#and I think that she can see herself as some evil seductress that has stolen him away at times and its like babe NOO!!

[fantasyhighdreamerz]

"Do you think we're lovers in every universe?" She asked softly watching the clouds above roll by. The grass felt soft, warm against her scaled skin as she traced a heart against the back of his.

"Why wouldn't we be?" He sounded deeply sincere as if unable to imagine a world without them together. She smiled feeling herself melt at his tenderness.

Gorgug Thistlespring was far to good to be true.

She was the luckiest woman alive.

^them in another universe btw because yeah I made myself emotional again while thinking about their story line and im crazy an feral an I will scream and cry if I don't talk about them once a day. Oooooo when I make a post about how Yani doesn't know how to deal with how kind his parents are its soooo!!!!!! over for every last one of you she has so many thoughts and feelings !!!!!!!

[ravel-puzzlewell]

Technically the same multiverse but Ari & Gann at The Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts in Sigil.

Listen, this is all kinds of perfect, and what I would want for this AU is a slowburn longfic exploring recovery and dealing with identity conflicts when you cannot have a direct confrontation with your demons.

Because MotB is structured like Greek tragedy and of course everyone gets to have a dramatic face off with their past and their present, because it’s an epic story with emotionally charged cathartic revelations. Gann gets to meet the Coven and Gulk’aush, Ari meets the Founder and Myrkul.

But it doesn’t always work like that. You don’t always get the answers, you don’t always get the truth, you don’t always get a chance at closure and catharsis handed out to you by the narrative. Sometimes you don’t get clear answers of who you are and why the thing that changed your life happened to you. Sometimes you have to deal with all your insecurities and questions by yourself.

In this AU, instead of leaving her child in the forest, Gulk’aush sends him to another plane. Ammon Jerro follows Ari when she’s stolen post King of Shadows battle and fights the Red Wizards before they can infect her with a curse. Realizing he’s outgunned, he manages to open portal to Sigil and send her there. She wakes up with vague dream-like memories and no real understanding of what happened.

It doesn’t really matter what excuses both Ari and Gann think up for themselves when they sign up for The Brothel. Gann probably thinks about it as an ideal stage for performances, even better than the theater, because he can have an individual connection with the audience. Ari sees it as a school, an oratory training ground and power exercise. As for their formal roles… Well, it’s easy with Gann, he’s still Gann-of-Dreams - he’s a seller of dreams, he’s going to guess what you want and give you the illusion of it. It’s harder with Ari, because while almost all of her interactions with people are oratory exercises, they can’t be really formalized. If Gann gives people what they want, Ari mirror at them what they *expect* and manipulates them into doing what she thinks they *need*. She excels at pulling strings, but to do that, people need to be unaware of that. She probably adopts some persona - Faerie Witch or Fortune Teller or something of the kind to have a basic framework - and transforms into something completely different and overwhelming.

Gann starts out as a Signer and Ari as a Fated. Ari is also trying to take over the section of Hive for the Fated - and herself, of course, because after her Camelot - Crossroad Keep - was taken away from her, she wants to repeat same experience of re-building and ruling as she had in CK.

In canon Gann\Ari is anything but slowburn, adventure forging friendship, trust and love almost violently fast as the narrative mercilessly stripes down their pretenses and defences and exposes existential dread and identity crises. The soul-searing experiences they have together shortcuts the “getting to know each other” phase straight into “understanding and caring”, the immediate soulbond assures both the transparency in communication as they share thoughts and emotions and that their mutual trust won’t be broken.

In this AU, they have to learn to open up and trust, both each other and themselves, slowly, painfully, starting with heavy power play as both of them always try to control every situation.

There are going to be long conversations with Grace, about the nature of communication and identities, about how her school gives people safe place to interact and express themselves because rules are pre-established. But also about what the chosen role and framework of a student says about them and how they can learn to understand themselves better and eventually transcend the one-note safety of The Brothel’s interactions. Gann literally constructs illusionary dream-worlds for people, but it’s still not satisfactory for him, because people interact with the persona he constructed for them, not him. Ari also creates a visage of herself, but what troubles her the most is that she herself makes people she interacts with into puppets.

They have to learn to accept each other without the answers given out to them. Gann has to let himself feel everything fully and let himself be loved without confirmation that his parents really did love him - because not all kids are loved or wanted, but it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve love and happiness. Ari has to recover and outgrow the role of a savior that was pushed on her, when she has to bleed herself and manipulate people to save the world no matter the cost. And again, they both have to learn to open up and  trust each other - and keep trusting, because it’s a constant choice, because it’s so easy for them to slip back into their respective personas without the connection of soul-bond.

Of course, there is always the theme of nature of monsters - that both of them and Grace share. Ari and Grace have same role pushed upon them - evil beautiful seductress, one demon, another drow, and Gann willingly constructed succubus narrative for himself in order to get acceptance from others. There’s SO MUCH to explore between these three!

Eventually Gann becomes a Sensate and Ari becomes a Bleaker, tricks the Fated into fighting off bandits from her section in Hive and helps Bleakers to open there free clinic\kitchen. But then they leave to travel the world, because you can heal in safe place and return there to recover, but you need to get out and grow too.

When they come to say goodbyes, Gann gives his impishly charming grin and says “Since you would never think of such wisdom, I feel obligated to say it outloud, but the school is a limiting shelter not only students need to outgrow.”

A couple of months later a grey-skinned man, covered in scars and tattoos, walks into the Brothel with a flying skull at his side.