#I. cannot summon the urgency to care any longer

[spade-club]

Mental health update of sorts. Heavy stuff under readmore!!

Summary: still upset about getting cheated on forever ago but I'll be okay

Guess who's self harming again!! Its meeeee~

Read through some texts between my partner and one of the guys they cheated on me with. Most of it was in person (fun fact: they were roommates at the time!) So it wasnt much of it but it was still fucking uncomfortable!! I dont feel bad for reading it. I think they gave up their privacy when they did what they did tbh. But I know I shouldnt have done that because now its so easy to picture and to get the day-nightmare scenes set just right.

Me doing this was prompted by seeing him in passing at the store today. He was just shopping with his kid. As if he wasnt the gross pathetic asshole he was in those texts. And here my partner is shopping with ME, as if they werent the avoidant cheating asshole they were in those texts. All while I still dont know shit about what really happened between them!!

I have to remember that most of the time I do still love them a lot. Its just really hard to believe that they just,, got better. That they realized they were in love with me and they'll never do this again. It feels like a line. They still willingly disrespected the O N E rule I gave them. With MULTIPLE people. All while trying to convince me that I dont ACTUALLY want them to tell me if they are having sex with other people (real thing they did!! I was telling them the whole entire time "i might be okay with you sleeping with someone else but you need to tell me as soon as possible" and they kept telling me that they didnt believe I wouldnt be cool with that (which I would have been!! Duh! Or I wouldnt have said it!!) All while still actively PLANNING on NEVER telling me they were talking to two other people!! And slept with one of them!!)

I know things are better lately between us. But I cant help but think theres such a thin line here keeping me from getting hurt again. I'm afraid of trusting it, and I'm tired of having to consider it. Always having to think about it. Every time they go out, having to ask what they're doing and if I'm not sent a picture from wherever they are I panic.

The girls (which is to say the other parts of me that consider themselves my partner's girlfriends) can talk forever about how happy and safe they feel in this relationship. Genuinely, they could all go on and on and on! I know I'm sticking around here for good reason (and not just because I can't afford rent on my own!) I think its important to remember the good things and what this is all for. I wouldnt struggle this much here if I didnt love them. They make me coffee every day and open doors for me and we laugh and make music and share our little hobbies and interests together and we have such cute little patterns & routines. We're a family and we're here for eachother. We cry together all the time. They've comforted me though some wild shit. We host our little parties and get togethers as a team! We spend pretty much all of our time together (not just because I'm afraid of leaving them alone but also) because we really truly love being around eachother.

I just wish we didnt have such a rocky start that 7 months later I still can't get over it. It kills me every day that things didnt turn out just a little bit different. I would have liked going my whole life without having to have experienced how shittily they handled that. But its too late for that now!! Gotta just keep moving forward I guess! Relapsing into hurting myself over this situation is, realistically, just a slip up. These happen. I'm still recovering. I am still going to be okay. Things will be better again!! I was just triggered today but things will be better again!!

Gonna go to bed now maybe... yeah... its weed and homestuck time until the Z's drop or whateverr. Goodnight everypony!

[adhdnursegoat]

Assault on Arkham

cw: just fluff 😊

word count: 913

The night is still, save for the distant hum of the city outside. You lie in your bed, the faint glow of the moon casting soft shadows across the room. You watch and listen as the shadows pitter patter on your window intime with the rain. The storm outside does little to lull you to sleep. You've been restless, tossing and turning as you let your thoughts linger on a plan you’ve been devising. The details are carefully calculated; now all that remains is execution.

Summoning a touch of drama, you let out a sharp, strangled gasp and sit up abruptly in bed getting into character. You stumble out of your room and make your way down the hall, careful to ensure your footsteps are heavy enough to sound distressed.

You push open his door with exaggerated caution and slip inside, eyes wide and face flushed with feigned terror. “Eddie…?”

Edward takes a deep waking breath, and part of you feels a twinge of shame for waking him for something so selfish. But the other part of you cannot take this tension between you anymore.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, his voice low and husky with sleep. And he doesn’t look up, just lays waiting for your pressing matter than just cannot wait until morning.

“C-can I sleep with you?” You ensure to add a quiver to your voice. “I had a nightmare, and - and…” You get choked up, simply unable to carry on with the harrowing tale of your terrors.

At the sound of your soft sniffles, he finally opens an eye, catching sight of the tears that glisten in the dim moonlight. There's only a beat of silence as he processes your words, but then, without hesitation, Edward sits up, concern clouding his sharp features. His hand reaches for yours, the gesture more tender than you expected. “Of course,” he breathes, his voice soft but laced with urgency. “Absolutely, my dear.”

His fingers are warm as they curl around yours, his eyes—keen even in the shadows—scanning your face for any trace of your supposed distress. For a moment, you're thrown off by the depth of his response. You hadn’t anticipated this level of sincerity, and you’re momentarily disarmed by the genuine worry etched into his expression.

But the guilt is fleeting, quickly replaced by the triumphant warmth of satisfaction. This is going even better than expected. You purse your lips, biting the inside of your cheek to suppress the smirk threatening to break through. Still, the pang of guilt is not enough to stop you from leaning into the comfort his concern brings.

Edward pulls back the covers with deliberate slowness, his fingers grazing yours in a way that sends a delicious shiver down your spine. He guides you into bed beside him, and as soon as you slip beneath the sheets, his arm slides around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. The heat of his body melts into yours, chasing away the cool remnants of the night. There’s something undeniably intimate in the way he holds you, the press of his chest against your back, his fingers splayed possessively over your hip, drawing you deeper into his embrace.

His breath fans against the back of your neck, warm and steady, and a soft sigh escapes him, the sound vibrating through your skin. He holds you tighter, the weight of his arm around your waist grounding you, but also sparking a different kind of awareness—the kind that makes your pulse race. After a few minutes, you can’t help but shift slightly in his arms, rolling over to face him, letting him pull you closer. Your head finds its place on his chest, your lips dangerously close to his collarbone as you peer up at him.

His eyes are no longer clouded with sleep, instead gleaming with an almost wicked amusement. The faintest smirk curls at the corners of his lips, his usual air of self-assurance returning with a quiet, sensual confidence.

“Better?” His voice dips low, velvet-soft as it skims across your skin, the sound alone sending a shiver down your spine. The flutter in your stomach is immediate, a pulse of heat you can’t ignore.

You bite your lip, the grin forming against your will as his warmth wraps around you, his body a cocoon of heat and intimacy. “Much,” you whisper, the word barely escaping you as his fingers begin to move, skimming over the curve of your hip. His touch is light, teasing, but every brush of his fingertips against your skin feels deliberate, coaxing.

“You know…,” he murmurs, his voice dropping in a conspiratorial tone. It curls around you like a blanket, and you feel yourself melting into it. “Next time, you can just get in bed with me. No need for the crocodile tears.”

A blush flares across your cheeks, your heart pounding at the teasing lilt in his words. “Was it that obvious?” you mumble, burying your face into the warmth of his chest, embarrassed but more than a little thrilled.

Edward’s thumb drags lazily over the sensitive skin beneath your ribs, sending a ripple of heat through you. “Painfully so,” he chuckles, the low rumble vibrating through your body where it’s pressed against him, making every inch of you hum with anticipation. His lips find your hair, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss, a show of affection that’s both tender and possessive. “But, I’ll admit, I appreciate the effort.”

[voltronisanobsession]

Compromised - Platonic Yandere! Voltron x Reader

This was a lot longer than what I intended it to be but whatever🔥

The rapid sound of footsteps echoed through the hallways, a sense of urgency present with each step taken. As the door came into view, the one door that held the most important thing in the universe, a sigh of relief was heard in the now quiet hall. He tried listening through the door for any signs of life, in which he received none, causing him to abruptly open the door.

There you laid on a bed, eyes tracing the ceiling blankly, ignoring the intruding figure at the entrance of your room. “Why didn’t you respond to the communicator Y/N?”

Turning your head, you stared at Shiro for a few seconds before ultimately deciding to stand up. “Sorry Shiro, I was just having so much fun. In this empty room. Doing absolutely nothing. Dying from absolute excitement.” The sarcasm seeped out like venom with each word, causing the man to wince.

Sighing, he responded, “I know staying in here isn’t an exactly ideal situation, but it’s the best way in keeping you safe.” Hopefully you would understand this time.

“Keeping me safe from what? The Galra? Space? You guys aren’t protecting me from anything, you’re only scared of what could happen to me.”

“Y/N.” Shiro just couldn’t understand how you didn’t see all the dangers that lay beyond the castle walls. How they’ve faced death on so many occasions just so they could continue saving the universe.

“No! It isn’t fair that I’m stuck locked in this stupid room with you saying you’re protecting me when you guys willingly throw yourselves in the face of danger! I can defend myself, I’m a paladin of Voltron too!”

“No you cannot Y/N. Remember how Keith had to save you from that Galra soldier who tried slicing you in half? Or how you lost your bayard because you were too busy trying to escape one of the sentrys’ shooting at you? Everything we do is for you, whether you choose to see that is on you.”

In frustration, you grabbed the nearest item (aka a pillow) and threw it against the wall, watching the feathers explode from its case. This wasn’t fair.

“I got my bayard in the end though! And if I lose my bayard again I can always try to summon it back like you did! I’m more than just some item to be kept away forever. I am a part of this team as much as anyone else!”

Dragging his metal hand across his face, Shiro had to take a deep breath before walking fully into the room, sitting on your bed after locking the door behind him. He patted the spot next to him, urging you to sit with him, which you reluctantly did.

“I was only able to get the black lions’ bayard by chance Y/N. In a real situation, if your bayard was taken from you, the chances of you successfully summoning your bayard is extremely low.” This caused you to deflate a bit.

“We know how bad you want to join us during missions, but putting you out in the field is too much of a risk we don’t want to take. Y/n, please, you have to see how important you are to all of us. The thought of you getting hurt physically pains me.”

This caused you to hang your head low, making Shiro think he finally knocked some sense into you. “But you guys get hurt too. Why am I the only exception? If you just give me the opportunity to show you all I can be helpful then I wouldn’t constantly fight against you.”

“You don’t even have a lion Y/N. You know yours was destroyed during the creation of the lions, so even if we were to allow you on missions you wouldn’t be able to do much. It’s better to have you away from battle.

Finally getting fed up, you sprang from the bed onto your feet which surprised Shiro. You didn’t care if they didn’t allow you into battle. You didn’t care if you had to stay with Coran watching and aiding from the sidelines, you just wanted to be out of this room.

Suddenly Allura’s voice rang throughout the castle and in your room from the speakers. “Shiro we need you in the bridge immediately.”

You watched with intense eyes as the man got up from your bed, heading towards the door of the room. “Shiro if you leave without me right now, I promise you I will do everything in my power to leave by myself.”

Shiro hesitated for a moment, hearing how bitter the words were. Looking back, all he could see was the anger in your eyes, as if you already knew what he was going to say.

“I’m sorry Y/N, we’ll continue talking about this when I come back.” This caused you to flop on your bed staring straight up at the ceiling once again, just like how he had originally found you.

Opening the door, he looked back once more, departing with his final words, “Please make sure you respond to the communicator on time.”

Receiving no reply, Shiro walked out, locked the door, and began heading to the control room, completely unaware of your quiet plans.

Sitting up, you listened as Shiro’s footsteps became quieter the further he walked away from your room until there was nothing but silence. Closing your eyes, you began focusing on the one thing you’ve been training yourself for after all this time. Shiro was able to summon the black lions bayard from a vast distance, who’s to say you couldn’t do it either.

Despite Shiro’s past words echoing in your mind, you brushed it off, almost feeling like this will finally be the attempt that will succeed. Having your bayard would mean being able to get out of the suffocating room, and a chance at freedom. You were taking a huge risk in attempting this but at this point, nothing else really mattered. Only the thought of freedom was keeping your fire burning.

Concentrating hard, you began slowing your heartbeat, taking deep breaths, and trying to connect yourself to your bayard. Searching, it took a while before you found the resembling energy of your bayard. It was faint, very faint actually, showing the distance between you and your beacon of hope.

Opening your hand slightly, you began imagining the feeling of the bayard, remembering how it weighed in your hand and remembering the energy it had given you in the short moments you had it.

It was yours, it’s energy finally connecting with your own. The feeling was uncomfortable at first, it was almost like something was being shoved into your body, making you feel a whole new energy present.

A bright light flashed causing your heartbeat to accelerate, praying that the light was really what you thought it was. Slowly opening your eyes, the heavy weight in your hand confirmed your prayers. The bayard was clutched in your hand, gleaming under the light of your room.

“YES! YESYESYESYES YEEESSS!” Jumping on the bed with joy, your eyes slightly filled with tears. You knew you could do it! Everything they’ve said about you was wrong!

“Oh my gosh I actually did it! Haha suck on that Shiro!” Your bayard transformed into your weapon, the feeling of your dagger familiar and comforting as you ran to the door. Forcing the dagger between the wall and the door, you grunted from the force you applied as you tried opening it.

Slowly but surely, it slowly began to slide open, the small opening being forced wide enough for your whole body to fit through.

You needed to get to an escape pod immediately before any of them noticed you were running around the castle freely. You’ll figure out step two once you’re out of the castle.

Sprinting through the corridors, you realized you were on the opposite side of where you needed to be. You could only hope you made it far enough before one of them took notice.

While the others spoke of their next move against the Galra, Coran was busy loading up information onto the system, when he got a small pop up of a small dot traveling quickly through the halls.

“Uh guys? I think we may have a problem.” Quickly tapping around, he pulled up a camera to your room first, eyes widening as he saw the forced opening of your door.

“What’s going on Coran?” Hunk moved next to the shocked man, his own eyes opening wide while the rest of the group gathered around quickly. Keith was the first one to dash out of the room not wanting to waste another second as you ran through the halls of the castle.

“How did they even do that?!” Lance quickly grabbed his bayard, anxiously waiting for instructions. The group watched as Coran replayed the video, seeing you struggling while trying to open the door with your dagger, the one thing their eyes focused on immediately.

“Alright team let’s move out! Coran do you have any idea where Y/N could be heading?” Hunk and Pidge went to retrieve their own bayards while Allura stared at the screen with a blank face.

“Uuummm from what I’m seeing, they’re trying to get to the opposite side of the castle!”

“Y/N is trying to get to the escape pods.” Allura was awoken from her trance like state, running towards the doors of the control room, everyone following after her.

“Here you go paladins! Y/N is a bit ahead of you all but it seems Keith is near them.” A map popped up in the group’s helmets, the red dot a stark contrast against the six blue dots that moved across a map of the castle.

“Alright listen up! Our best bet is to try and cut Y/N off from their path. We need to lead them back to the control room, there we’ll have the upper hand in a more enclosed space!” Shiro’s voice was strong and powerful as he spoke, the others grunting in agreement as they all continued running down the corridors.

“Found them!” Keith yelled out as the group followed to where his and Y/N’s dot were shown on the map.

Quickly turning the corner, Pidge was abruptly shoved into a wall as Allura saved her from the flying knife heading her way.

“Keith!”

“WHY CAN’T YOU GUYS JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” You yelled out in frustration, blocking Keith’s attacks with your much smaller blade. Kicking him back, Keith stumbled onto Lance, causing both of them to tumble onto the ground.

Running around the next corner, the rest of the team followed after you.

“Remember the plan guys! Left!” In confusion, you looked back only to see a blast coming straight for you on your right. Quickly jumping to the left, you turned the left corner in order to avoid Lance and Hunks’ nonstop firing.

