#I was in so much pain and also kind of stunned by her reaction so I just. hung up

[running-in-the-dark]

aw man. for a minute there I thought I might be allowed to take Ibuprofen again since I stopped taking the antidepressant that I was on. but sadly no, you're also not supposed to take it when you're on the anxiety medication I'm on 😔

[spideyhexx]

where you're not Billy's (yet) and get jealous <3 mdni

Billy wasn't yours. You knew that. It helped to remind yourself that you weren't his either. You could easily find another mind to keep your company, but you could never get yourself to even try. Instead those nights, you always returned to Billy, also in his lonesome, with no other woman at his side because he would always, already be looking at you.

That's how most nights would go. You would find one another like there was a string attaching you two and you'd fall into your bed, his bed, the grass, the side of a building, honestly anywhere he can get you quick enough.

Part of you always wanted to bite the bullet. Billy's made it clear he would pursue you more than just your late-night rendezvouses but you knew who he was. The type of life he leads and you're reluctant to let that bleed into your life. Fun little relations with him did not carry the weight his love would.

It was unspoken, but Billy respected it, he took what you gave him and that was better than nothing.

So in truth, you should not have had such a visceral reaction to seeing him chat with another woman one night at the saloon. You went there specifically to seek him out, not having seen him the past week made you antsy, but the moment you stepped in, your eyes found him, leaning close to a woman who would lean up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. His smile was easy, his demeanor relaxed, the flirty kind you felt used to.

Jealousy was always a problem for you, but it's never struck you this hard. Never has it hurt like it is as you watch them together.

Against your better judgment, you left immediately, and a restless sleep made you decide to ignore the cowboy.

Billy feels the cold shoulder the very first day. He sees you in the morning just as he rides into town, "Hey, doll, wait up," he says, getting off of his horse and tying it up in a quick manner to catch up to you, but he notices you didn't stop.

He jogs over, a hand to your arm, his big, warm hand to your arm, "Doll, you hearin' good?" He chuckles a little but you don't look amused so he drops it.

"I'm busy, Billy," is all you say to him, even though it pains you to keep your emotions inside, and you walk, quicker, away.

Billy's almost too stunned to speak before he calls after you, "Hey, hey, hey, slow down I just wanted-"

"I said I'm busy," you repeat, your head turning to lock with his gaze. The last thing you catch is his shoulders slumping before you turn forward again.

The entire week Billy tries to talk to you, only to get waved off or completely ignored until he just accepts it and leaves you be. You wonder if it's better to keep him at this distance, this way you didn't fall more for him every night you spent naked with him. But the pain in ignoring him was a devil.

Especially after you hear word that he got injured. Nothing major. He was in some scuffle and all you heard was that he actually got a little beat up from it this time around compared to other times he's fought.

It made you forget your pact to ignore him, knowing how often you were the one who cleaned him up. And Billy didn't seek you out this time. Maybe you fucked up.

You try the saloon, but he's not there. Who is there though, is his friend Charlie. You're barely even thinking through your actions as you walk up to him, "Charlie?"

He turns to face you, with a small smile after realizing it's you, "What's going on?"

"Where's Billy?" You don't beat around the bush with it and you try not to sound so desperate but you're sure you do.

"Uh, I'm actually not sure. Maybe go ask George over there," Charlie nods his head at the other man and you nod, turning your mission elsewhere.

You ask the same question to George, who's also unaware of where Billy is, citing he was back at the camp they've set up a bit away from town, but he's not sure if Billy is currently there.

It feels like a complete lost cause. Maybe even feels stupider that you've asked. Without much else to do and asking around the people you knew to be friends with Billy with no luck, you make your way to a spot Billy and you would typically go to.

In the fields, a small walk from town, where you'd sit under one of the bigger trees and talk. Or fuck. Either or.

A small sliver of hope pokes at your chest that he's there, but he isn't. You let out a sigh and sat down, leaning back against the tree.

You're not sure how much time passes until the sudden sound of footsteps jolts you to your feet. Your eyes lock with Billy, his brow is furrowed, and he's almost storming towards you. It makes your chest ache with relief that he's here. It makes your chest ache with anxiety over his anger. It makes your chest ache with desire because boy was he hot when he was angry.

When he gets closer, you see the cut on his lip and the worry overtakes your emotions. You open your mouth to speak but he cuts you off, his hand grabbing your jaw. His touch is firm, but not enough to hurt you. Billy tilts your head up, leaving you no room to look away from him.

His words are rushed, "You were lookin' for me? You were lookin' for me, huh?" A scoff leaves his lips after he speaks. His voice is gruff, almost demanding an answer than just curiosity. You swallow your desire.

"Well. Yeah, I was, I heard you got hurt and-"

He moves in closer, close enough that your back leans against the tree and you can smell him. The slight scent of whiskey, campfire and just him was enough to get you dizzy. It's dark, but you can see the tick in his jaw and the intake of breath he gets.

"Here I am," he says, taking his hand off your jaw and gesturing to himself, "What do you want?" There's a snap to his words and you know he's angry about your avoidance of him.

"I was trying to say I heard you got hurt and I wanted to...make sure you were okay," you get your words out slowly, your eyes never leaving his as he rubs the bridge of his nose.

"Right. So it took me gettin' hurt for you to find me?" There's pain in his tone when he says it and it makes you shake your head.

"Billy-"

"Doll, what did I do? We were fine and then suddenly you were actin' like I fucked up bad. I can't recall anythin' I could've done to deserve that from you," he says, crowding your space till the brim of his hat bumps into your head. Billy seems to get annoyed with it so he haphazardly takes it off dropping it to the ground at your feet.

"I saw you with that...woman or whatever...you...," You take a deep breath to keep yourself in check before you start speaking again, "I went to the saloon to find you and you were all up close with some girl and I just..."

When you let yourself trail off, you glance up at him and see the anger still full in his eyes.

"I wasn't...that was Manuela. Charlie's wife, doll. Can promise you, I am not gettin' sweet with her," Billy says, his brow still furrowed. It made you feel even more embarrassed that you jumped to conclusions, but could you help it? Women flocked to Billy easily. And he wasn't yours, you tell yourself again. He lets out a humorless chuckle.

"I told you I wanted you, you know?"

"I know, but-"

"I know. But I told you. And now you're jealous. You want me too?"

Billy is almost pleading with you to just say it. He knows it. But he's in desperate need of you to finally let it out. You're quiet, your head mulling it over in a frantic manner as he stares right into your soul.

He scoffs, "Darlin' stop thinkin' so hard. 've told you before. All you gotta do is tell me and I am all yours." It feels like you can't speak, your tongue is missing completely from your mouth. Billy's frustration only seems to increase as he rolls his eyes at your silence and his jaw clenches again.

His hands move to your hips, a firm grip, as he lets out a harsh breath, "What do I gotta do? Do I have to fuck it outta you?"

Your cheeks burn at that and he hears the hitch in your breath, "Billy, I-"

"That is it, huh?" He's mocking, finding humor in how heated you get over his words, his thumbs rubbing your hips over your dress. "Been missin' me these days? Got no one to look after you? Just me."

You nod, your head lurching forward enough to brush your nose to his and it almost makes him groan. "You're pissin' me off," he mumbles, like a warning, his lips almost inching to kiss yours, but he restrains himself.

"I'm sorry," you tell him, your breath lingering on him as your hands finally move to touch him, right against his chest. You swallow hard. "Don't know if I've ever felt this much," is what you're able to get out through your laboring breath. Billy takes that as enough, for now, pressing his lips hard to yours.

It's a bruising kiss. His lip was cut and he was fighting a wince, but he did not give a fuck about the pain right now. Billy was starved without you and all he can think about is taking. He pushes you back until you're more against the tree, the bark uncomfortable but that's the least of your worries. His hands pull at your hips to bring your body flush with his, slotting his leg between yours.

His one hand moves to cradle your face, mumbling to your lips, "still pissed off," and he licks his tongue along your bottom lip, nudging under your chin to tilt your head up more.

"Good," you mutter back to him before happily opening your mouth to him, tugging on the handkerchief at his neck to pull him as close as he can be.

He hums at your words, "Oh? You like me mad or somethin' doll?" Billy's hand at your hip holds you tighter, "is that why you're doin' this to me?"

You don't answer, your lips trailing along his jaw and to his neck. Your hand grasps the back of his head, pulling his head back a little to expose more of his neck, enough to find his spot that you found. That he didn't even know about until he slept with you.

As you suck at the spot, biting the skin enough to leave the start of a mark, Billy refrains from moaning, but you hear him mumble, "fuck's sake," before he's pulling back from you and taking his belt off.

"Ground?" He takes his belt off so easily it distracts you, but you nod.

"Ground," you reply, moving yourself to the grass. Billy doesn't waste a second, taking his jacket off and laying it out so you can sit on it.

He nudges you to lay back and gets on you so quick, it makes your breath run fast. "Billy," your voice is breathy, his head burying into your neck, leaving surprisingly soft kisses as he fumbles to push his pants down.

You help the best you can, then swat his hand away to fish his cock from his underwear yourself. Billy lets out a low groan when he feels your hand wrap around him. You hum, stroking the length of him once, then twice before taking him out.

"Tell me you missed this or I think I'll actually go crazy, doll," he mutters, his kisses finding your jaw.

"Now I wanna see you go crazy," you joke under your breath, but Billy isn't having any of that.

"Fuckin'...fine. That's what you want?" His hands are under your dress in an instant, and find your undergarments, the thin linen being harshly ripped from your body.

"Billy! Did you actually rip them, I-"

"Darlin' please be fuckin' quiet," he rasps, and you pull hard on his hair in his response. He laughs.

"Missed you. Pissed at you. But still want you just as fuckin' much," he whispers, giving your cheek a kiss as he hikes your legs up around him, his hips slotting to yours.

Billy's hand finds himself, guiding his dick to rub at your clit, both of you letting out shaky sighs at the feeling. His nose smushes to your cheek, eyes stuck on you to watch you react to him.

"Oh, honey," he whispers as his tip rubs through your folds, feeling just how slick you are. The head of his cock catches at your entrance and you both moan in unison again. Billy slowly pushes the tip into you, groaning over it and helping you wrap your legs tighter to him.

"There you go. Still take it good, hm?" He doesn't let you even try to answer him as he thrusts the rest of himself into you, his knees shifting in the grass to adjust his position. Billy grips your hips hard, thumbs pressing to the underside of your thighs as he begins fuck himself into you.

A moan rattles through you, your head pushing back against the ground at his immediate quick pace. You grasp at his shoulder, your other hand tangling into his hair so you can pull it whenever he fucking quips at you.

Billy grunts, his head down and teeth nipping at your jaw, "You actually listened to me. Actually stayin' quiet besides those pretty moans. Not even talkin' back," he chuckles at it and then again when you tug his hair like he thought you would.

"'M sorry," he murmurs, leaving an affectionate kiss on your jaw. For a moment, Billy buries his cock as deep as it can be inside of you, holding still to feel you tighten around him. "That's it...you missed that?"

You nod, your words not coming, but he grips your jaw, "you can speak," he says, his hips snapping to yours, just as desperate as his kisses were before.

"I did miss it, Billy....so, so, so much."

That spurs him on as he opens your mouth with a push of his fingers at your cheeks, your eyes dazed and tongue sticking out a little like routine. Billy slows his thrusts as he spits down onto your tongue.

Before you can close your mouth, his lips and tongue are finding yours, a strangled moan leaving him and melting back into you. Billy's one hand still at your hip moves under you to wrap around, giving your body a slight angle as he fucks harder, his rhythm starting to break.

His kiss is sloppy, as is yours back, tongues a mess of massaging to one another, his teeth biting to your lip, noises tumbling from you both. He breaks the kiss to nuzzle his nose to your cheek, "please tell me you didn't fuck someone else while you were angry at me," he suddenly says, his eyes closed like he's anticipating the worse.

"I didn't," you whisper back to him, "I promise you," you assure him again, your hand rubbing through his hair.

"I didn't touch anyone," he tells you, "nothing," he pauses, giving your cheek the lightest kiss as he changes his movements, slowing down, sliding his cock out of you slowly, but pushing back in hard, his hand moving from your jaw to slip between your legs and thumb at your clit, "Just tell me."

A whimper leaves your lips when you feel his thumb, your hips bucking up, which only makes him want to fuck you faster again, but he holds back. You know what he means the moment he says to tell him and you turn your head head to nose back at him.

"I want you," you breathe out and you feel him let out a breath, his lips tenderly kissing your nose.

"Can I be yours then?" He slows even more, which makes you whine. Your eyes lock to his, his face strewn with hope and deep desire, you can feel the twitch of his cock and see the flutter of his eyes.

"Yes," you whisper to him, giving him a small smile as you ruffle your handing his hair, "then I'm yours?"

He groans at your answer and question, and his hips rock faster again, needy and full of so much want, "yes, doll, you're mine," he rasps out, "and you're gonna come just for me, yeah? I know you will, Bet you wanted me to come for you all week, I'll give you it," he gets out his words quick, your fingers digging into his hair and his shoulder.

"Billy....fuck...f-faster."

He chuckles, "Jesus, doll," he gives you a crooked smile, but obliges, rubbing your clit in tight fast circles as he ruts into you, his forehead pressing to yours.

A heat overcomes you as your orgasm washes over you, Billy smiling as he watches it overtake you. The way your mouth parts and your moan borderlines a whine, the arch of your hips to his, and the spasm of your cunt against him.

He fucks into you maybe three more times before he's pulling out of you, letting out an almost guttural moan, spilling on your thigh, the slight friction of the tip against your thigh is enough to get him hard all over again, but Billy pushes those thoughts aside to move his hands back to your face and kiss you passionately through your heavy breaths.

"Still a little pissed," he mumbles and you nudge your knee into his.

"Ow," he grins into the kiss, a bigger flush coming to his face when you start laughing.

[potatoplace]

Gone

Azriel x Archeron!Reader (deceased), Elriel

the 1 | alternate endings: betty | The Prophecy

mini-series masterlist | ACOTAR x reader masterlist

Story Summary: In the wake of your death, Azriel loses everything. And still, you're dead and gone, an aching void felt in those around you.

Warnings: character death (suicide), dead body of reader, grieving, fuck Azriel

Words: ~2.5k

Author's Note: Yes, the title comes from Rosé's 'Gone'. Go listen to it RIGHT NOW. I would say that even without this fic tho lol love me some Rosie 🫶 So here's the first one of the second parts to the 1! I hope you guys like it, and I hope I did all of the characters' reactions justice (especially Miss Feyre) - ALSO thank you for all the love you've given the 1! It was born out of my own crappy day, I'm happy something good came out of it ☺️

18+ only pls

🤍💙🩷💙🤍

Azriel quickly made his way back to Elain, doing his best to put the interaction he had just had with you behind him.

His mate.

Elain’s sister… That’s the only way he had ever thought of you.

As a human you had been… Less than average. Hard to look at.

At least in comparison to Elain.

Elain was a breath of fresh air, so lovely and innocent and so entirely unlike him.

And turned fae, she was even more breathtaking.

He had waited for her to realize how truly damaged and scarred he was, and not just on the outside. How entirely unworthy of her he was.

But she hadn’t. She had seen him, loved him, even with how broken he was on the inside.

And he had meant his words to Nesta, when he had said no one would ever compare to Elain, even his mate.

And he was right. You didn’t compare to her.

But as he reached her side and wrapped his arm around his lovely Elain, he couldn’t help but… wonder.

Had he just made a mistake in rejecting the bond so easily?

His free hand came to rub at his chest, which felt like it was being scraped with a knife, a dull, throbbing pain.

“Are you alright?” Elain’s sweet voice asked, and he tilted his head to look down at her.

A small smile graced his lips. “Of course, sweetheart. Come to the balcony with me, will you?”

The ring he had selected for Elain lay in a white velvet box, tucked safely in his jacket pocket. It was a beautiful ring, a silver band inlaid with glittering diamonds, and a stunning pink diamond as the centerpiece.

You had told him that Elain had always wanted a pink diamond ring.

