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muertawrites · 5 years ago

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Aphrodite Kallipygos (Zuko x Plus Size Reader) [Modern AU]

Summary: Zuko takes up an art class as part of his therapy and ends up falling in love with a woman who’s a work of art in her own right.

Word Count: 3,500

Disclaimer: There’s a scene in this fic where a couple of thin girls engage in some rude behavior and are criticized in a few none-too-kind words. I want to make it very clear that this scene does not reflect my views of thin people or body positivity - these characters are meant to be a metaphor for greater culture and its strict, unrealistic views of what women should look like.

Author’s Note: I hate rom coms but after writing this fic it dawned on me that I would be excellent at writing them. Also, this one goes out to all my art hoes out there. I geek out pretty hard about art history in this one.

Speaking of which, I reference real-world cultures within the structure of the Avatar universe in this one as well. Something I like to do when I zone out is think about which actual countries would belong to which bending nations; my heritage is primarily from the British Isles, and what with liths like Stonehenge and the hella castles hanging around out there, I think we’d be earth benders - same with cultures like the ancient Egyptians and the Pueblos. I also love the idea of Pacific Islanders who can bend both water and lava, and Incan air benders, and I really wish the idea of global cultures as benders were explored more in the Avatar universe.

Have I mentioned that I’m a massive fucking nerd?

~ Muerta

Zuko never considered himself much of a creative. When he thought about it, he realized that that part of his life had never really been explored; his father always pushed him to focus solely on his bending and combat skills, never allowing even the consideration of other practices or hobbies. As much as Zuko was passionate about the martial arts he'd mastered, he also came to learn that he never had a choice in being passionate about anything else.

“I think you should take an art class,” his therapist suggested. “It would be a good outlet for you, and one that isn't directly influenced by your family.”

“I don't think I've ever drawn anything, though,” Zuko admitted. “I wouldn't be any good.”

“It's not about being good,” his therapist explained, “it's about exploring things that weren't available to you in your youth, freedom of expression. Consider it - there's a shop in this neighborhood that offers classes.”

She handed him a business card adorned with an array of different art styles, from delicate watercolors to bright, bold cartoons; it read, “classes for everything” in a cheerful, clearface font.

Zuko shrugged and pocketed the card. A week later, he was enrolled in a basic studio art course.

He arrived for his first class embarrassingly early, passing under the bell of the shop’s front door twenty minutes before it was scheduled to begin.

The building that housed the shop looked to be older than the rest of the neighborhood around it; the storefront was tiny, with crowded shelves lining each wall and tables and racks wound throughout the center of the space, creating a maze that led to the checkout counter. The room’s ceilings were high, supported by beams in a dark stained wood that matched the floor below. Paper mache sculptures and handmade lanterns hung from the rafters, and the simple, antique plaster walls were decorated with paintings and sketches, likely given by the shop’s clientele. From somewhere in the back, a radio sang folk music, accompanied by the hum of an electric fan.

Zuko wandered through the labyrinthine merchandise displays until he reached the register, where he was met with the single most beautiful sight he may have ever laid eyes on.

You stood behind the counter, leaned over a textbook with a pencil in hand, tapping it back and forth over the pages; you bit your lip in concentration, a few strands of your hair falling loose from the messy knot atop your head and over your cheeks, though you were too focused on your reading to care. An apron bearing the shop’s logo was tied around your waist, emphasizing your body's dramatic curves.

To Zuko, you were gorgeous. He couldn't place what exactly about you allured him; all he knew was that his pulse had quickened to a near dangerous pace.

You looked up at him when you noticed you were no longer alone, flashing him a kind, somewhat distracted smile. He nodded curtly, too nervous to do anything but stare.

“Can I help you?” you greeted him politely.

He cleared his throat, his voice coming out a pitch higher than normal as he spoke.

“I'm here for the art class,” he told you.

You smirked a little, peering down to check the time on your phone.

“It's a little early,” you said. “I was just about to start setting up. You could help me if you want? So you're not so bored while you wait?”

“Yeah,” Zuko mumbled, “yeah, sure.”

You grinned, waving him behind the counter and through a door to the back room. To his surprise, what he expected to be a minuscule stockroom turned out to be a space larger than the actual shop, lined on one wall with massive warehouse windows that poured late afternoon sunlight into the room. Metal shelves and boxes lay haphazardly about, mixed in with a scattering of easels, pottery spinners, canvases, and other art supplies. You directed your guest to a stack of chairs in the corner, instructing him to line them in a half circle in an empty portion of the room while you placed the easels.

“So, do you have a name?” you asked, attempting to make conversation that could drown out the repetitive radio drone.

“Zuko,” he introduced himself.

You stopped what you were doing, fixing him with an awed, slightly amused gape.

“Firelord Zuko?” you wondered.

He blushed, nodding.

“Oh spirits, I'm sorry I didn't bow!” you exclaimed, dropping into a low curtsy. The gesture was mixed with equal parts mirth and genuine respect; Zuko was unsure how to respond, his heart flickering as he watched you.

“I heard you were living somewhere in the city,” you continued after making your own introduction, setting an easel in front of each chair he positioned. “Not into the whole royalty thing?”

Zuko shrugged. He focused on his work, too nervous to look you in the eye.

“Just weird going back there,” he told you. “I don't really want taxpayer money going to making sure I live above my means.”

You leaned against the last chair he set down, smiling warmly at him.

“That's very respectable,” you responded. “Thank you. Y’know, as someone who pays taxes.”

Zuko chuckled softly as you handed him a bin of art supplies, instructing him to set one of each item at every station. He did as he was told, stealing glances at you whenever he was sure you weren’t looking.

“So, uh… do you own this place?” he asked, fumbling over his words.

“Oh, no, this is my professor’s shop,” you replied. “I just work here part time.”

“You’re a student?”

You shook your head.

“Nope. Graduated last year. I work days at the history museum downtown. I also give art history classes here, and help out with the ones Professor Cong teaches.”

“Oh.”

Zuko paused, unsure of what else to say.

“... They teach a different type of history just for art?” he asked after a moment.

You laughed, covering your mouth to muffle the sound and apologizing, giving him a little nod as you collected yourself.

“Yes. Some people even get whole degrees in it,” you giggled. “Not that it’s a useful field to learn anything about.”

Zuko shrugged, trying to shake off the embarrassment of sounding stupid in front of such a cute girl; little did he know, you found the question beyond endearing.

“It sounds important,” he contested. “I’ve been meeting historians from all over the world to correct all the propaganda from the past hundred years. It never occurred to me that I would need different historians for art.”

You smiled at him, meeting him where he stood and handing him one of the sketch pads from your bin. His cheeks pinkened, his eyes darting away from yours as he took it and mumbled a “thank you”.

“I like you, Firelord Zuko,” you decided aloud. “My classes are on Wednesdays. You can come if you want - free of charge.”

Zuko nodded, swallowing heavily as he met your gaze once again.

“Thank you,” he replied. “I appreciate it.”

You laughed a little bit, taking his now empty bin and returning both to their place on a nearby shelf. The shop’s bell rang from beyond the threshold and you went back to the front counter, telling Zuko to take a spot wherever he liked. He sat in the front row; wherever he thought he could be closest to you.

For the next five weeks, Zuko attended not only his studio art class, but your art history class, showing up early to each lesson so he could spend time alone with you. Despite the fact that you invited him to sit in, he paid the fee for the second course, not wanting you to go without the extra pay for your work - he found a doodle of a turtle duck on his seat the next time he showed up, the fuzzy little penciled duckling telling him he was a terrible listener, but thanking him anyway (with a heart scribbled in beside the words).

With your guidance, Zuko learned that there was much more to art than just vibrant colors and pretty decoration. Everything in art, it turned out, had significance, each piece and work holding insight into the people and cultures who created it; you spoke passionately about the art of the Egyptians, who used specific shapes and colors in their imagery to tell stories beyond the written word, about the mysteries of prehistoric structures that revealed how early humanity was much more sophisticated and interconnected than considered at a glance, about the symbols that translated and influenced across centuries to shape how each nation, each culture, portrayed themselves into the modern world. He found himself hanging on every word, falling even more deeply enamored with you with each moment he spent with you.

It didn’t take you long - what with the easy, pleasant conversations you shared before classes - to discover that Zuko lived relatively close to you, only two stops away on the local metro. Knowing this, you often saw each other on the days you weren't at the shop, meeting at the station between each of your respective neighborhoods and having coffee or dinner in one of its many cafes, talking about anything and everything and managing to pass several hours together in what seemed like the blink of an eye. You loved being with Zuko, finding the more you did it, the less you wanted your rendezvous to end; you thought about him all the time, getting all kinds of giddy whenever he crossed your mind.

On one of your extracurricular excursions, you and Zuko wandered around the local high street, marveling at the different streetside vendors and dreamily window shopping behind the glass of the upscale boutiques, doing little more than enjoying each other’s company. It was a hot day, and along your way, Zuko stopped at a coffee stand to get you each something cold to drink.

A pretty young woman in line in front of you eyed you up and down, her gaze flicking from between you and Zuko with disgust. She jabbed her slim, graceful elbow into her equally as flawless friend’s side, whispering something in the other woman’s ear as they both glared at you, sniggering cruelly behind flat stomachs and angular, willowy frames.

You sneered at them, making a point of hooking your arm within Zuko’s and pressing your much wider hip against his, the poison of the encounter sinking into your skin and infecting your thoughts. Zuko noticed your change in demeanor immediately, steering you away from the scene as soon as your drinks were served.

“You okay?” he asked, still holding tight to your arm.

“Fine,” you quipped, biting back tears. “Just a couple of pretty bitches proving how fucking hideous they are on the inside.”

“Wait, seriously?”

Zuko halted, pulling you to the side of the street and out of the way of traffic. He lay a hand on your shoulder, the firm, able grasp of his palm somehow making you feel even worse.

“Someone would really make fun of you?” he wondered, outraged and incredulous. “Why?”

You shook your head, smiling defeatedly as your lower lip quivered.