Running down the hall, you were about to make a right until Shiro yelled out, “Left!”

You watched with wide and shocked eyes as Keith’s sword flew straight past your head and into the wall in front of you. This caused you to stumble a little into the wall, running towards the left once again.

“WHAT THE HELL KEITH! ARE YOU ACTUALLY TRYING TO KILL ME?!” After running down multiple hallways, it didn’t take you long to figure out they were trying to lead you somewhere as you began recognizing some of the rooms you ran by.

Were they trying to herd you into one of the rooms?! Looking back once again, you noticed how concentrated all of them looked as they followed you down each turn. Deciding to take the ultimate risk, you headed in the opposite direction Shiro yelled out. “Left!”

Taking a breath in, you ducked past Allura’s whip as she threw it rather aggressively, instead heading towards the right. You needed to get to a pod asap, you were beginning to grow tired.

You used your advantage to put as much space between you and the paladins as they stumbled confused into a wall after you didn’t turn into the direction they were leading you to.

“Uh guys! I think Y/N found out what we’re trying to do!” Hunk yelled out as he quickly pushed himself off the wall, huffing a bit as exhaustion began seeping through his bones.

“No kidding! What do we do now?!” Lance could only run so fast before he began falling behind with Hunk.

“Run!” Keith could feel his heart thumping against his chest, watching as you turned the final corner before disappearing from their sight. Pushing harder, he, Allura, and Shiro swiftly followed after you with Pidge close behind.

You finally had made it to one of the escape pods, quickly trying to open it before hearing a loud shout.

“I’m sorry Y/N!” Next thing you knew, a wire was wrapped around your leg and you were yanked off the pod. Grunting out in pain from the harsh landing, you quickly in return yanked Pidge’s cord with all your strength causing her to lose her balance.

“Y/N please! What has gotten into you?!” Allura was huffing a bit yet she was filled with enough energy to fight if needed.

“What has gotten into ME?! I absolutely refuse to be locked up again!” At this, Lance and Hunk busted through and into the room where all of you stood tensely, waiting for someone to make a move.

You stood your ground, clutching onto your dagger tightly, watching silently before noticing Keith eyeing your weapon.

“How did you get that?”

“Doesn’t matter how I got it. Let me go.”

Furrowing his eyebrows, Keith began to run towards you before he felt a hand clamping over his shoulder. You stood in a more defensive position after the abrupt movement. Keith’s angry eyes made contact with Shiro’s narrowed ones.

“You can’t leave Y/N. Even if you get into the pod you won’t be able to get out of the castle.”

You wouldn’t let them see how your hands shook, you won’t let them know that you knew Shiro was right. Not after you came this far. Not when you were so close to freedom.

That’s when an idea came into your head.

Quickly, you pointed the dagger straight over your heart, now knowing you had the upper hand as you heard the gasps coming from all of them. You were only bluffing but with the state you were in, they didn’t know that.

“Y/N!” Hunk gasped in shock, hands suddenly trembling with fear. Allura gulped audibly, her hands now tightly clutching her weapon, hoping that’ll lower her nerves.

“Y/N please. Please take that away from you.” Keith’s voice strained in anxiety, eyes wide as he watched you take a few steps back. Lance lowered his gun, hoping that that might calm you down.

“There’s a better way this could end.” Shiro looked at the group, fear present in all of their eyes. Pidge was the first one to drop her bayard, almost sensing that was the only way to pacify you.

“Thanks Pidge. Now the rest of you, drop your weapons.” They all hesitated until you threateningly moved the dagger closer to your chest. Quickly, Lance dropped his weapon with Hunk following after him. After intensely staring at you, Allura threw down her bayard, hearing it clank loudly against the floor.

Being the last one, Keith looked over to Shiro, seeing the man nod, he dropped his sword, watching it turn back to its original form. You had completely forgotten about his knife, seeing as you soon began to relax a bit.

“We’re willing to work with you Y/N. But not if you’re openly threatening your own life.” Allura’s voice was sharp, yet you could hear the slight tremble in her voice.

Glancing at all of them one last time, you slowly lowered you weapon, letting your arms fall to your side. Walking over to the spacecraft, you leaned against it and had to hold back a chuckle as you saw all of them flinch the closer you got to the ship.

“I don’t want to be locked up anymore.” Was the first thing you said after a few moments of silence. Shiro clenched his jaw, already knowing where this was heading.

“You all say this was for the better but I was slowly going insane trapped in there. You all seem to know me well. You know under normal circumstances, I would never go against you guys.”

You slowly walked up to the group, glancing around to find a camera pointed directly at you all, knowing Coran was watching how this all went down. Like a predator stalking its prey, you circled around them, kicking their bayards further away from them, one by one.

Now standing in front of them, at a distance, you looked at them each in the eyes.

“Now let’s talk.”

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Don’t Take the Money

(cross-posted from my AO3 and based on the Bleachers song of the same name; you should give it a listen ‘cause it definitely shaped this story)

-vomit tw, depression tw, lots of angst and emotional whump with a happy ending, of course-

Jaskier had received six urgent messages in three weeks, each delivered by a different exhausted messenger in the same oddly familiar livery. They showed up outside of inns, in the corner of taverns, and one of them even had to trek through the deep woods to find their hidden campsite; Geralt almost felt bad for them. Almost.

After the seventh strange man appeared with a scroll for Jaskier, the bard didn’t even bother reading it. He merely tossed the rolled and sealed piece of parchment into a refuse pile on their way out of town and didn’t look back. Geralt picked it up when the bard wasn’t paying attention, letting his eyes scan the fancy, swirling script of the Viscountess Pankratz.

Julian Alfred Pankratz,

Return home immediately! Your wedding cannot be put off any longer! Lady Ainsley will not wait another month for your foolish adventures with that Witcher to come to an end. If you do not return for your wedding in three weeks time then you shall be officially disowned and your name will be stricken from the family records.

With Urgency,

Lady Pankratz

Geralt swallowed hard. Jaskier was betrothed? He was to be married in three weeks? But they weren’t anywhere near Redania. Or Lettenhove. Jaskier had never mentioned anyone by the name of Lady Ainsley before, or anything about his past if he could avoid it. Did that mean...?

“Why aren’t you going?” the Witcher asked. Jaskier whirled around, his eyebrow already raised in confusion; he went three shades paler than normal when he saw the limp paper hanging from Geralt’s fingers. “We’re not even remotely close to your hometown and we’re traveling in quite the opposite direction.”

Jaskier made a face and waved his hand dismissively.

“I know. I don’t want to marry her.”

“Why don’t you want to marry her? They’re going to disown you, Jaskier. Isn’t this” - he shook the letter for emphasis - “the life you’re used to living, anyway? You should go home and be with...with someone like you .”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Geralt? You think I belong with someone foppish? Loud? Annoying?” The bard was spitting mad already. The Witcher had touched on a sore spot, apparently. “Should I be with someone more breakable and human and petty?”

“Don’t you want- aren’t you-”

“C’mon big boy, use that fantastic Witcher brain of yours. Figure it out.”

Geralt didn’t understand.

“Wouldn’t you be happier with her than on the Path with me?”

Jaskier looked...hurt. His expression changed from indignant to heartbroken in the measure of time that occurred between split seconds. It did something awful in the Witcher’s gut. Something unfamiliar and painful. The bard’s next words were barely above a whisper. Even with his enhanced hearing Geralt had to focus hard: “Would you prefer me to be married off and out of your way?”

“No, that’s not what I-”

“I don’t even know what we’re even getting at here, Geralt. I’m sorry. I can return home if you’d like. If I send a messenger first thing tomorrow then the family’s hired mage can portal me back in time for the wedding.”

“Jaskier,” the Witcher was pleading. He didn’t know why or for what, but the pitch of his voice left room for no other possible interpretation. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“Then don’t ask me to marry her, Geralt.”

The Witcher dropped the letter back onto the refuse pile and shoved it deeper with the tip of his boot. Jaskier’s bright smile returned and the soft notes of his lute filled the air once again. For some inexplicable reason Geralt felt triumphant. As if he’d won a battle he didn’t know he’d been fighting against an enemy he’d never met before.

---

“Are you Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf?” a well-dressed stranger asked, approaching the table where the Witcher was seated. It had been a week since his and Jaskier’s argument over the summons. Neither one had brought it up again and the bard had seemed almost unusually affectionate since. The amount of casual touching they did had significantly increased, even when the sun set and it was growing close to bedtime. Jaskier seemed to be happy touching Geralt and the Witcher had no reason to complain; he liked knowing that his best friend wasn’t scared of him.

He regarded the messenger with a suspicious gaze, “Aye. I am Geralt of Rivia.”

“I have a contract for you.” The man slid a piece of paper across the table and folded himself into the chair across from Geralt’s. The pattern stamped into the red wax seal was familiar but the Witcher couldn’t quite remember where he’d seen it before. His strange visitor smiled benignly, “It doesn’t even involve killing.”

“Then why hire a Witcher? That’s kind of our schtick.”

“This agreement is of a more personal nature,” the man shrugged, leaning back in his chair and waiting for Geralt to read his missive. The Witcher took the delicate stationary in his large hands and unfolded it until he could see the printed words:

To Sir Geralt of Rivia,

Witcher and Friend of Julian Alfred Pankratz

We, the Pankratz Family, come to you and offer this agreement:

Return Julian safely to our ancestral home within two weeks and you shall be paid the sum of 1500 crowns. Consider it a bodyguarding mission, if you so desire.

You are also formally invited to attend the wedding of Julian Alfred Pankratz of Lettenhove to the Countess Ainsley DeStael of Rinde, which will occur three days after your mission ends.

In order to complete the job and claim your payment, however, you must leave the wedding party without Julian at your side and return to your Witcher duties alone. He isn’t cut out for such a hard life on the road. He is of noble blood and has responsibilities here at home. Please return him to his kind of people and claim your coin in recompense.

Sincerely,

Francois Reginald Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove

&

Constantina Charlotte Pankratz, Lady de Lettenhove

Geralt glanced up from the contract and out into the main dining room where Jaskier was currently jigging atop one of the surprisingly sturdy tables. The bard’s smile was bright, his voice was strong and clear as he sang of lovers meeting in secret, and his blue eyes twinkled with joy. He loved the attention of performing. How could Geralt take that away from him, even if he would be safer at home? Even if he would be married to another, spending his time with another, caring for another…

But didn’t Geralt care about Jaskier? Isn’t that why he’d risked life and limb over and over to keep the bard safe? Because Geralt loved him? He pushed the thought away with haste and tried to keep his expression neutral. His amber eyes strayed to the upturned hat at Jaskier’s feet. People had been depositing coins there all night and a rather decent pile had sprung up but -

But he could be doing better, Geralt thought. He could be taking a warm bath every night and buying expensive oils from real apothecaries and not sketchy traveling salesmen. He could be dressing in silk every day and never complain about having to wear a woolen doublet for warmth again. He could sleep next to a fire in a real feather-bed. With blankets. He could stay healthy and safe and never go near another angry monster for all his days.

Something in the Witcher’s heart withered and died when he realized just how much he’d been holding Jaskier back; something important. Something the bard had helped him cultivate over six long years of traveling together. In an instant the Witcher had hidden it away in a dark corner to die.

“Alright.”

“Huh,” the messenger smirked. “They thought it would take more bribery to get you to agree, Witcher.”

“It’s not about the crowns,” Geralt shrugged, gaze flitting back up to Jaskier. The bard’s twinkling cornflower-blue eyes met with his and Geralt quickly glanced away, already ridden with guilt and shame over his decision. “It’s about making him happy and keeping him safe.”

“If I didn’t know any better about your kind and their lack of feelings,” the messenger snorted, “I’d say you might even love the Little Lord Pankratz.”

“If I didn’t know any better about myself,” Geralt replied, “I might agree.”

“See you in two weeks, then. Hope you can make it to Redania in time.”

“Why not just portal us there? Jaskier said his family had a hired mage.”

“Busy with wedding preparations,” the man shrugged. “Anyway, I must be going. The Viscount and her Ladyship are eager to hear your reply. See you soon, I’m sure.”

The stranger stood, bowed, and disappeared back to Lettenhove with the signed contract. Geralt swallowed back a mouthful of bile. He hated himself. He really did. But this is what’s best for Jaskier.

---

“Who was that, earlier at the table?” the bard asked. He was lounging on the bed with a tin of lute polish in one hand and a rag in the other. “Did he have a contract?”

“Yes. In Redania, actually.”

“Oh, lovely! It’s almost time for the summer festivals to begin; I can show you the best alehouse in all of Novigrad while we’re there.”

“My job is near Lettenhove. Do you want to go with me?”

“Sure. Might be fun to swing by my old stomping grounds. This doesn’t have anything to do with my canceled wedding, does it?” the bard shot him a pointed look. Geralt schooled his features into some sort of passivity and shook his head.

“Vampires rarely attend the weddings of minor nobility,” the Witcher lied through his teeth.

“Vampires, huh? Nifty. Haven’t had one of those to write about in awhile.”

“Hmm.”

---

“Geralt, help! Geralt, please! GERALT!”

The Witcher tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He kept hearing Jaskier’s raw, heartbroken voice ringing in his ears. He could still smell the desperation and panic that clung to the bard’s soft skin as he struggled to get away from his captors. To get back to where the Witcher stood with Roach and the gatekeeper. Geralt kept imagining those eyes, those fucking beautiful eyes, brimming with tears of betrayal as a liveried servant handed him a velvet pouch stuffed fat with crowns. Oh gods, the way his bard had looked at him…Geralt shoved his head out the window and vomited. There was nothing but the sour sting of bile against his tongue and the back of his throat. He heaved in a breath but choked back the sob threatening to come with it.

“Please don’t leave me here, Geralt! Don’t take the money! I’ll be better, I promise! I won’t talk as much, I won’t touch Roach again, I won’t write any ballads about you, Geralt please, I lo-”

The guards had dragged Jaskier inside and slammed the heavy oak door shut before he could finish his sentence, but the Witcher had gotten the general idea. The bard thought he was doing this out of hatred and not out of the sincerest, purest love Geralt had ever felt. He thought this was a punishment and not a slightly backwards form of rescue. If only the bard could understand.

Jaskier’s love wasn’t unrequited.

The bard stole the very breath from Geralt’s lungs every time their eyes met. Every time Jaskier crowed with pride after finishing a new song about their adventures together the Witcher felt his icy heart melt a little more. Each casual brush of their hands as they walked side-by-side sent his emotions reeling. The way his exuberant bard looked as he strolled beside Roach, the sunshine bringing out streaks of dark red in his chestnut hair and lightening the embroidery on his travel jerkin, it was ethereal. Magical. Overwhelming in all the best ways.

And he’d given it all away for a measly pouch of a coin and a slightly clearer conscious. Or was it?

Geralt retched again as he came to another realization.

He had forced Jaskier into something he didn’t want. Geralt had always given his friend free reign. The younger man came on and off the Path like a bee between flowers, visiting and traveling with the Witcher when he pleased and leaving again for odd jobs or festivals when Geralt wasn’t in the mood for company. But he’d given him no choice about the marriage. No, he’d wrestled Jaskier to the ground and bound his hands. He’d gagged him. He’d flung the bard into Roach’s saddle and tied his crossed wrists to the pommel so he couldn’t pick the knots free and escape. He’d passed Jaskier off to the guards and watched them drag him away as he spit out the gag and started yelling.

As he confessed his love to Geralt after six long years on the Path together.

Fucking hells, what have I done to him?

The suddenly panicked Witcher tumbled from his rented bed and reached for his boots. There was no time to spare. There was no time to waste.

