#Gilded Jinx

[primreaper]

Jinx’s release date was yesterday so I decided to make a small doodle of one my favorite skins ✨

[mollysunder]

Gilded Jinx Looks Like What I Thought Chembarons Would Look Like.

Look at her, she looks like an 80s punk pirate queen with bolder coloring than both her gilded and chembaron counterparts, complete with bright makeup (by Victorian standards) and big hair. Zaun is supposed to be set apart from Piltover by the unmistakable creativity and innovation expressed through a loud punk aesthetic that it's inhabitants are meant to embody, at least the younger inhabitants do. The higher up the food chain you go in Zaun, the punk aesthetic filters out with only the Victorian base remaining.

(Finn's a bit of the exception but his aesthetic is kind of supposed to coincide with his self-serving nature rather than a reflection of Zaun's culture.)

On one hand you could argue that it's some kind of social commentary where these violent gangleaders are adopting the aesthetic of their oppressors to take on similar roles. But even chembarons that are antagonistic to Piltover, and frankly just hate Piltover for what it's done to them and their families still take on Piltovan aesthetic. If it isn't a straightforward Victorian aesthetic, then it's more of a fusion of modern business clothing and evening wear. This goes for characters like Silco, Renata, and Corina Veraza.

(Shout out to Silco for keeping it real and stitching his pants instead of getting new ones.)

Zaun, at least in League, is it's own city-state with its own distinct culture, but so often these leaders don't really embody that (once again maybe social commentary, but that explanation only goes so far). Honestly their designs are so dedicated to Piltover aesthetics sometimes it doesn't even communicate their wealth! The thing most of them are all about! If someone has to be in rags for me to know they're rich they're not doing it right.

The chembarons don't all have to be like that, but it seems like they're usually designed to just look like evil Piltovans. The only unifying part of their design that doesn't borrow from Piltover and makes them distinct is their asymmetrical styling and the fact they all either have scars or body mods to accommodate their disabilities, or both.

And here's Jinx in her obnoxiously loud outfit ready for the runway! Yeah her money's new, what are you gonna do about it? She's the right mix loud fun 80s mess with her fishnets and and ripped mesh covered in a fancy jacket lined with ermine fur. It would have been so easy to give her hexgem earrings, but no, they're in chemtech green, hooked with actual screws. The coloring alone says to me the designers couldn't let go of Jinx's Zaunite origins because her character defines Zaun as much as Zaun defines her. You'd almost think she was making fun of Piltover if she weren't wearing her look so well, if wasn't so dedicated to playful asymmetry where here shoes are slightly different, her coattails slant in two different style. Her whole look is so customized to be Jinx sans Piltover, it's just so her. The Gilded universe is supposed to be a universe where everybody's living a comfortably ritzy and safe Piltovan lifestyle and Jinx’s missing an arm. The prosthetic looks great!

The chembarons are supposed be a coalition of leaders in Zaun. Sure, they're gangleaders, but a lot of rich people politics is gang politics. At least some of them should understand that to grow past the shadow of Piltover, they need to embrace the strengths of Zaun, not co-opt Piltie patterns. Gilded Jinx's design understands that so well. If you put these pictures in a line up and asked me to find the chembaron, my safest choice would be Jinx.

Tldr: Chembarons in League of Legends and Arcane aren't very distinct from their Piltovan counterparts. The only real difference is their visible disabilities, body mods, and asymmetry (maybe goth vibes too). Gilded Jinx is a great example of what chembarons could be, leaders with loud and eccentric vibes that actually matches the distinct culture of Zaun itself.

[madisoncounty]

Kelli O'Hara as Aurora Fane in S2E08 of THE GILDED AGE, 'In Terms of Winning and Losing'

[j-1-nx]

I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that I hate Caitvi with a passion, however. The people on tiktok talking about how "Catradora walked so Caitvi could run" don't realize that mine and Vi's relationship and story is more similar to Catra and Adora than her and Caitler's ever was- only difference is that we're sisters and not romantically involved.

Also Catradora ran so Caitvi could trip and fall down a well, but that's an opinion so

[soraeia]

Pouting very hard because while there are dances and parties happening to celebrate her favourite season, she is stuck in hiding.

[hexhomos]

Jayce/Silco mirroring & other stuff Ive noticed

Starting with the big season 2 opener as pointed out by sage-nebula:

Zaun/Piltover figureheads rushing to save a loved one with their respective creations (Shimmer/Hextech); said creations leading to corruption and a loss of control. Silco frequently referred to as the Industrialist, leading Zaun into a new age, Jayce is posited as the Innovator, making Piltover more profitable than it's ever been. Misery following both choices.

Jayce's endgame look shares a lot of visual aspects with Silco's main coat, incl. the red gilded lapels and all those straps. His body is also being corrupted by hextech into unnatural scar tissue. Scars are more prominent in the wild rift model even if the colors are a bit off from the show itself (2nd pic)

(Text referring to Jayce's new legendary skin, dealing with arcane act3)

And if you remember, these two actually had a pretty big scene in season 1, which echoes the above sentiments and has Jayce pushing a negotiation for Zaun's independence - at this point in time, it's the closest we got to Silco's dream being realized before the big meltdown:

This feels like a really interesting scene now in the context of how he was asked to sacrifice jinx. And now jayce's entire world outlook is shaped by constant sacrifices to avoid impending doom.

There are a few more twisted parallels to this too; silco killing vander, jayce killing viktor in the name of preserving their ideals - vander being mutated by singed, again singed mixing viktor's blood with vanderwick in the act 3 teaser.

Previously I had compared the ep6 jayvik kill circumstances with vander's blinding rage leading him to try and drown silco in the river but I don't think the parallels are so clear anymore. It's looking like the further we go into the story, the more jayce/viktor change into a blur that mixes vander/silco's motivations together - viktor's weird, corrupted peacekeeper front inside the cult and how he connects to vander's memories admiring the man that he was in life. Jayce feeling in the flesh that the only way forward demands firsthand pain and power and sacrifice, not placidity.

Interested to see where act3 viktor goes. Vander working with enforcers = Viktor working with noxus I guess 😭😭 well I just hope they beat eachother 1v1 style. and I hope he ends up following through with his pledge for Zaun's independence

[misswynters]

* . misswynters Arcane masterlist

here is the list of all my works!

note l it would greatly appreciated if you would not only just like, but also reblog & give me feedback. thank you!

last updated: December 1, 2024

smut (18+) / suggestive (s) / fluff (f) / angst (a)

Viktor

Broken & whole | The Noble Daughter (18+) | A Noxian Christmas (f)

His most prized possession (18+) | Scientific purposes (s) | Christmas Present (18+)

drabbles.

Jinx

XOXO (18+) | having a gf who’s touchy and affectionate (f) |

Lil Daredevils with big hearts (makes an appearance) |

The Idol Star |

drabbles.

spending time with ekko, her and your twin girls (f) |

Violet (Vi)

Distrust | Fighting fire (s)

Caitlyn

Cold Heart (s) | Impenetrable Fortress (f) | Princess Treatment (f, s) |

Ekko

Gilded Cage : part two, part three (s, f) | Ma Meilleure Amour (f) | Royal Harbinger | Boy Savior | Lil Daredevils with big hearts (f) | Zaun’s pride | Ekko eating you out (18+) | Pillow princess (s) | Academic Rivals (18+,s) | A love is born (f)

drabbles.

Ekko and heimerdinger being nerdy while you sleep (f)

Ekko being protective while you are expecting (f)

A lazy and calm day with ekko (f) | Tag, you’re it! (f) |

Ekko rewinding time to save you | Childhood Besties (f)

Getting into a slight argument while heavily pregnant (f) |

Spending time with him, jinx and your twin girls (f)

Alone in the rumble as you died in his arms (a) |

Getting Married | Drunken |

Headcanons with ekko: as your bf | your husband

Sevika

Brothel (18+) | Strapped up (18+) | Steel and sunshine (f)

Headcanon: sevika as you’re partner | Warrior’s bond (s): part two , part three (18+) |

Found Family (f) | More than a transaction | hands off

drabbles.

Ambessa/sevika ignoring you in public, affectionate in private (s)

Ambessa

Warrior’s bond (s): part two , part three (18+) |

drabbles.

Ambessa spoiling her girly s/o | Ambessa/sevika being cold in public, affectionate in private (s)

Mel

Elegance is key |

drabbles.

Spoiled Rotten | Her Golden Shield |

Seb

drabbles.

Him complaining to you after a days worth of work |

Silco

Desperately trying to find something more (s) | Possesive

Lest

Smoke and kisses |

Claggor (au)

Big Bear (f) | Underneath (s)

Arcane characters

Reacting to you: being a vs model (s) | Patching them up (f)

Other…

Misswynters Christmas series 2024

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if you would like to be added to my taglist for arcane or anything else let me know!

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[wingedshadowfan]

some thoughts about the caitvi breakup scene

i saw ppl pointing out what looks like a tear running down caitlyn's nose after her and vi's fight w/ sevika and jinx (when she finally stops hitting the wall w/ her rifle and puts her forehead to it) and it could've been just sweat, but here's why i think it wasn't:

it's bcuz vi took the choice away from her.

we all know caitlyn's parents had been keeping her in a gilded cage since she was a child. we see this symbolically in her conversation with jayce when he gets kicked out of the academy after the explosion - he's outside in the rain, but she's within the gates of the kiramman estate, under an umbrella, protected, hidden. she tells him her parents don't allow her to talk to him anymore but she doesn't care. they're friends.

we know cassandra didn't approve of caitlyn's choice to become an enforcer either (we assume caitlyn had to fight for it and her family tried to stop her). even after that "win", her mother kept meddling and made sure caitlyn would always get safer tasks - out of harm's way and where she'd never be able to prove herself or do any actual good like she'd always wanted. her own coworkers make fun of her for being a kiramman and only "playing dress up" as an enforcer - a job she decided she wanted and had been working towards since she was a child, in order to help and protect people. she'd had to fight (not for the first time) to be placed on a case, in a real guard position, to be taken seriously.

caitlyn's choice and her agency - things she's barely been given in her own life, because of her parents, her name and how sheltered she'd grown up - she'd always had to fight for. she's had to fight to be able to choose, she's had to fight to defend her choices, and she's had to fight to prove herself over and over again.

then for the first time in her life, she didn't have to fight because vi (perhaps being swallowed by her own guilt for everything jinx had done to caitlyn) gave caitlyn the ability to choose what happens to jinx. unconditionally.

and caitlyn chose. vi agreed with her choice.

take the shot.

then vi took the choice away from her in the last possible moment, physically stopping her from shooting. (now, we can talk abt what that means to someone who's never been the stronger opponent in any physical altercation they've been a part of so far, but i won't)

this is the last thing cait needed to send her fully spiraling in the face of the adrenaline after almost dying again (sevika wasn't playing), the stakes of their mission and her trauma from jinx being unlocked. caitlyn completely disassociates shuts down, goes all out hitting the wall, possibly cries, refuses to look vi in the eyes and tells her, "i thought you were different but you're not"

she's yet another person who denies caitlyn the ability to make a choice in her life.

it's her blood in your veins.

to caitlyn in this moment, vi's loyalties lie with the blood of someone who'd worked for silco in oppressing the undercity, lured and blown up caitlyn's coworkers, tried to kill caitlyn (and vi) multiple times, kidnapped her from her fucking bathroom, dressed her up against her will, kept her hostage for a full day in which she with almost 100% certainty tortured her, kept her as the only person gagged throughout the tea party, asked vi to kill her, then blew her mother up along with 4 more counselors and (allegedly) attacked their memorial. talk abt taking someone's freedom of choice away.

then why are you the one acting like her?

vi - not fully without reason - compares caitlyn to her worst fucking nightmare. a psychotic killer who's caused so much fear and trauma to caitlyn that she admitted jinx's smile is all she sees when she closes her eyes, up there w/ her own mother's lifeless eyes?? and yeah, vi has a point - caitlyn had indeed grown more violent and aggressive in her desparate pursuit for revenge. that doesn't mean it hurts caitlyn any less, especially when she'd been trying so hard to do the right thing (sending a squad to catch jinx instead of a full blown armed invasion, only her and vi having hextech, clearing the streets first), and vi knows this: she just automatically did what she does best - aimed for where it hurts the most. i think she even realizes she's overstepped but before she can do anything about it, caitlyn bites back reflexively and hits her with her rifle. there, in the place of the wound she once took care of herself.

the perfect storm.

the only question i have left is why everyone in this fandom keeps acting like caitlyn is the only one who hurt someone and vi is the only one who got hurt in that scene.

