#Rax says things

[neptuneiris]

could you pretend to be in love? (05/10)

The Challenge

pairing: modern!aemond × fem!reader (fake dating)

summary: new sensations envelop you when you are with Aemond, especially when you learn more details about his relationship with Alys and an unexpected news fills you with nerves.

word count: 6.6k

previous part • series masterlist

new chapter finally!

probably won't be as exciting as the other chapters, however...there is something here going on and I want you guys to figure it out in the comments and we'll see if you are catching what I am👀

the next chapter will be full of drama, believe me, so expect it to come very soon as I'm focusing on finishing writing this story without making new ones and considering I have no more fics pending, just this one🤗

now yes beautiful people, enjoy!

warnings: cursing, language, mentions of cheating.

@melsunshine @at-a-rax-ia @jxdegodfrey @ttkttt @yentroucnagol @kate-to-the-ki @iamavailablesstuff @bluerskiees @urmomsgirlfriend1 @toodlesxcuddles @rosie-posie08 @iloveallmyboys @bellaisasleep @deliaseastar @cupcakesminicakescupcakes @dixie-elocin @lilostif16 @wickedfrsgrl @a-beaverhausen @a-beaverhausen

The sound of birds in the distance reaches your ears.

Today the sky is cloudy, with no chance of rain, the temperature is pleasant and you are thankful that there are no intense sun rays burning your skin when you are outdoors.

You find yourself immersed in your physics homework, sitting on the bleachers of the sports field, where you can only hear the sound of the birds and also faintly the sound of the soccer team training.

You sit in tranquility, undisturbed and unobserved by anyone, when suddenly the sound of footsteps stepping on the metal bleachers pulls you out of your concentration.

You look up and see Aemond approaching, a small smile on his face. You return his greeting with a shy smile and make a small space beside you for him to take a seat.

Aemond plops down nonchalantly next to you, letting out a sigh, then curiously observes what you're doing on your lap.

"What are you doing?"

You deliberately ignore his question and instead, take a loose leaf you had tucked away among your folder, pick it up and hold it out to him, with a gentle yet expectant look.

Aemond takes it and frowns, reading what you've written on it, only getting more confused.

'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen.

'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare.

"And what is this?"

"Have you already forgotten my conditions of the contract?" you tell him amused, "For every party I go with you to, you have to read one of my favorite books or watch one of my favorite movies or shows," you remind him, "So now, you have to pick one of these two of my favorite books."

Aemond rolls his eye with amusement.

"And why exactly do I have to pick one of these two? Don't they seem... repetitive and so usual?"

"That's what people always say, obviously they know these books by the title and their authors, but how many people actually read these books?" you look at him with your tone full of expectation, "I'm sure you haven't read either of them."

He shrugs indifferently, with his nonchalant air.

"So? There are movies," he says confused, "I haven't seen them either, but I know how they both end. In the end they both get married," he points to the title of 'Pride and Prejudice', "And here they both die together and their families stop being rivals," he points to 'Romeo and Juliet'.

You let out a small chuckle at his witty response, but you are not intimidated.

"Yes but there are a lot of things that in the movies they don't show, so... what will be your choice, Mr. Aemond?"

He lets out a laugh.

"Well, we'll see how this 'Romeo and Juliet' is," he decides.

"Perfect."

And when he least expects it, from your backpack you take the book, handing it to him with your clear satisfaction and he still confused but amused examines the book in his hands.

"Good, then give me the other one at once, because there's a new party on Saturday," he tells you, completely grabbing your attention.

You open your eyes wide and stare at him in disbelief and surprise.

"What? So soon?" you ask with clear irritation and disappointment in your look and tone.

"Why are you so disappointed? After all you come out on top too since I'm going to read two of your shitty boring books," he says as he raises them slightly in the air.

"My books aren't shitty and they aren't boring!" you exclaim indignantly giving him a gentle tap on the shoulder, "And it's okay, I just didn't think it would be so soon."

"We'll just go for a little while. Then we can both go get some dinner and I'll drop you off at your house early. Sound good?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

And as soon as you say that, you also hand him the second book with a good forced look, making Aemond laugh and take that book too.

"As much as I like seeing you with a wrinkled nose, take it off or it's going to stay that way," he says amused, crinkling it between his fingers briefly, making you laugh and you immediately move his hand away from your face.

Then he says goodbye to you, before getting up and heading off to his next class. And also not before telling you that he'll see you at lunch.

And as you watch him walk away, you tell yourself that these little interactions are part of pretending, since after all, the guys on the soccer team can see them clearly from this distance.

However, that slight fear returns to yourself that things may get more complicated than you expect.

Fortunately, the rest of the week goes smoothly, the teachers seem to be in a good mood and the homework is not heavy.

And you clearly continue to pretend along with Aemond.

Both he and you continue to act as usual, he is attentive and affectionate when you are together in full view of everyone at school. His gestures and looks full of complicity make you feel special, but at the same time remind you that it's all part of a game.

You also keep your word with Helaena, taking time to sit together for lunch at break time and occasionally Alysanne joins in as well, where you gradually start telling her about Cregan.

Until the day of the party arrives.

You tell your dad that you're going to a birthday celebration for a class friend, nothing big and everything quiet.

Then you opt for a pair of black pants, low-heeled ankle boots, a strappy blouse in a vibrant shade of cherry and a jacket to complement the outfit. And once you look in the mirror, you feel ready, although the nerves begin to settle in your stomach.

And of course, Aemond arrives promptly at your house.

His relaxed expression and smile greet you before you even get into the car. And driving to the party, the atmosphere is comfortable and calm.

And when you both arrive at the house where the party is, it's not a big, loud party like the previous one. But the atmosphere is full of energy, there is music, people dancing, drinks and cigarettes.

And you together with Aemond follow the same procedure to pretend to be a couple in love.

This time, you both decide to be more present with Aemond's friends. You sit between Trevor and Aemond, who immediately puts an arm around your shoulders, pulling you towards him, starting to make conversation with his friends.

And as always, he makes sure you're always included, just like during lunch in the cafeteria.

And while everyone is talking, the guys and Aemond make you laugh, feeling more and more comfortable with them. And as the night goes on, you realize how natural it feels to be next to Aemond, as if you fit perfectly into his world, at least for tonight.

When he at your side looks at you attentively and with some curiosity.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," you nod nonchalantly, "Why?"

"Just asking," he shrugs, then lifts his hand and tucks a lock of your hair behind your ear, "Can I get you something to drink?"

You shake your head.

"I don't want to drink beer or anything like that."

"Then a soda? Or water?"

You let out a small laugh.

"Okay, soda's fine."

"Alright. I'll be back soon," he says then leaves a soft kiss on your forehead and gets up to head towards the kitchen.

He leaves for a moment and you are left talking to his friends, who are a lot of fun and in fact, because of them and Aemond, you begin to understand lacrosse as such, since that's all they talk about, besides their nonsense.

And also about some of the girls they like.

And also in that small moment that Aemond leaves, as you briefly observe the party around you, you see Alys with her group of friends in another corner.

You just casually watch them, you don't plan to give them any attention, but just as your eyes watch Alys, she watches you back.

And you are struck by how she says something to her friends with a smirk of superiority without taking her eyes off you and then everyone in her group watches you and laughs too.

You snort as you look away, as if you really care.

Aemond returns with your soda and only a glass of beer for himself, resuming conversation with both you and his friends, having a good time together.

Time passes and you feel the need to go to the bathroom, so you leave your now empty glass on the small table in the center.

"I'm going to go to the bathroom," you announce, catching his attention, starting to stretch a bit to get up.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asks you thoughtfully, "I mean, wait for you outside."

"No need, don't worry. I'll be back soon," you assure him, standing up.

"Okay," he nods at you with a small smile.

With a nod, you walk away towards the second floor bathroom, where you'll mostly take a moment to recharge your batteries before heading back to the party.

Luckily the bathroom is empty and you do everything you need to do without pressure.

Then you take a deep breath, allow yourself a brief moment of calm before returning to the party, wash your hands and mentally go over how you should behave around Aemond in front of everyone.

As you exit the bathroom, just down the hall, you notice Alys' presence in the area near the stairs.

You think about just ignoring her and walking past her, but when her eyes watch you, as if she is waiting for you, a mischievous smile curves her lips and she turns fully towards you, giving you her full attention.

"What do we have here," she mutters sarcastically, moving towards you while holding a red plastic cup in her hand.

You watch her completely unconcerned and walk past her, as you don't plan on dealing with her right now or ever.

"How does it feel to be Aemond's new pet?" she asks with a mocking laugh, planting herself in front of you, stopping your steps, "Or did you just think you could replace me so easily?"

Your heart begins to pound in your chest, but you stand your ground, reminding yourself that you will not let his words affect you, as his expression is filled with disdain.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," you reply calmly, trying not to give her the pleasure of seeing you affected by her comments.

She glares at you, before a sly smile spreads across her face.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says with false sympathy, "I really thought you knew."

You frown.

"He's always done this, ever since we started dating," she says, "When we'd break up, he'd date the first girl in front of him as a pathetic attempt to replace me and make me jealous, so you're not the first and won't be the last, sweetie," she tells you with a fake pout, feigning pity for you.

You fix your gaze on Alys, feeling a mixture of anger and frustration coursing through your body. Who does she think she is to talk to you like that?

"I don't need your false sympathy," you reply with determination, your voice resonating louder than you expected, "What Aemond and I have has nothing to do with you."

Alys rolls her eyes in exasperation, as if your words are irrelevant to her.

"Oh, please," she replies dismissively, "Don't lie to yourself. He's always been like that, he's just looking to distract himself and you're just the last in line," she points out to you irrelevantly, "When we broke up, he was crying like a baby for me, begging me to get back together."

Your heart clenches at her words, with a surge of emotions surging through your chest.

For a moment, doubt takes hold of you.

Did Aemond really do that? Was he so affected by their breakup?

You tell yourself that maybe if he hadn't, he would never have asked you to do this. But this was mostly so that Alys would stop making a fool of him at school by cheating on him, not to get his attention and make her jealous... right?

"I'm not surprised you don't know," she continues to tell you dismissively, "But do you really think he loves you? Please," she snorts derisively, "He'll dump you in a few weeks when I give him the slightest hope because he's still crazy about me," she says superiorly, "Look at you and look at me. I know what he's into and that's definitely not you, especially you."

You try to ignore the stinging pain and keep your composure, clenching your jaw.

"I don't care what happened between you," you reply bravely, even if your voice shakes a little, "Ours is different."

She lets out a mocking laugh.

"Oh you poor little thing, you're so naive."

"If that's all, thank you so much for that vital information for my life," you tell her just as mockingly, walking past her, determined to leave her behind.

But just as you pass by her side, Alys moves along with you and purposefully slams your shoulder and arm with brutality, causing the beer in her hand to spill in a dull motion onto your chest and clothes.

The cold, sticky liquid slides down your blouse and pants, leaving you drenched and shocked by the suddenness of the moment.

You feel the liquid soak through your clothes and a shiver runs down your back. And you look down, watching in disbelief as the drink spreads through your clothes.

Then you look back at Alys, who has a mocking, amused look on her face.

"Oh, gosh, how clumsy of me," Alys scoffs, her tone of voice full of fake concern, "I'm really sorry, it was an accident."

You take a deep breath to contain your frustration, but her words spark a small spark of anger inside you. How can she be so brazen?

"An accident?" you repeat, disbelief in your voice as you stare at her with a frown.

Alys just smiles mischievously, enjoying your discomfort and what she just did to you.

"Enjoy the party, honey. But first, maybe you should clean yourself up," she says before turning away, leaving you soaking wet and clearly feeling very proud.

You don't even know what to do, feeling this way leaves you paralyzed for a moment, until you finally make your way back to the bathroom.

At the sink you further wet your clothes with water, which looks worse, but at least you won't stink of beer.

Drops of beer also splashed into your hair, so you wipe that off as well, feeling the humiliation wash over you and you don't even know exactly why.

But you do.

You look down at your ruined booties too, soaked from the front with beer and water.

The skin on your chest and collarbone feels chuckling from the beer, so you wipe it off too, when suddenly, there's a knock on the door.

"One moment!" you exclaim grumpily, still cleaning yourself.

"Y/N?"

You hear Aemond's worried voice outside.

"Fuck," you curse in a whisper.

"Are you okay?"

You bite the inside of your cheek and let out a long breath, already having the idea that you won't be able to hide this from him.

You were only supposed to come to the bathroom and you've already been late, of course he must have sensed something was wrong and come looking for you.

You leave the wet towel in the sink and open the door, where Aemond instantly notices you and opens his eye wide, seeing your clothes and some of your soaked hair.

"What happened?" he asks worriedly, moving quickly towards you, examining you.

You struggle to keep your composure, but can't, a bad mood overcomes you and you make your displeasure clear.

"Alys threw her drink on me," you finally say, stepping aside to let him go into the bathroom with you, reaching back for the damp towel to clean your skin.

Surprise crosses your face before it morphs into an expression of restrained fury and disbelief.

"What?"

You hiss, looking in the mirror at yourself as you wipe your sticky skin.

"Did she say something to you?" he asks, his voice serious but full of concern.

You let out a gesture of disbelief.

"She said things many things," you say seriously, not watching him for a moment, trying to dry your hair with the towel.

Aemond frowns, clearly annoyed.

He walks over to you and takes the towel from your hands, stopping your attempt to dry your hair. His gaze meets yours through the mirror, searching for answers.

"What things did dhe say?"

You sigh, feeling the weight of the situation on your shoulders.

"It doesn't matter, she just said bullshit," you reply evasively, looking away.

Aemond watches your face, urgently wanting you to look him in the eye, but you don't, you avoid his gaze and are obviously annoyed with the situation, which he doesn't blame you for.

He's annoyed too, because he knew he should have been near you to protect you if Alys is in the same place as the two of you.

He sighs in frustration, feeling the weight of responsibility on his shoulders, watching your soaked clothes and how you continue to clean yourself.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs sincerely, his voice full of regret, "You shouldn't have gone through this. She's totally out of her mind."

You remain silent for a moment, fighting the emotions that threaten to overwhelm you. As he looks at you with anguish and regret for not protecting you from Alys' comments and actions.

"It's not your fault," you finally say in a serious voice, still not looking at him, then set the damp towel down on the sink and inhale softly, "Can you take me home?"

Aemond nods, feeling guilty.

"Sure," he murmurs, "But first... you can put on my jacket," he says as he starts to take it off, "I'll be waiting outside."

He takes it off and gently hands it to you, his hand brushing against yours with a gesture of tenderness.

"Thanks," you murmur.

He exits the bathroom, closes the door and you remove your blouse and soaked jacket, leaving your bra down and immediately wrap his jacket around you, zipping it up almost to your throat.

With your clothes in your hands, you walk out of the bathroom and Aemond watches you silently, attentive and concerned, with a sadness and frustration in his eye that he can't hide.

He hates your distance.

A few moments ago the two of you were having a good time and now that Alys has done this... he hates that you are apart from him.

You both return to the party and Aemond doesn't even say goodbye to his friends, thinking he'll text them later, grabbing your shoulder and walking out of the house with you.

Together, you walk to his car in silence, where he doesn't dare to say a single word to you and you don't really want to talk either.

And all the way to your house, that nagging feeling doesn't leave your system.

But is it specifically because Alys spilled her drink on you or is it the interesting information she shared with you about Aemond?

You don't.

But you do.

Aemond tried to talk to you about what happened but you wouldn't let him.

You feel it's something you shouldn't make a big deal about. After all, he and you are not really 'dating'. So before he dropped you off at your house, you just reassured him that everything was fine and nothing more.

Now it's your father who drops you off at school on this day and you head towards your locker, immersed for a moment in thought.

You carelessly take your backpack off your shoulders to open it at the same time you open your locker, but as you do so, a polaroid falls to the floor.

You frown and bend down to pick it up, confused, since it's not yours.

And as you look at it, your heart begins to beat too hard in your chest as you see a picture of Aemond and Alys as if at a school dance or a party, both of them hugging.

But that's not what catches your attention, what does is seeing how there's is a picture of your face overlaid over where Alys' face should be, indicating just that, her replacement, a second place or temporary substitute.

But the thing about you and Aemond is not real.

So... why are you so affected by something you know isn't real?

It's a question that haunts your mind as you struggle to maintain your composure, beginning to tremble and feel your breathing heavy.

You swallow hard and press your lips together, when just then, you hear it...the giggles.

You raise your gaze and in the distance, you see Alys with her friends watching in your direction and laughing, clearly mocking you.

Although your relationship with Aemond is fake, the pain you feel at this moment is real.

And before you can react, Aemond's voice is suddenly heard.

"Hey, I was—

You turn your head towards him instantly and your eyes meet his, but his words hang in the air the moment he sees what you hold in your hands.

His soft expression slowly transforms from confusion to fury as he sees the picture. His whole face hardens completely and he purses his lips.

And sure enough, it's a matter of him realizing what's happening, as he hears Alys and her friends' laughter and looks in their direction, hardening his gaze even more.

"Aemond—

You try to speak but he instantly walks over to where Alys is standing without saying a word to you, taking the picture from your hands.

Your heart beats harder, opening your eyes wide and you want to walk towards him, to stop him, but somehow, you are paralyzed and you don't know exactly why.

Tension begins to feel in the air and you feel like your heart will burst out of your chest at any moment.

Aemond arrives in front of Alys with a determined look, his jaw tense and his fists clenched at his side. Instead of shouting, however, his voice is firm and controlled.

"From now on, I don't ever want to see you keep bothering my girlfriend with your fucking little girl pranks again, do you understand me?" he says angrily to then throw the photo at her.

The photo hits her face lightly and Alys looks up at him, surprised by the sudden intensity of his voice and his movements.

Instead of showing fear, however, her face hardens with an expression of disdain and disbelief.

"Oh, look who thinks he's the hero," she replies with her cynical smile, trying to hide her discomfort behind her façade of superiority, "I didn't know you had to protect your little girlfriend, Aemond. And come on, we were just joking."

Aemond clenches his fists, his jaw tense with frustration. But he continues to maintain his composure, his eye fixed on hers with determination.

"Oh yeah? You were just joking?" he repeats, "And the party thing on Saturday was a fucking joke too?"

Her face tenses slightly at the mention of the party, her smile fading momentarily before her regains his composure.

"That was an accident—

"Yeah, right. Everything to you is an accident, something you didn't meant to do, something that got out of hand. How could I not know about that, right? It's always the same fucking story with you."

She purses her lips.

"Who the fuck do you think you are to talk to me like that—

"Leave me and my girlfriend alone," he tells her slowly and clearly, "I'm not going to tell you again and I don't want to know that you're doing your shitty jokes again," he warns her, making it clear with his tone that he's not willing to tolerate her childish games anymore.

Alys recoils slightly at the annoyance and determination in his voice, her confidence waning slightly.

And before she can say anything else, Aemond turns and walks back along with you.

The students around you are still fully attentive to the confrontation, shocked and delighted by the drama, while you watch Aemond in awe of the way he has defended you.

"Come on," he murmurs to you in a softer, gentler way, closing your locker door and taking your hand, leading you with him away from the watchful eyes.

After what happened, he takes you with him to a nearby empty classroom and once inside, he gently closes the door behind him and turns to look at you, his expression attentive and full of concern.

He doesn't say anything right away and you just bite the inside of your cheek and lower your gaze, not knowing exactly what to say or what to do.

Until he exhales deeply, releasing the tension built up in his shoulders.

"Are you okay?" he asks, his voice soft and comforting as he watches you intently.

You nod slightly, though your hands still tremble slightly.

"I'm fine," you reply, trying to sound unconcerned.

He sighs, tearing his gaze away from yours for a moment.

"I'm so sorry. I-I didn't... I didn't expect something like this to happen. And she..." he runs a hand across his forehead in frustration, "It's not fair for you to be dealing with this."

"You have nothing to apologize for, Aemond," you tell him softly and sincerely, "But thank you for standing up for me."

He sighs.

"And you don't have to thank me, Y/N. It was the least I could do. But I promise you this is the last time something like this happens."

"You can't control what Alys does or doesn't do."

He exhales again.

"I know, but we never agreed that you would go through these bad times in the contract."

"Hey," you take a step towards him, your gaze soft as you see the frustration and worry on his face, starting to get upset, "Aemond," you call his name in a calm manner, "It's okay. I'm fine. Yes, the party thing and today was difficult but..." you shrug, "I'm fine. It's nothing I can't handle."

Still the worry doesn't leave his face.

"Are you sure? At the party you were upset and I don't blame you, but I don't want this to affect between us. You were distant and now...

His words float in the air and you try to place a small, comforting smile in his direction, though it appears more of a grimace.

"We're fine," you assure him softly.

His gaze reflects a mixture of relief, watching you without another word, then briefly glancing around.

And then an idea seems to cross his mind and he watches you again, attentive.

"What do you say we skip this first class?"

"What?" you immediately inquire.

"I know you don't like skipping classes but just one missed class isn't going to hurt you."

You frown.

"And what do you want to do?"

He shrugs.

"Just talk."

You bite your lower lip, hesitant.

But it's only enough to see the look on Aemond's face and his posture, utterly determined and solely waiting for you, that you finally let out a resigned sigh and nod.

Soon the two of you are sitting in the bleachers, with almost no one around, just the cheerleading squad training in the corner of the huge soccer and lacrosse field.

The atmosphere is quiet and you like that, just like the last time you were here and he chose the book of 'Romeo and Juliet' to read.

And once both of you are silent, just looking around and feeling each other's presence, Aemond decides to speak.

"What did Alys say to you at that party?"

He dares in asking, his gaze searching yours with a mixture of curiosity and concern, while you remain silent for a moment, not expecting that he would try to bring up the subject again.

And inevitably Alys' words echo in your mind, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth.

And you don't understand why.

You don't understand why you feel this unpleasant sensation when you remember her words.

"Well, she wasn't very nice..." you're silent for a moment, "Actually she wasn't at all but..." you lick your lips and avert your gaze from him, focusing on the lacrosse field, "She called me... your new pet, a new pathetic attempt to replace her."

He frowns, his gaze hardening as he hears your words, incredulous and annoyed. And he doesn't need to say anything, his face speaks for itself.

"She said you did that all the time when you both broke up... you know," you clear your throat, "Going out with other girls to make her jealous so she'd come back to you. That I was just a distraction and that pretty soon you'd drop me the moment she gave you the slightest hope of getting back together."

His lips tighten into a line, closing his eye for a moment and shaking his head, still intent on your words. And you prepare to say the next thing more softly and tactfully.

"She also said that you cried to her and begged her to come back this last time you both broke up."

He snorts, more incredulous than ever.

"Of course she said that."

And before he can speak further, you feel the need to clarify your behavior a bit.

"I always acted with her as if we were a real couple," you clarify, "I wasn't bothered by what she said," what a fucking lie, "What bothered me was her talking to me that way and throwing her drink on me."

"No, no, it's okay, I understand that," he assures you instantly, in a soft voice, "But everything she said to you is not true."

You watch him with your parted lips, slightly surprised and beginning to feel your heart knot.

"It isn't?"

"No," he says more firmly, incredulous, "It's true that I begged her to get back together, but that was a while ago, practically in the beginning of our relationship when it was fun for her to break up and come back," he explains to you, serious and honest with his words, "I was crazy about her, I even grew to love her and gave her all of me. But I was just a fucking child experiencing his first love... and that wasn't enough for her."

His confession takes your breath away for a moment, revealing a vulnerability you didn't expect, watching his serious and frustrated face clearly from what happened at the party and an hour ago at your locker.

You have no idea what to say, not wanting to minimize his feelings from that time nor now by saying the wrong thing.

"It's also not true that I was dating other girls to make her jealous to get her to come back to me, I-I..." he shakes his head, "I've never been like that. And you're certainly no distraction or... my new pet," he says with distaste.