There was only Jaskier.

---

Jaskier couldn’t believe it.

After all this time. After all their adventures. After all the songs he’d written and rooms he’d gotten them at comfortable inns, this is how the Witcher repaid him. Trading him back to his parents for a bag of coin like he was some sort of slave or whore.

He was a bard.

He was Geralt’s bard.

Well, he used to be Geralt’s bard. Now he was going to be Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove and Lord of Rinde by marriage.

He wished he could just stop breathing and disappear. His heart thudded dully in his chest and it felt as if he was floating several feet below the surface of deep water. He was unable or unwilling to surface; maybe both. There was no point anymore, really. Geralt, the only person he’d ever really loved, had trussed him up like a market goose and traded him for silver.

The food his family’s servants brought him laid mostly untouched. He knew how to eat just enough to keep from dying. He’d been in plenty of dungeons and bandit camps before. Jaskier had spent six years following the Witcher’s Path and surviving off of whatever Geralt caught or he traded for. There was no reason to eat any more than what he needed to keep his body alive. There was no reason to get out of bed. Or bathe. Or change clothes. These clothes still smelled like the road. Like lute polish and chamomile oil and Roach and mud and Geralt.

“Please,” his mother begged, clasping his limp hand in both of hers. She’d been sitting at his bedside for maybe an hour, watching him stare listlessly up into the green velvet canopy above him. “Just eat something substantial. Say something. Do something, Julian. We know you aren’t happy with us or our decision but you can’t just lay here all day and wallow in self-pity. You have responsibilities to take care of; Ainsley has grown worried and her father is impatient.”

“The wedding is tomorrow,” he’d replied. There was no emotion in his voice and the monotony was soothing to his own ears. Geralt didn’t like it when he got too excited. Best to be calm and quiet like a good little noble. “I will be presentable. I will be at the altar. I will do my duty for the family.”

“Thank you, Julian.”

“But I will not love her.”

“You never have to love her,” his mother smiled. She gave his hand another small pat before standing and moving towards the door. Her job here was done, after all. “We only need you to marry her.”

---

Geralt pounded up the steps of the keep two-at-a-time. His usually slow heartbeat was now pounding in his ears like a warlord’s drum. He had to save Jaskier, he had to - the door slammed open and something hard went flying into his chest, knocking him back a step. The Witcher reached out a hand to steady the person he’d collided with but his amber eyes were still focused on the castle’s front door. He moved to step around the stranger and into the building when they suddenly spoke. The bard’s voice was pitchy and low from crying all morning: “Geralt?”

“Jaskier?” the Witcher gasped. His grip tightened around the younger man’s upper arm. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Jaskier looked truly flabbergasted. His expression shifted from shock to anger quickly, however, and the hurt in those blue eyes nailed Geralt to the ground where he stood. “Am I OKAY? You absolute fucking moron; of course I’m not okay. The love of my life tied me up, handed me over to my horrible fucking family like a Beltane offering, and disappeared into the night with a fat bag of crowns. The one person I love most in this world, the only person I’d ever trust with my life or my lute, treated me like a transaction of some sort. I am very much not okay, Geralt of Rivia! Now pick me up, take me to Roach, and get me the fuck out Lettenhove before I have to marry that horrible, terrible, hideous woman!”

The Witcher cracked a smile. Jaskier jabbed a finger into his chest and frowned even more deeply. “Why the fuck are you smiling, Witcher?”

“Because I missed the sound of your voice.”

The bard blushed, his righteous anger faltering.

“I love you too,” Geralt added. Jaskier’s eyes somehow grew even rounder and more watery. “I’m so fucking sorry but I didn’t know how else to protect you. I thought that maybe after coming home and seeing how much nicer it was than being on the Path you might want to stay here and be safe. Live your life normally. I thought you’d be happier here than you were with me. You’d certainly wouldn’t be hurt as often.”

“Did you just say that you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear me say that I love you, mere moments ago?”

“Yes.”

“Then why the fuck would you try to get rid of me?” The Witcher tried not to flinch when Jaskier placed a gentle hand against his cheek. He’d expected a slap. A kick to the shin. A knee to the groin. Screaming. He hadn’t expected that look of soft understanding to dawn on Jaskier’s boyish face. Despite the knowing sparkle in his eyes, the bard’s voice was sad. “Caged birds never sing, Geralt. What an awful cage it would have been; I'd never see my handsome Witcher again. I'd never attend another royal wedding as entertainment. I'd never write another line of song, much less be able to sing it. I would have been miserable Geralt. I probably would have died much sooner here than I would on the Path.”

“Can you ever forgive me?”

“As soon as you do as I say and get me the hell out of here, then yes, I’ll consider forgiving you, Witcher.”

“Well I suppose we shouldn’t waste any time.”

Geralt flung the bard up and over his shoulder and took off back down the steps at a sprint. He wasn’t going to let those people have his darling Jaskier back. Not if they tried to cage him and take his voice. He knew better now. He understood. 

They loved each other.

The bard was laughing brightly, bouncing along as Geralt made for the stables. He could see his family exiting the Great Hall and making their way in his direction. It didn’t matter. They’d never catch up with his Witcher. He shot them several naughty hand gestures and grinned widely when Geralt swung them both up into Roach’s saddle. “Sorry girl,” he apologized. “Time for our daring escape into the woods.”

---

"Fifteen hundred crowns, huh?" Jaskier asked, eyeing the hefty purple velvet bag.

"Actually there are only fourteen hundred left," Geralt shrugged. He reached into his saddlebag and brought out a small leather pouch, which he handed to Jaskier. The bard opened it, peered inside, and gasped in very genuine surprise.

"Geralt..."

"Do you like it?" the Witcher was worrying his bottom lip between his teeth in the cutest way. Jaskier wanted to answer but his heart was caught somewhere between his throat and his stomach so he couldn't quite form words. He nodded.

"Can you help me put it on?"

"There's no clasp. They aren't meant to have clasps."

"I know."

Geralt's heart soared as he lifted his gift for Jaskier out of the bag and lowered it over his head. The medallion rested just between his collarbones, framed by a tuft of the bard's chest hair. It was a copy of Geralt's wolf medallion, only this wolf held a flower in its mouth. Gently, as if unwilling to break the stem or let it go.

"It's perfect," the bard beamed. His eyes were watery and he blinked the tears free to keep staring at his new jewelry. "Thank you."

"Hmm."

"What do you want to do with the rest of the money?"

"I don't know," the Witcher shrugged. "Maybe go to the coast?"

"I've always wanted to go there!"

Geralt pressed a tender kiss against Jaskier's lips, reveling in the sensation of his bard melting against his chest. They'd spent the last few nights wrapped around each other, whispering secrets and stories into each others mouths until sleep overtook them. Tonight would be no different, except that now Jaskier felt truly safe. He felt loved. He felt utterly surrounded by the happiness that came with being on the Path next to his Witcher. "What are you thinking about, little lark?"

"I'm glad you came back for me. I'm glad we're together now."

"Hmm. Me too."

[tragedybunny]

Naming Day

Swain wants to do something special for his wife Katarina, but finds out it is easier thought than done. Takes place after my story "The Blade's Edge"

I just wanted an excuse to write something sappy and fluffy about these two. I hope it works in that capacity.

A decent husband would recall his spouse’s Naming Day. That is the truth as espoused by those most intimately acquainted with living in matrimonial harmony. And for once, I intended to prove I was capable of being a decent husband. I am, of course, not one to indulge in celebrations of a spurious nature, Naming Days being one of the foremost of those. In times long past, the Noxii tribes would not name their children until they had survived their first year, marking the occasion with much celebration. As this tradition was passed down, the time grew shorter, and no one really withheld a name in the current time. However, a notion occurred to me as I overheard the bragging amongst a number of the Officers of High Command about the celebrations for their recent progeny. Marking the occasion would probably be appreciated by my dearest wife, and I rarely had the opportunity to indulge her.

Mere seconds later that thought was followed by a terrible realization, the source of doubts about my status as a decent husband. I had no idea when Kat’s Naming was. The notion tormented me as I hurried back to my office, a tactical retreat to plan my next move. Surely she must have mentioned it at some point. Was I not paying attention or had I simply forgotten? After bolting the door behind me, I settled into the chair behind my desk, desperately needing to think.

After an hour of stern concentration, and even inquiring of my birds, I still had no answers. Cold realization washed over me, I couldn’t remember my wife’s Naming Day. The battle was not entirely lost though. She had not been angry with me for any reason I had not discerned, so if I followed logic, it implied that I had not yet missed it. There was still one route to victory left to me, a strategic reserve as it were. Noxian records were unparalleled and went back ages. There was no way a Du Couteau birth in the years of Darkwill went undocumented. I would have to go myself though, I couldn’t trust this to anyone else.

With Kat out on an assignment, and the sense of urgency I felt, there was no better day to accomplish this task. As soon as the last dispatch of edicts and orders left my office, I hurried off. The records hall was just concluding its daily business as I arrived. “I have personal business to attend to, leave me.” The stunned clerk vanished as I waved him away. My steps quickly took me through the endless maze of shelves and cabinets, laden with registry books and rolls of parchment, to the section that should contain the correct date. With trepidation, I assessed my adversary, a near endless amount of paper, and felt a sigh leave my throat. Truthfully, I couldn’t place the year either. I could narrow it down, but still, the task would be daunting. Should I have asked for the clerk’s aid? Would it have been worth the embarrassment? The Grand General cannot figure out his wife’s Naming Day or birth year. With a frustrated growl, my left fist slammed into the wood of the nearest shelf and it buckled, making a distinct popping noise. It would seem I fell short again, a pattern I’m tiring of.

But I had to know the year, I...I’d been at the damned celebration. At the time it hadn’t been very remarkable, I had little interest in the Naming of an infant. Marcus had been a friend however, and our two families had long been allies. It was enough of an occasion that my parents had insisted on my attendance, even if I was only on a short leave from my fledgling military career. A memory floated to the surface of my mind, as though summoned at last by my concentration. Marcus spies me from across the room and rushes over, a smile adorning his features and a tiny bundle in his arms. “Jericho, you made it! Here, you must hold her.” That bundle is passed to me before I can utter a protest. I stare down at the cooing little thing, green eyes wide and locked on me, a dusting of red hair matching Marcus’s adorning her head. For just a moment I think perhaps infants are not so terrible after all. And then she screams at me, the wretched little brat, with such force and fury that Marcus quickly snatches her back.

It could be a humorous memory I suppose, but my teeth dug into my lip as I was reminded of exactly how much difference there was in our ages. So, just to make a clear assessment of my current position, I don’t know my wife’s Naming Day or birth year, and I’ve just been reminded I’m old enough to be her father. What a miserable set of circumstances.

Lucretia had laughed though. Another unbidden memory from somewhere deep inside, the place where I’d buried all remnants of her. I clenched my fists and willed myself not to feel the burning in my chest that accompanied it. “Lucretia.” The whisper filled the empty air around me. It had been the last laugh we would share, she would be gone in mere months, my first companion and friend, my sister. I remembered the year now.

It was easy enough at that point to find the correct registry containing all the high born births for that year, and from there, the Du Couteau name within. Ah, a solid victory at last, it was not for some weeks. We hadn’t been living together at the time last year, so perhaps it just hadn’t come up. I doubted the likeliness of that scenario, but either way, this year was sorted. We’d been busy enough planning for the wedding we never had that a small celebration would be a welcome break.

When the day had at last arrived, I felt a small touch of pride. I’d considered the notion of something more extravagant, but in the end, I’d thought she’d appreciate time where my attention was focused solely on her, where she didn’t have to share me with the Empire. It was something we both understood would be a rarity, but she never resented that fact. So, to that end, I’d planned an intimate evening at home, and handed Darius all authority until sunrise. Her gift was tucked away in the small wooden chest it had arrived from Piltover in. Dinner was arranged to be all of her favorites, starting with Cress’s seafood bisque and ending with a confection laden with strawberries. The bottles of her favorite Shuriman red had been brought up and placed on the table.

When I greeted her at the door, her surprise was evident. “Home on time for once?” I knew she didn’t intend it with malice, still, I was reminded of my fears that one day, she would no longer tolerate this life.

“I can always work in my study if you decide to keep up the sass, Kitten.” At that, she bounded into my arms with enough force to knock me back a step. After a lifetime of war and ruthless ambition, I’m not a man who deserves to be loved like this, but I’m selfish to cling to it as tightly as possible. “Shall we?” I held out my arm and she took it with the soft, slight smile that I know is mine alone. The dining room door lay open, revealing the first course on the table, and the cake awaiting us at the center. She inhaled a soft breath and turned to me, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Jericho.”

Looking down, I brought up my hand to cup her cheek softly. “Kat, I wanted to make this evening something wonderful for you and show you how much I cherish you. Happy Naming Day, my love.”

I leaned down for a soft kiss, which she absent-mindedly returned. Panic clutched at me, she was not pleased. Perhaps she had expected more? The wooden box on the table offered some hope, and I led her to it. After opening the lid, I carefully withdrew what was inside and set it before her. The finely carved crystal reflected the gas lamps and set hundreds of small glowing motes of light on the walls and ceiling. Two figures stood at the top of it, frozen in a moment. One turn of the small handle in the back and they began to move, the room filling with the soft tone of a waltz.

Still, she stood rigidly, saying nothing. “It’s the waltz from our first dance, that night at Solstice.” I offered, my heart rending in two. I had botched this somehow. All the careful planning, all my lofty intentions, it was all coming to naught. Even when I put all my will into it, I could not be what she deserved. “If it doesn’t please you I could find something else. I know it isn’t grandiose, perhaps it was a poor …”

“I love it.” She cut me off, but the melancholy in her tone did little to convince me it was the truth.

Moving in closer, I took her hand again. “I promise I won’t be upset if you don’t.”

“Did you realize you couldn’t remember when it was?” Her fingers entwined in mine, even as her eyes avoided me.

It would seem she had found me out. “Yes. I had to work it out. I’m sorry for forgetting.” Was that what she was upset about?

“You didn’t forget. I never told you.” The figurines stopped moving and she winded the handle again before finally turning to me. “I don’t celebrate my Naming.”

“Oh.” I’d still made a grievous error, just an entirely different one, it would seem.

Her gaze fixes back on the music box, the tune filling the silence between us. “When I was younger, just after Cassie was born, we stopped celebrating it. Father was away on campaign, this was before the move to Uzeris, and I excitedly went running to Mother the day of, asking how we would celebrate it. But she had Cassie now, and she looked at me with that cold look I would come to know so well, and replied that she was too busy with the baby. If I was old enough for Father to take away for training, I was too old for Naming Days, and that she would beat me if I continued to whine. I was five.” For a moment, she was quiet, staring into the distance. “You know what the worst part was? Father never said anything to the contrary when he returned.”

My own parents had been absent, cold, and ambitious to the detriment of all else, in many ways though, it was too typical of an upbringing in Noxian nobility. Kat though had experienced so much outright cruelty and intentional pain, I sometimes sensed I had not even scratched the surface of it. I wrapped myself around her until I could feel her head resting just under my chin, the place it felt like she was made to occupy. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stir up old hurts.” Though I wasn’t sure how, I felt as if I should’ve known better. All the secrets I’d seen, all my ability to be ten steps ahead of allies and adversaries, I should’ve figured this out. Desperately clinging to her, I kissed the top of her head.

“You know better, you can’t blame yourself. You’re not all-knowing, as much as you’d like the pretend.” Sadness still colored her words.