[thesecondhandwoman]

𝑰𝑵𝑻𝑹𝑶𝑫𝑼𝑪𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵

Hey there, it’s @thesecondhandwoman, but you can call me Minx. Here’s a short introduction to get to know me better.

✧ Pronouns: She/Her

✧ Sexuality: Lesbian (taken)

✧ Languages: English and Spanish

✧ Zodiac: Virgo

✧ Strawpage: Lesbianism

✧ Pfp & Bio: Matching @lilyyx0

✧ Banner: By @strawberrysnscreams

✧ Blog’s Purpose: To write a lot of fanfics based on current obsessions/fandoms and interact with the platform’s community.

✧ Fanfic Writing: Currently on Arcane and League of Legends (characters: Sevika, Vi, Caitlyn, Jinx, Grayson, Mel, Ambessa, Lest, Katarina, Elise, and Leblanc. Sometimes Viktor, Jayce, Ekko, etc.)

Note: A lot of my fanfics are sfw, since I enjoy being able to get into fluffy or angsts write ups versus nsfw, so if you send out a request for one, I might not go through with it.

Requests: Open!

𝑴𝑨𝑺𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑳𝑰𝑺𝑻

From Newest to Oldest

Sevika:

✧ Sick of You

✧ Paid in Fill

✧ Your Little Thief

✧ A Little Bit Of Sugar

✧ Sick Day

✧ Baby Fever

✧ Bottom of the Bottle

✧ Hold Me Together

✧ Easing the Ache

✧ Mama Bear Sevika (headcanons)

✧ Blinded Lover (with Ambessa)

✧ Breaking Point

✧ Between Silk and Steel (with Mel)

✧ Dirty Little Cheater

✧ Iceplay With Sevika

✧ Christmas Cookie Catastrophe

✧ A Close Call

✧ Snow Day in Zaun

✧ Jinx’s Death

✧ Isha’s Death

✧ The Arcane’s Grasp

✧ Holding Onto Her

✧ Sink Into Me

✧ Nightmares

✧ Factored Steel Part One//Part Two

✧ Morning After

✧ New Haircut

✧ Another Repair

Ambessa:

✧ Attention Seeker

✧ Bloodsucker

✧ More Than Enough

✧ Lights, Camera, Action

✧ Hidden Strength

✧ Through the Ache

✧ Chronically Ill

✧ Her Little Assisant

✧ Hidden Injuries

✧ Blinded Lover (with Sevika)

✧ Your Insecurities

✧ Tending to Bloody Wounds

✧ Gilded Warmth

✧ Hexed Heart

✧ Training for Two

Vi:

✧ Kiss Me Slowly

✧ Pit Fighter’s Medic

✧ Counting Her Freckles

✧Motherly Love Part One//Part Two//Part Three//Part Four (with Caitlyn)

✧ Line Dancing

✧ Jacket Thief

✧ Sister’s Sacrifice

✧ A Flavorful Surprise

Caitlyn:

✧ Birthday Girl

✧ Tethered Hearts

✧ Beauty in Scars

✧ The Price of Betrayal

✧Motherly Love Part One//Part Two//Part Three//Part Four (with Caitlyn)

✧ Overworking Herself

✧ Morning Struggles

Jinx:

✧ Puppet Show

✧ Her Tall Girlfriend

✧ Morning After

✧ Gunpoint Kisses

Mel:

✧ Her Noxian Knight

✧ Doing Your Makeup

✧ Between Silk and Steel (with Sevika)

Katarina:

✧ Severed Ties

Viktor:

✧ Little Apologies

Ekko:

✧ Hoverboard Practice

Lest:

✧ Winding Down

Grayson:

✧ Loving a Thief

Arcane Women:

✧ Self Harm Confessions

[thenationofzaun]

Vi and Jinx's Bunny Toy

I was thinking about how bizarre it is that Vi thinks Jinx is dead, and we're meant to see this as a positive thing for her character. The way the writers explain it, Vi will never be able to give up on her family and thus will never be able to choose between Jinx and Caitlyn. So Jinx makes the choice for her and removes herself from the equation, "freeing" Vi from the burden of having Jinx in her life so she can be happy with Caitlyn. This is so unsatisfying to me for a number of reasons:

1) Caitlyn is a godawful partner and the Caitvi relationship is such an equal, abusive shitshow that there's no way I can see Vi ending up in the Kiramman's gilded cage as positive. And the implication at the end that Caitlyn suspects Jinx is alive but is going to keep this hidden from Vi so she can have Vi to herself makes it even worse.

2) The whole "Vi can never give up on her family" doesn't land because Vi as a character is extremely inconsistent in this regard. One second she's letting her girlfriend take kill shots at Jinx, the next second she's shielding Jinx from an explosion, then she's hugging Jinx in the jail cell, then she's shit-talking Jinx for refusing to fight for Piltover even though she's obviously crippled by grief after losing Isha. The extent to which Vi cares about her sister changes every 5 seconds with barely any coherency in the writing.

3) The idea that Jinx is too much of a burden on Vi and Vi would be better off if she were DEAD is............. gross to me.

4) Vi is robbed of any character development. It would be way more powerful to me if Vi accepted that Jinx has grown into her own person and has to forge her own path in life whether that includes Vi or not. Which Vi DOES in S2E5 ("Why did you come get me? You don't actually need my help. You haven't for a long time.") Vi has shown already that she IS capable of this character development! But then the writers just make her regress and now apparently she's incapable of letting her sister go her own separate way and has to be duped into thinking Jinx is dead? Bruh.

So I was thinking about all this, and I thought, the ending would work so much better for me if Jinx left some sort of message or hint for Vi to let her know she's alive, and she just needs time away from Zaun and Piltover. Remember their bunny toy? The one that a bully stole from little kid Vi and threw onto the power lines, then Vi got it back to give to Powder in S1E2, then Jinx kept it with her all throughout Season 1?

I wish Jinx had left this for Vi somewhere Vi would definitely find it. Maybe back at Vi's apartment or something. Imagine Vi goes back there to pack her things to move in with Caitlyn, and she finds her old toy sitting on her dresser. Preferrably with a note from Jinx explaining everything. This way Vi would know her sister is alive, she'd have some character development in accepting her sister has gone on her own journey, and it'd bring the bunny toy full circle all the way back to its original owner. First Vi gave it to Jinx in Season 1 to say goodbye before Vi turned herself in to Piltover, now Jinx gives it to Vi to say goodbye as she leaves Piltover behind. I would also have liked for the show to end on something Vi and Jinx related rather than Vi and Caitlyn. The sisters are the heart of the show. It should have ended with them.

[scarletrotted]

// YA DON'T SAY????

// What's worse was that I made a joke while talking about the DLC being a combination of BB's Hunter's Nightmare and DS3's Ringed City. I absolutely never thought I'd see Twin Princes 2.0, let alone Pontiff Sulyvahn 2.0 and then some.

// I really, really don’t think that Malenia called Miquella “the most fearsome Empyrean” for nothing.

Watch his fight be more frustrating than Malenia’s. I’m calling it. 

[mollysunder]

I really love this icon of Jinx and Vi from the RiotxArcane event for Legends of Runeterra. It's Gilded Vi and Jinx just staring at each other. The Gilded skins are supposed to be from a world where everyone is a wealthy Piltovan and essentially Zaun doesn't exist, but they're still at odds somehow! Vi has her eyebrows furrowed in frustration so you can tell she's irritated at whatever she knows, but doesn't exactly know what Jinx has in store. And Jinx's own face has this confident smugness, that she doesn't usually get drawn with, it feels like she's practically daring Vi to do something. We don't usually get to see Jinx this way she's usually wearing a carefree smile surrounded varying levels of violence.

The Gilded universe is such a fun what-if universe, except that compared to the rest of her counterparts, Jinx still looks like she's from Zaun. So I can't help but think of an Arcane au where she somehow swerves into an ambassador's position for Zaun and everybody just has to swallow it. Also, Jinx and Vi are staring eye to eye, is Jinx on a stool or something?!?!!

[thebestofoneshots]

Gilded Constellations | (wolfstar x reader)

Series Masterlist | Previous episode

Pairing: Wolfstar x Reader Word Count: 8.3 K Warnings: none Prompt: It's time to set up a trap with the boys! It has to be fun, right? This IS a Wolfstar x reader fic, but it's incredibly slow burn. They won't start all dating each other until we're very deep into the story, but I promise the long wait will be worth it. Proofread by lovely @aremuslupinsimp

Chapter 60: Stone in Love

Wednesday 12th, 1977 - 12:34 AM

Lily didn’t take too long in the bathroom, and you went inside right after her. The girls had showered after arriving on the train, you, on the other hand, had only mildly gotten yourself looking decent before walking to Gringotts, and that was because you knew you had to look presentable. You suspected that after the entire mirror adventure, running around Hogsmeade like a crazy person, and making out with two boys at the same time, you urgently needed one yourself. 

You looked in the mirror, and thankfully, you didn’t look as bad as you assumed you would. You did have a parted lip that you hadn’t noticed before, and your wrist was still slightly sore, but you looked brighter than you had looked in the morning. The evident sadness from then was now coexisting with a newfound joy, the tinge of someone completely in love –and happy about it– evident in some of your features. The shine in your eyes, the curve of your lips, the dreaminess of your gaze. It was almost ridiculous how much a small talk had changed the way you felt, and looked. 

You took a deep breath and turned on the shower, basking in the way the warm water fell over your body, so soft and kind, so unlike the blazing fire, and the cold snow, that you almost wanted to fill the tub and stay there. You were still slightly sleepy, but the shower was enough to wake you up. 

By the time you stepped out of the shower, Mary had also fallen asleep, and Lily was sitting on her bed while reading a book. “You’re leaving now?” 

You nodded, and yawned, “Hopefully I’ll get some sleep after the preparations are ready.” 

“Good luck,” she said and yawned. 

“Sleep tight,” you replied with a smile, took James’ cloak and wrapped it around yourself, completely disappearing before her eyes. There was an air of child-like joy in Lily’s pupils as she saw you do it. She might have been immersed in the magical world for years, but every now and then, something caught her eye that reminded her of just how fascinating magic could be. People might have called the way she saw things a “muggle outlook” but Lily refused the idea of ever taking it all for granted. She loved being mesmerized by magic, and she never wanted to stop being fascinated by it. She smiled, looking at the door open and close by itself and then went back to her book. 

She was trying to find a toad-repelling charm. If there was anything completely unrefutable about Lily Evans, is just how much she wanted to be prepared for any situation that she might face. And with the little to no information you had given her, she wasn’t eager to find herself surrounded or –Godric forbid– vomiting toads without being able to stop it. She really hoped it wasn’t the latter, Barty had charmed Nox like that in first year after he said something about Evan. She had been in the infirmary checking on Remus and she had to leave the room before he woke up because she too, had gotten the urge to puke. What a terrible jinx that was.