He hoped you weren’t lying, trying to sabotage his proposal.

He wouldn’t put it past you, mating bonds do make fae rather territorial. Even if Elain is your sister.

He shook the thought out of his head, you had never been anything but kind. Boring, yes. Quiet, yes. But always kind.

Azriel smiled at Elain once they reached the balcony, and they stared out over Velaris together for a moment while he gathered his courage.

“Elain,” he said softly, drawing her gaze to him.

“Yes, love?” Elain asked, her lips curving upwards, as if she knew what was coming.

Azriel dropped to one knee and pulled the box from his jacket, reveling in how Elain’s eyes lit up.

“Elain, I have loved you for so long now. In fact, I believe I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you all that time ago, in the human lands. Never did I think that I would have the honor of calling you mine, even once. But now, knowing how wonderful you are, I cannot imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone but you. Elain,” he said, cracking open the box and showing her the ring inside. “Will you marry me?”

Tears were streaming down Elain’s face as she beamed down at him. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” She squealed, and Azriel quickly slipped the ring onto her left hand before taking her in his arms and spinning her around. “I love you so much, Az. And how did you know I wanted a pink diamond?” Elain asked once he had set her down, giving her time to admire her new ring.

“Oh, I may have asked Y/N for advice on what you’ve always wanted,” Azriel said.

“Ah, that was smart-”

“Oh my gods!” Feyre screamed, cutting Elain off and causing the pair to look over to her.

“What is it, Feyre?” Rhys asked worriedly, panic on his face after Feyre’s outburst.

Feyre took off running before answering, Rhys following immediately, and the rest of the inner circle exchanged looks before sprinting after them, leaving the confused citizens of Velaris behind.

They skidded to a stop at a balcony, where Feyre was leaning over it, sobbing.

“No!” She screamed, a guttural cry leaving her lips as she collapsed to the floor, Rhys barely catching her in time as she passed out in his arms.

“What is it, Feyre?” Nesta asked as she walked over to the balcony, glancing over the side herself. “Mother above! Y/N!” Nesta yelled, the first time that Azriel had heard true, heart wrenching pain in her voice, and she collapsed next to Feyre, tears streaming down her face.

Y/N?

But what would be wrong with Y/N? Azriel had left her in the hallway, not ten minutes before now.

Elain tugged him over to the balcony, her heart rate picking up just from the reactions of her sisters. When she peeked over the side, a scream left her lips, more wounded and hurt than Azriel thought she would ever sound. “Y/N!” Elain cried as she fell next to her sisters, the three of them huddled together once Feyre came to a moment later, her sobs picking up instantly, her hands clutching at her chest.

Azriel dared a glance over the side, his heart dropping to his stomach when he saw it.

Saw you.

Lying there, unmoving, darkness surrounding your body.

He gasped and stumbled back from the balcony, reality hitting him.

Dead.

You were dead.

You were his mate and you were dead!

Tears streamed down his face, and he couldn’t tell exactly what happened next, but soon enough Cassian was flying back up from the ground, your limp, unmoving body in his arms.

The three sisters’ sobs grew louder when they saw you up close, the three of them surrounding your body where Cassian had gently placed it on the floor. Feyre sat with your head resting in her lap, her hands running through your hair as she sobbed. Azriel watched on, a hand covering his mouth as he beheld your lifeless form.

“Why…? Why would she do this?” Feyre cried, resting her head on Rhys’s shoulder when he sat next to her. “I don’t understand, she was fine just a little bit ago…”

Azriel couldn’t help but feel partially responsible.

“I…” He started, but stopped before he got it out.

Nesta’s head whipped towards him, though. “You…? You what, Azriel?” She snapped.

All eyes followed suit, snapping to Azriel’s form, taking in the tears on his cheeks.

“I… Y/N is… was… my…”

“Spit it out,” Nesta growled, her voice icy with rage and grief.

“Y/N was my mate,” Azriel finally whispered.

Everyone gasped, but it was Elain’s face that broke his heart.

“Y/N was… I don’t understand,” Feyre said softly, watery eyes meeting Azriel’s. “What… What happened?” She asked between teary breaths.

“She… She told me, when she had asked to speak with me, Elain.”

“And?” The sharp question came from Rhys.

Azriel hesitated, but the pressure of all those teary eyes had him answering. “I rejected the bond. Just as I said I would.”

“You what?!” Nesta screeched as she launched her body towards him, only stopped by Cassian’s strong arms wrapping around her waist and holding her back from killing his brother. “You found out about the bond and rejected it in the same night?! In less than ten minutes?!”

Feyre was glaring at him, tears streaming down her face, and he was sure that if she wasn’t still cradling your head in her lap that she would be eviscerating him with Nesta’s help.

And Elain… She was staring at him with such sorrow in her eyes, the love that had been shining in them mere minutes before all but gone.

“I… I thought that it was what I should do, I love Elain,” Azriel explained, but he could tell it was the wrong words by everyone’s shock and disgust.

“So you turned down the bond? Just like that? You couldn’t even think about it? When it was Y/N?!” Nesta yelled, her struggles against her mate renewed with her outrage. “What in the hells is wrong with you?” She snarled, silver flames bursting from her fingers.

“You should go, Azriel,” Feyre said quietly, the calm before the storm. And he didn’t want to be here when his High Lady turned into a raging hurricane.

His gaze snapped to Elain, who had turned away from him, instead focusing on where her fingers were caressing your rapidly paling face.

“Az. Just, go home. Okay?” Cassian suggested, his own expression harder than it normally appeared, but still softer than everyone else around them.

Mor and Amren, who had been quiet throughout the ordeal, gave him pitying looks as he turned to leave, his wings drooping to touch the ground.

The three sisters wails grew in volume as he left them, Feyre’s the loudest among them as she mourned her twin, who she’d already lost in death once before, and nearly again to the terror that was the Cauldron.

He could hear the concerned chatter of the citizens of Velaris nearby, a few people daring to venture into the disallowed areas of the House to see what all the commotion had been about. Quickly, Azriel made his way to another quiet balcony, launching himself into the sky.

Tears were still falling from his eyes when he landed in front of his and Elain’s cottage- though he wasn’t sure if he should even call it that anymore.

She still said yes, his shadows whispered to him quietly, their voices tinged with sadness. But… Our mate… they wept softly, coiling tightly around him.

Azriel threw the door open, making a beeline for the bedroom. He collapsed by the foot of the bed, a sob ripping from his throat.

His mate. Gone.

🤍💙🩷💙🤍

Three days later and his mate was being lowered into the ground, her decoratively carved wooden casket slowly taking her to her final resting place.

His mate. Dead.

It had been three days since he and Elain had spoken, though they had laid next to each other in silence each night when Elain came home from planning the funeral and mourning in the company of her remaining sisters.

She looked beautiful today, even in dull black mourning garb. Her engagement ring was still sparkling on her ring finger, the one ray of light still left in his life.

He couldn’t help but feel she was slipping through his fingers, though.

A situation entirely of his own making, he supposed.

After the ceremony and during the wake, he waited for Elain to approach him first.

“Hi, Az,” she said softly, settling herself into the chair next to him. He murmured a soft hello back. “I wanted to… Talk to you.”

“Oh? What about, ‘Lainey?”

A slight blush colored her cheeks at the nickname. “I wanted to know… What you said to Y/N. I just… I need to know if it was just the bond being rejected or…” She trailed off, turning her eyes from his hazel ones to the table.

“If I was needlessly cruel to her?”

Elain pursed her lips together. “Yes.”

Azriel sighed. He had hoped he would never need to admit how horribly his last interaction with his mate had gone. “I… I was not kind to her, not like I should have been. I wish I could change how I rejected her Elain.”

Elain’s mouth turned downwards. “What exactly did you say?”

Azriel looked at the ground. He couldn’t meet her eyes as he repeated his awful words to her, her eyes widening by the second.

“I… Azriel, I am sorry, but I cannot marry you.” She slipped the ring, the ring that was so, perfectly Elain, off of her finger and onto the table, sliding it over to him. “I would not be able to marry someone who could say such things to someone, let alone to my sister and their mate. I… I wish you the best. I’ll move my things out of the cottage as soon as possible.”

And with that, Elain stood from the table and walked back to where her sisters and his brothers were sitting, leaving him and his broken heart in her wake.

She’s right, master, the shadows whispered to him. You hurt our mate badly. She is gone.

Tears pricked Azriel’s eyes again.

A few minutes later, a black cloud encroached on his field of view-

His High Lady.

“You said WHAT to my twin?!” Feyre screamed at him, darkness flooding his vision. “You thought being her mate was a joke?! And when it wasn’t a joke, you told her she would never compare to Elain?! And that waiting for your mate, the one who was made for you, was a waste of time?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Feyre raged, her inner beast coming out, only for Azriel to see.

And he was horrified, terrified as his High Lady pinned him to the ground, talons cutting into the skin of his throat and piercing his left wing.

“I should rip you limb from limb,” Feyre hissed, her voice more animal than fae. “It is only for my mate that I will not, but you will leave this court and never return. Better yet, leave the fucking continent so that I am less tempted to hunt you down and slaughter you anyways.”

And then Feyre was off of him, letting her claws slice into his neck, just barely missing his jugular. The darkness receded, leaving him lying on the ground bleeding and Feyre standing over him, appearing as a fae again.

“Azriel.” Rhys approached the two of them, followed closely by Cassian, and extended a hand to help Azriel up. “Brother, you know that I love you. But… You can’t stay here. Not now. Not after… This.” A heavy sigh left his brother’s lips.

Cassian hugged him tightly, careful to avoid brushing against his now punctured wing.

“I’ll miss you, brother. Take care of yourself… Don’t… Don’t do anything stupid, okay?” Cassian said quietly, tears shining in his eyes.

“I second that, Az. Be smart, hmm? I’m sure that you’ll find somewhere to hear from this, to change from this,” Rhys said aloud. Then, he spoke into his mind, “I know Feyre said to never return but… If you could, I would like for you to check in with me every month or so. Just to know that you’re alright.”

“I will,” Azriel replied in a soft voice, his throat sore from where Feyre had held him and cut him. “I am sorry, for what it’s worth,” he added as he regarded the three remaining Archeron sisters, knowing it would likely be the last time he would see any of them.

And then he took to the skies, even with his punctured wing making flight painful and more difficult than it had been since he first learned.

His mate, gone.

His family, gone.

It’s what I deserve.

General Taglist: @daughterofthemoons-stuff @lilah-asteria

'the 1' Taglist: @blackgirlmagicforever @historygeekqueen @angelbunny222

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Here's another long-winded post about me combing through BG3 early access files in search of Aylin and Isobel tidbits - rummaging that already resulted in this post right here. Let me just say I'm pleased to have brought Aylin Silverblood some attention because, again, I think it's a dope name.

Now, obviously, Isobel and Aylin are both Act 2 characters, and early access only covered Act 1. So anything related to them is partial stuff that wasn't scrubbed from the game files for whatever reason, and a lot of placeholders (these are usually indicated by |the text being in vertical lines|). This all means that sometimes (usually!) there are no nice voice lines indexed by UUID and parseable dialogue trees, and you have to trawl through a giant localisation XML of every bit of text in the game instead. An additional complication is all these stories were in flux, but older bits of writing from deprecated iterations didn't get immediately removed from the files, so it's sometimes hard to tell what belongs to which version.

The biggest luck I've had with regards to these two is the 24/11/2021 version of the game - EA Patch #6 Hotfix #19, aka game version v. 4.1.1.1356845, aka the source of Aylin Silverblood (my beloved). Here's a handy list of the patch and hotfix history, if you're like me and interested in this stuff. I'm actually wrangling files from 5 versions of the game right now, ranging from March 2021 to July 2022 - it's been a fun time. This old datamining post on reddit really helped narrow down the timeframe for me to look into.

Why am I doing this? I genuinely find it fun and interesting! There's some neat writing to be found! I crave more Isobel at all times! And I'm always into WIP and "how the sausage is made" type stuff. Also, tons of cool inspo for fics and headcanons.

Note, because I know that's a popular EA tidbit: this is all from after the Halsin killing Isobel variant was scrapped. This is, in fact, the version where she gets killed and soul trapped by Balthazar, and Aylin gets framed for it.

I'm going to start this off with my favourite part, and that is snippets of an early version of the Aylin/Isobel reunion from 2021. I've done my best to put them in order, but be aware a lot of this is still me speculating.

|[CINE: Nightsong teleports the party to the plaza in front of Last Light. As she looks around trying to familiarize herself, Isobel notices your arrival from the balcony. Her reaction is pure shock, followed by an immediate rush down the stairs.]|

|[CINE: Isobel dashes out of the front of the inn, wide-eyed and out of breath. Nightsong stares at her, stunned.]|

Aylin: |(distant, shocked) Isobel.|

Isobel: |Aylin...|

|[CINE: Nightsong takes an instinctive step towards her but stumbles, collapsing to her knees, eyes blown with pain and disbelief. Isobel closes the distance between them in hasty steps, trying to help Nightsong up, but Nightsong tightly grips at her arms - as if the contact makes everything real.]|

|[CINE: Isobel's eyes fill with tears as she drops down to the ground, throwing her arms around Nightsong's shoulders in a tight embrace. Shaking, almost fearful, Nightsong returns the embrace - the first kind touch she's had in a hundred years.]|

|[CINE: Nightsong draws back from the hug, looking Isobel in the eyes. Isobel helps Nightsong to her feet. As the two of them stand, they keep their hands linked.]|

Aylin: |A hundred years. Isobel, light of my heart, where were you? (choking up) I found your body, I....|

Isobel: |I was dead, Aylin. For so long. It was Balthazar - he trapped my soul, he-|

Player: |[Doesn'tKnowRelationship] You were lovers? Did Ketheric know?|

Aylin: |(jaw tightens) We were lovers. Her father was against it. He saw nothing but future misery. I'm immortal. I would never age, but she would.|

Isobel: |He didn't understand. It doesn't matter when... (fearful, as if worried Aylin's feelings might have changed) ... I still love you so much.|

Aylin: |(her first genuine smile) And I, you. No trial or pain could ever change that. (relaxes a touch) It is why I couldn't leave your body, even when they came. Balthazar and that Sharran witch told your father that I was to blame.|

|And he believed them over you?|

Aylin: |(frowns) He believed what he wanted to believe. Ketheric saw his daughter dead, and he saw someone he wanted to hurt. Shar took that cruel thread, that moment of mortal pain, and used it to corrupt him to the core.|

Aylin: |I was put on trial, and I had no defence. The moment it was over, I was taken down to the temple and... well, you saw what they had done.|

|Isobel presses against Nightsong's side, face tight with worry, running her fingers in slow strokes up and down Nightsong's arm.|

|[CINE: Nightsong tilts her head back towards the player.]|

Aylin: |These heroes saved me. Without them, I'd still be trapped in Balthazar's soul cage, with Ketheric gripping my heart like a leech.|

|[CINE: Isobel's face falls at the mention of her father's name.]|

Isobel: |A *soul cage*? Gods.|

Isobel: |I didn't know. Gods, he didn't say a word to me. I ran away because it was Balthazar that brought me back. As I ran, I heard my father shouting... but I'd seen enough. There was no saving him.|

Aylin: |You are not your father, Isobel. (sad, wry smile) You were the only thing that kept me alive in the dark. When hope began to fade, I simply thought of you.|

Isobel: |[To player] Thank you. (smiles wide) I... I can't possibly thank you enough, for bringing Aylin back to me.|

|Nightsong smiles too, but she's lost looking at Isobel, completely tuning out everyone else around them. Isobel leans in, resting her brow against Nightsong's and closing her eyes, Nightsong's hand clutched to her chest.|

Then, there is an option to press Isobel for details:

|You said the necromancer trapped your soul. Why?| |Was Balthazar the one who killed you, Isobel?|

Isobel: |(hesitant, visibly guilty) I think Aylin would know better than I do. The last thing I remember is a blade in the dark. Too fast to feel pain. Then silence.|

Asking Isobel to go with you to Moonrise was possible at various points, leading to different responses:

Will you come with me to Moonrise? I could use your help. If we're going to stop Ketheric, you have to come with me.