“A failure is still a failure, no matter the cause.” All I had wanted was one night to love her right. “I told you I would make a terrible husband.” My forced laugh did little to lighten things.

“Oh shut it, you’re wonderful.” Her arms tightened around me, making breathing difficult, but it was worth enduring. “You know what? Fuck her.” She looked up at me, that fire that I adore burning in her eyes. “She’s rotting in her empty manor, and I’m here with you, celebrating my Naming with the man I love.” There was a feral intensity to the kiss she suddenly pressed to my lips. “I won’t let her keep controlling me.”

In that moment, I doubted the gods themselves could control Kat if she put her mind to it. “Are you sure? You don’t have to force yourself.”

“I am. I don’t want to let the past ruin what we have right now.” There was no denying the conviction of those words.

I kissed her cheek and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “In that case, I do have further plans tonight that involve the two of us, another bottle of wine, and the bath.”

She inhaled sharply. “Only if it ends with the bed a wreck and both of us exhausted.”

“But of course, my love.” I kissed her deeply again, hands wrapping around her waist to keep her close. She really is the best thing that ever happened to me.

[dreadwulf]

Love is a Burning Thing

(part 1) (part 2)

He is riding away from her. Farther and farther away.

Jaime is riding at the head of his battalion across the Crownlands. Glory trots along quite amiably, at pace with hundreds of other horses around him. Without his needing to move a muscle, at every moment Brienne is farther away. He can feel the distance stretching between them like she is still holding onto him somehow and pulling with all her might, ever since she had left him this morning.

It hurts. Like a steadily increasing stomachache, only it’s some other organ down there in his gut. If there is a structure in the body that secretes devotion like eyes spill tears, it is surely there, somewhere in his belly, and it is contracting violently, whispering at him to turn around and go back. But his gut is perpetually wrong, and cannot be trusted. This is exactly what he wants, to be getting away from Brienne as fast as he can. If it hurts, well, Jaime is quite accustomed to being hurt by the things he wants.

They ride for King’s Landing, and the ache simmers inside him like a low fire. But there is enough else to occupy his mind, and surely it will fade into the background, unimportant, beside the urgency of a Targaryen invasion.

His squire is watching him worriedly from his palfrey nearby, and Jaime straightens under the young man’s scrutiny. Smiles back at him until his squire grins cautiously back, and spurs his horse to ride over to the flanks. There, that’s more like it. Lord Lannister is no lovesick boy pining after some maiden. He made a foolish mistake, but fortunately it has cost him little. A few days away from his post, some chagrin before his men, and this wretched ache in his gut. That is nothing he can’t recover from.

His squire is riding, he notes, much more smoothly than he did when last they rode the Kingsroad, leaving the capital. He has grown tremendously in these months. Just as he had told Brienne, he will have to knight him sometime soon, Peck. Else some other knight will do it, and deny him the honor. He has been a good squire, and Jaime will regret losing him. 

Does he hope for it? Jaime wonders. At his age I thirsted for battle, and if there are truly Targaryens on the march there will be some promise of glory. If he knights him today, Peck will have to fight for his King. He will probably have to fight either way, but as a squire he will keep to the periphery, and a knight will be expected to charge on horseback, into the thick of the fighting. But Peck has not shown any remarkable talent at swordplay, not as Jaime had when Ser Arthur Dayne had knighted him. Not that, not yet. Let him squire a little bit longer.

His eyes drift to the wagon where the sons of the Riverlands are riding, where until this morning Podrick Peck had sat chattering and playing at dice with the other boys. What will he do with the hostages when they ride to battle? They could squire for his men. But if he loses any of them in battle, he will lose the cooperation of their parents as well.

I think Peck was sorry to see young Podrick go, Jaime thinks. His squire had taken the smaller boy under his wing, and the younger Payne had looked up to him with the kind of hero worship reserved by young boys for older, not-quite-grown boys. Peck enjoyed that attention, clearly. Podrick had a starry-eyed eagerness that his squire would be just outgrowing. An innocence. 

Jaime had spoken with the child as well, the night they had caught him sneaking into the camp. A scared and reticent boy to begin with, with a fearful glaze and a pronounced stammer that made one wonder if he had lost his wits. But with only a little encouragement, he had turned into a fair chatterbox. He had been startled to learn that the boy had squired for his brother Tyrion during the battle of the Blackwater; it had been he that saved his life, though not his nose. Timid he may be, but the young squire does not lack for bravery. It seems he had left King’s Landing looking for Tyrion, and followed the Maid of Tarth in hopes that her quest would lead him there. His brother had been good to him, Podrick said. 

As not many people have been, I’ll wager. Cast-off of a cast-off of House Payne, small for his age, and guileless as a newborn. 

Jaime had offered the boy a berth in his army. He could squire for Jaime’s cousin Addam Marbrand, or at least apprentice to someone in his camp, earn his keep. He would not be a hostage like the Riverlands’ noble sons, but he could still run about and play with them, as he seems to enjoy doing. I suspect the boy has not done much of that either, he notes.

Pod refused his offer, however. He said, with some hesitation, that he hopes Lord Tyrion is well, and thanks Ser Jamie for the kind offer, but he would rather stay with Lady Brienne, wherever she will be. He has a fair cavalcade of praise for the lady, which Jaime endures without comment. All in all, he seems a good lad. Loyal. From what little he saw, they are quite tightly bonded, the boy and his lady knight.

He ought to feel better knowing that. If he was to be sacrificed for another, at least the other was a good-hearted and clearly beloved child. It could have been Lem Lemoncloak. 

It does not make him feel any better.

He had gritted his teeth to look upon the boy, to be honest. Can one be jealous of a child? But Podrick very obviously had his lady’s love, and Jaime does not.

He has only just learned how much the wench meant to him, and how comparatively little he had meant to her in return. For her, at a moment’s notice, he had thrown over his family, his house, his responsibilities, to follow her into the Riverlands on the flimsiest of excuses, all because he thought she needed his help. It had been startlingly easy to do it, and as he walked away from his life he had felt lighter and merrier with every step.

What a fool he had been. As it turns out, she would not do the same for him - no, he was no more than a hostage himself, intended to free the companions she valued more. This boy, and that Hunt fellow, a hedge knight of some sort, who awaited them at the Dread Lady’s Gallows. Brienne had risked a great deal to come and find him, but the risk had not been for his sake. 

But no matter. She is gone now and he will not see her again. He will return to his life and go about forgetting her. That should make these feelings stop. It will have to end sometime, the crawling betrayal, the creeping shame, the sharp sting of rejection, and that time will come much sooner without the constant reminder of her presence. With time he will stop thinking of her, and it will be like he had never met that stubborn, ugly beast of a woman.

This is not making him feel any better either. Cheer up, he tells himself, tomorrow you may die. 

The Targaryen pretender has already taken Storm’s End in a rout. This “Aegon” has a band of supporters and a hired troop of mercenaries, the Golden Company, and at last word was riding out to face Mace Tyrell and the Crown forces. Of course it isn’t Aegon Targaryen - Jaime knows all too well the babe was slaughtered, skull crushed against the wall by his father’s creature The Mountain - but he looks the part, with the Targaryen hair and eyes. Perhaps he is some unknown cousin, some lost branch of the Targaryen family tree using Aegon’s name. Should Westeros be nostalgic for the relative peace of Targaryen rule, they might find the young man very persuasive.

He turns the details over and again in his mind. The Golden Company, a fearful force, and Targaryen banners stirring the populace to rebellion. They could be marching into a battle they cannot hope to win. Impossible to tell from the increasingly vehement missives he has received from the Queen Regent. She commands him to victory, but does she truly expect it? As has been amply demonstrated to him recently, he cannot expect even his closest allies to place much value on his safety. After all, what does anyone care if the Kingslayer should die?

My sweet sister would summon me regardless. She has shown that often enough. As coin she would spend me on a hopeless trial by combat merely to flaunt her purse. No doubt my beheading at the gates of King’s Landing would be just as gloriously pointless. 

Though Cersei, it seems, wants him only to return to her side directly, to serve as her personal bodyguard. She is grown obsessed with some prophecy that the children will all be murdered and her choked to death at Tyrion’s hands. Hearing that Tyrion himself is approaching the city has sent her into a kind of frenzy. Her last letter was nearly incomprehensible, raving. 

Yes, that had been the last bit of news the Spider had passed along, with the rest of his whispers: his own brother Tyrion rides with Aegon, and advises the Targaryen pretender how best to defeat their House in battle. That was the lowest blow, and it had knocked his usual confidence right out of him. Jaime does not fear battle, but he dreads this confrontation.

If one side wins, his sister and son are dethroned and probably executed. If the other side wins, he will have to kill his brother. Jaime loses either way.

He should not worry about defeat. The Crown forces are superior, the Lannister army vast and well-provisioned, and King’s Landing is by design a difficult city to take. But his brother is fearsomely clever, and he was Hand. He defended King’s Landing against Stannis Baratheon, and a man who knows how to hold the city will know how to take it. If he does, he will have his revenge for a lifetime of slights. He knows Tyrion holds it against him still, the lie he had told him about Tysha. After all the years they had been beloved brothers, after Jaime had set him free and saved his life, his little brother saw fit not only to murder their father but to conspire with their enemies to contest Cersei directly for the throne. He does not expect Tyrion will pull any punches now for old time’s sake. Not when they will face each other across a battlefield.

If there is anyone left who has not yet stuck a knife in my heart, they are running out of time to do it. 

He mulls over such thoughts feverishly as the dimming winter sun lowers in the sky. For a time he considers pressing the Lannister troops onward into the night to reach King’s Landing. It will be only a few hours march from here, and their summons have been increasingly urgent. Still, he would rather rest his men so that they can arrive fresh to the fighting and not exhausted from the road, and he commands them to set camp.

“Milord,” a lieutenant interrupts him tentatively as he unhorses, “we have Thoros of Myr bound in your tent as you requested, awaiting interrogation.”

Jaime smiles thinly. They have captured Beric Dondarrion’s Red Priest, who had somehow turned Catelyn Stark into the apparition who had lead the Brotherhood without Banners to capture him. Somehow during the conflagration with the Brotherhood he had run away and vanished into the trees. But Jaime’s scouts found him in the night, Thoros, stoking a meagre fire near Maidenpool. There was no time to deal with him in the morning, so they bundled him up and brought him along on the march - though they gave him no horse, and forced him to walk along tied to one of the wagons, thinking it would make him more cooperative. 

The Lord Commander’s tent is first to rise, and resplendent before ever he sets eyes on it, not that he notices. He leaves Peck to unsaddle his horse and enters it in full uniform. He will get through this interrogation before undressing and taking his supper.

He sits in the armchair they have carried across the Riverlands for him, and accepts a glass of sherry. The muddy priest is bound on the floor before his desk, and at his command his bonds are loosened, and he is allowed to sit in a wooden chair before his desk. Jaime observes all of this as he finishes the first glass of sherry, and requests another.

Once a huge man, both tall and fat, Thoros of Myr is now considerably diminished. His red robes are cavernous around him, his skin hanging loosely off his skeleton in great folds. Formerly a fierce swordsman, the fire that he once brandished by burning swords has seemingly gone out. The old Thoros could wear this one like a cloak. 

Even before Jaime can begin to question him, the Red Priest is firing questions back. First among them, “What have you done with the girl?”

“Which girl?” he stalls, disconcerted. 

“The maiden with your blade.” He may be physically smaller but his eyes are bright and sharp, and he holds Jaime’s gaze without flinching. The priest explains patiently, “the tall young woman with the king’s seal, she who brought you to the Brotherhood. I saw you strike her down. Where is she now?”

Jaime ignores this questioning; it is none of the man’s concern. Instead he asks him of his escape from the ambush that night, which quiets him a bit. He could have fought them, could have produced a flaming sword and defended his Lady Stoneheart, but instead he had fled. Thoros does not seem to be interested in explaining why, averting his eyes and answering  him shortly with “yes” and “no”.

He questions the Red Priest about Catelyn Stark, about Berric Dondarrion, about remaining members of the brotherhood and the commonfolk who supported them. Still Thoros turns the conversation back and back again to Brienne.

“But what of the Maid of Tarth? I saw her nowhere in your formation, amongst prisoners or soldiers.” He pokes and prods, Thoros, and his brow furrows with concern. “It has not gone unnoticed that she is gone. Some here have it that you have done away with her.”

His patience at an end, Jaime snaps back, “And what if I have?”

Thoros puts on a perplexed expression, blinking at him curiously. “That cannot be. Surely even you are not so cruel as that.”

“Surely I am, ask anyone in the Seven Kingdoms.” Thoroughly tired of judgement, he decides to go along with the Red Priest’s poor opinion of him, if it will loosen his tongue. “The wench lured me to my barely-averted death. I am well within my rights to punish traitors such as she.”

“Brienne of Tarth never betrayed you for a moment.” The Red Priest is disturbed, shaking his head sadly. “That poor, brave girl. She defended you to a crowd baying for your blood, said that you were a changed man, that you were not responsible for your reported crimes. We called her your whore. But you never touched her, did you? Wouldn’t trouble yourself with someone so pure of heart, when you have your sister the Queen in your bed.”

Ah, so Thoros still has a sense of humor after all. Jaime snorts. “So pure of heart she would lead me to my death, while calling me friend. How is that not a betrayal?”

“She was forced to it. Our dread lady commanded her to kill you and she refused. The entire Brotherhood demanded it and she refused. We offered her a choice, the sword or the noose.”

“And she choose the sword to save her own skin.” Jaime swallows from the glass. “I understand it, of course. It is a hard lesson for one such as her. No one is pure.”

“No!” Thoros smacks the palm of his hand against the commander’s table, and Jaime cannot help flinching. “She chose the noose. Brienne said she would not betray you and they put a rope around her neck and hung her, hung her choking and kicking from a tree. She would have died there without relenting but for Podrick Payne, the boy.”

No. No, it isn’t true, he tells himself. But it tracks with what the boy had told him. She did it for me, my lord, you have to understand… He had assumed the choice had been a simple one. Podrick or Kingslayer. But had there been another choice as well? Hadn’t he seen the angry red marks around her neck, or decided not to see?

“They hung him from the tree next to her, and when she saw him dying, she called for a sword. Not before. Not for herself. She would have died for you.”

“Lies.” Jaime has gone very still. Only the muscles of his hand flex, where he holds tightly onto the drinking glass. “The Brotherhood’s Red Priest. Why should I believe anything you say?”

The priest raises his hands, palms beckoning to the air. “What reason have I to lie about this? What benefit to me? I care no more for factions or grudges. I have seen war render this land a hell beyond anything my lord R’hllor or any the Seven could dream up. So far as I care whoever is left standing at its end is welcome to its rotten fruit. All that matters is that in the ruins of honor and justice I met a maid who embodied both, and now she is dead. That, my lord, is a calamity, and I would have you know just how great of one.”

He hardens his heart. “In this world you are either faithless or dead. She is both, and soon enough we will be too. It’s no calamity.”

“You utter fool.” The Red Priest has the nerve to look sorry for him. “Let me tell you: when we found that girl she was dying of fever, battered and broken by brigands, and all she would do is talk about Jaime Lannister. She said your name in her sleep. She said she had to find your honor. She pleaded for you to come for her when she was next to dead. Not her companions, or her kin. Only you. No sword could have been more loyal to you, and no woman more true to anyone.  

Jaime’s guts are churning now, his heart clenching painfully enough to turn him inside-out. What a stupid organ, the heart. If he could, he would carve it out himself. 

It makes him snap back at Thoros tightly, “Gold will buy loyalty as reliably, and a woman too.”

