#andylindsource

[skloomdumpster]

I swear somewhere this works

[faytalepsy]

Prompt H

I had so much fun working on this with the wonderful Andylind-Queen @shadowofnight ! The process for me definitely had its ups and downs and I was this close to scrapping the entire thing before seeing sense. And now we present an amazing Andylind fic just in time for Andylind August and not at all late for RBB!

Read the fic to the art here:

[myalchod]

for the three sentences fic: andylind + marriage of convenience (yes i'm quite late to it)

Quite late but I don't care in the slightest -- seriously, for this or for any other such ask meme, there is no wrong time. I love prompts basically always ... and unlike some of those others, I'm not taking a trillion years to fill this one for you. 😘

Their vows had been said in a small, utilitarian room, their marriage born of practicalities and realised on paper alone for contingencies that might never come to be -- not when he lives now a world away from where their too-brief time together had been spent, wearing a different name and a different identity and the past hanging a stubborn millstone around his neck, far heavier than a simple ring and an equally plain chain have any right to be. She had eyed him askance when he’d bought that ring and his own, when he’d insisted on marking what meant far more to him than he was willing to give voice, but she had slipped the unadorned band onto finger nonetheless, the brush of her skin against his far softer than he had imagined it could be, and he is glad of it in hindsight, when the shape of it smooth beneath the pad of his thumb is a tangible reminder not just of what was but of what will be, the promise she had sworn to him when he’d seen her last, before blood and lightning and fire rent his world asunder.

(He imagines, sometimes, what might have been -- imagines her here with him, fair head bent close to Bea’s dark one with lightning crackling above their cupped hands, imagines discovering what other softness she might have hidden -- and he knows those possibilities owe more to dreams than any sense of realism, knows her far better than perhaps anyone else alive, all too aware that she would consider sentiment an aberration and that this is a matter of convenience, but that does not stop him from dreaming, wondering, hoping that one day she will return and that, one day, this will mean more, though he knows she would call him a fool for it; even if it means nothing more to her, those vows, along with all of the others he has given her, remain everything to him -- and how could they not, how could she not, when he gave everything up for her?)

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[widadsadki]

(insp.)

[faytalepsy]

Embracing Rosalind and science

[myalchod]

Andylind + Being sick AU

I would say it’s plausibly canon, except I’m pretty sure it’s softer than canon would ever be. But this is meant to be an AU, so ... success?

1. There are terrible patients — and then there is Rosalind Hale.

2. Ben makes up some disgusting herbal concoction that he says will help with the symptoms. She doesn’t doubt it will, but it still tastes horrendous, and so she drinks far less of it than she probably should. There’s something about being sick that makes her feel like the petulant child she never truly was, and it has her ignoring the mugs that appear pointedly at her elbow throughout the day, which in turn leads to Andreas sitting there staring at her even more pointedly until she drinks. In normal circumstances she could out-stubborn him, but she’s not really herself right now, not with her head full of cotton wool and her lungs full of muck.

3. Of course she gets a fever, because her body doesn’t care why she’s ignoring her medication, just that she is. It doesn’t help that they’re still out in the field, or that it’s been pissing down rain for the last few weeks. She’s pretty sure she remembers opening her eyes at one point to Andreas dozing in a chair beside her cot, but her limbs had felt as heavy as the blankets piled atop her still-shivering body, and she lets sleep pull her under. (She’s pretty sure the fever was high enough that she said some ridiculous things, and she’s furious at her body for betraying her like that, but even if she can see the question in his eyes when she opens hers next he doesn’t say anything about it. If anyone has to see her like this, she thinks, at least it’s him.)

4. It turns out that she did talk, in the delirium of her fever. He won’t tell her what he heard, but his mental defences have never been particularly good and even if he doesn’t say anything aloud she catches pieces that bleed past — pieces that she wraps up in the steel of her own shields and locks away so no one else can find them. She considers, for a long moment, whether she should lock them away from him as well; it would be easy enough, for a fairy of her skill and power, to do that. But she does trust him, more than she does anyone these days, and she can feel the echo of how he’d looked at her in those moments in his own thoughts, and so she leaves them as they are. They will be one more secret of hers that she gives to his keeping.