Until there is a way to keep Last Light safe, I cannot leave. All I can do is pray. |Not if everyone is killed at Last Light in my absence. I'll do everything I can to help you from here, but I won't go with you.| |Not if everyone is killed at Last Light in my absence. If someone else could take my place, I would go with you. I swear it.|

|Nightsong is here, she will protect Last Light - let's go to Moonrise, like you promised.| |I want to spend the night with Aylin. Meet me at Moonrise tomorrow.| |Nightsong will protect the people while together we can stop Ketheric.|

Isobel: I... we need to get close to him, don't we? And Aylin can protect Last Light in my absence. Aylin: Isobel, I have just gotten you back. To put yourself in his hands again-

Looks like we would've had a flip of the current Act 2 boss fight, and Isobel would be the ally for the confrontation with Ketheric, not Aylin. Also, that one line right there that is our first indication of Succor™, gotta love it. Sadly, post-reunion I only have:

|TBD: Post Nightsong Reunion.| |How are you and Aylin doing?|

To borrow release version Isobel's stock line: KEEPING VERY WELL, I HOPE? In any case, I'm putting the rest under a cut, featuring options for calling Isobel out on her parentage, Aylin being from Mt. Celestia, and Balthazar being gross - among many other things.

At one point quite early on, Isobel's protection from the shadow curse wasn't a spell, but an ointment:

|Ointment of Selûne| |Ointment Container PLACEHOLDER| |Isobel filled this with precious doses of her sacred Ointment of Selûne.| |First get the ointment from Isobel.| Have you received Isobel's ointment yet? What protection can her ointment offer, exactly? You should see Isobel. If Marcus does crop up, I'd sooner you had her ointment to protect you. Can use that cleric's ointment to get you on your way. But I have to move out - now. Can I get some of your ointment? No more theories! It's time for action. Our secret weapon needs to travel to Moonrise Towers, which means they'll need your ointment. You have the ointment. You have the Gate Stone. Moonrise Towers awaits. Are you sure the ointment will last long enough?

What is now Isobel's Ominous Cough was a gradual weakening that was remarked upon and seemed to be there to create more of a sense of urgency:

I won't claim to know Isobel's craft, but Selûne's light is bright in her. Isobel's tough - though she was tougher at the start. I've rarely seen a cleric so in tune with her goddess, but the curse is taking its toll. The light used to be stronger, Isobel. How much more of this curse can you take? You look paler than death, Isobel. How much more of this curse can you take?

We have some nice concise infodumps on Ketheric:

After Ketheric turned to darkness, the Enclave joined with the Harpers to unseat him and his Sharran cohorts. We marched together, fought together, bled together... and in the end we prevailed.

Only it wasn't the end. Nothing seemed to kill Ketheric himself, so the Harpers decided to seal him in his own tomb, alive. They thought that would be enough. But they hadn't counted on Ketheric unleashing the shadow curse. We watched it drain all light and life away from this place, saw it twist people into abominations. The Harpers lost hope.

Ketheric wove the curse on this land. The moment he was sealed in that tomb, Shar's poison devoured everything in its path.

Fallen paladin. Champion of Shar. He was building an army bent on unholy conquest, but we stopped him. Killed him. Buried him.

It was not enough. General Thorm lives again. He's built a new army, and this time he marches under the banner of the Absolute.

November 2021 is the earliest mention of Aylin I found, mostly marked as not finalised and placeholder dialogue (and that reunion up there). The Nightsong as present in that patch is still very different from what we ended up getting - nobody was killing her, in fact people were coming to get her "kiss", and there was a whole thing where it seems like Shar would directly take control of her and you could help her overcome the curse, or abandon her to it - or kill her. 

Embrace the Nightsong and be sworn to Eternal Shadow.

Anyway, here are her lines (all of these exist as voice files, which is rare for stuff I put in this post - but they're done by a voice actress who doesn't sound like Helen Keeley, our final Aylin VA, so I don't know what to make of it all tbh):

Shar is the Nightsinger, and I am her Nightsong. I am her instrument, transforming the faithful into shadows. I've been here for centuries. Do you know how many priests of Shar came here, full of faith, seeking my kiss? I've been here for centuries. Thousands of Sharrans came here seeking my kiss. I drink their sorrow, their loss, their grief. Then I vomit it back into the world. All of them are shadows now. That is Shar's only reward. But Ketheric returned for my kiss, over and over. You're the first to survive my kiss intact. You're the only one who can help me. Please, you have to help. No one's ever resisted the kiss before. No one has ever resisted my kiss. But you are not merely *one*, are you? That thing in your head must be incredibly powerful to resist a goddess. Perhaps it's also divine in nature. Because a mind can't survive two masters. It breaks us. Shar's attention must be elsewhere. Speak quickly. She's watching now. She's waiting to steal my voice. But it won't last. Please - listen! I was captured by Ketheric Thorm, Shar's chosen. He turned me into this creature. I'm a slave of Shar. She owns me, just like that thing in your head owns you. I want to sing my own song. Not Shar's. Not *Ketheric's*. Find Ketheric. Kill him so I can be free! Slay Ketheric. His wretched existence binds me to this temple. Oh. That made her angry. The Lady returns! She has me again! *Again!* Stop! You've driven her away!

I am not your *spectacle*. Turn away before I strike you blind. Tell them to come and receive my kiss.

Some possible relevant tags, interactions, and outcomes include:

|The soul cage has greatly weakened Nightsong| |Debug: click to save Nightsong (sets the flag to talk to Isobel)| |We sided with Ketheric and doomed Nightsong.| |Companion comment!||But if his power is linked to this Nightsong, there must be a way to unlink it.| |You have taken control of Ketheric's Soul Cage| |You are bound to Ketheric's soul cage, taking his regenerative powers for yourself| |Bound to Soul Cage| |Soul Cage Key| |Soul Cage Research| |The book details the necromancer's research on the soul cage| |There is a glimpse of Isobel's ghost, as she takes her Father with her to the afterlife.| |There is a glimpse of Isobel's ghost terrified and in agony. Both Isobel and Ketheric will disappear.|

At one point Isobel delivers her own, Ketheric's, and Aylin's backstory as "a story", but sadly I can find very little of it, just disjointed fragments:

You seem to know a lot about Ketheric. He was a devout Selûnite who converted to Shar. They say it was Ketheric's purity that drew an angel down from Celestia. You're Isobel Thorm. The daughter who died in that story.

And there seem to be many options to question Isobel about her hiding the truth about her father:

Why are you lying to me, Isobel? Everyone thinks you're dead, Isobel. Tell me the truth, Isobel. Everything. Still, Isobel might have saved us some time had she been honest from the beginning. |Why didn't you tell me what happened from the start, Isobel?|

Ketheric. Don't you mean your father? Ketheric is your father. I know the truth. Ketheric told me at Moonrise. He wants me to bring you home. I need your father to trust me. He wants you back. You sent me after your father - Ketheric. I think we should discuss Ketheric - your father - first. For all you've said about Ketheric, you left out the part where he's your father.

To which I've found some responses:

And would you have trusted her? Ketheric's daughter? Why didn't I tell you that I was murdered, that my soul was locked away for a hundred years? What would I have told her? That my father murdered her fellow Harpers, but that I can surely be trusted?

[Attempt to read Isobel's thoughts.] *You see Ketheric standing before Isobel, although the memory is hazy. His words are unclear, but his tone is not - he is pleading with her.*

Brought back by the same man that killed me. Balthazar. Standing next to my father with a smile on his face.

But I'm not sure it would have mattered. To stand with that man, my father has surrendered to deepest evil.

I would love to know what the whole pleading thing is about, and what Isobel "didn't know" that she claims didn't matter anyway.

My father. After a century, he somehow brought me back. But I saw the monster he had become. I couldn't bear it... I ran. I ran until I found Last Light. It was like a second home to me, once. I've been studying the curse ever since, searching for answers. Trying to restore the damage my father has wrought upon this land. It's possible I may have to sacrifice myself. But this is my father's crime.

And then, there is this nugget I cannot place but that I like: 

|Your father's due will come.|

There is also an option to tell her Nightsong is Aylin (who was, at this point, a full celestial - no mention of being connected to Selûne, though, and in fact, if she was indeed from Mount Celestia as mentioned in the "story", she would not have been):

Isobel: My father's curse still blackens this earth. Have you found anything? Player: A celestial, chained to Ketheric's soul. Player: They called her Nightsong, but she told me her name was Aylin. Isobel: Aylin. She... she's alive. I knew she had to be, I��� Player: Ketheric's necromancer took her to Moonrise. Isobel: His necromancer? Gods, you have to free her. Isobel: You have to go to Moonrise and free Aylin. When Ketheric is weak, this can all be over. Isobel: The truth is that I would give anything to see her again, and anything to stop my father. Free her, and you do both. Isobel: At least, the shell of my father. There's nothing left of the man that championed Selûne. Isobel: Find her. Free her. If Ketheric isn't stopped, all of us are doomed.

Player: |[Doesn'tKnowName] Aylin? Care to explain?| Isobel: The angel in my story about Ketheric. That was Aylin.

Speaking of Balthazar. Some lines from him:

[Introductory note: please imagine everything Balthazar says spoken with a wheezy voice, as if he's permanently out of breath.]

[I need to retrieve the Nightsong, but the temple is haunted and my minions cannot make it past the trial grounds. I cannot go there until the ghosts have been dealt with. Now that you are here on behalf of Ketheric, you will do all this for me.]

I, Fodder, am here on behalf of General Ketheric Thorm. Down in the depths of this temple writhes his desire. I am to bring it to him.

I created the Nightsong for General Ketheric, many moons... HEAR THAT SHAR? Many moons ago.

*As you hold the necromancer's mocking gaze, you can tell how it starts to dawn on him you are not the mere minion he thought you were.*

Along the way I found some more recent Patch 8 (2022-ish) gross Balthazar lines, some bits of which have actually survived to release:

She was a unique specimen even before I began my work. Aasimar. A god's blood united with mortal flesh.

Such fine clay she was. We grew quite close as I… remoulded her. Now she is General Thorm's shield. Her strength is his to drink upon. His pains are hers to bear.

If I never exceed her, I will still die happy. If I ever do something as gauche as truly dying, that is.

Utterly revolting! Makes my skin crawl! Man deserves a yeeting into the Shadowfell a hundred times over! But in order to not end on a gross note, I leave you with:

Ketheric Thorm. Murderer. Oathbreaker.

Aylin Silverblood. My true name. Nightsong was only ever a curse.

[olenvasynyt]

In the Azriel bonus chapter, Az leaves Rhys after their little fight and he says this: 

“He'd been so vigilant about keeping away from Elain as much as possible, and had stayed up here to avoid her, and tonight ... tonight had proved he'd been right to do so.”

And then you know what happens?  When Az keeps away from Elain, and he goes to the training pit, he stumbles upon Gwyn.

I think so many things point to Gwynriel in this bonus chapter.  The shadows reactions to her are something people often bring up to support Gwynriel.  They are curious, they dance to her breath.

And I can talk more about how the shadows react, all of the similarities Gwyn and Az have with each other ( made a post about that already, link here!), the foreshadowing people like to bring up, the retconning SJM has done for Gwyn, etc.  But I feel like I don’t even need to mention any of those tidbits even though I think they are important.  

All I need to know is the bonus chapter (which is usually used to tell the reader what will happen in the upcoming book) starts with Elain, and ends with Gwyn.

We can also analyze how the chapter is set up, the transition from Elain to Gwyn, the stark contrast between the two interactions and the feelings Az experiences, and we can compare a few sentences that are alike to understand what SJM might be trying to do. So I want to simplify what happens and focus on Az’s feelings throughout the BC.

It starts with him restless and filled with lust and desperation.  There is a constant looming feeling of self-harm almost because Az doesn’t take care of himself.

He found himself leaving the room. Entering the foyer, and he stumbles upon Elain. During his time with Elain, we get this lust, self-hatred, guilt, desperation.  He doesn't want to taint Elain with his presence. He constantly says this is wrong, it’s a mistake.  

He knew it was wrong, but there he was, sliding the necklace around her.

Wrong—it was so wrong.

And then Rhys interrupts and we see anger and spitefulness from Az.  He is defensive, he is in denial.  

"So you will leave Elain alone. If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her." Azriel snarled softly.  "Snarl all you want." Rhys leaned back in his chair. "But if I see you panting after her again, I'll make you regret it."  Rhys had rarely threatened punishment or pulled rank. It stunned Azriel enough that it knocked him from his rage.

And when he leaves, he goes back to this kind of self-harm because he goes and uses cold to numb his feelings.  

Azriel tucked in his wings and left without another word, stalking through the house and onto the front lawn to sit in the frigid starlight. To let the frost in his veins match the air around him. Until he felt nothing. Was again nothing at all.

He felt nothing.  Was nothing again at all.  A way of self-harm, and it brings out his self-hatred that we saw before.  We continue to get these feelings of disappointment and regret when he says that he was right in avoiding Elain, and we see him have feelings of temptation, rage, frustration, and writhing need.  And he goes to work off these feelings.

He aimed for the training pit, giving in to the need to work of the temptation, the rage and frustration and writhing need.   He found it already occupied. His shadows had not warned him.

And then we get to Gwyn.  We see his interactions with her and how he has a bit of empathy and maybe pity, but also amusement—he can’t help his soft chuckle. He also opens up to her and drops a very important personal bit of information, something Azriel almost never does.  

"Do you, though?" she pressed. "Sing?" Azriel couldn't help his soft chuckle. "Yes."

And we get him working off his temptation and rage and frustration but in a way he didn’t expect.  He was planning on doing it alone and probably in the same sort of way we see with how he sat in the cold by himself: he uses pain to dull his feelings.  But instead of doing this, we see him help Gwyn with her training.  And we see a change in his emotions: his shadows, aka his inner voice, end up calming.  The restlessness in him eases.  He feels content and calm around Gwyn, even after what happened with Elain and Rhys.

Ariel dipped his head in a sketch of a bow, something restless settling in him. Even his shadows had calmed. As if content to lounge on his shoulders and watch.

I truly don’t understand how people take this as Gwyn manipulating Az with her “lightsinger” abilities.  Because he starts with so many negative emotions, and walks out calm.  The restlessness in him eased.  That’s nothing nefarious, it’s a good thing!  So many sentences when he’s teaching Gwyn show that this is a good thing.  

So we see this switch in his emotions.  But let’s also talk about the several sentences that contrast with each other in the bonus chapter.  

We have a sentence that contrasts with the one I brought up before of him flying and making himself so cold he gets numb so he doesn’t feel anything.

Azriel tucked in his wings and left without another word, stalking through the house and onto the front lawn to sit in the frigid starlight. To let the frost in his veins match the air around him. Until he felt nothing. Was again nothing at all.

"Again," he ordered, rubbing his hands against the cold, grateful for its bracing bite and the distraction of this impromptu lesson.

When he left Rhys, he was nothing, and the cold made him feel nothing.  But during this lesson, he’s still cold but he’s a teacher to Gwyn.  He is something.  He has a healthier way of coping with his feelings when he’s with Gwyn.

He also says this to Gwyn:

“Happy Solstice," Azriel said before aiming for the archway into the House. "Don't stay out too much longer. You'll freeze."

This is adorable and ironic and sweet and ugh...such a good little nod to the details SJM brought up before.

When Azriel leaves the training pit, we get another sentence that uses “he found himself” in this bonus chapter:

Before it was, “He found himself leaving the room. Entering the foyer.” And at the end of the BC we get, “Instead, he found himself at the library beneath the House of Wind, standing before Clotho as the clock chimed seven in the evening.”

SJM is using identical phrases to kind of draw a circle in Az’s journey throughout this bonus chapter.

 He finds himself at the library, and the chapter ends with Az thinking of Gwyn smiling and something sparks in his chest…it brings a smile to his own face.