“People have made fun of me since I was a kid, Zu,” you told him, speaking as if he should’ve just assumed it. “I’m fat. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“So?” Zuko replied. You were so shocked, you physically leaned away from him, raising your eyebrows. “Yeah, you’re fat. That doesn’t mean you’re not pretty. I… I think you’re really pretty. Gorgeous, even. You’re beautiful.”

You blinked at him, taken aback. He gave your shoulder a reassuring squeeze, his eyes never once leaving yours.

“... Did I break you?” he tried after a moment, sounding concerned that it was a genuine possibility.

You laughed, shaking your head in feverish disbelief, attempting to clear the confusion that fogged your battered brain.

“No, I just… Nobody’s ever called me pretty and fat before.”

Zuko shrugged.

“Both are true,” he told you. “I like your body. You look like one of those Greek sculptures. Of the goddesses.”

You stared at him, searching his eyes for any sign of dishonesty or patronization; all you found looking back at you was the clumsily genuine man you were quickly falling in love with.

“... Have I ever told you about Aphrodite Kallipygos?” you asked.

Zuko shook his head, as confused as you had been a few seconds ago.

“She’s a statue of Venus,” you explained. “She’s got her dress raised up over her backside, and when they found her originally, she didn’t have her head; the guy who restored her sculpted it so that she was looking back at herself, admiring her body. There’s even a whole folktale about a pair of brothers who fell in love with two women because they had, like, beautifully fat asses and the town built a temple dedicated to Venus and her butt. The name literally translates to ‘Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks’.”

Zuko chuckled, raising the hand at your shoulder to cup your cheek.

“See?” he said. “Men have worshiped thick, juicy butts since the dawn of time!”

You laughed, your cheeks turning bright red as you buried your face in your hands, leaning forward to rest your forehead on his chest and further hide yourself.

“Zuko, oh my god,” you breathed. “Promise me you’ll never say that out loud in a public setting ever again, please. You’re the fucking Firelord for Tui’s sake.”

Zuko chuckled, wrapping an arm around your waist and hugging you tightly.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, still grinning. “Made you feel better, though.”

You pulled away from him, affectionately punching him in the shoulder. He laughed, gasping at you in mock reproach before pressing a finger into your side, shocking you with a burst of static electricity; you cackled as you jumped away, sticking your tongue out at him.

Zuko felt a rush of lightheadedness as he watched you, savoring the sound of your laugh and the radiance of your smile. It was then he realized he was in love with you.

The next studio art class focused on model drawing - more specifically, a nude model. Zuko, having been raised in what was arguably the most reserved family in the world, was nervous about the idea of having to sit in front of a stranger for an hour, not only staring at their naked body, but immortalizing it in graphite on a page.

He was mortified when he arrived at the class and found you sitting in the corner, wrapped in nothing but a silk dressing gown.

As you climbed the platform you were meant to model on, your limbs rattled. You began to question your sanity, wondering what you thought you were doing offering to pose for the class, what kind of statement you thought it would make. You faced enough judgement from others about your weight with your clothes on - what the hell did you think they would do when you stood before them completely naked, every bump and crevice on full display for them to gawk at and criticize?

You glanced to the side at Professor Cong, seeking some sort of assurance or comfort from him; he, being the seasoned professional in his mid-sixties that he was, sat reclined in a chair in his Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, scrolling totally undisturbed through Pinterest on his phone. Honestly, you expected no less - his obtuse reactions in the face of the awkward and uncomfortable were basically a superpower.

Taking a deep breath, you untied the knot holding your dressing gown together and let it fall, slipping gracefully from your shoulders and to the floor. You assumed a comfortable, classic pose, purposely facing yourself away from the man whose eyes you could feel searing into your back.

Zuko’s breath hitched as he watched you undress. Though he only saw the full of your body for a moment, he was captivated. The swell of your breasts and curve of your stomach sent him into a dizzy spell, his mouth going dry and his skin heating with a noticeable flush. The rolls of your back, the ripples and divots along your thighs and rump, the stripes etched into your skin like the veins through a granite block, he drank in every part of you, moulding every detail with a focused hand as he sketched. He made note every scar and beauty mark. Once or twice, his mind drifted towards the salacious, imagining how your body would feel beneath his, soft and supple, releasing exalted breaths and enraptured moans, your nails dragging down his back as he drove you closer and closer to infinity…

He inhaled sharply, snapping himself back to his work. You were Venus, Minerva, Diana - a goddess among men. He would gladly spend the rest of his life worshiping you.

The moment the class ended, you gathered your dressing gown and made a beeline for the employee bathroom, getting back into your clothes as quickly as you could physically manage. The experience of nude modeling wasn’t nearly as harrowing as you expected it to be; you actually found it kind of freeing, being able to show yourself to a room full of other people and come out of it unscathed, in fact feeling quite beautiful - what had you nervous was the fact that you’d have to face Zuko immediately after the fact, seeing as you took the train home together after classes. His was the only opinion you cared about, and you wanted nothing more than to convince yourself that he hadn’t judged you as harshly as the self-hatred brainwashed into you made you believe.

When you emerged from the bathroom, Professor Cong stood in front of one of the empty easels in the back, smirking at the drawing the student had left there.

“Your boyfriend left you his piece,” he teased.

You blushed, glaring at him as you approached and snatched the sketch from his hands.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you tried in vain to defend yourself.

Professor Cong just chuckled.

“I’ll believe that when I see evidence to the contrary,” he replied.

You looked down at the paper in your hand and felt the breath drain from your lungs, your heart and stomach soaring into your throat.

Zuko had drawn you in the image of Venus, your body draped in gossamer fabric and your head turned over your shoulder, eyes cast downward and lips slightly parted in a blissful, ethereal expression. In the corner of the page, he’d written “Aphrodite Kallipygos” in his sweeping handsome script, beneath which was his signature and the date. You’d never once seen yourself look so beautiful, let alone in the eyes of someone you loved so fiercely.

You swallowed hard, rolling the drawing and securing it with a hair tie from your bag before exiting the shop through the back, knowing Zuko would be in the alley waiting for you.

“Hey,” he greeted you when you appeared through the storeroom door. “Are you okay? You looked really ner-”

You interrupted him by throwing your arms around his neck, slamming your lips into his in a desirous kiss. It took him less than a second to recover himself from the shock of the action and curl his arms around your waist, pressing his body against yours and lifting you every so slightly off the ground, kissing you just as hard as you kissed him. When you parted, you were breathless, your cheeks fiery red and your lips swollen the color of vermilion. Zuko smiled at you, one side of his mouth curling up slightly higher than the other.

“So you liked it?” he asked.

You laughed, nodding.

“Zuko, I loved it,” you gasped. “I love you. I think I loved you as soon as I met you but that sort of thing is really cliche and stupid to admit.”

Zuko chuckled, raising his hand to your cheek and kissing you again, his lips soft and tender this time around. You sighed happily into his mouth, closing your eyes and losing yourself in the feeling of his body sharing the same space as yours.

“I think I loved you the moment I met you, too,” Zuko confessed, his nose grazing against yours as he pulled away. “But you’re right. That sort of thing is really stupid and cliche.”

You giggled, tugging gently on the collar of his jacket.

“Come on,” you prompted him. “Let’s go back to my apartment. You’ve already seen me naked; we need to make it even.”

Zuko laughed, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and leading you out of the alley, his side pressed firmly against yours.

“Fair,” he agreed. “But if you want me to pose for any art, you’ll have to sign some paperwork. I’m still Firelord, you know.”

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tackyink · 4 years ago

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The only reason I've decided to post this is that I think unless I do I won't stop anxiety-editing it and I'd like to move on to something more interesting. And maybe pick up Veleta again, because I had written more than what I posted here and I want to keep working on her.

I can only offer for context that I hail from real life Dressrosa and one day someone asked me what, as a historian, I would do if I ever came across a Poneglyph in the OP world.

— — — — — — — —

Chapter 1

In a remote corner of Paradise, outside of the main travel routes, there was an autumn island called Harlun, and on its shores there was a place called Duster Town, remarkable if only for the fact that every day was exactly the same and nothing of interest ever happened.

Duster Town was acceptably hot in summer, relatively cold in winter, and unavoidably wet and muddy the rest of the year. This had been a big reason for Alex’s stay to last as long as it had: five years and counting. She was fond of the weather because that was what living in summer islands for nearly twenty-two years did to a person.

She had been working in Duster Town’s old, old library since she had arrived there, having secured the job through contacts she had made while studying. Alex was a historian, and there weren’t a lot of secure jobs for people in her field unless one wanted to work under close supervision of government officers. She had never liked research that much, anyway – or rather, she had liked sticking her nose in archives for the sake of it, but the actual process of searching for documents, putting the pieces together and then writing papers sucked. Learning to satisfy her own curiosity was fun, being forced to share that knowledge was not. Besides, if there was an area of research that grabbed her attention more than anything else, it was that conspicuous century-wide blank in human history, and everybody in her profession knew what happened when someone tried to look too closely into that. Ohara was the biggest ‘accident’ that came to mind, but it wasn’t the only one. Things happened to people who knew too much. Everybody was aware of it, but complicit silence was a healthy tactic that her sensible colleagues employed.

Alex had opinions on that, as, admittedly, did most historians she had met, and since opinions were like assholes, she wasn’t going to be the gross weirdo showing hers to other people. Figuratively speaking or not, it was liable to get her in trouble with the law, and that was the last thing Alex wanted.

She liked her library, and even though she was incredibly disappointed that she’d never be able to set foot inside the Tree of Knowledge due to the unfortunate circumstance of having been born too late. Her job was quiet; since she wasn’t a librarian proper, they had put her at the entrance desk to check out and retrieve books, and she handled the petitions for documents researchers sent to the library. The building in which she worked dated back to several centuries, and the foundation upon which it was built, and which housed the local archive, suggested an even earlier date. It contained one of the biggest and best preserved documentary collections in that half of Paradise, so she spent a lot of time digging inside the archive to fulfill the researcher’s requests.

All in all, she thought she had had an amazing run so far, lending books, persecuting tardy neighbors to retrieve them, memorizing catalogs from too much use, and sending informative material to researchers who were actually doing important things with their lives, unlike herself. Her coworkers were few and not very nosy, which she appreciated, because she loved her time alone and wasn’t too fond of talking about the past.