You let out a long breath.

"I'm sorry," you say softly, "She said it in a way that made me believe her. I don't know what I was thinking," you say sincerely, "And I'm also sorry she made you feel that way," you mumble, feeling a lump in your throat.

"Don't worry, it's okay," he says softly, with a bitter little smile and his gaze lowered.

He shakes his head regretfully, as if he's remembering a past he'd rather forget and you feel guilty.

"It's just..." he starts to say, "Why would I want to go back to her if she cheated on me?" he asks incredulously, "She was the one who cried and begged to get back together this last time. And you know why? Because I found her fucking that guy in her car after she told me she was feeling sick and didn't feel like seeing me or going out with me."

Fuck.

His words echo in your mind, bringing with them a wave of sadness and empathy, definitely not expecting to hear that.

You never knew how it was that Alys cheated on Aemond, it only began to be said that it was with a college guy, but it was never said under what circumstances exactly she cheated on him.

You feel a sharp pang in your chest and suddenly feel outraged at what he had to endure, that she betrayed his trust in that horrible way.

How could she do that to him?

You don't have a heart made of stone to put a person through that.

You feel grateful that he shared this with you. It just shows you the level of trust you both have built. And you take a moment before you speak, trying to find the right words.

And the first thing you do is raise your hand and place it on top of his.

"I'm so sorry," you say softly, sincerely, "I'm so sorry you went through that. You didn't deserve it."

"You don't have to apologize, Y/N," he replies gently, accepting your touch, "None of it was your fault."

Then he sighs and you realize there's a weight to his words, a pain he's carried with him for some time.

"It's just... "he continues speaking, his voice heavy with mixed emotions, "Even if this thing between the two of us was real, why do this? Why tell these lies and want to hurt you with her cruel words and actions? Why won't she let me move on?"

You press your lips together and your heart clenches as you listen to his anguish.

"Maybe she's still in love with you," you mutter, trying to find a reason, "In her own twisted way."

He shakes his head, incredulous.

"This isn't love. It wasn't before and it isn't now. She just wants to have me eating out of the palm of her hand, like always."

His words are blunt and make you feel even more helpless about the situation.

And there's really nothing you can do, you can only be here for him, listen to him, support him in whatever he needs and be... his friend, like you've really been all this time, putting aside your facade of a girlfriend in love.

Right?

He lets out another sigh, this time heavier than the previous ones, and then leans against the metal of the bleachers behind you, leaning back.

You think he will let go of your hand, but he pulls you along with him, both of you close, shoulder to shoulder, both of you suddenly falling silent, saying nothing more, just staring at the horizon.

Until he speaks again.

"I don't want to think about it anymore," he says as he watches you and you look back at him almost instantly, feeling his thumb gently caress the back of your hand, sending a kind of electricity through your body.

And you propose the first thing that comes to mind.

"Do you want to listen to music until the next class starts?" you say in a soft voice and he nods immediately.

You take your headphones from your backpack, your phone and settle back down next to him, handing him an earphone and then you play your Spotify playlist with the songs you keep listening to lately.

You don't even know if he also likes the same style of music as you, but he doesn't complain or say anything to you the moment you start playing The 1997, Harry Styles, The Weeknd, Chase Atlantic, Cigarettes After Sex and Lana del Rey.

Until he closes his eyes and suddenly uses you as a pillow, dropping his head on your shoulder, immediately this catching your attention and feeling a strange sensation in your lower stomach.

Despite being surprised and feeling confused for a moment, you do absolutely nothing to push him away and after a moment of hesitation, you slowly drop your head on top of his as well.

He doesn't open his eye or say anything to you, he just settles in better and then you both get very still, continuing to listen to music.

And you can't help but wonder; are the two of you even pretending now?

You honestly don't know.

"We have a problem."

That's the first thing Aemond says to you on a Tuesday morning when he stops by to drive you to school.

Immediately this catches your attention and you look at him slightly concerned, closing the passenger seat door to the side of you and watch him completely attentively.

"What's wrong?"

"My mom knows about you."

Shit.

Your whole body tenses and you watch him with your eyes wide open in surprise.

"And of course, she wants to meet you."

Oh shit.

"B-but...

You try to speak, not finding the right words watching him confused, not understanding anything and Aemond helps you with that as soon as he sees your completely disbelieving and surprised face.

"Aegon told her," he lets you know, "The fucking cunt talked out of turn and before he knew it, I'd already told her everything."

Oh God.

"And what did she tell you?" you ask, feeling a knot in your stomach.

"She wants you to go to dinner Friday night."

He tells you in a soft voice and looking just as worried as you do, still trying to convey calm.

"I told her I'd talk to you about it, but..." he lets out a resigned sigh, "I know her. And she won't leave me alone until she meets you. She's really nice, I swear, she's the sweetest person and... I know we agreed not to involve families but I had nothing to do with this."

Your mind is spinning as you finish processing the information, feeling an unexpected uneasiness and anxiety.

The mere thought of meeting Aemond's mom already makes you feel nauseous from the same nerves. However, you empathize with him, as this wasn't something he planned and it was by third parties who think he and you are actually dating.

But still, you feel incredibly nervous and the day hasn't even come close.

"I get it," you mumble, trying to hide your nervousness, licking your lips, then looking at him hesitantly, "You want me to?"

Aemond averts his gaze from you, running a hand over his face, not knowing exactly what to say to you, as you wait for his thoughtful response.

Until he lets out a long breath and moves a little closer towards you, placing his hand on top of yours.

"I know this is a lot to ask, especially after we agreed not to do this," he tells you softly, "And my mother is insistent, I do want you to meet her, but... if you don't want to do it, it's totally fine with me," he assures you, "The least I want to do is pressure you into doing something you're not comfortable with."

His words comfort you a little, but you still feel the nervousness wash over you, as well as feel a slight pang of guilt.

You bite your lower lip, struggling with your own emotions and thoughts.

"It's just that I feel remorseful that I'm going to meet her and she's going to meet me when this isn't real," you say in a sad, worried tone.

"I know," he says with compression, holding his hand tighter with yours, "Me too but you won't have to do this again. I'll take care of it, I promise."

You let out a long breath you too, lowering your gaze to the clasped hands in your lap as you feel Aemond's attentive and concerned gaze on you.

"All right," you finally reply, "If it's important to you and your mother, I'll handle it."

"Are you sure? You can tell me no and I'll understand."

"No, don't worry," you assure him, "I will."

He smiles softly at you with gratitude, but also with a hint of concern in his eye.

"Thank you. I really appreciate it."

And despite your own misgivings, you return the small smile.

"It's okay, really. I just... need a little time to think."

Aemond nods, understanding.

"Sure."

general taglist:

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 13: Condemned From The Start] [Series Finale]

Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra’s wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother’s life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting…

Chapter warnings: Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, references to sexual content (18+), death, angsttttttt, more children than usual, Wolfman!

Series title is a lyrics from: “7 Minutes In Heaven” by Fall Out Boy.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year” by Fall Out Boy.

Word count: 8.1k.

Link to chapter list: HERE.

Taglist (more in comments): @tinykryptonitewerewolf @lauraneedstochill @not-a-glad-gladiator @daenysx @babyblue711 @arcielee @at-a-rax-ia @bhanclegane @jvpit3rs @padfooteyes @marvelescvpe @travelingmypassion @darkenchantress @yeahright0h @poohxlove @trifoliumviridi @bloodyflowerrr @fan-goddess @devynsficrecs @flowerpotmage @thelittleswanao3 @seabasscevans @hiraethrhapsody @libroparaiso @echos-muses @st-eve-barnes @chattylurker @lm-txles @vagharnaur @moonlightfoxx @storiumemporium @insabecs @heliosscribbles @beautifulsweetschaos @namelesslosers @partnerincrime0 @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @yawneneytiri @marbles-posts @imsolence @maidmerrymint @backyardfolklore @nimaharchive @anxiousdaemon @under-the-aspen-tree @amiraisgoingthruit @dd122004dd @randomdragonfires @jetblack4real @joliettes

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoy the finale.🦀💚

In the Eyrie, one of Rhaena Targaryen’s three dragon eggs has hatched at last; the creature is small and pink, and she has named it Morning. When Rhaena’s tears fall onto the scales of her diminutive wings, they glitter like flecks of rose quartz. Deep within the snow-laden labyrinth of the Mountains of the Moon, Nettles is in hiding with Sheepstealer; already the nearby clans are bringing her offerings of meat and treasure, axes and clubs and daggers, hairpins carved from the ribs of enemies and necklaces made of bear teeth. Silverwing is settling into a lair on an island in the Red Lake at the northwestern corner of the Reach. Word of this has travelled back to King’s Landing, and Borros Baratheon implores Aegon II to seize Silverwing for himself; but the king does not want a new dragon. He wants Sunfyre back. That grim truth aside, Aegon is unable to trek across the continent to tame the beast anyway. Some days he cannot even cross a room. At the bottom of the Gods Eye, bodies are dissolving into bones, threads of long white hair breaking loose to flow in the currents like weightless strands of spider webs torn free by cold drafts. And only a few miles from the border of the Crownlands—preparing to cross the icy waters of the Blackwater Rush—the army of Northmen camps under a full moon in a clear, indigo sky heavy with stars like glinting coins.

“There are passageways under King’s Landing,” Clement Celtigar says. He stands by the bonfire with his sword in his hand, his face flame-bright and eager, forever licking up drops of the Kingmaker’s approval, a stray cat lapping milk splashed in an alley. Increasingly, Cregan Stark finds him tiresome. Clement is brash and dramatic, forever swearing vengeance, reveling in his newfound position as the head of his house. The Warden of the North has never had to beg for attention, admiration, acclaim. These things come to him like snow falls to the earth in winter: effortlessly, inevitably. Yet Cregan tries to be patient. Clement is soon to be his brother-in-law, and it is dishonorable to fail to extend courtesy to one’s kin. Furthermore, it seems, Clement has his uses.

“Are there really?”

Clement nods. He wears the banner of his house on a strip of fabric looped around his upper arm: crabs red like blood, a backdrop of white like snow. “That monster’s disciples used them to kidnap my sister from the Red Keep. But she fought hard. When we searched her rooms, all the furniture was upturned and the sheets ripped from her bed.”

“She is brave,” Cregan murmurs in agreement, though he is distracted now. The air tastes like smoke and ice, the wind rubs raw spots into the soldiers’ faces. They are arriving just in time. The depths of winter is no time to wage war. Cregan Stark imagines how you will greet him when he liberates you: a desperate embrace, hands that refuse to let go, whispered gratitude and breathless kisses on his earth-stained knuckles, bones of steel softened by the innate weakness of womanhood. You will love him, of course you will, fervently and entirely. Then when the realm and succession are secured, the Kingmaker will take you North and wed you in the tradition of his people, under the heart tree where the Old Gods can witness it. And then there will be the wedding night. In Cregan’s understanding, women receive little pleasure from the act itself. It is a burden they bear for the men they love, for the children they are divinely tasked with bringing into existence. Cregan Stark intends to alleviate your suffering in this regard as much as possible…yet he has already begun to choose the names of the sons he will make with you. He especially likes the sound of Brandon, sturdy and grounded and thought to mean leader or prince. “This is the last night your sister will ever spend in the clutches of the Usurper.”

“Praise the Seven.” Then Clement adds diplomatically: “And the Old Gods too, of course.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Cregan Stark says, gazing up into the night sky where constellations tell the stories men deem worthy of remembering. “And the start of a brand new one.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“How did you learn to braid hair?” little Jaehaera asks you in her lilting, reedy voice like a bird’s. You are sitting behind her on the floor in Alicent’s bedchamber. Nearby, Autumn is flipping through a child’s book with Rhaenyra’s ever-solemn son, murmuring as she points to colorful illustrations of ravens, dolphins, bears, dragons, crabs. They are learning to read together.

“My sisters taught me,” you tell the princess. Firelight turns her silver hair to gold, her pale skin to flames. Logs crack and pop as they melt to glowing embers. Alicent glances over at you and sighs despairingly. The dowager queen, so thin she might disappear, is hunched in a chair by the fireplace. She has an unshakeable, rattling sort of cough that reminds you of how Sunfyre sounded on Dragonstone when he was near the end. Her long auburn tresses are falling out in handfuls. She will not survive the winter, this is a certainty.

“You have sisters?” Jaehaera says, surprised. “How many?”

You smile faintly as you weave her hair into one thick braid like the kind Aemond once wore when he went to battle. “Three. Piper, Petra, and Penelope.”

“Where are they now?”

“Back on Claw Isle, where I came from. With our mother.” Mourning Father, mourning Everett, writing letters to Clement to keep his spirits high as he and the Warden of the North march towards King’s Landing to slay the Greens’ king and bind me to a different man’s will.

“What’s Claw Isle like?” Jaehaera asks with a child’s clear, boundless curiosity.

“Rocky, misty, grey. But the ocean is beautiful.” You think of Aegon’s eyes, the same as his daughter’s, a murky storm-blue that is deeper than it looks.

“What brought you here?”

You consider this before you answer. You see it, you feel it: cinders like dark snow in the air, Aemond’s iron grip on your forearm. “When your father was burned at the Battle of Rook’s Rest, he needed someone to help heal him. Your uncle Aemond found me.”

“And he asked you to stay with us?”

He would have slit my throat if I said no. “Yes, he asked very politely, as any gentleman would. And of course I agreed. I wanted to make the king strong again. I wanted to take his pain away.”

Jaehaera stares down at her tiny hands, palms crossed with lines that are long and shadowy in the shifting firelight. She does not speak of Aegon. She does not know him, and he frightens her: the burns on his skin, the suffering in his glazed eyes. She has no memories to impress his true character upon her. If she does not make them herself, she will believe whatever she is told. “I miss Aemond. I miss Daeron.”

“I know, sweetheart.” They were formally laid to rest yesterday on two funeral pyres. Daeron’s bloodied, charred, seafoam green cape was burned to ashes on one. All that was left of Aemond—his favorite books, his quills and ink, small leather eyepatches from when he was a boy—were torched on the other. “I miss them too.”

Jaehaera’s braid is finished. You reach into a pocket of your emerald green velvet gown to retrieve what you have brought for her: a thin golden chain necklace with Aegon’s ring as a pendant. He can’t wear it anymore. His fingers are too swollen. “What is this?” Jaehaera says as you place the chain around her neck. She lifts the ring and peers at it, gold wings and jade eyes.

“It’s supposed to resemble Sunfyre,” you explain. “Your father loves you very much, Jaehaera. He wanted you to have this ring and keep it with you always.” Aegon didn’t say that; he rarely mentions Jaehaera at all. Sometimes you think he forgets she exists. But she is a part of him, she is his legacy, and you cannot look at any piece of her without seeing the man you love.

“He gave it to me? Like a gift?”

“Yes. A gift.” A gift, an inheritance, a relic, a reminder.

Jaehaera turns around and looks up at you hopefully, vast wave-blue eyes like winter oceans. “Do you think I’ll have another dragon someday?”

Her own infant beast, Morghul, was killed in the Dragonpit before Rhaenyra fled the city. “Maybe,” you tell her. “There are eggs that could hatch someday. And there are a few unclaimed adults left, Silverwing and the Cannibal. Perhaps you’ll tame one.”

She wrinkles her nose in confusion. “What’s a cannibal?”

Someone who murders, devours, fuels their body to the detriment of their soul. “Someone who eats their own kind. Like a dragon who feeds on other dragons.”

“So just like in the war. Dragons killing dragons.”

“Exactly,” you say, a shiver crawling down your spine. “Now go show your new necklace to Grandmother.”

Jaehaera wobbles to her feet and dashes across the firelit bedchamber to where Alicent is slumped in her chair. “Look, look! It’s Sunfyre!” you hear Jaehaera chirping. Alicent examines the ring—skeletal hands trembling, large dark eyes slick with tears—and dutifully fawns over it, telling the little girl how beautiful she looks, how brave she has been. Then she bundles Jaehaera into her boney arms and holds her like she’ll never let go. Autumn catches your gaze from the other side of the room, and when you leave to return to Aegon she follows.

“What is your plan if the Greens lose the battle?” she says in the hallway under an arc of grey stones. Her tone is urgent, her hazel eyes sharp. Everyone knows the Northmen are within days of King’s Landing. Borros Baratheon—a large, loud, abrasive man, but with a bottomless appetite for combat—and his soldiers will march out of the city tomorrow to meet Cregan Stark’s army on the fields of the Crownlands, sparse and grey with winter. The Lord of Storm’s End has spent hours locked in the council chamber discussing strategy with Larys Strong, Corlys Velaryon, and the misfortunate yet courageous Tyland Lannister, maimed by his months of torture at the hands of the Blacks.

“We won’t.” We can’t.

Autumn slams her palm against the wall behind you; the sick thud of flesh against stone reminds you of the day Helaena died. “Wake up. We might. You’d better have your options figured out.”

And you recall Larys’ words on Dragonstone: I think it’s time for you to consider what your options are if a Green victory no longer appears to be viable. “We’ll run,” you say weakly. “We’ll take Aegon and we’ll escape through the corridors under the Red Keep, just like he did before. Cregan Stark will kill Aegon if he finds him. I can’t let that happen. We’ll have to run.”

“Run where?” Autumn snaps pointedly, pushing you towards a conclusion you refuse to acknowledge.

“I don’t know.”

“Where? Where could we go that is beyond the grasp of your wolf if he seizes the capital?”

“Dorne, Essos. Somewhere, anywhere.”

“The king won’t survive a journey like that.”

You cover your face with your hands, feel the biting cold of snowflakes melting in your hair, see the stains of earth on your thighs as Cregan Stark forces them apart. How can I lie with a man who hailed the deaths of people I loved? How can I spend the rest of my life listening to him being called a hero for killing Aegon? How can I give him children? How could I love a baby that was half-made of him? “We ran before. We’ll have to do it again.”

Autumn scoffs. “You have no idea what it means to be a woman on your own in the world. What will you become without a great house, without protection? A prostitute? A peasant? Will you eat scraps covered with rot or mold? Will you live in a tree? Will you beg some family to take you in? And then when the father who is oh-so-gallant in daylight starts fumbling under your blankets once the candles are blown out, will you let him inside you? Or will you fight him off and risk a blade in your guts, your throat? You have no fucking idea what it’s like out there.”

“I don’t care what happens to me if Aegon’s gone.”

“You would abandon Jaehaera? You would abandon me?” Autumn demands. “You speak for us now. You are the only one who can. Our fates are twisted up with yours.”

That’s true. And I promised Helaena I would look out for her daughter. You can’t imagine a life without Aegon; there was a time when he was only a name—and an infamous one, a terrible one, soulless and monstrous—but now he has broken down the eaves of what you were once resigned to call your life and painted colors in the sky you’d never glimpsed before, never even dreamed of. You ask Autumn with genuine, painful bewilderment: “What is the point of learning that something exists only to have it taken away? Why would that happen? Where is the justice in it, where is the reason?”

Autumn smiles, sad and patient. “Ah, this is an affliction of the highborn. You still believe that there is a design, and that life has some amount of fairness in it. There is no divine judgment being passed, my lady. There is no god weighing the worth of your dragon or your wolf or yourself. Life is random, and it is ungovernable, and it is very often cruel. And that makes it all the more remarkable that you knew the king for the time you did. That you ever met him.”

It wasn’t enough. And I can never go back to who I was before. “I’m sorry. I should not complain to you. Your losses have been terrible.”

“It is no contest,” Autumn replies, weary now. “But I should go back to check on the children. They need me.”

“No. They love you.”

And now she beams, sparkling eyes and copper ringlets. She doesn’t need to say it, you can both feel it in the winter-cold air. She loves them in return. She loves them fiercely. As long as they live, she will have reasons to.

When you reach Aegon’s bedchamber, Grand Maester Orwyle is just leaving. He bows to you and grins, pleased that you have both survived the fall and retaking of King’s Landing. He is haggard from his months in the dungeons when Rhaenyra ruled the capital, but he endured. Who would have guessed at the start of this war that the old man had more years left than Aemond or Daeron or harmless little Maelor? You wait in the hallway for the maester to amble sluggishly by, but then when he is gone, you peer through the slit of the half-open door to see that Lord Larys Strong is speaking to Aegon, who is propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows and wearing only his cotton sleeping trousers. He is thin, frail, ghostly pale with the exception of the scars that are a mosaic of white and scarlet and bruise-like violet. Aegon and Larys have not noticed you. You linger just outside the doorway, watching, listening.

You can take care of Aegon as much as you wish now: feed him, clothe him, clean sweat from his brow, dose him with milk of the poppy, rub rose oil into his scars, stretch his legs, test the heat of his skin for fever. He’s too weak to stop you. He can’t walk, can’t stand, can’t stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time, can’t even pour his own wine or milk of the poppy; the glass bottles are too heavy when full. Yesterday, Aegon had to be carried outside in a litter to see the remnants of his brothers burned on the pyres. And he had exchanged a brief, somber glance with Autumn that you neither anticipated nor understood. He acknowledges her so rarely. And yet her small hazel eyes had been alarmed, knowing.

Larys is saying with a grave expression and his restless hands propped in the handle of his cane: “Lord Borros Baratheon is asking for your assurance that as soon as the war is won, you will take his eldest daughter Cassandra as your wife.”

Aegon stares at him, incredulously, impatiently. Aegon has not called you his wife in the company of others since his homecoming. You do not ask why. You already know. It is not because his intentions have changed; it is because if he is not the victor, your life is in less danger as his captive than as his queen. “Surely even a man as brainless as Borros can surmise that there would not be much benefit for the lady now. I am a worm. Useless, pathetic, deformed, no longer virile.”

“He is willing to take the chance, I gather. And he is placing his eggs in more than one basket. He would like another daughter, Floris, to be married to me.”

“Seven hells,” Aegon mutters. Then he turns determined. “I cannot marry another. I won’t do it. I am claimed already, body and soul.”

“I fear how enthusiastically Borros’ men will fight for you if you do not agree to the match. He is risking his life for your cause. He will expect generous repayment.”

Aegon is quiet for a long time. He stares fixedly at his bedside table: a full cup, a large glass bottle of milk of the poppy. His dagger is still there from when you cut and braided his hair for him this morning; he cannot do it himself anymore. At last Aegon says, almost too low for you to discern from the doorway: “He’s not cruel, is he?”

“Who? Borros Baratheon?”

Aegon glares at Larys. “No.”

After a moment, Larys realizes what his king means. “Cregan Stark isn’t cruel. I’ve heard many whispers from many mouths, but I’ve never heard that.”

“Look at me. Don’t lie to me.���

“He isn’t cruel,” Larys says again. “Perhaps the truth is worse. He is measured, competent, merciful, wise. He is honorable. The Manderlys want to torture everyone and the Boltons itch to sharpen their flaying knives but Stark forbids it. He respects the laws of war. He tries to avoid the slaughter of noncombatants. He forbids his men from burning farms or raping women. He is devoted to the woman you call your wife. He takes no mistresses, visits no brothels. Cregan Stark is not a monster. He’s not soulless. He’s just on the wrong side.”

Aegon nods slowly, then his face breaks into a humorless smirk. “Tell Borros Baratheon that I’ll marry whichever daughter he wants me to when the war is over. I’ll marry all four if that is his preference, and bed them all on the wedding night too, one right after the other. Agree to anything he asks for. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

It doesn’t matter because none of it will ever happen, even if the Baratheon army does win the Iron Throne for the Greens. It doesn’t matter because Aegon does not believe he’ll still be here in a month, or two weeks, or perhaps even days.

But he can’t mean that. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s confused, he’s exhausted, he’s in pain, you tell yourself, before remembering that Aemond said it first.

“Yes, Your Grace.” Larys is subdued, sorrowful. He bows deeply to his king. Then he turns to depart.

