Just as you had gotten on your feet you heard a rustle coming from behind you, immediately you reached for the dagger Ivar insisted you carry at all times.

The noise became louder and it became clear that this was not just an animal moving around but a person approaching you.

You got ready to defend yourself when at last Ubbe stepped into the clearing.

‘Ubbe! You nearly scared me to death!’ you whined, clutching your heart as you willed it to slow down.

‘Sorry, I departed shortly after you and decided to see to it that you got home safe, our soldiers get a bit too bold during a good feast.’ the Ragnarson explained.

‘Well thank you for your concern, but I am fine. I will be on my way.’ you said quickly, moving to walk away but Ubbe caught you by your wrist.

‘You were praying.’

A panic took hold of your heart, you had hoped he hadn’t heard your prayers.

‘P-please don’t tell him.’ you begged as your eyes began to water once again.

If Ivar heard about you praying to your Christian God he would be angry with you for at least two weeks, and that’s if you’re lucky.

‘Do not cry, I will not tell him. Just let me walk you home, to make sure you are safe.’

You let out a cry of relief, and as Ubbe led you back to the pathway you tried to recenter yourself. Ubbe was a good man, and from what you heard from Margrethe he was a good husband.

Though his marriage to the former thrall wasn’t by any means Christ like, seeing how he shared her with Hvitserk, but he was always kind and trusting.

Nothing like your husband who you now truly believed didn’t have a single kind bone in his body, and if he did it was probably one of the broken ones.

At last you two were at your door, you thanked him for his kindness.

‘I don’t consider ensuring your safety a kindness, it is a decency.’

‘I haven’t been shown much decency since I was brought here, so I do thank you. I hope you return home safely as well.’ you said.

‘Goodnight (Y/N).’ he bid farewell as you went inside.

Inside your home you head towards the chamber you shared with Ivar and found two thralls already there waiting to help you undress and get ready for bed. Removing Viking clothes is so much more time consuming than your old attire.

Once you were in your nightgown and your hair was unbraided you sent the girls away and got into your bed.

Silently you prayed, you had come to learn that most of the thralls doubled as spies for Ivar, and they felt no guilt telling him you were disobeying.

You weren’t sure when you drifted off or how long you had been asleep before you were rudely awoken by Ivar stumbling into the room and drunkenly falling into the bed.

‘Wife!’ he shouted.

You sighed and sat up, you already knew where this was going. So you stood up and moved to stand in front of him and began removing his leg braces.

Ivar only let two people do this for him, his personal healer and you. He would say he thought only a man’s wife should take care of him, but you knew he didn’t want anyone else seeing his legs.

You finally got them off and put them away while Ivar got undressed.

‘Come to bed.’

With a sigh you walked back to stand in front of your husband, and like he always did he ripped off your clothes and threw you onto the bed.

You don’t even bother trying to fight him anymore, he overpowers you physically, then once he is done he will lecture you on how evil you are for not wanting him as a wife should want her husband.

Ivar climbed on top of you, and with no gentleness he forced himself into your body and you let out a cry of pain. Your womanhood still hurt, it always hurt because Ivar would do this every night.

At last he pulled himself out of you finished over your belly before he rolled over, you took the wet cloth from the bedside table and cleaned yourself.

‘In three days I will be leaving Kattegat to make arrangements with the Earl of Gotaland. If all goes well he and his soldiers will stand by me when I attack Hedeby next spring.’ Ivar said.

You were filled with a sensation you hadn’t felt in so long you could barely recognize it, joy.

‘How long will you be away.?’ you asked, trying not to sound excited.

‘If it were to go smoothly then at least two weeks time, but if what I’ve heard about this Earl is true then maybe a month.’ he informed.

A whole month without Ivar’s abuse.

‘I will be busy with preparations for the journey, so I will not be around as much. I will need you to make sure all my personal belongings are properly packed, as well as managing the home.’ Ivar said.

‘Of course.’ you said as you turned over.

Ivar sat there and watched you for a while and thought about how Bjorn would talk about his first wife, Thorunn, who would shower him in her love and affection whenever he left Kattegat for any amount of time.

He was eager to tell you that he was leaving, so that he could hear you go on about how much you will miss him, but you didn’t do that.

You just turned your back to him and went to sleep, as if you didn’t even care that he would be leaving.

Ivar’s stare became hard and angry before he leaned down and whispered into your ear.

‘My mother would have hated you...she was the only one in this world is whoever truly loved me.’ he hissed before he rolled over.

The next days were spent gathering everything Ivar would need on his journey; his clothes, weapons, oils for his braces, his bathtub and other things. Once that was done you spoke with all the thralls and let them know that they would report to you now.

Ivar was spending his time speaking with the men he would travel with, making sure all of them were on the same page, and preparing his battle tactic should things go horribly wrong. If your husband was anything it was prepared for the worst.

On the third day everything was chaos, you and Ivar running around getting the last minute things taken care of, double checking that everything was in order. It wasn’t until nightfall that you were both sure everything was ready, in the morning they could load up the carts and be on their way.

Honestly you were eager for sleep, tomorrow would be your first day of freedom.

Ivar came into the room very tiredly and you removed his braces then he used you like he always did, but this time he did not stop.

He did not stop until the sun was raising and thralls began knocking on the door to tell him that they were beginning to load up the carts. By the time he got off of you and began getting dressed you felt so sore and tired you were surprised you could even move.

While you were being dressed Ivar watched you, his beautiful wife. He would often look at you and think back to the day that he decided he would take you as his wife. You hadn’t even mentioned his legs, and that was always the first thing about him people noticed and spoke about.

