#a bed of thorns

[nym-wibbly]

A Bed of Thorns - the ending

I've answered a few Asks recently about the state, fate, and ending of my 12-year-old Belle/Rumple WIP, A Bed of Thorns.

I don't have it in me to admit that this thing defeated me (Once Upon a Time is all about not giving up hope, after all, so that would be silly) but I think it's time to put the ending out here for anyone who'd like the closure to find. It's not a huge secret. I've been sharing details of the ending and epilogue with anyone who asked privately since a couple of years into writing it, and I've never asked those people not to tell others.

As with all my works, anyone is welcome to snag my ideas and original characters for use in their own non-profit fanworks, so if my planned ending doesn't float your boat, by all means create your own! Of all my stories, I know that A Bed of Thorns was, is, and always will be so much bigger than myself. I lay claim to nothing but the words I've written. Even if I'm never able to complete it, the story lives in my head and heart, and the privilege of touching something once-in-a-fannish-career special still leaves me humbled (and more than a bit intimidated!)

Don't click the 'keep reading' if you don't want to know how the story ends!

Rumple eventually lets the Dark Curse (and Regina) go, trusting Belle to find a way to reunite them with Baelfire. A way that doesn't rack up the cosmic debt and devastate more lives. Belle finds the way, because there was always another way—multiple other ways to move between the Enchanted Forest and the Land Without Magic—Rumple just couldn't access those solutions by using dark magic, distrust, or dealing. And, having let Baelfire go all those years ago, he couldn't see the flaw in his approach until he had love in his life again. Magic bean, plot, then Rumple hesitates at the portal, afraid to go through and become powerless on the other side. Afraid it won't work. Afraid that Bae won't forgive him. Afraid he'll fail as a father again. Belle just holds out her hand and waits patiently for him—trusting him to make the right choice for Bae, not doubting for a moment that he will. She's so excited for the big adventure of this strange land without magic. They step together through the portal into Victorian London. In the brief epilogue Rumple and Belle finish up an anxious search by knocking on the Darlings' door, finding young Bae before he's taken to Neverland. Before it's too late for them to be a family.

If you love A Bed of Thorns even a fraction as much as I do - thank you.

Nym - September 2024

[kelyon]

Jack of Hearts/Slow Burn → What is the longest fanfiction you have ever read?

That would be the original 134 chapters of A Bed of Thorns. I didn't read it while new chapters were coming out. I thought it was long enough that I wouldn't mind when I came to the end of it, that I would manage to be satisfied with having so much excellent Rumbelle fanfic.

... I was wrong. There is no satisfaction. I still hunger for more of that fic. I can never have enough...

[pjs-everyday]

Sharing a bed (for the mission) 💕 // Twiyor Month @twiyorbase

[yuushin7]

It's doooone 🙌 I don't really partake in this holiday, but I figured it'd be cool to use it as a deadline to finish this. Otherwise who knows how much I'd nitpick and drag it out xD

Here's Twilight and Thorn Princess for your Valentines ~ Have a good one, solo or not 😉

This is inspired by Original Illustration by author Tatsuya Endo, if you know you know. You have it on my previous WIP post here

[izzystizzys]

clone wars au where fives survives because fox is a disaster and people care about him (derogatory)

aka he hasn‘t slept in 72 hours and while every corrie understands why, that doesn’t mean they have to like it. plus, he already has borderline braindamage from not getting more than five hours’ sleep a night the whole duration of the war, and all the strange injuries and electrostaff burns he keeps showing up with, stabby the clone medic reasons. also bone density is a concern with the half-rations the guard is consistently on, so really this is all a very reasonable emergency measure, he says and cuffs fox to a cot.

yes of course, meathook and rabid nod, who pounced on the commander and pinned him for stabby and his sedation hypo the second he came through the door. very reasonable.

hnngfnhfjfj, fox grunts in the corner, already halfway to insensate. thorn, who knows better than to protest lest he become the next target of stabby’s ire, nods along while switching to fox’s armour.

which is also how palpatine gets himself caught, because of course ‘cc-1010’ activates exactly nothing in thorn’s brain except maybe alarm bells for rancid kriffing vibes, and by the time the chancellor orders him to switch off his blaster’s stun setting and terminate the ‘faulty unit’ at all costs, he’s already recording the interaction and sending it as an attachment to the whole guard command staff as well as the jedi temple.