She could see herself growing old in there and getting cobwebs, if sudden changes in the town hall didn’t run her out of the island, and the way things worked in moderately small towns like that, where everybody knew everybody and keeping a job was more a matter of knowing the right people and having been there for a while than being actually competent at it, meant that her position was likely secured in the long run. That said, the local mushrooms by themselves would have tempted her to stay, even without the rest of advantages. Not many of those in her hometown or Sabaody. Lots of heat and not nearly enough rain.

The sun wasn’t yet up when she woke up with an itchy nose in the small apartment she lived in, and a flurry of sneezes alerted her that she should have taken her allergy meds the night before. Navigating the place with closed eyes, she threw on the same skinny jeans and oversized sweater that she had left on a chair two days ago for yet another day at work. It took more effort than someone who had slept so many hours at her age had a right to. Like nearly every morning, really.

The last remaining days of winter had brought the cold in full force, at least for her summer island sensibilities, and after having a steaming cup of red tea that fogged up her glasses, she bundled inside her black coat and red scarf, put on a pair of burgundy gloves, and headed for the library with a thermos full of more tea, making the usual stop at the nearest bakery to buy a croissant. Her hands ached with the chilly breeze.

(She kept a kettle in the library, but there was never too much tea, in her humble opinion, and the thermos kept her freezing hands warm on the way.)

The sun had barely risen when she arrived at the building, an old stone structure that casted its shadow over a private square, though the tall iron fence was open at all times so the people of the town could use the benches and the fancy stone fountain in the middle of it. According to the records Alex had read, the whole area was built four hundred years back or so as the private residence of some rich family that eventually lost its fortune. The basement that doubled as the archive, though, was considerably older, but records stopped around 700 years back, like everywhere else, and so she couldn’t tell how old the foundations were, or what sort of building used to be there in the past without digging a trial trench in the square, something the town hall had been vehemently against when she suggested it. The refusal only made her want to do it more.

She crossed the fence and was halfway through the square when she saw someone in front of the library’s massive oak doors. That was so unusual it made her stop in her tracks. She wasn’t ready to interact with human beings this early in the morning. In fact, the baker was so used to her being absent at that time of the day that the only things she needed to say when she picked up her breakfast were ‘good morning’ and ‘thank you.’

She repositioned her glasses to peek above them and tried to focus her teary eyes on the figure before approaching it. It belonged to a man, obnoxiously tall as many in these seas had a tendency to, who wore a long black coat with a yellow pattern around the hem and a fluffy spotted hat that looked quite ridiculous but also warm, so she wasn’t going to judge in a morning like that. Since he seemed to be looking for something and having no luck, she did what she was paid for, though she was still off the clock, and approached him.

“Hello,” she said to catch his attention. Her voice came out raspy because this was only the fourth word she had uttered since waking up, so she immediately wanted to jump in one of the flowerbeds and melt into the muddy soil. She cleared her throat softly. “Is there anything you need?”

He turned around to look at Alex. He was in his twenties, and his face was kind of familiar. His earrings caught her attention, but then again, she had a bad tendency to not pay much attention to people’s faces and fixate on irrelevant details. This individual’s entire ensemble and circumstances, though, made him difficult to forget overall.

“Do you work here?” He asked.

She barely registered the question, because it was about then that she noticed the smiley yellow faces on his coat and the long-ass sword he held against his shoulder. She hadn’t been able to see them from behind, and if she had, she sure as hell would have kept her distance until he left.

That… had the potential to be really bad.

“Yes,” she said, thinking she should have not, but it was stupid to deny it when there was nowhere else to go in the plaza, she had offered to help, and the only place she could hide in was inside.

After she unlocked the building.

With the keys she was carrying in her hand.

Yeah, honesty had been the right move.

“What are the opening hours?”

That was also unexpected. “Nine AM to eight PM. It’s on the plaque—” She pointed to the side of the door, and she saw someone had vandalized it with rude graffiti. “Not again,” she sighed to herself, and then back to him, “Nine to eight.”

There were still thirty minutes to go, and she hoped to god that he didn’t plan on sticking around until it was time to open.

“I see,” he said, looking pensively at the door. “I’ll be back later, then.”

“Of course,” she replied, smiling, relieved, and then panicking inside because there was a pirate planning on coming to her workplace that morning and this was an anxiety factor she hadn’t asked to be burdened with. He had to be dangerous. People who weren’t dangerous didn’t carry swords around. Not that people who were dangerous sometimes didn’t carry weapons, but at least those had the grace of not putting every stranger around them on edge. And wait a minute, were those tattoos on his fingers? She couldn’t see all the letters, but she could guess, and after she did, she wished she hadn’t.

When she thought he was already done and about to go, she made her even more nervous by saying, “Just to make sure, I heard you have a sizeable medicine collection.”

Ah, so he was looking for something specific. It made more sense than him simply waltzing in for some light reading, she supposed. “You heard right. It’s not updated often, but it was until ten years ago or so.” Then they ran out of funding. “If you’re looking for recent studies, you may not be in luck.”

Medicine. Why medicine? This man was a pirate. Was he a doctor in his ship? She regretted more than ever having such a bad memory for names and faces. She should take a look at the newspaper archive when she went in, just in case.

“Lucky me, then. What I’m looking for is older than that.”

She noticed a bit of a northern accent. He sounded… not quite polite, but not aggressive, either. Clinical. At the same time, it made the innocent statement sound vaguely threatening. She was curious now about what he wanted to read. What if he was one of those weird pirates? There was a chance, she supposed. Like winning the lottery twice, which she didn’t count on.

“That’s good,” she replied awkwardly, and then added in a valiant effort to be left alone, “There’s a café around the corner that’s already open, if you need to kill some time.”

He looked slightly surprised at the courtesy, and nodded before going off.

And when he was far enough to be a very stupid but not totally unsafe to say, she spoke a little louder to tell him, “Excuse me! Weapons aren’t allowed inside the library!”

The dude seemed amused when he looked over his shoulder to look at her, and he didn’t say anything as he walked off.

Nobody could say she hadn’t tried.

❦

Unbearably jittery after the encounter, Alex went on to switch on the lights of the entire building, put the last few books she hadn’t returned to the shelves the day before in their place, and picked up the day’s newspaper to sit down at the front desk to scarf down the croissant and hopefully wash down all that nervous energy with a cup of tea.

If her first encounter in the morning was a sign of what was to come, she could tell her day was going to be shit. She should have known when her own sneezing woke her up.

Alex wasn’t sure when or how her anxiety had started. It just had, a few years prior, seemingly unprompted, and though it wasn’t severe, thankfully, it had a tendency to assault her when she least expected it. Like a pirate. Pirates did that, right? Not all of them, but according to her limited experience there was a fifty-fifty chance that he would, at the very least, turn out to be a pain in the ass.

Still, without any additional intel, she couldn’t think of any ulterior motives for the guy to come to the library. Since she couldn’t do anything to stop him, for her peace of mind, she decided to be willfully optimistic and believe.

Or at least she could try. She had never been too good at this denial thing.

A several bites into her pastry and a few pages into the newspaper, she came across an article about a sunken Marine warship by a pirate submarine, and she choked on her tea when she saw the same smiley face on the picture that accompanied the article. On said submarine. Accompanied by the word “DEATH.” Good on her for guessing what was on his fingers. At the same time, a coworker arrived, and blanching, she said good morning, got up from her seat and made a run for the newspaper archive, where they also kept in storage a copy of every bounty the Marines distributed with the World Economic Journal.

She didn’t have to look too far to see that yes, the face was familiar because it was supposed to be. She had classified it a few times in the last months – every time the guy got a bounty raise.

Surgeon of Death. Heart Pirates. Captain of one of the several rookie crews that were stirring up trouble that year. Those were the worst, they thought they were at the top of the world just because they had made it into the Grand Line. She could deal with older pirates, but she had yet to come across a newbie that wasn’t an unrestrained asshole.

She thought she saw something about dismemberments in the poster, did a double-take because she had surely read wrong, and by the time she was done with all the crimes attributed to the guy she just put the bounty back in place, went to the front desk once again, and told her concerned coworker, “A famous pirate will probably show up today. Don’t mind him. Let’s hope he just wants to read.”

She looked a little frightened. “Should I call the Marines?”

“If worst comes to worst. Let’s try not get involved if we can. He didn’t seem aggressive.”

“Okay,” she replied, sounding relieved. “Good luck out here, I’ll be in the back tagging the new arrivals.”

“Some people are lucky.”

She sighed and turned the page. Sipped on her tea. It was getting cold. Sipped on it again. She just had to play it cool. She was a professional. The guy had been okay to her.

She just hoped he would come soon, because she wasn’t so sure she could drown her nerves in tea anymore.

It was okay.

Everything was surprisingly okay.

The pirate, the day, the lunch she had at the café around the corner – waitress said the guy even tipped – but yes, everything had gone fine.

Alex didn’t move a lot from the lower floor because she often had to come and go from the front desk to the archive, but she made escapades upstairs to make sure everything was still standing.

She had seen the pirate sitting next to a window in the medicine section reading one of those thick tomes that looked very interesting but made her dizzy because she suffered from having a very graphic imagination.

Her coworkers, who roamed up there more often than her, gave her periodic reports, and one of them remarked that he was kind of hot, didn’t she agree?

No, she did not. The radiator was hot. The kettle was hot. The adjective could hardly be applied to a man unless he was on fire.

Though perhaps he was not a human man, because he had spent all day long sitting in the same position, staring at that book. She had to admire that attention span, if nothing else. She was pretty short on that, lately.

And so, having avoided any type of incident during a day in which she was very tense for no reason after all, it came time to close shop.

The pirate was still there.

Her coworkers were, very conveniently, not. She was sure it had nothing to do with the fact that someone had to remind the wanted man that it was late and he had to go.

As much as she wanted to go home and have dinner, the temptation to stay in her post so she didn’t have to interact with a criminal that hacked his victims to pieces was strong, and no one could blame her for it.

But then he appeared.

The massive door in front of her began to open, and Alex thought it was one of her treacherous coworkers returning to pick up something until a head peeked inside the hall.