“Not like her, not to you. You are only too cynical or too stupid to see it. That girl loved you. She loved you.”

The glass in Jaime’s left hand abruptly shatters.

Thoros jerks back, more at the noise of it than anything else, and stares down wide-eyed at the Lord Commander’s desk. His hand had squeezed and squeezed the glass until it finally popped, in a small explosion of shards and blood. Now his hand opens and stretches, and the Lord Commander examines it curiously. A few jagged bits of glass stick out of his palm and fingers. It hardly hurts at all, but it produces an impressive amount of blood.

Lannister guards burst into the tent at the sound of breaking glass, and the sight of blood makes them draw their swords. Jaime waves them back. “My golden hand holds drinking glasses not so well as I’d hoped. Stay at your post.”

“My lord…” Thoros, distinctly alarmed at his lack of reaction, darts his eyes between the bleeding hand and Jaime’s impassive face. “Your hand…”

“It’s nothing.” For a second he moves to pluck the glass bits out of his hand, but his other hand is made of gold. Not much good for that. He can only poke at the bloody shards with a strange fascination. His guards watch warily, not leaving but keeping their distance. 

“You know I am a healer. Allow me.” 

He shouldn’t allow it, and his guards are visibly appalled, but Jaime makes no move to stop him when Thoros kneels at his side. He moves aside the golden hand, taking his flesh hand and extracting shards of glass with careful attention.

“I can’t imagine why,” the priest murmurs, “but Brienne thought very highly of you. I owe her some kindness, for what we did to her. If she is gone, you will have to do.”

Then it comes again; the pain. Worse than ever. Jaime bows his face to the floor at the weight of it.

“I let her go,” he manages to say, hoarsely. “I gave her the sword and I let her go. Her and the boy.”

“Truly?” Thoros looks up at him dumbfounded, uncertain whether this could be another of his jests.

But of course he let her go. What else could he do? He couldn’t keep her prisoner forever.

He sees it now, too late. Brienne in the cell, wasting away. The tears she had shed when he denied her Oathkeeper. How she had hesitated so inexplicably when he allowed her to leave. The way she had looked on him, as though she would accept any punishment he would give her. He had thought it was her simple goodness that made her contrite. But it could have been more. It could be true; somehow, she had loved him. 

When he could not bring himself to harm her, he thought it his own weakness that stayed his hand. Perhaps they share the same weakness.

He jumps up from his chair with that thought, snatching his one working hand back from the damned Red Priest and sweeping out of his commander’s tent. He strides rapidly to the stables and grabs the bridle of the first horse he sees. Honor, not yet unsaddled from their ride. 

Jaime rides hard against the twilight, back down the trail they’d come. Back to the place where he’d left her. It was a day’s ride back as an encampment, but a single man riding as fast as his horse is able made the distance in a few hours.

She won’t be there. She could have gone in any direction with a day’s advance. But if she stopped there. If she stayed to rest, and to think out her next move. If she waited there. If she waited for me. 

He urges Honor to run faster at the thought.

The Riverlands rush by headlong and the pounding hooves drive every thought from his head until he is pure instinct, animal-simple: find her.

The clearing is empty when he arrives, and quiet. 

Jaime slings down from his horse looking around him wildly. It’s dark. There’s no sign of anything. No fire, no trail, no sign she had been there at all except that he knows this is where he had left her. He knows that in his bones. He will never be able to forget this place. 

He walks aimlessly in one direction and then another. Which way would she have gone? East is Maidenpool, closest of anything, where she might find Tully allies. Riverrun in the other direction, a farther walk but where she might potentially find a ship, go back to Tarth. Or would she have headed singlemindedly North, towards the Vale, without even stopping to supply herself?

He takes not much time to decide. He thinks Maidenpool, then North. Climbing back onto Honor he rides East, alert for any campfires or single riders,scouring the forest hour after hour, and shouting out her name until his voice is nearly gone. 

He reaches Maidenpool with the dawn and sees no sign of her there. 

In a haze of desperation he accosts passers-by, one after another. Have you seen a maid pass this way, with a sword and a young boy? Riding a chestnut horse?

They all say no. They step back from him like he has gone mad; but of course it sounds a bit mad, doesn’t it? A lady knight with a Valyrian steel sword, as big as The Hound, with her own squire. While he’s at it, he should ask after Galladon of Morne, and mermaids, and the Crone with her lantern. But perhaps it is the stench of a cursed man they respond to, a man who has held riches and lost them. Such ill fortune is catching. They give him a wide berth, they murmur, they leave him standing in the street lost and alone. Perhaps they do not know a Kingslayer when they see one, but anyone can spot a man laid low by love.

Have you seen a woman, an absurdly large woman? With the bluest eyes you’re ever seen? A woman with a sword - a broadsword, two-handed? Looks like she knows how to swing it? Have you seen her? Big and strong as an ox but pure as a maiden? Straw-blonde, a hand taller than me, shoulders as broad as a barn. Has no one seen her? A knight? A true knight? The truest knight that ever walked this land? Tell me where she’s gone. Please, tell me if you’ve seen her. I saw her and I sent her away. She loved me, and I let her go.

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

The sun is marking mid-morning by the time he returns, and there are dark clouds looming in the distance, swirling up from the horizon.

He has hardly left the saddle before he is accosted by a barrage of debriefs and dreadful news. 

King’s Landing is burning. Aegon’s forces arrived faster than anyone predicted, are thoroughly breaking Mace Tyrell’s formation, and their secondary forces sneaking up the bay have set Flea Bottom afire. The Goldcloaks have surrendered already, and the Red Keep will soon be under siege. Even if they ride full-tilt for the capital it will be a rescue mission now, not a defense.

“Ready us to ride directly to battle in an hour,” he instructs his captains. “Leave the camp set here, and I set my cousin Addam in command. Peck, you and your lady Pia will stay behind with the hostages and the provisions. If we face defeat see that they are returned to their homes - quickly as you can, the Kingsroad will be dragon territory before long.”

His squire’s face turns quite red and he looks ready to argue with him, and Jaime quickly turns his back to him. He hears the lad sputtering behind him as he throws the tent flap aside and goes into his Commander’s Tent. 

Jaime sits alone in his tent for that hour and he burns. He feels the flames of wildfire in King’s Landing, hears the screeching laughter of Aerys Targaryen getting his fiery baptism at last. His most sacred oath is to guard his King, and his King is in mortal danger and he is not there. He left Tommen unprotected. Left his sister, his son, his duty. His doom awaits him there, is waiting for him still. He must go.

All around him his men are making ready for battle. He knows, with a dreadful foresight, that it is not a battle they can win. It will be glorious, and at the end of it he will be dead and he will never see Brienne again.

Brienne. Brienne. His heart blazes in his chest. 

He should have kept her with him. He should have let her tell her tale. His stupid pride would not allow it and now she is gone.

Where is she now? Sheltering in some rain-soaked forest? Hiding in some Tully supporter’s house in Pennytree? Could she have seen him foolishly asking after her, and held her tongue?

He has been cruel to her. He has let her suffer. He denied her Oathkeeper. He had been badly wounded, his pride wounded, his poor sore heart wounded, and he had wanted to hurt her too. When he saw her tears some sleeping part of him wanted to take it back.  He felt monstrous for doing it, and told himself it was because he was a monster. He had stood there and watched her with her shoulders hunched and fists balled at her sides, tears running down her face. What might she have done if he had tried to soothe her tears? He could have been kinder.

Now she will remember him as bitter and petty and hateful when he is gone, and there will be no one left in the world who thinks on him fondly. 

But at least she will not see this battle; at least he gave her Oathkeeper to keep herself safe. She will have to think on him when she wields the sword, and perhaps she will remember whatever it was that had made her care for him. Perhaps she will know, when she holds the blade, that he had loved her too.

Mother, let her know it for certain. Give her my love.

When the hour is up, he leaves his tent, mounts Glory, and rides to battle. 

[brokasteltranslations]

Fate/Requiem: Prologue

People have taken to calling me “the Reaper”. Only once have I ever been thanked for my work.

–

This was awful. This had to have been one of the worst nights of my life.

My pursuers had grown in number once again. They were dividing, at an incredible rate. Monsters who lived only to separate humans by component parts; no matter how many I cut down, I couldn't stem the tide.

The effects of the Body Augmentations I'd equipped to my own body had long faded. The fetish charms of which I'd prepared so many, into which I'd stockpiled so much mana, had all been expended. My heightened eyesight, my improved cardiopulmonary functions and all the rest were now ragged and exhausted, barely at the level of an ordinary human. All that I had left to rely on now was my own flesh and bone, my own blood and guts: the body that I'd somehow managed to keep intact for these fourteen years.

That, and the lessons that had been carved into my heart by a needle of regret.

The Material Barrier that coated every inch of my skin had dwindled to its base parameters. A single solid hit would be enough to blow me to pieces, like a plate dropped on the floor. But I had a strange premonition that all this was only a prelude to what was waiting for me; to what would really make this the worst night of my life.

–

I sprinted through alleyways, drenched in muddy water, covered in unreclaimed garbage. Once, worshippers would take this road to reach Kanda Shrine. I tumbled down one of the narrow, steep sets of stone stairs that split off into innumerable branches. As I did so, I landed a flying kick on the  behinds of the two men ahead of me. The uninvited guests.

“Ugh, we still not at the harbour? My heart's about to damn well burst, girl! I'm gonna drop dead right here!”

One of the men tilted his neck to look at me.

“You know damn well you aren't! If you're gonna live as long as you have, you should try to have the courtesy to scrape together a century or two's worth of wisdom! Or if you can't do that, at least just shut up and run!”

“Hey now, hey now! If I'm ever gonna put a sock in it, it'll be when I go meet the Buddha! You could cut my head off right now and my mouth would still be chatterin'!”

“Like hell it would, because I'd tie it shut myself! With a good metre or two of wire!”

How many dozens of times had he made some dumb immortality gag? It had gone beyond getting on my nerves. He knew better than anyone that he could be carved to pieces or shot full of holes, and it still wouldn't be enough to kill him. Although, for all that, he was in almost as sorry a state as I was right now.

Even in this day and age, when immortality was hardly a rarity, he was still making me listen to his nonsense. And what was he doing talking about meeting the Buddha anyway, when he was a Jew?

“Just shut up and keep moving!”

“...Understood.” The other man nodded. His partner skidded as he rounded a corner, almost toppling, and he reached out to grab his belt, righting him as naturally as if he were taking hold of a jib sheet.

“Once we reach the docks, they cannot best us.”

His wild black hair and unshaven beard carried the smell of the deep. It was something wholly unlike this town's artificial landscapes: the scent of real sea breezes and real shafts of sunlight, carved deep into his soul.

“Understood. I'm counting on you, Captain.”

His response was silence.

The starkness of the difference between himself and his companion still took me aback. Could it be that sailors simply disliked wasting words? I didn't think so. He likely just didn't trust me yet. In any case, though, I was glad that I had not made an enemy of this strong, silent man of the sea. Things could have easily have gone differently.

And besides, I couldn't deny that I had found something unexpectedly endearing in the twin grey flames burning beneath his chiselled brow.

–

Needless to say, the captain's dominion was the sea; on land, he could not fully exercise his power. That was why we were now making haste to the harbour.

I was only collateral damage to the monsters pursuing us. Their real target was my companions: the two men whose protection constituted my current job. One was a Heroic Spirit, who had come in answer to a summons: a Servant. The zenith of necromantic magic. The other was human; was human, for he had abandoned his humanity a long time ago.

Any denizen of this city would have told you that Servants are safe and harmless; but peaceful and happy though this thought may be, only they believed it. That was why people like me existed: to maintain the illusions of their everyday, by doing the work that anyone else would revile. The work of killing Servants with our own two hands.

–

She, too, had been one - someone I had been assigned to dispose of appropriately.

Her name had been Kundry. A pagan woman, gone mad with love. The lingering fragrance of her loathing, the vicious curse from an enemy I should have finished with, her terrifying, meticulous booby-trap had survived her death, and pursued us relentlessly even now. Those little sprites. They would chase us forever, gorging themselves on the mana that suffused this town.

I had expected that she might make her appearance mounted on horseback. I had not expected her to have any knowledge of summoning magic. Nothing to that effect had been mentioned in any of the documents I had scoured.

The creatures Kundry had called forth were little sprites called “gremlins”. Newcomers in the world of magecraft, and monsters for the modern era. They made their nests in machines and electrical appliances. Appropriate for this town, I thought.

Vermin who swarm around open ley-lines. Efficient, I suppose.

This wasn't the time to be marvelling. Aside from anything else, they had come close to chewing off one of my fingers not a few minutes ago – but this struggle too would end, if I could set these men to sea.

“Over there! Drop down to that waterway! The side street goes straight to the harbour!”

“Damn it, girl, a one-way street? Ain't my thing at all!” He didn't even bother trying to put on an air of urgency.

Water shone slick on the concrete of the side street. The tide was ebbing: an ideal time to set sail.

“Well, ain't that lucky, Reaper girl? Looks like you'll be able to give us the nice little sendoff you wanted after all!”

“Damn right I will. I won't be sorry to see the back of either of you.”

“The Reaper really don't pull her punches, huh! What was that earlier? “Looks like Hendrick has once more failed to take a wife”? “Maybe you'll hit the jackpot in another seven years”?” The talkative one cast a glance at his partner's back. The captain remained as taciturn as ever, but his shoulders seemed slumped just a little.

Seven years. Seven years' time. Two thousand, five hundred-odd days? I didn't know how it felt to immortals, but to me, seven years' time seemed unimaginably far away. It was a world hidden behind a pitch-black fog, with no guarantee that it would ever come at all.

“I'm, well...I'm sorry about that.”

“Ain't nothin', girl, I'll cheer him right back up again. Bit of a shame, though, I liked this town. It's noisy, and crazy, and it was ever-so-willin' to look the other way for us.”

“I see.” As long as you two remain here, there can be no guarantee of that. That's why this was always going to happen.

The sails of the yachts moored in the harbour began to come into view. I expelled an inadvertent sigh of relief. Careful now, Erice. You mustn't let your composure slip, not even for a moment. “Presence of mind”. Words my master taught me.

Maintaining one's composure did not mean denying one's emotions. It meant accepting them. Anger, bitterness, suffering, terror – welcoming each and every one as an old friend, turning none away. Without doing that, it would be impossible to take a step back and view oneself objectively. More than a few times, that principle had saved my life.

We arrived at the wharf, and were lucky enough to find ourselves an unsecured vessel. It was only a small boat, rowed by hand, and cramped enough that even just the two men climbing in would be enough to fill it.

“Are you absolutely sure you don't need anything bigger?”

“This will serve just fine”, the captain said. He had procured two oars from one of the other yachts. By no means did they look like sufficient preparation for setting sail to the open sea, but whatever the case, I was grateful that they at least hadn't wasted any time indulging in sentimentality.

I checked the boat meticulously for traps, before turning my attention to keeping watch on the surrounding area for our pursuers. It was midnight on the Kanda river, and the reflections of neon lights drifted lazily across the water's tranquil surface. The harbour was deserted, and the river was devoid of the silhouettes of waterborne buses. At least there was no need to worry about any civilians getting caught up in this.

“Looks like this is goodbye, huh? My dear little Reaper girl.”

They had already climbed into the boat. The talkative one began to gather up the mooring rope that I had carelessly tossed from where I watched on the jetty.

“Ya know, I wouldn't've minded killin' you, if it woulda meant I could bum around this town just a little longer.”