He knew in that moment you were the woman for him; you were beautiful, and clearly saw him past his disability. Sure you praised a false God, but he could change that, and of course sometimes you would turn away from his touch but he knew how to make love to you.

Last night he had made love to you all night long, after all this would be the first time the two of you would be apart for more than several hours. Ivar wanted the night to be the best it could be and wanted it to be one to remember.

Once you and Ivar were outside you could see the other men loading their own carts; their wives kissing them and praying for their return, their children hugging their knees.

It was truly a heartwarming sight, and Ivar saw it as well.

When Ivar had married you he wanted to immediately fill you with his children, but the time wasn’t right, he could not give his wife or child his full attention. Not with Lagertha still breathing, taunting him with her very existence, no he needed to avenge his mother first.

For now he would bask in the love of his wife.

He looked over at his wife, but she just kept looking around at the other families, practically ignoring him.

‘Wife.’ he said getting your attention.

You looked over at him and kept your face from twisting in distaste.

‘Yes Ivar.’

Ivar looked up at you and waited for you to wish him a safe journey or kiss him...anything to show you would miss him.

You stared at him and he stared back, him waiting on you to tell him you didn’t want him to leave, and you waiting for him to tell you what he wanted.

After about a moment he finally realized you would not say sweet things to him like the other wives and he turned away from you angrily and got in his cart.

Completely confused as to how you had upset him this time you watched him sit his crutches down beside him in the cart. The other men finally got onto their own carts and finally they began their journey.

You watched Ivar’s cart the whole time as it went down the path, you watched until you couldn’t see it anymore. If only to make sure he was really truly gone, that he wouldn’t just turn around and come back as soon as you looked away.

‘Mistress?’ one of the thralls finally spoke.

‘Yes, let us return home.’ you said.

As you walked back to your estate you kept your head low to hide your smile.

Ivar was gone you walked around the house giving orders and the first one you gave was to the cooks. You requested porridge, chicken and fruits, the standard meal from the church. You hadn’t had porridge since you married Ivar, he wanted you to eat like a viking and vikings ate meat and vegetables.

In the days that followed you would assign the tasks to the thralls and then go out and sit in for Ivar in the great hall. You would hear the men scoff whenever you spoke, clearly not respecting what you have to say as not only a woman, but also as a Christian.

You did not care, because at the end of the day you were still Ivar’s wife and Ivar was a very violent man who was easy to insult. No one in Kattegat would ever be so bold as to publicly disrespect his wife.

After the official business was done you would go to the markets, or maybe just a stroll through the woods so you could have your own private little mass.

One day as you were preparing to take the body of Christ Ubbe came into the clearing.

‘I saw you heading out here.’ he said.

‘Are you going to make a habit of watching me, I doubt Margrethe would appreciate that.’ you smiled.

You already knew Ubbe would not tell Ivar what you were doing here, in all honesty it was great to be open about your religion with someone.

‘She is with Hvitserk today, she will not mind whatever I do.’ Ubbe dismissed.

‘Your views on marriage are so strange to me, even after all this time.’

‘I am sure your Christian marriage customs are just as odd to me.’ he smiled.

‘I guess you are right, besides I should get used to heathen marriage since I am married to one.’ you sighed as you sat on a fallen tree.

‘Not all marriages are like yours (Y/N), not all husbands are as cruel as Ivar.’ Ubbe said, sitting beside you.

‘I can see that, in the way other women sit by their husbands and speak so boldly to them...I wish I could speak with so much confidence.’ you said as you picked at the dead bark.

‘Why don’t you?’

‘Ivar would lose his temper.’

‘He’s not here is he? Ivar is miles and miles away, looking for warriors to fight against Lagertha.’ Ubbe grinned as he moved to stand in front of you.

‘Go on, yell at me...as if I were Ivar.’

You looked up at him, fighting a smile, you wanted to do this, it would be so nice to do this. Like a massive weight lifted off your chest.

‘Y-you are too mean.’ you said softly.

‘What was that wife? I cannot hear you.’ Ubbe said, mocking Ivar’s voice in a way that made you giggle like a child.

‘I said you are mean.’ you said louder this time.

‘And...you never let me choose our meals, or make any decisions of my own. I have to request what you order me to request, be where you tell me.’ you continued.

‘Keep going.’

‘I hate how you talk...you are always either whispering or yelling there is never an in between. I hate how everything I say and do is an insult to you!’ you shouted, standing up.

‘You always yell at me like a child, it’s humiliating!’

‘Let it all out!’ Ubbe encouraged.

‘I-I hate how you touch me!’ you yelled at the top of your lungs.

‘Woah.’ Ubbe said taken back a bit.

‘You are always too rough, it is disgusting and feels horrible!’

You took a deep breath and in that moment you realized you were yelling these things at Ubbe, things that he probably didn’t want to know at all.

‘I’m sorry.’ you squeaked out an apology.

‘It is fine.’ Ubbe smiled.

‘No that was unacceptable, I should not have told you that. That information should be kept private, I apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable.’ you said.

‘No it is fine really...but if I may ask, is Ivar really being too rough with you?’

‘...yes.’ you confessed.

‘Back home, I was so thankful for the church. No man ever laid hands on women of the church, we took vows of celibacy.’

‘My father told me about this. You wait until you are married to have sex.’ Ubbe said.

‘Nuns swear not to marry; their hearts, bodies and souls belong to their church and their God. I never wanted to marry at all Ubbe, but then the decision was made for me and even that forced marriage wasn’t Christlike.’ you said.

You sat back down and lowered your gaze to your lap, and chose to ignore the tears that hit your skirts.

‘Hey.’ Ubbe said as he kneeled in front of you and took your hand in his own.