Luckily for her, having the entire school puke toads, was not on your plans, you were only trying to infest it. You walked down the stairs making as little noise as possible. You thought of using a spell to silence your steps, but it was quite late –about 40 minutes later than your original meeting plan– and there seemed to be nobody around. You walked towards the boys’ dormitories and gently knocked on their door. 

“About fucking time,” Prongs whispered as he opened the door. Once it was closed, his voice went back to normal. “We were thinking you bailed on us!”

“He was, not me,” Remus said with a shrug. 

“Why did you take so long, anyway?” Peter asked.

“Oreos,” you retorted. “And girl talk.” 

“You talk about me with Lily?” Prongs said as he raised his eyebrow at you. 

“What? Do you think girl talk is always about boys?” 

“No?” He retorted, dragging that O a little too much. 

You scoffed, “We did not. I’m sorry to inform you, our agendas don’t always include complaining about our boyfriends.” 

“What are Oreos anyway?” Peter asked about at the same time that James murmured “Complaining about our boyfriends?” He had a frown on his face and looked terribly upset at the idea of Lily complaining about him. 

You didn’t even bother to hide the smirk that had appeared on your lips. “Oh, a very muggle thing,” you retorted. The boys didn’t need to know what an Oreo was, at least not until you bought them a pack, at which point they’d be too busy delighting in them to remember that you had been late for the prank because of some cookies. 

“A very muggle thing?” Remus asked, eyebrows raised, his tone clearly telling you he knew exactly what they were. Hope made an Oreo / triple chocolate cheesecake that was to diе for.

“Indeed, Moony,” you retorted as you shot him a look. “And talking about muggle things, I brought you something,” you said as you pulled out the Aero bar from your pocket. “Have you tried it?” 

“Don’t think I have,” he said as he looked at the chocolate. “Thanks, Luv.” 

“How come Moony always gets treats and I never do?” Sirius said with a small pout. 

“Somehow  I knew you would say that,” you said as you pulled out a tiny chocolate frog and placed it right in front of his mouth. “I got these at Muggle London, they don’t jump but they’re tasty. Open up.” 

“That’s what he said,” James said and got a short slap from Peter who looked mortified. Somehow he was the only one in the entire group who saw you more as a girl than as a Marauder. 

“Oi! What was that for?” James complained as he rubbed his arm. Meanwhile, Sirius had taken a bite out of his chocolate, you expected him to take it all in, but instead, he bit right in the middle, causing the filling to spill down his mouth and your hands. It was liquidy and it kind of looked like cough syrup. 

“Oh, I guess it was blueberry,” you said as you noted the purple colour drip from your hands. You took the other half of the frog and plopped it into your mouth, “It’s actually my favourite,” you added as you licked the back of your palm. They were small kitten lips, just trying to get the stickiness out of it so you could wipe them on your shirt but somehow that had caught the attention of the two boys. 

Perhaps they were too imaginative, or the kisses from a few hours ago had left them wanting more, but both boys had their mouths watering at the sight. James and Peter were still arguing in a hushed tone so neither of them noticed their gazes until you felt you were being stared at. “What?” you asked as you turned to Remus. “Got something on my face?” You eyed Sirius who was also starring. 

Perhaps if Peter and James weren’t there, Sirius would have retorted with “A kiss” and jumped on you, but instead, he cleared his throat. 

“Nothing. It looks like it was a good chocolate,” Remus said, somehow calmly.

“You think?” you asked as you pulled another one from your pocket and held it up to his mouth in the same way you had done with Sirius. He glanced over at Peter and James nervously, but their small discussion had turned into a relatively heated quarrel. He then eyed Sirius who nodded with a small shrug. 

Remus leaned towards your hand, taking the chocolate with his teeth without breaking it, his soft lips brushing against your fingers in some kind of way that made Sirius wish he could drag the two of you somewhere private and kiss your pretty lips until he ran out of breath.

“Good, yeah?” you asked as you saw him smile mischievously as he bit the chocolate. You didn’t understand the look he and Sirius had, but he did, and he did not miss the way Sirius was looking at the two of you. First your way and then his, he never thought he’d love being the centre of attention of Sirius’ piercing eyes as much as he did right then. 

“Delicious,” He replied with that same, devilish smirk. Sirius would have scoffed if he hadn’t been just as lured by him as if he had been with you. 

You smiled and turned to the two boys still deep in their discussion. “Okay, that’s enough, we’ve got a spell to teach you,” you said as you placed a thick book in the centre of the small circle you had ended up in. Quite similar to the one you’d been in back in your room with the girls. The book fell down on the wooden floor with a thud so loud it snapped Peter and James out of their quarrel. 

“What? I thought you were going to do it with Moony,” Peter said. 

“If the school didn’t have thousands of classrooms perhaps. We’re thinking we have to split into 2 teams. The team with three takes the bigger places, such as the great hall, the courtyard, the stairs, the astronomy tower,  and the longer halls, the team with two takes the other classrooms. Especially the ones with classes tomorrow, but also the empty ones in case the teachers think switching classrooms would be a solution.” 

“Classes will be cancelled, no matter what,” Sirius said with a smirk. 

“And is it complicated?” Peter asked with a frown. 

Remus tilted his head to the side, “Well…” 

“You’ll do great Wormy, I know!” You said with a thumbs up and opened the book. “What Remus and I designed was a variation on Arresto Momentum,” you explained. 

“The freezing time spell,” Remus continued. “More technical versions can freeze a person before they fall to their dеath, Quidditch coaches are all taught how to perform it–” 

“Simpler ones are used to freeze food in time so it does not go bad. Muggles need refrigerators and stuff for that,” you continued. “But the tricky thing with this one–” 

“Is that we needed to time set them, like a bоmb. And all of them at the same time.” 

Sirius was looking at the way the two of you quite literally finished each other's sentences completely in awe. While he had already been in love both with you and with Remus, the fact that he could kiss either of you mid-sentence was beyond thrilling. You were both insanely pretty, almost unfairly so. Sirius was sure you were saying something important by the way you both pointed at the book and flipped your wands in a very specific way, but he was so entranced by you that he hadn’t been listening at all.

“You got it?” You asked Peter, he was moving his wand up and down and then in a circle and saying a couple of spell words, albeit a little clumsy, he was saying the words right and making the correct movements. 

“Did I?” He asked as he loosened his grip on one of the decoy swamp-bombs (the ones that had no swamp but just a little water inside). The ball stayed in its place until James grabbed it and put it in his pocket. 

“James mate, that’s a–” Remus started, but you placed your hand on top of his and threw him a knowing look. A small eyebrow wiggle and a tiny little smirk. He shook his head in amusement but didn’t press further. 

“Yeah?” James asked. 

“A great swish and curl,” you said as you imitated the swish on his wand. “Also, I think Pete is ready too,” you smiled. “You just need to add a little more confidence with the wording,” you added as you turned to him. “It’s Arresto Momentum um debiat” you added. 

“Um debiat,” Peter repeated. 

“You got it, Puppy?” you asked, turning to Sirius, who only now seemed to be snapped out of his trance.  

“Uh, yeah…” he replied with a confident nod, only now turning to actually look at Peter and James moving their wands and practising the new spell. He leaned towards Prongs. “What were the words again?” he asked in a whisper.

“Oh, my Merlin!” James complained. “You’re keeping this twat with you,” he added as he turned to you. 

“Hm… I suppose I’ll have to take one for the team,” you said with a shrug and a smirk. 

“You love having me as your team, shut up,” Sirius retorted with a playful scoff. 

“Moony is going to be with us, yeah?” Peter asked. 

James threw a look at Remus and smirked himself, “Don’t think so, Worms. Vixen and Moony are taking the bigger places since they’re faster with the spell. We’ll take the classrooms.” 

“Oh well,” Wormy said with a sigh. “Should we hide the balls in the corners, in case someone notices them?” 

“We probably should, yeah,” Remus replied. “That way even if one of us fucks with the spell they’d have to find the rest of the swamp-bombs before they actually explode.” 

“Brilliant idea, Pete!” you said with a warm smile, Peter smiled confidently after that. He knew he wasn’t all that great with charms, but he got little pride from getting ideas that turned out for the best every now and then. Like the cuddles, he was still pretty shocked by how well it worked in the end.

Sirius threw you a look, not quite jealous but not quite happy about you praising Peter either. It’s not that he didn’t like Peter, but he was still kind of bothered about the PDA discussion they’d had earlier, even if he had been playing him just to get on his nerves, he wasn’t too happy about being told when he could and couldn’t kiss his girlfriend; unless it was you telling him, that is.

“Okay, then, we ready?” you asked. “Who's keeping the cloak?” 

“Well, if you disillusion me and Peter, you three should have it,” James said, thinking of how cosied up you’d get under the cloak. You had been there for him every time he tried to have Lily fall in love with him. He considered his duty as your best friend (since Remus was your boyfriend now) to ensure he provided you three with lots of quality time together. Besides he hadn’t seen Remus this happy in so long, he wanted that smile to grow bigger. He wanted all of your smiles to do so. “Besides, you'll be going to the red zones.” 

The red zones was a term employed by the boys to reference the areas with the most teachers and prefects around at night. Places like the library (which you would not touch because both you and Remus valued books too much to risk them being damaged by the toads), the great hall, and the grand staircase.

“Sounds like a plan,” you said with a smile and took out the wand, successfully making both boys almost completely invisible. “The swamp-bombs?” 

“Under the bed,” James said as Remus pulled a small bag that had been extension charmed, and then another one. “The blue bag has the most.”

Peter leaned over –at least you assumed it was Peter, if the faintest whisp of neatly tucked hair was anything to go by– and took the purple bag. The colour of the bag faded after his hand touched it, it was almost completely gone by the time he lifted it from the floor. 

James whispered something, and you didn’t even notice they were leaving until the door opened by itself and closed seconds later. “I really need to learn that silencing charm, James has truly mastered it.” 

“Bet it’d come in handy,” Sirius teased, and you reproachfully threw the cloak at him, understanding full well his implication. He took the cloak and the bag and stood from the floor. “All right, we don’t have all night, we better hurry this up,” he added as he extended his hand for you to take. You stood up and then did the same for Moony who, once he was up, took the cloak from Sirius. 

Remus extended it around himself and held it over his head, welcoming the two of you inside. You smiled and got in, Sirius followed with a smirk, standing almost unnecessarily close to the boy. Not that you were standing much farther. Both –per James’ prediction– had cosied up to the taller boy like you did when you were in your animagus form. 

Remus tensed at first, being brought back to before you were with him, to having to worry about being caught smelling Sirius’ hair or looking at the back of your neck. And then you pulled your hand behind your back and searched for his, taking it in yours and giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. He relaxed almost instantly, smiled and squeezed your hand softly in retort. Since you’d kept the cloak, Peter and Remus had gotten the map. That meant you’d have to be extra careful while walking around the school. 

If only we had two of those, you thought as you walked towards the door. Remus held his finger to his mouth, and for a few seconds, your breaths were the only thing either you or Remus could hear. “It’s empty, let’s go,” Remus said and Sirius opened the door. The three of you stepped out and in a matter of seconds were out of the door. 

The hall was empty, Remus was set to patrol that night, along with Frank Longbottom, the Gryffindor head boy whom you hadn’t met yet –at least officially, you’d seen him around– but was kind of close to the boys. And Remus had convinced him he’d take care of the prefect’s duties. According to Remus, Frank was trying to sway a girl named Alice (not the one you knew, a different one) and he was going to be working on writing her a letter all night.