“...I know. You're leaving because the Captain wishes it. You don't have any concern for me, you're just respecting his desires. That's right, isn't it...Ahaseurus? You're the oldest man alive. The man who's lived longer than even Noah or Methuselah.”

He shook his head from side to side, laughing uproariously. Next to him, the captain struck one of the wooden pillars of the jetty, changing the boat's direction. Still refraining from joining the conversation, he took the oars in both hands, and began to row with powerful strokes.

“You overestimate me, girl. You're well aware, aintcha? That I'm not the only poor bastard who turned his back on the Lord, and wound up unable to die 'cos of it. Even nowadays, the world is full of monsters. And what about you, born in this Mosaic City, in this new world - can you really be so sure you're human? Whaddaya say to that, eh?”

The little boat left the jetty behind, slipping easily through the water, growing smaller and smaller. It was all I could do to hide my humiliation beneath a calm exterior, and offer him a parting gift.

“Ahaseutus! The Wandering Jew of legend! I pray that someday, you will find your place of rest!”

The immortal was now sprawled lazily in the bottom of the rowboat, waving back at me impudently. I wish I had more time to speak to you. I wanted to learn about the way you live. But he was sneering at me now. The same cruel smile, I felt sure, that he had once turned upon someone else, long ago.

“Oh, wake up, girl! There ain't a single place of rest in this whole damn world! Ain't nothin' but inferno, as far as the eye can see! God damn... I ain't got no mind to thank ya, especially not after everythin' you did to cut our stay short, but I hate naivety more than a third helping of bagels! How about one last bit of wisdom from an old man?”

The currents of the Kanda river had finally taken hold of the rowboat, and it rapidly receded from view as he shouted from the stern.

“Try and enjoy yourself a little! That's how you live a splendid life!”

How carefree he smiled. He had spouted nonsense to the end.

“...And how am I supposed to do that?”

It might have been valuable advice from a man with centuries' more experience than I, but it wasn't the kind of joke I wanted to hear. I knew no small number of people who had striven to enjoy their lives, and died all too soon for their trouble. What did pain or suffering matter, in the face of that? Above all else, I did not want to die.

–

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The gremlins had closed the distance, and now they had cornered us in this place.

A few seconds after my prophetic chill came the sound of claws scraping on asphalt. A thousand chittering shrieks. All at once they burst forth from the shadows of the harbour, and surged across the decks of the boats docked by the wharf.

“Not this again...!”

They had no eyes for me any more. They splashed across the surface of the water, racing after Ahaseutus and the captain. They might have been weak individually, but if a horde of this size reached their boat, it would sink in an instant. The situation sent a shiver of fear through me. I levelled my final trump card - my Arcane Bullet, Freischütz - at their vanguard, and barked a warning across the water.

“Captain!”

But before my shout had even reached him, he had pushed his oars onto Aheseutus, and now stood upright in the unstable little boat. I heard the rushing sound of him sucking in a great breath.

“Yooo-ho! Hoo-howay! Yooo-hoo-howay!”

He bellowed, as though awakening after a long silence. Or rather, he sang, in a mighty, booming voice that could only have been produced by his broad chest. A sailor's song. A sea shanty, of the kind true men of the ocean hummed under their breath.

And in that moment, I saw. Aheseutus' scrawny arm, thrust lazily upwards. The distinctive pattern on the back of his right hand, that for an instant flared dull red.

“We're setting sail, Hendrick. Looks like it's goodbye to dry land for a while.”

“Hee-sa!”

A order made by Command Seal, one of the crown jewels of magecraft. From Master, to Servant. And the captain responded instantly. His piecing whistle echoed throughout every corner of the harbour. Space began to warp, and a barrage of concentrated magecraft struck my cheek.

“Raise the anchor! Unfurl the sails! Set the lookout! Tonight we set to sea! Tonight we are bound for the sea of endless storms!”

The captain roared – and voices answered his call, from below the water's surface.

“Hee-ya!”

Vile laughter, now, like the creaking of bones. And voices that continued in song even so.

“Hah!” “Hah!” “Hah!” “Hah!”

“Where's yer bride, Cap'n!”

“Give us drink from the shore, Cap'n! Give us spirits, to put fire in our throats!”

“Hee-sa!” “Hee-sa!” “Hee-sa!”

Beneath the boat, a host of pale wisps swirled. From the gremlins who had been racing across the water to close in on the boat, not even flinching at the unveiling of the captain's magecraft, now arose a shriek of warning.

An edge of red cloth sliced upwards from within the water. It met with the gremlins about to reach the boat, cutting them quite literally in two. A crimson sail.

A black pillar now rose from the water, knocking the rowboat aside. As though they had been waiting for this moment, the pair abandoned their vessel to leap to it. The waters of the Kanda river boiled and churned, as an enormous hull slowly revealed itself.

A sailing ship. An oak-wrought galleon, of the kind that forged the path across the Atlantic Ocean during the Age of Discovery. A bowsprit that thrust forth threateningly from the prow. The gentle curve of a sturdy hull. A quarterdeck like a fortress, towering intimidatingly over all it surveyed. Three tall masts pierced deep into the night sky, and from them billowed sails coloured the red of blood.

The greatest Noble Phantasm of the Wandering Dutchman.

“So that's the wandering Dutch galleon, the Flying Dutchman! A ghost ship, cursed to drift eternally upon a stormy sea...”

I was bearing witness to the manifestation of a most unique kind of magecraft. My cheeks began to tingle. A shiver ran through me at the sight of the sails and the hull – blood-red and pitch-black, just as the legends claimed. A ghost ship cursed to share the fate of its captain, the Wandering Dutchman, never to rest or be granted relief.

The waves lapping at the jetty were getting higher now, and threatening to sweep me away, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the spectacle of the ship, and its manifestation amid a mighty corona of energy.

The gremlins who had evaded the attack from the sails tried to cling to the ship's hull, but the wisps on deck would not brook such a means of boarding their vessel. One by one they changed form into the spirits of sailors and descended to the deck, brandishing the cutlasses at their belts. It looked almost like a fairground attraction.

They, too, were bound by the curse of the Flying Dutchman. One more part of a terrifying Noble Phantasm. There was never any mercy to be found in their blades.

“Hah!” “Hah!” “Heeeee-sah!”

“Worthless scum! Ain't even worth turnin' the cannons on 'em!”

“Give us more blood, Cap'n!”

“Hee-sa!”

This battle was theirs. To watch the ease with which they overwhelmed the foe, one would never imagine how much we had struggled on land. Aheseutus watched from on high. It might have been the correct approach for a Master, but something about it grated on my nerves.

The final gremlin was dispatched with a blow from the captain's oar.

“Stow the chatter, my lads! Now, set a course for open sea!”

Once more, he gave the order to set sail, brandishing his oar towards the night horizon. Lightning flickered there, and there came a distant roll of thunder. It had been the same on the night of their arrival. Now the eternal storm waited for them once again.

The ghost ship forged onwards, wind swelling in its tautened sails. Its silhouette grew smaller, until it was lost in the darkness. All that remained on the deserted shoreline was the mournful echo of the pale spirits' song.

“Dalais, Nicht, Eijikeit...

Dalais, Nicht, Eijikeit...”

I hummed it to myself. I'd heard or seen that phrase somewhere before, in the classroom library.

“Dalais...Nicht...Eijikeit...”

“The Devil's curse lies on these sails...they shall not tear 'til Judgement Day...”

I could no longer see the figure of the captain. All that remained was a single slender silhouette reclining against the railing of the poop deck, never waving, simply staring back at the town's lights until it faded into the distance.

The storm passed, and silence returned to the harbour. I sighed in relief. Now that they had set sail, I could barely move. I was overcome by exhaustion, of course, to some degree. But more than anything else, I wanted to cast my mind back over these past few days, over the ways in which these two man had unapologetically pulled my heart to and fro, and commit them firmly to memory.

–

I let out another sigh, and then touched my fingertip to one of my forelocks. My magic circuits, set to refuse communications, once more return to open...and as if on schedule, a message came in. The familiarity of the voice immediately put me at ease.

“I presume your assignment has been completed?”

“Mm-hm.”

My master and I always contacted each other this way. Delicate vibrations were transmitted into my inner ear, and I perceived them as her voice. This was a method of communication with no need for electromagnetic waves, being derived from automatic transcription magecraft. The average citizen had no need for it, but this was one of our little tricks.

“This assignment's targets – the “Wandering Jew”, the immortal Aheseutus, and his Servant, the “Wandering Dutchman”, Captain Hendrick Van der Decken – have been successfully escorted from the Akihabara ward of Mosaic City.”

“If so, then it should be seven years at the earliest before we see them again?”

“I think so. I can't speak for anyone else, but it should be that way for them, at least. Aheseutus didn't appear to have contracted with any Servant other than Hendrick.”

The captain's ghost ship was an oddity among oddities.

Even among the various wards of Mosaic City, Akihabara – also known as the Maritime City – was, as its name implied, in notably close contact with the ocean. However, its topography did not make it defenceless. If anything, it was the reverse; it was protected by a stronger barrier than the other wards. And the Grail would not permit an act so barbaric as breaching the barrier and forcibly making port.

However, a powerful curse lay on the captain and his crew: they were forbidden for making landfall more than once every seven years. And by the same token, once every seven years, they could make port wherever they wished. If they had come to Akihabara with more aggressive intent, it would have been virtually beyond me to stand against them.

“Understood.”

I could tell from her breathing that she was satisfied. Now her confirmation checklist moved on to the crux of the matter.

“And what about Kundry?”

I bit back the response that immediately rose to my throat, and paused for a moment to steady my breathing.

“Dead. I confirmed the destruction of her Saint Graph myself.”

A brutal matter to discuss openly on the street. I once more cast a quick glance around the midnight harbour, but it remained unchanged, deserted as ever.

“But...I think there's a chance that some of her enchantments might be remaining somewhere. I'll investigate again soon.”

“Oh? So you're telling me that an autonomous-type Servant's enchantments still remain, even after the Servant themselves has disappeared?”

“That's right. And I've suffered for it, too.”

“What a unique case... This whole situation has turned out to be rather troublesome. I can lend my aid as far as scanning the city for unauthorised ley line access goes, but...”

“I don't think it'll show up on a scan. I don't know how, but she's managed to conceal it.”

“I see. In that case, it seems I will need you more than ever.”

“Perhaps so.”

My master responded to me with a deliberate silence, and I followed suit. I got the distinct sensation that we were feeling each other out. If we had been talking face to face, I somehow felt certain that she would have seen right through my nervousness. It was of course possible to equip a communication circuit with video functionality – in fact, it was possible to directly send input from all five senses – but I disliked being so open about my work. And in the first place, I didn't even have the mana remaining right now.

Anyway, it seemed that she had accepted my report, for the moment.

“Understood. You can tell me about the details in person, later.”

“I don't mind coming by tomorrow, if you want. I'll be coming to class anyway.”

“...I see. In that case, I'll hear what you have to say then.”

“Alright.”

“Your hard work is appreciated, as always. Goodnight, Erice.”

“Thanks.”

My master was unfailingly polite and courteous. Odd it may have been to wish someone who had never known a true night's sleep a good night, but it did not bother me. I was just on the cusp of a suitably witty retort when I was interrupted again.

“Oh, that's right. I ought to have mentioned, Erice.”

“Eh?”

“Karin was terribly angry earlier.”

“...Karin?”

“It couldn't have been more than half an hour ago. She was rather fierce about it. She was complaining that you were ignoring all of her text messages, and wondering if there was something wrong with the network. I had to explain to her that you were engaged with your work, and were likely blocking all communications.”

“...right. I'm sorry about that.”

“As am I.”

–

“As am I”...?

Blocking communications had been the correct call. My master had nothing to apologise for...did she?

“That Karin...”

I left the jetty from which I had watched the Flying Dutchman's departure. A forest of white sails passed me by as I cut across the harbour, and set out on the road home.

Something so distracting as idle chatter with Karin while I was working would have been fatal. I would be hanged before I would allow my concentration to be so disrupted in a battle with my life on the line. But in the end, I had still been careless. I had been elated, buoyed up by the success of a job well done.

To the edge of the wharf. Into a break in the yacht harbour. Past rows upon rows of warehouses, at the top of the stairs that led to the overhead roadway – she was there.

The tail of her habit fluttered in the sea breeze. Once hidden beneath her veil, her hair now danced proud and wild.

“Pray tell me – how do you feel, in this moment?”

She asked with painstaking courtesy, her voice dripping with merciless contempt.

“Boor that you are, to steal away my love, and think to strike me down. And in the end you did not even finish me, but left me by the roadside. For indeed, you had every chance to kill me, but in your arrogance you pitied me instead. I can only imagine the self-satisfaction you must feel.”

Kundry, the pagan. Her hair was ebony, and her skin was walnut. The lids of her rich, dark eyes were lowered, as though she were half asleep. Powerful awakening magic resided within her captivating lips. Her face proudly showed her Mediterranean heritage, and it was near-flawless in its beauty...or so it seemed to me, at least. Provided I could pinch my nose to the stench of the machinations writhing in her guts.

Her clothing was stitched with horsehair, said to be worn by those who wished for atonement, and it had become torn and ragged in our battle. Here and there, her skin now lay unashamedly bared to the world. At our first encounter I had thought her a virtuous woman of the cloth, but the scandalous costume she now wore would have drawn stares even on the night of Halloween. Although what was more, the one who had damaged her so beyond repair had been me.

“Ahh...You. I believe you named yourself Erice? Nay, I misspeak. “The Reaper” was your name, was it not?”

“Kundry...”, I whispered. She was a woman beyond my help.

I had used a trap I had laid to deprive her of her mount, before engaging her in a vicious melee and damaging her heavily – or so I had thought, but it seemed that she hadn't been as immobilised as I had believed. I would have to revise my assessment of the Rider class's base stats.

I called out to her, in as simple terms as possible, trying to make her understand.

“Are you listening, Kundry? I'm repeating myself here, I don't know how many times this makes it, but all I ever did was encourage Ahesh and the captain to prioritise evacuating the city. I did not steal your lover.”

She remained silent for a long moment. Her eyes stared down at me, boring into me, not moving a millimetre. I was fully aware that she was not an opponent I could negotiate with – but more than anything else, in my current situation, I wanted time to observe her. There was something more here - something that lay behind how she had maintain control over so many gremlins even after losing consciousness, behind the ease with which she had appeared before me now - and I wanted to know it.

I knew I was outmatched. Should I request aid from my master through my magic circuits? Unthinkable. This was my whirlwind to reap. But even so, I couldn't see my decision to spare Kundry the finishing blow as a mistake. There was no doubt that leaving her unchecked would have been catastrophic for this town – but only if Aheseurus and the captain had stayed. At the end of the day, Kundry too was an outsider, and she had only appeared here in their pursuit.

“I'll tell you once more, Kundry. Leave this town. Your wounds are too deep to heal if you don't. You'll be destroyed, and I'm sure you don't want that.

“I too repeat myself. Return my love.”

“”My love”...?” I was surprised. So blinded was she in her pursuit, that she had followed us here without realising even that simple truth.

“You're too late, Kundry. Your love has already set sail, and unfortunately, all the monsters you set in wait for us have been destroyed. Continuing your chase any more would be pointless.”

Their departure I was sure about. The destruction of her traps, I was not. But whatever the case, all I wanted was to persuade her to give up.

“My love has...left me behind...? Aahhhh....”

A wail of grief arose from her throat as she bent over double. From between two hands tearing at her hair, her burning gaze pierced into me.

“I will take my vengeance! The hammer of retribution will fall upon you!”