“Hi?” The newcomer said shyly.

Alex wasn’t sure if the gross amounts of tea she drank every day had finally caught up to her and were making her hallucinate, because she was seeing a polar bear’s face.

“Hi?” She replied, to busy processing what was in front of her to come up with words of her own.

It seemed that that was enough for the bear, because it – no, not it, he? She? How deep was a female bear’s voice anyway? – pushed the door open some more, becoming more visible. A bright orange jumpsuit was not what she was expecting, but the smiley face on its chest and the sight of the sword the pirate had been carrying that morning didn’t leave a lot of room for imagination.

The creature in front of her eyes was a bear walking on two legs. A pirate polar bear. Probably a boy, with that size. Was he a mink? She had never seen one so up close.

“I’m looking for my captain,” he said, clutching the sword against his body. “Is he around?”

Words decided to come back to her, although in a rather clumsy manner. “Oh. Yes. Yes, I think so. He should be upstairs, reading.”

The bear smiled and she melted at the sight. “Can you… tell him to come?”

“Sure,” she said, sealing her fate. She had to face it sooner than later, she thought as she rose from her seat. The bear was still half-hidden by the door, his boots barely touching the tiles of the library. Curious. Was he that shy? “Why don’t you step inside?”

“I thought you can’t enter the library with weapons.”

His reasoning hit her in the solar plexus with the force of a herd of rainbow ponies. “Right,” she breathed out, wondering how something in the planet had managed to be so big and cute at once. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll go get your captain.”

“Thank you!”

Alex walked as fast as she could towards the stairs until she was out of sight and covered her face to keep her reaction under control. So. Goddamn. Cute. Was that how those pirates lived? Trying not to squeal whenever the resident polar bear was being sweet?

Steeling herself, she walked up the remaining steps, hoping the captain had somehow vanished while she wasn’t looking.

No such luck.

She stepped a little more forcefully than necessary as she approached him from behind a shelf, always staying at a safe distance, to try to catch his attention, but he didn’t move.

(The annoying voice in her head told her that the only safe distance from that man was a sea away.)

Could he have been asleep? That would have explained things. What was his name again?

“Mr. Trafalgar?” She tried. She wasn’t sure if she should have made known that she knew who he was, but the deed was done. He looked up. “It’s about time to close and… there’s a polar bear looking for you in the reception hall.”

“Bepo’s here?” He looked in confusion at her, and then at the window. It was dark outside. “I hadn’t noticed it had gotten so late. Eight, right?”

He stretched in the chair. Between the movement and the spotted hat and jeans, he reminded her of an overgrown leopard.

“Almost,” she offered.

He glanced at the book, frowning. Granted, his face seemed to be stuck in a perpetual frown and he didn’t sound angry. “Do you have the same hours tomorrow?”

“Oh, no, we don’t open on Sundays,” she replied, wondering if this was the exact point where the conversation would go downhill. She attempted to make it better. “But you can come on Monday if you want to keep reading.”

He grimaced, this time for real. “Can’t do. We leave on Monday morning.”

“Oh.” A quick stop, then. It was a thing that happened often. The recording time for the Log Pose was less than a day in Harlun. “Well, we could make some photocopies, but…” The book was way too long for that, and he seemed to be about halfway through.

“Can I take it out tonight and give it back to you sometime tomorrow?”

She appreciated wholeheartedly that he wasn’t getting mad at her, but the thought of the book going out of the library like that made all her alarms go off. “Not without a library card.” Which was only for residents, obviously.

She braced for retaliation, but it never came.

The pirate looked kind of conflicted. She didn’t know what was so interesting about the book that he couldn’t find it in another island, and she didn’t need to know the options that were crossing his mind to realize that she probably wouldn’t like them.

Since idiots had to find ways to console themselves, she would tell herself during the following hours that the only reason she made a tremendously stupid offer was to avoid the much worse alternatives.

“I’ll actually be working here tomorrow. The library is closed, but if you’re really that interested, I can let you in.”

Or maybe she was a fucking bleeding heart who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make someone’s day better for free. But ironically, at what price.

She recognized the emotions on his face. First surprise, then suspicion. “Why would you?”

Because she really was that stupid, she wanted to say. “You’re a doctor, right? I don’t want a dead patient on my conscience because you couldn’t finish a book you needed. Anyway… you’re free to come tomorrow.”

And she left him there, quickly making her way down to retrieve her stuff. The bear had come inside, at last, and he looked up from the documents on Alex’s desk. She would have been surprised if he could read that handwriting.

“He’s coming,” she said with a small smile, but she didn’t know if it showed. She had, on occasion, been asked why she was angry when she tried to smile. “I’m going to pick up my things inside.”

He looked pleased, though. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She went into the back room, taking extra long on purpose until she heard movement outside and the sound of the door closing. By the time she found the courage to crawl out of her hole, the pirates were nowhere to be seen.

She left a note in her desk’s drawer, just in case, saying that if she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Trafalgar Law was to blame. She had thought about phoning a coworker to alert her, but she wasn’t supposed to let anybody in on Sundays, much less a wanted man, and she didn’t want to risk this incident reaching the ears of the mayor.

For the first time in years, her stomach couldn’t handle the tea and she had to throw most of her cup down the drain. Damn nerves. Her hands were acting up more than usual, to the point where the warmth of the thermos wasn’t doing a lot to soothe the pain. She would have worried about that if it weren’t because of more pressing matters.

❦

Even earlier than the day before, he was already waiting for her at the door when she arrived.

Alex would admit without missing a beat that she had been an idiot for offering – never mind the very real possibility that the guy could have broken in to retrieve the book and left damages the library couldn’t afford to repair – but he was either equally dumb or exceedingly confident for having shown up. Alone. Alex could have called the Marines, for all he knew.

She didn’t miss the sword he was carrying, this time around.

She put two and two together then. Of course. He had appeared before the hour to check that the surroundings were safe.

“I didn’t expect you to actually show up,” he said as a greeting, and she reached for the key in her pocket. His tone was impressed with a good dash of mockery. “Do you know who I am?”

He already knew the answer, since she had called him by name the day before. With only two sentences, he demolished most of the halfway positive impression he had made the day before, and Alex, already predisposed to think he was a dick, decided he was exactly that.

She was tired and anxious, so she couldn’t muster up any facial expression as she said, “Should I care?” Upon noticing that had sounded even worse than she meant to, she added in a hurry, “I mean, what’s the point of asking that? Do you want me to turn around and leave the door locked?”

He didn’t seem to take it badly, thank the heavens. He looked a bit amused, in fact. “I don’t need you to unlock a door.”

“I’m well aware,” she replied in a monotone. “I appreciate you had the courtesy of waiting.” The budget was tight and changing the lock would have been a royal waste of money.

She opened the door and went in first to turn on the lights. He closed the door after going in, and she would have usually locked it again, but she really did not want to be stuck alone inside of a building with a stranger, even if the state of the lock wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“I’ll be working downstairs.” She pointed to an old, reinforced door on the wall behind the front desk. “Give me a heads up when you’re done.”

That sword was making her unnecessarily jumpy. He didn’t need to have it with him.

“Alright,” he said, glancing at the staircase to the second floor, and then he must have noticed that she was giving the sword the stink eye, because he tapped it against his shoulder and smirked. “Got a problem?”

Yeah, one about two meters tall. “None as long as you don’t use it.”

“As long as you don’t give me a reason to.”

She wanted to say a lot of things. That they were alone, that he was kind of a dick, that yes, she was as dumb as he was thinking, and to please leave her alone until he was done and only then appear to say goodbye and thank you.

Instead, she picked up a folder from her desk drawer and a lantern from the wall and left it at, “Enjoy your reading.”

He took the hint and left, and so did she.

The door to the archive closed behind her with a heavy thud, and she lit the lantern.

It was a fire hazard in a library, but it was inevitable, because the basement didn’t have electricity. After many years of pressuring the city hall for a budget increase, the council had seen fit to make renovations and extend the electrical installation to the basement. She just had to keep herself from setting the archive on fire for a couple months and the risk would be no more.

She went to the farthest area from the entrance and set the lantern on an ancient wood table. The basement was pure grey stone from floor to ceiling, making it permanently cold. She hadn’t bothered to take off her coat and scarf, but the gloves had had to go and she wasn’t happy about it. She had icicles for hands as every winter, and this year they had begun to hurt earlier than usual.

Alex had decided to put in some overtime that week because she was researching a family tree that a cousin of the mayor, a pretentious git that paid very well, had commissioned. Something about proving a blood relation to a noble family from a nearby island to have a claim to somebody else’s lands. Alex didn’t care. She had been trained for this thing, a job was a job, and she was going to do it to the best of her ability. Even if she had absolutely loathed genealogy back when she was still a student.

She didn’t think her employer would be too happy with her findings, though, because so far she’d only found a mess of marriages that didn’t bring her any closer to the neighboring island. She even found some records of a family branch that had one of those pesky Ds in the name and then disappeared from record. She supposed they just left the kingdom. She had noticed that every D. that rose to prominence was an outright weirdo, and she wasn’t sure if it was just confirmation bias because boring people didn’t make the news, but damn it they didn’t seem to crop up in the most outlandish incidents. There was the infamous Monkey D. Dragon, his father Garp, who she had seen a couple of times in person and seemed frankly overbearing, the guys in Whitebeard’s crew… And the biggest weirdo of all, of course: the King of Pirates. She’d heard from an acquaintance funny stories of him to last her a lifetime. A lot of the mystique around his figure was lost, but that was one of the things that made history interesting, in her opinion.

Sitting down on the floor to open the cabinet on the lower part of a bookcase, she took a look at the bundles of papers there. It was a seriously old part of the archive, housing documents from six hundred years back, but thanks to the cold and darkness, they had stood fairly well against the tide of time.

She reached inside and pulled out the dozen of tomes at the forefront to make sure noting was trapped behind. That part of the archive had been catalogued way before Alex’s time, after all, and not every archivist had been as careful as they should have. She had learned that the hard way, finding folders that didn’t match the catalog and misplaced pages centuries into the future. Whenever that happened, she passed the mess to her coworkers, the actual archivists, who had a tendency to curse her incessantly until they fixed the issue, but it was all in good humor.