“One more thing,” Aegon says, gesturing to something on the side of his bed you can’t see from where you’re standing. “I hate to impose upon you further, but I can’t manage it myself. Can you take that and empty it somewhere? I don’t care where. But you must keep it hidden from my wife. The red-haired girl Autumn knows, and so do the maesters now. They are all sworn to secrecy. Can I trust you to exercise the same circumspection?”

Larys is gaping down at an object that is a mystery to you. He begins to stammer out a reply, stops to collect himself, and starts again. “Yes. Yes you can.”

“Good.”

Larys picks up the object; you are puzzled to discover that it is a chamber pot, white and porcelain. And as he navigates around Aegon’s bed and towards the door where you wait, you see that the vessel is full of blood.

You gasp before you can stop yourself, a razor-sharp inhale of breath that both men hear. They spot you, lurking in the doorway like someone lost, someone far from home. Shock bolts across Aegon’s face, and then frustration, and then defeat, and then profound misery.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to lie to you, I just knew…I knew you’d be upset and I…I didn’t want to hurt you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

“How long?”

“It doesn’t matter, Angel.”

“How long?” you ask again. “Just since this morning?”

“Four or five days now.”

“Four or five…?” Your mind whirls like storm winds. He’s dying. He’s really dying. His kidneys are failing and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t cut him open and stitch him back together. There’s no wound to scrub clean with vinegar and then bandage with honey and linen. There’s no brew that can restore the rhythm of his blood and bones and nerves. He’s just dying. That’s all there is. That’s the beginning and the end of it.

“Please don’t cry,” Aegon says, reading your face. “Don’t do that, please don’t, I’ve hurt you enough already.”

His hands stretch out to close the space between you, and as Larys slips from the room you go to Aegon, climb into bed beside him, collapse into him as his arms catch you and rest your head against his bare, scarred chest, his feverish skin mottled with the history of wounds you helped close all those months ago. “I’m sorry,” you sob. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you go after Baela and Moondancer on Dragonstone. I should have stopped you. I should have dragged you inside the castle to wait until Aemond and Vhagar could help you. I shouldn’t have let Aemond go to Harrenhal. I shouldn’t have let Daeron fly south. I shouldn’t have let Autumn go back to King’s Landing, and I shouldn’t have let Everett stay there. I shouldn’t have let Helaena leap from the window. I should have stopped Maelor from being sent to the Reach. I should have stopped Rhaenys and the Red Queen from taking flight to burn you in your armor at Rook’s Rest. I should have stopped this! I should have done something! The only good thing I’ve ever had to offer the world was healing but I can’t save anyone, I can’t stop their suffering, I can’t do anything!”

“None of it was within your control, and none of it was your responsibility. I am the king. The fate of my kingdom and my followers rests with me. I wear their spilled blood, not you. I am so full of red I’m overflowing with it.” And he chuckles, sardonic, exhausted. He’s already battling unconsciousness again; you can hear his heartbeat slackening, the slow laborious expanding and contracting of his lungs.

“Aegon,” you say softly, as if afraid to speak it into existence. “What happens if the Baratheons don’t win tomorrow?”

“They will. They have to. There’s nothing I can do for you if they lose.” Then he winces and groans. It’s his back again, his failing kidneys, overrun with so much ruin—burns and breaks and pressure and heartache—that their cadence faltered and then ceased. You grab his cup of milk of the poppy and tilt it against his lips; and how many times have you done this since you met him, burned nearly to death and half-mad at Rook’s Rest? A hundred? Aegon drinks it down, his arms still tight around your waist. They do not loosen until he’s out like a snuffed candle.

You refill the cup on his bedside table with milk of the poppy in case he needs more when he wakes, pick up the dagger you use to cut his disheveled hair, take it to the dresser. And in the cascade of silver moonlight flooding in through the windows, you practice laying the gleaming blade against your wrists, pressing it to the throbbing arteries of your throat, angling the sharpened point of it between a gap in your ribs and towards your racing heart.

Autumn. Jaehaera. Aemond’s child that Alys carries. I still have promises to keep. I still have tasks that cannot be left unfinished.

Helaena’s words surface like a drowned man dredged from the waves: You must whisper into the right ears.

You set the dagger down on top of the dresser and roam to the castle library where Aemond once spent so many hours. You collect a stack of anatomy books and carry them back to Aegon’s bedchamber. There, before the roaring fireplace, you devour them for any scrap of hope, any last resort. You turn pages until one illustration stops you. It is an unclothed man, his major veins etched in blue and his arteries in red, his nerves a faded yellow, his bones white and unshattered, his body a roadmap of the bricks and mortar used by the architects of nature. You have seen this image before. It is the same page Aegon teased you for studying when you were travelling by carriage back to the capital from Rook’s Rest.