She had firmly grasped the wrong end of the stick, and she wasn’t letting go. The flames of jealousy burned bright within her. Was putting an end to this my only option?

“You would be a fool to try. You can't win against me, Kundry.”

“Do you truly think so? I still retain my Saint Graph, Reaper. As you can see.”

She tilted her neck exaggeratedly, as she advanced down the stairs, one step at a time.

“What makes you so certain that it is not you who is the weaker of us? Already, your mana has dwindled such that you did not notice my approach. The battle with my gremlins has expended your talismans and gemstones to the last. Is that not so?”

I kept my silence.

“You are naught but a girl, not even come of age. For your courage in taking up the night watch in this fortress, and for the heavy responsibilities you bear, I admit my admiration. However...” A tatter of her habit tangled around her leg, and she dispassionately tore it away. “In the end, you are a human – and I am a Servant.”

“I know.”

If this mad queen had some awareness of her nature as an autonomous Servant, then there was only one more step left.

“That's why, Kundry. That's why Akihabara will never accept your existence. That's why, no matter where you go in Mosaic City, you will be rejected as an outsider. I installed a classification tag into your Saint Graph. Your supply of mana from the town in order to sustain yourself will be closed to you. Not only that – just by your existing in this place, the tag will pollute your Saint Graph, poisoning you from the inside out.”

There was hardly any need for me to give her the warning. Just trying to absorb mana through the act of breathing should already be wracking her body with pain. But she seemed to be interpreting it instead as the agony of parting, as suffering that proved her bond with her beloved.

Kundry furrowed her eyebrows resentfully. She shouldn't have been able to manage more than standing still while still maintaining her corporeal form. And conversely, my strength was recovering by the second.

“My talismans and gemstones might have protected me, but that wasn't their true purpose.”

“Know that whatever nonsense you are speaking, it does not sway my heart.”

“I suppose it wouldn't.”

Kundry, you learned that this place would become a battlefield, and used Akihabara for your own ends. But you must have neglected to thoroughly investigate the Reaper who lurks in the shadows of this town. The moment you learn the reason I bear this name will be the moment in which you are destroyed.

But even so -

“I do not want you to disappear here, Kundry.”

Her face twisted in incredulity.

You are a Servant. A being summoned by some unknown party - a magus of high rank, most likely. A wandering fragment of myth, fitted with a thaumaturgical perpetual motion machine of the second kind. If left alone, you will eventually fall to sustaining yourself with the life energy of the common people. You are a clear threat to this city.

“It would be such a waste...”

But it was nothing short of a miracle, I thought. That a Servant had fallen in love with another Servant. This was no destiny assigned by the Grail. It was an impossibility, one that would not come around twice. Kundry's lover had been the Holy Knight of the Swan – someone all too different from the wild captain of the Flying Dutchman.

“You fell in love with the captain, didn't you? You came to this town in pursuit of him, knowing all the while that your love was impermissible. How many decades did it take you, Kundry? How many centuries?”

I advanced towards her, slowly, deliberately, one step at a time.

“You aren't a Servant, Kundry. You aren't some spectre of the past. You're a human, living in the present. A human being.”

The story she was living now was something entirely new, untouched by any human eye. She had slipped the yoke of the Grail.

“I kill Servants who violate the rules of this town...of the Grail. That's my job. I can't lend you my aid.”

“And so you'll let me go? At your convenience? My, my... Such kind consideration...”

She descended into feeble, self-deprecating laughter, her posture slumping. Her face was pale and drawn, sickly from loss of blood.

“Kundry, you have to leave this town. You can still make it in time, if you take the train. The last one hasn't left the station!”

Cut off from her means of replenishing her mana, she likely had less than an hour. And if my master learned of the truth of her survival, all would be lost. There was no chance whatsoever that she would overlook my transgression.

“Will his ship...return someday?”

She put the question to me, her hostility faltering. Her voice was hoarse as an old woman's, but it carries the innocent words of a lovestruck young girl.

“I cannot say.”

I didn't have any answer to give her. Although at the very least, I knew that they had shown no such intention during their stay here.

Their curse was “to wander eternally”. Working from the definition, it was unlikely that they could return to any city where they had already made landfall. After all, travelling back and forth periodically between two cities could hardly be considered “wandering”. Even if they did visit the same land twice, it would only be after the name of the city had changed, and its people and the age it had existed in had moved on, that they would be permitted to dock.

What was more, Kundry too was deathless, a creature of legend fated to wander eternal; but the form her curse took was different from that of the Dutch captain or the Wandering Jew. It was from world to world that she wandered, reincarnating over and over, yet retaining her memories. Once, she had been a witch; once, the consort of King Herod II. It was even said that she was once a Valkyrie, one of the daughters of the Allfather Odin. It was her fate to serve men of strength in every life, only to be used as a tool and cast aside – and that fate would never end, until she was at last united with her true love, and granted the salvation of death.

Now she had been summoned again as a Servant, and was being used once more by another. Ordinarily, her memories of her different summonings would be reset, but the effects of her unique circumstances extended even here. The hell she was living differed from Aheseurus's in form, but that made it no less tragic.

“But...”

There was only one thread of hope I could give to this woman, struggling beneath the enormous weight of her past.

“I am sure that you will meet them again. It all turns on you. No-one knows what will come...I am sure that your future can be changed.” I drew level with her now. She was close enough that I could reach out and touch her.

But in the end, my cheap words and my naive heart were not enough to move her. I was answered with an unwavering gaze, and steely rejection.

“You lie.” She shook her head, distraught.“What makes you think I will permit such self-centred, ill-mannered applause – on my stage? What would you know of my despair?”

She had seen right through me. The desperation that had seeped my words – words that would certainly have violated the rules of Mosaic City – was plain as day to her.

“The future can be changed? My future? Well then, come, Reaper – come and kill me, if you can!”

“I'm sorry...Kundry...”

The legends told: that Kundry, the pagan woman, would never tell a lie. However, nor would she ever serve the cause of good.

She brandished her hand high above her head. In her palm, mana began to gather, and crystallise into the form of something straight and long: a spear. A long-handled soldier's spear, in the fashion of the ancient Roman empire.

“That spear...that spear is-”

I was reflexively diving away before I could even complete my mumbled sentence. This was a Noble Phantasm! The Holy Spear – Longinus!

Once more, I had been careless. Her Noble Phantasm had been neither her mount, nor her lips of awakening. It had not even crossed my mind that she might possess this spear, both blessed and cursed.

With the spear held aloft, the mad queen arched her body backwards like a whip, never once taking her eyes from my fleeing figure – and threw.

The attack closed on me faster than the speed of sound. I activated a single-action incantation. All I could manage was to instantaneously fire a sure-hit arcane bullet into the spear's path, deflecting it a little from its arc straight to my heart.

The blow skewered me deep, sending me flying sideways out across the harbour, bouncing across the surface of the Kanda river. The spray from the impact splashed high, reflecting the neon illumination of the town like tacky fairy lights.

“...Porca...miseria...”

The last effort I could muster went into that curse, and then I sank towards the riverbed.

I saw a dream. A dream of a tiny pain.

When I lost my parents, I was placed in the care of my grandmother, who was my only living relative. She lived in an old-fashioned wooden house on the outskirts of Shinjuku. As a child I never showed my emotions outwardly, and did very little to endear me to my grandmother, who must have struggled to know what to do with me.

One afternoon, she laid out newspaper in one corner of the narrow garden, and cut my hair. I sat in the chair, letting her do as she wished. I was not yet old enough for my feet to have touched the ground.

My grandmother's hands were far from deft. The toothed tip of the pair of thinning scissors she was using brushed against the top of my left ear, the metal cool on my skin  - and with a snip, cut it along with my hair.

It hurt, of course, but I let nothing show. I had simply accepted it for what it was.

In the end my grandmother realised her carelessness, and her mistake, only when she noticed the thin rivulet of blood trickling down my neck as she was finishing her work. She stared at me, lost for words, with an expression so deeply grieved that the world might as well have ended.

For a long time after that, she was silent. She treated my wound, and then she spoke. “If it hurts, Erice, you have to tell me it hurts.”

I nodded mechanically. She managed a feeble smile, although she still looked as though she were about to cry.

I still have the scar from that day on my ear. A scar like the mark left on a train ticket by the ticket punch.

I awakened from my momentary dream.

A heavy, cold pain lanced pierced through my abdomen. The moment I became aware of the irregularity, a burning numbness spread throughout my body. It had been a magnificent blow. Although I should have expected as much from the spearwork of Valhalla.

I knew this was real – that I was submerged, sinking to the bottom of the Kanda River – and yet it felt strangely like a dream. Perhaps I was numbing my own senses, in order to spare myself unnecessary suffering.

–

I was running my recovery systems at full power, but they still couldn't keep pace. The mental processing power required for self-analysis, and the underwater respiration functionality I had loaded in case of emergencies, would only last a few more seconds at best. Through my wavering vision, I watched the edges of the lance skewering my stomach begin to blur and lose cohesion, coming undone from the outside in.

So this spear...was a projection... It wasn't a genuine...Noble Phantasm...

It had been a counterfeit, reproduced by the hand of someone other than its rightful owner.

That would...make sense... If it had been...the true Holy Spear...an arcane bullet couldn't have...

But still, there was something in its framework that came extraordinarily close to the genuine article, forged with incredible precision. My lips curled into a self-deprecating smile, at the absurdity of my lapse in judgement and the situation I had been placed in.

The projection's creator showed no sign of coming to retrieve her spear, or any intention of making sure of the death of her foe. She must have found the satisfaction she sought, believing her vengeance complete. Now, she should no longer have any reason to remain in this town. I prayed that she managed to escape Akihabara before her Saint Graph disappeared in totality...although I reserved the right to register a complaint or two with her, should we ever meet again face-to-face.

–

I had lost all sense of up or down, but it seemed I must have been sinking face-up. The colours of reflected neon coalesced before my eyes on the water's surface, spreading out in front of me like a sky filled with stars.

It's...so beautiful...

My vision began to dim, and the spectacle before me felt as though it was receding into the distance. The darkness drew me silently under. My life slipped out from between my lips, in little bubbles that rose into the sky.

–

And then, I met with my fate.

–

First to come was the music. A lone piano, a woodwind ensemble, a vocal chorus; even, somewhere, the whimsical tones of an electric guitar. Melodies played by a multitude of instruments faded in and then out again, one after the other.

It wasn't a real orchestra. It was unmistakably being played back - and its recording quality was hardly the best, at that. It would have been extremely low-fidelity, even if I hadn't been underwater.

And then, suddenly, I noticed. That beyond where my eyes' drifting focuses met, a tiny, pale blue light was flitting back and forth, as though frolicking among the bubbles rising through the water. It swam gleeful and free.

What...is that?

Next to enter my ears came the words, although they were in languages unknown to me. But all of them were short, like words of greeting. Some of them even seemed as though I had heard them somewhere before.

My consciousness dimmed once more, and I blinked, long and slow – and then he was there. A child of gold.

A young boy floated before me, phosphorescence dancing across his golden hair.

His form was all too unreal, but somehow, it seemed reassuringly familiar to me.

...A...a Servant...?

I could easily have told myself it was just an illusion, shown to me by my dimming consciousness. A hallucination brought forth by my oxygen-starved brain, as its suffering reached saturation point. But still, somehow, an inexplicable expectation filled my breast, swirling, warming me from within.

His mouth opened.

“I...ask...you...”

He spoke, in halting English. He was calling out to someone – to me, directly.

“Are...you...worthy...of...being...my...Master...?”

I had no way of understanding what was happening. All I knew for certain was that on this night, my war had begun. That a Holy Grail War had begun. And that single truth overtook anything and everything else, to strike deep into my chest.

I stretched out towards him, reaching with fingers that had lost all feeling.

And in the next moment – my arm was grasped by sturdy claws, and I was dragged up once more to the world above the surface.

–

Several minutes later, I was laid flat on the concrete of the wharf, desperately hacking up water. The hand of someone drawing up close to me gently patted my back.

“Hey, you awake? You're awake, right?”

The girl who had been nursing me now leaned over to peer directly into my face – and then yelled mercilessly, directly into my ear.

“OY, OLD MAN ERI! AWAKE IN THERE, YA ROTTEN SACK OF STUPID? THE HELL YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYIN' AT, HUH? YOU BETTER BELIEVE I'M GONNA KICK YOUR SORRY ASS FROM HERE TO NEXT WEEK!”

It was her. The girl my master had talked to me about, and one of my very few friends.

“Oh, it's just you, Karin.”

My mood had taken a sudden turn for the worse. The inside of my nose was beginning to sting.

“Blegh. ...Hang on...Karin, don't tell me...artificial respiration?”

“LIKE HELL I DID, YA DUMBASS!”

“I'm telling you, keep it down.”

“Ah, yeah, nope. Not gonna lie, I thought about it for a bit. But Momi was sayin' you'd be fine, so...”

That would explain it.

“So you were the one...who helped me, Kouyou. ...Thank you.”

The hulking form next to Karin rustled a little, in place of a response. The visage of this creature who had fished me from the water was a clear oddity, even by the standards of Mosaic City. She resembled nothing so much as a black dinosaur, with great horns growing from her head. This was the Servant who called Karin Master: the Berserker, the Ogress Kouyou. Karin had nicknamed her Momi, short for Momiji – another reading of Kouyou, “autumn leaves”.

Even knowing her true name, I still struggled to reconcile it with her appearance. But by no means did I mean to denigrate her worth by saying that.

“Hold on a-! I'm right here, y'know! The girl who told Momi to dive in and save your sorry ass! So, you're rewardin' me for my efforts, right? You're treatin' me to takoyaki, right...?”

“No idea what you think I'd do that for. Although I'll gladly treat Kouyou to as much as she wants.”

“Wha-!”

Karin's mouth kept running, and it showed no signs of stopping any time soon. I rolled over exasperatedly and made to pick myself up, but was pushed back down decisively by Kouyou. No moving yet. You would never think her arms ended in such wicked claws, so gentle was her touch – but even so, it was firm enough so as to permit no disagreement.

I tried to twist my body around as I lay sideways, and a wave of agony crashed through my midriff. I winced, almost passing out.

It shouldn't have surprised me. After all, I had been skewered through by a spear up until a few scant minutes ago. The weapon itself might have vanished now, but it had left its mark clearly on my flank.

“C'mon, just rest for a bit. Listen to Momi. Where do you think you're going, anyway, with a hole in your guts you could drive a bus through? Don't you realise that if it weren't for Momi's healing you'd be dead by now?”

“...Ugh...I guess so...”

Heat blossomed steadily throughout my abdomen as my metabolism began to accelerate. Even though Kouyou was a Berserker, she was oddly well-versed in the healing arts. I placed a great deal of trust in her capabilities – her Master notwithstanding. This was not the first time I had unexpectedly found myself having to make use of her power, or even the second.

“She's incredible, isn't she? Kouyou, I mean. I don't know why I'm even surprised any more.”

“Well, maybe you'd be a bit more surprised if she wasn't having to patch you up all the time, dumbass! And how many times did I tell you, anyway? That you should call on me to help you for big jobs?”

Karin paused in her tirade to heave an exaggerated sigh.

“Well...in the end, I guess you're just lucky to be alive, huh.”

“...You're telling me.”

I managed to catch a glimpse of the pattern of the Command Seal glowing on the back of Karin's right hand. Normally it would be transparent, indistinguishable from her bare skin, but now, thanks to her use of healing magecraft, it was awakened. The majority of its strokes had been expended. It looked like it would take a few days to recover.

Ah...