Very carefully, she took the lantern and approached it to the cabinet. She looked inside and stared at the darkness. In fact, she had to stare for a very long while before realizing that she wasn’t looking at the back of the cabinet or even the wall.

There was an empty space there.

A secret compartment?

Work forgotten, she had a good minute of doubt, sitting on the floor. She was severely allergic to dust mites and exploring further was a health hazard. There could be spiders or rats or fungi or lethal mold. She could wait until the next day and ask a coworker to check it out in her stead.

But the temptation. There was only so much willpower she could exert in less than twenty-four hours until she ran out.

Please let it not be rats or fungi, she thought as she peeled off her coat and scarf to avoid getting them dusty, and dived in.

❦

It had been eleven years since he had any anything to remember his parents by other than the bitter memories of how Flevance had gone up in flames.

If someone accused Law of dwelling too much in the past, he would have denied it with full knowledge that he was a liar. But there was a hint of truth in that, and that was that he didn’t think of his dead family often. It was another particular piece of past that haunted him.

There was nothing left of Flevance but ashes and ruin. He knew it well, and that was why he avoided revisiting those times.

And yet.

He closed the book he had just finished, running a finger over the cover. He remembered the nights his parents spent locked in their study, writing the results of their investigations in order to share their knowledge, hoping that a cure could be found in time.

He had spent the last two days reading every word in their voices, surprising himself when he could still recognize in the wording which parts had written who.

He’d been thinking from the moment he’d found the book, the first time in over a decade he had found a copy of it anywhere, that he’d have to let it go, but he wasn’t willing to. He had considered offering to buy it from the librarian, but given she hadn’t even let him take it out the day before, he had a feeling that she would refuse. She was understandably wary of him.

Well, he was already going to hell, so proving her suspicions right wouldn’t make a difference.

He slipped the book inside his coat and went downstairs to find her. He’d at least say thank you before she could find out what he had done. He was mildly curious about her reaction, but he’d make sure to miss that.

He opened the door to the place where she’d said she’d be to be greeted by darkness and a faint light, and he immediately tumbled down half a set of stairs when he set a foot down and only found air.

Cursing under his breath, he fought against the urge to leave unannounced and, going against popular advice, he followed the light at the end of the tunnel. It got increasingly brighter the more he advanced, passing bookcase after bookcase. The way they were set made the basement somewhat labyrinthine, and he was unsure he’d be able to find his way upstairs again if he had to follow the same path he was taking.

And right as he reached the source of light… it disappeared. Briefly. As did half of the librarian’s body inside of a low cabinet in which there was no human way an adult’s torso could fit.

How interesting.

He cleared his throat, and she visibly jumped, hitting her head with a resounding plunk and an ow. She pulled out of the cabinet, looking pretty embarrassed when she faced him.

“Um, oh—Are you heading out?”

“That was the plan.”

“Okay, then,” she said like nothing had happened. Her hair, brown and chin-length, was covered in dust bunnies, as was her sweater. She took off her glasses to clean them with her clothes, revealing a set of dark circles under her eyes that could rival his. When she noticed she couldn’t wipe anything with what she had available, she discarded the glasses on top of a nearby table. “The door’s open, so—”

“What’s in there?” He asked.

“Oh, nothing important,” she said calmly, and rubbed her nose with the back of a hand. “Just old registries.”

She watched her watch him. She wasn’t budging under his stare, but Law could detect lies from miles away. Also dust allergies. He hoped she was getting medicated for those, because this town was supposed to be a quick, relaxing stop, and he wasn’t in the mood to get the corpse of a librarian added to his list of crimes. “Inside the wall?”

“I guess someone saw fit to build a compartment in the cabinet?”

“A compartment where an adult and a lamp can disappear into?”

She spread her arms, as if to make a point. “I’m fairly small.”

“Don’t you say.”

Her expression went from neutral to mildly annoyed as she dropped her arms and the pretense altogether. “You really don’t have anything better to do in town?”

The question would have been fair had there been anything out there other than mud and the tavern his men had occupied since the day they arrived. “Any suggestions?”

She conceded the point. “No, not really.” With a sigh, she nudged her head towards the cabinet. “There’s no wall. I think there’s a hidden room in there. Too wide for a passage.”

“Is this something common in libraries?”

“No, but it is with old buildings, to an extent. And these shelves may be old, but they sure as hell aren’t as ancient as the basement.” She knocked on the wood. “Someone hid that room when this basement was repurposed as an archive.”

Consider his curiosity officially piqued. “Any idea of what’s inside?”

“I was about to find out.”

“So?”

“You want to check it out?” She sounded confused and like she didn’t want to hear the answer to that question.

Too bad he wasn’t feeling charitable. “Sure. You never know where a treasure may be hiding.”

If she had been tense until then, at that moment she looked ready to shove him out with her own hands. “Any objects that may be in there could be historical artifacts and need to be treated as such.”

“And are you going to stop me if I decide to take something?”

Her frown deepened, but there was little else she could do. She had to know that, even if he left just so they wouldn’t have to put up with each other any longer, he could come back any time he wanted, key or not.

There wasn’t as much bite in her voice when she relented. “Be my guest,” she said, offering him the lamp and gesturing towards the cabinet.

“Ladies first,” he replied, which didn’t win him any points, going by her huff, but she didn’t waste more time arguing and headed inside.

And then he was left without any light on his side.

“Well?” She asked, sounding a bit nervous.

“Are you in a hurry?” He said, feeling his way down the cabinet until he found the opening. There. He saw a faint light on the other side.

“Do you enjoy making people uncomfortable?”

“It’s a job perk, so might as—” Thud. His hat fell off his head and rolled to the other side. “—well.”

“…Did you hit your head?”

“No,” he lied, crawling out of the cabinet and picking up his hat.

“That’s why I tried to give you the lamp,” she said with obvious satisfaction, ignoring his reply, and holding the lamp higher to cover as much terrain as possible with the light. “The floor and walls look the same as outside. This is an extension of the basement, built at the same time as the rest of it, by the looks of it.”

“Why do you think someone would block the entrance?”

“To hide something or someone, so there’s a good chance there’s going to be a corpse instead of treasure. In fact, I hope it’s a corpse,” she sentenced.

“You have strange hobbies.”

“You wouldn’t try to steal a corpse. At least I’d avoid a pointless argument.”

Well, that depended on its state. He was bored, and it couldn’t hurt to take a body part back for closer inspection.

“…You wouldn’t, right?”

“Technically, it wouldn't be anyone's property.”

“Just saying, you have no right to judge anybody else’s hobbies. Hm?” She walked forward a few steps, and the light revealed something square standing in the middle of the room.

“Doesn’t look like your corpse,” he said.

“Doesn’t look like your treasure, either,” she replied, but she seemed to tune him out as she approached the object, and by the time she was standing in front of it, her eyes were wide open and her mouth fell a little bit.

Law waited for her to say something, but she was too caught up inspecting the thing. He took a few steps forwards and saw a perfect stone cube with etched inscriptions that covered one of its sides completely, and whatever it was, the librarian must found it fascinating. She was running her free hand over the symbols, leaving trails in the dust, and looking at them so up close that she may as well have been head-butting the stone. He was fairly sure that he had forgotten he was there. And that had to mean something, since she had made clear that she didn’t want him there.

“What is it?” He asked. There wasn’t anything interesting to him about that stone, and the fact that she had the lamp he had refused to take just to be a smartass meant that he couldn’t inspect the rest of the room while she did her thing.

She wasn’t brought out of her reverie right away. When she finally spoke, she took a couple of steps back to look at the entirety of the cube. “It’s a Poneglyph. It makes no sense, but it has to be.”

That didn’t answer anything. “And what’s that supposed to be?”

“A Poneglyph’s a… a record of sorts. There’s an indeterminate number scattered across the world, and they contain… well. Historical records.”

“So something that makes sense to have it in an archive.”

“Well, yes, but no. Poneglyphs contain forbidden knowledge.” Her stare could bore a hole in the stone if she kept it up. “You know the Void Century? Have you heard about the tragedy of Ohara?”

“On passing.” He recalled the news about the Tree of Knowledge burning and the scientists being declared enemies of the World Government. “One of the people involved has joined a pirate crew recently, hasn’t she? Devil Child, they call her.”

“Do they?” It seemed to come as entirely new information for her, and that made her look at him, at last. Without the glasses and under the light of the lamp’s flame, her eyes looked yellow. “I don’t pay that much attention to pirate news. No one ever comes here.” The question of why was he there was left unspoken, and thus unanswered. “Anyway. They are the only remaining records of the Void Century, and its study is prohibited by the World Government. Rumor goes that Ohara’s experts were working on them.”

“World Government covering up stuff then. Nothing new.”

“Indeed.” She switched the lamp to her other hand and glanced back at the Poneglyph. “I wonder why there’s one here. They are supposed to be extremely hard to find.”

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. Nobody can read them. Maybe the people of Ohara could have, but…” She shrugged. “We’re twenty years late.”

She stared pensively at the Poneglyph, the lines of frustration etched on her face showing more emotion than anything he’d seen so far from her. Then, unexpectedly, she offered the lamp to him. “You want to take a look around, right?”

Their hands brushed for a moment when he took it by the handle, and she turned again towards the stone and crossed her arms.

He was still curious.

“What are you going to do?” He asked.

“Hm? About what?”

“What do you think?”

“The Poneglyph? Did you not hear what I said? Its study is prohibited.” He tone became despondent. “And… the city hall is going to know it’s here in a few months.”

“Why?”

“Renovations. We’re supposed to get electricity in the basement. Lamps are a fire hazard.”

“So it’s your only chance. Could you decipher it?”

“With years of work and research, maybe. But that’s—nah, no way, they reduced an island to bits because of this. It’s not worth the risk. I couldn’t do it anyway.”

“Sounds to me like you’re just making excuses, but what do I know? I’m just a pirate.”

And he started walking around the perimeter of the chamber, in hopes of finding something. After a few minutes of continuous disappointment, the librarian spoke up, and she sounded oddly polite.