She deserves something as beautiful as this. I thank you for the joy it shall bring to her.  Something sparked in Ariel's chest, but he only nodded his thanks and left. He could picture it, though, as he ascended the stairs back to the House proper. How Gwyn's teal eyes might light upon seeing the necklace. For whatever reason . .. he could see it. But Azriel tucked away the thought, consciously erasing the slight smile it brought to his face. Buried the image down deep, where it glowed quietly. A thing of secret, lovely beauty.

And that last sentence: a thing of secret lovely beauty…that was used before when describing the necklace that he gifted to Elain but she ended up returning.

The golden necklace seemed ordinary- its chain unremarkable, the amulet tiny enough that it could be dismissed as an everyday charm. It was a small, flat rose fashioned of stained glass, designed so that when held to the light, the true depth of the colors would become visible. A thing of secret, lovely beauty.

The way this chapter flows, the way we compare these moments of him with Elain and him with Gwyn; the way we see how his emotions change…t’s so fucking important.  And I truly feel like this bonus chapter is just screaming to us that E/riel is done and Gwynriel is endgame.  

The chapter starts with Elain and ends with Gwyn.

(I did a three part series of my thoughts and analysis of the Azriel bonus chapter and this post is a summary of part 3! Shameless link for some shameless promo lmao)

[stevie-petey]

hiiiiiiiii honey <3 could we get a blurb about bug telling steve about jonathan’s outburst towards her after he took the pictures of nancy and steve’s reaction to learning about it???? it would be so so appreciated by me <3 you’re the best ever <3 MWAH

(i am being held against my will to write this jonathan sweetie im so sorry) (i love u val) (u are evil)

i know this isnt necessarily what u MEANT but ,,, ive been dying to expand upon bugs kindness and how it may seem annoying and pathetic, but its hers ! its her kindness !!!

enjoy <3

"no way you guys havent wanted to strangle each other at least once." steve remarks one day as he watches you and jonathan work side by side at the cash register.

jonathan had been bored today and decided to join you and steve at work, something that you're very happy about, honestly.

"oh, ive definitely wanted to strangle jonathan," you say, writing down a new shipment receipt while the boy next to you doodles.

steve rolls his eyes. "old married couple squabbling doesnt count. im talking, like, full on betrayal and hurt here. you guys are always so... you, and it has to be an act."

jonathan snorts. "shouldve seen the fights we had last year. surprised y/n didnt kill me with her bare hands."

"i dont believe you."

"no, hes right." you look up at steve. "he threw a jacket at my face last year and then told me we werent family the night he took those pictures of nancy. then cried in my arms like a day later."

steve stares at you, shocked.

"i also then slept in nancys bed and lied about it. and tried leaving you behind a few times."

"that you did," you flick jonathans ear, causing him to wince in pain. "you deserved that."

"i did."

during this entire exchange, steve hasnt said a single word. hes still stunned, baffled by the fact that jonathan could be so cruel to someone so wonderful.

"wait a second," he looks between you and jonathan. "and youre still friends?"

"yeah." you both say at the same time.

steve cant fucking believe it. you do anything and everything for jonathan, that much is obvious, and sure. steve has seen jonathan do small acts of kindness towards you, devote the same back, but to throw a jacket at you and belittle you? and now here he is, joking about it alongside you. as if it was all okay in the end.

"youre too nice sometimes, y/n." the words leave steves lips before he can stop them. once he realizes what hes said, he looks up at jonathan and panics. "sorry, man. im sure you guys talked it out and... yeah."

jonathan shrugs. "no, youre right. she is and i was dick."

"im right here, you know."

steve winces. "sorry."

"its fine, honestly." you go back to scribbling shipment orders. "i am indeed too nice, but i dont ever really see the point in holding a grudge? i mean, jonathan apologized and i understood the stress he was under. sure, it didnt erase all the hurt he caused, but after almost dying immediately after being mad at him for not including me in something... i dont know. it felt silly to hold onto that anger after. childish, even."

jonathan and steve share a look, for once both seeming to think the same thing.

shes too good.

you hate that they do this. you hate that people view your kindness as a weakness. after the hell youve been through, long before monsters even came to hawkins, youve learned the hard way just how rare kindness is.

now you try to be kind to everything and everyone, no matter what it may cost you.

the kindness is yours, no one elses.

and if that makes you weak, then at least it made you better.

you tear two pieces paper from your notebook, scrunch them up into balls, and then throw them at steve and jonathan. "stop pitying me. im kind and i love that aspect of myself. i dont care if it makes me vulnerable or pathetic. its a piece of me, and i wouldnt change it. if you dont like it, then that belittles me even more than emotional outbursts ever could."

jonathan sighs. "youre right, bug. youre a very kind and lovely person and its what makes you a joy to be around, paper balls and all."

steve plays along. "definitely a better super power than spider-man, dare i say."

"okay, lets not get ahead of ourselves now," you giggle, appreciative of both the boys. they may not understand or like the way you view the world, but theyre at least trying.

its all you could ask for.

even if steve later on that day pulls you aside to whisper, "i think i can kick jonathans ass this time, if you ever need it."

and its enough.

[ameliathecatto]

First meetings preview

Don't come after me for any OOC behavior, I have a rather limited knowledge of all the of characters since I'm a rather casual fan. [Divider Credit: @cafekitsune]

Sometimes I wonder how my life has come this way.

Children are not my forte, though taking care of anyone is already a massive pain for me. And out of somewhere in my heart, I decided to take care of more than one child? 

Seriously, what have I gotten myself into?

[First meetings preview] 

The sound of a gunshot rang in her ears.

Amelia was no stranger to death, being called the Grim Reaper by some, death was as much her friend as that pit of endless despair she found herself in. 

So, she watched; parents of a child that seemed no older than ten fell to the ground, their fates sealed as soon as they entered this wretched city. The crowd looked on in shock, some only gasped, some shouted while others simply looked on. Gotham City was the strangest kind of hell Amelia ever been to, that an assassination on two people from a moving circus only garnered mild reactions.

The Flying Graysons, the family of acrobats that were performing their usual trapeze act, now became another name in the soiled land.

Her eyes wandered over to where the murderer was, putting his gun away in his jacket as he prepared to run away. Perhaps she should have intervened, knowing very well that she could just smash the man’s head into pieces with a strike of her fist. Yet, there was a feeling in her gut that she should not do that, that there was more to all of this than just multiple wrong moves made by the circus as well as the family. Besides, she was sure that Batman, the caped crusader who acted like a Guardian of the Night, would find the murderer eventually.

She chose to get out of her seat, jumping right past the two rows of viewers, nearly hitting a few poor persons in the head. She landed on the ground with grace, fixing her hair with one hand as she walked into the light, shone down on the bleeding corpses and the crying child. She looked at the child with her usual nonchalant indifference, slowly approaching him while taking a look at the corpses. 

One clean shot to the head for each.

It was easy to say that the killer was incredibly trained and had been doing this for years. It was also easy to say that whoever that hired the man, they really, really wanted the Graysons to be dead. Which made her wonder who was so determined to ensure that the couple died that they chose to hire an experienced killer to do the job.

A soft sob entered her ears.

She looked over to the boy, too stunned to clutch onto their corpses yet his arm remained outstretched. His body trembled, fear, pain, despair filled in those blue eyes. He did not look at her, he had not yet noticed her presence. Even with the crowd being dispersed and asked to get out, his eyes remained firmly on the bleeding corpses, the blood slowly starting to reach him. 

Before the other circus members that were responsible for helping the crowd get out of the tent could reach her, she took off her black jacket and gently placed it around the boy. The sudden feeling of weight spooked him, causing him to look directly into her eyes. Yet, there was not much he could see, from her eyes or even her facial expressions as they remained neutral even as she kneeled down beside him. 

“You will be alright.” It was the first words she spoke to him. Even with her cold and monotone voice, it sounded soft to his ears.

The jacket acted like a blanket due to their height and slight build difference, giving him some warmth even under the bright lights and the blood. He continued to stare at her, tears falling down like streams of water. Amelia flashed him a soft, almost warm smile that did not quite reach her eyes even if she tried.

“You will be alright, I swear.”

Those words were an anchor, tying both of them down to the current moment. 

The jacket was left with the young boy after Amelia was forced out of the tent as the GCPD (Gotham City Police Department) arrived, she spared a glance at the poor boy before leaving the area altogether. 

… 

The sound of metal clinking. 

It was not a bad sound per say, not the worst type her ears had caught. At least it was not swords or someone trying to break in. Her eyes wandered over to the strange car parked beside the alley, it clearly did not belong in the filth of Crime Alley, stench of trash stronger than anything else. The car seemed more like a tank, incredibly well-built, seeming like it could live through a ten-floor building with minor damages.

It was the Batmobile, not the first time she had seen one, mostly due to Grayson but oh well.

She noticed a figure immediately, kneeling on the back right as they held something in their hand. Her footsteps were quiet, not making a single sound as she walked on the balls of her feet, slowly approaching the figure. 

She only then realized that it was a male teenager stealing the tire of the Batmobile. ‘Brave and stupid’ 

She approached the young man just as he took off the tire, her head tilted slightly as she stared at him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood upright, making his head snap towards the direction where she was at. He jumped, letting go of the tire but not the lug wrench, holding it tightly while his eyes turned from fear and shock to determination. The young man wanted to fight her, she knew that as much.

“Now then, I believe we could just talk, yeah?” She offered with an arm extended towards him.

“About what exactly?” 

“As to why you’re stealing a tire, of course.”

Her words had struck a chord with him as he decided to start running for it right after she said that, still clutching onto the lug wrench like his life depended on it. 

She just shook her head. As much as she could very easily just let him go, not that it would matter if she caught him, though there was something in her head that seemed to spin differently. A low chuckle rumbled through her chest as she watched him run, her eyes narrowed before darting around the area. 

The teenager felt goosebumps surging all over his body along with his heartbeat, each thump feeling like a closer encounter with her. This was something he was not used to, something he would never have imagined, that he would be so terrified about a single person.

But his instincts honed from the streets told his gut that he should run.

“Now, you don’t look too good scurrying like a rat.”

Her breath hit his neck, making his eyes peek over to where she was. His feet continued to move, yet he could not feel the ground. His eyes looked down, realizing that he was picked off of the ground. Her hand holding him by the neck, just firm enough to hold him though the pressure was undeniably suffocating. 

“Let. Me. Go.” The young man glared at her, his fingers gripping around the lug wrench.

A faint smile tugged on the corner of her lips, holding him closer to her while she murmured, “Come on now, let’s talk.”

…

Amelia’s senses had always been high.

She could hear every footstep within the area, every broken light flickering, every gasped and heavy breathing. Her eyes remained fixed on the bleeding man, every bone in his arms twisted, turned into mush. Yet she knew the man would be fine either way, his regenerative abilities were enough to ensure that he would live this encounter.

But there was something else she was more curious about. The pair of eyes staring at her from behind the tall grass.

“Tell your boss that he should try harder to kill me next time.” She threw the sword right back at the man.

The sword landed on the ground, the shiny blade stained with blood. 

She only spared him one more glance before leaving, walking towards the closest door. Luckily for her, there was no one else in the area (aside from those pair of eyes) and she could leave safely; Unluckily for her, there was a really high chance that she might end up in Gotham News the next morning for her brutal fight.

‘I’m going to worry about that later.’

She stretched her arms, letting out a soft yawn as she walked towards the exit of the arcade. The moment she pushed the door and stepped out, the familiar bright white lights shone down on her. She let out a sigh, her body visibly slumping as she started to walk down the bright, endless hallway.

And the door swung once more.

She kept moving however, running her hand through her hair while looking at the ground. She could feel it as if the person was walking beside her, but they were not. Their footsteps were slow, cautious yet it felt a little clumsy, likely being fascinated by their surroundings.

She stopped abruptly, turning around to see who it was.

It was a young teen, younger than Jason when she first found him. He took a step back after noticing that she was staring at him. She cleared her throat, waiting for him to say anything. She could tell with a glance that the child she was dealing with was someone that had intelligence unlike the peers of their age.

“I’m…” His tongue was tied up anyways, unsure of how to get his point across.

“Well…” She paused, crossing her arms. “You better start talking or… I will just assume that you’re just a lost child and not a stalker.”

[freedomfireflies]

Into the Harryverse

The Harry’s reaction if they ever made their girls cry?

OH OKAY WE WANT ANGST TODAY, YOU GOT IT!!!

Teach Me Harry:

Oh pure panic!! Because she never cries!! And maybe he's had a bad day so he snaps, and she also had a bad day, so she's more susceptible to tears!! And she tries to turn away and say she's fine but he knows better!

And he steps forward gently and says, "Whoa, hey...shit, I'm sorry. I didn't...I didn't mean to yell. Bee...Bee, I'm sorry. Can you look at me? Please?"

And it takes a minute but eventually she lets him pull her into his arms and he kisses her forehead and apologizes and explains and they make up!!

Mine Harry:

I think she would cry if she saw him come home with tons of cuts, bruises, and shredded clothes 😗 Maybe after she specifically told him not to do something stupid but he went and did it anyway and now he's incredibly hurt!!

And he can't go to a hospital because of the cops so she has to take care of him. And so she's trying, but her hands are shaking, and she keeps thinking that maybe she could have lost him, and why did he have to go out there, and she can't see past the tears!!

And he notices, and he's gutted. You know how sometimes women with babies lactate if they hear crying?? I imagine Harry is the same way except pure fucking FEAR HAHAHHA

He's riddled with anxiety and regret to see her so upset because he hates it and he doesn't know how to fix it. So he grabs her shaking hands from where she's cleaning his wound, and guides her eyes to his.

"Hey, hey. Mama...look at me, please," he'd murmur. "I'm so fucking sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm okay, yeah? Gonna be just fine. You aren't gonna lose me. Never let myself leave you. You know that."

And then they kiss heheh

One for the Money Harry:

I also think it would be rare that Peach would ever cry in front of him!! But lets add some more angst and say she's crying during sex 😗

Not because of the sex or because of anything Harry is doing but her mind is all over the place and maybe she's not feeling it as much as she thought she was and he's saying all these great, dominant things but it's just...heavy. It's hurting her heart a little and she doesn't know why, so at first she doesn't say anything.

So her body says it for her. She starts to cry and Harry thinks it's because of the pleasure but she won't look at him and he quickly realizes these aren't good tears.

So he stops instantly, and pulls her into his arms, and gets really quiet. Because he doesn't know what to say, but he finally whispers, "When you're ready to tell me...I'll be here."

And she doesn't tell him for a while because she's so overwhelmed but eventually does and he spends the evening helping her relax 😭

iFall Harry:

I think he would feel so guilty!!! Maybe even pulls a Jack Chambers and gets down on his knees to apologize and bury his face in her stomach (except he lets her go if she asks, cause he's not fucking crazy)!!!!

404 Harry:

Well let's face it, this man wants to make her cry. And she never does because why would she cry over a man?? or because of a man??

So if she DOES actually cry one day during one of their little fights, he's just.................he's stunned. Doesn't know what to do. Stands there, blinking, very quiet.

But I think eventually he'd just clear his throat, step forward, and murmur, "Hey, you know I was kidding, Tink. I think what you're doing is fine. I didn't...I was just fucking with you."

And she just nods and waves him off because she's not crying because of him but they aren't close enough for her to tell him why she's really crying. But he knows it's bigger than him so he just kind of...awkwardly throws an arm around her shoulder until she calms down. Maybe waits until she isn't hiccuping to press a very rare kiss to her forehead before sneakily suggesting he fuck the pain away HAHAHAH

I'M SO SORRY IT GOT LONG AGAIN BUT THIS WAS FUN????????? THANK YOU FOR ASKING 😭💞

[cdyssey]

Agatha All Along (1.04) Reactions:

“I didn’t think I had it in you.” [Cue Agatha winking at Teen.] Ooough, does she suspect him of killing Mrs. Hart????

“RIP, Mrs. Hart.” She’s so fucking unserious djsjdjjd

Also, I don’t think I’ve said this yet, but I love her hair being long and wild when she’s on the Road. It’s so witchy.