[glassedplanets]

Can you do it, Drifter? Can you make the Man with the Golden Gun the villain in the eyes of those who would tempt the Dark?

redraw!

[seagull-scribbles]

And you think that makes you unique?

[wantonlywindswept]

Definitely True Facts About Commander Vertex #1

He repels ghosts.

The fourth bed in the Guard commanders' bunkroom was haunted. 

Thorn scoffed at the idea, and Stone hummed with tolerant indulgence when it was brought up, but Thire knew they both agreed.

There was something unsettling about it: it was all neat lines and tucked corners and entirely devoid of life. And while that made sense--no one had ever used it--it still gave off a feeling of emptiness, like there was supposed to be someone or something there when there wasn't.

Thorn had tried sleeping in it just to prove Thire wrong, but he'd only managed a few nights before copping out and saying he just didn't like the bed, even though they were all the same standard-issue bunks. The fourth bed might even be nicer than the others; the mattress and pillows were still a little fluffy from having not been slept on.

Stone never tried, but Stone had a relationship with his own bed that bordered on worshipful; he was known to threaten violence toward people who even dared to try to sit on it. There was no way he would sleep on a bed that wasn't his.

Thire, of course, was too smart to even go near the fourth bunk.

But that was difficult, because the bed was the closest to the door--making it doubly cursed--and any time Thire walked too close he felt like he was about to be smacked by some ghostly hand for the presumption. Whatever was haunting it demanded peace and quiet, and even Thorn and Stone seemed to subconsciously try not to jostle the bed while passing by. 

They didn't have to believe in the curse for it to be true.

Thire was just about to fall asleep--they were allotted a whole eight hours now! just for sleeping!--when the door to the bunkroom opened. He squinted peevishly at Thorn, who flipped on the lights, and squinted slightly-less-peevishly at Commander Vertex, who followed him in. 

"Why," Thire moaned.

"You weren't even asleep yet," Thorn said without an ounce of sympathy. He turned to Vertex. "We have an extra bunk in here if you want, but we're allowed to stay in the GAR barracks now if you want somewhere cushier."

Vertex shrugged easily.

"I don't mind. Less of a commute from here."

He turned to the sole empty bed--the haunted empty bed--and Thire sat up sharply in alarm, opening his mouth to warn him--

Thorn ruthlessly shoved his face back down into the mattress.

"If you say anything about the stupid ghost," he hissed, "I am going to smother you with a pillow."

Thire's complaints were muffled into the bedding, and he could only watch, helpless, as Vertex dropped his bag on the bunk and sat down next to it.

And the bed...went back to being a bed. Nothing out of the ordinary, no sense of something missing; no gaping emptiness that seemed to permeate that corner of the room. The wrongness was just gone, chased away by Commander Vertex simply from him being there. 

Thire smacked Thorn in the head a few times until he let go, and shoved him away so he could sit up and gape as Vertex started unpacking his belongings. Even when someone just sat on the bed in the past, it still felt like they were doing something illicit, like they didn't belong.

Vertex fit in the space like it was made for him.

Vertex fit in the space like he had just made it his own.

Vertex could repel ghosts without even trying.

They never had to worry about the haunted bed again.

"The curse is lifted," Thire breathed reverently.

Next to him, Thorn growled and lunged for a pillow.

---

prev parts: one | two

[loidbriarforger]

WE WERE SO CLOSE 🤬🤬🤬 ENDO YOU COWARD

[foursaints]

what is your opinion on barty and evan using nicknames or pet names? rosie? bee? bat? ev? evs? babe? love? what are they calling each other in your mind?????

im thinking of one of nabokov's letters to vera, where he says: "You can be bruised by an ugly diminutive — because you are so absolutely resonant — like seawater, my lovely"

that's how i see most rosekiller nicknames.... "rosie" is the undefeated classic, and i like it for being a little old-fashioned? barty uses nicknames to harangue/be annoying ("babe" "blondie"), but i think the ones he uses SINCERELY are very different. the way barty uses pet-names is fretful & uncharacteristically sweet.. "petal" is good. "little one" is something that slips out in private ("have you eaten, little one?")

evan isn't a nickname person to me. the transition from "crouch" -> "barty" is already a big enough deal. anything cloying grates on him. but i picture terms of endearment slipping out of him when he's tired or really worked up. i picture him using one (sweetheart? pet?) when tugging at barty's sleeve, frowning & quietly asking him for something (the something is: exhuming a diseased corpse from nearby gravesite) 

[mossytrashcan]

feyre archeron; breaker of curses, mother to many, inventor of slaying

+ close up :b (also hand tattoo cr to miavern on twt)

[rebrandedbard]

Another watercolor page, this time featuring a passage from The Curse of Kwiatekkaszel!