“Could you wait here a moment? I want to pick up some material from outside.”

It was his turn to be suspicious. “Won’t you need the light?”

“No, I can navigate this place in the dark. I’ll be right back.”

He supposed that this was too convoluted to be a trap, but he felt kind of naked having left Kikoku in the archive. He didn’t feel uncomfortable for long, though, because true to word, about a minute later and after bonking her head on the way back in, she reappeared in the room with large sheets of paper and several other packs that she stacked up in front of the stone.

“Is that carbon paper?” He asked as he approached her. He hadn’t found anything else in the room, but damn if the library’s resident gremlin wasn’t a welcome entertainment.

“That’s right.” And she climbed on top of the unstable pile of papers and started to smooth the carbon paper over the stone. “I’ll transcribe it back home.”

This was a turn of events he hadn’t seen coming. “What happened to ‘it’s forbidden?’”

“All the good things in life are unhealthy for you.” With one hand, she pulled out a roll of adhesive tape and cut a few pieces with her teeth to stick the carbon paper to the Poneglyph. “Besides, fuck the government.”

Law couldn’t help but smirk at that. “A commendable sentiment.”

“Why, thank you!” She beamed at him, whether sarcastically or not, it was hard to tell. With considerable effort, she kept sticking pieces of carbon paper to the surface. He guessed the plan was to cover it entirely.

“Do you need help?”

“Are you offering?”

For someone who had been so wary of him a few hours earlier, she was a bit of a smartass, herself.

“Good question.”

He thought he heard her snort, but he couldn’t tell if it was because she was annoyed or amused. Probably the former.

“That stack of papers looks very unstable,” he commented.

“Yes, thanks for mentioning it.”

“You aren’t tall enough to reach the corner of the Poneglyph.”

Silence, resignation, and the telltale look of someone who was looking at an infestation beyond the capabilities of pest control. “I don’t suppose you would help me?”

“If you asked nicely.”

She looked at him with a strange face, one that indicated many thoughts and the inability to pick a single one and answer accordingly.

“No?” He tried.

Her eyes narrowed as she motioned to one of the papers. “Can you hold this up for me, please?”

His reply, however, was immediate. “I’ll think about it.”

She sighed, determined to ignore him, and returned to her work like she hadn’t expected anything from him at all, which he thought was a great attitude to have. But again, because he didn’t particularly care to see her slip and crack her head against the stone tiles, he did the tremendous effort of lifting up an arm to hold the paper in place.

She paused to look at him. Stone-faced as she was, it was hard to tell if there was any surprise in there or just mere curiosity, but she smiled a little when she said, “Look at you. Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.”

He let go of the paper, but since she didn’t stop chuckling to herself, he nudged the stack under her feet to remind her who was in control here.

❦

Alex said goodbye to the pirate that had managed to surpass her admittedly low expectations, but not before filing him under the pain in the ass category. Her classification system stood the test of reality so far.

Relieved at being alone again, she locked the door, did a few stretches, and decided that she’d had a lot of emotions that day and deserved another cup of tea.

One hurdle overcome. The pirate had seemed a way bigger problem before she’d found a fucking Poneglyph in the basement. Now she had no clue what to do with the new one.

It didn’t take her long to realize that she was fucked, no matter how she looked at it.

She felt oddly calm about it at that moment. She supposed it had something to do with the shock of the discovery and that the danger was still nebulous, if certain.

She sipped on her tea.

She was the only person that ventured regularly into that art of the archive, but alerting about the discovery herself was out of the question. If they knew she knew, they’d probably make her not know anything anymore.

The problem was that the construction workers would surely find the door, and now that she and Trafalgar had been walking around the room, there was obvious tampering. Cleaning the dust would get rid of the footprints and marks on the Poneglyph, but the lack of dust would be as suspicious as the sets of footprints.

The next gulp of tea scorched her throat.

So, only two options remained: stay, wait patiently and leave up to chance whether an accident happened to her, and probably the whole library with its workers, or quit her job, take a boat somewhere else and drop off the radar. The first one wasn’t worth the risk.

Two things to take into account with the remaining option: anybody with half a brain could suspect that her sudden departure had something to do with the Poneglyph, and in that case, all suspicions would fall on her. The plus side was that her coworkers would probably be spared.

What to do? It was a long way to her hometown. She could settle back there if she was spared from the government’s suspicions. If not…

Well. There was Sabaody.

Which was stupid for several reasons, the main one being that it was on Marineford’s and Mary Geoise’s doorsteps.

The ache in her hands felt especially acute, even through the heat radiating from the cup.

It would come down to luck, no matter what she did. Maybe she was overthinking the situation and nothing would happen. Workers would move the Poneglyph in the middle of the night, or seal it away while no one was looking, and that would be the end of it.

But assuming a best case scenario would most likely spell death in this situation, and she’d like to avoid that. She may not have had a super interesting life, but she was quite fond of having it.

Reality started to sink in then. Oh, god. She had to make a run for it, didn’t she?

She left the cup aside on her desk and started pacing around and up the stairs to burn energy. She could tell the city hall that a family member was ill and she needed to go back home. That would be sensible, but all the paperwork and finding a replacement for her would take weeks. At least one month would go by before she could leave the island without raising suspicions. Being able to cross the Red Line depended entirely on travel time and the wait for permissions to traverse the Holy Land, both of which would take money she didn’t have. She could probably cover the expenses to get to the Red Line, but not the rest of the way.

She’d need to pick up a quick job in between to replenish her wallet, then.

Why couldn’t she go work to a normal library? Why had this happened to her?

She hurried towards the medical section to put the book back in its place, and when she didn’t find it in the cart, she went to check the desks. All empty. Maybe he had put it back in place?

But all there was where the book should have been was an empty space, and a nervous heat started to rise to Alex’s cheeks as she realized that she had been duped and the son of a bitch had stolen her book after she’d had the generosity to open the door for him on a Sunday so he didn’t have to break and enter.

She was too full of anxious energy, with all that had happened, to sit still and fume silently. She’d never been prone to resignation where there were still options left to try, and if what her near future held for her was a one way trip to Impel Down, getting murdered by a pirate wasn’t the worst that could happen.

Harlun wasn’t big, and it was muddy outside. Very much so. Enough that Alex picked up her belongings, went outside, and, for once, was grateful that the roads were made of dirt and not pavement.

She hurried through the private plaza, carrying her bag on her shoulder, boots stomping on the cobblestones until she reached the road and saw a recent pair of shoe imprints that headed down the street.

With her black coat open and billowing in the wind, she went on Trafalgar Law’s pursue and, to her relief, his trail didn’t lead to the port, but rather to the tavern where every single sailor that stopped in Harlun seemed to spend their days in. Not like they had much of a choice.

A friendly face saluted her from behind the counter as she crossed the door. “Long time no see, A—”

“HiAl,” she said to the bartender so fast that she wasn’t sure if the words came out properly, but she didn’t care, because the bastard she was looking for was sitting on a barstool right in front of her. She couldn’t interpret the look on his face, but what she could tell for sure was that she wanted to deck him in it. “You,” she said, accusatory.

He smirked, and her irritation only grew. “What a coincidence. Here for a drink?”

She inhaled deeply, angrily, walked up to him and dropped her bag on the nearest barstool. Damn, he was tall, and so was his seat. Even sitting down, he towered above her. Not that it mattered, because most people tended to be taller than Alex, so this didn’t register as an intimidating factor. “You know what I’m here for.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You stole my book.”

“Your book?”

She had come here to embarrass herself, hadn’t she? Too late to turn back now. “The library’s book.”

“What makes you think I did?”

Oh, he was insufferable.

“Do you take me for an idiot?” She retorted. “You’re the only person who could have taken it.”

“How so? The library’s closed today.”

Alex’s mouth fell a little bit open at Law’s flippant answer under the curious gaze of Al. “Really?” She said, unimpressed. “I can’t make you return it even if I try, and that’s how you’re going to play it?”

He wore a self-satisfied smile, and he wasn’t even looking at her. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She considered what to say for a few seconds. “Okay,” was the best she could do. She didn’t know why she felt so disappointed. It wasn’t like she had expected anything good from him, from the start. He was right if he thought she was an idiot. “Serves me right for trying to help,” she said, yanking on her bag to retrieve it and turning around without facing him. “Bye, Al.”

Being taken advantage of was the worst feeling.

She hadn’t taken a second step away from him when a hand grabbed her by her left arm and pulled her back.

“Wait,” she heard Trafalgar say. When she turned around, he wasn’t smirking anymore. “What’s the name of the book?”

“You know the name,” she said irritated, confused, and offended that he was invading her personal bubble.

“Do you?”

“Effects of heavy metal poisoning on the cardiovascular system, I think?” She said, punctuating the sentence with a tired sigh. “Do you need the reference too?”

“No. The authors.”

“Are you getting at something or are you just laughing at me?”

He let go of her to search for something in the coat he had discarded on the barstool to his other side. The book she was looking for. He held it up for her, but didn’t offer it, and Alex didn’t try to take it by surprise because there’s no point in stealing when you can’t make a swift escape with the loot.

She looked at the names written below the title. “Doctor…” She muttered, and then she read the surname, and the surname below it, and she blinked a couple of times before redirecting her attention to Law. “You aren’t old enough to have written this book.”

It said Trafalgar. Twice. Family? Was this a con? Did he come from a line of doctors?

“Obviously.”

“A parent?” No, there were two. “Parents?”

“Bingo.”

Alex’s indignation and disappointment fizzled against her will. He was a thief, he’d taken advantage of her good will and was waving the prize in front of her face, she should’ve been furious!

And yet, she had to be a bleeding heart again. “And I don’t suppose you can ask them or the printing press for another copy?”

His response wasn’t immediate, but when he gave one, it was silent. He opened the book from the back, and showed her the words printed behind the back cover:

Printed in Flevance.

That was a resounding no if there ever was one. But did that also mean…? No, he couldn’t have anything to do with that incident, there wasn’t anybody left from Flevance. Perhaps his parents had been working there when war broke out. It was safe to assume that the son of two doctors wouldn’t become a famous pirate if he still had a family to fall back onto. This was a huge can of worms that she had no intentions of opening, though.