Agatha holding up a single finger when asked how many witches survived the Road the last time she walked it is sooooo good.

“May she be smart and not annoying. And also, not super political.” ALWKKDCJWJSK

“May she be pleasant looking.” THIS WHOLE COVEN IS FULL OF GAY WITCHES. <333

FUCKING JUMPSCARE GOD.

“This was very clearly a group effort.” AKQOKSDJSJSK. (Also, obsessed with the fact that Agatha instinctively threw her hands out to protect her coven.)

RIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

“SURPRISE. M’LADY.” GAY GAY HOMOSEXUAL GAY!!

“So, the dangerous but charismatic lady is back. Do you wanna talk about it?” AKWOWKWD, Teen saw them fight-flirting all across Agatha’s house.

ALICE WANTING RIO’S NUMBER TOO. GAY WITCHES

Ooough, this is Alice’s trial.

HELLO, THESE FUCKING FITS!!!!!!!!!!! GODDDDD, HOT HOT HOT

Rio, trying to play with Agatha: “Boo.” / Agatha, looking more than discomfited: “No.” Fuck, I can’t wait to see what horror divides them.

Lilia tearing up at the portraits of women/witches being brutally murdered… her backstory is going to be horrific, isn’t it?

Lorna’s fans being her coven ooooughhhhhh, that’s good.

Lilia not remembering the half-premonitions she blurts out is so interesting. Can’t wait to see where they all go, especially the tarot card shouts.

Agatha covering up her chest when Rio is around. She doesn’t want to feel naked around her just yet, doesn’t want to be vulnerable. The super fun part about "you're vulnerable" / "only physically" is that it's an absolute fucking lie!!

“I’m feeling impatient. I’m feeling like I want to cause some damage.” YEAH BABY FREAK 4 FREAK TOXIC YURI

“Just one more big adventure. You and me.” / “like old times?” / “Work and play. It could be nice, right?” MY GOD????????????????? I'VE DREAMED FOR THESE KINDS OF DAYS

but also, I think it’s incredibly interesting that the scene starts with Agatha visibly uncomfortable, but then she leans into the flirting —like she did in their first encounter, bc she knows power and seduction are what Rio responds to

KILLING OTHER WITCHES AS FOREPLAY. “You get your power, and I get my bodies.” THEY’VE BEEN A TEAM

lmfao, Agatha purposefully pressing the mic. I love a drama queen

“She’s a psycho.” [Cue Rio nodding enthusiastically.] LAOQOSFJDK

Alice breaking down about the curse. Fucking hell. I love her

JAM SESSION JAM SESSION JAM SESSION!!

“To save her daughter.” 😭😭😭

LORNA’S BALLAD IS A PROTECTION SPELL. SOBBIN G. LIKE ALSO THE FACT THAT SO MUCH OF AAA IS ABOUT MOTHERHOOD. Protecting children, losing children, grieving them, perhaps finding a surrogate son.

LET PATTI LUPONE SING

AGNES TELLING THEM TO KEEP PLAYING EVEN THOUGH SHE’S IN PAIN

THIS NEW COVER FUCKING SLAPS. HOLY FUCKKKKKKKKKKKK. It’s very Fleetwood Mac omfgggggggg

I love that they have Patti lupone on the fucking triangle AKAKDJISWO

"BLOOD AND TEARS AND BONE / TOGTHER AND ALONE." FUCK YEAH

PATTI ON MARACAS NOW LMAO

Alice is slaying these final notes holy shittttt.

TEEN'S HURT, OH FUCK. Oh my god, Agatha being so CONCERNED about him. Look at her, cradling his fucking head

THE WAY HER VOICE CRACKS WHEN SHE SAYS THERE’S SO MUCH BLOOD

THE VULNERABLE WAY SHE SAYS "DON’T" TO RIO. FUCK ME. AUOWJSHHSH IT’s A FUCKING PLEA, A PRAYER EVEN, BECAUSE RIO IS CLEARLY DEATH UAHDGHSUIHUIHUI!!!!!!

CRYING IN DA CLUB

(ALSO, THE FACT THAT AGATHARIO'S DYNAMIC WAS CLEARLY, I'M DEATH AND YOU'RE THE STUNNING MONSTER WHO KEEPS BRINGING ME BODIES IS ABSOLUTELY ENTHRALLING.)

“Jennifer. Look what you did.” SOBBINGGGFFFFDFHHH FUCK OFF. Jennifer is growing confident in her abilities again

AGATHA KEEPING WATCH ON TEEN. I'M SO WEAK

The way all of the witches are grieving something or someone—their lost magic, lost mothers, lost family, a lost child, a lost lover. THIS SHOW IS ABOUT GRIEFFRDDF

If I lose any of these witches, I will DIE

“You don’t have extra nipples? I’m covered in nipples.” lmao, she’s so unserious

Agatha teasing Teen but also being super gentle with himmmmmm. Fuck offf!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agatha’s face darkening at the mention of her son and just completely shutting down. Ugahhhhhhhhh

SITTING NEXT TO RIO.

Agatha LOOKING AT RIO WHEN SHOWING HER SCAR AND BOTH OF THEM LAUGHING BECAUSE THEY'RE REMINISCING. THEY KNOW EACH OTHER SO DEEPLY.

Agatha looking so uncomfortable when the witches laugh at her joke. She hasn't had friends in a very long while, and she doesn't know what to do with those warm, tender feelings

“I’ve got a scar.” / “No, you don’t.” OF COURSE YOU WOULD KNOW AGATHA

“A long time ago, I loved someone. And I had to do something that I did not wanna do, even though it was my job. And it hurt them. She is my scar.” YOU’RE FUCKING KIDDING ME. OH GOD SHE REAPED NICHOLAS DIDN'T SHEEEEEEEE

AGATHA MOANING WHEN SHE TOUCHES HER HAIR SHUT UP SHUT UO SHUT UP

TENDERLY AND AGONIZINGLY CUPPING HER FACE, EMBRACING HER BODY

GOING IN FOR THE FUCKING KISS

RIO TELLING HER SO GENTLY MY FUCKING GOD. LIKE. SHE KNOWS IT'LL HURT AGATHA, BUT SHE KNOWS THAT SUCH A TRUTH IS NECESSARY. IT'S IMPORTANT.

THE LITTLE DEVASTATED NOD. THE FAKE, PLASTERED ON SMILE

SHOW OF ALL FUCKIGN TIME GODDAMN!!!!!

[theroyalsims]

BREAKING: PRINCE ALISTAIR AND LONG TERM GIRLFRIEND HAVE BROKEN UP FOLLOWING FAILED PROPOSAL

Prince Alistair is a bachelor again following his break-up from his girlfriend of over three years, Ximena Kalarmy. The separation apparently took place over three weeks ago and the two have not spoken since.

The duo had a much-publicised relationship from the very beginning, which, at times were reportedly too much for commoner Ximena. The paparazzi and media onslaught on Ximena has caused Prince Alistair to issue a  “warning” on Ximena’s behalf. 

The ex-couple’s relationship was also plagued with alleged unhappiness and disapproval from “key members” of the Royal Family, several sources claim. Although Ximena once went on an overseas trip with Prince Alistair, Princess Ingrid, and The Crown Princess, rumours claim that Ximena never really felt welcome into the royal fold. 

Further, the Queen reportedly admonished her son, Prince Alistair, for posing on the red carpet with Ximena during the opening of a new restaurant where the latter worked. The Queen was said to have advised Alistair to “act like a Prince” and to “refrain from being that woman’s accessory in the future.” While royals, every now and then, grace the red carpet, they’re often for charitable events and royal-approved projects - certainly not for publicity for a restaurant launch.

However, despite the challenges the two faced, they remained steadfast and seemingly happy with each other, that is until late last month. 

Prince Alistair flew Ximena off to Rennaux for a short weekend getaway in the mountains. There, His Royal Highness reportedly got down on one knee and proposed with a diamond ring. Ximena, however, rejected the proposal citing that she’s unsure if the public and his family would approve. She also reportedly said that she’s happy with her currently job. She’s said to have asked the Prince to wait a while longer, but His Royal Highness apparently had enough. A source close to the Prince shares:

“He called it off with her and broke up with her right then and there. He arranged for her safe return to Brindleton, but he stayed back in Rennaux a couple of days longer.

 He feels that he’s done everything to prove to Ximena that he loves her and will always be there for her, but he thought it was all lost on her. In the end, he got tired of constantly reassuring Ximena that she’s enough, and that she shouldn’t listen to what others say. Her insecurities are her own, and she’s so far convinced that his family hates her, that the public hates her, that she’s not fit to join the family. Alistair could only do so much.  

They’ve been together for over three years, and if she couldn’t see a future with him now, they’re better off not wasting each other’s time.”

Ximena was reportedly stunned by Prince Alistair’s reaction to her rejection and the two are reportedly no longer on speaking terms. The source further spills:

“Ximena was shocked by how Alistair reacted. And I think that Alistair’s in shock, too. It’s still very new. They’re still at that point where they’re still both hurting. Old presents were sent back. Phone calls were rejected. It’s that kind of break-up. Probably what makes it so painful was the fact that  they both loved each other so much.”

Yikes. We were all somehow expecting a proposal seeing how these two lookED adorable together, and secretly we were all hoping to see Ximena in full Princess mode for the royal wedding, but that’s apparently not happening.

Hopefully these two find themselves and realise that they’re better off together than apart? Or maybe Prince Alistair’s right and they’re doing each other a favour by realising that they are off to different paths?

[amaretigris]

The Sea Witch's Curse

Taglist: @notagreekgal28 @mylittlemermaid221 @hopeisrising @justagirlthatlovedtoread @freyagallileaevans @daydreamerwithnohobbies @luna2034

A/n: Posting this now cause I've read it so much I hate it 😭 I do plan on writing an epilogue!

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Ch. 10 | 1.4k words | Pure fluff

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You grabbed the letter from your father's hand, holding it to your chest. You wanted to imprint the words on your heart. You were sniffling and attempting to sob, but the tears wouldn't come. How had it been so easy to cry when you were human? You couldn't seem to do it now, no matter how much you wanted to.

Your father quietly observed your reaction to Eric's letter.

"My dear (Y/N)," he suddenly spoke.

"You look the most like your mother, out of all of my daughters," he reached his hand up to brush your cheek.

Your eyes squeezed shut and you leaned into his touch.

"Would you like to know why I never told any of you more details about your mother's death?"

Your eyes found his again as you nodded. Your father dropped his hand from your face, looking back to the beach.

"It's because I found the crew that killed her. I found them, and I struck them down. I sunk their ship and they all drowned. They can be such savages, so I gave them a taste of their own medicine. I'm not proud of that, (Y/N)."

You heard your father sniffle and your eyes widened. He turned to look at you again with pain stamped across his face.

"I stopped living when your mother died, (Y/N). What kind of father would I be if I allowed my daughter to meet the same fate?"

Your hands seemed to move on their own to wrap around your father's neck. Not once since your mother died had he shown this much emotion in front of you.

"It's okay," you whispered. "Mother's love for you has never wavered. It will never fade. It's as strong and constant as the algae blooms every year."

Your father hugged you for a moment, then pulled back to look at your face.

"The humans can be savages, my daughter, but Eric's words have shown me that they can also love. His love for you reminds me of the love your mother and I shared. Who am I to take that from you?"

You felt your bottom lip trembling.

"What do you mean, father?"

Triton swallowed and took a calming breath.

"I will transform you back into a human if that is truly your wish, (Y/N). Just know that we will always be here for you. I will always be here for you."

You crushed your father into another hug.

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Eric spent the week going through the motions of his old life. It all seemed so foreign to him now. Smiling and nodding his way through another breakfast with Grimsby and his mother, Eric excused himself to walk down to the beach.

As soon as he left the dining room, his mother grabbed Grimsby's hand.

"I'm worried about him, Grimsby. He hasn't been himself. It's been a week. You settled back into your role nicely. You wanted normalcy again. Eric is different. I know he craves adventure and the sea but-".

"He craves her," Grimsby interrupted, meeting the queen's stunned eyes.

He placed his other hand on top of hers.

"The last five years have taken their toll on him, Your Majesty. Eric was resigned to his fate, until he met her: (Y/N). She gave Eric a new taste of life and freedom to express himself. You must understand, that was taken from him too, Your Grace. He simply needs time and patience to heal."

The queen pondered Grimsby's words for a moment and nodded.

"I hope you're right. I fear he will never be the same."

"He never will be," Grimsby shook his head and sighed.

He gave the queen's hand a reassuring squeeze.

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Down on the beach, Eric let his toes sink in the sand. Plopping down on his rear with Max at his side, Eric ruffled the dog's hair, watching the waves.

"You think she's out there, Max?"

He asked his furry friend. Max wagged his tail and happily barked in response.

"Yeah, I hope so too, buddy," Eric cracked a smile, but sighed.

Suddenly, Max began barking frantically at the water. Eric rose to his feet in a hurry, alarmed. His eyes searched the sea.

"What? What is it boy?"

You slowly swam to the shallows, rising above the water when your feet could finally touch the ocean floor. Luckily, you had held onto the dress you wore the day you broke the curse.

Eric's eyes landed on your form emerging from the sea. He was frozen in place. He rubbed his eyes for good measure. Was this real? Eric slowly stepped forward, submerging his feet, and wading towards you. The two of you closed the distance, meeting in the middle. Neither of you had spoken a word.

Eric lifted his hand. He hesitated, but settled it on your cheek, stroking it with his thumb. You saw a breath of relief leave his chest. Eric brought his forehead to connect with yours. He watched his finger grazing over your skin for a moment before meeting your gaze.

"Is this a dream?"

He whispered, afraid to know the answer. You shook your head slightly, tears welling in your eyes.

"No. No, Eric, it's not."

The look of alleviation that passed over his features tugged at your heart strings.

"Oh thank God," Eric said before squeezing you tightly to him.

You felt his arms around your torso shaking. You hugged him back, sliding your fingers through his curls. Eric outstretched his arms to look at you again.

"I was afraid I'd never see you again, (Y/N)," he admitted.

You nodded.

"I know, me too. But," this time your hand found his cheek, "I'm here now, and I'll never leave you again."

Eric scrunched his brow, and his eyes watered. He quickly pulled you in for a kiss, enveloping you in his arms. His lips were soft and gentle against yours. Like he was kissing something that was fragile. Like he was kissing something that he treasured.

You weren't sure how long the two of you stayed like this- wrapped in one another's embrace. It did eventually come to an end when Max started barking at you and wagging his tail, running up and down the beach. Eric laughed and loosened his hold on you. He grabbed your hand and together you walked back to shore. Water was dripping from your clothes, but the two of you stood laughing at Max.

"See, even my dog loves you," he joked.

Eric realized his words, and tightened his grip on your waist once again.

"I do love you (Y/N)," he said reverently.

The two of you had never said it to each other face to face in your short time together. But, in your heart of hearts, you knew without a doubt that you loved this man as much as a person could love another.

"I know. I love you too, Eric," you replied instantly.

It was so natural. It felt like breathing.

"Will you marry me?"

Eric asked with hopeful eyes.

"I know we haven't known each other long, but my heart is yours, (Y/N)."

You smiled and nodded.

"Of course I'll marry you, Eric," you said, wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

Eric held you close, running his fingers through your hair. He decided right then and there that he'd brush your hair every day if you wanted.

⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅

Eventually the two of you joined hands and made your way up to the castle. As soon as he saw you, Grimsby rushed up to hug you like he'd seen an old friend.

"Oh, Miss (Y/N), thank heavens you're safe! We cannot thank you enough for freeing us from the sea witch's curse. We are forever in your debt," he released you to bow before you.

You giggled, feeling Eric's hand close around yours again.

"It's the least I could do, Grimsby," you smiled.

"Grims, where has mother run off to? She must meet (Y/N)."

Grimsby suddenly turned to scurry down the hall.

"Yes sir, I'll grab her right away, sire."