“What do you even do when you patrol?” asked Sirius after he yawned, you instantly did the same. It was as if the sleep that you’d gotten after drinking the cookies was coming back to you, slightly stronger than before. 

“We literally just walk until the clock ticks midnight and then we come back to our rooms,” Remus said. “Frank talks a lot about spells, he’s a little clumsy like Peter, but he’s really clever regardless. When I’m with Lily we just discuss things like what we saw in class or the themes of our essays. Sometimes we just talk about muggle stuff,” he retorted. He was speaking low, not quite in a whisper, but enough for it to be muffled by the cloak. James had added a sound-blocking spell to it, it wasn’t strong, but it was enough to cover for words as soft as Remus’. 

“Where are we going first?” you asked, holding back another yawn. You knew Sirius would instantly tease you if he noticed you were sleepy, and while you didn’t hate his teasing, you didn’t want Remus to have the impression his new partners were childish. 

“Great Hall?” Sirius asked.

“We want them to go off in class, I was thinking we could have those set a little later, you know how Dumbledore loves taking the students to the Great Hall in a contingency.” 

“Imagine! They think it’s safe, and boom, toads!” Sirius added. 

“How do you even know about the contingency plans?” you asked with a frown. 

“We’ve caused a couple of them,” Sirius retorted with a smug smirk. “How does it feel to really be a troublemaker in the end?” 

“I sometimes feel it’s your madness rubbing off on me, you know?” You retorted and Sirius gasped. 

“Speak softer,” Remus chided when he heard a portrait yawn in the background. “I was thinking we could do the stairs first. Prefects are rarely there.”

“What about the portraits?” You asked, tilting your head. “They can be as bad as the Peeves when it comes to ratting someone out.”  

“Nah, they won’t bother you as long as you don’t wake them up, most of them just take the time to relax,” Remus responded with a shrug. “If anything happens I’ll just tell them I caught you sneaking and I’ll report you.” 

“Who would have thought it’d be so convenient to have the law in your pockets,” you said with a teasing smile and got a slight shove from Remus. “And we didn’t even have to bribe him!” 

“Oh, if I have to pull the Perfect card, you’re most definitely gonna have to make it up to me.”

You eyed Sirius, it was dark but the slight shine on his eyes was unmistakable, he was, like you, eager for something like that to happen. 

“Should we split to cover more ground?” you asked as you stared down at the massive staircase. 

“It would be the best…”  Remus said hesitantly. He clearly didn’t want you to pull away from him. 

“Promise I’ll be thinking of you,” you said, placing a short kiss on his cheek and disillusioning yourself. You exited the cloak with about 15 small balls hidden all over your pockets. You walked towards one end of the stairway and started to perform the spell over the small little balls. They looked almost kike gobstones, which was great since, even if they were visible, they wouldn’t be all that suspicious.

“Aren’t you going too?” Remus asked Sirius when the boy grabbed some of the balls from the bag and placed them in his pocket. 

“Thought I’d see you do it a couple of times to make sure I got the hang of it,” Sirius said as casually as he could. 

Remus groaned in return, “You so weren’t paying attention to either of us when we explained.” 

Sirius didn’t even try to deny it, “You both looked too pretty, I’m sorry.” He didn’t miss the blush that crept up on Remus’ neck when he said it. “So, pretty boy, care to teach me?” 

“Are you serious?” Remus dеadpanned. Regretting his words as they came out of his mouth. 

The other boy’s smile grew wider, “As a matter of fact, I–” 

“You have to flick your wand to the right, to the left, do a swish and then flick it again, towards 9 o’clock though. You got the words, yeah?” 

“Rude,” Sirius said with a small pout and followed Remus’ instructions seamlessly. Moony was almost jealous of how easy it was for Sirius to do it. You and he had taken so long to develop the spell for him to come and master it in seconds. 

“Like this?” 

“You’re just a show off,” Remus retorted as he pushed Sirius lightly, but the other boy just took the chance to hold on to Remus’ hand and pull him closer. Both still under the cloak. 

“Allow me to thank you, Professor Moony,” he said flirtatiously, planting a short kiss on the boy’s lips and slipping off the cloak with a disillusionment charm. 

Remus had to take some time to recover, blinking and staring at nowhere in particular, only being brought back by the moving of the stair underneath him. He was taken by surprise and lost his balance for a mere second before he remembered where he was and what he was meant to be doing. He tried not to think so much about the fact that he could literally walk up to you or Sirius and kiss you and how you would happily return the kiss, because if he did, then he might as well call the whole prank off and bring the two of you back to the room now that Peter and James weren’t around. 

By the time you were done with placing your swamp-bombs and turned to look for the boys, you realised just how hard it would be to find them now that everyone was using some kind of invisibility magic. You looked around for a while, trying to spot something that could reveal it, but it was almost useless, there was no way you’d spot either of them. You resorted to trying to use your other senses. 

You took in a deep breath, trying to channel Vixen’s sense of smell, but while you had gotten much better at transfigurations, and you had managed to do things like getting those fangs out and ripping your skin, you were not so good as to be able to just do that, not without turning into Vixen at least. You were just about to do that when you remembered that you didn’t have to solely rely on your senses, but that you could rely on theirs too.

“Remus,” you whispered. “Hey, Remus! Where are you? I’m done.” You blinked a few times, looking around to see if you spotted any sort of odd movement, and you thought you saw something move in the background when you felt a pair of hands grab you from behind and drag you inside the cloak.  You sucked in a breath, and his hand was over your mouth in a second. 

“Shhh,” he whispered to your ear soothingly. “It’s me, Little Witch.”

“Holy shit, Rem, why the hell from behind?” 

“I was there,” he replied with a shrug. “You seen Sirius?” 

“Thought I saw something move over there,” you said pointing at a stair that was moving on the other corner. Remus leaned closer to you, his head almost resting on your shoulder as he looked at the point you referred to. He was squinting his eyes in the direction of your finger, not realising how close he had gotten to you or perhaps he would have gotten as nervous as you were. 

But it was the good kind of nervous, the sort of heart-fluttering sensation that you got when you are close to the person that you like so much. While both Sirius and Remus had realised their feelings for each other and for you a while ago, you were just now noticing how much you liked Remus, and how many things about him you liked romantically. It was like being brought back to the Slug Party where you weren’t able to stop ogling him. 

He really was outstandingly pretty, so much that you wanted to kiss him. “You know Rem…” 

“Mhm?” he asked, tilting his head slightly as if trying to see better, while his eyes weren’t on you, he looked comfortable with the closeness. 

“Sirius and I have a bit of a tradition…” Now he turned to you, eyebrows knit. “It seems like whenever we’re on a stealth mission,” you added, turning your face to his as well, you were standing so close that your noses were pretty much brushing against each other. “Something comes over the two of us, and we end up doing the most outrageous thing.” 

“Like getting caught?” He teased. 

You scoffed, “Of course not! We’ve never gotten caught.” 

“What about that time at the Slytherin’s?” 

“He got caught, I didn’t!” You retorted, He raised an eyebrow as if to remind you that the only reason you hadn’t gotten caught was because he had been there to stop you. He had been tempted to kiss you then, perhaps as tempted as he was now. “But that’s not it.” 

“Then?” 

“Well when the tension rises,” you leaned a little closer to him, “and the adrenaline is in the air–” Your mouth was centimetres away from his, “we tended to–” 

You didn’t even finish, Remus got the idea and he was more than eager to join your little tradition. He was the one to close the gap, your lips crashing against his in a rather urgent manner. As if he was trying to kiss you for every time he had wished he could and had to restrain himself. He tasted like chocolate and cherry wine (probably because of the filling of the chocolate frog he got earlier). 

Despite his urgency, it was you the one who bit his lower lip and pressed your tongue against his mouth. He was quick to part them and chase your tongue with his, there was something about the way he kissed you that made your knees weak, in the same way that Sirius’ kisses did. Like you wanted to melt into him, allow him to mould you to his body instead of moulding him to yours. But then there was the other part of you, the one that didn’t like losing control and fought back for it, your hand rushing to the back of his neck and pulling him down to you while allowing your hands to play with his hair. It was much shorter than Sirius’ but that didn’t mean you couldn’t pull on it just slightly. 

He moaned into the kiss when you did and it was hard for you to hold back the smile as you separated for air. You were about to go back to kiss him when you heard a door shut from the side. You pulled apart from and looked towards it, biting your cheek to swallow the gasp you would have instinctively made. 

“It’s Severus,” you whispered as you stared at the greasy-haired boy. He was walking with his head held high, his Prefect badge, perfectly polished adorning his chest. You rolled your eyes and turned to Remus again, his lips were rosy and he was also panting a little, you never thought he could look prettier and here he was, all kissed out and looking like a prince. “You find Sirius?” 

Remus turned to you with eyebrows raised. He was too busy finding your lips to look for Sirius. “We have to distract him,” you mouthed, not daring to speak any louder, despite the charms the cloak had, you couldn’t risk it. You were not going to get caught by Severus Snape, of all people. 

“How?” He asked. 

You smiled mischievously at that. “Insecti,” you whispered, effectively conjuring about 4 thick flies, directing them straight towards his hair. Remus looked at you with interest, while the flies buzzed about all around Severus. 

“Go away!” the Slytherin said as he frantically waved his hands over his head. Hitting one of them with the back of his hand but still being followed by the rest. “I said go away!” He said again, much more irritated. He was going up a flight of stairs, and you knew he wasn’t distracted enough to fall, regardless you were keeping a very close eye on him. Finally, he took out his wand, and the moment he did you pulled just the tip of yours from the cloak. 

You smiled, “Mucus ad nauseam,” you whispered this time. He sneezed. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said as he took out a handkerchief to stop his runny nose. It was a simple spell that you found in one of those trick books the boys had to sneak out of the restricted section. “It must be the fucking flies,” he complained again.

Remus threw you a diverted look and you winked his way. Severus sneezed again, waking one of the portraits. “Shhhh,” the man said by placing his hand over his mouth. “Some of us are trying to sleep.” 

“It’s not like I can control them,” Severus muttered under his breath, and then sneezed again, this time a little louder. Just to piss him off. But he inadvertently woke up a couple more of the portraits.

They had already started whispering about, a lady in a horse shushing him while on another one, two men that had been playing chess started discussing his outrageous behaviour. “Who’s responsible for this squawking?” a man with an Auror uniform asked. Severus sneezed again. “Ah, it’s the Slytherin kid, of course, it’s the Slytherin kid,” Said Lady McDougal as she pointed at him.

Severus rolled his eyes, trying to hold his next sneeze while also hitting one of the flies with his hand. Remus turned to you, pulling out his own wand and pointing it towards him. “Sonorus,” he whispered.

“Stupid ancient portraits, they should start minding their own fucking business,” he muttered again. Except this time, Remus’s charm had made his voice a lot louder. So loud that instead of a whisper to himself, as he intended, his voice resonated all over the Grand Staircase. He froze, looking around the portraits as he gulped. 

“Who are you calling ancient?” A very old man asked from the right wall. “I thought you’d be wiser since you’re a member of my house.” 

Severus was about to apologise, but he sneezed instead. “And he won’t stop making noise even after we asked him!” the portrait that had shushed him first added. 

Some portraits were looking at him with disapproving glances, others were muttering among themselves while, the most outspoken ones, were straight up telling him off. 

“Cannot believe the prerequisites for becoming a Perfect have stump so low that someone like you has gotten the honour,” a man with curly black hair added. “When I was the Headmaster of this fine institution you could only achieve such a position by being at the epitome of the student body. Only truly exemplary students…”

“Shut up Nigellus,” another portrait said. “Nobody liked you when you were Headmaster!” 