“If you’re a liar, you’re a very convincing one,” she admitted. She couldn’t even get rightfully enraged without the universe throwing her a curveball, huh? “All right, keep it. Not that you need my permission.”

With a satisfied smile, he put away the book. “Will you get in trouble?”

“Why do you—” She cut herself short. Not worth asking. “No, I’ll blame you if anybody notices,” she replied. “Al—”

“Not a word.”

“Thank you.” She nodded, and then looked at the pirate once again. “Well, Mr. Trafalgar, it’s been…” Not exactly a pleasure. “Interesting.”

A short laugh escaped him. She had to wonder if it was the alcohol what had him in such high spirits. “Leaving so soon?”

“What, you steal from my workplace and want me to stay for the party?” She asked with incredulity.

“Is it theft if you’re allowing it, though?”

The gall of this dude. “No, thank—”

Suddenly, a red haired man wearing sunglasses indoors and a white jumpsuit entered the scene, putting an arm around Law’s shoulders. “Hey, Captain! Who’s the girl?”

“She’s…”

“A librarian,” she offered. “Just a librarian.”

“Oooh, the librarian!”

“…What—”

“Penguin, come here! It’s the librarian!”

His friend, who wore a cap with the word ‘penguin’ on it that concealed his eyes, but otherwise was dressed exactly like him, walked up to them, “Nice to meet ya!” He wave at her. “You’ve got guts!”

She sensed her chance to make a swift exit was gone. “I think I’m a little lost.”

“Captain said you opened the library just for him.”

“Oh. That.” She was still regretting that. She should have never woken up. Sundays were meant for sleeping. “That’s not guts, it’s being a dumbass.”

The two men laughed, and the first said, “Aren’t they the same?”

She tilted her head, conceding the point. The tilt of their voices was similar to the captain’s, she noticed. Northerners, too. She felt small thinking that they had travelled from practically the opposite side of the world until she remembered she had done the same. The difference was that she had managed to make it boring.

“So what brings you here?” Penguin asked. “Come for a drink after work?”

“No, not really, I was just about to—”

“Come on, have a drink with us!”

“Um, I should really—”

“You live here for long?” The redhead intervened. “I wanna hear about this town. Is it as boring as it looks? Because we’ve been trying to find something to do since we got here.”

“There has to be something.”

Alex smiled a little despite herself, feeling their plight until she remembered the Poneglyph in the archive. “There’s nothing at all.” She turned her head to look at the tables for a moment, hopefully find an excuse to escape. As expected, she saw about a dozen people dressed in the same kind of uniform as those two, but she did a double take when she saw someone clad in orange.

There was the polar bear again, toasting with his friends.

“Is he a mink?” He asked the guys, who grinned at her. She saw Law hide a smile behind his glass before returning his attention to the bear.

He was laughing as he lifted a companion from a chair one handed. Everyone looked so… happy.

“Woah!” Penguin exclaimed. “Second person—”

“Third.”

“Right, third – third person who’s realized what he is since coming to the Grand Line!”

Not surprising. She had never seen any so far from the Red Line. “Is he part of your crew?”

“Yeah, Bepo’s our friend.”

“And our navigator,” Law added.

Aw. Oh, she was getting soft with age.

“Wait here,” said the redhead, “we’ll introduce you!”

“Oh, no need, we already—”

But the two were gone before she could finish her excuse and leave. She supposed there wasn’t any harm in staying a while. She had already demolished her life in a matter of hours, and she didn’t see how this could make it worse. They seemed friendly people, even if their captain was kind of an ass.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” she said quietly, more to herself than anybody else.

Law replied, though. “There aren’t many of them around.”

“No, I’ve seen minks before. I meant a free one.”

Law regarded her with a brand interest that she hadn’t received from him yet. “Are you talking about slaves?”

“You’re headed to the Sabaody Archipelago, right?”

“Eventually.”

“Be careful. Minks aren’t safe there.”

He snorted. “I assure you Bepo can take care of himself.”

Raising her eyebrows at her dismissal, “Don’t underestimate what those people are willing to do to get their hands on a novelty slave.”

“How do you know? Have you been there?”

For longer than she had ever expected to. “Some time ago,” she replied noncommittally. “And it’s dangerous enough for boring people with the kidnapping crews, the human auction, the Celestial Dragons and the Marines so close. You already stand out, but your friend? Keep an eye on him.”

He sounded disgruntled when he said, “You don’t need to tell me,” but it sounded as close to a concession as she thought she was going to get from him.

“Coffee?” Al interrupted to offer one to her. He already had a press in hand.

“Sure,” she said, giving in. She wasn’t going anywhere soon, it seemed, so she climbed on a barstool. “How did you even meet him?” She asked Law, who seemed amused by her interest in his friend. “Don’t they live in the New World?”

“North Blue. We met eleven years ago.”

That was about the last answer she expected. “He’s been with you all along? Wow.”

She felt kind of jealous. She didn’t have any friends from when she was a child. She knew people, sure. A lot of people. Some she liked, many she’d rather not have met at all. A couple of true friends here and there, but no one close by. As much as she enjoyed being alone, and she couldn’t recall a moment in her life she’d felt lonely, she had to wonder how it was like to have such good friends around all the time. It sounded exhausting and fun.

“Yeah,” he agreed, though she hadn’t expected him to, and the admission made her smile a little. “My thoughts exactly.”

#degrees of separation

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intrepidmare · 4 years ago

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JAIME x BRIENNE FIC EXCHANGE RECOMMENDATIONS

Well, I have read about half of the fics in the @jaime-brienne-fic-exchange and these are my favorites so far. Seriously, guys, if you haven't read any of these stories already, you must! It's incredible how much talent is in this fandom.

PS: I don't know/couldn't find everyone's Tumblr, either because they have a different username than on ao3 or don't have a blog here. If you recognize someone else's or your own work that I didn't @, please let me know and I'll edit it 😊

Let me begin with the fics with a love that transcends time and death.

(The first is the story that was written for me!! Please, guys, go, read it, and give some love to the extremely talented writer that came up with it! Words fail me to explain how amazing this fic is. Go read it and then you'll thank me for the rec.)

This is where we start again by @forbiddenfantasies1

Explicit | chapters 8/8 | 40.7k words | past life au, modern setting, canon compliant

Brienne and Jaime had never met, but when they come together to work on a new project, they realize their connection may have been generations in the making.

Or in which Jaime and Brienne meet, begin having flashbacks to their ancestors lives, and are forced to figure out where they went wrong before they can determine how to make it right.

This life and the next by atomsandfairies

Teen and up | chapters 6/6 | 8.2k words | historical setting, modern au

“Do you ever wonder how old our souls are? How many times we have missed and met? How many times we have come together?”

The questions have turned themselves over in her again and again, as long as they’ve been together, before he’s asked, before they’d even found each other.

There is a familiarity between them that seems too old for their time together.

Angstfest addicts, these are for you. Get ready to get beaten with feels. Don't worry, despite heartbreak along the way, all ends well.

My honor in your hands by @aviss

General | one-shot | 2.8k words | hurt/comfort, missing scene, book canon

Jaime lasts the better part of a day before the silence gets to him.

By hearts and hands made fast by anonymous

Mature | chapters 4/? | 10.1k words | 8x04 canon divergence, secret marriage

»But he’d held her wrist even then, thumb stroking, Marry me, he’d said, marry me and never acknowledge it if you do not wish, but marry me as I should have married you that night and every other. If I’m to die, he’d said (with her, he had not), let me die as your husband.«

A grand romantic gesture has repercussions neither Jaime nor Brienne had foreseen.

Lies in the darkness by aleighcarlisle

Mature | one-shot | 4.4k words | angst, hurt/comfort

"Hurt me with the truth, but never comfort me with a lie."

Man With a heartbeat by @sigilbroken

Explicit | chapters 5/5 | 25.5k words | modern au

Angst is not your cup of tea? No problem. You should try the following. Only laughter, happy feelings ahead.

This one last thing by @aliveanddrunkonsunlight

Mature | One-shot | 13.3k words | Canon compliant, Post-ADWD, bed-sharing

Most tasks needed of a knight, he has been able to adapt to with only one hand, but he struggles with striking flint in order to start a fire. It would be easier if she was here.

Jaime and Brienne journey to the Vale.

What loves you back by @bookishpower

Teen and up | one-shot | 11k words | fairytale-ish, post-canon

A retelling, and a continuation. Jaime learns the great lesson of his life.

That Would Be Enough by forpeaches (bluecarrots)

Mature | One-shot | 2.2k words | Canon compliant, Post-ADWD

Jaime, pining.

The unwitting third wheel by @nightreaderenigma (I should've known this was you!)

Mature | chapters 4/4 | 17.8 k words | post-ADWD, canon compliant

Whilst recovering on the Quiet Isle, Podrick develops a crush on his mentor and heroine, Lady Brienne. The only hiccup in his bubble of infatuation is their new travelling companion – Ser Jaime Lannister. Because even though M’Lady Ser and the Golden Knight argue, there seems to be a bond between them he can’t quite place…

Warm by @angel-deux-writes

Teen and up | one-shot | 13.5k words | canon divergence

Before the battle against the dead, Jaime volunteers for a routine patrol with Brienne to try and get some time to talk with her about why she has been avoiding him since he arrived at Winterfell. When a storm catches them unexpectedly when they're still far from the castle, they find a cave to hole up in for the night.

Way enough by laihiriel

Mature | chapters 3/5 | 10.8k words | modern setting, sports au

Brienne had forgotten how much she loved being out on the water. Joining the local boathouse and sitting in a scull again after her accident was the best thing she could have done for herself.

Because of you (i took my time to come around) by Weboury

Teen and up | chapters 4/4 | 14.7k words | Modern setting, road trip, bed-sharing

Jaime, curator at the Tully Museum, wants to spend more time with Brienne, and maybe finally work around telling her how he feels about her. When Brienne, a historian, is tasked with retrieving the legendary sword Widow’s Wail from King’s Landing, Jaime thinks it’s the perfect time to put a plan in motion, only to find himself with Brienne and his cousin Cleos on an awkward road trip across the Riverlands. And then a goat shows up.