Eric laughed at his retreating form. You'd never seen him smile so bright. His dimples gave you butterflies in your stomach.

"Are you happy, Eric?"

You asked without thinking. Eric looked at you with joy in his eyes, retaining his smile.

"I'm the happiest man in the world right now, (Y/N). You came back to me, and I'm home. You've given me everything I could ever ask for. But, somehow, it's more than I ever imagined," he used your hand to tug you closer once again.

"Now, my little mermaid, I will never let myself lose you again. Once my mother meets you and falls in love with you, just as I have, then we will be married. You'll be a princess of the land, as well as the sea. One day, you'll be queen. And I will bow to you in worship, the same as everyone else."

[get-back-homeward]

The Case of Thelma Pickles

Thelma's account of John is most often cherrypicked by detractors as evidence he was some lifelong wifebeater. While the violence in the incident she describes is clear, the nuance that makes her account so vivid gets lost in the debate.

I keep coming back to her account for her picture of John at a crucial time, only a few months after Julia is killed.

John’s girlfriend in the autumn of 1958 was Thelma Pickles, a new and interesting student at the art school, just turning 17. Initially, she thought him “a smartarse,” then changed her mind when she witnessed his reaction to a girl who asked if what she’d heard about his mother was true. “She said, ‘Hey John, I hear your mother’s dead.’ He didn’t flinch. He simply said, ‘Yeah.’ She carried on, ‘It was a policeman that knocked her down, wasn’t it?’ Again he didn’t react, he just said, ‘That’s right, yeah.’ I was stunned by his detachment, and impressed that he was brave enough not to break down or show any emotion. Of course, it was all a front.”30

Soon afterward, John and Thelma sat talking at the Queen Victoria Monument and each revealed being deserted by their dads. “He pissed off and left me when I was a baby,” John said of Alf, which was far from correct but no doubt how he felt. Thelma’s father had left home when she was ten; she was sensitive to the stigma of having only one parent and emotional when anyone mentioned it. “I couldn’t sustain the detachment John managed,” she says. “I thought it was quite an achievement to be able to behave like that.”

Suddenly, John and Thel, as he called her, were “going out.” The shared soul-baring cemented it, and also they fancied each other. Thelma was the first female John allowed to get close after Julia’s terrible death. She was given glimpses of his other side.

When we discussed it between ourselves I realized he was clearly more sensitive than he appeared. He spoke of the pure shock of losing his mother, and he said what a loss it was (though I don’t think he used the word “loss”). At such times, he spoke in a much softer, more explanatory way than usual, and though he never demonstrated extremes of emotion, his pain was clear. The other side of the coin was that he’d detect any minor frailty in somebody with a laser-like homing device. I thought he was hilarious, but it wasn’t funny to the recipients.31

Thelma was witness to a rare occasion at Mendips, when John, Paul and George all stood in the kitchen and played their guitars. Mimi was out, and before she was expected back Thelma and the two lads scarpered. John knew Mimi didn’t want them in the house and would raise merry hell about it, and he just didn’t need the headache. For a while, though, John and Thel took regular advantage of Mimi’s going out (it seems she went to play bridge one night a week). The plan, carefully formulated by John, was for Thel (who lived in Knotty Ash) to take the bus to Woolton; she and John would meet and sit across Menlove Avenue in a shelter on the edge of the golf course, and when Mimi left and walked down the street, over they’d go. “I only ever saw Mimi from a distance, in the dark,” Thelma says.

Mostly, Thel found John “enormous fun to be with, always witty, and when we were alone together he was really soft, thoughtful and generous-spirited.” He made them tea and toast, he made her laugh, and he made love to her in his little bedroom above the porch. “We didn’t call it sex—that word wasn’t really used by people then. John called it ‘going for a five-mile run,’ because he’d read or heard this was the amount of energy a man spent.” They used no protection, trusting only to luck, and John told Thel he was glad she was no “edge of the bed virgin”—his euphemism for the kind of girl who would take him half the way there but no further.

John and Thel often took afternoons off from art school to go to the pictures. He liked the old horror films at the equally old Palais de Luxe on Lime Street, and they also went to see Elvis’s final pre-army film, King Creole, which reached Liverpool Odeon in mid-October 1958. Though John very occasionally wore his glasses at college, he definitely didn’t do so in public, and without them, even sitting near the front of the stalls, he could hardly make out how his idol was faring up there on the big screen. He kept nudging Thelma, nagging her to describe all the action: “What’s he doing now, Thel?”

—Tune In, Ch. 9 (June–Dec 1958)

Her account of the beginning of their relationship supports Paul and Cynthia’s characterization of young John as a kid that put on a public front to mask fear and insecurities and grief. She is surprised by his detachment to loss, something she wishes she could attain. (Echoes of this story of John and Paul. Like recognizes like?) Yet with further scrutiny, she sees the detachment as a facade and discovers a shared trauma, and they bond over opening up about their family losses.

After this recognition, they become close. When alone, Thelma sees the softer side to John, thoughtful and generous. When in public, she notices his awareness of the eyes of others, mocking frailties of others while walking around half-blind himself. She finds him hilarious as long as his target is someone else, feeling a sense of specialness by being part of his crew. You can see echoes of John and Paul's mean girls schtick here.

It's notable that by 1959, John has made a habit out of bonding over shared grief/trauma. John meets Paul just after his mother dies, and John lost his father figure a few years before that. John meets Thelma after Julia’s death and they bond over absent fathers. John goes on to meet Cynthia, who has just recently lost her father.

Her account of the end of their relationship supports how John would lash out when power shifted and exposed his insecurities. This lashing out comprises not only one hit in a moment of anger, but several days/weeks(?) of public mocking in response to her ending the relationship over his own actions. Notice how he mocks her with a lie they both know isn’t true all because she wounded his ego? It’s the performance of it all that sticks with me.

And the only way she gets him to shut up is to match him in being equally vicious back. The games of adolescence perhaps, but its echoes in John’s other significant relationships suggest a pattern. Mind games, more than anything, is the weapon of choice.

[Quotes and sources under the cut]

During the course of this, John leaned over to Thel and asked if she fancied “going for a five-mile run.” She agreed, and they slipped upstairs to the Art History room, assuming it would be free. “It was dark but we could tell there were other couples in there, probably having a five-mile run of their own, or trying to,” Thelma recalls. “I told John I was uneasy about doing it in a place like that, especially with other people there, and he wasn’t happy with my attitude. When I insisted on going, and got up to leave, he became rough and whacked me one—his fist connected somewhere between my shoulder and my head, around my neck.”8

During the course of this, John leaned over to Thel and asked if she fancied “going for a five-mile run.” She agreed, and they slipped upstairs to the Art History room, assuming it would be free. “It was dark but we could tell there were other couples in there, probably having a five-mile run of their own, or trying to,” Thelma recalls. “I told John I was uneasy about doing it in a place like that, especially with other people there, and he wasn’t happy with my attitude. When I insisted on going, and got up to leave, he became rough and whacked me one—his fist connected somewhere between my shoulder and my head, around my neck.”8

Thelma stormed off, and decided that was the end of their relationship. She did her best to avoid John through the following week, and when this wasn’t possible she simply ignored him. He started to mock her but she resisted his gibes, and this went on for several days until reaching its culmination in the Cracke. “He was still mocking me, in front of others, and then he called me ‘an edge of the bed virgin.’ That really pissed me off because we both knew it wasn’t true. He was just being sarcastic and wounding because he was pissed off with me, and I got so enraged I shouted back, ‘Don’t blame me just because your mother’s dead!’ It was a cruel remark, but he knew all about those. It just seemed the easiest way to get back at him.”

John and Thelma had reached the end of the line, though they’d remain friends and keep in touch for several years. In an interview in 1980, John reflected on his teenage behavior: “Hitting females is something I’m always ashamed of and still can’t talk about—I’ll have to be a lot older before I can face that in public, about how I treated women as a youngster.”9 Except that he was talking about it, and with the sort of candor customary even when it was to his own detriment. In 1967, John mentioned it within a song lyric and spoke about it to his biographer Hunter Davies. “I was in a blind rage for two years,” he said. “I was either drunk or fighting. There was something the matter with me.”10

This was also, of course, the way it was in many other relationships, and had been for a long time and would be in the future, especially in the north of England. It wasn’t excusable but nor was it unusual, and such attitudes were reinforced constantly in receptive minds by the silver screen. “Not only did we dress like James Dean and walk around like that,” John later remarked, “but we acted out those cinematic charades. The he-man was supposed to smack a girl across the face, make her succumb in tears and then make love. Most of the guys I knew in Liverpool thought that’s how you do it.”11

In terms of dress, John continued to interchange between college scarf and Teddy Boy drape, though being a Ted was always more a state of mind for him.12 The persona remained very much part of his attraction to Paul and George, however—as Paul says, “We looked up to him as a sort of violent Teddy Boy, which was attractive at the time. He got drunk a lot and once he kicked the telephone-box in … [and] what might have been construed as good old-fashioned rudeness I always had to put down to ballsiness.”

—Tune In (Ch. 10, Jan–July 1959)

Based on the accounts of Thelma here and Cynthia elsewhere, both known incidents of John being physically violent with women are single, isolated events. Thelma describes a hair pull and full-on hit (punch) in the neck, which is physically painful to think about, whereas Cynthia describes a slap in the face. In both cases, they feel confident enough to shut it down and walk away, Thelma for good and Cynthia at least making him grovel first (Christmas 1959 card). Domestic violence comes in several forms, some of which do match John’s behavior with Cynthia even if they were common for the time (controlling appearance and activities, possessiveness and paranoia of infidelities, etc.), but neither of these women describe habitual physical violence.

However, this incident does not seem to reflect the guilt with which John talks about it later. Even when put together with Cynthia’s account, which is less than a year later (fall 1959), the level doesn’t seem to match. I notice both incidents would be within the two years after Julia’s death, yet he’s writing about it in 1967 (“I hit my woman”) and still talking about it in 1980. Even 3 months before his death, he was calling himself "a hitter." Either there were more incidents left untold (e.g., Thelma and/or Cynthia are condensing into one where they left, or other women who’ve remained silent) or John’s guilt spun it into more over time. This is notable because there’s not much else he ever seems to publicly regret.

Looking up Lewisohn’s sources, the worst quote from John is actually from Source 11 (the James Dean quote above), a print interview from a dubious author (link in the sources listed below). The author Sandra Shevey has claimed to have spent at least 12 hours interviewing John and Yoko, and while at least one recording of her interview with them is available, I’m skeptical about other quotes in print considering her output. Reading a few pages of her book on John, some parts are so unhinged I wondered why on earth Lewisohn even used anything from her as a source (serious burn book vibes). John has mentioned elsewhere about being influenced by Hollywood’s images of (toxic) masculinity as a teen, but her full quote makes it sound like he was basically raping women all the time. She uses the quote as a springboard to her more outlandish theories (like devoting several pages to the idea that John raped and then murdered Brian over a contract detail?!).

Burn book moments aside, Shevey also gets tons of basic details completely wrong like attributing Get Back’s writing or Bernard Webb’s Woman to John (both are Paul’s) and in general treats Paul as a nonentity in John’s life and work. So I have a hard time trusting anything from her book. However, she is one of the few John bio authors to consider bisexuality (unhinged theories aside) and is questioning the ballad of John&YokoTM in print as early as 1990, perhaps because she spoke with them during a time when the cracks were more visible. So assuming her quotes are accurate and her reading is just wildly off the mark, I think it’s worth mentioning the context of this James Dean quote in her book. It's prefaced with background that may shed light on the case of Thelma Pickles, who had the dubious honor of being John’s first real girlfriend.

Talking in 1972, he's speaking about this in relation to his struggle with accepting Yoko as an equal creative partner on the latest album. There’s a flavor of blaming British society and American culture that sounds very Yoko shaped (he goes on to call British men both effeminate and sadist). However, applying this background to 1958, you can see how a young John would have struggled to apply his relationships with other boys to his first attempt at a relationship with a girl, especially one who was by her own account looking for recognition and belonging with the boys.

Aside from the physical violence, Thelma’s account details the headtrip of John’s verbal violence. When you’re 16, a week of public mockery can feel like a lifetime. Doubly so when it comes from someone you were once close to. Like Pete and Paul, Thelma figures out how to match John’s level and shut him up. Bill Harry also recalls the importance of standing up to John to gain his respect. Thelma has to deal with him like one of the guys, delivering a verbal uppercut that leaves him clocked out and in the sand.

In a way, John’s mockery of Thelma looks like a mirror of the much longer, much more public mockery Paul gets from John 1970-1972. Ram aside, Paul waits to turn the public equivalent on John until 1972—which just so happens to be when John starts to cool his fire toward Paul. Shevey claims to interview John a day in September 1972 and the only recording she’s released is John ruminating about working as a partner with Yoko vs male artists (“It’s a plus, not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without…I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship, maybe that would have solved it”) and the continued struggle of making this transition. Assuming Paul knew more about John after 13 years than Thelma did in 6 months, I’m left wondering why did Paul wait so long in the 70s? Maybe it’s harder to kick back when you’re feeling down? Or guilty? Maybe smarting from result of the last attempt? Maybe it’s harder to kick back when there’s a mountain more of feelings between you.

After Thelma gives him a taste of his own medicine, they continue to be on speaking terms though the closeness they had was gone. She recalls loaning him art college assignments because he’s in danger of flunking out. John goes on to date Cynthia, and Thelma remembers thinking he’d fancied her given his taunts but sounds a bit dismayed by how he got her to change her entire identity for him (“He got what he wanted”). She recognizes being married to John would be a “gargantuan task” and had no regrets herself.

Lastly, a comment on Lewisohn’s framing here. I think it’s appropriate to mention John’s guilt and the effect of pop culture on the social mores of the time here. But I find it incredibly distasteful that Lewisohn concludes this incident with a quote that suggests Paul liked John violent and hitting women, considering the actual context of the quote.

Here's Paul's words in Many Years From Now that Lewisohn quotes from:

The first sentence of Paul's words on this says it all. This quote is all about the image of the Teddy Boy as a protective measure. Conflating violence against women with fashion is not helpful at all.

This word-twisting feels especially terrible because Paul ends up dating Thelma himself a few years down the line...

All the Beatles were now in settled relationships. Having ended with Dorothy Rhone, Paul played a broad field without hindrance, sparking flames old and new, and he also (from August 1962) found himself a special new “steady.” This was Thelma Pickles—John’s art school lover before he got together with Cynthia. Paul had always liked Thelma, and happened to see her in Liverpool while driving his car—his proud and precious Ford Consul Classic, which he bought new (“on the never-never”) in early August.16 She married, had a baby boy and then separated from her husband. Approaching 21, Thelma lived in a Prince’s Avenue bedsit as a single parent and was trying to resume her art school studies, a talented young woman … and here in her life arrived Paul McCartney.

He was no longer a slightly plump young schoolboy but very much his own person. I only like visual art, I’m not into music, so I had just a vague notion that John and his group were still going. Paul said he’d pick me up later to see them play at the Cavern. It was a jazz club when I’d last been there. It was full of raw energy. Girls were screaming and boys liked them as well. I’d only ever watched Six-Five Special and this was different. I hadn’t believed what Paul said about their increasing fame—being brought up working-class in that era, we were given to believe “our sort” couldn’t become successful.17

—Tune In (Ch. 31, Aug 19–Oct 4 1962)

Her comment on class and success is important to put in context with the rest of her account. Given John's more middle class standing living with Mimi at the time, I’m sure Thelma felt the power differential between them at least the first time she visited Mendips. Notice how sneaky John is to make sure Mimi doesn’t meet her? It mirrors how John only has the band over when Mimi's out of the house; he knows how she will react to him seeing a working-class girl and doesn’t want the trouble. That sticks with a girl, feeling like you’re not worth the trouble. He does end up introducing the much more prim and proper Cynthia to Mimi, and it still goes terribly, but at least he tries, signaling to Cynthia he sees some future with her. That hit in the neck? Sounds a lot more gruesome than a slap in the face. And it's in public, after she turns him down. Despite their shared closeness alone, the power differential in public still reigns supreme. But she knew her limits and stood firm in spite of it all. We only have one picture of her at this time, but it’s a telling one all the same. I look at it and can’t help thinking, oh, I know this girl. Good for her.