“He kind of reminds me of…” you muttered as you looked at the portrait of Nigellus, who had now engaged in a heated discussion with the portrait of a Quidditch player.

“Nigellus Black,” Remus said with a smile. “He’s nothing like our Sirius but he’s got those pretty eyes of his.” 

“Should have known…” you smiled as you turned to him. 

Severus sneezed again, successfully driving the attention –and anger– of the quarrelling portraits towards himself. 

“Well boy, what are you still doing here? Go lock yourself in your common room or something!” Nigellus said, you snickered, covering your mouth with your hands to avoid making a sound. 

Severus wiped his runny nose with his sleeve. “BIoody portraits!” He said as he rushed towards one of the halls, and away from the stairs. 

“BIoody portraits,” one of them mocked in a high-pitched tone as he passed by. It was the portrait of a younger boy, and he didn’t think twice before flicking his index and middle finger at him. 

“Let us sleep!” an old lady with a flower dress shouted from the very top. 

Severus cursed under his breath as he shut the door, loud enough to get cursed again by the rest of the portraits. “Slytherins,” Lady McDougal said with a sigh, “It had to be one of them.” 

Another lady agreed with her while some Slytherin wizards shook their heads in disapproval. Meanwhile, you and Remus couldn’t stop eyeing each other with a satisfied and diverted look. That’s when you saw green sparks coming from one of the doors. 

“Is that the Slytherin boy again?” One of the portraits asked. 

“Let’s go,” you said, knowing full well it had been Sirius and not a Slytherin. By the time you and Remus got close enough, you could distinguish his beautiful black curls through his disillusionment charm. Remus extended the cloak around him and suddenly the three of you were back in the little safe heaven James’ invisibility cloak provided. 

“That little act of yours was brilliant,” Sirius said with a smirk in a low tone. “Where next?” 

“The Great Hall,” Remus said. The three of you made your way towards it, stopping by the library before you got there. “We should probably lock it…” 

“Or they’ll try to give classes inside,” Sirius added. 

“A simple locking spell won’t be enough,” You said and took a deep breath. “What if we disappear it?” 

“What?” Remus asked with a frown. “How?” 

“We could hide it,” Sirius said with a nod. “Make it seem like it has disappeared even if it’s still there.” 

“Exactly, something close to a disillusionment charm, but for things.” 

“And then we could fill it up with something like escargot slime, nobody would want to get close to it.” 

“Snail,” you said before Remus even threw you a confused look. You had no idea why Sirius would remember the French word (which was far more complicated) than the English one but one time you had forgotten how to say spoon and went for cuchara instead.  You turned to Sirius, “Where would we even get snail slime, though?” 

“Don’t worry about that,” he said with a smile and turned to the massive library doors. He took in a deep breath and cast a disillusionment charm, followed by you and then Remus. The door had completely disappeared after the third spell. Sirius smiled and turned to the door. “Cochlea bitumine,” he said, suddenly there was a green, snot-like slime all over the floor and wall. You sighed, it didn’t stink, but the smell was rather potent. 

You took a swamp-bomb from Remus’ pockets and stared at it for a second, “I think they’ll rather enjoy this ambience,” you smiled and hid it inside the smile, while you avoided touching the viciousness of it altogether. Then you whispered the words of the spell. Sirius imitated you, and you ended up hiding about 6 of them just in the area. 

The great hall remained pretty empty at night, you had never been there, but the boys were familiar enough, apparently, the ghost didn’t really like being there when there wasn’t people, there were no portraits, and while the charms in the sky became a little fickle when there were people there after hours, it much easier, once you were inside.

The complicated part was getting in. Since that’s where the Prefects gathered before and after their patrol, it was much harder to get through the open halls that took you inside. Lucky for you, you had taken the cloak, which meant your life would be made easier. 

“Ready?” Sirius asked with a smile. You were standing just below the stairs, and peering up at the hall. There were three Hufflepuff prefects there. You recognized one of them as Alex Wood’s classmate, but you weren’t familiar with the rest. 

“We could try to distract them first?“ you said. 

“But then they would know someone’s out and about, and James and Peter would have people looking for them, they have no cloak.” 

“Then we become as stealthy as ninjas,” Sirius said with a confident nod. He’d been reading some Daredevil comics Andromeda had sent him and he had been fascinated by the idea of them. 

“I could turn into Vixen.” You shrugged, “they would never figure out I’m a student and not just a rogue fox.” 

“It’s not as believable as if Wormtail did it…” Remus replied as he shook his head. 

You were still discussing strategies when a ghost mounting a horse came in screaming through the side. “Someone has been in the classrooms,” he roared. You grabbed both boys’ hands and dragged them towards the great hall as the Hufflepuff scattered from the door and tried to talk to the very altered ghosts. 

“I guess they’ve been discovered,” Sirius whispered as you all arrived at the Great Hall. 

“Mhm,” you agreed. “We need to be more careful now.” 

“Perhaps not quite,” Remus said thoughtfully. “They’ll probably go talk to the portraits, and Severus was the one causing a mess, so they might pin the classroom incident on him too.” 

“Sir Pendragon would have said Potter and Pettigrew were there if he had spotted them. He’d take any chance to drag either of us down.” 

“Huh? Why?” you asked curiously. 

“Peter thought it would be funny to share a rumour about him in second year. He told everyone he didn’t lose his head on a joust, but that it had been eaten by a Wilddeoren,” Remus explained.

“They were a lot more common back in the day,” Sirius added. “Anyway, I think Sr. Nicholas found out it had been Peter and told Sir. Pendragon since he wanted to join the headless hunt. The man has hated all of us since then.” 

You laughed and shook your head. “You should make friends with the ghosts, not make them your enemies.” Sirius just shrugged, smiling and sending you one of those winks of his. He then pulled some orbs from his pocket and placed them on your hand. “Ready to cause mischief?” 

“Definitely,” you retorted with a smile, placing them in your pockets and then grabbing another handful. You disillusioned yourself before stepping out of the comfortable warmth of the cloak and walked to the back of the hall. You did hear the uneasy rumbling of the ceiling, as if it knew someone was around when they shouldn’t be, but you ignored it until you got all the way to the teacher’s table. You placed swamp-bombs underneath it, three by the windows and some on the closer gargoyles. Meanwhile, Sirius and Remus were making sure all the tables had swamp-bombs underneath them. And for good measure, they also hid a couple next to the floating candles.

Once you were done, you all reunited back in the same spot near the door, it was Remus –who still had the cloak– the one that dragged you inside as soon as he spotted you, or rather, smelled you, since he’d managed to do that way before the saw through your disillusionment charm. 

“Hey,” you said with a smile once he pulled you to him. 

“Hey,” he responded, like the idiot in love he was. You smiled, as you looked up at him, and he leaned in to press a short, quick kiss on your lips. “Sirius is on his last bomb.” 

“How do you know?” you whispered.

“I counted them,” he told you with a shrug. 

“No wonder he calls us nerds,” you said with an amused scoff. You were both pulling Sirius into the cloak mere minutes later. 

“Where to now?” He asked with a smile, Remus was tempted to press a kiss onto his lips as well but decided perhaps right at that instant it wouldn’t be proper. Not that either of the three cared too much about proper, but Remus still had more common sense than the two of you. 

“The tower,” you said as you yawned. 

“You tired?” Sirius teased. You blinked and shook your head in response. Not that you didn’t have perfect reasons to be tired, but the idea of falling asleep in the middle of a prank was so absurd to you, that being tired –no matter how sleepy you actually were– seemed preposterous. 

Sirius tightened his lips as he tried to hold back a smile, he had known this for a while, but when you were sleepy, you got into a cuddly mood, and when you were in a cuddly mood, he got to be as clingy as he wanted to be. He wondered if he’d be able to hug you and Remus at the same time later that night, without having to turn into Padfoot, and picture how amazing that might be. 

“You think they’re outside still?” You asked as you leaned your ear on the door. 

“They’re not,” Remus said confidently. “Even the portraits are asleep now.” 

“Good,” you said as you cast a silencing spell on the door and pushed it open. “Let’s go!”

The portraits at the Great Hall were also much calmer now, which is why you tried to be as quiet as possible as you climbed up the stairs that would lead you to the Astronomy Tower. “Looks like they’re already falling asleep,” Sirius said. “You think they’re still mad at Snape?” 

“They won’t get over being called ancient anytime soon,” Remus said with a smile. “And with how much they gossip, they might turn the rest of the portraits in the castle against him as well.” You let out a low giggle after that and covered your mouth almost in an instant. When you heard one of the portraits wake up the three of you threw a look at each other and rushed towards the tower as fast and stealthily as you could. 

Once you got to the stairs you looked up, it was a rather long stairwell, leading all the way to Professor Spellman’s territory. The divination classroom was dark and gloomy at night. There was a rather faint light coming from the window, but the classroom was only lit by a single black flamed candle. Spellman had talked about that in a previous class.

According to him, black flame candles were better than normal candles in divination spaces because they didn’t disturb the light from stars as much. 

“Lumos,” Sirius said and pulled out the tip of his wand from the cloak. “I don’t think there’s any ghost here now,” he whispered as he turned to you. 

“Prefects don’t come here often either. They do check the top of the observatory, but that’s just because some people use it to make out.” 

“Oh, really?” You said with a smirk, managing to shake off the sleepiness a bit more. 

“Don’t get any funny ideas,” Sirius told you and you pouted as you looked at him. 

“You’re the one with the funny ideas most of the time,” you retorted. Remus shook his head in amusement, took some of the swamp-bombs and handed them over to the two of you. 

“Focus, we can discuss those funny ideas once we’re done.” 

Sirius turned to you with an eyebrow raised and a smirk that you retorted with a raise of an eyebrow and a similarly satisfied smile. After the small exchange, the two of you went on your way to set up the classroom.  Once you were done, the three of you stepped out and went straight to the observatory. You split up again, this time not bothering to disillusion yourselves, and started placing some swamp-bombs all over the place. 

When you were done, you walked over to one of the small lookout spaces and leaned both of your arms on the railing, looking out towards the Black Lake. It was the same railing in which Evan had threatened you not so long ago. If someone had told you then that he would save your life months later you would have called them crazy. And here you were, in that same railing, thinking of how sudden the change had been. 

You took a deep breath, trying not to let thoughts of that night cloud over your happy ones, “What is it?” Remus asked as he approached you, leaning close enough that your shoulders bumped into each other. 

“Nothing,” you said almost in a whisper. He raised one of his eyebrows. “Everything,” you sighed and then yawned. “Godric! Why am I so damn sleepy,” you asked as you rested your head on his shoulder. “It isn’t even that late...” 

Remus turned to his watch, “It’s almost 2,” he said. 

You yawned again. “I didn’t even wake up that early,” you complained. Your eyes were closing on themselves, and Remus was tall, warm and so reassuring that your eyes almost refused to stay open. 

“But you had one hell of a day,” he retorted softly. 

You hummed in response. “That indeed,” you yawned. “But still, there’s something weird about it…” you said with a long sigh. Remus was thinking of an answer when he felt a little bit more of your weight reclining against him. He turned towards you only to notice your evened-out breath and completely relaxed expression.

“Little Witch?” he whispered, the lack of response confirmed his hypothesis, you had fallen asleep as you reclined into him. Remus smiled, looking at your slightly parted lips as you breathed in and out the chilly winter air. He wasn’t sure he had ever had the time to look at it from such an angle. 

Not that you hadn’t already used his shoulder as a headrest, but he had never felt comfortable just blatantly staring, in case someone else was watching, in case somebody noticed how irrevocably in love he was with you. But you knew it now, and Sirius knew it too, and you were both okay with it. So he stared, at your lashes, and your nose, and the curve of your lips, like he was seeing you for the first time, even if he had been dreaming with them for months now. 