[auntiejohn]

up at 1:39am curating my black brothers angst playlist and sobbing hysterically

[nkhluu]

foreign kids as bugs??

LATE TEXT SORRYYYY <333

I don't really have a headcannon. I made some up haha.

Estella as a lady bug, Damien a varied carpet beetle, Pip as tiny chubby bee, Pocket as a Phasmids, Gregory as a dragonfly, and Christophe as a cockroach

[yuushin7]

Day 03: First meet; Day 17: Sharing bed OR "How it started" vs…. How they'll end up someday 😅 They're getting there! Just very slowly Day 03 could also double as alternate for Day 16: Red Thread…. Which gives me idea that I could combine 2 days if I end up lagging behind too much 🤔especially since not all prompts spark inspiration for me 😅

[izzystizzys]

Fox tags along on a smuggling bust one (1) time and subsequently wishes he’d never been decanted.

Well, he’s arrested the perp a lot more than just one time, actually, but that very first tackle into a chokehold and electrocuffs more than sufficed to turn the fates against him - the fates, and Cody, the insufferable twat. They’re not actually even batchmates, the lot of them, and going by numbers Fox was decanted long before them (long as in seconds or minutes, no one actually knows), but Seventeen put them all in a training room together and then stupid kriffing Kote looked him up and down, nodded, and hasn’t stopped calling him vod’ika since.

“Why is one of the Republic’s most wanted criminals asking to speak to you, vod’ika?”, Cody asks, without any preamble, almost making Fox cut the holocall on principle. He would, if General Kenobi wasn’t right there next to the little shit. “And why do I not like his tone?”

Fox has to resist the urge to close his eyes and scream, making do with a deep sigh instead. Force curse the day Cody decided to adopt-nap him, and Wolffe following suit immediately. “Weequay, shifty eyes, stupid fucking pirate bandana?”

Cody’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and Kenobi’s eyebrows raise simultaneously. It’s more than a little creepy.

Fox rolls his eyes so hard he sees stars. “Tell him he can go space himself, unless he wants me to do it for him. And then tell him that if he sends me fuzzy fucking socks again I might just hunt him down and do it anyways.”

Past the slide of the door, Thorn’s unmistakable cackle reaches Fox. And Cody, going by the narrowing of his eyes. “Don’t tell him that, ori’vod, he’s probably into that”, Thorn calls out, gleefully, and Force Fox really should’ve kept this to himself in the first place.

He would’ve, actually, but the constant stream of strange presents into Guard headquarters is hard to miss. It was Alderaanian chocolates, last week, which Fox pawned off on the Shinies. A box from a store with a blacked out label before that, which he launched out the window with burning ears before Thire could get a closer look at it.

“Actually”, Thorn continues, happily, “I don’t think it matters much if you do tell him anything - it’s not like the Commander has been the most graceful courtée, and that hasn’t done anything to discourage our favorite smuggler.”

“Marshall Commander”, Fox hisses, because he’s a pissy bitch, and then, because all professionalism has gone out the window anyways, “This is why Stone is my favourite.”

Thorn’s wounded gasp is lost over Kenobi’s thoughtful hum, and Cody’s patented I’m-going-to-do-something-incredibly-stupid-and-you-can’t-stop-me glare. “That would explain why we have Hondo Ohnaka accosting our troopers about your flavour preferences concerning fruit candies. But the one asking to speak to you is Cad Bane, Marshall Commander.”

The string of curses Fox lets out at that is loud enough to have Mauler stick his head in the com room to ask if everything is alright, and Thorn roll on the floor with howling laughter.

Force curse the day he ever slapped electrocuffs on Hondo Ohnaka, and double-curse the one he threw Cad Bane to the floor with a scissor leg takedown.