Even after Thelma and Paul’s relationship fizzles, they stay friends through other connections. She ends up dating (and later marrying) Mike’s bandmate, Roger McGough. She recalls staying with Roger at Cavendish in the 60s. It’s not clear if she crosses paths with John at this time. Perhaps her presence prompted the guilt we see John express in 67 in Getting Better and interviews with Hunter Davies. I hope she haunted him…even just a bit.

Sources by Chapter

Chapter 9

30 Observer, December 13, 2009.

31 Author interview, September 6, 2010.

Chapter 10

9 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy.

10 Davies, pp56–7. The song lyric: “I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved”—“Getting Better,” 1967.

11 Interview with Sandra Shevey, the Hartford Courant, November 26, 1972.

12 “The Teddy Boy … that was my scene, but it was only a club to belong to at the time”—interview by David Skan, Record Mirror, October 11, 1969.

13 Many Years From Now, pp49/33.

Chapter 31

16 Author interview, May 2, 1991.

17 Author interview, September 6, 2010, and e-mails August 29, 2010, and February 28, 2012.

[reiketsunomizunomegami]

Akatsuki boys reaction to my oc Jana Diamond

Warning: cursing mainly on Hidan, Fluff, SFW to the Rest, some spoiler, changes of some plot

Feat: Itachi, Kisame, Hidan, Kakuzu, Sasori, Deidara, Zetsu, and Tobi/Obito

Pain had suddenly recruited me while I was on my way home from my previous Mission.. He talks to me and explain his Organization's cause and afterwards he Invited me to join the so called Akatsuki... I told him that I will think about it and he agrees before he vanishes from the dark leaving me inside the Cold and dark forest...

After a few days I went inside the Forest again and call for his name.. Pain stare at me with a serious face “I'm In” I said in a Calm tone “Come with me” He said sending me the same vibe.. The redheaded man makes me to follow him to the weird looking place “You have to meet the others” he said making me hum in agreement

When we reach at wide looking cave he opens his mouth and calls out a numerous name that I never heard before.. Slowly some unknown people to me approached us gathering in a circle “Everyone I want you all to meet our Newest Member Jana Diamond”

*Their POV*

Uchiha Itachi

-I Silently Stared at her emotionless Eyes while trying to find out what is she hiding from us

-Jana was very Odd to me.. She has this weirdly dominating Aura around her making not only me but the whole group avoided her

-Until she proven her worth to us.. Her power was very Alluring for me..

-we all become more attached to her and she also opens herself to us.. She would even smile or cook for all of us like she was our mother

-And I honestly loved it

Hoshigaki Kisame

-Man she's creepy! Creepier than the Leader himself

-I often Stayed myself away from her until the Leader notices it and makes me to accompany her on her first mission

-Jana was very quite! Like she will only talks to me when she needed something! Like what?! She's creepy as f*ck!

-But my View lf her Changes when she saved my ass from getting killed.. She healed me before taking my fight into her hands.. I stared into her fighting skills like what?! She's so Elegant and very Stunning!! Like a Goddess

-afterwards we took the 8 tails back to the hideout and then I approached her again “U-Uh Thank you so much for saving my ass back there” She smiled at me making my poor heart jump “You're welcome” She turns around before making her towards her room

-She's so beautiful! I loved her!

Hidan

-What a Hot chick!

-She's a solid 1000000/10!!

-But she was very cold and I couldn't just constantly Flirt with bef because she actually creeps me out! Like what kind of f*cking Beauty has this kind of menacing Aura?!

-Wait?! Did she just talks to Kisame and smiled at him like an angel?! But how?! How the f*ck does this fish face manage to talk to her so casually?!

-Aweee man! What Am I supposed to do?!

Kakuzu

-Hmmm she's fine.. She not t noisy and annoying liked Hidan does

-But something in her that is very fishy to me

-I always keep my guard up around her like when I Notice that she's about to approach I will just constantly move away from her or sending her a threatening Look

-I always despises her presence until she helped to caught the biggest fish making me to earn 10x more bigger than it was used to be

-and more importantly she even declined my her part of the bounty.. I stared at her again staring at her now smiling face making my face turns red

-She was now my most favored akatsuki Member! And I will stay with her even if she pushed me away

Sarori

-She's fine

-She's not loud so I liked that

-Wait?! She thinks that beauty is eternal?!

-Marry Me! She's too perfect! Beautiful, Intelligent, Strong, powerful, and lastly she thinks the same way As I did!

-I would loved her to be my partner on my next mission

-*Frown* Why is she talking to Kisame?! She's smiling?! Why?! What she sees in him?! And also why does Hidan was staring at her like an idiot?! .. Oooohh I think I have rival already.

Deidare

-Ughhh I hate her! She agrees with Danna hm!

-But I had to admit that she's Quite a beauty herself

-maybe I should give her chance and talk to her to change her point of view about art

-Ohhhh man she's so Elegant! How Am I supposed to talk to her?! Wait! Maybe Danna knows how?! But he will ask me why would I wanted to talk to her so bad.. Well I have to give it a try right??

White Zetsu/Black Zetsu

-She reminds me of a carnivorous plant

-She's too serious all the time

-“I Hate her!” I actually Liked her “Oh Shut up!” No you shut Up!

-I was actually spying on her all time but not in a bad way tho “You can't Fool anyone by your Stupid statement” But ut was True! I'm doing it in a very friendly way! “Yeah Whatever you say Creep” *Sigh* You're so Irritating sometimes

-“I think that she was delicious” Please don't “Why not?! She looks tasty *Lick his lip* I would loved to devour her now” Oh My God! You're so Disgusting “As if you don't desired it too?! So don't act so innocent here and help me to lure her over so we can devour her!” No! “N-No?!” Yes! NO! And It will stay that way! Whether you liked it or not!

Tobi/Obito

-(tobi) I loved her so much! She's so cute and beautiful! But I have a question for her tho.. Why is she always wearing black??

-Well I'm always approaching her not Intimidated by her Dangerous Aura

-She seems mean but believe once you get to know her you will loved her liked I do!

-Jana~Chan is the best!

-(Obito) She seems normal to me

-She's not annoying so its okay too

-Oh she's very intelligent.. Very impressive

-She can be a great asset for the organization in the future..

[with0utath0ught]

So this is an add-on to the first part of my rotbtd au/idea.

This one is more focused on Tooth, I should also add that this was before I knew that Tooth was inspired by Indian culture so I do apologize if this is not something you like.

So, for me, it was fun to imagine Tooth as Heather, I thought it was a fun connection between Rise of the Guardians and How to Train Your Dragon.

For this au, I imagined Heather like the rest of the Httyd cast fought in a war, not exactly sure what kind, but they did.

At the end of it all, Heather died protecting the ones she loved and her home, however even with all of her memories still there, she could never remember who killed, all she knows is that she saw a shadowy figure, before darkness took over.

So how would that work in this au?

Guardians try to maintain their weekly meetings or more like hangout time, they are busy, but they don't want the work to overtake their lives.

So they get together on one day of the week as a way to maintain close relationships and make sure each of them is not overworking themselves. No one has missed the meeting once, and usually, they rotate on where they would get together, now this time Jack doesn't show up and the Guardians are surprised since he is the one who is usually the happiest for this meetings.

One thing leads to another and they start to notice how it isn't the first time Jack either didn't show up to something or disappeared off of the face of Earth.

Now this would not be surprising, they understand that as a Winter spirit he has other jobs to do, but it is the time specifically that confuses them.

In the middle of Summer, when he should be resting somewhere cold, the end of Spring and the start of the Fall, when he should be slowly getting ready.

But they don't get their answers, Jack laughs it off awkwardly as he attempts to change the subject the next time they meet and, while this does confuse them, as they don't understand the point of secrecy, they don't question him about.

Though Tooth does ask about other Seasonal spirits, which in turn leads to a long tangent.

"Summer is annoying, but I find it fun when she gets angry. She has the best reactions to my pranks, a bit like Bunny.

Spring is kind, she is sweet and smart, she makes the best cookies, though it isn't fun when the pollen gets too much.

Autumn is not really social, he keeps to himself mostly, but I like his drawings, they are not as colorful as Springs, but the dragon sketches are fun."

And it is that comment that leaves Tooth stunned.

As far as she was aware, there should not be any spirit who lived in the time of the dragons and, truthfully, she does not have a heart to fully think about such notion it brings out too much pain for her to deal with at the moment, so she leaves the comment simmer in the back of her mind as she attempts to not think on her beloved Windshear.

This is as far as I got for this part, any thoughts?

prev | 2 | next

[grey-gteam]

GreyG: the formation of the group

Chenny:

We were still in the training room, all together, chatting, calmly. Jin Sol and Yerin were laughing like crazy, while Iji was judging them loudly right behind. Ara and Heni were in the middle of a discussion, adorable. Gabi was stretching with Mio, on the floor, except that's when Jin Sol fell backwards because she was laughing way too much, rolling backwards, bumping into Mio and Gabi.

Gabi: Soli!!! What's your problem ?

Mio: Ouch! I am in pain.

Jin-Sol: Sorry! It's Yerin's fault.

Yerin: Don't accuse me!

Jin Sol clasped his hands in apology.

Jin Sol: Sorry girls.

Iji: Are you bilingual?

Jin Sol: Of course!

Because of Jin Sol's burst accent, we all laugh our hearts out, making fun of her.

Chenny: You are the least serious here… Finally after Yerin. Nobody beats his stupidity.

Yerin: Chenny!!!!! How dare you ?!

Yerin then does her drama queen which makes us laugh even more.

Akane:

We had fun together, it was great. But it was still a long time that we were there waiting.

Akane: What have we been waiting for all this time actually?

Lynn: Yes, it's true we've been here for over an hour.

Ara: One hour?! Only I feel like I've been here for a whole day

Mio: I no longer have the notion of time since I left Japan, me, apparently you too Ara.

Ara: Is that supposed to be nice?

Mio: No.

We all laugh even more. It's weird our humor.

We were still making fun of Ara, when suddenly someone walks into the training room. We all get up in panic and line up, a reflex of our years as a trainee. It was a woman, very beautiful, probably in her twenties, accompanied by a man. Looks like a couple, the gentleman was also in his twenties, that's for sure.

_Hello girls !

Enthusiastic lady.

Us: Hello.

Without emotion, because in my opinion, we were a little scared.

_Hey ! Get a little excited girls, you've been chosen to be part of a group.

Ara: REALLY?!

_ That's the kind of reaction I want. Anyway, my name is Heo Erin, and from today I'm your appointed art director. Me and my colleague here, we have chosen you and propose a project for a new girl group to the management of SM. This is Mr Parker, your manager. We will take care of you as it should be.

Mr. Parker: Hello.

Ara:

We listen carefully to what they tell us.

Ara: We will then be in a group every 10?!

Ms. Erin: Yes, all 10.

Chenny: Since when do 10-member groups work, especially in SM?

Ms. Erin: That's the challenge we gave ourselves, me and Parker.

Mr. Parker: Don't call me Parker.

Mrs. Erin: Shut up.

We all prevent ourselves from laughing before being reprimanded, it looks like a couple.

Iji: Excuse me but we're still too young, me, Ara and Heni, no. Are you going to start us off like this?

Ms. Erin: The project still needs to take some time to properly train the group. Your debut will be scheduled for 2023.

JinSol:

Ah ok, so we still have time to improve before starting, I can't wait to start.

Jin Sol: So what do we do now?

Ms. Erin: It's Parker's turn to speak, isn't it Parker?

Mr. Parker: Shut up, Erin! Okay, you're going to move into your dorm, together. Then we will give you time to settle in. Tomorrow we will start to establish the bases of your group, the positions and all, with time, we will talk about the concept with the other madwoman there, and the rest will be communicated to you.

Jin Sol: Wow, that's crazy!

Mr Parker: By the way, we will also give you new stages names. Not all of them, it will depend on your choices too.

Yerin:

I didn't say anything from the start, I was so stunned, it's crazy, it's the start of a new experience, I don't believe it.

Yerin: Do we have a name?

Ms. Erin: Patience, you will be soon. Now go get your things together, a car will pick you up in two hours.

Then they leave, leaving us like potatoes in a field.

Chenny: In 2023?

Gabi: Are we going to start in 2 years?

We all look each other in the eye without saying anything, suddenly I explode with joy.

Chenny: Ugh! why are you screaming?

Yerin: WE'RE GETTING STARTED!! In 2 years but that's already it.

Iji: She has the right to be happy, I think we all are.

Ara: You're kidding me, Iji. Come, let's redo our handshake!

Heni: Uh...yes, let's celebrate, our...uh, new group ?!

Gabi: Let's go! 1,2,3

Together: dont'you know !!! we !!

Jin Sol: Woohoo!!!!

[et-cant-phone-home-no-signal]

Reacting to: “Finding Celebrían” written by Tumblr user balrogballs

This is a reaction to this wonderful essay, please give the essay a read, and just a note that this is just me writing my rambling thoughts, feelings and reaction to this stunning piece of writing.

Celebrían did not mean much to me the first time I was exposed to the Lord of the Rings, in fact, I didn’t know she existed until I picked up the books for the first time roughly 6 years after I’d first watched the films at age 10. My relationship to Tolkien’s works is once of a long-suffering lover who knows and sees all of the faults, cracks and missing chunks, and forgives it anyway because the rest of it is beautiful and fulfilling, despite its faults. But as I’ve gotten older, and wiser, and more experienced in many different ways, I’ve come to appreciate Tolkien’s cracks and missing pieces, perhaps more so than the pictures that are yet whole to enjoy. Celebrían is one of these missing pieces.

The opening of this essay immediately had me going “yes, agreed”, because I too was expecting so much more when I first found Cel in those Appendices and notes. The emphasis put here on Cel’s torment is such an important thing to hone in on, because in a world where there is such beauty, which Tolkien describes readily, for the wife of such a great elf lord as Elrond to decide that the pain she had endured was so much, and so heavy, and so irreparable, that the better choice was for her to leave the shores of Middle-Earth, and her family, behind. Lovers of lotr and Tolkien’s other works are not unfamiliar with the concepts of torture, war, consequences of actions and of death, but it’s still a striking word to use, especially in the context of the Appendices. Seeing this being pointed out certainly made me feel some sense of relief, that indeed I’m no the only one who sees.

Now, The Fields means something specific to Miss Balls, and this entire segment of the essay had me putting my phone down and willing my gathering tears to chill out and leave so I could keep reading. The tone of this section, as well as the vulnerability, made me pause and reflect on why I was feeling so upset at reading it. What about this was resonating with me? I don’t see myself has having my Field, rather, I have many Fields spread across many places. I did not have a steady Field growing up, and the one that I wish I could return to, the original comfort, is something far-off and distant to me; a hazy remnant of my childhood, so old and wrinkly I can no longer be sure of its cosy details. All of my other Fields however… I start to understand why this section is making me want to scream into a pillow. Most of my other Fields are withered, and they too became things I could no longer stand to look at, though I myself have never even considered the concept of cPTSD being a part of my (already damaged) psyche, but this writing has definitely opened a can of worms that was simply waiting to be found. I’m not sure whether to thank you, or curse you out.

Anway.

Following Cel became a natural pathway to trying to understand what was going on with her, but also what was going on with me. By the time she became a true interest in my life, I was already knee-deep into my own lotr writing project, one that’s been years in the making. Suddenly, I had to think about where Celebrían would fit in this narrative, on what kind of things she might say, or do, or like. How do you write someone who exists only in footnotes? As nothing more than a name in passing, another female tragedy, another missing wife. Like Miss Balls, I tried to find her, and felt cold disappointment when I found little to nothing for my efforts. How awful, to be a part of a world so wonderful and bright and big as Middle-Earth, and still be left behind in the shadows, like so many others. “I couldn’t find her in the story.” - and I could not either.