‘I hate this marriage Ubbe, I hate everything about it. The man I’m married to, the wifely duties, the thralls, the estate...the sex. I hate the sex so much.’ you cried.

You cried for what like hours but was probably only a few minutes.

‘What uh...what does Ivar do? What makes the sex so bad, if you don’t ask mind me asking.’

‘Well...he comes in while I’m asleep, then he yells until I wake up, that’s when I take off his braces, then he’ll climb on top of me and have his way.’ you explained.

‘Have his way?’

You nodded.

‘Does he ever try to...make you feel good in anyway?’ he asked.

You shook your head.

‘If he has then I surely took no notice.’

‘Does he...ever kiss you?’

Again you shook your head.

‘Never.’

‘Never?’

‘Not once, a wife who has never felt her husband’s lips.’ you sighed.

‘What about touching you? Holding you? Anything?’ Ubbe asked.

‘What are you speaking of?’ you asked in complete confusion, you had no idea what your brother in law was talking about.

‘I mean has he ever treated your body the way it should be treated, touched you the way a woman needs.’

‘I don’t even know what you are talking about Ubbe.’ you admitted.

Ubbe looked down at your hands in his then he looked back up at you.

‘May I?’ he asked raising his hand.

You looked at him, confused but accepting.

He brought his hand up and lightly ran his fingers up and down your neck, barely touching you, just enough for you to feel it.

‘Has Ivar ever kissed you here?’

‘N-no, he’s bitten me a few times I think.’

‘How about here?’ he said, placing his hand on you collar bone.

You took his hand and spread it out over your neck, so it looked as if he was going to choke you.

‘He pins me down like this some nights when I try to back away from him.’ you said.

Ubbe shook his head with a sad sigh.

‘If this is what Ivar has been doing with you then you are no less a virgin now than you were before he chose you. You are a virgin until you enjoy the sex you are having.’ he said.

‘I hear the other women speak of sex so fondly, and though it is a sin I become envious of them.’

‘Would you like to...try it?’ Ubbe offered.

‘Try what?’

‘Sex, enjoyable sex.’ he clarified.

Oh.

Your face went red as you prepared to say no but the word wouldn’t come out. Deep in your heart you knew that you wanted to try having sex that you would enjoy, but it would be adulterous.

Ubbe was your brother in law no less, could God forgive such a sin? Then again was your marriage even real in the Lord’s eyes, it wasn’t done in his ways, maybe it could be premarital sex?

No! You could not do this, and you are going to tell Ubbe this!

‘Y-yes.’ you said so softly even you yourself barely heard it.

Ubbe smiles before he began leaning into you.

‘If you want me to stop just tell me.’ He said before he kissed you.

You never told him to stop, he touched you in ways Ivar never had and he was gentle. That day you truly felt like a woman, like you had truly lost your virginity.

Ubbe let you explore his body as well as your own, he would run his hand over your body to see which parts of you were most sensitive. You would touch him and try the things you’d hear the other women talk about and he would tell you if he liked it.

It was practically educational.

After that day your entire schedule had changed each afternoon you would send the thralls back to the estate to do their chores then you would meet Ubbe in the clearing.

The place where you once worshiped God had become the place where you would commit all kinds of sins with Ubbe. Everyday you would try something new, touching a new place, or a different position. You were learning what you like and Ubbe was always there and willing to help you discover new things.

You never wanted this to end, finally you were seeing a silver lining in the stormy cloud that was living among heathens. Now you truly had the freedom to do as you pleased, in a way that you never had back in your tiny kingdom.

In your heart you were still a Christian, but you were choosing to believe God was forgiving. It was so much harder to ignore the temptation in a place where no one sees anything they are doing as wrong.

Ubbe was also encouraging you to be more expressive and to make decisions for yourself, like choosing clothes you liked and speaking whenever you had something to say.

You still wondered what exactly Ubbe had told his wife about what was going on between the two of you, Margrethe didn’t seem too fond of you, but then again she never was to begin with.

All good things come to an end however, you had been told by an envoy that Ivar’s party was spotted about two days ride away.

With your husband’s inevitable return, you needed to make sure you and Ubbe were on the same page. You were fairly certain that none of the thralls were aware of your rendezvous, and you didn’t want Ubbe to let Ivar become aware of your affair.

‘Well...what are we trying today?’ Ubbe asked as he came into the clearing, already removing his tunic.

‘Nothing...Ubbe, Ivar is returning.’ you told him.

‘I heard, so if you have any other things you’d like to try out-’

‘Ubbe!’ you gasped.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘We can’t do this anymore, don’t you understand? Ivar is coming back and if he heard so much as a word of this he would kill us both.’ you explained.

Ubbe walked up to you and took your hand in his, same as he had weeks ago, when all this had started.

‘I would never tell him, and I would never let him hurt you (Y/N)...not ever.’

‘What can you do to stop him Ubbe? The larger part of the Great Army follow him, he has trusted spies walking all over Kattegat, the only reason they haven’t caught us is because he took the best of them with him. He has the men, the money and the mind to kill anyone he pleases.’

He didn’t have an argument for that, everything you had said was true. Ivar was crazy, the way he thought was unlike any other man in this world, and he had the means to do as he pleased to whoever pleased.

‘I will hold the memories of all we have done close to my heart forever, and I pray that God will forgive all of my sins. I must prepare for my husband’s return, this will be the last time I come here, with Ivar returning I will be being watched just as before.’ you said.

‘(Y/N).’ Ubbe said, placing a kiss on your forehead.

‘Even if you are right, remember that you are his wife, and you are a free woman. If he ever hurts you then you have the right to ask for divorce, Bjorn is the King now. The army is bound to him by their armrings, do not just let Ivar rule over you anymore.’ he advised.