The snow was gently falling outside, the lake shimmered with the reflection of the stars and the forest was as dark and alluring as ever. But not even the beautiful, shimmering stars in the sky were lovely enough to divert his attention from you. He was in a trance so deep that he didn’t even hear the steps from behind.

“Hey Moony did you–” 

“Shhhh,” Remus said softly, turning to Sirius as he rushed a finger over his mouth. “She’s fallen asleep.” 

Sirius frowned and tilted his head, you had never fallen asleep in the middle of a prank. “Don’t you think that’s weird?” Sirius whispered. 

“With the day she had?” Remus retorted. “It might just be the only thing she’s done that makes any sense.” 

Sirius shook his head with a smile, “It’s not the only thing,” he retorted, leaning in closer to Remus, and laying his head on the boy’s free shoulder. “She got us together, and we make sense together.” 

It was almost ironic, that when Remus finally managed to rip his gaze away from you, it was only to look at Sirius. Sirius with his confident smile and sparkling eyes, he would have sworn they were shinier than the stars and the shimmering reflection of the crescent moon in the black lake. The snow might have been falling like glitter in the water and dissolving into sparkly droplets of dew, but his eyes were lost on the endless grey of his best friend, his boyfriend. Remus smiled, “Yeah, we make sense together.”

Series Masterlist | Next Chapter

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Snippet - He's Back - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

A confrontation long overdue.

(Happy Valentine's Day, folks :'D)

Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

tw: angst

"I trust," Silco says, breaking the quiet, "you didn't take that personally."

"What, you bailing midway?"

"Hm."

She doesn't frown. But her dipped eyelids shield a stormfront. "...Look. This arrangement? If it's not working out—"

"You know that's not the case."

"No?"

"I only needed..." To put my pieces in back together. "...Space."

"Yeah?" A flash a familiar vigilance.  "Sure it's not because of her?"

"Her?"

Does she mean Nandi?

Her sister's specter has ceased to interfere in the peripheries of their intimacy.

Or—gods, has she learnt about his dalliance with Medarda, the long-game laced together in exquisite deception?

Silco doubts it—he covers his tracks—but sometimes he underestimates the razor edge of Sevika's perceptiveness.

Too late to dissemble if that's the case. But before he braces for impact—before the blowback of her judgement leaves him a smoking crater—he prays for a chance to plead his case. To explain that Medarda balances on the precarious axis between personal proclivity and political leverage. To beg Sevika—

(Beg? That's unseemly for both.)

—convince her, that his attraction is a complicated calculus. His goals are on track, even if the rest's tangled in desire's gilded strings.  He'll not deny the thrall Medarda exerts; the fascination of her nimble wit; a rare gift in reading people, even the darkest facets of his own nature.

But it's survival—not need—that shares their bed. It's common ground—not devotion—that drives their bargain. It's the irrevocable necessity of circumstance—not goddamn choice—that turns him to the enemy as he once turned to drugs, drink, dissipation.

There is no tether there. Only game after bloody game, Sevika, and if you give the word, I'll burn the board to the ground—

"Sevika," he begins.  "I—"

As always, she preempts him.  "Jinx."

Silco struggles to conceal his surprise. "...Jinx.."

"You miss her. Miss her so much you'd rather be here, with me, than alone in your penthouse."

"That's not true." It is, and isn't. "I'm not here for—"

"Don't deny it. There's a piece missing with her gone.  And that piece won't be filled by any of us here."

"If by piece—," he dares a cautious sidestep "—you mean peace of mind—"

"You barely talk about her," Sevika cuts in. "Don't like to hear her mentioned. When I bring her up, you either ignore it, or change the subject. As if she's locked up somewhere too fucking precious to share with the rest of us. It'd be fine if you were at least drinking like a fish and smoking like a fiend and throwing yourself headfirst into anything involving disembowelment. Instead, you've been..." she gropes for a second. "Distant."

"Distant."

She gives him a meaningful look. "Like you're still in the Deadlands. Still… somewhere I can't follow."

Inwardly, Silco marvels. Outwardly, he says nothing.

It's true; he's kept himself to himself. Not because he's subsumed everything into his work—he has—but because he's lately sensed himself at a crossroads.

Not of Zaun but his own convictions.

Self-concept's not been in the cards for a while. It left when Jinx crashed into his life. Without her, he's not lost the measure of the game, but the measure of himself.

A father.

Except he's still Jinx's father. It defines him like a chalk outline around a corpse; a name carved on a gravestone. He'll always belong to her. No matter where their paths uncross into separate tangents, or where their roads lead together.

But Silco, himself? Beyond Zaun?

He's yet to find the answer, though tonight's left him on surer footing. 

From the streets, fireworks spiral, then fade. In the spreading silence, Sevika says, "You can be not-okay, you know. Nobody'd fault you."

Her gentleness unsettles. His deflection is reflexive. "No, they'd simply kill me."

"They'd have to go through me," she says matter-of-factly, "And nobody gets through me."

They trade a brief smile. Tight as tethers go.

Sevika says, "I figured… that was why you let them stay over."

"Who?"

"Pearl’s girls." She sips slowly. Her chest—still faintly sweat-sheened—rises and falls in measured exhalations. "The entire time they were over, you were so... unlike you. Or maybe you: times ten. Like you'd be with Jinx, only... safer." Her eyes meet his. "You must miss it. Taking care of a kid who looks up to you like you're Janna's godsdamn gift."

"Pearl's kin look to the future. Not to me."

"You care about them." A beat, "Same way you must've cared about Pearl."

Silco steels himself against his habitual response: Admit nothing, deny everything, destroy everyone.

Instead, he takes a long swig of tea, buying time before the final draft.

"Yes," he says.

"Yes, what? Which part?"

"All of it." A deeper swallow; tongue weighing each word. "I did care for Pearl. She was fine company. Generous with herself, and patient with my inadequacies."

Sevika scoffs. "Those being?"

"We both know better than to enumerate." A shadow of a smile slinks across his lips, then fades. "It was good, what we had in the Ditch. Not a matter of what my body needed. More... what my self required.  With Jinx gone, there was so little to steer me except survival. Except survival is a stalling tactic. It allows you to continue existing. But life, really living, requires meaning. And meaning demands engagement beyond oneself. Pearl gave me a second chance at that."

Silence from across the table. He waits her out: a stubborn force brooding in place. Finally Sevika shakes her head.

"I should've been there," she murmurs. "Should've gone with you."

"How could you have known I'd vanish?"

He thinks of all the things he could tell her of that time. His psyche-marred misery in wake of Jinx’s departure. His rage and emptiness. How he'd been left with the topsoil of his soul stripped bare. All that was left was a doppelgänger sustained on the fumes of memory.

A soulless medium compelled to descend to the darkest core to mine his purpose from stone.

Quietly, he says, "You pledged me your loyalty. Loyalty isn't grounds to follow a leader beyond death's door."

"Is that where you went? Six feet under?"

"A thousand fathoms deep."  Draining the mug, he sets it aside. "That's where Pearl found me. Her, and her girls. And from there... they guided me back. In their ordinariness, they were extraordinary. They had such little in the world. Yet they fought for everything in it. Tooth and nail;, blood and bone. Life took nothing from them without paying a price."

Sevika regards her own mug. "So they helped you figure out how to live again." 

A cogent summary. He nods.

"Were you and Pearl...?"

"In love? I'd not take it that far." Silco exhales. Pearl's presence is between his ribs—a vivid ache—but not a mortal blow. Her quintessence was pure steel; it'd steeled and purified him in turn.  Even in his blackest mourning, he'll carry that unyielding framework into the future. "We suited each other. A simpatico of spirit and flesh. In another life—perhaps that would've sufficed.  In this one..." He traces a fingertip down his left cheekbone: the rough corrugation of scar tissue like tear-tracks. "I'm grateful our paths crossed. But I'll always regret the way they did."

"Because she didn't make it."

"Because in seeking her out, I abandoned you."

Sevika doesn't flinch. But her expression, in tiny increments, softens. For the first time since his return, he sees forgiveness. Forgiveness, and a strange species of sorrow: as if she's bracing herself against worse to come.

She's already lost him in more ways than one; to war, to prison, to something else entirely.

To Zaun itself: the loss that keeps on giving.

"Do you ever wonder..." she falters, as if casual discourse might veer the night dangerously off-course. "...if it would've been better if we'd chosen a different path? Stayed apart, in Nandi's wake?"

"If our lives hadn't met at Zaun's center?"

"If the ...grief... hadn't changed us. If we never became this."

"This?"

"Us." She gestures: copper fingers singing on oiled servos. Their everlasting entanglement; their perpetual estrangement. "What if we'd kept it strictly business. No strings attached."

"Strings can be severance. Or safety ropes."

"What's the difference if both'll strangle you?"

"Have they?"

"Don't pretend." Sevika sets down her emptied mug. The knuckles of her good hand are pale on the handle. "If we'd kept it straight business, maybe we would've moved on. You with Pearl. Me with whoever this city threw my way. Instead it's always been this weird limbo. The life we're living, and life we could've been living. Except—it's not living at all. More like the coffin's nailed shut six ways from Sunday. But the grave's still yawning open. Open to chance. But ...never closure."

Hope's not a commodity Silco trades in. But right now it's rushing in like a high tide over sandbags.  

"Then—" he swallows, "—is it closure you're after? Or an escape clause?"

Sevika shakes her head. Her sigh is edgy.

"Escape," she says, "isn't freedom. Freedom's a choice."

Silco nods, but says nothing. The silence, seconds ticking by, is an unspoken invitation:

Step through, and show me what you'd choose.

"It's why we work," Sevika goes on. "We didn't choose each other. We chose Zaun. That was the big picture, and we were both in it, and the rest didn't matter. For the longest time, that was all I needed. It was enough. But then... then you were gone. Zaun fell apart, and everything else fell to me, and fell fast. And as it fell, I started thinking: what if things had been different? What if we hadn't been so afraid? Of failure; of fallout? Of... each other? What if I'd stopped staring at the big picture, and taken the risk on getting caught in close-up?"

She meets his stare dead-on. Silco forces himself to weather the spotlight of her scrutiny.  He feels, inordinately, like he's facing a firing squad, and his shirt's half-buttoned.

"The days dragged on, and there was no news of you. But even so—even though we'd been finished longtime—I kept wondering. Kept wishing. Just like the night we'd lost on the Bridge. Me, searching and not finding. Me, left waiting and not knowing where to stand."  The deep-seated hurt in her eyes—a flicker, then a flame—makes Silco want to gut himself.  "There were other offers. Same as last time. Other options. I could've taken 'em and escaped that fucking loop. But instead—fuck. I kept on waiting. I waited, and I waited, and I got sick of the waiting. And it hit me:  I wasn't waiting at all. I was stuck. Because I couldn't bear to start again, after losing so damn much. Because moving on meant stepping into the dark, and having nothing underfoot if I fell."

Silco starts to say something. He doesn't.

This is about honesty—not eloquence.

"You know what makes Zaun stand apart?" Sevika says. "We're all about change. About action, not inertia. Me? I wasn't acting. I was going through the motions. Surviving. And in my survival, staying in stasis. Meanwhile the gangs kept warring. The chem-barons kept demanding. The politics kept getting bloodier. My world was coming apart at the seams, and there I was, clinging to scraps like my sanity was worth less than a potshot to the skull." A hard smile surfaces: tough as nails, and molten bright. "It'd be easy to blame you. Say it all led back to you abandoning us. Except we both know the score. You taught it to me, over and over. Cost and reward. Win or lose.  Surrender—or fight like hell to keep going."