You rip out the page, crumple it violently, pitch it into the fire and watch it burn.

~~~~~~~~~~

At dawn, Lord Borros Baratheon leads his men out of the city. You hear them through the glass panes of the windows, closed against the winter chill and flecked with frost: boots marching, hooves of warhorses clomping against cobblestones. They carry with them swords and spears and bows and morning stars like the one Criston Cole was famed for using. Meanwhile, throughout the city, civilians are arming themselves with anything they can find to ward off an invasion of Northmen, creatures they believe to be bestial and mindless. Men carry kitchen knives and clubs fashioned out of bits of furniture or driftwood. Women hide their young children in cupboards and under creaking wooden floors.

“I should be going with them,” Aegon says. He’s just taken another dose of milk of the poppy and is struggling to keep his eyes open. His long, slow blinks close his vacant eyes for ever-increasing intervals. You’ve changed his clothes and cleaned the sweat from his skin as best you can, but he’s burning from the inside out.

“You’re not able to fight, Aegon. Nobody faults you for that. Everyone knows you were wounded in battle.”

“They must think I’m a coward.”

“No, you inspire them. They love you. I love you.”

Aegon doesn’t say it back. He never says it back. He only offers you the same drowsy, mournful phrase of High Valyrian he always does, not knowing that Aemond told you what it means: To your misfortune.

Autumn is with the children in Alicent’s rooms. The castle is tense and as quiet as a crypt—Alicent weeps soundlessly, Larys paces the halls with Corlys and Tyland Lannister, everyone peeks out of windows constantly to see if bannermen of the victor have appeared on the horizon—but she keeps them distracted with stories and games. You cycle between Alicent’s bedchamber and Aegon’s. He is in and out of consciousness; sometimes you perch beside him on the bed, sometimes you lie curled up against him counting the beats of his heart, sometimes you help Autumn read to Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger. It is just after noon when the city bells begin to toll and screams rise from the streets outside the Red Keep. You and Autumn hurry to a window. In the distance, beyond the city gates, there is a swarming mass of infantry, cavalry, archers. Their banners, when you strain your eyes to decipher them, are not the brazen, vivid yellow of House Baratheon. They are night black and an icy, steely grey. They are the colors of House Stark.

“No,” Autumn says, denial in a protracted, helpless exhale. Alicent shrieks, frightening the children. You grab Autumn’s hand and lead her out into the hallway to warn the others if they don’t know already.

Lord Corlys Velaryon comes bounding up a staircase. “There are soldiers down in the secret passageways!” he booms. “Northmen! Armed! I’ve helped our guards bar the doors, but that won’t hold them back forever.”

Autumn looks to you. “Get the children ready to travel,” you tell her. “Find Larys and inform him.”

“Yes, my lady,” she says, and is gone. You sprint in the opposite direction towards Aegon’s bedchamber. You blow the door open like a strong wind, and Aegon startles awake. You rip through his dresser for things he will need: warm clothes, boots, his dagger, bottles of milk of the poppy.

“Get up, Aegon. We have to go. We’ll run, we’ll flee, there are Northmen in the tunnels but we’ll find another way out, we have to try, we have to, if they catch you they’ll—”

“Come sit with me,” he says from the bed, calmly, like you have all the time in the world. He is reaching out for you with one hand.

“What? No, we have to hurry—”

“Angel,” Aegon says. “I need you to come sit with me now.”

Why isn’t he afraid? Why isn’t he frantic? You cross the room with slow, numb footsteps. When you reach the bed, Aegon takes both of your hands in his own. And suddenly you know exactly what he is going to say. You remember what he told his brother in High Valyrian the last time Aemond left Dragonstone. Your voice is trembling and hoarse. Your throat burns like embers. “Aemond was supposed to be here to help us win. But he’s gone. Daeron, Criston, Helaena, Otto, Everett, Jaehaerys, Maelor, Autumn’s baby, so many people are gone.”

Aegon whispers, smiling softly as tears spill down his cheeks, one scarred and the other pure: “I’m not going to get better this time.”

“No,” you moan. “No, Aegon, no. You can’t say that, you can’t tell me that—”

“I’m not going to get better.” Now his palms cradle your face, forcing you to listen. “I’m not. And it’s okay. I’m not angry, I’m not scared. You’ve done everything you could and you’ve bought me more time and I’m so grateful. But I don’t want it to hurt anymore. I’ve been in pain for so long. I’ve been in pain my whole goddamn life.” He kisses you, like tasting something rare and fleeting. His thumbprint skates along the curve of your jaw, memorizing the angles of your bones, the rhythm of your pulse. “Please, Angel. I don’t want to try to run and die on the side of the road somewhere. I don’t want to die with Cregan Stark’s blade at my throat.”

You shake your head, unable to believe, unable to understand.

Aegon glances to the empty cup on his bedside table, to the large glass bottle of milk of the poppy. Then his eyes return to you. “You know how to do it.”

No. Never. But beneath those cold, dark, stormy waters: It would be painless. “I can’t,” you say, overwhelmed with horror.

“Listen, listen to me—”

“No—”

“Angel.”

“I can’t do that to you. Not to you. I can’t, I can’t.”

“When I’m gone, go to Cregan Stark,” Aegon says. “He is an honorable man, he will ensure your survival. He is the only person who can now. He wants to put his mark on the world. He wants to play Kingmaker. Let him. He can decree that my daughter will marry Rhaenyra’s son and ascend to the Iron Throne. He can end the war. Cregan will keep you safe. Tell him that I kidnapped you, that I forced myself on you. Tell him that I wanted an heir with Valyrian blood. Tell him that I was a drunk, a degenerate. Tell him whatever he wants to hear.”

“You would become a monster?”

“To protect you? I would become anything.”

He’s holding you, he’s pulling you into him until you can feel the fever bleeding from his flesh into yours, until you can number the knots of his spine and the ladder-rungs of his ribcage, counting them with your fingers through the sweat-drenched fabric of his cotton shirt. You draw back to look at him, to really look at him, sunken bloodshot eyes and rasping breaths, scar tissue of the body and the soul. You remember the day you met him, how he’d begged to die and been refused, how you brought him back. You postponed a debt, but you never paid it. It’s not possible to ever pay enough. You stack up gold coins in a vault until they touch the ceiling and still the Stranger comes knocking, jangling his purse sewn with scorched skin and chanting: more, more, more.

Aegon glances to the cup again. “How much?” he asks you, hushed like a prayer.

You don’t answer. Instead, you stand and go to the dresser. You open a small wooden door beneath the mirror. Your reflection is a woman you don’t know, someone who walks through fog and memory, someone made of ghosts. You take four clean cups from the cabinet and set them on Aegon’s bedside table. As he watches—eyes glassy with agony, lungs rattling—you fill them all with smooth, pearlescent, lethal liquid, as well as the empty cup that was already there. “Five,” you say, and it sounds nothing like you. “I think three at once would be enough. Five to make sure.”

He sobs with relief, and only now do you realize how badly he needed this. “Thank you. Oh gods, thank you.”

Your own words come back like an echo: I preserve life, I don’t take it. But that was a different lifetime, a different you. Aegon’s fingers are lacing through yours. He is drawing you back onto the bed, he is brushing your hair back from your face, he is kissing the path of tears down your cheeks so he doesn’t waste a drop of you. He’ll never get another taste, another chance; not in this life, not on this earth.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the end with you,” he says. “I really tried.”

“I know, Aegon.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

He looks down at his left hand, then remembers where his ring has gone. He chuckles, darkly, bitterly, dismayed by all the failings he is built of. “I don’t even have anything to give you.” Then he remembers. “My dagger. Can you get my dagger?”

You are petrified. “Why?”

He grins, dull teeth beneath dazed eyes. “I’m not going to hack off a finger or my exemplary cock or something. I promise. Just get it.”

You fetch the dagger and bring it to the bed, and only then do you realize what he means for you to have. He points to it, then threads it through his pale, swollen fingers: his thin lock of hair that you’ve been weaving for him since the day you met. He wants you to take his braid.

“You’ll have to cut it yourself,” he says. “I don’t think I can.”

You hook the blade beneath the top of his braid, and with a few cautious slices of the dagger it is free. You tuck the braid into a pocket of your gown, thick black velvet to guard against the winter cold. Then you lay the dagger on the bedside table and pick up one of the cups filled to the brim with milk of the poppy. Your tears are scalding and torrential; it is almost impossible to see through them. You smooth back Aegon’s white-blond hair as you pour the blissful, deadly brew through his lips and down his throat, hating yourself, knowing it is the kindest thing you can do for him.

Suddenly, when the cup is half-drained, Aegon pushes it away. “You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to watch,” he says. “I can do the rest. Go, now. Right now. If the Boltons or some other house finds you before Cregan does, they might not recognize you. They might not care. You’re only safe with Cregan Stark. He has to find you first.” Aegon takes the cup with one shaking hand and presses a palm to your shoulder with the other. You haven’t moved. You can’t move. “Go. Leave me. Now. Please go. I love you, but you have to go now.”

“I can’t,” you choke out.

“You have to.”

“I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”

“Angel,” he says tenderly, smiling. “I’ll see you again. Just not too soon.”

“Okay,” you whisper, and you kiss him, traces of milk of the poppy on his lips that deaden the thunderstruck horror faintly, powerlessly, like small clouds drifting over the sun.

“If there’s anything interesting on the other side, I’ll find a way to let you know.”

The dreams, you think. “Okay,” you say again, barely audible.

“Now go. Right now. Go.”

You wipe tears from your face with your sleeve as you turn away from him. You can’t look back; if you do, you’ll never be able to walk out of this room. You take the dagger from the bedside table. Your bare feet pad across the cold floor. As you step through the doorway, on the periphery of your vision you can see Aegon swallowing down each cupful of poison as quickly as he can. It won’t take long to stop his heart. Minutes, perhaps. Seconds. You walk into the hallway. Autumn has just arrived with Jaehaera’s tiny hand clasped in her own. A few paces behind her, Alicent and Larys stand with Rhaenyra’s son. Two orphans without choices, two pawns in a much grander game.

Autumn is panicked. “Where should we go? What should we do?” Then she takes another look at your face. Her eyes go wide with terror. “What? What happened?”

“Follow me.” Your voice is low, flat, dark like deep water. Your eyes flick briefly to Lord Larys Strong. “Keep the boy here. He’s not safe with the smallfolk yet. But the Northmen won’t harm him.”

Larys knows. It’s over. He is devastated; and yet you think a part of him might be relieved as well. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“I’m not the queen anymore. I never really was.” You give him Aegon’s dagger. “I don’t think you’ll need this, Lord Larys, but now you have it in the event of any danger. Or in case I can’t convince Cregan Stark to spare you and you decide you’ve had enough of this world. You should get a say in how your life ends. You’ve earned it.”

Then you break away from them and glide through the Red Keep, Autumn and Jaehaera trotting swiftly behind you to keep up. You pass the rookery where Aemond wrote his letters. You sweep through the gardens where Helaena loved to collect her insects. You gaze down to the beach where Daeron landed on Tessarion under a dazzling sun before winter came like a plague to King’s Landing. From inside the castle, you can hear Alicent wailing as she discovers her last child’s lifeless body. What was all of this for? Why did this have to happen? Why didn’t anybody stop it?

Out on the streets of the city, the smallfolk have flocked with their makeshift weapons to defend their homes from the Northmen. But their eyes are darting everywhere and their faces are uncertain as they clutch their clubs made out of the legs of chairs and their rusty kitchen knives. They haven’t decided if it’s futile. They don’t want to be butchered for nothing.

“That’s Autumn!” they shout and sigh, especially the women. “The mother of the king’s bastard son, the one murdered by the half-year queen!” They reach out to skim their hands over Autumn’s gown, her long coppery hair, as if she is a saint or a spirit who can impart good luck upon them, who can change their fates. They fall to their knees to bow to Jaehaera, their king’s only living child, and she blinks at them with benign confusion.

But the smallfolk have a different reception for you. You hear their venomous chattering: “Is that the Celtigar woman?” “Her family put this city through hell.” “They served Rhaenyra.” “She’s a traitor, she’s a thief.” A few of them venture close enough to tug at your gown, to strike at you. A woman’s knuckles rap against your cheekbone, raising a bruise there like lavender in a dusk sky. You think dully: I wonder if they’ll gouge out my eyes with those knives like they did to Everett.

“Get back!” Autumn hisses, shoving the smallfolk away. And when she speaks, they listen. “She is going to the Wolf of Winterfell. She is my protector. She is your protector now too. She is the best chance you have left.” And the crowds open up and the three of you pass through King’s Landing unimpeded, though cloaked in thousands of fascinated gazes.

The King’s Gate has been abandoned; the guards must have feared the Boltons’ flaying knives or Lord Stark’s dark justice. Autumn instructs several hulking men of the smallfolk to open the gate if they wish to be spared from the wolf’s wrath. They are reluctant at first, but do as she asks. When the massive doors creak open, the people of the capital huddle behind the wall and peer out skittishly as you, Autumn, and Jaehaera advance to meet the Northmen, who are bloodied from battle and now within a hundred yards of the city. Above, the sky is thick and iron-grey and frigid. Snowflakes—the first of this winter to touch King’s Landing—begin to fall and land in your hair, and you are reminded of how embers rained from the smoldering pine trees at Rook’s Rest.

“Can you catch one on your tongue?” Autumn asks Jaehaera, and the little girl giggles as they both try.

The Warden of the North rides an immense, shaggy warhorse at the head of what remains of his army. He recognizes you immediately, dismounts, approaches with determined, unbreakable strides. Clement is close behind him.

“You’re alive!” your brother shouts joyously. “And apparently not pregnant with a Targaryen bastard! Praise the gods!”

Cregan Stark does not act as if he’s heard this. The Warden of the North is not as you remember him; he is larger, heavier and broader from the muscles won in battle, coarsened by weather and war. His hair is long and dark and pulled back from his face. He wears a sword at his belt that is taller than you are when it’s unsheathed. He is entombed in leather and furs. He does not hesitate before he lays his hands you. You are betrothed to him, you are his property, would a man ask before he grabs his horses or his dogs?

The Warden of the North does not seize your forearm roughly like Aemond once did. Instead, his massive palms and fingers clasp your face as he marvels at you. You can feel the stains of dirt and ashes he leaves there. You want to scream when he touches you, but you can’t. You want to burn with rage and heartache until you crumble like ruins. Your life is already over. Your life has just begun.

“You have suffered greatly,” Cregan Stark says, a marriage of shock and reverence.

“You have no idea.” Perpetual Resurrection, you think. It doesn’t mean you come back better. It just means you’re still here.

“You are safe now,” Cregan swears. “The Usurper will never harm you again.” And it ends the same way it began: with a man mistaking your allegiance and beckoning you into a destiny that he wholeheartedly believes is greater than any you could have envisioned for yourself.

“He’s dead.”

This stuns Cregan. “When? How?”

“Today. Of old wounds sustained in battle.”

He looks at Jaehaera, noticing her for the first time. “Is that his daughter?”

“Yes,” you say. “She must always be treated with kindness. She must be protected.”

“You have an affinity for her,” Cregan notes, intrigued.

You hear Aegon’s voice, so clearly it cuts like a blade: Tell him whatever he wants to hear. “We have been through great trials together. We survived the same monster.”

The Warden of the North nods. This is a story he craves to be told. “Very well. If it is your wish that she not be discreetly disposed of as a Silent Sister, I will betroth her to Rhaenyra’s surviving son. They will unite the noble houses of Westeros and end this war.”

“The worst of the Greens are dead already. Those who remain should be shown mercy. Alicent is old and ill and broken from loss. She poses no threat. She should be permitted to remain in the company of her granddaughter. Corlys was loyal to Rhaenyra until she falsely imprisoned him for treason, and he belongs on Driftmark with Rhaena. Larys Strong, Tyland Lannister, and Grand Maester Orwyle, if no pardon can be arranged for them, should go to the Wall instead of the scaffold. And Autumn, my companion there with Jaehaera…she was a true friend to me. I owe her my life several times over. She must be permitted to stay with Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger as a caretaker, and reside in comfort in the Red Keep for the remainder of her days.”

“Who do you think you are, sister?!” Clement exclaims. “You’re speaking to the Kingmaker, not some handmaiden! You do not command him!”

“I am not commanding,” you counter levelly. “I am pleading for mercy on behalf of imperfect souls who showed me kindness during my captivity. If granted, I will consider these my wedding gifts.”

“She is remarkable, is she not?” Cregan Stark says, grinning to Clement and several other men who have ventured closer. They wear the sigils of Northern houses: Bolton, Cerwyn, Manderly, Hornwood, Dustin. They chuckle in agreement, stroking their wild beards with huge filthy hands. “Dauntless but merciful. Clever but obedient.” And then the Warden of the North claims your lips with his, chaste but overpowering, the first of a thousand kisses you never desired, a thousand acts of affection for a woman who isn’t really you, feigned resignation and bitten-back rage, eternal war with the interminable knowledge that there is something more, more, more…you just aren’t permitted to have it. It was taken from you, it was ripped from your hands like stolen treasure.

All your life you will have to murmur in wounded agreement when people recount the terrible sins of the Usurper. All your life you will have to praise Cregan Stark for killing millions to rescue you. And the days will pass, weeks, months, years, summers and winters, the births of your children and their own marriages; and when Cregan’s boy Rickon, born of his first wife, produces only daughters, your son Brandon and his descendants will become the heirs to Winterfell. In the desolate North—so far from the ocean, so far from everything Aegon ever knew—your greatest solace will be letters from Autumn as she learns to read and write, books that your husband orders for you from the Citadel, setting bones and treating burns, a tiny lock of braided silver hair that you keep in a hidden drawer of your jewelry box, dreams that you never want to wake up from.

But one day, decades after you leave King’s Landing, you will receive a raven from Queen Jaehaera Targaryen, and she will ask you: You knew the Greens in your youth, Wardeness Stark. You knew Aemond, Daeron, Helaena, Alicent, Otto, Maelor, Aegon the Usurper. What can you tell me of them? What was my father like? Who was he really?

And you’ll pick up your quill and begin writing.

[kismetconstellations]

@sockdooe I first encountered this supposed explanation in the comments section of a fanfiction, so it is to be taken with a grain of salt, but I read that Shiro's design was primarily based on what the showrunners thought "looked cool". This includes the prosthetic grafted onto his person by his captors, the scar across his face, and the shock of white fringe in his otherwise naturally dark hair. And, I won't lie, his design serves its purpose. Shiro immediately draws the eye, and not just because of his usual placement front and center in the standard team line up.

It's reasonable for the sort of space soldier, G.I. Joe type of character the staff intended Shiro to be to have these sorts of physical characteristics.

It's also completely reasonable in a Sci-Fi/Action show for a villain as menacing and ruthless as Sendak to have a similarly distinct, eye-catching design. Such features as a sinister, gleaming, red bionic eye, and massive prosthetic arm powered by a core of glowing, magical electric energy pulsing in a line from shoulder to forearm stand out, are easily memorable, and make him instantly recognizable as a really Bad Guy.

The idea of Shiro being a sort of "light, heroic mirror" to Sendak, which the show introduced and continued to attempt to enforce all the way up to Sendak's death, sits incredibly uneasily with me, however. As I've made explicit several times, before.

Content Warning for discussion of sexual assault/rape.

We're shown the recurrent imagery of Sendak looming over and behind an incapacitated Shiro.

Shiro's instinctive response to seeing Sendak heading toward him is to back away out of fear before steeling himself and resolving to fight, if only to protect the Castle and an unconscious Lance.

The very first thing that Shiro says to Sendak is, "You're not getting in", to which Sendak replies, "Yes. I am".

Coran suggests that the Galra might keep him and Hunk as, "some sort of creepy pet to play with how they please", in an appeal to Shay and Rax for assistance concealing their presence on the Balmera.

There's genuine contempt in Shiro's voice when he asks Sendak, "What do you want?", prior to his torture at Sendak's hands.

Sendak delivers a stomach-churning gloating little speech after torturing Shiro via electric shock.

And, Rolo refers to Sendak as a, "real nasty bugger", a term that has an exceptionally crude colloquial meaning.

Now, maybe I'm a cynical weirdo who is reading far too deeply into this, and connecting dots that aren't there. But...

Shiro bears a much stronger resemblance to Berserk's Guts than the Takashi Shirogane from the original Go Lion! that he's named after. Guts is a famous survivor of childhood sexual abuse, having been sold by his adoptive father and purchased for use as a sex slave by an ugly hulking pederast.

There were obvious Neon Genesis Evangelion fans working on this show, and Rei Ayanami, the character that Shiro's story seems to reference with the sheer excess of clones created using his DNA, is also a victim of sexual abuse.

(There's even, arguably, influence taken from The Legend of the Blue Wolves, a relatively obscure yaoi OVA largely set at a military facility which trains soldiers and pilots for combat missions in deep space. It features an extended scene with a virtual flight simulator, and one of the two male leads is-- wouldn't you know it? Raped by an ugly hulking monster.)

Correlation does not imply causation, and perhaps the similarities are entirely superficial, and we're not meant to think too hard about them.

Yet, with the amount of scrutiny that a series as utterly wholesome and innocuous as Bluey is constantly under, I cannot buy for a minute that a series Netflix gave a TV Y7 rating to didn't undergo some level of screening to ensure that its content was appropriate for the intended child audience. Someone had to have asked the staff if bugger was the term they meant to use, aware of the disturbing, far less than child-friendly implications, and was met with a resounding confirmation.

Beyond that, extended proximity to even an imprisoned and inanimate Sendak sends Shiro spiraling into a psychological break down.

Shiro's intensely traumatic experiences in captivity, which his brain seems to have largely repressed in order to protect him ("It's all a blur.") would, by themselves, be enough to convince him that he's been broken and reshaped into something monstrous. His bodily autonomy was, unquestionably, brutally violated, and his innately altruistic, self-sacrificing nature was violently challenged when he was forced to kill or be killed for his captors' entertainment. His right arm was taken from him and replaced with a weapon, and he has the blood of who knows just how many innocents on his hands. He was, indeed, broken down in an attempt to reform him into the Galra Empire's "greatest weapon", and likely very much wars with himself over what he had to do to ensure his own survival, believing himself to be a monster.

What really stands out to me, though, is that this intense, primal terror and the accompanying feelings of "brokenness" and "monstrousness" only surface around Sendak. Despite also being associated with and direct causes of his trauma, neither Haggar nor Zarkon rattle Shiro to his core the way Sendak does.

Neither of them are insistent on drilling into Shiro's head how "broken" he supposedly is, as Sendak is shown doing over and over again. Including taunting Shiro over the non-consensual modifications to his body.

Harboring a deep sense of shame, and viewing themselves as something dirty, ugly, disgusting, broken, or even monstrous is an experience common among survivors of sexual abuse.

Having Shiro's physical condition repeatedly mirror his personal tormentor's would be sick and twisted enough.

Adding the context of rape or sexual abuse to Shiro's torment makes the creative decision to intentionally model his arm after his abuser's outright sadistic.

No one deserves to have a constant physical reminder of their abuser and rapist permanently attached to their person. And, attempting to paint Shiro as a "heroic mirror" to Sendak fails entirely when Shiro doesn't so much as get to best Sendak in combat once.

All of the points you've raised about the function and structure of prosthetics are amazing, informative, and highly appreciated. (The comment about Shiro's abominable floating arm looking like it wouldn't be able to support the weight of a grocery bag makes me laugh.) Sadly, there's a faction of the fanbase who are all too quick to fetishize that arm, like everything else surface-level about Shiro. I've seen a number of fics where its ability to be propelled a great distance with a single thought is used to pleasure a partner while Shiro, himself, is in a different room, where the arm is equipped with a vibrating function for use as a sex toy, and, of course, where the thickness of its fingers is sexualized for... the same reason the bulge in the crotch of Shiro's pants is.

(I beg this fandom to stop reducing this man to a seme stereotype because of his physical build and height. Nothing in his personality suggests that he would be anything even approximating that cursed archetype. Let him be a pillow princess, for God's sake, like he deserves.)

This reply took me forever, and I am sincerely sorry about that. I hope you find something worthwhile in this haphazard collection of thoughts.

And, "Sendick" is how I'm going to be mentally referring to that creep from now on.

[fruitsaladc0wboy]

Can I hear about your D&D party who hates eachother soooo bad?

anon I am kissing you on the mouth

hokay the OG (as we call them) has been a rotating cast of a whole bunch of characters over the course of Six Fucking Years (which is CRAZY to me. we play them sort of on and off but that’s bonkers that we’ve been playing some iteration of them for that long) but the current iteration (known occasionally as Five Guys) is andal, skillet, rax, kettle and my character trinket! they all fucking hate each other. but also they love each other. they’re so much.

trinket was originally the villain from a one shot I ran six years ago that my party hated so much they decapitated him at the end. it’s ok he deserved it. so then about a year later one of my friends that was in that campaign was like “hey. what if we. stitched his head back on. and you played him as a pc” and I was of course like SAY NO MORE so now he’s going through a post-resurrection redemption arc and is mostly just sort of grumpy and depressed now.

they really are just the perfect combination of characters to make a party that Fucking Hates Each Other though. every time we play them we spend most of the session arguing and swearing at each other it’s great. but also they love each other they’re the worlds most fucked up found family. skillet and andal are the people who killed trinket in the first place so as you can imagine that relationship is. COMPLICATED. andal and skillet are actually very close friends but andal is kind of a cunt so they still argue a lot. trinket and kettle are best friends and have been for years but kettle annoys trinket like it is his fucking Job. rax keeps trying to flirt with both kettle and skillet while The Bastard Brigade (andal and trinket) scream in protest because that’s GROSS. we are all constantly yelling and threatening to kill each other while simultaneously making sure the others don’t die. I hate you so much you’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me but also please don’t die that would be horrible.

they mean everything to me

[pinchedlittlefox]

As a companion to this post, I wanted to make a separate one about Armitage Hux & Rae Sloane’s relationship. This post is not meant to defend/validate Sloane’s actions. Or excuse Armitage’s atrocities due to his childhood suffering. But rather, it’s just an analytical view of their relationship based on the limited facts and implications we were given. 

We see two people stand up for Armitage in the Aftermath: Empire’s End, but they are both fairly convoluted. I’m going to start with Gallius Rax, who gifts Armitage control of the child soldiers. 

They are hungry and feral and he tries not to tremble. But the boy trembles harder, instead. The door to the transport bay opens, and a man steps in—the boy knows this man: Counselor Rax. The man comes and stands before the boy, looking down. “Hello, Armitage.” “Sir,” the redheaded boy says in a small voice. “Hello.” “Has your father explained to you what’s happening?” “No, sir.” “Hm. Brendol does not much like you, I suspect.” Tears line the boy’s eyelids as he nods in agreement. “I suspect that is correct, sir.”

In the scene, a five year told Armitage is shivering while riding in a transport with a group of preteen/teen soldiers. He is afraid and confused. He has been taken from his home by his father ( away from his step-mother and mother ) without any explanation to this dismal desert planet. Note: It’s not known to Brendol or Armitage that Rax is the one who ordered them to be brought here without Brendol’s wife or Armitage’s mother. Rax ordered Sloane to arrange the evacuation under those pretenses ( before Rax betrayed Sloane ). 

For now, I leave you with a gift.” “What’s that, sir?” “These other children? They stare at you, don’t they?” “Y…yes, sir.” “They want to kill you, I fear. They want to slash you with their fingernails. They want to bite you until you are just unrecognizable pieces. They would, if given half a chance, beat you with common rocks until all your limbs were broken sticks. Just as I was once a savage of Jakku, so too are these children savage in the same way. Your father’s work has only heightened that impulse. He has sharpened them the way you do a knife.” The boy is truly afraid.