You knew you could never take that advice, it would get you killed, but still you nodded. If only to make Ubbe feel better.

‘If this is our last evening together, then let us enjoy it.’ he said as he lowered himself onto his knees and pushed up your skirts.

You gasped in surprise before you let your head fall back in pleasure, deciding to enjoy this last day of freedom before you returned to your chains.

That day you were surprised you could even walk back to the estate, your legs were still so weak. Honestly all you wanted to do once you were home was bathe and sleep, but that wasn’t an option, you had to prepare the home for Ivar tell the cooks to prepare his favorite meal and tell the healers to have all of Ivar’s usual treatments ready, and give the thralls a few last minute tasks.

As tired as you were sleep was evasive, tomorrow you would have to go back to walking on the eggshells of Ivar’s temper. You weren’t sure when you fell asleep, but when you were woken up by a thrall you were still dead tired.

One of the girls picked out a dress for you, the brown dress, Ivar had picked it out for you when he first brought you here, it was his favorite dress to see you in.

You hated it.

‘Not that one, give the blue one, and I want the silver jewelry.’ you said.

‘Mistress, the master is returning today.’ the girl said.

‘I know, give me the blue dress and the silver jewelry.’ you said firmly.

You were filled with dread even as you were bathed you were meant to be at the docks, waiting with the other wives to see your husband’s safe return. Ivar didn’t like you wearing bright colors, he said it drew other men to look at you in a way no man other than he had any right to.

As you walked to the square you did see a few men spare you a glance, but you didn’t shy away from the attention. You really like this dress, you had it commissioned by one of the best dressmakers in Kattegat.

All the women and children around you were buzzing with excitement, ready to see their beloved husbands and fathers returning home safely. How you wished you could have felt the same way they all did, but how could you?

‘Please, My Lord...be with me in my time of troubles, for one is approaching.’ you whispered as you saw the party approaching the square, Ivar’s cart right in front.

Still as a stone you stone you stood as the other women ran to their husbands’ carts and wagons, even when your husband’s cart was right in front of you and the thralls were going to open the door you remained still.

Ivar’s eyes landed on you, his beautiful wife, with shining eyes, but they lost some of their happiness when he saw what you were wearing.

‘Wife...what are you wearing?’ he asked as he was helped out of the cart, leaning against it while waiting for the thrall inside to hand him his crutch.

You didn’t recognize this thrall.

‘Who is she?’ you asked instead of answering.

Ivar glared, he noticed that you had not only avoided his question, but had even gone so far as to question him.

‘This is Freydis, a thrall I received from the Earl, given to me in good faith.’ he said.

You looked the slave over, and saw her beautiful face and even in thin ragged clothes you could tell she had a gorgeous body. Even now as they were reuniting with their wives some were looking at the thrall at Ivar’s side.

‘Of course...good faith.’ you said plainly.

Ivar didn’t like this tone of yours, not at all. He had just returned after being away for a month and he was ready to have his wife run up to cry how much she had missed him. While away he managed to forgive her not being sadder to see him, maybe she didn’t truly believe that he was really going, but surely now that he’d been gone so long she should be happy to see him.

She should be wearing his favorite dress for her, she should be kissing him the way the other wives did their husbands. Instead she was in this ridiculous blue dress that she no doubt bought with his money, and questioning his faithfulness.

‘Come, I wish to see the house, make sure it as it was when I left...since my wife has clearly changed.’ he snarled, looking you dead in the eye.

‘I apologize if I am behaving strange...Husband.’ you apologized, as you would have before, but you didn’t lower your head.

You looked him in the eye as you spoke, something you could rarely do before, but now it felt easier.

Ivar instructed the thralls to remove his items from the cart and have them brought to the estate while you, he and Freydis walked. He said he wanted the new thrall to become better acquainted with the house since she’d apparently be your personal thrall.

At that you had no reaction, and Ivar noticed it.

He did not like the way you were acting, he had brought you a thrall as a gift, he had safely returned home with even more warriors to fight against his mother’s killer. Ivar had missed her from the moment he got in the cart, and he couldn’t wait to be back in her arms.

Even when the Earl had gifted him with Freydis he knew it was meant to be a bed warmer, but even a beautiful woman like her could compare to his wife in his eyes. Freydis spoke words of encouragement, about how his deformity was a gift from the Gods and how he was greater for having them. Those words had truly touched him, but they were not what he needed to hear.

When he thinks back on the day he first saw his wife in that unimportant kingdom and saw her standing up to a king on behalf of the other women he admired her bravery, then when he met her in his tent and she figured out his little life or death mind game he was impressed by her intelligence.

He knew she was the perfect wife when he asked her what she thought of him and she spoke of how she feared him she said nothing about his legs. She spoke to him as she would have spoken to a man standing nine feet tall man, not some cripple who couldn’t chase her if she tried to run.

Even once they were married she never mentioned his legs or let her eyes linger on them the way others always did. She treated him like a man and he loved her for that, for the way she feared and respected him.

Now she was treating him as if he wasn’t anything important to her, even the fear in her eyes were gone.

Something had to have happened while he was gone, and if it was the last thing he did he was going to find out what it was.

#vikings imagine #ivar the boneless #ivar x reader #ivar lothbrok #Ubbe Lothbrok #ubbe x reader #THE ONE HE CHOSE #finally updated #unhappy marriage #cheating

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bluepines · 4 years ago

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Genshin Impact, Discussion of the Pyro Element Part 1

I was going to do geo next but I realized there are 7 pyro characters and soon to be 8 and more because mihoyo loves pyro, I decided to go over them. But a lot of these characters have a lot to go over so I will be spliting this into two parts, Mondstadt first and Liyue second.