"You did," Silco says. "This city owes itself to your fortitude. Not mine."

"I tried," Sevika counters, blunt. "I held the center, until I couldn't. But that's the point. Holding the center isn't going anywhere. It's stalling in place." The smile fades, but the fire lingers. "I don't know what threw us together. Chemistry, or karma, or fate playing games. But I do know this. I'm done holding the center. I'm ready to move on. But I can't—won't—unless I know you're moving too. Unless I know you coming back is a choice. Not a dead man marking time."

The ultimatum is brutal. But he reads between the lines. She'd kept it together, and kept herself intact. Survived, not as his second-in-command or factional proxy but as a person.

Just Sevika, fighting for life in a universe of atoms.  Just as he had done in the Deadlands.

Tonight, closure's not un the cards. But choice is.

And upon that choice, the groundwork for the next stage of revolution.

"Sevika," Silco begins. "I never considered—"

"I'll bet."

"I meant—I never understood, either. That holding the center meant staying in place."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Why?"

"Because you're always ten steps ahead of everybody."  Her eyes flash a semaphore of secret admiration. "Every option weighed; every factor calculated.  No errors. No exceptions."

Her faith nearly fells him. He's never been more unworthy of it. Never more terrified of knowing he's unworthy.

"I'm not," he says, "as clever as you think I am."

Her snort snags between his third and fourth rib. "Bullshit."

"It's true. I'm—"

Gods, what does he tell her?

That for all his sturm and drang—laying waste to a city and resurrecting it into splendor—he's a fucking coward at heart? Too gutless to let himself bleed; too feckless to let himself hurt. That for ten years, he's held onto himself by the skin of his teeth, and kept a city in his crosshairs—only to be undone by a little girl's tears? Unmade by fatherhood and the promise a legacy more lasting than the wreckage in his wake?

That he's still unmaking himself, putting the pieces in patterns yet unseen?

And still, there's no promise the pattern will cohere into a whole. Into a man who is halfway worthy of a woman willing to be his spine, his shield, his tether. A woman who has been through her own hell, and yet embodies every quality forged from that hellfire: tenacity, toughness, truth. A woman who manages ninety percent of her life effortlessly and the other ten percent ruthlessly; who fights harder for Zaun than anyone but him; who demands respect without begging for approval; whose tolerance for bullshit ends at the doorstep.

Who grants him access to her body, but whose boundaries are uncompromising. Who compromises daily, for his city's sake, and his own, and still sticks around when she has no cause to care.

Silco starts to speak. Stops. His throat's seized up. Ten fingerprints; Vander's phantom chokehold.

And beyond that chokehold: choice.

Silence crawls between them: tense, terrible, tetherless.

At last, Sevika gusts a sigh.

"Forget it." Her chair scrapes across the tiles. "I shouldn't have brought it up." She rises with military precision: all the momentum, with none of the grace. "Let's call it a night. I need some shut-eye, and you need to be at HQ. I'll radio the crew—"

The mind-body connection reinstates with a wallop.

Before she can withdraw, he's cut off her egress. For some reason he cannot fathom, he finds himself kneeling, though what he has a right to profess at her feet is beyond him. 

Daddy, he thinks, proposed to Mother like this.

The recollection's absurdly random, and strangely relevant.

Stunned, Sevika backs into the chair, her elbow banging off the wood. "...What're you—?"

"I choose."

The dark lashes flutter. The tough exterior conceals a flashpoint of panic:

He's lost it.

He's gone mad.

Gone for good, oh gods—

"I choose," he repeats, compelling her stare with his. "I'd choose all the choices that brought us here. Because that's what it was: choice. Not karma, or fate, or sheer dumb luck. I'd still choose to crawl out of that river, and stick a knife in Vander's back. I'd still choose to ally with you, because there was nobody else worth allying with. I'd still choose Jinx, and all the wins and losses that followed. I'd choose freedom; I'd choose Zaun. I'd choose to march the streets with my army—every misfit soldier, every broken soul. And you by my side, leading the charge. As you've led everytime I couldn't.  As you've led me through the hardest parts of our journey—whenever I failed to light my own way."

The fear shifts to something else: half-formed, fiercer in its vulnerability.

"You—you don't mean that," she stammers. "You never would have chosen this. Not me, not us—"

Silco takes her good hand in both of his.

Sevika tenses, but doesn't tug away. Plainly her first impulse; to save them both from something irreversible. He recognizes that fear; it's his own. 

In another life, he'd never give credence to its silhouette. He'd take her hand, twine her fingers through his, hold on tight—all without a single red lie. He'd have cupped her head, smoothed her hair, then dragging her close, so their foreheads met in a familiar circle of warmth.

That'd been the go-to, once. When touch was easy, and trust a matter of course.

Replicating the gesture now seems a forgery. Worse, a travesty of what once was.

Except what once was is no more. Neither are they. Whoever he is—he must learn it all from scratch.

Starting now.

He stays his knees; he keeps her hand in his.

"I don't care," he says. "I don't care if the odds don't stack up. Or what probability matrix I'm fucking over. All I know is: I choose. Us—whatever us means. Whatever it doesn't. Whether it's you jettisoning everything we've built, or me burning it to ground zero—I'd still choose where it's led us. I'd choose whatever path lies ahead.  Even if it takes us out of Zaun's orbit altogether—or down to the last circle of hell. No matter where we fall on that spectrum: I choose, Sevika." He breathes, steadies. "I choose whatever's left."

The silence spins like a roulette wheel: a freefall between extremes.

Her hand's a tether. He holds it tight between his fists, until the subdermal tremor stills.

"Silco..."

"Yes?"

Her eyes are burningly dark. "I'm what's left."

"You are." He skims a thumb over her lifeline, where blue veins branch across her wrist. Life coursing beneath: vital, raw, real.  "And you're what I choose. Fuck the rest."

Her breath jitters on a rare laugh.  "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Funny."

"How so?"

"'Cause that's exactly how I feel."

He lifts her palm to his lips. Feels the pulse quickening at the base, overflowing with all he's lacked; with all he needs.

Warmth, want, wholeness.

Unexpectedly, her fingers flex; she twines them through his. The cybernetic hand reaches out to seize his jaw. Gently, then not. She drags him in even as he flows into her embrace. The kiss is like whiskey left mellowing over the hearth-flames: fiery, smooth, familiar. Cardamom lingers in the gaps; the rest's doused in the residue of adrenaline.

Then desire simmers back into the brew: a low smolder, but with the capacity to roar should they pour a stiff shot into the equation. Her arms span his shoulders; his teeth catch her lower-lip. The kiss drags them down deep.

 Love's like revolution. An entire paradigm rewritten from the ground up.

In the aftermath, there's always blood.

When they break apart, it's only to breathe. Their skins are pinked with inner-heat; pupils dilated. Sevika's grip is unyielding; her thighs have gone from a rigid V to a needy cinch. His body, fitted between, has traded languor for livewire greed. Memories of earlier burn viscerally bright. Himself inside her, a cock thrust deep; a body on fire against another starved of heat.

He lays a kiss, openmouthed, at her breastbone. Her throat vibrates against his ear: purr, chuckle, moan.

"You should get going," she breathes, "before this gets ugly."

He laps the words from her throat. "That's the idea."

"Tomorrow's schedule... is a shitshow."

"All the better to end on a high note."

"Silco..."

It's a quaver of syllables. Halfway to futility—all the way to surrender.

By nature, Silco presses his advantage: cool palms coasting beneath the hem of her nightshirt, blunt fingernails ghosting goosefleshed flanks. Her breasts fill his palms like decadent teardrops: nipples pebbling into silky little hellos as he rolls each with delicate intent, then roughly pinches. Her startled groan fills his mouth.

Gods above and below—the way she arches; the way she rocks. Her own kisses have gone from scalding to incandescent. He knows they're no longer going to make it to her bed—at least, not immediately. He'll have her here, first: in the kitchen, on his knees. With his tongue, then his fingers, then his cock in her cunt.

Nothing romantic to it, but what he wants is far more real.

"Sweet Janna," Sevika gasps, as he rucks up her nightshirt and fastens on her bare tit like candy, "do you ever ease up?"

Silco hums the negation between her breasts. "...You?"

"Gods, no—" She cups his skull, drags him closer, "but tomorrow—"

"Fuck tomorrow."  The crudeness earns him a grin. Her fingers tighten on his crown; her knee hikes higher around his torso. "Tonight's Jubilee. Not your father's bloody funeral. Save the damp squib for when it counts."

 Her spiky smirk was spreading. But somewhere, he's hit the wrong note. The spark douses into stillness. Her arms loosen; the Valkyrie wilts.

In her absence, there's only the shape of a wary woman: heavy-boned and hard-lined; scars all across the skin.

Breaking their embrace, she tugs her top down. Self-conscious; unlike herself.

"C'mon," she mutters. "Don't play roulette with the cards you're dealt."

"I thought that was our calling." Bemused, he searches her face. "Unless there someone else you're hedging your bets on?"

"No." An old exhaustion creeps into her eyes. One that prefigures Zaun in its entirety. "Just... no."

"No?"

"I need to be counting sheep tonight. Not stars."

 Rising, she gathers the empty mugs, ferrying them to the sink.  The shift is sudden and inexplicable. His XO is carved from bedrock, with all its obdurate depths.  Moodiness is a character flaw she rarely indulges. 

A premonition prickles along Silco's nape. The monster stirring awake. He's never handled disappointment well. Rejection, worse. It makes his knucklebones lock around a blade's hidden heft; ready to dish out whatever collateral damage is necessary until his goal is within reach.

Mine, the monster hisses. Mine.

Ours, he counters, and wills himself to stillness.

"What's wrong?" he says, as mildly as possible. "A minute ago, you were ready."

"I was." She rinses the mugs. Her movements aren't tense, only sharply efficient. "But... tonight's not ideal."

"Bad head?"

Her sidelong smile is wan, but warms her eyes.  "Nobody'd level that critique against you, sweetheart."

The Sweetheart is a token; Silco pockets it as compensation. They don't do endearments; haven't in years. Perhaps, tonight, it's one of many rules they're unwriting.

Or perhaps Sevika's setting new parameters for intimacy altogether.

Not his strong suit: abiding by limits. But, then, neither is sharing.

Yet here he stands. Near enough for her heat to soak into him; not so close as to invade her space.  He's in no position to inveigle, especially after laying his cards at her feet.

The dice is hers to throw.

"If we're going too fast," he says, "say so. I'll match whatever pace you set."

Her head pivots. She looks—truly looks—as if he's an anomaly she's never encountered.  Something enthrallingly new, and far too dangerous.

"You're not angry," she murmurs.

"No."

"Why not?"

His shrug isn't effortless, but it's honest. "We've had a string of long days. We deserve to take the edge off, however we like. If that means shut-eye instead of screwing, so be it. But," and here the devil seeps to the surface, "I'd be lying if I said a quickie wouldn't put a spring in my step tomorrow."

She doesn't laugh, but it's a close call. "I think I'll manage without the extra bounce."

"Are you sure?"

"You know me. Always on the ball."

"You're not. Though you do a damn good job hiding it." He reaches out, thumbing a tangle behind her ear. "You're wired. You're always wired. But this is the first time it shows."

She tenses. But the touch, lingering, softens something within. Her eyes drift half-shut. "...It's nothing."

"No?"

"Just... there's too much riding on the line."

"We're the line, remember?" The caress drifts lower, cupping her nape. She arches into his palm: a dragon seeking shelter.  Yet within their closeness is  sense of something sinister. A splinter of truth, caught in between. "Unless, in honor of Jubilee, you've chosen abstinence for the month."