Now, I quote an entire paragraph, because I must. “But I think that was always what drew me to her, that absence. I didn’t find myself in Celebrían, but in the footnote that gestured to her presence. It wasn’t that I understood her so much as I knew how to decrypt the desperate scratches left behind by someone who drowned on dry land. That was how she and I were truly alike: people who wanted to change the world, or a little part of it, and did, did something good - and had all of it forgotten, crammed into a footnote read with a tender, pitying fret.” - I had a whole paragraph of words lined up when I first read this, hell, I was practically cheering in my seat, going “yes! exactly!” as I felt a connection with the words on my screen, but I think the visual of that reaction alone tells more than I ever could in a measly paragraph. The way Miss Balls writes Celebrían, the joy and craziness, the sweet tooth, everything that makes her her, is born within whatever has been unwritten. Cel is not just what we make of her in writing, but rather what she can be to use outside of it, what she is to the world she lives in. I’ve been finding her in my own writing, her small eccentricities that make her more than a footnote. My Cel hates bees, and she loves the colour purple, and she delights in eating with her hands. When I read “I don’t know, if I’m being honest, whether Celebrían changed me, or if I changed her. Whether change is an instant or a process, whether this version of almost-Celebrían mattered to anyone but myself.” I understand, and I wonder just how many version of Cel are out there - how many of us have read this footnote and decided that she was going to be so much more than what is assumed of her.

For Miss Balls, leaving The Fields is written as this freeing (yet scary) necessity (and feel free to tell me I’m talking bullshit, because at the end of the day, I am just an outsider looking in and reading an essay that makes me feel like my heart is going to implode on itself). And it brings me great joy to read this section in which freedom from the place that you perhaps don’t actually know you want to leave, until all of a sudden, you just know, because yeah, it really do be like that sometimes. I can agree with and understand Celebrían being a guide of sorts, at least mentally, because yes, she would not judge, she would understand and applaud. She would sit both of us down, as we leave our Fields behind, and offer us a (too sweet) glass of lemonade and say ‘it isn’t over yet’ with the kindest smile and a twinkle in her eye. The concept of being a “cracked vessel” applies not just to Cel, but to me as well, and I hated being confronted with that, but it’s a reminder that that is not all you are. And now my words begin to make less sense, so let’s slow it down, shall we?

Miss Balls speaks true; all of us that are sucked in by Celebrían are mirrors of a kind. There is no such thing as one Celebrían, and I don’t think there ever could be. The beauty of loving a character who is nobody, is that she can be everybody. I too had to write Celebrían to find her, or at least my version of her, and all of her idiosyncrasies, some of which are still hidden to me. It doesn’t all have to be said, if fact, I think that most of it goes unsaid, in the ways in which she thinks, and walks, and talks, in the colours that she wears, in the shoes (or lack thereof), in the way she styles her hair… “I look at her now, as she is in my head, and there Celebrían is neither alive nor dead.” - And as Miss Balls looks into her dusty wing mirror, so I do too look in mine. My mirror is not dusty, and it does not belong to me, but it is cracked and holding on by a thread. The girl in that mirror is stuck in some of those Fields, and she looks different in every single one, but just maybe, she can be consoled. I know for a fact that my Celebrían would know what to do.

After note: Miss Balls you make me cry, but I’ve been meaning to read this essay since I first saw you published it. Now that I finally have, I just could not stop thinking, and these thoughts flowed out onto my keyboard with such relative ease (relative mind you compared to whatever my writing capability is at any given moment) that I almost felt like should have bit the bullet days ago. Anyway, I encourage everyone to read the essay, especially if you have any love or feeling toward Celebrían because damn. Damn.

Finding Celebrían

For Tolkien Meta Week — an essay on autofiction, archives, healing, and why I moved across the country after finding out Elrond Peredhel had a wife. Being an essayist irl, believe me when I say I was thrilled to see @silmarillionwritersguild have the personal essay form as a format for Tolkien Meta Week! Here's something from the heart - warning for discussion of cPTSD and (non explicit) references to violence.

When I first found Celebrían in a footnote, I wrapped up warm and followed, certain she'd lead me to where she truly lived in the text.

By that point, it had been a good decade or so since I first read Tolkien – I had been aware that Elrond had a wife, and assumed she was dead or hung up in some other cold meat locker alongside a procession of wives spanning literary history.

It was only years later that I properly came across her, and blinked, realising she was a cursory line which led to a footnote in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, one which referred to her torment in passing, meant to explain why the sons of Elrond and to an extent Elrond himself, were the way they were. 

Fridging was one thing, but torment was another entirely, I thought — and so casually! Tea and torment in the Third Age, tra-la-lally traumatised into "losing all joy" in Middle-Earth and leaving the year after, taking ship to Valinor and leaving behind a grieving family. It was simple curiosity, really, until it turned into a cold, familiar grasp: the clear-cut knowledge of exactly what sort of torment it would have been, that drove away the wife of a noble lord living in what was very clearly described as being one of the last great sanctuaries in a ravaged realm. 

But to understand why The Footnote stopped me in my tracks, I need to tell you about The Fields. 

When I speak of The Fields (which are of course not really fields and neither are they called The Fields anywhere but here), I refer to one of the most beautiful spots in the country. The Fields combined the peaceful pastoral with quaint urban charm, rustic without being remote, safe without being detached. I lived in The Fields for several years, and made a little life for myself that grew into something bigger. 

I had been an activist in The Fields — moved from scrappy student to card-carrying revolutionary — and I did it because I loved where I lived very, very much, enough to think I could kiss it better. And I was good, I was! I belonged on the stage in that sense, I was invited to panel after panel, talk after talk, and I stood on little podiums that grew alongside me. I knew how to carry myself, present myself, leveraged my palatability and conventionality in return for rights and bare-minimum environmental reparations. 

Such wonders, of course, came with a cost I hadn’t foreseen — an incident, a couple really, that tossed a diagnosis of cPTSD into my lap and turned my lovely home into The Fields. And because I had been so good at presenting myself and clambering on podiums with shiny hair, the incidents became the talk of the town, and I in turn very quickly became a subject, the walking, talking cost of resistance. 

A feature of cPTSD, one that sets it apart from PTSD, is the overarching dullness with which the emotional flashbacks grasp you. Not like being plucked off the surface of the earth by a monstrous thing, but rather drowning quietly in sludge you never realised was beneath your feet in the first place. There was never a thing that terrified me about The Fields, it was only ever a quiet, creeping mass taking over everything, and in being so — easy to ignore and disguise. 

I love The Fields, I told myself, even after. I loved The Fields, even though life had turned into air and static, and I had turned into an unfeeling thing. I lived in the middle of that little city but felt as though I was in a small hut on no-man's land, or a joint security area, suspended between towers. I couldn't stand the wonderful hills and valleys, so I tried my hardest to cling onto the reasons I loved them, tried to medicate them back into my heart with the forcefulness of a pacemaker. I shoved things down throats and up noses, walked back onto all those stages, turned myself into an electric hearse chasing a long-dead dragon. I would walk around The Fields on some nights, very cold and very young, the bleached bones left behind by something very promising. 

Can you see why I stopped still at Appendix A, at Celebrían? I tried to follow her, and see where her story began, and what wonders it would end in, because if Celebrían's story ended in wonder then maybe, there might be a chance, perhaps….. 

It would be easy, I thought, I was a writer, a journalist, a researcher - I trained in asking questions and knowing things, even sticky, stunted, back-of-the-throat things that you'd rather not catch sight of in a mirror. The History of Middle Earth book sets were ordered, fresh copies of all the old texts, magnifying glasses held over Unfinished Tales. 

I’d been so certain I would find her. That Celebrían would ramble across page after page, legs dangling over the edge and an indolent expression fizzing on her face. She would be stubborn and glorious and righteous in her fervor to change the world. I would find her in the flesh, and then no longer would I stand in The Fields each night, hollow-eyed, self-haunting spectre holding myself thrall to a single series of events in what has been, objectively, a lovely, loving life.

But a full month went by, and all I found was footnote after endnote after cursory mention, almost all of them clothing her in torment, growing stiff and sharp against the tooth of the page: vicious, like a blade angled backwards. For Celebrían and I, the richest text in the world turned into a landscape of loss. 

What a wonderful, rich, textured world you have!

All the better to swallow you whole, my dear. 

I couldn't find her in the story. I spent weeks and weeks on her, and I couldn't find her in the story and by then I had already fancied myself and Celebrían to be counterparts, like if she laughed, I would laugh too, like if she ran, then I would run too, and if she was lost, then… well. I suppose it shows the power of an enduring text. I had a PhD, at that point I had just gotten my publishing deal through, I'd spoken on all those podiums and done all those real-world, adult things, and still I was not immune to the indulgent tether of a good old self-insert. And then it turned out we were not counterparts but rather more akin to co-morbidities, that The Footnote and its friends were all I would ever know of Celebrían. 

It was summer, I remember, but my hands were cold — autopsy-fingers, my partner called them. Archive-fingers, autopsy-fingers, scrabbling around to find nothing, no indication as to how Celebrían's story truly ended and why I was the person I was. The texts shifted uneasily under my hands, like the Professor himself was turning out his pockets and shrugging, reminding me that it was neither Celebrían's nor my story, not really. Pointed me back to The Footnote like it was a pacifier, and still I turned in circles like a dog chasing its tail, looking for other instances of her name. I found nothing. I began to fear that I had wasted my life.

The Footnote started to blur across weeks, and soon it turned itself into My Footnote. The one I had found, a year or so before the hunt, in a fantastic, recently published book that spoke about activism in The Fields, where I came face to face with myself. But there, I hadn't been standing on a podium or being interviewed or writing pressure pieces or anything I had really, truly done, but I was instead a single footnote — condensed into the things that had happened to me, as opposed to the things I had made happen. As the months went on, I looked for references to myself in new books, newspapers, magazines — and I would find myself, but in the same scrap of footnote, wearing the same costume of torment, tragic poster children of a violent world. 

I sat there looking at the thousands and thousands of pages in the legendarium, the stack of books on things I had worked upon, statutes I had pulled down and little laws I had changed. And then at the scraps of Celebrían and I, reduced to scribbles and crossing outs in the margins. It was like we never lived at all. It seems a rather childish reaction, perhaps, to not finding the story you want in a book you bought. Still, that afternoon, when I put down the last page of HoME I had access to, I crawled into bed and stayed there for a very long time, trying very hard to not touch even the bedclothes around me.

But I think that was always what drew me to her, that absence. I didn't find myself in Celebrían, but in the footnote that gestured to her presence. It wasn't that I understood her so much as I knew how to decrypt the desperate scratches left behind by someone who drowned on dry land. That was how she and I were truly alike: people who wanted to change the world, or a little part of it, and did, did something good — and had all of it forgotten, crammed into a footnote read with a tender, pitying fret. 

But that's not canonical, is it? Yes, her absence shaped the story of the Ring War in certain regards. But who said Celebrían, Celebrían the Person, not Celebrían the Footnote — had ever changed anything, let alone the world in which she lived?

Simple – I did.

My Celebrían was a complete nutcase. I wrote her as a daughter born to a borderline-squirrel of a wood elf, who herself hated small creatures with a passion. I had her take off her shoe and beat earwigs to death, had her talk the ear off a perpetually grieving mother, irritate a kinslayer into planting a pine forest, and threaten the High King with a shovel. She would shove cotton in her ears to block out her husband's snoring, and put four teaspoons of sugar in her tea. She bribed her sons to dispose of a snake, and demanded magical healing for a little scrape on her forehead. 

I cut her into familiar shapes: the shape of someone who spent months unable to bear the slightest touch, whose loved one slept on the floor beside the bed, clinging to a listless hand dangled off the side. The shape of a small house in a forest, and the shape of a wonderful ending, in which she truly did change the world in all the ways she could. I don't know, if I'm being honest, whether Celebrían changed me, or if I changed her. Whether change was an instant or a process, whether this version of almost-Celebrían mattered to anyone but myself. I knew one thing though — my Celebrían is a thousand footnotes long, and counting. 

Footnotes, like most things in the archive, are of course caging things: keeping unpalatable violence in the past, or at least elsewhere, keeping the here and now good and quiet. It's easier to outsource healing and rediscovery to other places, to archives and museums and books and Valinor. Was being a footnote a punishment? What’s worse, being pickled wrongly or never being pickled at all? Was this yet another installment of the cautionary tale stretching all the way through time and reality from Celebrían to me; footnotes about women who held themselves thrall to the memory of violence, who lived as well as they could, till they couldn’t? Would it have been better if she never existed at all?

I don't know. All I know for certain is this: at some point between finding Celebrían and writing her, I moved out of The Fields and across the country.

It had been a long time coming. But for years, I had thought I would weather living in The Fields because even after the Torment, the Footnote, the Diagnosis, I never felt a disconnect from the place, because I was still extroverted and irritating and fizzing with the desire to stay in the Fields and love it, as I had always done. And then suddenly, I wanted to run.

It wasn't as if Celebrían burned The Fields down, leaving me there to watch flames eating its flat, starless sky. But what she did was this: carefully take off my rose-tinted glasses, and say run —- this earth has swallowed you whole. 

I had assumed it was my fault, my attachment to The Fields, that I was looking at things wrong, that I was maintaining unhealthy attachments to sites of trauma, prioritising the wrong perspectives, the body keeps an atlas and all that. But Celebrían did not call me crazy. Celebrían was not the kind of person who would ever call you crazy. She was the kind of person who would lay in a wide-open field beside you and ask you what you were looking at. 

And when you say "oh, just up at the big sky", she wouldn't probe. She would know exactly what you mean when you didn't say "-- because there is nothing ahead of me", and she wouldn't say a word about how the ground around you was soft with decay, reeking like a corpse, that you were caught in the straggling grass of its hair. 

She would instead shrug, wink, and point you towards Gollum, because of course she would. She would tell you that Tolkien, ever the Catholic, had drawn out a perfect depiction of what might have happened if Lazarus was left in that cave. And then she would say, run, for god's sake, girl, run, and you would. I did!

How stubbornly we all cling to the idea of staying fixed until being fixed, to the idea of a ready-made Valinor to sail to if we do well enough at life, stay still enough in the margins! How faithfully we believe that if you spend enough time being a very, very good cracked vessel, maybe one day you might feel the quiet triumph of bearing water again. Celebrían, not the Celebrían of The Footnote but my Cel, the manic pixie freakshow of Imladris, said shut the fuck up and run. That it was no use hungering for the impossible and thumbing listlessly though footnotes, and to instead run, and run, and start digging a garden at the ground you come to a stop at because it is only in new soil that something gentle could unfold unbidden. That as time passes, you will belong less and less to the ground you left behind and more and more to the ground you walk upon, to the new trees and new hills around you, to those who love you still.

Run! she said. How alive you looked, hunting for me. How badly you craved my story. See? There are still stories you crave. You are still human enough to crave. Run! 

I think many of us who love this brief, inexorable footnote of a Celebrían, whether we read her or write her, are bound by a similar truth: that in her we caught sight of something within ourselves. All around the world, these tiny, unflinching mirrors in Appendix A and the rest, tie together and create a hundred different Celebríans, all part of the same thread, each version carrying its own burden, though rarely do we ever acknowledge it in each other. It's a quiet nod, an unspoken connection, a reminder that we are all more alike and less alone than a cursory footnote might imply.

To find Celebrían, I had to write her. And in turn, she wrote me in her image. I look at her now, as she is in my head, and there Celebrían is neither alive nor dead. No, what is most clear in my mind is a girl in a dusty wing mirror, a life packed into boxes, sunglasses sliding down her nose. One hand sandwiched in an ordnance map, prying the pages open, hurtling at a perfectly legal speed down an M-road, The Fields growing smaller, and smaller, and smaller in the rearview mirror. Not gone, not truly, but invisible to the naked eye, unless you know exactly where to look. A grain of sand in a bucket of water, a single, sad-looking fish half-buried on a tropical beach. A finger to the past, a wave from a window, a footnote in an appendix.