This is the same deal as the anemo discussion, this is not a discussion of gameplay or playstyle, just each character’s lore.

This contains character and story spoilers for Genshin Impact.

With that, let’s get started

I want to start off with Amber, infamous for a few reasons but I want to start off with her since she is the first pyro character of 7 that we meet.

Amber is the Outrider of the Knights of Favonius, better put, the only Outrider of the Order. Amber is a very energetic woman and very passionate as a knight and citizen of Mondstadt. There isn’t a ton in Amber’s stories other than her story about her relationship with her grandfather.

Amber’s grandfather was a mercenary from Liyue Harbor but went to Mondstadt and joined the Knights after he was saved by one of their medics. Amber’s grandfather founded the Outrider order in the Knights and Amber would always watch him train them, then in the evening practice what she saw him taught. Then 4 years before present day Teyvat, Amber’s grandfather just left. Not saying why or to where. After that slowly the order of Outriders fell apart until it had no one.

Amber is now the only Outrider in the Knights now, she got her vision after she felt lost since she couldn’t find her grandfather. She read the book of fables from her quest and it ignited the fire in her that she had to forge her own path and “there has to be something only I can do.”

Amber is one of the best people to look to when looking at one detail most pyro characters have, passion or vibrant personalities. Pyro is the element of the god of war but many of them are more passionate than forces in a battle.

---

Next up, let’s talk about Diluc.

Okay, where to start with Diluc. A lot about him is simplified to “daddy issues,” so I’m going to try to explain Diluc as accurately as I can in a timely manner for the sake of your time.

Diluc is the owner of Dawn Winery, just from looking at him, most people can tell there’s something more to him. Diluc has a spoken distaste to the Knights of Favonius, but 4 years before present day Teyvat he was a member of the Knights of Favonius. He even became Calvary Captain at the young age of 14. Everything put together from Diluc’s childhood makes him sound like a knightly prodigy. A vision at the age of ten, a father who encouraged him to be a knight, and even becoming a captian at a young age.

When Diluc was a child, the exact age is unknown, his father, Crepus, found Kaeya abandoned on the road near Dawn Winery. The two were practically raised as brother and shared a close bond. On Diluc’s 18th birthday while his father and he were on their way back to the winery, they were attacked by Ursa the Drake. His father fought when Diluc was unable to and the power her used, a delusion, ultimately back fired at the end of the fight killing him.

After that, more things are told to Diluc that changes his life and world view even further. Kaeya tells him about his own past and how he ended up in Mondstadt and under Crepus’ care. Diluc lashes out and the both almost engage in a fight, but it doesn’t happen. When Diluc went to the Knights of Favonius head quarters he was told to “conceal the truth.”

Diluc then left the Knights of Favonius, his vision, and Mondstadt itself. Summarized, Diluc spent the next few years trying to learn more about delusions and learning about it’s ties to the Fatui. Eventually, Diluc does return to Mondstadt and even still protects Mondstadt in the night. There’s more to still touch on, but that’s for a different discussion.

---

Next let’s discuss Klee

Klee is known as the Spark Knight of the Knights of Favonius. Klee is a very eccentric young girl and destructive despite her best intentions. Klee is often getting into trouble by causing explosions and even though she doesn’t mean too most of the time, she often spends a lot of time in solitary confinement.

Klee was entrusted to the Knights of Favonius three years before present day Teyvat just before her parents left on an adventure. Klee’s mother is the vibrant adventurer and writer of the Teyvat Travel Guide, Alice. Just from what little we know about Alice the parallels between her and Klee are there. Like mother, like daughter. To Klee the Knights of Favonius are like her family, but her mother is still her greatest role model. Klee has a very close bond with Albedo from the close bond he and Alice had. He was told to “treat her like a sister” and that’s how the pair that seem like total opposites, because they technically are, happened.

How Klee gained her vision is somewhat known. The event, where she was testing out a new bomb but it made her workshop turn to ash, is known, but it can be assumed it’s from the passion she has to making bombs even despite the failures.

---

Next up, Bennett

Bennett is the leader of Benny’s Adventure Team, and sadly, it’s only member. Bennett’s gag or shtick in Genshin is his very unfortunate bad lack, just the term bad luck is a bit of an understatement. Bennett used to have members of his adventure team but they quickly left after instances of being affected by Bennett’s bad swing with luck. Though despite that, Bennett is still a pretty happy person. Even when his adventures don’t turn out the best, he’s still optimistic. Like how in the Windblume story event after he and Razor get freed from the cage he isn’t angry with Razor and even gave Razor his food while they were there.

Bennett was raised in the adventurers guild by the older men there, whom he calls all of them “dad.” Bennett is a good kid, I say this with 100% bias. He’s close friends with Fishcl, one of her only friends really, same for Razor.

How Bennett got his vision is pretty sad, he was on an adventure and was bleeding out but he kept going to reach the destination. In the end there was nothing there and in his emotions and pain from his injuries, passed out. When he woke up the wounds were cauterized and he had a vision in his hand. Part of me assumes his scars on his arms are from this day, but Bennett is a determined kid who despite the challenges still tries his absolute best.

---

A lot of this is summarized due to the sheer length this was if I didn’t. There’s a lot more to some of these characters I wanted to get into but simply didn’t want to make this too lengthy. I will do part 2 with the Liyue pyro characters, but not right away so give it some time. But thank you for reading! If there’s anything you’d like to comment or pitch in, say something.