I just wanted to include the above scene to display the tone and make Rax’s manipulation apparent....

“The gift. You want to know about the gift. Here it is, Armitage: You will lead these children. They will serve you. And one day soon your father will pass down his teachings to you, and you will learn to do what he did. It will be your life’s work to take children like these savages and hammer their malleable minds into whatever shape you so require. They will be tools built for the work at hand. That is my gift to you, boy. One day your father will die. One day soon, I fear. And you will take his place.”

The thing about this scene is that, when isolated, it is misleading. You think Rax is giving Armitage protection via control of the child soldiers. But, in reality this is not true. Because Rax never revokes Brendol’s control over the soldiers. That is apparent via a later scene where Brendol gives orders to the child soldiers ( by Rax’s command ) to intimidate Sloane. The soldiers respond to his commands without questions. 

Brendol and Armitage posses control over the child soldiers in tandem. But the power is imbalanced because, ultimately, Brendol still has control over Armitage.

And this is very in character for Rax, who views people as tools. 

Now to move to Sloane’s relationship with Armitage. For context, during the above scene, Sloane is not present in the Remnant at all. Rax has betrayed her by framing her for making a very sloppy attack on the New Republic. The Imperial Remnant believes her to be dead. And Rax intended for the New Republic to capture or kill her. But she survives and escapes, with serious injuries, and is determined to return and expose Rax.

By the time Sloane and Armitage have their encounter, Rax has all but destroyed the Imperial Remnant via inciting the Battle of Jakku. And Sloane ends up teaming up with a rebel to kill Rax and stop him from destroying the entire planet. She escaped the planet with Brendol Hux, the child soldiers and Armitage Hux, while barely alive.

Her first encounter with Armitage convoluted and conditional

The months for Sloane are hard and lonely. The Imperialis is a cold, impeccably designed ship, and she shares it with a pack of wild children and the haggard, haunted remnant of the man named Brendol Hux. The early days of the trip were spent worrying about whether or not one day Hux would rally his vicious orphans to slay her while sleeping. But once she saw that the children listened to Hux’s own son—a pale slip of a boy with a tousle of red hair—she went to him and asked young Armitage to make a deal with her. She said to Armitage: “If you’re willing to keep me safe from the children, then I will keep you safe from your father. Do we have an accord?”

Armitage agrees and then Sloane goes to Brendol to try to strike and deal but it doesn’t go well...

The oaf made a mistake, then: he came at her. His hands reached for her throat. Even beaten and bruised as she was, it took her no time to hyperextend his knee with a hard kick. As he doubled over, mewling, she grabbed a hank of his messy hair, and she began to beat him. She hit him, punching and kicking the man until he was on the floor, on his knees, whimpering. Sloane told him: “If you ever cross me, I will visit this same violence upon you a hundredfold. Whatever waits for us out here, you’re with me. You will not betray me. You will not question me. Do you understand?” He nodded. Smiling through tears. Blubbering that he was her man. Then she added, “Your son. Armitage. I know you don’t like him. I suspect you hurt him—psychologically or physically, I don’t know, and I don’t care. You will leave him alone. And you will teach the boy everything that you know. Are we clear?”

So she brokers a deal by force and commands Brendol to stop abusing Armitage and, instead, pass his knowledge along to Armitage.

For context: Since Sloane was on the run from Rax and trying to survive in the wilds of Jakku, she is very out of the loop with Rax’s plans and even the course of this ship. She has to study the ship to even get an inkling of what lays next for the group. She travels into the unknown regions by the help of Thrawn’s map and the droid sentinel piloting the ship. She is still gravely injured...

It doesn’t help that all along her side has ached fiercely. Every morning she checked the old injury, and though the bruise has faded, the ribs look soft and caved in. And even the faintest fluttering touch of her fingertips upon the skin causes her great pain. Something is broken inside. She tells herself she will fix it when they land on the Eclipse. If they land on the Eclipse.

 This is a trying time for them all. And it’s obvious that her relationship with little Armitage is not the most nurturing but she seems to grow attached to him over time. When they finally arrive at the Eclipse she is wrought with doubt about what comes next and if Brendol will betray her.

Her worries are myriad. Will Hux betray her when they join with the others? Who comes after? Do they serve him, or her? Can she be the legacy of Palpatine, or must she always contend with the ghost of Gallius Rax, his presence lingering in those who remain? That man’s influence was a virus. Infectious and potentially incurable. Then there comes a question of the children: those bright-eyed monsters. They train every day here on board the ship at the urging of both Brendol and his son Armitage. Armitage has grown more vicious during these months, even for such a small boy. Sloane likes him. But she worries about him, too.

We don’t know what happens next. But we do know that she survives and becomes one of the first set of leaders in the First Order, according to a except of the Phasma novel.

In terms of her relationship with Armitage, it’s uncertain. My other post presents details about how Armitage retains views that are similar to those Sloane had. That makes me think that he had a relationship with her. 

Of course, we do see Armitage being abused by Brendol and Brooks in the Age of Resistance: General Hux comics. And that makes me wonder if Rae stopped protecting him? Or if she was just outnumbered by Brendol, Pryde, Brooks and whoever else was in league with them. Especially since she suffered injuries that will probably never fully heal. And then there is the implication, from the Kylo Ren comics, that Brendol is in league with Snoke. So it’s possible that Brendol helped orchestrate Snoke’s control of the First Order?? ( If so that could serve as payback to Sloane and a way for him to take back power from her )

Thank you for reading this very long analysis. I hope it was helpful! If you want me to provide any other sources, let me know! Also, fyi, I summarized a lot in order to keep it from being even longer. All of the indented quotes are from Aftermath: Empire’s End by Chuck Wendig 

There are a lot of loose ends that make the rest of their relationship a very unfinished picture. Ultimately, Sloane wasn’t a perfect guardian or defender but it seems like she tried to help Armitage with her limited strength and resources. Initially it was for the sake of her own survival but she also did start to care for him. 

 I am very curious to see what happened next for them both. 

[whichwoods]

do share the headcanons pls the last chapter has me squealing in joy (they are so adorable... THE RING WAS PEAK ROMANCE). Thank you for yet again another amazing chapter!

thank you!! i'm glad people liked the ring reveal, that was one of the plot points i was heavily debating and agonizing over 🥲 below is lucemond being a family in the not-so-distant future! 💕

they're big on baby-wearing 💕 baelon can sleep through pretty much anything because he took most of his naps as a baby strapped to luke or aemond's chest while they chased around two toddlers

for a while aemond's phone background is just a selfie naerys took while she was tapping at his phone as a baby, just big brown eyes and chubby little face like 👁👄👁️💕

baby naerys does NOT like going to bed when she's old enough to have an opinion >:( she gets fomo 💔 she has a long bedtime rountine so she can stall consisting of things like saying night-night to "gar-gar" and "rax", being read TWO stories WITH voices, and being sang to by luke (she gets angry if aemond tries)

aemond becomes a selectively light sleeper as a father 🥲 baby crying? one of the kids is up sick or with a nightmare? he's awake. baby crawling all over him and smacking his face? luke needs to pee and he has his waist in a death grip? he's out cold. luke doesn't understand how it's possible

they usually take the kids for rides on vhagar because all of them can fit (aemond is SO stoked to get a big family-sized saddle for when they're old enough 😭) but luke will also take one kid at a time for solo rides sometimes, which they love because arrax can actually go fast and do flips with them and stuff (they're heavily strapped to both luke and the saddle lmao)

luke has more experience dealing with hatchling and young dragons and knows how durable they are and aemond is just always a little startled when luke like, grabs one of their kids' dragons by the neck and kind of chucks them when they're not listening 😒🤜🏻🐉

their dragons are all kept either literally in the backyard or close enough (still working out some logistics) that luke and aemond are doing most of the things for their kids' hatchlings when they're young instead of handlers,,,, it's like having 10 dogs it's absolute chaos 🥲

their daughters do something scout-adjacent when they're young and you bet your ass aemond targaryen is walking around his office/lab with those cookie sheets making his co-workers buy stuff so they get their badges 😭 so does luke but at least he tries to be charming about it

[greatkittydream]

The creature from the dungeon 2

Aafje pov

“Thinking”

"Big sis was talking to some weirdos not that it mattered we are on our way to the dungeon, but that is okay now that he's gone we will get to dungeon now and she will be forced to spend time with me". Gushing an excitement but keeping it in her mind as much as she wanted to squeal and move around she knew she couldn't. If her sister caught her now it would be ruinous. So she will settle for just being excited.

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​

Ada pov

Hey Stone, I have a question for you which route do you think would be more profitable dropping straight down to floor 150. Or gambling it and dropping down to floor 160.Aye Well that would depend on how much we're willing to gamble. The dungeon may have reset the monsters down there by now; it's about that time of the month for the monsters to be renewed; we could run into some nasty beasties. At the same time though that also means the loot would be fresh if I were a follower of hashoot I would say absolutely luckily for you I'm not a follower of greed. so how about we do the sensible thing and drop down to 150 or 155.

Lionheart butted in onto the conversation. I'd say we go down to 160 there will be tougher opponents down there. and it's been a while since I've had it actually exercise some force against an opponent. You can get all the fights you want just know if you die I'm skinning your scaly ass. but if it were up to me I'd say we stick somewhere around the 150s we just got our tank back and we need to get some practice.

If it's any constellation I just leveled up last mission. Raxs spoke up. I don't know if that changes anything but my overall magical power and physical power has increased.

Well good on you that brings you up to 35 right. Keep that up and we might reach 40 by the end of the year, I tell you what we dropped down to floor 155 explore Maybe, maybe hit 165 and I'll buy you an ail, Dwarven promise.

Well thank you Stone it's been a bit since I've had some good drinks. you know which Tavern will take us the last one we went to kind of hates us now. Well it's their fault for calling me a Kobalt. I'm a noble Dragonborn not some lesser-born dragonkin. Did you really have to keep the bar through the window though all he said is he's never seen a Kobalt that big before he was obviously new to the city, probably any city. And that's exactly why he is still alive. I took pity on the boy if it were any more prouder of my skin or sadistic he would have been very dead by now.

so. Interrupting this conversation knowing full world this would just devolve into banter We're heading to 155 and then making our way down. A resounding I came from the group. Well then let's not dilly-daddle. with that the groups are making their way to the teleportation Customs room. When using a teleportation Crystal you must go through this room in order to vent out any possible monsters, parasites, diseases or other illegal Goods that can be smuggled out of the dungeon or are potentially dangerous to The Wider population.

They didn't notice was a figure slinking away back into the crowd making his way to a familiar looking face.

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Vect pov

Floor 155 huh.

That is correct my Lord. responded a kneeling dark elf whose hair is black as night.

Let's give him 10 minutes that should give them time to orient themselves and potentially collect some loot for us. Lilith get your weapons ready and be sure to inform the others of what's going to happen.

As you wish. and with that he left.

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Jacob pov

​

Jacob had found himself in a cave system, an expansive one from what he's gathered. He did the echo test and from what he gathered from it this cave Network seems like it could go on for Miles potentially.

Normally people would start freaking out and praying that they could live. After all, they were potentially kidnapped by something Supernatural. Jacob isn't like most people, He's thinking of every logical explanation he can find if only out of denial.

Walking out for what felt like hours occasionally taking a drink of his water bottle he dropped it. looking down to bend over to pick it up he noticed something startling. "My stomach's gone” looking down he noticed the large portion of fat missing.

Normally people will be ecstatic at losing weight being healthy but Jacob he needed those fat stores if he was going to survive potentially long tracks without food. not to mention whatever caused this rapid loss of fat could not be healthy. Quickly lifting up his shirt to see abs?

"What the hell is happening? I know for a fact I did not work on any musculature in my stomach region even if I lost 20 lb from the looks of it. I should not be showing musculature to this extensiveness” Looking over his body.

what had once been a very lean body with very little musculature had become A still rather lean body with obvious musculature looking more like a Roman statue.

Most people would be thankful to God for this, Jacob wasn't he knows damn well this was not natural in the slightest. The body generates muscle mass by tearing muscle fibers and then regrowing them thicker after use. whatever is happening to him cannot be good.

"Okay let's calm down. I'm more than likely in some type of illegal experimentation focusing on creating natural enhancements for people that are too lazy to go to the gym. I can think of a lot of pharmaceutical companies that would do this, or even governments".

**deep breath in deep breath out**

Okay let's make the best of a bad situation. when normally gaining muscle you will also become more flexible because you also mess with attendance while moving well I cannot confirm at the moment.

I can take an educated guess and assume I will not be as flexible; most of this muscle appears to have just grown. As disturbing as this is this could prove beneficial if… physical means are needed to ensure survival.

With shaky hands he begins tracing the muscle outline along his body and a curious way still thoroughly freaked the hell out and scared but also rather curious of his new situation. He began testing the limits of his physical capability and he proved right as well.

Yes his muscular sure did increase his physical strength by many orders of magnitude. But he is still not more flexible this is also messed with his Center of balance as he's unused to the weight distribution he is currently under.

**Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap**

Looking over his shoulder he saw a small child running towards him with tears in her eyes. Not even looking where she was running she had bumped into his leg and Fallen flat on her butt. looking up with teary eyes she saw him and had a look of Horror.

The first things he noted were her more pointed ears. The next thing he noticed was a deathly Pale Man chasing after her with similarly pointed ears except his eyes were as black as night.

And then a few more men of similar Look to Him showed up they had all focused on the child completely ignoring him. the girl had backed away from Jacob not noticing the men behind her until one of them grabbed her by her hair.

omecay erehay oungyay ingthay i'llyay ebay uresay otay aketay oodgay arecay ofyay ouyay i'llyay oldhay illstay iyay ightmay evenyay etlay ouyay enjoyyay isthay.(It's Pig Latin if you're curious)

The man pulled her quickly to his face looking like he was about to kiss her.

Whoa Bad Touch Bad Touch. quickly running up and grabbing the man by his shoulder pushing him away he accidentally launched him back a good 5ft. The little girl fell back and clung to his leg for dear life it didn't take too much to understand what was happening.

Well it did a lot, this was an elf somehow and he didn't know exactly what was happening but he knew it sure as shit not to let something like this happen in front of him.

I'm going to say this one time you touch a child in front of me I'm going to skin you alive and use your fucken Shinbone as a flute. growl at the end.

owhay oday ouyay inkthay ouyay areyay otay alktay otay usyay ikelay atthay eway areyay ordlay exvay ersonalpay ounselcay andyay ouyay illway obeyyay ouryay emandsday . ateverwhay ouyay areyay andyay opstay eakingspay inyay ouryay arbaricbay anguagelay. uckingfay ongrelmay. spit entered Jacob's face.

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3 hours earlier

Ada pov

Ada and her friends have begun to make progress towards the dungeon on the 156th floor now. They were in a marsh swamp land that had either swarming monsters using large numbers to overwhelm opponents.

Or singular strong monsters there was no in between. some of the monsters in this area included killer Hornets and greater snap Jaws AKA alligator.

The party agreed to set up camp here although not having gone up not but one floor. The next floor was the most aggravating part of this entire dungeon to most parties. It was a labyrinth most people skip it but seeing as they are trying to not get attention of raid monsters they can't exactly just use teleportation Magic. They decided they'll do this later and spend the time setting up camp and grinding on Monsters to see if they can get any good loot drops.

Stone can be seen setting up the tents along with his mini Forge. although a common stereotype that all drawers can forge it is true. After all you don't have to be a blacksmith but you have to know how to fix your own stuff.

Raxs Can be seen putting up a wall using trees and Moats he is digging. Lionheart was somewhere in the area clearing out monsters. And Ada was setting up magical wards to keep the more demonically charged creatures at Bay.

**swish swish crack thunk.**

Raxs had almost been hit with a magical crossbow bolt, Without years of experience and the instinct to dodge he would have been killed. Just like the tree he was setting into place beside him was snapped in half.

The other bolt was making its way towards Stone. He had the luck of being near his Anvil at the time. A magically imbued item which gave it extreme resilience to all form of damage allowing it to handle even the strongest of materials to work with.

Without uttering a single word the party left into action understanding what was happening. Dungeon killers, fellow dungeoneers that would kill and steal the loot off of those that had more wealth or had just been weakened. The most frowned and scorned upon are the community.

Ada herself assesses the situation. crossbows were a newer development. They allowed for greater power at a lower fire rate. They could also be enchanted more than a bow. And with the Power released from those bolts it won't surprise her if there's some pretty hefty enchantments on the crossbows that fired them.

Her face formed into a scowl. She never liked hurting people, It was the job of the nobility to protect those that cannot themselves. With that said however those that would pray upon fellow dungeoneer weren't people in her eyes.

# Fourth level Divine protection.

Fourth level divide protection is a magical barrier that can be applied to up to 10 people, Or concentrated on fewer to make it stronger at first level it can stop physical attacks relatively well. At second level it provides protection against magical attacks as well. At the third level it provides close to immunity to physical attacks. At fourth level it provides close to immunity to magical attacks. At fifth level it provides immunity to Enchanted items. This process will repeat itself until the 10th level although theoretically possible to go higher no one has achieved it so far.

Raxs and stone were not idle either, for raxs part being away from his great Shield only having his Morning Star by his side got into a locking position. Bringing his left arm forward and bending it. This turned the platemail into a solid shape with few gaps effectively turning it into a shield.

Readying his right with the morning star in it to strike his opponents come near. Raxs was a reactionary tank; he needed his opponent to make the first move before he made his decision. And not seeing the enemy only knowing the general direction he decided to wait.

Stone duck behind his anvil Ada could already hear him patting and cursing around for his weapon. haha, found it now you little fucks are going to get it. Stone, had in her humble opinion a very creative language well dwarves are known to be crude he was creatively crude. When I'm done with you I'm going to turn your fucken guts into a bagpipe and play a nice tune at your funeral.

Stone is waving around his weapon angrily while wielding a double-sided Hammer ax. with heavy enchantments the hammer side of the weapon is Enchanted to wear when it smashes into a Target it will cause ice to freeze around the struck in Target or area. the ax is imbued with Fire magic meaning when it hits a Target it will unleash a torrent to flames.

Pointing her finger into the air and releasing Illusion magic she releases an explosion of multiple colors. She just informed their damage dealer that they were in trouble. Depending on how far he went out he should be back in either a few seconds or a few minutes that is if he isn't already beating the crap out of them.

# 2 level Dark Thorn bindings

Dark Thorn bindings is a magical can trip which summons a binding thorn bush from the cursed continent the higher the level the stronger the restrictions are.

Pitch Black Vines covered in thick Thorns appear out of the ground around raxs and stone. Ada for her part was left untouched it appeared they value taking out the melee fighters of the group before the ranged.

A volley of four bolts was unleashed. Ada's magical barrier had lit up in a bright flash of blue protecting her and stone. Around the group eight figures could be seen jumping out Dark Elves covered in black leather, wielding weapons Intended to cause as much pain and suffering as possible jagged and poisoned.

One of the figures was rushing his way towards the unarmored stone. Jumping high into the air with a deathly scream prepared to bring down two daggers into Stone's eyes. The daggers themselves looked more similar to meat hooks with how jagged and serrated they were.

Stone's arm was wrapped in the thick black Vines piercing into his skin a little. for any other opponents this would have been disastrous, unable to avoid the attack. or use his two-handed weapon.

The dark elves made one mistake however they attacked a party of dungeon delving nobility. Each one of their levels five times out of a normal person and at level 37 this dwarf is going to kick their ass. Ripping one of his arms free pulling Vines out of the dirt gripping his weapon at the middle of the pole and Swinging hard. The hammer side of the weapon made contact with the jaw of the dark elf.

Dark Elves perceive time at a slower rate than most species when in fighting. Using Speed and Agility to outmaneuver their opponents. This cocky dark elf had jumped into the air hoping to land a fatal blow making it to where he couldn't use any of his natural advantages.

From a dark elves perspective he could feel the hammer making contact with his cheek, As it broke Teeth and Jawbone alike slowly spreading through it. Almost as in slow motion he could feel his cheek flesh tearing as broken teeth fragments flew out of the other side ripping holes in his other cheek as he was sent away.

Being launched this side with a great force his back slammed into a half-made wall. A deafening crack Was Heard his spine along with several ribs were probably just broken. Ripping free from the depressingly low level spell. Stone was counting for his part. He knew that with him immobilized they would take the charge to him. and so he counted on them to do it full of false confidence thinking that he was immobilized.

That's one of your fucken sadistic cunts, So who's next.

One of the Dark Elves was spinning in the air using a cloak to hide where he exactly was in the General shape of it Landing next to his Fallen comrade. Pulling out a vial of red liquid and pouring it down the gullet of the dark elf that had been brutally struck down. Launching back up with a vigor sit down dark elf was back and he was staring that dwarf dead in the eyes.

The eight Dark elves started circling around the group creating two circles going in opposite directions of each other. There Capes kept fluttering about to disorient their opponents. Four more bolts fired off this time aim for Ada seeing where this was going to go she prepared a spell to create dirt golem. When the arrows bounced off her magical Shield she activated it.

From out of the earth a 8 ft tall vaguely humanoid shape stood up. Dirt golem your instructions are to block any incoming projectiles and try to keep melee Fighters at bay. with bright green eyes they flashed a bit brighter understanding its mission.

Seeing a dark elf get a bit too far away from the pack the golem extended its arm as a massive dirt surge out of its arm like a pillar. The pillar of dirt slammed into the dark elf wrapping around its body. As the dirt wrapped around his chest and back it pulled him in, crushing him with all the strength in that column of dirt. when it was brought face to face with the Golem the Golem brought him into its body to suffocate the dark elf.

With a muffled Scream the dark elf was completely absorbed into the golem. The Golem expanded ballooning out and then quickly compressed Itself. With a definite crunch blood could be seen seeping through the golem, it's eyes its mouth and any other whole or crack blood was pouring out.

The dark elf party paused for a moment and then the dirt golem spat out the crunched body bone poked through skin and all separate angles limbs bent in ways that they weren't meant to. The Golem completely uncaring Scanning for any projectiles that could potentially harm its master.

**Stomp,stomp,stomp,stomp,stomp,stomp.**

Tearing their head towards the direction it was coming from the pitch black swamp, this sound of thunderous footsteps along with the squelching of mud and water. leaping out from that Darkness was Lionheart they're Dragonborn. Spinning in the air and delivering a thunderous kick he knocked the head clean off of one of the dark elves.

The head itself was launched with such a great force that even while missing a jaw and most of its neck it still managed to get sent into the darkness of the swamp. The body did several summer souls in the air before falling on the floor.

Slamming his fist together the Dragonborn showed a vicious you're in fighting monsters was fun and all but fighting people was even funner in his opinion.

Thank you for sacrificing yourself to bring me entertainment. Your screams are suffering shall be told for Legends after our deaths in the dungeon community.

You'll be told about as myth and legends. Because the ass beating I'm about to give you will be unlike any other so prepare yourselves.

All was going well. Except for one tiny problem in the midst of the commotion, blood splattered onto Ada's bag normally she would just be upset about having to clean it but a scream was heard from it. and she recognized it for whatever inconceivable reason her sister was in that bag.

The dark elves capitalizing on this rushed for the back the six melee units left head formed up a wall near as the ranged opponents went to go grab it. Thinking Fast she sent out a gust of wind powerful enough to launch the range units back to feet. This also had the effective knocking her sister out of the bag.

Aafje was Now next to the Headless corpse in a pool of its blood she let out a terrified shriek as tears began to swell in her eyes. Holding on to anything she could as if it would save her from this nightmare. Ada could tell from here these bastards were getting off on her suffering.

Aafje RUN. standing up and starting to run, the four dark Elves started to give chase Ada was about to launch a lightning bolt at those mongrels but the dark elves had a trick up their sleeve. Using a counter scroll her magic was launched back at her her Shield protected her from the brunt of it but she still suffered a minor burn on her left hand.

One of the Dark Elves fired up bolt at her feet tripping Aafje up. As she fell on her back the thing she was holding revealed to be a teleportation crystal. Aafje was screaming crying mess she Unleashed magic into the crystal sending her to some random floor on the dungeon.

And a bright flash of light she was gone.

Use the tracing Crystal and follow her, we can use her as Leverage. one of the brat bastards said. Before she or her party could do anything they had used the crystals on hand they had.

It would appear that we are now at an impasse. So here's what's going to happen: we're going to stop fighting, you're going to put down your weapons and you're going to tie this rope around yourself. and if you don't well I'm sure that little elf wouldn't mind having some Noble blood put into her.

Lionheart looked like he was about to go feral with them out of growling and baring of teeth shown. Ada wasn't much far off high Elves were typically very composed But in this moment years of training to be eloquent when out the window.

Fine Raxs spoke out. Just know when they get back I'm going to rip your spine out.

we'll see. Was all that was uttered by a soon to be dead man.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

jacob pov

Wiping the spit out of my face I knew how this was going to end. I could give up the child and be left alone. Or I can listen to my morality and fight these guys. Sometimes I wish my morality wasn't so strong.

let's see or going up against taking a closer look at the group there was four of them clad in Black cloaks in what appear to be miniature daggers with very serrated edges. “Fuck the only winner of a knife fight is the man dying on his way to the hospital”.

Jacob had set a plan into motion he accepted he was probably going to die. But giving your life for a child isn't the worst way to die. Picking her up he hurt her squeak

“aww that's just fucken adorable”.

Holding her from under her armpits he could see her role of her knees and hold on to his hands he was holding her in front of him as if to hand it to the dark elf.

She began muttering something in a language he didn't understand holding on to his arms as if begging. When the dark elf got close enough to grab her he launched his foot square into the dark elf's dick. “ If you're not fighting dirty you're not fighting at all”.

Pulling the child he has to dub squeak into his chest and spin back around into a roundhouse kick square into the elves chest that was currently holding his ruptured testicles in pain. when the kick landed he forgot his own strength and balance for a moment when it landed he'd definitely felt something break he also fell flat on his back.