5. It’s not just talking that happened in the fever delirium, though. She doesn’t notice at first, but when he hands her the mug of an entirely different kind of tea after her fever breaks — overly sweet but no longer tasting like a rotting meadow — she sees light bandages wrapped around his hands. “Your magic got erratic,” is all he says, but images once again bleed out of his mind, snapshots of arced lightning and shattered crockery and burned flesh and the slow ooze of blood from hairline cuts. “It’s not that bad,” he reassures her, when she slants a look at him over the rim of the mug, and though she’s sceptical, his thoughts only reassure her that he would take far worse for her, whether she asked or not.

6. “A week?” she echoes, appalled, when he tells her how long she’s been laid up sick. “Who’s been leading the army while I’ve been here?” (It’s not as bad as she feared, but it’s nothing she’s particularly happy about, either. She has come to expect certain things, and it’s never easy when things outside of her control change — especially when they should have been under her control.)

7. The next time he reminds her to get some rest so that she doesn’t end up sick, she thinks back to the aftermath, and though she grumbles, she concedes.

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[faytalepsy]

Andylind + 46

Andylind x Kiss out of envy/jealousy

“You failed today.”

He cringed away from the blatant statement, the bite of disappointment in her voice of steel, needing no reminder of the fiasco that was todays training. Her fingers tapped on the polished wood of the desk, more metronome than rhythm.

“I thought you had an ounce of competence. Apparently I was wrong.” He bristled at the statement, having finished the course as one of the best, despite his lack of sleep. “General, I performed better th-“

But her voice lashed out before he could finish.

“I don’t care how many fucking fools you ended up beating. I expected their mediocrity. But you…”

Her eyes flashed as she rose, slowly rounding her desk. It had always been a mystery how he could be towering over her and still she managed to look down at him.

“I expect my soldiers to be flawless.” She dragged out another pause, a scorpion waiting to sting.

“Like Farah.”

There it was, the name that had his nostrils flare with annoyance. He was well aware Rosalind latched onto his weakness, finding the cracks in his skin to slip her claws beneath and dig deepest where it hurt most. But that didn’t stop her from succeeding by bringing up perfect Farah who finished the training segment perfectly after dragging her perfect little Saul from his party yesterday so they could prepare to be Rosalinds perfect little star team.

“I thought you could match her, work hard enough to be exceptional. But now even Silva seems like a better match.”

It wasn’t fair. Comparing him to fucking Saul when he worked twice as hard to please her while his friend resisted the General wherever he could.

Since he had entered the office he had waited for this blow, the shame and the anger that would follow. But somehow it stung less this time, stung less because although Farah performed better, he was here, with her, the sole focus of that razor sharp attention.

“Perhaps you should stop wasting your time with mid-class fairies and put your focus on improving your skill set.”

The comment was haughty, spoken with all her superiority and still it had him raise his chin, finally look her in the eye. Was this what it was all about? Him fucking another soldier? But before he could even begin to finish that thought she pounced, fingernails digging into his jaw as she angled his head down, making him face her black tipped boots. He could feel her breath on his cheek as she leaned in, a shiver running down his back.

“Don’t you finish that thought Eraklyon.” She leaned in further, her lips brushing the shell of his ear.

“We both know who you thought of yesterday.”

Almost involuntarily he leaned into her, into that whisper he couldn't shake. The woman who dug her claws so deep into his mind there was no removing her presence.

And she knew. Her lips brushed his cheek in a mocking kiss, holding not promise but claim.

You're mine, they said.

Even if I give you nothing, you're mine.

[myalchod]

Andylind + Enemies with Benefits AU

Alternate canon setting. This just kind of happened, oops? I hope you don’t hate me for it. 💙

1. It starts when they’re still on the same side, the roles of leader and subordinate falling away in the adrenaline-fuelled haze of a surprise encounter with a Burned One that catches them both off-guard. That should have been the start and the end of it, but it is not.

2. “Kill Saul Silva for me,” she says, in the days before Aster Dell, fingers sliding through his sweat-soaked hair as their naked bodies tangle together, and he can’t hide his shock at the request. It is the first time he questions what he’s been doing and where he has come to be.