#genshin impact #pyro #diluc genshin impact #bennett genshin impact #amber genshin impact #genshin klee

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blogsupitssam · 5 years ago

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Blood Bounded

Chapter 7: “Anguish in Your Eyes”

Previously: Chapter 6

Taglist: @drinkwinebymeasure @mrskamilxh @drakexnadira

(It’s been a while)

Sweat soaked over her brows, laying down on a surprisingly comfy bed, the lights in the room are dimmed. Her eyes slowly opening from darkness.

Vision becomes more clear as Samantha blinks a few times, having the will to turn her head, looking at her surroundings.

“ What just happened?” In her mind, trying to remember what happened before she went into darkness.

“Samantha! Wait!” Jax’s voice was in her head. Then remembering the man she fought, his content of dust down on the ground, Samantha lowering her arm down, her eyes’ vision goes blurry. “Wha-?”

Samantha shakes her head from reminiscing, “God, did I do all that? I barely remember all this.” She says to herself, her hand rubbing her forehead, slowly getting up, but the sudden heaviness in her weight felt like she’s being pulled down, so she lay herself back, groaning from some headache she has.

Then, a door flies open, Jax and Lily comes in to check on the young vampire. Jax kneels by the bed just on her side.

“Hey are you ok?” He asks with a frown, a sad expression of worry.

Samantha shakes her head, giving her attention to the asian vampire, “I don’t know. I feel heavy in my head. What happened?” She asks, trying to get up, but groans from her grogginess.

Lily strides over to her to help her out, “Hey, take it slow. No rush.” The gamer vampire putting her hand on top of Samantha’s and placing a hand on her back.

Samantha gives a small nod, flinging her legs on the edge, Jax putting a hand on her shoulder, “Do you remember what happened before you passed out?”

The vampire pup shakes her head, “Not really much, I just remember fighting those gangs of vampires. I saw you got pinned and I was saving you, but then my vision goes blurry, I saw …. I saw the man I fought who was gonna kill you. I stopped him and then I all of a sudden saw his ashes….. Did I kill him?” Samantha frowns, trying to say everything she can from her memory.

“You saved me, yes, but you…. You seemed different when you killed him. I somehow saw…. I felt some aura around you before you killed him. You were different. You killed him, not even with your hands exactly, but somehow with some force..” Jax shakes his head, sighing with a calm voice in his response.

“I did that?” Samantha looks down on her hand, some bits of ash in her hands still linger on her skin.

Lily comes into the conversation, “I came as fast as I could to help, but I saw you already on the ground, Jax trying to help you up, i’m sorry I was late, I try to call for help…. It took-”

“Yes, you just had to leave, thinking you have enough time to do everything.” A voice coming from the entrance of the door.

All three young vampires turn their heads to see, Samantha eyes widen, “Kamilah…?” She says, but her eyes widen because of her cold expression she on her.

“Kamilah I can explain.” Lily stands up, a slight frown forming, then looking back at Samantha before looking at the Senior vampire.

“Give me one good reason why I should tolerate this?” Kamilah slowly takes a few steps towards them, her arms folded in her chest. Adrian is behind her, but steps by her to see Samantha. “Samantha, are you alright?” He asks, his mouth forming downward.

The not so newborn vampire nods as her previous boss walks over to her.

“Hey look, I just had to think fast. I thought if me and Griff go off to get the weapons. Call you guys for help and get back to backup Sam and Jax.” Lil bows her head down in guilt, her hand under her other, places on her side.

Kamilah sighs, giving a look at Samantha, her eyes show she’s upset, but also guilt, “Do you think you have all the time? What if you just had just seconds?” She asks, her eyes haven’t shown any sign of crimson.

Samantha thought she’s not angry, surprisingly not yet.

Jax gets up on his feet, taking a step towards the blood queen, “Look, I made her do it. I gave her the order. It was my fault. I wish I told them to stay, maybe even none of this would’ve happened. I was reckless.” He says, looking at her, feeling sure and showing no fear.

The older vampire woman turns her head to look at Jax, “You think you can do everything yourself? You think you and Samantha are enough to kill a group all on your own? Look Jax, I know you can fight, but Samantha shouldn’t have stay, she could fight, but she couldn’t be able to fight multiples at once yet.” Kamilah takes a few steps to pass Jax and toward Samantha.

Samantha looks up to look at her queen, “I’m fine Kamilah, they didn’t get me. I just need more practice.” She said, shaking her head.

“You know you’re not yet capable of fighting on your own, especially a group that could surround you.” She responds, then turning her head to look at Jax, “Don’t ever think you can do everything on your own. Samantha needs someone to watch her back.” She says, her eyes crease downward, a small expression of anger.

The clanless leader sighed, “I am more than capable to fight on my own and watching her back.” His voice slightly raising up.

Kamilah scoffs, “Yet you got pinned while Samantha was on her own, you telling me.”

Adrian steps close to Kamilah, “We should understand Jax, he did all he can, I can understand you though sister. He shouldn’t be the only one to fight and watch Samantha’s back. At least he’s doing all he can and the clanless is also was in his mind, their safety.” The over 200 year old vampire says, trying to be neutral with both Jax and Kamilah.

Kamilah sighs in defeat, “Alright, I will let this slide. What matters is no one got hurt…. Not even Samantha… I apologize Jax for my… outburst… I appreciate your concern for Samantha..” The egyptian vampire turns herself to look at Samantha, her arm lifts up, her fingers ghosting over Samantha’s cheek, thumb stroking her chin.

Jax gives an accepting nod, “I understand Kamilah. I promise to do better.”

Samantha gives a small smile, looking her in the eyes, hazel looking at brown. Kamilah’s eyes have form warmth, but also guilt, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you. I don’t want to fail you.”