Knowing the dark elves most likely are out of their stunt he began to roll backwards holding the child in his arms. just in time too as a dagger landed where his face was. Grabbing dirt and gravel from the floor and throwing it at the dark elves face.

The dark elf fluttered its cloak around its face blocking all the dirt and gravel that would have hit it. such a childish unarmed move would never land against the noble Elegance of a dark elf. This creature should be honored it was about to die to their hands.

And then the elf got punched in the face. Well not what Jacob hoped for, it still obscured the vision and one not to waste an opportunity launched with a speed he didn't know he had. Or at least shouldn't have had and gave a mean uppercut to where the general idea of the face was lending it on the left side of the jaw and sending the dark elf into the sky. it was lights out.

“Holy shit balls I'm actually doing this, how the fuck am I doing this”. Jacob had zero confidence in himself but somehow he was surviving. Out of the corner of the eye he saw the other two making their sprint towards him. hopping back and forth between each other hoping to disorient him. Thinking quickly he grabbed the dark elf's body as it was falling to the ground now, one arm having the child capped around his elbow and waist and the other holding on to the face of the dark elf that he had just knocked out.

Holding the dark elf up as a human shield and hopes of deterring then from getting closer or at the very least use him as a human shield. The dark elves took it in stride and began circling him. This reminded Jacob of something when guts from berserk fought those assassin dudes. Unlike Guts he isn't a master swordsman that can scare the shit out of demons. jumping back into the corner of a wall he heard a faint scheduling behind him but paid it no mind.

“Normally having your back against a wall in a fight is a horrible idea but seeing as how these pedophiles use teamwork it's the best option I can come up with”.

The dark elves pause and take a moment to consider what to do from here, they don't have their arranged weapons they left it back at the camp in chase of the girl. They're obviously High tier opponent is some sort of Monk class. Getting into a wall like that stop them from doing their techniques.

Setting the girl down behind him he quickly took off his shirt this perplexed. And he waited for them to make the first move. The one previously writing In pain had been drinking something and gotten up. Brandishing his own dagger frothing at the mouth and rage it said something.

atwhay areyay ouyay aitingway orfay illkay imhay.

All three launched at him at once more than he wanted but hopefully this will work. throwing his shirt forward towards the directions of the daggers all of them aimed for his midsection. They pierced through the shirt but did its job with how Jagged they were their weapons were now stuck in the fabric.

Not wasting any time, the one that had just got up he slugged right in the cheek. the next one spinning around doing a poorly conducted back fist towards the back of the second one's head. his hand throbbed he had just potentially braking something.

The final one had gotten the knife free but it been too late charging forward grabbing the knife-wielding wrist and using his other had to grab the back of the left knee. Raised him behind to the sky and slammed him onto the ground using his shoulder. he felted crack the same hand that was on the knee was now forward and slammed down onto the face breaking the nose.

**Huff Huff Huff Huff Huff Huff**

Taking a moment to assess the situation and adrenaline beginning to calm down he took in the situation. There was a child now clinging to the back of his leg saying something over and over and over again. go and take a guess and say that's thank you. for currently unconscious murderers and pedophiles.

And he was now shirtless having to look after a small child. “Well To the victor goes the spoils”, taking a quick moment to take the Cape of one of them to replace his torn shirts with the benefit of having a hoodie and taking all four of their bags.

It doesn't matter what's inside they have stuff. Slinging his back in the four others around one of his arms and picking up the small girl with the other lending her rest on his elbow he began to March forward.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

Back where the group had been unconscious, the one that had been uppercut it began to arise and use what he had managed to hide to wake up his fellow dark elves.

That rat bastard when we find him we'll make his suffering legendary.

**Scuttle Scuttle Scuttle**

Turning around their anger turned to horror, monsters were flooding out of the walls they were warded off by the presence of a raid boss. but now since it was gone they could do as their Instinct told them.

Centipedes spiders of all varying sizes came out but none smaller than that of a wolf.

One centipede took charge of each one of its mandibles the size of a great sword.

**AAAAAHH– squelch. munch crunch munch crunch munch.**

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Chapter 2 end

the scene where those elves got eaten think of it like the scene from Kong Skull Island where all those insects came out the Woodworks. also please inform me if I'm doing better or worse in writing u/qeze for the advice in writing tools he gave me.

Previous https://www.tumblr.com/greatkittydream/742254581036302336/the-creature-from-the-dungeon-1?source=share

[askteamspirit]

Zephyr: "I just... used to get kinda talk that a lot. Before Rax I mean

"It's also... simple. I understand the rules, the goal, what I need to do."

"Oh, wait, I know a good example"

"I don't exactly know her whole story, just enough to gather that. And I know that people lie,or just say things they don't mean for good and bad reasons all the time "But the difference in our strength, the power behind her blows; that can't be faked. Or the fact that I came out mostly unhurt. "She didn't want to hurt me. Probably doesn't want to hurt anyone"

"Does, uh, any of that make sense to you? "or... do you kinda already have your mind made up?" (@askthetraveller (Cameo @asksavel))

[aspenmissing]

𝚃𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚊 (𝙿𝚝 𝟸)

Haxus is in the Central Energy Chamber of the Castle of Lions and speaking with Sendak through the computer.

"Powering sub panels" Haxus says, typing on the controls.

"Sub panel energy transducer is go" 

 "Aye, sir. Opening pathway to link with bridge. Initializing main cluster reboot." Pidge is climbing on a ladder on the wall to hack into the Castle's computer system through an open panel using the armour's computer.

"Gotcha" 

"Initializing complete. I'm set for main power up"

"The bridge is go" Sendak says.

"Powering up" Haxus powers up the engine; Pidge hacks it to overload the engine using her armour's computer.

"And up, and up, and up. I would not want to be touching a metal surface when this thing overloads" Alarms blare.

"Sir, something is wrong" Haxus says. The engine overloads and explodes in energy; Haxus is caught in the blast and wounded. Pidge grabs Rover as it hovers to avoid being electrocuted. Rover brings Pidge to Haxus "You're the one causing all this trouble? A child?"

"I'm not a child. I'm a Paladin of Voltron" Haxus laughs, drawing his sword.

"Let me tell you something, child. I'm a soldier of the Galra Empire. Nothing stops me but triumph or death" Haxus yells and battles Pidge. Pidge strikes Haxus with her grappling hook. He catches the rope and throws Pidge aside "Nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to hide." Haxus says, lifting his sword to strike Pidge. Haxus then hears a sound and looks at the controls to see Soul. With Haxus distracted, Pidge dives between Haxus' legs and throws him off-balance on the catwalk. Rover slams into Haxus to knock him over but Haxus grabs Rover to avoid falling.

"Rover!" Pidge shouts. Soul jumps onto rover and stomps on Haxus' fingers, trying to get him to let go, failing. Rover deactivates to let Haxus fall. Soul jumps into Pidge's arms "No!" Pidge rushes forward after Rover but is too late to grab the drone. Haxus and Rover fall to their end.

"No!" Haxus shouts. Pidge mourns Rover as Soul rubs her arm. Sendak interrupts through the computer.

"Haxus, report in" 

"Haxus is gone, and you're next!" Pidge shouts.

"You've slowed me down, but this ship is mine! You will turn yourself over to me immediately!" 

Never!" 

"Well, then, maybe your leader or friend can convince you" Sendak said. 

"What do you want?" Shiro asks, as he tries to protect Y/N. Trying to make due with his arms tied. He smirks "Nothing better than sibling love, they will do anything to keep each other safe" Y/N glares at Sendak "Your friend wanted to hear from you two, but maybe all I need is one" Sendak nods his head for a Sentry to grab Shiro.

"Leave her alone!" Shiro shouts, struggling.

 "Shiro? Y/N?" 

"Pidge? Pidge, don't listen to-" Sendak tortures Y/N using his prosthetic gauntlet. Y/N's bites her tongue, as to not scream.

"Looks like we have a fighter here. You'll do perfect in the gladiator fight" Sendak smirks. He continues to torture Y/N, turning up the power. Y/N couldn't hold it any longer and lets out her screams.

"Stop it! I'm the leader! Not her!" Shiro says, struggling.

"No!" Pidge shouts. Pidge closes her eyes, trying to drown out the sound of Y/N's screams.

"You can make it stop. Turn yourself in. Her suffering is in your hands"

==

Hunk and Coran stand with Shay and Ray in their home.

"Is your ship repaired that you may depart our presence?" Rax asks.

"Uh...Are you saying that you want us to leave?" Hunk said. 

"Yes" Rax says, arms crossed.

"Well, it's working, but we can't leave without the Crystal" Hunk turns to Coran "You come up with an ideas how to get it?" 

"Actually, yes." Coran says. Coran grins.

==

His plan is to disguise themselves as a Galra Sentry with Hunk as the legs and Coran wearing a helmet as he sits on Hunk's shoulder, both of them wrapped in a blanket. They can barely keep upright.

"I can't believe I'm the legs again. I'm the one who took down the guard. I should get to be the head" Hunk complains.

"Shh! Legs don't talk" Hunk and Coran approach two Sentries guarding the Crystal while wearing their disguise "Oh, hello, gentlemen, shift's over. Boss needs you back at the guard shack"

"Verify identification code" A Sentry says.

"Right. I didn't want to have to do this, but I'm going to have to pull rank. You guys are in big trouble, right? So, hand over those blasters and ID badges" The sentries take aim.

 "Verify identification code or be destroyed." The drone said. 

"Okay, okay. I've got it right...here!" Coran throws off the disguise. Hunk blasts the sentries with his Bayard cannon. Coran jumps off Hunk's shoulders and walks over to the Crystal, placing his hands on it; making it glow.

"What are you doing?" Hunk asks "We got to hurry!"  

"I'm not just going to pry this out of here like some Galra monster. The Balmera is a sacred being. You have to communicate with it. Let your life forces connect. This is the way it was done in our time"

"Whoa. You really know your Balmeras" Hunk says. The Balmera responds to Coran and exposes the Crystal entirely. The Crystal nearly falls over, but Coran catches it, injuring his spine in the process. He cracks his neck to look at a Hunk, his eyes wide open "........I think I'm broken" Hunk sighs; he hears the sound of laser blasters being armed and turns to see they are surrounded by Galra Sentries

"Augh...Okay, guys! All right, I hate to do this. Blasters and badges. Come on. Give them up" Coran falls over from pain. Hunk raises his arm in surrender, smiling sheepishly.

==

Pidge and Soul lurks near the entrance to the Bridge in the Castle of Lions and listens as Sendak speaks to Shiro, who has his head down. Lance lays near him, face up. Y/N lays on the other side, face down, severely injured.

"I'm impressed that you managed to escape. Perhaps it would be worth the trip to your planet to see if the rest of your kind have your spirit, as well as your sisters. Of course, they will all end up broken, just like you. Now that we have Voltron, every planet, every race, all share the same fate." Sendak says.

==

Hunk and Coran are locked in a cell on the Balmera.

"Quiznak! I can't believe they saw through our disguise..." Hunk and Coran hear footsteps "Someone's coming!" Shay appears carrying a Galra Sentry arm.

"Shay?" Hunk asks. Shay uses the Sentry arm on the cell scanner and unlocks the cell. The cell barrier disappears.

"Make haste to your pod. The Crystal is prepared for departure"

"How did you get the Crystal?" Coran asks.

"I was assigned to take it to the upper levels, but instead I took it down. Soon, they will discover my ruse. Time is short"

"Why are you helping us?" Hunk asks "You'll get in trouble"

"Because your words touched my heart. I wish for freedom for all Balmera. Perhaps your Voltron can make it so" Hunk looks determined. Hunk, Coran and Shay run for the flight pod. Rax meets them there with Sentries armed.

"No. Rax, why?"

"These two bring only trouble to our family. It was the only way to protect you" Hunk angrily readies his Bayard.

"No! The Balmera will save us"  Shay places her hand on the ground to contact the Balmera.

"Shay, no!" The Balmera responds to Shay and causes rocks to fall from the cave to crush the Sentries. Hunk, Coran, and Shay run for the flight pod. Some Sentries survive and capture Shay "Shay!"

"Go! Make haste!" Shay shouts.

"Let her go!"

"No, Hunk! We have to go!" Hunk hesitates, but more sentries and Galra fighter jets arrive. Hunk enters the Altean flight pod with Coran.

"I'll come back for you, Shay! I promise!"

"If we can't shake these patrols, we might be back here sooner then we want!" Hunk and Coran leave in the flight pod pursued by Galra fighter jets.

==

The Altean Mice infiltrate the Generator Room of the Castle of Lions and take out the last Galra Sentry guarding it. They press buttons on the control panel to deactivate the particle barrier.

==

Outside, Keith and Allura watch the barrier disappear/

"It worked!" Keith says.

"They did it!" Keith and Allura head inside the Castle.

==

Sendak sees Pidge on the computer of the Castle Bridge. He turns to attack and pursue her out of the Bridge. As Sendak runs out of the Bridge, the real Pidhge, alongside Soul, rushes inside the Bridge to speak to Shiro and Y/N. Soul jumps of Pidge's shoulder and nuzzles Y/N's head.

"Shiro, Y/N wake up. It's me, Pidge-" Pidge is caught by Sendak's gauntlet.

"You really thought your little hologram trick would work with me?" Sendak says. Keith and Allura enter the Bridge. Keith summons his Bayard to fight "Stand back!" Sendak is suddenly struck behind by Lance's Bayard rifle. Lance passes out again. Shiro rushes at Sendak and is knocked aside. Keith battles Sendak. Sendak throws Keith and Pidge severs the energy chain to his gauntlet, rendering it useless "No!" Sendak is enrages and battles Pidge. Allura accesses the Bridge's computer. Keith attacks Sendak again and Sendak catches his Bayard's blade. Allura readies the computer. 

"Keith, duck!" He does so and a Scythe knocks Sendak into the centre of the Bridge and a barrier rises up, trapping him. Keith is pushed back. He looks up to see Y/N, breathing heavily. She puts her Bayard away and turns to face Keith, a tired look on her face "We did it" She suddenly collapses, only to be caught by Keith. She's unconscious again. He shows a small smile.

"Yeah, we did it" Pidge frees Shiro and Keith brings Y/N over to Shiro, He instantly holds her tight as Soul curls up onto her stomach.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you" Shiro mutters. Keith frowns before going over to Lance.

"Lance, are you okay?" Keith asks, pulling him upright. 

"We are a good team" Lance says. He smiles, Keith smiles in return. Lance looks over at Y/N and frowns "It's my fault she was in the blast. I didn't cover her" 

==

Hunk and Coran are fleeing from Galra fighter jets on the Balmera.

"We can't shake them!" Coran says "We're not going to make it!" Hunk remembers the booster fuel Pidge installed and motions to press the button "Uh, it may turn us into a giant fireball"

"Maybe, but it's out only chance" Coran hesitates but sees more Galra jets approaching.

"Fine. Fire in the hole!" Hunk presses the button and the flight pod blasts into the sky. Coran cheers.

"We did it!"

==

Lance and Y/N are sleeping inside a pod. Allura, Keith, Soul, Shiro, and Pidge stand by them in the Sleep Chamber. 

"After a day in here, they should be fully healed" Shiro approaches Pidge.

"Pidge, we can't thank you enough for all you did. I can't help but feel that you were meant to be a part of our team... but I understand if you want to leave" 

"Dad used to tell me how close he was with his crew members. They were like family. Now I understand what he was talking about" Shiro smiles at Pidge "I'm staying with you guys. Let's stop Zarkon for all of our families" Allura and Keith also smile at Pidge.

"Good to have you back on the team" Keith says. Soul makes a noise from Pidge's shoulder, nuzzling into her cheek. Pidge smiles fondly at her team.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Napoleonville [Chapter 6: The House Of Salt And Scales]

Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, smoking, infidelity, Evangelical Christians, kids, parenthood, Willis Warning, (Mis)Adventures With Aegon, Targ family dysfunction, bodily injury, blood, alligators, ANGST!!!

Word Count: 7.5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @dr-aegon @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @libroparaiso @bluerskiees @herfantasyworldd @elizarbell @urmomsgirlfriend1 @fudge13 @strangersunghoon

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“Did you hear that Willis is single again?”

Ugh. “Yes, Mama. I heard. You told me already.” You linger in the doorway with a white bakery box in your hands: your mother’s favorite, grasshopper pie, straight out of the 1960s. She allegedly ate through two a week when she was pregnant with you. Cadi has already dashed inside and made herself at home; she’s probably jamming the movie she got from Blockbuster—Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Amir recommended it—into the VHS player. “You told me, Willis told me, all his deputies told me, Cadi told me, my mailman told me, the checkout ladies at the Piggly Wiggly told me, literally every resident of Napoleonville has informed me in no uncertain terms that Willis is single again. And I could not possibly care less.”

Your mother sighs and presses a hand to her forehead, wounded and incredulous, like she’s just watched a 60 Minutes segments about a tsunami or a genocide. “I just don’t understand it. In my day, people married for life.”

You glance back longingly at your Chevy Celebrity. “Yeah. I know they did.”

“When your father, and God rest his soul, when he was young, he was a hellion,” your mother says, as if you don’t remember it, as if you weren’t there. “He’d get his paycheck every Friday and stay out all night with his buddies, sometimes he didn’t come home the whole weekend. I’d lay into him when he finally showed, I’d say, ‘Rene, how on earth am I supposed to put dinner on the table if I don’t have any fish in the icebox?!’ Once he punched a hole in the kitchen wall and I had to cover it up with a picture of President Eisenhower! And I never even thought about leaving. How could I have done that to you? Forcing you to grow up in a broken home? Mothers and fathers living apart, whoever heard of such a thing? It’s unnatural.”

You’re brainstorming recipes to distract yourself. Caramel pretzel cookies. Banana chiffon pie. Cheese Danish cupcakes with diced cherries and a hint of vanilla. “Everyone draws their own lines, Mama.”

“But it’s not just about you,” she implores, her eyes shimmering with sympathy she never had for other women. You remember what she said on the rare occasions you confided in her about your frustrations with Willis: Of course a man isn’t going to want you bothering him with your feelings when he’s had a hard day at work. Of course a man—after you’ve had his baby, after you almost died to do it—is going to be crossing off days on the calendar until you can have sex again. He keeps a roof over your head and he never hits you, what more could you ask for? “What about Cadi? What if she grows up thinking that her marriage vows don’t mean anything? It’s the foundation of society, marriage. If that goes, everything goes.”

It’s the foundation of a lot of coercion and unfairness and misery, that’s for sure. “I wouldn’t want Cadi to stay in a situation that makes her unhappy. Would you?”

Your mother throws her hands up, like you’ve told her you’re converting to communism and catching the next flight to the USSR. “Life isn’t just about happiness, sweetheart! It’s about commitment, it’s about responsibility! If everyone did what they wanted all the time, no one would stay married!”

“Maybe that speaks to the value of marriage as an institution.”

“And morality is already falling apart in this country,” your mother continues, ignoring you. That’s what she does when she can’t refute facts, logic, evidence. “Young people living together, women having babies with two or three different men, people doing drugs, people on Welfare, people shooting and stabbing each other, sex shops everywhere, naughty magazines at gas stations, men wanting to marry other men—”

“Okay, Mama. I really have to go now.”

“Alright, I’ll shut up. I will, I will, I swear.” She makes peace with a brisk kiss to your cheek like a stamp on an envelope. “Enjoy a nice quiet night to yourself. Do you have any plans?”

Well, Mama, I’m trying to resist the temptation to call my engaged dominant oil tycoon not-boyfriend and tell him to come over for kinky adulterous sex. “Not really. I’ll probably take a bubble bath and then watch something Cadi would think is boring, like 20/20.” You hand over the bakery box, and your mother’s face lights up.

“Grasshopper pie?!”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. You know it’s hard for me to make it myself anymore. This rheumatoid arthritis, it’s got me all twisted up.” She nods down to where her fingers grip the box, knobby and increasingly useless.

“When’s your next appointment?”

“I’ve got one in…oh…about three weeks, I think. I’d have to check my daybook. All the way over in New Orleans with some specialist that Dr. Cormier recommended.”

“Okay. Want me to go with you?”

“Yes, that’d be fine.” It would be more than fine; she wants you to go, though she won’t say it. You aren’t sure if she doesn’t want to impose or doesn’t want to admit how reliant she’s becoming upon you, like growing up in reverse.

“Mawmaw!” Cadi shouts from inside the house. “Hurry up! I want to watch Predator!”

“You quit your hollering, I’ll be right there!” Then your mother looks to you and offers one last piece of very unsolicited advice. “Just be kind to Willis, alright? Give him a chance. I don’t think he’ll ever find a woman he likes as much as you. That’s what everyone says.”

“Mama, he has no idea who I am.” And he’s not interested either.

“Sure he does. You’re the mother of his child, and you always will be. Maybe you’ll find your way back to each other.”

“I’ll think about it.” You definitely won’t. “Goodnight, Mama.”

“So long.” She shuffles into the house, and once she’s shut the door you hear her muffled voice: “Arcadia, come on over here and help me slice up this pie…”

You drive home with the windows down and blasting St. Elmo’s Fire. There’s still an hour or two of sunlight left; the world is painted in gold and blood orange, the soybeans, the sugarcane, the grass growing tall and wild, the Spanish moss swinging from the trees, the earth ripening as its revolution hurtles towards the apex of summer. Cadi is out of school until August. Amir will be announcing his looming departure to San Francisco. Aemond will be getting married.

The adolescent alligator that Aemond is so afraid of is in the far corner of the front yard, basking in the last of the daylight. You walk into your room, flop down on the bed, lie there staring longingly at the pink phone on your nightstand. You reach to pick it up, then stop yourself. Aemond hasn’t fucked you, hasn’t kissed you, has rarely touched you at all since you found out about Christabel. But he stops by your house and invites you to his; he stitches himself into your life like someone somewhere once sutured his face back together.

I can’t. It’s wrong. He’s engaged.

Aemond doesn’t know you’re home alone. It’s Friday, and usually Cadi would be here with you until tomorrow morning.

Maybe it’s not really cheating until he’s married. I mean, if Aemond and Christabel aren’t sleeping together, if they almost never see each other…is it even a real relationship?

Wistful thinking, yes, denial, yes; but with each passing minute your resolve not to pick up the phone weakens.

We don’t have much longer until the wedding. Our time is slipping away.

He’s a robber baron. He’s arrogant, he’s delusional.

And I want him. I still do, and I can’t stop.

The phone rings. You sit up, startled. It’s not Aemond, you tell yourself so you won’t be disappointed when it isn’t him. But it is.

“Hi,” Aemond says; he sounds out of breath. “I’m really sorry to bother you.”

“No, it’s okay, Cadi is actually having a sleepover with my mom. They’re watching Predator. My mom has no idea what it’s about, she’ll be clutching that Bible she got signed by Jerry Falwell a little extra hard tonight. What’s up?”

“This is going to sound random, but…you haven’t seen Aegon, have you? He hasn’t shown up at your house, he hasn’t called? You don’t know where he is?”

Aegon? Why would I know anything about what Aegon’s doing right now? “Um, no…?”

A long exhale, a lull that’s full of dread.

“Aemond, what’s going on?”

“He and my father got into it a few hours ago. They were screaming at each other, kicking furniture over, which isn’t all that unusual, honestly. But then Aegon ran away.”

“Wait, like, he’s gone…?”

“He stormed out the back door, went down to the lake, and then headed north into the trees. And I assumed he’d be back by now, but it’s getting dark and he’s not here. He never came home. His Porsche is still sitting in the driveway.” There is a pause. “I think he’s out there.”

“Out where?”

“In the woods,” Aemond says, shellshocked, terrified. “In the bayou.”

Your eyes dart to the window; the golden daylight is dwindling. “Aemond, he can’t be alone in the bayou. It’s dangerous. He could die. There aren’t just alligators, there are wild boars, cottonmouths, copperheads, snapping turtles, brown recluses, fire ants, I don’t think there are any black bears this far south but it’s always possible, he could drown, he could get trapped in quicksand, you cannot let Aegon spend the night out there.”

“I don’t know what to do.” You’re not used to hearing this in Aemond’s voice: the panic, the vulnerability. “No one else seems worried. They said he disappears all the time, and that’s true. They’re convinced he’s found his way to a strip club or a Waffle House or something and will drag himself home eventually. No one will listen to me. My father has forbidden me from getting anyone else involved. He doesn’t want gossip getting around town and overshadowing the new rig project or…you know. The wedding thing. My wedding. And I can go over his head, sure, I can make calls, but when investigators show up here to start searching my father is just going to tell them to leave. How is it even possible to find Aegon? At night in a fucking swamp? Is anyone going to be willing to go out there before morning? Do I need people with bloodhounds or a helicopter?”

No way, you think as soon as the idea hits you. But it’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do. “I can think of someone who knows their way around the bayou.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s just after 7 p.m. when Willis arrives to pick you up: grinning smugly, mullet fluffed, Plymouth Gran Fury hauling his brand new 20-foot jon boat. He’s dressed for night fishing in boots, camo-colored waders, and a grey hoodie with SHERIFF printed across the front in black letters. You climb into the passenger seat wearing sneakers, denim shorts, and a blue raincoat over your Pepsi t-shirt. You haven’t been fishing since you were married to Willis, and you’ve never missed it. It’s a grisly business: hooks through lips, hooks through eyeballs, hooks swallowed and tangled up in some doomed creature’s guts.

Aemond is waiting at the mouth of the Targaryens’ driveway, just out of sight of the mansion they call The Last Desire. He gets in the back seat and sits there testily with his arms crossed, lips pressed into a thin line, glaring out the window as an indistinct blur of primeval vegetation passes by outside. He has on his Marlboro jacket, light-wash jeans, and Adidas sneakers. You hope he doesn’t ruin them; although you suppose he can always buy more. He could buy a hundred more, a thousand more, and it wouldn’t make a difference. You can’t fathom what it’s like to live that way. It seems to conflict with all the laws of man and nature.

Aemond speaks grudgingly to Willis, a quick flat statement that invites no conversation. He didn’t call Willis to explain the situation, you did. You’re afraid to leave them alone with each other. You aren’t sure who would be more likely to end up a corpse decomposing in the muddy silt at the bottom of Lake Verret. “Thank you for agreeing to help with this.”

Willis chuckles warmly, either oblivious to Aemond’s prickliness or unbothered by it. “Bien sur! It’s my job, son. We’ll hunt your brother down.” Then he glances over at you, smirking, prying. “So, sugar…how’d you two make each other’s acquaintance?”

“Amir and I baked the cakes for his engagement party.”

“Engagement party, huh?” Willis looks at Aemond in the rearview mirror. “You gettin’ married?”

Aemond is still staring out the window. “Obviously.”

“So you ain’t single?”

“Legally, I am in fact single until the day the marriage license is signed.”

Willis returns his attention to you. “So he ain’t the petit ami you’ve been so secretive about.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, Willis. I really can’t be more clear than that.”

“Oh, I know you got one. I know all your looks, sugar. Some days you come ‘round my office lookin’ lovesick, like you’re just a-floatin’ on a cloud. Other days you’re real mean, like you don’t want me takin’ none of your time, like you got somebody more important to spend it on. And then sometimes you just look…” He smiles, mischievous. “Well, how can I put it? Satisfied. The cat who ate the canary. And I recall exactly what that looks like on you. It’s been a while, sure. But I remember.”

From the back seat, Aemond sighs irritably. You say to Willis: “Can we please focus on finding Aegon?”

“Sois calme, sois calme. That’s why I’m here. We’ll be in the water in ten minutes.”

There is no more discussion; the only sound is the radio, Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler. Willis turns onto a winding dirt road that leads to a boat launch about a mile from the Targaryens’ property. He spins his Plymouth Gran Fury around and backs it down the concrete ramp towards the rippling, slow-moving currents of Lake Verret. It’s difficult to see from the driver’s seat—most people would have someone get out to guide them—but Willis knows the way by heart. He’s been on boats since before he could walk; Willis’ daddy knew the bayou, and his daddy knew the bayou, and his daddy did too, all the way back to before the Louisiana Purchase. Your family are newer arrivals (relatively speaking), having only been in Napoleonville for about 100 years and keeping mostly to the town. You remember your 11th grade science teacher saying once that alligators have been around since before the dinosaurs went extinct. Maybe that’s what Willis is: a relic of a distant time and species, afflicted with a cunning ruggedness that won’t allow his kind to go extinct.

When the trailer is mostly underwater, Willis gets out of the car to unhook the straps that keep the boat moored to it. You go outside to help and Aemond follows, though he doesn’t know what to do. He’s never handled a boat this size and it shows; perhaps a yacht would be more his speed. He stands aside and watches, frowning, hands buried in the pockets of his Marlboro jacket. His lack of expertise riles him. He’s not used to being the incapable one. He hates not having control.