3. He stands beneath the school, bathed in the glowing blue light that fills this corner of the undercroft, and studies her face in silence. With her eyes closed and her limbs at ease, she is utterly unlike the woman he remembers, the woman whose bed he’d shared. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, though he doesn’t think she can hear, “but you left me no choice. I couldn’t agree with that.” (It is only his imagination and a trick of the light that paint her face with a smile, thin and sharp as the edge of the knife at his hip — the knife he’d held to her throat only days before.)

4. He dreams of her. Sometimes he thinks they are merely memories; sometimes he is certain they are more, whispers of her thoughts teasing past meagre defences made all the weaker by sleep. He wakes with hunger pulsing in his veins, and if there is a vague sense of guilt threaded through it as he reaches for himself, it is nothing new, and does not stop him.

5. He knew she would get out, at some point. He’s pretty sure they all knew it would happen eventually. It doesn’t mean he’s ready for the moment when her mind cuts into his, as sharp as that half-imagined, half-remembered smile. Come find me, her voice echoes in his thoughts and, against his better judgement, he does.

6. She could kill him with little more than a thought. He has weighed, more than once, the value of driving a knife between her ribs to see whether she does, contrary to the stories, have a heart. And yet they meet, furtive as secret lovers, and yet they part unscathed, and yet the war continues.

7. When they die, it is at each other’s hands and in each other’s arms, and his friends say nothing at the smile on his face.

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[myalchod]

Andylind + 1

Psst, Anne, I may have managed to write you some fluff this time! (Don't get used to it.)

#1: a kiss good morning - [ also on AO3 ]

Rosalind Hale has never been the sort for lazing around. For as long as she can remember, her life has been driven by a sense of urgency. There has always been something to do, something she needs to address — war has been the backbone of her life, the one the Otherworld has seen and a second, secretive one waged in the shadows and known only to a select few. She cannot remember the last time she did not move immediately upon waking, fuelled by the horrors that haunt her sleep, driven by all that needs to be done.

Today is an exception. Her body has known only that vague half-existence for over a decade, suspended between sleep and waking, and it is slow in rediscovery. She takes in the shiver of nerve endings that have long slumbered, the warmth of the sun that seeps past the curtains to settle on her skin, the muffled breathing from the body sprawled beside her, letting them all settle into her reality. She had known nothing for years, just the blue gleam of her solitary prison; sensation, all on its own, is already a strange sort of luxury. (She tells herself this is about learning herself again, the stretch of limb and the swirl of chemicals through her brain, and that there is value in recalibrating like this rather than rushing in blind, but magic sings in her veins as well, the power drawn from Alfea’s wellspring pulsing eagerly, filling her with impatience. She wants to run, but first she must remember how to walk.)

And before she can walk, she must stand, and that thought has her pushing upright, aware of how time is slipping through her fingers. There is a finite window within to enact her plan, and she has already spent more of it than she would have liked here, even if she acknowledges that her body needed that time to adjust. But night has passed, and day is here, and the excuses wear thin in the face of her growing sense of urgency. She must act now, while they remain off-guard. She has waited too long, given too much; she will not risk losing this battle, and with it the larger war, to unnecessary delays.

Beside her, he stirs, reaches. Those nerves, still waking, quiver at the brush of fingertips against her bare hip, shiver as he trails them higher. “Ros,” he groans, sleepy protest, as one eye cracks open.

She has never been sentimental but everything is still shifting, resettling. It’s the only reason she can think of to explain the uncharacteristic impulse which has her bending down to kiss him, lingering when that same hand threads into her unbound hair so that she can rediscover the shape of his mouth and his taste against her tongue. When she flattens a palm against his chest to push upright again, she finds that his eyes have opened fully, lips curving into an almost fond smile.

“Morning.” His voice is raspy with sleep, and she thinks, if we had the time, but that has always been in too short supply.

“Get moving,” she says instead, suiting deed to word as she gets to her feet. “We have a score to settle.”

Out of the corner of her eye, before she turns, she sees fondness become something feral as his smile widens. They’ve both been looking forward to this day for a long while.

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[skloomdumpster]

Andreas gets wounded during a sparring lesson. Rosalind helps.