Samantha shakes her head, leaning against her touch, “Don’t worry, I'm here. I got Jax and Lily. I can also hold my own. I’m glad you’re here at least.” She reassures her with a soft voice, making the vampire queen’s guilt disappear.

“But let’s think on important matters now. Samantha, Lily and Jax mention of your powers? Did it get manifested?” Adrian cuts in, giving his attention to the bloodkeeper.

Samantha sighs, trying to remember, ”I don’t really know. When I saw Jax almost got killed, I thought I wouldn't be able to save him, I tried to. Then I felt….. Something well up inside…. I don’t know It’s something came out of me. This power. I felt Jax’s fear as well as the vampires we fought…. I felt their need to kill.” She answers, breathing slowly, trying to calm herself down from stress.

Adrian strokes his chin in thought, “Hm.. Somehow your emotions might’ve awaken or trigger it. Before you we’re even turned, you had psychic abilities to see through past memories. Maybe your abilities somehow developed. You have powers similar to Serafine and Jameson.”

“I think this could be still useful, if she can somehow control them and if Rheya really is back, we can take her on more easy than with Gaius.” Lily comes to the conversation.

Adrian sighs, “Well it’s possible, we just need to have Samantha the help she needs. Besides...” He takes out his phone, looking through the screen with a smirk. “Serafine just arrive at the airport, we should meet her there.” He says before typing to send back a text.

“Great, it’s been a while. She can help Samantha and even it be her chance to tour Cali. I really gotta hang out with her again!” Lily responds excitedly.

Jax nods, “I’ll let the clanless know i’ll be off, I need to tell Nikhil to watch over for me. Come on Lily.” He gestures Lily to come. Lily gives Samantha a quick hug, her expression changes, giving her a hope things will go better kind.

“I should go contact a driver to bring us to the LAX airport.” Adrian takes a hold of his phone, most likely still texting Serafine with a smirk on his face as he walks out of the room.

Then it was Kamilah and Samantha alone, both looking down and trying to think what to say.

Kamilah sits by Samantha on the edge of the bed, “Are you really ok Samantha?” She asks, her eyes changed already to a worried expression.

“I just feel different. I hope to take control of my power soon. I… I fear to hurt Adrian, Lily, Jax or…. Or even you the most....” She looks down on her hands, trying to wipe off the dry ash remains on her hands, shaking. Heart slightly racing.

The vampire Queen takes a hold of her hand, making Samantha feel at ease a little, “You will have difficult challenges ahead, you may have…. Accidents that can happen…. But I know your intentions are good. I will protect you, I can handle so much… I know this may be hard. I cannot imagine this … burden you have, but know I'll always be by your side. When Serafine helps you and you can control your powers, you can do so much more. Serafine can do it and you can as well. I believe in you.”

Kamilah looks deep into Samantha's eyes, her eyes full of determination, becoming an optimist thanks to Samantha. The Older Vampire brings her hand up, caressing the younger vampire’s cheek softly, giving Samantha warmth feel going down.

Samantha nods, seeing the reassurance, making her mind gets clouded with the words of Kamilah. Somehow her words makes Samantha into some trance, making her forget. She still wonders how she does it, but it made her fall in love with her more

The bloodkeeper leans forward to her, catching her lips to her into a slow kiss. Warmth forming in their stomachs. Kamilah returning the kiss, slipping her other arm around her waist. Samantha hands on her shoulders to her neck, pulling her closer, taking away the space between them. Their bodies presses together as Kamilah’s hand on her cheek falls to circle the young vampire’s body with both of her arms, pulling her close. Their hearts beat together, feeling it to each other.

Kamilah gives a few more pecks before sliding them down to her chin and then her neck, making the young vampire bloodkeeper gasps softly. The Blood Queen hums against her neck while still kissing, then moving to the side just under her ear, giving it a gentle suck. Making Samantha moan slightly, shifting her body with Kamilah to press her hips against her, her legs wrapping around her hips over her legs.

One of Kamilah’s arms slide down to her lower back, a groan escaping her throat. Her lips leaving the spot under Samantha’s ear makes a small mark, nipping it there when her eyes bleed red.

Samantha’s moans escaping her lips, one of her arms rise up, her hand on her head in her brown hair, strands of them in between her fingers, pulling her closer to her to keep going on. Eyes flashes red from the feeling of pleasure.

After Kamilah nibbles on her spot, she gives it a small lick to soothe it till she brings her lips back up to her Firefly, kissing her again, but harder this time and deeper, bringing them both down on the mattress.

Samantha pulls away slightly, just inches away, “How do you always get me into this? I think you have the ability to seduce.” She jokes, making the Senior vampire chuckle softly.

“Nonsense darling.“ Kamilah brings one of her hands, slipping it under her sweater, leaving Samantha shivering in anticipation. “It’s just you. I have more experience and I could do this to you all day.” She responds with a wide grin as her hand goes over her laced breast, making the vampire pup whine in a way of begging. “Please ...?” Samantha asks, her eyes hooded, a sarcastic pout forms on her lips.

Kamilah’s hand then goes under her jeans, teasing her, “As you wish.”Kamilah obeys, starts pressing her fingers inside. Samantha mouth opens, “Nnngh” A fire forming inside them.

“Come on guys, whatever is holding you up you better hurry up! Adrian and Jax are waiting for us!” Lily voice coming from outside the room call out to them both. Making them both jump in surprise, but at least no one didn’t come in.

The couple snickers, shifting a little away from each other but their hold around each other still. “Well I guess we should go. I wouldn’t want them to wait and Serafine to stand in the airport alone. We’ll have more than this later.” Kamilah smiles, looking at her, giving a firm kiss as her arms around her, her fingers under Samantha slowly slip off.