Willis already has a tow rope tied to a metal handle at the bow of the jon boat; he lifts it out and gives the free end to Aemond. “Hold onto that, will ya? Don’t let her get away.”

“Sure,” Aemond replies ungenerously. Willis returns to his Plymouth Gran Fury to finish backing the trailer into the lake until the boat floats. Standing on the shore together, you and Aemond stare at each other, unable to speak honestly, unable to decide what you’d say even if you could.

The jon boat bobs in the water, and you show Aemond how to pull it away from the trailer using the tow rope. Willis drives the trailer back onto dry land, parks his car in a flat area near the boat launch, and then joins you and Aemond by the water’s edge. He walks to where the boat is floating just to the right side of the concrete ramp and, with some difficulty, clambers inside as the boat rocks under his weight. Then he stands in the middle of it and gestures for you to approach. “Let’s get goin’, sugar.”

You take Willis’ hands when he reaches for you and let him help you into the jon boat. When you stumble over a bench seat, he steadies you with a hand on your waist, familiar but in no way erotic; not for you, at least. Still, from where he is standing on the lakeshore with the tow rope, Aemond glowers venomously.

“Your turn, son,” Willis calls to him, winking. “And I promise not to get too sweet with ya.”

But Aemond doesn’t need any assistance to board the vessel. He has long limbs, good balance, and an ironclad determination not to let Willis see him falter. Aemond sits at the bow of the boat. You claim a spot in the middle. Willis takes a seat at the stern, starts the outboard motor, and guides the boat into the treacherous swampland that lurks like a stalking animal at the edges of Lake Verret.

In the bayou, the water is sluggish, currentless, thick with vivid green salvinia and duckweed. Towering bald cypress trees grow out of the opaque depths and are adorned with greyish, anemic bundles of Spanish moss like spiderwebs. Mangrove trees with their myriad of semi-submerged roots are sanctuaries for catfish, turtles, baby alligators. Larger gators—as big as the female that lives in your yard, and some up to seven or eight feet—prowl with only their nostrils and ancient yellow eyes peeking out from under the water. Great blue herons tiptoe along the shallow shoreline and stab at fish that unknowingly flit between their long skeletal legs. Cicadas shriek in the trees so loudly they almost drown out the hum of the boat’s motor. When the last of the daylight vanishes, Willis tells Aemond to turn on the spotlight mounted to the bow, and the water becomes a soupy, greenish, primordial witch’s brew beneath its glow. Aemond lights a cigarette and puffs on it as he ponders this alien corner of the world that he’s found himself in.

Willis has a number of items stowed on the flat aluminum floor of the boat, you notice now: nets, paddles in case the motor fails, bottles of water, ropes, fishing poles, flashlights, hunting knives, a few sturdy wooden walking sticks. He’s wearing his sheriff’s pistol on a belt fastened over his waders. This makes you uneasy, though you can’t recall ever seeing him use it. It seems wrong to be able to end a life with so little effort.

“Aegon!” Aemond shouts from the bow, using a flashlight to look to the sides of the boat where the spotlight’s luminescence doesn’t shine so brightly. You grab your own flashlight to help him search. “Aegon! Where are you?!”

There’s something burning in your nose and throat as you lean over the side of the boat to peer into the shadowy wilderness. Salt, you realize, but that doesn’t make any sense. Lake Verret is a freshwater lake. You turn towards where Willis is steering the boat with the rumbling gas-powered motor. “Do you smell that?”

“Yup. Sure do.”

“But…how…?”

“One of the rigs mighta hit a salt dome while they were drillin’, I figure,” Willis says. “There’s been talk for years that we got salt domes under the lake. But that don’t stop these oil companies.” He stares meaningfully at Aemond. Aemond glances back, rather abashed. “And ya know what that means. If the water turns brackish, most of the fish’ll die. And who’s got to live with that for generations to come? Not the Targaryens or the Rockefellers, that’s for sure.”

Aemond resumes shouting for his wayward eldest brother. A dark snake, perhaps six feet long, slithers down the length of the boat through the murky water. “Aegon! Aegon!”

“What did he and Viserys argue about?” you ask.

Aemond is cagy. “It’s…kind of personal.”

“Personal like he got a stripper pregnant or personal like he murdered someone in a drunken hit-and-run?”

“Neither. But closer to the first option.” Then he roars into the darkness: “Aegon!”

“Maybe the bon a rien already found his way back home,” Willis says. “Maybe—”

And then there is an echo through the bayou, faint but vaguely human, a ghost, a phantom. “Aegon!” Aemond shouts back. “Where are you?!” Willis cuts the boat engine so you can hear the reply.

Faintly, very faintly, his disembodied voice drifts out of the trees. “Over here! Help me! Quickly! Seriously, really really quickly!!”

“Keep talking!” Aemond yells. Willis is listening intently, trying to pinpoint a direction. His thick, dark eyebrows are knit together in concentration that is rare for him.

Barely audible over the screams of the cicadas: “What the fuck am I supposed to say?! Just get over here and save me!”

“We’re trying to figure out where your voice is coming from, so don’t stop talking!”

“Help me! Come help me!! Right now!! My arms are getting tired!!”

“What? What are you doing with your arms?!”

“I got him,” Willis says. He restarts the motor and steers the boat down a narrow corridor of the swamp. The path is only about ten yards wide and bordered by mangrove trees with nests of exposed, labyrinthian roots. The water is probably relatively shallow: five feet, ten feet, just deep enough for secrets. The breeze is cool and wet, almost chilly. On the shore, you spy a snapping turtle the size of a golden retriever. Its long prehistoric claws are coated with mud and green blades of marsh grass. It ogles you as if to say: What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. This is where the dinosaurs that survived the asteroid live.

“Aegon?” Aemond calls.

“Here! Over here! I can see you, I see the lights! Oh my God, I’m not gonna die! Thank you Jesus!”

Aemond laughs in relief. “I didn’t think you two knew each other.”

“Shut up and save me, you muppet!”

And then you see Aegon—the spotlight hits him, he is illuminated in a stark white glow—and your stomach plummets, your blood goes cold. In an alcove of the bayou, right where the water meets the shore, Aegon is up in a bald cypress tree. He’s about five feet off the ground and standing on top of a branch just thick enough to hold his weight. It’s too narrow to balance comfortably on; he is hugging the trunk to ensure he doesn’t fall, and a fall would be catastrophic. Sprawled on the muck surrounding the base of the tree are a plethora of alligators, all approximately ten feet in length. That’s big enough to be lethal humans. That would be big enough to kill a bear, a horse, a shark. When the spotlight shines on them, the gators begin to squirm and hiss, glaring with soulless reptilian wrath at the boat. Willis shuts off the motor, and the boat bobs placidly.

“Oh, fuck,” Aemond says.

“Yeah, exactly!” Aegon pitches back. He’s wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and tiny turquoise blue shorts. He is barefoot. “So what’s the plan?! By the way, hey, cake lady.”

“Hi, Aegon.”

Aemond says: “How the hell did you get up there?”

“I was pissed off about the dad thing and I was walking for a long time, then I realized I was probably in the wrong neighborhood for someone with two legs and no desire to get eaten. I tried to find my way back but then these pig-looking things started chasing me and I freaked out and climbed up here to hide until they left. But as the sun went down, alligators started showing up. And the more time went by, the more alligators there were. And that’s the whole story, can you get me down now?!”

Aemond asks Willis, petrified: “How do we get him down?”

Willis surveys the scene for a moment, thinking. “Alright. Here’s what I reckon. We can toss him one end of a rope and he can tie it to the branch above him, right at the base where it’s real thick. Then we’ll hold the other end of the rope, and he can kinda shimmy on down it into the boat.”

Aegon says: “But what if right before I get to the boat, when I’m like four feet above the water, an alligator jumps out and bites me?”

“They don’t usually do that,” Willis replies.

“Usually?!”

“Look, we don’t have a lot of options,” Aemond tells his brother. “We can do the rope plan now, or we can leave you here, backtrack all the way to the boat launch, get the car, get some help, and hope they magically have a better solution for you. Or you can wait up there until morning to see if the alligators leave. You pick.”

“Isn’t that the hick sheriff guy? Can’t he shoot them?”

“Gators got brains ‘bout the size of a walnut, son,” Willis says. “And if I don’t hit ‘em where it counts, I’m just gonna make them angrier. That ain’t good for any of us.”

“Okay,” Aegon concedes. “Throw me a rope.”

Willis grabs one from the bottom of the jon boat, hands an end to Aemond, and tosses the other to Aegon. It takes the eldest Targaryen boy four attempts to catch it; the rope keeps falling and smacking the hissing alligators in the face before Willis lugs it back to the boat to try again. Once he finally obtains the rope, Aegon knots it—double, triple, quadruple—around where the branch above him, just barely within reach if he stretches as far as he can, meets the massive trunk of the bald cypress tree. Willis tells Aemond: “Now ya gotta hold the rope real tight. No slack at all, or it’ll dip and he’ll end up in a gator’s lap.”

“Yeah, Aemond!” Aegon says, his voice shaky. “No slack!”

“Got it.” Aemond loops his end of the rope around his waist, makes a knot, and then grips it with both hands and tugs it until it forms a straight diagonal line from the tree to the boat.

“Ya sure you wanna do that?” Willia says softly, nodding to Aemond’s waist. “If somethin’ goes wrong and he ends up in the water, you’ll be goin’ in with him.”

“I’m sure.”

“Alrighty.” Willis grabs one of the heavy wooden walking sticks from the aluminum floor of the boat. “If a gator tries to cause a problem, I’ll whack ‘em good. Don’t let ‘em get their jaws ‘round ya, not an arm or a leg or nothin’. If they get ahold of ya, they’ll roll and rip your bones right outta the sockets.”

“Awesome,” Aegon says from the tree. “I’m so glad you told me that. Yeah. Great. Any more super helpful alligator trivia, Sasquatch?”

“Yes sir. If one chomps down on ya, poke it in the eye with your fingers. A whack to the snout or a poke to the eye is the best way outta a gator’s mouth.”

Aegon gulps and clutches the rope, steeling himself.

“What should I do?” you ask Willis. “Should I get a stick too—?”

“Nothin’. You don’t do nothin’. You just sit down right in the middle and keep the boat steady. And if your petit ami starts goin’ overboard, maybe try to snatch him. But don’t ya fall in. Ya don’t want to be in that water. If there are gators above the water, there are gators below too. I guarantee it.”

You sit in the precise middle of the boat, using your weight to reinforce the vessel’s center of gravity as Aemond and Willis stand at opposing ends. Right before Aegon begins his descent, Aemond snags your attention. He makes a motion with one hand, a slicing, a prohibition. Don’t do anything insane, he means. Don’t risk trying to drag me back into the boat if I start going over.

“Whenever ya ready, bon a rien,” Willis says. And no one else but you knows that what he’s calling Aegon is a good-for-nothing.

Aegon begins scurrying down the length of the rope, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the bobbing jon boat. He passes above the hissing gators congregating at the base of the bald cypress tree and then over the water, where there are ripples that multiply out from epicenters and flashes of movement just beneath the surface but no homicidal alligator activity. When Aegon nears the boat, Willis seizes him and helps him into it; and then Aegon ruptures into hysterical giggles.

“I almost died, can you believe that?” he asks Aemond, who is untying the rope from his waist and beaming, the first real smile you’ve seen from him tonight. “Because I ran away from Viserys?! What an idiotic way to go. I’ll never let that bastard convince me to off myself. I gotta outlive him. I gotta do Jello shots on that motherfucker’s grave someday.”

“Yeah, you do,” Aemond agrees, squeezing Aegon’s shoulder.

“Goddammit,” Willis grumbles. He’s using his walking stick to jab at the water near the rear of the boat. “We’re hooked on a mangrove root or something.”

“Do you need help?” Aemond asks, headed towards him.

“Yes sir, if you’d be so kind. I don’t…I can’t see…what the hell is it stuck to?”

“The motor…? The blades of the motor?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re right. Yup. There it is. We musta drifted into it while we were preoccupied. Okay, we gotta push the boat off the root and then we can get movin’ again. Grab a stick, let’s start pushin’.”

“Should I get a stick too?” Aegon says, joining them. “I can hit stuff with sticks. I really want to get out of here…”

There’s a bit of a commotion at the back of the boat as the men try to propel it away from the mangrove tree. Willis is complaining that the water is too deep to touch the bottom with his stick. Aemond’s stick keeps slipping off the mangrove roots when he tries to get leverage. You aren’t sure what Aegon is contributing, if anything. The boat has begun to rock.

You look to the tree where Aegon had been imprisoned. The alligators are fully awake now; they are headed into the water and disappearing there, unseen, unheard, and yet all around you.

“I think we need to go now,” you say, but no one is listening to you. They’re still wrestling with the mangrove root. You rise, taking a few steps to the left to offset the boat’s listing towards the right. “Guys, we need to—”

The boat is freed from its organic jailor and lurches sharply towards the left. As the men cheer triumphantly—completely unaware of what’s happening—you are jolted off your feet and tumble backwards over the side of the boat.

The shock of hitting the water stuns you. It is cold and impossibly dark; when you open your eyes to try to find the surface, the boat, you can’t see anything. You paddle blindly. Something brushes your leg, and you scream bubbles of mute terror. You can’t breathe, you can’t think, you are picturing those ten-foot gators slinking into the water that you’re now thrashing wildly through. You swim towards what you think is the surface and strike unyielding metal—the underbelly of the boat—hard enough to put stars in your skull like the flashes of lightning bugs. You get turned around and don’t know where you are again. Something glides past your arm, and you gasp before remembering that there’s no air. Dark water—salt and silt and decomposition—surges into your lungs, your stomach, sinking you like an anchor from within. There is a whirlpool of motion around you and muffled shouting. Then something closes around your wrist.

The eyes! you think frantically. I have to poke out its eyes!

But the vice around your flesh has no teeth. It’s not a reptilian jaw, you realize now, but a human hand. It leads you and you obey.

When you break the surface, you cough bayou water from your throat and blink it out of your eyes. Willis is leaning over the side of the boat and stabbing at gators with his stick, shrieking at them in French. One lunges at him from the water, jaws snapping. Willis whips the pistol off his belt, aims it squarely between the creature’s eyes, and fires. The boom is deafening; the bleeding gator sinks into the water. Aegon is kneeling in the boat and offering his arms to help you climb up.

You look beside you. Aemond is barely keeping his head above water. “Go!” he orders you. “Get in the boat!”

With Aegon’s help, you heave yourself over the side and collapse to the aluminum floor, lungs aching, skull pounding, heart thudding mercilessly, soaked to the skin. Then you force yourself to your hands and knees to see where Aemond is.

“Aemond?!” Aegon is yelling. “Aemond, where are you?!”

He’s gone; you don’t see him in the water. You try to scream for him too, but the water still in your throat strangles you. Your hands close around the edge of the boat, and Willis grabs your raincoat to yank you backwards. “Other side!” says, pointing. “We’re gonna capsize, we need weight on the other side, go there!”

You scramble to the opposite end of the boat, sobbing now, still hacking up muddy water. Where’s Aemond?? Where is he??

Both Willis and Aegon are grasping for something. They’re shouting and stabbing into the water with their walking sticks. And then they’re hauling him into the boat: Aemond, blood pouring down the left side of his face, a gash by his temple, another on his forehead; something bit him or clawed him. He’s wearing only his jeans and a white tank top; he ripped off his Marlboro jacket before diving in after you. You don’t see his Adidas sneakers anywhere. They must have been kicked off in the water. His glass eye has been knocked out and lost in the muck. What’s left in its place is a void, gaping, pink; it’s difficult to look at, you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t. It has the visceral, gory quality of organs never meant to be seen. His fingertips go to the socket to feel for his prosthetic. When he confirms it isn’t there, he covers his face with his hands and moans.

He saved me. He jumped in after me.

You crawl to him. “Aemond—”

“No!” He pushes you away, and you see that there’s blood and ancient silt from the bayou in his empty eye socket. It will have to be cleaned out. Willis watches, astonished, bewildered. For once, he is at a loss for words.

“Aemond, please…” You’d do anything to help him. You don’t know how to help him.

He saved me.

Aegon reaches for Aemond. “Hey, hey. It’s not that bad. Hey…” He drops to his knees, presses his forehead against Aemond’s, stains himself with his brother’s blood. And when Aemond tries to pull away, Aegon doesn’t let him; he’s got his fingers tangled in Aemond’s wet hair. “Thank you for saving me. I’m always almost getting myself killed and you’re always saving me. What would I do without you, huh? None of us would be okay without you. Thank you, Aemond. You hear me? You’re not gonna get this again anytime soon, so listen up. Thank you. Thank you.”

“I’m just so—”

“I know.”

“I hate that I’m like this.”

“It’s not a big deal. You’ll order a new one.”

“You know what he’s going to say.”

“Fuck him. Why do you care what he thinks? Because you think he’s the one who gets to decide what you’re worth? He isn’t. He’s not qualified.”

Aemond nods, but he doesn’t seem to be convinced. He still doesn’t look at you. He turns so the left side of his face—bloodied, eyeless—is angled towards the water and out of your view. Willis goes to the motor, starts it, and begins guiding the boat back towards the launch where he parked his Plymouth Gran Fury.

Aegon glances over at you. “You okay, cake lady?”

“Yeah.” But your voice shakes. The rest of you is shaking too; now that the adrenaline is wearing off, you can feel that you’re shivering in your wet clothes.

“Put it on,” Aemond says softly, and at first you don’t understand. Then you see that he’s pointing to his Marlboro jacket, left hurriedly flung on the floor of the boat. You unzip your dripping raincoat and don Aemond’s Marlboro jacket instead. It smells like him: smoke, cologne, effort, secrets.

“Thank you,” you tell him, wanting to say more. Aemond doesn’t answer. He stares into the murky water, greenish under the glare of the spotlight, and says nothing to anyone all the way back to the boat launch. Wordlessly, he helps Willis re-hitch the jon boat to the trailer. He remembers the steps. He’s a fast learner. The blood on his face is drying; his right eye won’t allow itself to look at you. The only sound on the drive to the Targaryens’ mansion is the radio of the Plymouth Gran Fury, which Willis turns up to cover the silence: In A Big Country.

At the end of the cobblestone driveway, lights are on in the vast house called The Last Desire. Everyone gets out of the car. Willis shakes a rather puzzled Aegon’s hand, then turns to Aemond, who ignores him. Willis chuckles, more curious than offended.

“So ya are the man who’s been givin’ her that satisfied look. I knew it. Yes, I knew what I saw. What’s your secret, son? Ya must really know your way around a woman if ya got her so mad about ya with a face like that. Ya look like the Rougarou got ahold of ya—”

Aemond grabs Willis by his hoodie, yanks him off his feet, jacks him up against the side of the sheriff’s vehicle. Immediately, you and Aegon are shouting and trying to break them apart.

You plead: “Aemond, don’t!”

“Aemond, he’s got a gun!” Aegon screeches.

Fortunately, Willis isn’t grappling for his pistol. He holds both palms in the air, open and empty, like he’s surrendering; but there’s still a smile on his face. Aemond doesn’t act like he’s heard anyone. He leans in close to Willis, his voice low and dark and snarling, his sole blue eye glinting. “You had so much in your filthy fucking hands and you just threw it away.” Then he slams Willis against the car one more time, tears away from him, and strides up the porch steps and into the house.

Aegon hurries after him, casting you a quick glance and a beckoning wave. It’s an invitation. You coming? Aegon mouths, and then vanishes inside.

Willis peers up at the house: stained glass windows, immense white columns. You don’t see any signs of Vhagar the Great Dane. Willis speaks calmly and without looking at you. “I think he’s in love with you, sugar.”

Improbable. Impossible. If he was, he couldn’t marry someone else. “He’s not.”

Now Willis’ eyes flick to you. “All I’m sayin’ is that I’ve been fishin’ on that lake since as long as I can remember, day, night, sun, storms, and nothin’ on earth would have gotten me to jump into that water. Not even Heather Locklear herself.”

“Just go, Willis,” you say, exhausted, heartsick. “Thank you for what you did tonight. But please go now.”

“How ya gonna get home?”

“I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me.”

“Of that, I am incapable,” Willis drawls. Then he climbs into his Plymouth Gran Fury and is gone. You sprint up the porch steps in your soggy sneakers, searching for Aemond.

In the white-and-gold foyer, Viserys is just arriving. He struts across the marble floor until he is close enough to his two oldest sons to embrace them, to hit them, to extract their teeth with his knuckles. The others pour through the doorways—Alicent, Criston, Helaena, Daeron, Otto—but while they gape in horror and fascination, they don’t speak in anything more than murmurs amongst themselves. Viserys steals only a glimpse of Aegon, swift and disinterested, then examines Aemond: wet clothes, no shoes, grime and blood, dazed fury. When his cool, pale gaze reaches Aemond’s empty eye socket, Viserys flinches and looks away.

“So you lost another prosthetic,” is all he says. His face twists into a grimace. And you expect Aemond to do something, to jab back, but he doesn’t. He’s frozen, he’s paralyzed. His right eye is misty. He’s biting his lips so they don’t tremble. And suddenly you hate Viserys Targaryen, you hate him more than you can imagine hating anyone. You think that you could watch his entrails unspooled from his body without feeling a thing. The Targaryen family patriarch hasn’t spoken to you; you don’t register to him at all. You might as well be an oriental vase or a house plant.

“You’re the one who did it, Viserys,” Aegon says, stepping in front of Aemond seething and sharp like a blade. “You remember that part? I do. I remember. The North Sea, 1968. I remember him trotting around after you, always so desperate to prove himself, always doing anything you asked, anything you could dream up, worshipping you like you were God. And where were you when he was getting his eye socket debrided at Moorfields Hospital? In fact, where were you when he got his hands caught in a winch when he was eleven? Where were you when he fell off a pipe deck and broke six ribs because one of your idiot employees forgot to close a safety gate and he couldn’t see it? Where were you then? Where are you now?”

Viserys scowls down at him—revolted, repelled—but he doesn’t reply. He feels no instinct to defend himself. He is unable to internalize shame; it rolls off him like raindrops.

“You’d love me so much if I was dead,” Aegon says, grinning, baring his teeth like an animal. “How sick is that? You can love bones in a box, but not someone standing right in front of you. You love Aemma, a ghost. You love Baelon, and you never even knew him. You’ve got nothing for me. That’s fine, I don’t care, I’ll be alright without you.” He points to Aemond. “But you’ve got nothing for him either, and he’s everything you always wanted. You’re disgusting, you’re broken. You belong in a box too. The part of you that was human is gone. I don’t give a fuck about what’s left.”

Aegon shoves Viserys, hard, and then storms past him. As he crosses into the kitchen, Helaena grabs for his wrist. You can hear her whisper: “What the hell happened?!”

Then Aegon remembers one last thing. He whirls around and bellows at Viserys, his voice reverberating off the vaulted ceilings: “And I’m not getting my vasectomy reversed! You can’t make me! It’s bioethics! I asked the lawyer!” He stomps off and disappears, Helaena in tow.

Alicent shoots Viserys a hateful glare and then flees from the foyer, her long auburn ringlets streaming out behind her. Viserys goes in the opposite direction. Daeron and Otto share an awkward glance and then depart as well. Only you, Criston, and Aemond remain in the room, surrounded by treasures that might as well be handfuls of earth, flour, swamp water, salt.

Cautiously, Criston lays a hand on Aemond’s shoulder, on his right side where he can see it. “Aemond…”

“Don’t touch me,” Aemond says as he wrenches away. He leaves like a hurricane, like a flood, receding until there remains only wreckage and memory.

Criston sighs deeply, and then he asks you: “Do you need a ride home?”

You don’t respond. You haven’t decided how to yet. You stare at the place where Aemond stood, a void like a star that died out. Do I follow him upstairs? you think.

Do I?

[zangren-signal]

[PSSSSSSSSSSH]

Jus-[PSSSSSSSSSH]-ry wiggling it [PSSSH] No! Not li-[PSSSSSSH]-otta wiggle it the othe-[PSSSSH]-en it'll work!

It ain-[PSSSSSH]-orking, fenging thing.

Watch, just give it a punc-[PSSSSH] Eyo! Think I got it!

Naw, see. Ain't no visual.

Told ya, just gotta give it a wiggle and a whack. Oh right, visual! Forgot to plug it in...

Ey! I see myself!

Alright... just gotta clear up this static... then redirect... Go pee in the radiator.

What?!

Hey, who has four chin-tendrils and knows that urine is an electrolytic? This guy. Go, go...

Feng it... This is how the galaxy will remember me, y'know.

[FZZZT]

Oh, dinzo! I saw sparks... Ya alright?

Ugh... y-yeah... just about...

Go see the doc. Signal's clear so I'm just gonna tranfer this up to the captain's... Eyo, Captain-Mayor, Engineer Soxun here, got it workin'.

Ah, good job tech-heads! Go to the mess and get a round of nutrient brew on me. Now... ahem. Howdy y'all out there in the galaxy! Name's Voxong. Captain-Mayor Voxong. Representin' the Raxing Flotilla. Don't mind me holdin' this lasrifle, just for safety. We're a buncha folk from the fringe colonies of the GZTC. We're flyin' out into the unknown, got no home and got... some worries. We're mostly on transport ships, cargo vessels, and whatever we could get our hands on really. Now why'd we go and do somethin' like that?

Some of y'all mighta heard, but for those that ain't, the Miorans came on in and "peacefully liberated" GZTC space from a "robit uprisin'", well now... Gotta say there ain't much concrete proof of that. We can't say for sure. Didn't have many robits out on the fringes, and we didn't get the chance to see the Mioran ships before we shot off.

We got as many folk as we could onto our ships, but y'know, there's always a weight capacity, some gotta be left behind.

Ugh, I guess this is always what happens with us Zangren. Lost our homeworld, and never found a new one. Each time we think we do, some no good xenophobic feng-face invades or takes over and we're out on the hyperlanes again.

We're gonna be back on our feet in no time, y'hear? But it would be mighty kind of y'all to respectfully let our ships be and let us do our tradin' in peace. Wuh- There it is!

[PEW PEW... PEW]

I got it! Sorry about that, just got some pests eatin' at our wires... and my cheese collection. No biggie. See y'all around, and safe travels!

[vampiremeerkat]

How would Leronce, Lossrax, Loftrax, and Lochrax respectively react to Lorax's "blinded by rage" state if it ever happens?

If Leronce/Once-ler is the reason for his state, he'll be the one getting swung around and beaten to death. At most, he'd be surprised during those few seconds he's potentially still conscious. If given the chance, he'd either fake flinch as to make Lorax feel remorseful and calm down, or really, let him do his thing and die. He doesn't engage in objectively unwinnable battles, nor is it really in him to kill The Lorax. As a non-target, he'd again watch on in surprise. Not disappointed or pleasant surprise, just the most basic version of it. Almost like he doesn't truly care. As for these raxes who're not even part of the story, Lossrax wouldn't say or do anything in particular. Maybe give Lorax a thumbs up if he kills something. But if that is his girlfriend, Leronce, then Lorax becomes Lossrax' enemy. Loftrax is an object. He'd maybe hover around for a second to see if Lorax' hissy fit is tainting his air, then fly away without seeing the end. Lochrax would be a curious spectator, but not necessarily scared, disturbed, or entertained by it. He'd be the most likely one to bring up the incident afterwards. Unprompted, that is.

[cuprohastes]

The Trouble with Pebbles (3!)

Part Threeth

Previously on "Days of our Graak"

Dave the Human has taken up an offer to be Dave the Atrix, mostly for the chance to be a brat and access to that sweet sweet moss.

Cat Fantastic is discovering that the big exciting non Atrix world sucks in new and unticipated ways, but he has acquired a new Aunt Dave.

Dave The Human is displaying oddly maternal behaviour... what could this mean? It means Dave's not an ass.

The Von Neuman Space Squids are not learning to sing and still aren't in this story.

EVA 43 and the Most Dangerous human are eating mozarella sticks and arguing over which was better: 21st Century Superman, or Post Contact Superman. They also aren't in this story.

Gondy, Rax and Garfield are starting to wonder AITA?

O'Patel and Big Ma are surfing a diplomatic incident wave and cackling with glee: Also they're about to ask Dave the Atrix A Question...

Dave the Atrix twitched in a way that Dave the Human had come to associate with an incoming call making a bunch of tech gadgets go into vibrate mode.

Dave pulled his tablet out, unfolded it and picked up the call - It was Big Ma, his nominal superior now he'd defected to the Big Purple Lizard Team.

"Hang on..." he muttered and flipped down his UV Visor. "Atrix" he said and flashed his name pattern.

In the background, he could hear O'Patel absolutely losing it at the expression Ma pulled. Her display skin was doing the Atrix equivalent of the spinning beachball.

O'Patel leaned into frame. "Say, Dave, would you like your registered Atrix name back?" he asked.

"Oh... sure!" said Dave the Atrix Phalanges Mitten, known troublemaker, shortarse and interspecies drag performer.

"Oh yes... PRIME DAVE!" squeaked Dave The Human doign a victory dance. "Last Dave standing. Squeap!".

"Is that Dave?" asked O'Patel.

"No this is Phalanges." said Dave.

"Not you!" O'Patel responded and so Phalanges held up Cat.

"In that case, you mean Cat Fantastic?" he said, mostly to introduce his Little Guy's new name.