Only now did I realise that spread out beneath me lay Karin's shirt. It was soaked through, and wet with blood, although the bloodstain was smaller than I would have thought. My wound was still agonising, but the flow of blood had stemmed, and it had already acquired a thin covering of granulation tissue.

“Karin...this is...”

“Don't worry about it.” Karin produced an antibacterial patch from the pouch she carried, and gave a little smile. I must have been more fragile than I had thought, to have been on the point of showing her a moment of weakness.

–

Kouyou, still as silent as ever, was keeping watch even as she applied her healing magecraft – although no matter how much time passed, all remained quiet on the wharf. Kundry had disappeared, and left this town, or so my intuition told me. But even so, unanswered questions remained. They stayed lodged in my memory, as items requiring urgent investigation.

I quickly turned to Karin. “How did you know where I was?”, I asked.

“Ain't it obvious? I had to wring it out of your 'master'. On account of a certain somebody not picking up their phone. Got anything to say about that, eh? Hmm?”

Karin prodded one of my forelocks, an exasperated expression on her face.

“Hmm. So that's why.”

So that was the story behind my master's oddly pointed final line. She had decided that it was prudent to send Karin to the scene to lend me her help. Which ultimately meant that I was not yet strong enough to be worth of her unreserved trust.

And I suppose she wasn't wrong, either...

I grit my teeth in frustration. Still lying sprawled, I covered my eyes with my arm. Just how long would it take, before she would acknowledge me as worthy? How long would it have to be before she would assign me work outside of Akihabara?

This time it was Karin's turn to ask me a question, as I lay despondent.

“Hey, by the way, Eri-pie? Just wondering, but...”

I turned my neck to peer in the direction she was pointing, behind Kouyou.

“Who's the shrimp? Someone's kid or something? He's a Servant, right?”

“...What?” I started.

My premonition earlier this night had not been mistaken after all.

–

That boy was there.

His ethereal radiance was nowhere to be seen, and now he was just as sodden as I was. As I watched, he approached Kouyou's tail, brimming with curiosity – and then came too close and was smacked away. He was rolled first one way, then the other, like a kitten playing with its mother's tail.

“Hang on, Eri, don't tell me...he's not anything to do with your work, right?”

Karin probed me, hesitantly. I knew well that Servants should not be judged by their appearances. But even so...

“What're you gonna do? You're not gonna kill him, are you? You're really gonna kill him?”

“Uh...” I was at a loss as to how to answer her. “I honestly don't know. I've only just met him.”

What class was he? Where did he live? Who was his Master? The questions came thick and fast, and the only answer I could offer was a vague shake of my head.

“Huh? So you're telling me he's some sort of stray Servant?”

“I...I suppose he must be.”

I had finally regained enough strength to sit upright, and I looked down.

The back of my hand remained devoid of Command Seals. Just as it had always been, ever since the day I was born.

[brandedsavior]

@oraculideluna ( x )

☾ - ♕ - ☽ It feels too much, the panic gripping her chest, the pain lancing through her stomach, the weariness of her arms trying to keep her up. She feels weak, yet urgency keeps her from listening to the demands of her body and her Shield, and she doesn’t lie down, not at the threat of her arm giving way beneath her, nor at Lightning’s gentle pressing at her shoulder. She cannot lie back, not yet, not until she knows that Noctis is alright. That is the most important thing to know right now.

And reassurance comes when Lightning tells her that Noctis is alive. Relief floods her entire being, and she finally allows herself to be pressed gently back onto the bed, her arms grateful to not be holding her up any longer. A weight feels as if it has been lifted from her chest, her breathing feels easier, lighter, despite the lingering pain. What good would it be if Luna were to have survived and Noctis to have died? They are both children of prophecy, yet the emphasis is on the Chosen King making it through to the very end. Her life’s dedication is to seeing that done, her own survival be damned. In that moment, holding Noctis close and summoning every ounce of magic she had at the time, her every desire had been to sacrifice herself to see him live.

Her survival be damned.

Still, as she rests her head back against the pillow, murmuring praises to the Six in the common tongue interwoven with her native Tenebraean, there is a part of her that feels…gladto know she is alive, too. There is still so much to hope for, to fight for, and she has another day to continue to see it through. And that is in no small part to-

“Light,” she says again, opening her eyes, and she realizes that, in the haze of pain and relief that had washed over her, she had grasped her Shield’s wrist and held her hand against her collarbones. A human touch to keep her grounded, to keep her from giving in to the pain and falling into unconsciousness again. Perhaps this touch is a breach of propriety, but Luna cannot let go, not yet, as if letting go would prove this all to be some fever dream and Luna would realize that she is dying and allowing her final moments to be encompassed by the warmth of someone she cares about. (And it has come to that, hasn’t it? Years of being Oracle and Shield has lent itself to Luna finding solace in Lightning’s presence, in finding her to be a friend. And who better to spend her final moments with than one who has been there for her through everything? Her hand tightens around Lightning’s wrist just slightly, feels the pulse of her heartbeat against her fingertips, revels in the life beating through her veins.)

“You…you saved me.” Luna has to blink to keep her vision clear as she focuses on the piercing blue intensity of Lightning’s gaze. She knows the woman cannot heal her with magic, so the bandages around her middle are from practiced medicine taught to the woman while in training to be the Oracle’s Shield. Of course she would have been taught what to do should the Oracle be incapacitated, unable to provide her own services. All in the line of duty.

And that’s what it is, isn’t it. Duty. Something Luna should be focusing on more herself. They both have their roles to play here, and Lightning’s has always been to keep Luna safe. Ofcourse she would find Luna’s body and bring her to a place they wouldn’t be found. Slowly, she loosens her grip around Lightning’s wrist and rests her own hands against her stomach. Ardyn’s knife had ripped her open here in an attempt to end her life. Luna’s eyes close and she focuses her strength, her magic, to knit the wound close.

But nothing happens. Her body resists, knowing that expending any energy could cause more damage than it would fix. Luna is alive, but her magic is useless now, while she heals from the wound, and from surging all her own magic to Noctis. She has left little for herself to use. She is, in essence, useless right now, and that is a feeling she doesn’t know what to do with. Despite her enhances strength, despite her ability to use magic and heal people, despite everything she has going for her in her role as Oracle - she is useless. What a feeling to face.

Tears burn her eyes as she closes them, and she despises how they leave hot trails down her face and back into her hair. “I cannot do anything,” she says aloud, putting words to the reality that there truly is nothing she can do right now. “Lightning.” A shaking breath leaves barely parted lips, and she opens her eyes again to look at her Shield. Her friend. “We should go back to Fenestala Manor. They will help keep my survival a secret until I am better.” And their doctors will be able to take over for Lightning and let the woman rest. “Under cover of night, we can go back.”

⚡ ⚡

  THE MOVEMENT OF HER HAND WAS SLOW, but still somehow managed to take the rosette aback when slender digits were wrapped around her wrist, coaxing a palm forward. Fingertips touched warm skin, twitched with the temptation of tracing the jutted bone of her collar. It was foreign, an INTIMATE gesture that Oracle and Shield had never truly indulged -- too firmly rooted in their sense of duty to allow for the physical. Lightning had never been one for prolonged touches, but she allowed for whatever comfort Luna might seek from the contact, gently, carefully, pressing fingers against pale flesh in an attempt to ANCHOR the blonde to reality.

  You saved me. The words echoed in her mind, the Shield attempting to dissect their meaning. Was it disbelief that Lightning had put herself in danger to ensure the safety of the Oracle -- a task for which she’d been prepared from a young age ? Or was it merely the DELIRIUM born of pain and the remnants of unconsciousness? Did she, perhaps, fear that Lightning had only saved her because it was her job and she’d done little more than adhere to years of training ? Much as the rosette had an obligation to the Oracle, it wasn’t merely her title as Shield that has driven her to rescue Lunafreya. Though she strictly adhered to the decorum expected of her, Lightning viewed the princess as a friend -- more, even, if she dared to be honest with herself ( and when it came to ever foreign matters of the heart, she certainly didn’t ). Emotions often failed the Shield; raised in near seclusion -- save for Luna, Ravus and those who taught her what it meant to dedicate one’s life to the Oracle -- and given the minimal contact she’d had with others, the memories of a more carefree childhood long since faded, the difficulty of forging bonds and navigating even the most basic interactions was to be expected.

  Even as Luna’s grip fell away, fingers lingered, aqua gaze falling to spot where flesh connected, watching the steady -- albeit somewhat labored -- rise and fall of her chest. The Astrals had never seemed the benevolent type, but Lightning could only attribute Luna’s survival to divine intervention.

  Unless the Oracle had not finished playing her part in their tale -- a notion that nauseated Lightning. Though the rosette wouldn’t hesitate going toe-to-toe with the deities if it ensured Luna’s safety, she knew the blonde would never allow Light to come between her and the damned prophecy.

  Fuck the prophecy.

  Finally withdrawing her hand, she watched as tears sprung from the other’s eyes, lips down-turned as she resisted the urge to reach out and swipe at the rivulets that coursed across her cheek. Luna had ENDURED much ( too much ) and seeing her like this -- vulnerable, lost -- only solidified her conviction in ending whatever role she was expected to continue to play. 

  The Astrals would no longer treat the Oracle like a plaything, so long as Lightning lived.

  ❛  NO.  ❜  Dusty rose locks shifted as she shook her head, the gaze that met with Luna’s missing its usual STEELINESS, but still held a finality within; this was clearly not up for discussion.  ❛  IT’S TOO DANGEROUS, AND YOU’RE IN NO CONDITION FOR THE TREK.  ❜  Before the expected protest could be uttered, a hand was raised.  ❛  YOU NEED REST. WHEN YOU’RE HEALED, WE CAN MAKE PLANS.  ❜

[footballerindreams]

When Accidents Happen, They Happen - Chapter 2

Here it goes! Paging @quack-and-yellow

Mia’s POV

“Whoo! That was it! I’m done!” I swipe the sweat from my forehead slumping to the back rest of my seat.

It’s been one hectic day for me at the office. When I entered my room I thought I could not be able to finish things faster as what I wanted to be when every colleague of mine comes in with bundles of papers in their hands but looks like luck is on my side today.

I am working in an accounting firm that affiliates with the football club Hertha Berlin. I guess it will not be a wonder how I met my boyfriend. But if you want to go to specifics, well, we met during a charity event hosted by the club and a welcome party for the new Bundesliga season a few years back. I was an intern in the office and he was one of the new signing from Nurnberg. He was the subject of the teasing that moment being the new one and being the youngest in the team, the same thing I am being new and young in the office. We sat on the same table that night, a reason for the people we are working with to boost the teasing they already started. We talked to each other most of the night to get away from the nuisance of everyone. And from that talked, it lead to getting numbers, to hanging out, and asking me to be his girlfriend, to dates and to making it official and moving in with him. He is the sweetest thing I ever had so far in my life. Very caring, cheeky, shy, witty and brave. The same as what you see on him on TV, on and off the pitch. And even with our career now being busy, we always make sure that we have time for each other, never thinking that I am the leader of my team in the firm and him being a part of the senior team of Hertha and being team captain of the Under 21 National Mannschaft. Some people are amazed that as young as we are, we have that status in our lives already.

I was about to head out of my room when Alice, my assistant and very close colleague, or my working best friend came opening the door, revealing Nik with a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

“I’m sorry Mia. He was just smiling at me bringing those flowers and I cannot say no and assisted him to go here.” Alice apologized.

“No worries Alice. It’s okay.”

“Well, I got to go and leave you lovebirds alone.” Alice smiled and left.

“What are you doing here? I thought we’ll just meet at the training ground as agreed upon.” I reacted.

Niklas kissed my cheek and gave me the bouquet. “I cannot wait any longer. I’m excited for today you know. I even sneaked out of training just for this.” He adds smirking.

I slapped his arm softly. “You idiot. What if Coach Dardai will notice you’re gone and summon you tomorrow in his office?”

“Don’t worry. He won’t notice.” He grins.

“What do you mean he won’t notice?! With that height of yours it’ll be a miracle if he won’t.”

“And besides, I asked Davie to cover for me. He knows what to do.”

“And if the coach ask?”

“Davie will just say I went home ahead not asking permission because I have stomach flu.” And he shows his trademark smile to me.

“You dork.” I slapped his arm again softly and he giggles.

“It seems like you’re finished here. So, let’s go?” he asked and I nod.

---

Unlike his other football mates, Niklas is the type that, as much as he could, he wanted to be like normal people do; like eating on the simplest restaurant, which is exactly what we are doing right now, eating dinner.

“I haven’t asked this yet but…what’s the occasion that we went out for dinner? It’s neither your or my birthday nor our anniversary.” I asked while slicing a part of the steak that I was served on.

“Do we have to do this on those dates only?” he asked smiling then he adds. “I just want to make my girlfriend feel special and catch up. We’ve been busy lately especially that we are now able to compete in the Europa league. And this is sort of my gesture of apology to you about what happened last month.”

And what he said made me remember some things. We were giving each other cold shoulders last month because of his attitude of being a couch potato. I got fed up following his trail of mess like picking up his cleats on the corridor and put it on his rack, or picking up his laundry and put it on the hamper. I snapped at him and he snapped back reasoning that he is tired from training.

“Do you think I’m not working outside the house?! I just want us to help out each other inside the house!” I yelled at him.

We went on Davie’s party the next day and I haven’t spent time with him on those moments, drinking, bawling of all the frustrations that I have, and dancing to make myself enjoy…which I ended up sleeping with Nik’s friend and teammate. Nik and I made up a few days later, saying he was sorry that he acted like that and that he should do his share of helping as well because he’s not the only one tired when we reach home.

“It’s been a month or more since it happened. You don’t have to do this.” I told him.

“I really have to.” And then he closes the gap between us and he whispered in my ear, “And it does not end here.”

---

We went home after that with the urgency to continue our date with intimacy. By the time the main door of the house clicks to close, we ripped each other’s clothes as we make out naked when we reached our bedroom. Nik for me is the epitome of “Gentleman on the streets, a beast on the sheets.” You don’t have to deny and I know you will agree, aside from the pretty face that he has, my boyfriend’s body is a blessing from the heavens above and I am very lucky to be able to touch it in ways other people, especially women could not, and the way he gives himself to me feels like he puts me on different dimensions. He knows where my erotic parts are and he knows a lot of ways to make me reach my high again and again.

“That…was…awesome.” He said as he lands beside me after reaching his high. “Are you okay? Are you satisfied?” he asks me. I was closing my eyes, legs shaking from the highs he made me go through. I nod my head signalling him that I was all good. A few minutes later, he gets up of bed and went to the bathroom, removing the condom he was wearing and getting a towel. He wipes me up and throws the towel and when he was about to wear his boxers, I pulled him back to bed and made him lay down and I straddled above him.

“I’m not finished yet.” I smirked then kissed his neck.

---

The next day I woke up alone. I got up of bed feeling a little bit lightheaded but tolerable and went on to prepare myself to work.  When I reached the kitchen I saw food on the table with a note.

“Thanks for being my girlfriend and for a wonderful time last night. I hope you will like this. Nik.”

I smiled and opened the cover of the food. He made me eggs and bacon, a cheese sandwich with milk beside it. Nik maybe a footballer but his culinary skills are awesome. That boy can cook.

But before I could even sit down and eat, I felt my stomach wrenching and I rushed on the sink and vomited. After recovering I started to get a bit worried. Thinking that I have eaten something bad but the food yesterday was prepared well. I tried to calm down for a while to see if I will have another episode. I sat down on the counter and wait. When I felt that it will not happen again, I ate my breakfast.