With a quick motion, Samantha grabs her wrist, bringing it up in front of them. Kamilah giving a surprise expression, “What are you-?” She asks till Samantha pushes her wrist, her fingers to the Queen’s lips.

After realization, she complies, she licks her own fingers, clean, tasting and making her hum in delight. “Now you’re really making want more soon…. And I mean very.” Kamilah states, grinding as her fangs show, her eyes fully red already.

“You’ll get more of that if you promise me let me next time.” Samantha responds back, her eyes bleed red, eyes almost like they’re smiling as her mouth forms one.

They give one more lingering pressing kiss before untangling themselves from each other, and getting off the bed. “Let's go then.” Kamilah nodding at her, slipping her hands into Samantha before leaving the room, meeting their friends to the car.

After an hour drive, everyone gets out of the car when the vehicle parked in front of the airport building. They went inside, finding Serafine. Their attention then on a familiar woman, tan skin, curly brown hair, wearing her outfit with a couple luggage in hand.

“Ah, if it isn’t my favorite vampire gang yeah!” The french vampire waves at them, walking over to them.

“Nice seeing you again Serafine. I knew eventually we’ll see you again.” Adrian smiles brightly, Serafine gives a warm hug to him.

Jax gives a wide smirk, “Hello again Serafine, nice meeting you again.” After Serafine lets go of Adrian, she steps towards him patting him on the cheek. “You always a fine specimen.” Then gives her attention to the purple haired Vampire, “Ahh Lily, lovely seeing you again. I hoped to see you again.” She kisses both of her cheeks.

“Fancy seeing you again. I’m really looking forward to us hanging out again.”Lily responds, making the french vampire giggle “Hopefully you learn another trick or two from me yeah?” She says, then turning her head to great Kamilah.

“Ah Dear Kamilah, always a pleasure.” She greets the egyptian vampire with a hug.

“Always to be Serafine.” She responds, hugging her back, then Serafine notices Samantha standing right by Kamilah, coming to wrap her arms around her.

“Samantha, delightful to see you again after a long while. Now a vampire yeah! Well a pup, but you will get there. I hope you’re holding onto dear Kamilah have you no?” She grins, glancing at both at the couple.

Samantha chuckles at her, the two letting go of Serafine, “I’m getting used to it, but I feel really great. I kept Kamilah in my clutches as I always have been even for the past months together. I am happy with her thank you, she’s been good to me.”

Kamilah quirks her mouth up, slipping her hand in Samantha’s with a small squeeze. Samantha gives a small smile. Serafine glancing at them with a thought in her head.

“Will there be a wedding in place soon?” Serafine’s smile becomes wider, teasing.

Everyone's eyes widen in shock, even the couple themselves,”Whoa, you guys already move in together. You guys moving to the next level?” Lily teases with Serafine, making Jax snicker and Adrian just giving a playful smirk at the couple.

“Uhh, well...ummm..” Samantha looks at Kamilah. Seeing her needing backup, Kamilah rolls her eyes, but forms a grin, looking at Serafine, “Now is not the time of tying ourselves down, but...” She glances at her vampire, her eyes like they’re smiling back at her when her mouth formed into a smirk, then looks back at the 700 year old vampire, “Maybe sooner or later, when the right time comes… I hope it to one day to do it with Samantha.” She responds, making Samantha’s cheeks form a blush, her free hand rubbing her cheek, her lips pressed together.

Then Kamilah lets go of her hand, then wraps an arm around her shoulders to ease her.

“Can I be your best man then?” Jax sarcasm comes in, Lily starts laughing, “Man I love you two, you guys are so cute. You guys are Samilah.” Lily states, being her gamer self, like she loves making ship names with her favorite game characters.

Samantha mouth gaps open, “Lily did you serious make ship name for me and Kamilah?” She asks, her expression not in amusement.

“What? You two have become my favs.” She giggles, making Kamilah roll her eyes.

“For I will never truly understand your references and how you talk sometimes. Putting our names together sounds so not proper english when you make words.” Kamilah slowly and gently let’s go of Samantha, but the two are just inches apart.

Adrian takes a step forward, “Lets leave at that guys, now that Serafine is here, we should bring her and let her settle. Also later if she wants, we can show her around LA as she trains Samantha.”

“Yes! We seriously need a night out together and she could teach me more of her ways of wooing.” Lily says, everyone remembering when they all had a night together back in Greece.

Serafine softly chuckles at the gamer vampire, “Slow down, we will have plenty of time. I need to take care of Samantha for her abilities yeah. Then after we shall drink together and share stories.” She smiles, looking at everyone.

“Please, I would actually need one soon.” Jax states, then looks at Serafine’s luggages, “Need help with those?” He offers. Serafine nods appreciatively, handing him both in his hands with ease.

Adrian takes his phone out, “Come now everyone, the driver should be waiting for us.” He says walking off, everyone follows him out.

Samantha and Serafine following behind them, while they’re not listening, Serafine leans close to the bloodkeeper.

“Are you doing well Samantha? Adrian told me about what happened.” Her expression into a frown.

Samantha sighs softly, “I’m trying, I really need help, you the one i’ve thought so far that can help me with this. I just hope I can control it… It’s been difficult not to think of such things.”

The french vampire places a hand on her shoulder, “I am here now, here to do whatever I can so I can help you. I just have my concern and fear for you… You’re in danger.” Her voice soft and low.

Samantha nods, “I know….”

#kamilah sayeed #mc x kamilah #adrian raines #jax matsuo #lily spencer #serafine dupont #bloodbound fanfic #bloodbound mc

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