"Oh, good name" said Ma somewhat enviously, having recovered form the novelty of Dave having suddenly acquired a comically robotic Atrix communicator. "If you don't want it..."

"Graak!" Cat said.

"Understandable." Ma said, and Dave leaned in and said "That's what I said too!"

"I'm the big boss. And so's O'Patel." she added in response to Cat's entirely reasonable query. "OK Atrix, take care of each other and check in soon. This is a weird scenario and we have a lot of people suddenly either worrying, yelling that this shouldn't be allowed, or asking really bizarre questions."

"Had to get the space broom out." said O'Patel which gave Phalanges and Dave an indicator of what some of those queries had been.

The Space broom is the metaphorical item used to beat back wannabe horny alienfuckers. The fact that Atrix are about as asexual as you can get while still having a natural reproduction rate, and basically do not have anything that a human could recognise as genitals has not stopped anyone, including a small community of Tsin, three Wallandernook, and a really weird artist colony of Atrix who are collectively keeping the entire Atrix Erotica industry ticking along: from cranking out staggering amounts of Atrix interspecies romance and erotica novelettes to audio books. The question is less: "Why are you making this?" and more who is buying these things?

Meanwhile in another part of the Station...

Rax is carrying a tray of purple breadrolls, dips and fill-ins. Un-Named Male is in Garfield's pouch, and Gondy is carrying the drinks.

"Are we... the bad guys?" wonders Gondy.

Gondy had been hit in the faceplate with debris months earlier and the partial decompression had blinded her in one eye and caused her face to develop some nasty crack pattern scars.

The possibly Human EVA Maintenance specialist that everyone referred to as 43 had hauled ass out of the medical wing, yanked open an airlock with no concern for his/her own safety and dragged Gondy in out of a hard vacuum.

They'd basically walked it off, and recovered within weeks while Gondy had needed her eye reconstructing and still had scars months later.

Rax had been Gondy's Little Guy and had promptly left her pouch and started stuffing their face... which by human standards is a Douche Move.

But from an Atrix point of view it meant Gondy only had to look after herself, and besides, now Rax, rapidly putting on mass, was always on hand to help out and keep up Gondy's social obligations, if not her work: Not the Asshole.

And now all four are lurking in Garf's cabin, which is more or less a single room with storage and a ton of more or less free range mosses, ferns, decorative fungus, and a place for someone with a tail to sprawl out or sit with friends.

"I mean..." says Rax, in Atrix, half spoken, half displayed. "... in ways that can be discussed, we have been which has been mentioned?"

"In ways that can be discussed and measured." Garf says. "And it shames us. It has shamed us all"

Gondy says, "That which is known and considered. We could have done better by them that is faceless. It is to the faceless human's credit that she accepted a token of bonding."

"Graak" says Un-Named male, being a little coarse. Garf passes him the mushroom and spinach and the little guy hollows out a purple roll and starts filling it. "Grak."

Everyone flickers their colours and ponders food, apart form Un-Named male who's somewhat pithy commentary has rather clarified the matter.

"Insofar as that goes, I am in agreement. We cannot, now, have done better in the past, in a retroactive manner. But we can do better at this time and at times future." says Garf, and Rax, being the second youngest polls the vibe and says, "... how?"

"That remains to be seen." mutters Gondy around a mouthful of purple roll and tomato pesto.

That night

Actually it's kind of day but Phalanges works the night shift when there's less people and a lot of the station's life support can be sequentially taken out of service and tested or maintained without having to put a memo out for everyone to hold their bowels for an hour.

Dave's sacked out in bed, rolled up in a duvet. The room's dark with just a little ambient light, a comfortable 16c.

He's set Cat up with a pillow, the laundry bag and the fuzzy blanket that they've been using because Phalanges doens't have a pouch the way a big Atrix does.

Cat is, despite these kindnesses, miserable.

It's way too dark, it smells funny and alien. Cat normally sleep in a comfy little hollow lined with various live plants. This laundry bag is... weird. It's floppy it's too roomy, it moves too much when he tries to lean up against it.

The fur is a weird unsettling texture and the air is just a little too dry. And it's cold.

Frankly Cat is dreading having to use the bathroom again, or deal with weird human notions of scale.

Cat's really wondering why they thought quitting the Atrix community was a smart idea.

Admittedly it was a community that hadn't wanted him and made it dishearteningly clear: One which had been making his life miserable by ostracising him for his entire life, no matter how much effort he put in to co-parenting the hatchlings, maintaining the garden or generally trying to be friendly.

Not having the display skin across his cheeks and forehead just made them all turn their back.

And then... something magical had happened. He'd woken up and found The Best Rock, tucked into his arms as he slept. he'd hidden it well and pondered. None of the other Atrix Of Size would take him, even for this unbelievable, magical treasure. And if he tried he'd lose it to someone within short order.

And then someone had reminded him that technically, for whatever reason, Dave the Human - everyone's good old Aunt Human - had been officially an Atrix Of Size. Even if they were only half the bigness of a real Atrix.

So Cat had taken the opportunity. Anything had to be better than the casual dismissal and hurt... right?

Well not so much. And now Cat is cold and scared and blind and realising they may have just made their life so much worse.

Cat finally falls asleep, exhausted, whimpering softly.

Cat is asleep. He's dreaming of a stony plain: There's no sun, no comforting moss to hide in, and in the distance he can just see everyone walking away, leaving him. No matter how hard he's trying to keep up: The ground is sucking the heat out of him, and the rocks are sharp. If he's left he'll die. There's nothing to hide under from the remorseless, cruel sky, nothing to eat, no cool water. They finally just... left him.

But then the cruel ground vanishes, falling away as though he's being lifted up, into warmth and safety, and he wonder: Is this what it's like to curl up in a pouch?

It's warm and comforting and the sharp stones can't hurt him up here.

Now he's speeding through the air, with the gentle pendulum swing of being carried... And things are looking more lush - There's purple moss and plants and soft lichens. The sky is warmer, less cruel.

Better... They - he and the warm comfort who's carrying him - are catching up to everyone, and if he keeps quiet he can pretend that the warm chatter and rippling colours include him. And at the moment it feels like they really do.

For the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time, Cat has a name, and nobody seems to notice that he has no colours. He clings on to this dream tighter than he's ever held anything in his life, and it's as though he really is warm.

Phalanges is asleep.

He doesn't feel Cat relax in his arms, tucked up under the duvet: He heard his little guy in softly crying in his sleep.

he never even woke up: Just slithered out, scooped Cat up and vanished under the warm covers.

In his dreams, the halls of the Station are wide. This is normal, as are many things in dream logic. He's walking with two faceless figures - he can't quite place them but for some reason he imagines the skin of an apple breaking. Ahead he sees a friend, cold and lost, and so hurries up and swings a blanket around them with satisfaction, though he can't quite recognise them... but somehow knows them so well.

And tonight almost more than any other night, he sleeps well.

[hungerpunch]

need a version of this

that is photoshopped to say "i speak for the midwest" bc one thing about me is that i will extol the virtues of the american midwest

which is comprised of states belonging to both the great lakes region and the great plains region. the cradle between salt-coast empires. often mocked, derided, and maligned even though the nation relies on us to provide its current way of life, even though we boast boundless natural beauty, even though we maintain bastions of art and culture, even though we have sent many forth to become known on the world's stage for their talent, skill, or intellect.

i am the (lo)rax and i speak for the midwest. and i won't stop speaking for the midwest until every self-styled academic, every self-professed progressive, every self-identified intellectual stops looking down their nose at us as if the white supremacist engine of genocidal colonization and everything that came after, including and perhaps especially the rise of those salt-coast metropolises, did not have a hand in shaping everything you pity or resent us for. as if those same qualities, features, or aspects cannot be found under your very own nose where you are. as if the machines of your wealthy empires do not actively, still to this day, work hard to make us misunderstand each other.

[uhhhh-balls]

Rax was turned into a vampire during the 1870's. At first, he was constantly killing for blood. But in 1922, he met Masho. As they started getting close, Masho made him promise one thing before they could date. Never to kill anyone for their blood again. Rax agreed with him, quickly switching to blood bags. They didn't hide their love at all, but the town was oblivious. During 1930, Masho made Rax turn him into a vampire so they'd never have to leave each other, so Rax did. Masho forced himself not to drink directly from humans, no matter how bad his body wanted it. "Hard, isn't it?" Rax asked, lovingly and concerned, but with a hint of teasing in his tone. "Yeah, you could've warned me" Masho teases back, pretending to be angry. "Sorry darling" Rax says with fake guilt, laughing a little. Eventually, in 1996, Rax goes up to Masho. "Darling, I'm going to start drinking fresh blood again, do you want to?" He tells him, asking if he wants to do the same. "No. And you're not either, you promised" Masho says. "I know, but-" Rax starts, but Masho quickly cuts him off. "Have I ever given up on you?" Masho asks. "Not once" Rax smiles. "Then don't force me to do it now" Masho tells him. "I- alright, fine. I won't. I promise" Rax smiles.

And he keeps his promise. Never hurting another human and drinking from blood bags as usual. He never breaks his promises, especially not to Masho

Prompt #1099

"Have I ever given up on you?"

"No, never."

"Then don't force me to do it now."

[muchadoaboutjax]

moving on was always easy for me to do (it hits different 'cause it's you) -> rax

tagging: Jax Beiste, Riley July @rileyjulypsu location: psu building a timeframe: oct. 14 2024, lockdown day two warnings: none summary: comforting your ex girlfriend during a lockdown after three years of not seeing her? what could possibly go wrong?

Jax Beiste

Jax was doing her best to keep a level head despite the fact the situation she found herself in. One of her father's sayings was ringing in her head: "don't be the first headless chicken to start running, be the rooster" which while not making a lot of sense, did bring her some comfort. Still, Jax was stressed, not only was she indefinitely locked down to wait out and earthquake (nothing that new to a California girl, but still pretty stressful), but it just so happened that she was locked down with Riley of all people. It wasn't that Jax wasn't happy to learn that Riley had moved out to LA, but she knew that for whatever reason, her brain and her sensibilities went out of the window the second she and her ex were in the same room, and despite knowing how it always ended, Jax found herself drawn to her ex for reasons that she couldn't ever explain. Maybe that was why she was approaching her now with a bottle of water in hand, or maybe it was simply the fact that Jax could see that Riley wasn't doing so good herself, clearly worried about the fact she couldn't get in touch with her siblings. She knew how close Riley was to them, that she was about the nearest thing to a mother those kids had ever had, and not being able to check on them in a situation like this was probably incredibly distressing for her. It wasn't like Jax loved not being able to contact her own family, but it was different for Riley and she knew that. "Hey…" She smiled softly as she reached Riley, passing her the bottle of water, "Are you okay? Sorry, stupid question…"

Riley July

This was not happening. LA was supposed to be her place, her new start and chance to reconnect (and keep an eye on) her siblings, her escape from New York. But no, she was really reconsidering changing her mind right now. Fuck LA. And fuck earthquakes. She had no idea where her siblings were and that was the worst thing. Riley had spent the best part of nearly two hours pacing back and forth trying to call them over and over again until noticing that her battery was at 15%. Sighing to herself, she knew she needed to stop, just in case some service came back. But at least she wasn't on her own. She didn't know any of these people but at least it was company. Well, she did know one of them. It must have been karma or maybe lady fate playing a trick on her to have her locked in here with her ex, Jax. The one person that Riley could never stop thinking about, her eyes searching her out constantly throughout the day. They both didn't know what it was, but they couldn't stay away from each other. But now wasn't the time. At least that's what Riley kept telling herself. Keeping her eyes locked to her phone in case it rang, she heard the steps coming towards her and knew exactly who it was. Glancing up at Jax and then the water she hesitated, but then took it. She needed to stay focused and keep eating and drinking. "Thanks." She mumbled out and took a sip. But then Riley looked away. "What do you think?" Then she sighed. "How are you?"

Jax Beiste

Jax winced a little at both her own dumbass question and the sharpness of Riley's response, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly, "Pretty stressed? Kinda grumpy? Same old, same old either way…" She joked weakly, shrugging a little, "I'm okay. You forget I lived in San Fran for most of my life, and now I live in LA, this is not my first earthquake rodeo. Think of it as an initiation rite, you're not a true California girl until you've been through your first earthquake." She was the way that Riley was clinging to her cell phone, barely dragging her attention from it and it made her expression soften. She hated seeing her so obviously distressed. "Here." Jax reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out one of the wireless charging packs the first responders had given them, "Just promise me you're not going to sit here and play Angry Birds on your own all night okay?" A pause, Jax gently nudging Riley with her shoulder, "Eileen will call the second she can. They all will."

Riley July

Riley turned to glare at Jax, but softened slightly as she actually looked at her. Always had the ability to take her breath away. "You know me so well." She quipped back with a shrug of her own. "I'm seriously regretting moving here if this is going to keep happening." Then she sighed. "I suppose it's still slightly better than New York though." Her siblings being the reason. The phone was clutched to tight in her hand that it was a surprise that it didn't break. She was ready to throw it across the room but then Jax had handed her a charging pack and Riley took it eagerly, equipping it to the phone straight away. Then her lips twitched up into an amused smirk. "Do people really still play that?" Making sure the phone was definitely charging, Riley placed it on the floor next to her. "I just need to know they're okay." She replied, her tone tense. "Especially Eileen, she's the baby and as much as I love her she is easily led and if she is with people who can take advantage of her… I just need to know she's okay."

Jax Beiste

"I do." Jax agreed, feeling her cheeks tinge a little at the thought of just how well she knew Riley but forced herself not to dwell on that thought any longer. Dwelling on those kind of thoughts always caused her problems, "I mean… it's not a weekly occurrence, if that makes you feel any better? Just… every so often. Most of the time it's a little wobble and people get on with their day." Her smile grew a little easier, "Well I'm glad you're in LA. Y'know, for your siblings I mean, I'm sure they miss you." She had back pedalled quickly, but a lump still formed in her throat. That was definitely not what she meant. Not entirely anyway. Jax laughed a little, nodding, "Yeah? What do you think I do to kill time when I'm waiting for my next class to show up?!" Her expression softened, sighing a little as she ran a hand through her hair, "I get it. I haven't been able to stop thinking about Malea, she's so small, and I can't get through to Immy to check they're both okay, it's driving me nuts. But spinning out on your own about it isn't going to change anything, you just have to have a little faith Riles. Because Eileen is an adult now, I'm sure wherever and whoever she's with, it's all going to be okay."

Riley July

"It doesn't make me feel any better. But, its better than nothing." And Riley crossed her arms over her chest as she raised an eyebrow. It wasn't missed on her that Jax was glad she was here in LA and she felt her heart almost jump out of her chest. "Well they've told me they're glad. Whether they actually are or not is another thing entirely." Then she bit on her lip as she thought over what she wanted to say next. "At least some people are glad I'm here for certain." Riley snorted out a laugh and shook her head. "You're ridiculous." But there was a very fond smile on her face and the tone was only teasing. Then there was a frown on her face. Jax's niece of course, she would be caught up in all of this too along with her sisters. "They'll be okay. All of them." She stated firmly, shifting her body to look at her ex. "I know I need to have faith in Eileen and I do, it's other people I don't trust Jax. People are cruel."

Jax Beiste

"Which is Riley speak for 'thanks Jax that made me feel a little better'." Jax quirked her eyebrow a little, shaking her head. She'd always been good at deciphering Riley, which is why her cheeks were getting redder now, shuffling a little on the spot, "I'm sure they're glad to have you here, they adore you Riles." The words "who doesn't?" died on her tongue as she occupied her hands with playing with the water bottle label instead of reaching out to Riley. "You're ridiculous." Jax pouted a little, giving Riley a gentle shove, expression sobering again as she nodded, "I know they will. Still doesn't stop you worrying though does it?" With Riley facing her now, Jax could feel her heart pounding, wondering just how long it had been since they were this close, and wishing the thought didn't fill with her with both excitement and fear. Her stomach dropped at Riley's words, "I know… am… am I one of those people?"

Riley July

Riley rolled her eyes but didn't argue. Jax really did know her that well, dating someone for two years will help with that. "I hope so." She sighed. "I've tried so hard to make them the people they are today and not turn out like our mother. I can't fail them." Anyone else and she wouldn't be sharing any of this, but Jax already knew all of her secrets and all of her shit, so why hide it? She shoved back, a smile growing on her face. "No of course it doesn't. Like we said, our siblings are adults, doesn't mean we don't worry." Was Jax moving closer? No, must just be a figment of Riley's imagination and she shook her head to clear it. They couldn't do this, not again. "Are you a cruel person?" She asked confused. "Of course you're not Jax. You're amazing."

Jax Beiste

Jax scoffed, "Please, there's no danger of you, or any of those kids turning into Cassandra July. Or of you failing them, you have spent your entire life taking care of them, and if any of them decide to be ungrateful about then I'll set them straight for you." Despite everything that had happened between them, Jax found herself really grateful that Riley could still talk to her like this. God only knew she needed someone to be vulnerable with. Jax felt it then, that pull inside her that she tried to ignore whenever she was around Riley, that magnetism that got them into trouble time and time again. Riley seemed closer than before, and even as she watched her shake her head, Jax couldn't seem to make herself move back from her. "I just… I know when everything was going wrong, when we were back in New York I said some things I still regret, and… I'm not amazing. But I'm glad you don't think I'm cruel at least…" Some of the tension eased from her shoulders as she let her eyes meet Riley's, feeling her mouth go dry as she did. She really should move back.

Riley July

"I hope not. Hell I pray every night to whoever is listening that they don't turn out like her." The mention of her mother's name made her flinch, but she knew Jax never used the name to make her suffer on purpose. "Do you think I try too hard?" Riley asked, but then stopped herself and shook her head. "Nevermind." She bit her lip as she listened to Jax talk, the fact that she was talking herself down was killing her. "No Jax, it wasn't you. It was mainly me, you know what I'm like. I never made things easy for us, ever." Riley loved her, but she just had too many demons that she was fighting all the time. Hesitantly, she reached a hand out and placed in on Jax's shoulder. "We both said and did things we regret, and I don't know how I'll ever make it up to you."

Jax Beiste

Jax frowned a little at her question, shaking her head, "Hey, no, don't do that." It always used to infuriate her a little when Riley suddenly backpedalled on talking about her feelings, "You do not try too hard. Sometimes you forget to take care of yourself, but trying too hard? Never. They're really lucky to have you." "It wasn't, I was… I don't know, over the top? Clingy? Kind of a jealous bitch?" She managed a weak smile, hating the thought that Riley had been blaming herself for their break up all this time, "I know I kind of smothered you a lot, and that's on me, not you." God, Jax knew that there was something powerful between her and Riley, there always had been, but she had grossly underestimated how much of it remained after all this time apart. As her hand rested on her shoulder, Jax felt as if a jolt of electricity shot through her, the crashing reality that she had never stopped loving Riley hitting her. This was not the time for this realisation, nor was it even remotely a good idea to open that Pandora's Box again, and yet.. "You don't have to make it up to me. It's water under the bridge, ancient history… as long as you can forgive me that is?"

Riley July

She crossed her arms over her chest and listened to Jax's words. In a way she was right, but was Riley going to listen? Probably not. "But I don't have time to look after myself, I have to look after them." And she sighed, they were just going to go around in circles on this all day she could already tell. Plus they had just talked about her siblings being adults, they didn't need looking after as much any more. "Over the top and clingy? Maybe. Jealous bitch? Yes, but we were both easily jealous. And maybe I wasn't clingy enough." Riley just shrugged, it was all over and done with now. But it still didn't mean that she didn't miss it. "I know it might have seemed like I hated it, but maybe I needed it Jax. I mean you got me to stop drinking and that probably saved my life." Her hand slowly trailed down for her ex's shoulder to her arm. Maybe she shouldn't be touching her like that, maybe she should let go and pull away. But she couldn't. Because she loved Jax. "I forgive you. I forgave you the minute you walked out the door, the minute you ended things. I could never hate you Jax."

Jax Beiste

Jax rolled her eyes a little, knowing her ex-girlfriend all to well. It was the same argument they'd had time and time again when they were dating, but Jax knew better than to try and press this issue yet again. Whether she liked it or not, Riley's lack of ability to put herself first was no longer her problem. "I mean you could have been a little less repulsed by my touch…" Jax managed a short laugh, a sad smile tugging at her lips as she ruminated over the years they had spent together, surprising herself with how she had forgotten just how good it felt to be in Riley's presence, even after everything that had happened. "I never thought you hated it, we were just two different people Riley… and you saved your own life, you put in the hard work, I was just there to cheer you on. I still am if you need me to be." As Riley's hand trailed down her arm Jax had to suppress a shiver as memories flashed through her mind, memories of what it was like to have Riley touch her, memories that would only lead to making very questionable choices. But despite knowing that, Jax felt herself leaning into her touch, a lump in her throat as she pursed her dry lips. "Which time?" She mumbled, shaking her head a little, "I could never hate you either Riles, even after everything, you… I never stopped caring about you, you know that right? I didn't leave because I stopped caring."

Riley July

Riley snorted out a laugh too and shook her head. "I'm glad you didn't think that, because I didn't hate it." Her eyes searching Jax's face. "I needed it. I needed you." Needed, not need. Because Riley refused to admit that she needed anyone now, she could do this on her own. But with Jax saying that she would still be there if she needed her too made Riley falter. She was only so strong. But no, they couldn't fall back down the same rabbit hole that they always did. And now her ex-girlfriend was moving closer, and Riley's eyes fell to her lips. "Every time. Every time you left I forgave you. And I hope every time I left, you forgave me." Her jaw clenched at Jax's words and her eyes moved back to hers. "I… I didn't know that. I just thought you didn't care any more. You still care? I still care." And it was almost as there was a magnetic force between them that was pulling Riley closer to Jax.

Jax Beiste

The past tense made Jax's heart clench. Needed. Riley used to need her. But Jax had messed that up at every possible turn, and now here they were. As her eyes searched her face, Jax tried to her best to keep her expression neutral and supportive despite her very complicated feelings, and offered her a small smile. "I needed you too Riley. Don't ever think that I didn't." Jax didn't miss the way Riley's eyes wandered to her lips and it caused her cheeks to flush, feeling herself falling into that same trap again but seemingly powerless to stop it as her fingers drifted forward and brushed against the back of Riley's hand that wasn't resting on her arm still. God they were getting so close… "I don't know what I did to deserve all that forgiveness. God knows I messed up so many times." This amount of eye contact was killing her, especially when they were this close to each other, and as she tried to break it, her eyes find Riley's lips instead. Dammit. "No, no Riley, I left because I cared. I cared way too much and you deserved better. You do? Even after everything I've done?"

Riley July

"But why? How? How did you need me? I couldn't give you anything useful." This was a mess. Just like their relationship had been over the two years, and all the years that followed where they'd continuously end up in bed together. "It wasn't just you that messed up, it was both of us. We're adults we can both admit that we were in the wrong." Her grip tightened on Jax's arm. "But of course I forgive you because I love you." Love, not loved. Now Jax's eyes were on her lips and Riley swallowed hard. "I still care." And she dipped her head, moving in closer.

Jax Beiste

"Are you kidding?" Jax scoffed, shaking her head a little, "Riley I was so lonely in New York… you gave me everything, you gave me a lifeline. You…" She inhaled for a moment, trying to stop herself bursting into tears. Jax had never meant for this to get so heavy and deep, but after three years of not seeing her and now being forced to spend every second of the day with Riley, all these feelings that she thought she'd moved past were bubbling to the surface, "You never treated me like I was broken. You just loved me as I was." She sniffed quickly, desperate not to fall apart, to not lapse into old habits either, but the hold Riley still had on her heart was far stronger than she could have realised before being here in front of her again. The grip on her arm tightening made her heart skip, but not as much as it did when Jax heard her say "I love you." I love you. Not I loved you, I love you. "I love you too." She whispered, heart in mouth as instead of pulling away from Riley she leaned into her, forehead almost touching hers, "I don't think I could stop caring if I tried."

Riley July

A lifeline. Just what Jax had given to Riley, apparently Riley had given that in return. It's not like Jax hadn't appreciated it, but with all of Riley's issues of self loathing and low self esteem, she never felt like any worth to anyone. Not to her siblings, and definitely not to Jax. "You're not broken Jax, I would never treat you like that. Everything you've been through in your life, you're so strong." Three years they'd been apart with Riley trying to convince herself that she was over it, but right now it had felt like three minutes and every single emotion she'd ever felt for Jax was slamming into her at full force. And with that every single rational thought had left her head, and all that matter was them. "I love you Jax. I will always care about you." And then she's leaning forward and pressing her lips gently against her ex girlfriend's.

Jax Beiste

Jax had always known that her deep seated need to fix everyone wasn't healthy, and that it was a big part of the reason that their relationship had fallen apart, but for Riley it had been almost instinctual, like a primal urge to protect her from everything, including herself at times. But for herself? Jax had let herself stay broken, had known it every time she looked in the mirror, but hearing Riley say that she was strong, that she hadn't seen her as broken made her resolve crumble. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she shook her head a little, and as Riley's lips met hers she let out a soft whimper leaning into the kiss and responding in kind. Time stood still for a moment for Jax as she lost herself in how good it felt to be kissing Riley again, at how right this felt… but her brain caught up to her, and suddenly, she remembered how this always ended, pulling away quickly with a soft sigh, "Riley… I-"

Riley July

She really didn't realise how much she had been craving the feeling of Jax's lips on hers again. Three years apart and she'd not really been with anyone else, because that one person for her was still on her mind. And now here they were, finally back together. Riley let out a soft sigh and wanted to wipe away the tears that she could feel on her cheeks. But then everything came crashing to a halt as Jax pulled away. Riley's eyes snapped open and she looked at her ex-girlfriend in horror. "I shouldn't have done that." That was an understatement. What an idiot. She and Jax were never going to work things out or get back together so why fall back into this situation again. "I have to go." She stumbled to her feet and looked back at the other woman. "I'm so sorry Jax." And then she was gone.

Jax Beiste

Jax watched Riley go, open and closing her mouth as more tears started to fall, unable to speak or do anything but sit there as she scrambled away from her. This was exactly what she wanted to avoid, what she hadn't wanted to happen when she and Riley reunited. But it was what always happened, they'd get drawn into each other, they'd do something stupid, and then… someone got their heart broken. "Fuck." Jax hissed, wiping quickly at her cheeks, pushing to her feet. Following Riley would only make it worse, but that didn't mean she didn't want to. "God fucking dammit…"