"Hardly." There's a trace of a smile; a shadow of bitterness. "That was Nandi's cup of hemlock."

"Hyssop."

"Huh?"

"Hemlock's the killer. Hyssop's the healer." Off her stare, he tips a shoulder. "Your sister taught me the finer points of herblore. During our courtship, I was always bruised, bloody, and bone-deep in doom. She couldn't steer me tidy, so she choose to teach me how to triage a broken arm."

Sevika's scrubbing slows. "That sounds like Nandi."

"A born dogooder."

She laughs—a frayed but genuine sound—just as he suspects her mouth may be running short on indulgence.

"Nah. She had a wicked streak. Only difference is that hers came with a heart of gold. Whereas mine..."   She performs a neat sidestep to hang the mugs off their hooks. "Got mine from my old man. Not a lick of shine in sight."

"I disagree."

"Your eyesight's one flaw worth enumerating."

"If I had to list yours, self-deprecation wouldn't feature among them." He catches her wrist, but lightly. "What's wrong? Because something is."

"Something." Her shrug's an imitation of his, but a poor one. "I guess... I'm just being superstitious. Thinking: if I let myself go now, I'll slip up at the next critical juncture. Or get so fucking pissed when you're back to being Zaun's reigning bastard, I won't be able to keep a lid on it? Because—" She swallows. "That's the deal between us. There's always a catch. Cost; reward."

He lets her wrist go. "You think I'm playing games."

"Everything's a goddamn game with you. Same way everything's a game with Janna her-own-damnself.  And those games always end up at cross-purposes—and into clusterfucks."

Her silence doesn't quite sit right; Silco feels its surface ripple like a sine wave. There's something vulnerable inside. Something, conversely, walled-off.  It recalls the gloss in her eyes when they'd been going at it before. A stormfront brewing north.

Now it occurs to Silco the storm may not entirely be his doing.

"What is this?" He's prowling a circle around her now. "And if you say 'nothing'—"

She nixes the warning with a sharp headshake. "It's not."

"What, then?"

Outside the flat, fireworks: scalding showers of garnet red and verdant green. The eerie fractals dance through the blinds.

On the last ebb of colors, Sevika swallows.

"I can't—" Her voice snags; her lips pull taut. "—trust a single thing about tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because you're you, and I'm me. Between us, there's always a flipside. Some wrench in the spokes. Some debt overdue. That's how this game works. That's how it's always worked." Her chin lifts, defiant, but the eyes hold a haunted sheen. "You drive a hard bargain, Silco. But tonight? This deal feels too good to be true. And whatever I have left... I'm not ready to lose. Not if—if you mean what you say. And not if this is the only shot I get at—at—fuck."

Abruptly, she punches the wall. The lapis tile cracks like ice beneath her cybernetic fist.

Dazed, Sevika stares at the damage, the copper knuckles flexing.

A heartbeat later, she's in tears.

Silco's at her side before he registers it. The monster—always slithering, always shapeshifting—is lured to the stress chemicals wafting in the air. The rest of him—the vestigial organ pumping the barest heat to every extremity—pulls rank over roiling appetite.

This isn't a foe to fight. Nor prey to penetrate.

This is Sevika baring a bellyful of hurt.

"Sevika." He catches her shoulders. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing." Furiously, she backhands the tears. "Look, forget it. Just—forget it. It's been a long fucking day. I'm tired. Tomorrow, everything will be fine. You'll be the terror of the deep, and I'll be the stone-cold bitch. Same old, same old. We'll move on; move forward. Like we always do."

"We will." His grip tightens, anchoring her in place. "But not tonight. Tonight, I want the truth."

"Nothing worth sharing." 

"Let me be the judge of that."

Abruptly, she wrenches loose.

"Since when do we swap sob stories?" she erupts. "Since when does the Eye of Zaun care what's going on between my ears, and not what deal's brewing in the the backrooms? Since when do you care about anything beyond the big picture, and not what's right in front of you? And why now, Silco? Why tonight, of all nights? When I'm at the end of my fucking rope, and it's just a matter of time before I slip up and strangle myself?"

"Because," Silco snaps, "I do care."

"You don't." She's breathing hard, as if she's sprinted miles to get here. "You're not Sil. You haven't been Sil in over ten fucking years. I was fine with that. Fuck, I was better than fine. I was grateful. 'Cause Sil was mine, and he'd stay mine, even if the rest fell, and our bones rotted. None of this—the dirty deals, the politics, the backstabbing—would touch him. He'd always be that dreamer with a big speech, and the best intentions, even if the worst came knocking.  But you—" Her mouth twists. "—you're the fucking monster, remember?  The goddamn anti-Sil. You're not supposed to care. You're not supposed to feel a thing. Except lately... you look at me like Sil used to. Like he's still in there, under fifty feet of icewater, and I can't take it. I can't stand you pretending to be him. You can't be. Because him, I knew. Him, I've I believed in. Him, I fought for, and for him, I'd gladly die. You—you're a changeling who stole his skin, and I hate you for it. I hate myself more for wanting you. Because it's too risky to want you. Not if it's all or nothing, and nothing's my most likely bet."

She's barely breathing by the end. The fury's spent itself. Her body's deadweight.

Silco's the one lost at sea.

"Is that what you think?" he says, low. "I'm a pretender in my own skin?"

"I think the last ten years have been a fucking nightmare. I think, whatever you are—whatever you've turned into—that you've still got a long way to go before you're a man I can trust."

"But you want to trust me." He's inching closer. "Trust us."

"I can't!" She jerks back. "I can't go back there. I can't let myself hope."

"Why not?"

"Because—" The bravado cracks. "Because what's left isn't worth losing. You're never gonna change, and neither will the game, and we're both too fucked up to make this work."

"You're wrong."

Inexorably, he advances; she retreats, until he's caged her against the counter. The monster's wide awake, instincts primed to strike. It's Silco's way; coercion as conversational art; proximity as pressure valve.

But here's neither advantage to be extracted, nor damage to impart.

Only his refusal to let her suffer alone.

"I won't," he repeats, softer, "And I'm going to prove it."

"How? By threatening your way into my pants?"

"By owning the truth. Whatever that truth is." He doesn't touch her. Only breathes the salt-scented air between them: stress, sex, tears. The sensory olio solidifies the stakes. "I'm not Sil, and I'll never be again. But he's what I became, Sevika, and he's in me. All the pieces, and none of the pretty. But whatever's left, you can have it all.  So long as you'll give me the same."

She shivers. Doesn't move a muscle. Doesn't lash out.

But nor does she run.

"You're asking a lot," she says, raggedly. "What if it's not worth it?"

"Let me be the judge." He holds her eyes. "Tell me what's eating you alive. Because whatever it is—whatever's got you so scared—it won't be the end of us, Sevika. I swear."

Sevika resists; a muscle quivers in her jaw. But the tears are relentless.  Each drop's a surrender, unmaking hard-won stoicism by stages.

Finally, she sags. Her voice is uncharacteristically small.

"It's my old man. He's back."

[soraeia]

Chercia allows Jinx to take her hand, her other curling around the duckling and pulling it closer to her chest as her knight spoke. She bit her lip, listening. The conflict within her piling. Wrenn wouldn't lie about something like this. But then that would mean Chercia had been lied to her whole life by the man she trusted most. By the man who raised her. By her father.

Suddenly, that frightening expression on her father's face during their duel flashed in her mind and Chercia closed her eyes as though that would expel the image from sight. No. No....it couldn't be true. But if Tristan wasn't her father, then who? That man Wrenn mentioned? And who was her mother? And if what Qai said was an honest plea, that more of her family would be in danger, what does Tristan have to do with any of it?

"Alright...I'll go." She didn't know what to trust. But she wanted to see. She wanted answers. And she knows at least one person will be by her no matter what the truth ends up being. "As long as you're with me, Jinxie..."

Wrenn only watched as Jinx worked his way of convincing her, not bothering to interject. Whether Chercia ended up believing any of it or not, Wrenn was going to take her. She might hate him for it, but all that mattered right now was that she was safe and away from Tristan. Away from the rot of this palace before she was infected with the decay.

His eyes flicked toward the window again, giving Qai's hand an anxious squeeze, his other hand finding Jinx's shoulder in silent gratitude. "Come on, we're out of time."

Jinx's jaw was set as he watched Wrenn deliberate, then looked... out the window? But the knight didn't have time to question that, not before Wrenn dropped that massive bomb.

"What...?" Tristan wasn't Chercia's father? Apparently her actual father was here? That was... a lot to unpack. He was so stunned that he didn't even register the fourth person in the room, until they started speaking over the yelling.

And then both Wrenn and the stranger are looking at him for help, and Jinx suddenly feels very on the spot.

Gods... this was a lot for Jinx to take in, so he knows Chercia wasn't doing much better. But, if it was true... if they really weren't safe here...

"...Chia. Calm down and listen to me for a sec. Okay?" Turning to kneel in front of the princess, he takes her hand in his own, waiting until he has her attention. "I don't think he's lying. You know Wrenn wouldn't joke around about something like that. And if he's right, and it's not safe here..." He trails off, squeezing Chia's hand, then.

"I think... you should go with them. At least to get some answers... maybe it'll give you answers to what actually happened. And if none of this is true, we'll come right back." He gives her a reassuring little smile, then.

"I won't force you to do anything. But remember, no matter where you go, I'll be by your side, and protect you from anything and anyone. That's my oath as your knight--I'm your sword and your shield."

[soraeia]

"Chercia? I hope I'm not interrupting anything..."

Ahnia's crown prince approaches; an apprehensive, but hopeful look on his face as he reaches Chercia. His lips quirk upwards in a smile, and he motions to the spot beside her as if to ask if he can sit.

"...Listen...I know that I'm probably not someone that you're especially excited to be around right now, with everything that's happened. Everything that I've told you. But that's not why I'm here today."

From his pocket, Jai produces a neatly folded, pale pink envelope. The wax stamp sealing it closed is the signature color of Ahnia's royalty-- a gold and cream, along with barely there wisps of a light, warm grey. Holding it out to her, he waits for her to open it before continuing on.

Inside was a simple, but elegant invitation, addressed to Chercia herself.

"This time of year means a lot to you-- every year, you're probably one of the last people at the celebrations at the end of the day, and you're always smiling through the whole thing. The sky might not be as pink in Ahnia as it is in Vanystea this time of year, and the celebration isn't quite as big...but I wanted to at least put together something that you would hopefully enjoy. We'll be starting things up around dinner, you have time to shop for whatever you want to wear, and whatever else you want or need to do."

"...I hope I'll see you there. Jinx is invited too, if he wants to come."

@soulsxng

She'd been laying on the windowsill with a book laid open on her chest, having long abandoned it when the boredom affected her ability to focus on the prose. When her uncle Jai baits her attention, it slips flops down to her lap as she sits up.

"...no, I was just daydreaming, I guess..." she responds quietly, unsure of how to even look at him after all she's been elightened to. Though, since she's warmed up to Jinx again....it wasn't really fair to keep giving her uncle the cold shoulder. Even if he kept the truth from her all these years, Chercia knew it hadn't been done out of malice. It was all in the name of keeping her safe...

She watches from the corner of her eye when Jai produces what looks to be an official royal invitation from his pocket---the colour of the envelope having piqued Chercia's curiosity before she takes it with a careful hand and opens it herself...

"...!"

Her smile grows as she reads, as her uncle explains, and her demeanor brightens almost instantly before she's turning fully toward Jai and throwing her arms around him with an excited squeal.

"You're really throwing a party for Pink Season!?"

Wait a minute...dinner? Tonight?

"I only have a few hours to find the perfect dress! Uncle, why didn't you give this to me yesterday!?"