Kaleidoscope sky by allison_wonderland

General | one-shot | 1k | modern au, carnivals

A terrible day, an unexpected stop, and drifting closer together.

Backpfeifengesicht by @samirant

Explicit | one-shot | 18.8 k words | modern au, enemies to friends to lovers

Backpfeifengesicht

(German) n. a face badly in need of a fist

See pictured: Jaime Lannister.

Brienne, Jaime and the Accidental marriage by @angel-deux-writes

Teen and up | One-shot | 10k words | modern setting, reporter au

Best friends, co-workers, and roommates Brienne and Jaime were supposed to head to Greywater Watch to cover a local festival for the newspaper at which they both work. They were NOT supposed to get married while they were there.

Those who seek to find by @ice-connoisseur

Teen and up | one-shot | 22.3k words | Jumanji au

But anyway, that was how it started: Arya found the game, and Sansa rolled the dice.

When you play the game of Jumanji, you win or you die.

In better light by winterkill

Mature | one-shot | 17.7k words | canon divergence, post-ASOS

Perhaps Cersei was right, and every ounce of sense and bravery Jaime possessed was lost with his hand. Sansa Stark is my last chance for honor. He really said that to her? Brienne latched onto the sentiment like a hunting hound to the scent of its quarry.

Before dawn, Jaime rises from his bed, wide awake and with a sense of renewed purpose.

I’m going to go with her.

If you're looking for adventures a little outside of the law, check these out

Codename: kingslayer by libkat

Mature | one-shot | 2.4k words | modern au, thief au

The world's greatest jewel thief is after his biggest score when he encounters his toughest opponent, who might also be the love of his life.

The Knight and the thief By @ddagent (this is the only one I guessed the author right. I knew it was you, Kelly)

Teen and up | one-shot | 3.6k words | Modern au, burglar au, hurt/comfort

Jaime Lannister is rich, handsome – and a jewel thief. His next target is the home of Brienne Tarth, where he might finally find something worth stealing.

Last but not least, for those who like to hang out with creatures of the night, this one is for you

Into the spider's web by @jailynnW

Teen and up | one-shot | 4.5k words | vampire au

Jaime has been a Vampire for centuries, dancing in and out of the grasp of his hunter. Brienne is tasked with taking down the Kingslayer. A mission that brings her more than she bargained for...

Hmm, it doesn't look bad that I'm going to do shameless self-promotion now that I've recommended the work of others, right? You know what? I don't care if it does. So here it is the one I wrote 😊

Made for you by me (Mare9548 on Ao3)

Teen and up | chapters 4/4 | 9.6k words | modern setting, arranged marriage

Despite his reluctance to get married, Jaime Lannister is having dinner with his future wife tonight. Quite a surprise he gets when he meets the woman that his father has chosen for him.

I'll come back later with more recs once I've gone through the rest of the amazing stories in the collection.

More recs

#fanfic recommendation #braime #jaime x brienne fic exchange #braime fic

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vee-angel · 5 years ago

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Sharking Sherry (Chapter 1, repost)

So I have, at last, managed to get the Introduction to the fifth and final member of the Pervert Pentet. I’m pretty excited about that because it means the first part of this series is done. I actually wanted to write Sherry’s story earlier, but I put it off a bit after I decided that it would be written in first person from the perspective of someone who’s a much bigger anime/hentai fan than me. It’s always tricky trying to realistically write a character who knows much more than you about something.

This is probably my most wholesome story so far, so there’s not really any content warnings needed, but as a bonus, there is a bit of a flash-forward to the point where all five of the character’s stories converge.

________________________________

My name is Sherry Sugisaki, I’m twenty-two years old, single, blood type B, and as of today, I’m the official club historian for the Pervert Pentet!

The Pervert Pentet is a club that me and four of my best friends formed so that we could all get together and just be ourselves without other people calling us weirdos or sluts. Well, except for Piper. She calls everybody a slut, but trust me, compared to the other things that come out of her mouth, “slut” is a compliment!

Piper is kind of our leader. She’s the first girl I ever met who was an even bigger perv than me! She’s so smart it’s a little scary, and she always speaks her mind. The only problem is that her mind is always in the gutter!

Nancy is the muscle of the group. She’s the tall athletic type, and way prettier than she realizes. She can be a little intimidating, but I think deep down she has a good heart. I haven’t really gotten close to her yet, and Piper says I probably shouldn’t try to. Nancy says that she doesn’t want to hang out with me because she doesn’t like Asian people (except she said it in a way that wasn’t quite so polite), but I think maybe she just had a hard life and she’s not ready to trust people, yet. And she’s always hanging out with Teira anyway.

Speaking of Teira, she’s this rich, famous artist from Europe. Nancy went to one of her art performances a while back and Teira saw something special in her. Ever since then, Nancy has kinda been Teira’s sidekick. Teira can be a little scary too, but in a different way. While Nancy seems tough, Teira’s… well, creepy. She never smiles, never seems to have an opinion about anything, and she kinda has this icy-cold “I’d like to see you chopped into neat little pieces” vibe. In fact, the only time I’ve ever seen her look excited is when I introduced her to guro porn.

Bailee is the last girl who joined our club. She’s usually kinda dumb, exept sometimes she’s not? We’re all still trying to figure out exactly what her deal is. She’s sooo much fun to hang out with, though! And she’s actually into cute things, like me! As much as I love Piper, some of the things she’s into gross me out. But with Bailee, we can talk about cute boys, and go clothes shopping! Plus, she looks like the big-boobed girls in hentai, but in real life!

But you’ll get to know them later. They say to write what you know about, so I guess I’ll start by telling you about myself!

I grew up in the U.S. but my father is from Japan. My mom is from here, but ethnically, she’s half European and half Brazilian, which I think is why I have a bigger butt than most Japanese girls. My dad was the typical Asian father, which means that he worked all the time to provide for me and my mom, but I never really got to spend much time with him. I guess that’s why I started getting into Japanese culture at a young age. I was into all the normal stuff like Pokemon and Sailor Moon and Hello Kitty, so it was really exciting when I was little and my mom got me a subscription to this really cool anime streaming service!

But even though my mom really liked Japanese history and culture, I don’t think she realized just quite how naughty some parts of it can be. While other pre-teen girls dreamed of a storybook romance with a handsome man who buys them pretty dresses and mansions, I thought up pranks to play on my romantic rivals when we were all crowded into a little house along with our collective boyfriend! When I finally learned what other little girls fantasized about, it just seemed so boring! And lonely, too. I mean, sure, being in a harem seems like it might get a little crazy sometimes, but it’s also exciting. And besides, when things get really tough the girls always put their differences aside to solve problems as a family!

I guess watching all those shows gave me a sense of humor that wasn’t exactly “politically correct.” But honestly, it’s funny when busty girls get their boobs yanked out, or when lecherous milf-types molest shy, blushing lolis. Oh! And when bad-ass fighter girls get their clothes all ripped up during a battle and they suddenly realize that everybody can see that they’re not wearing panties and then they’re all like “Eep! Don’t look!!” That’s the best!

Okay, okay, maaaaaaybe it’s not just that I think it’s funny. Maybe it turns me on a little bit, too. But can you blame me? I mean, when you see a pretty girl on the street, don’t you just want to pull her dress up or yank her boobs out?? Of course you do! Everybody does, they just don’t talk about it. The only difference is that in my case I actually do it!

I’m getting ahead of myself again. I should back up. So when I was in middle school, my parents let me get a smart phone with internet access. And let me tell you, if you think anime is naughty, you haven’t seen hentai! I mean, there’s stuff that’s even too dirty for me! But eventually I came across one kind of video that made me obsessed. And for once, it wasn’t animated at all.

The first time I saw it, I was confused. It just seemed like a guy with a camera-phone following this cute girl in a skirt. But then this guy came out of nowhere and pulled up her skirt and yanked down her panties! She made this cute little “Eeeee!” noise while the guy ran off. It was so cute, and so funny, and so super hot! I figured that video had to be one of a kind, but boy was I wrong!

Apparently it’s called “sharking.” I never quite found a satisfactory explanation for the name, but it started in Japan (just like all the best pervy stuff!), and the idea is to run up to a girl and expose her while somebody else films and puts it online for everyone to enjoy! There’s all kinds of varieties. Top-sharking works best when you find a girl in a tube-top and you can pull her boobs out. Bottom-sharking works best for girls in a short skirt; and if you’re really lucky, you might find a girl who isn’t wearing panties! There’s even cosplay-sharking! That’s when you steal all of a girl’s clothes and run off with them, but you leave her a super cute, slutty outfit that she has to wear if she doesn’t want to walk home naked. Personally, just regular full-sharking is my favorite. That’s when you strip a girl naked and run off with her clothes while the camera guy follows her while she figures out what to do. It’s so exciting! I mean, at first the girl thinks it’s just going to be a regular boring old day, but then she gets to be part of this awesome sexy adventure where she’s naked in public! And nobody can even get upset at her because it’s not even her fault! Everybody wins!

I should know, I’m proud to say that I’m one of the few girls who’s been on both sides. You see, after I graduated high school, I got my parents to finally agree to pay for me to take a year off to visit Japan! It was everything I ever dreamed! I was surrounded by signs displaying happy anime characters, I got to ride public transit with groups of cute, giggly school girls and handsome, studious schoolboys. There were night-clubs with lolita-goths and J-pop was playing everywhere!

The only thing that could have made it better was if I could have had a romantic encounter with a cute boy. I think everyone who visits a foreign country kinda wishes that they could have a special lover to think back on fondly when they’re old and grey. Unfortunately, no matter how many blind corners I hurried around, I never accidentally collided with my true love. Not even when I had toast in my mouth!

I figured maybe I still dressed too much like a kid, and boys were scared that I was under-aged. So I decided to show off my assets! While I was far from flat-chested in America, in Japan my full C-cup breasts made me downright busty. And the Brazilian butt I inherited from mom put me way ahead of at least ninety percent of the other girls in Japan. So I got some new button up shirts that were small enough to hug my curves, and I left a few buttons undone. I also bought new mini-skirts short enough to ensure my panties would be visible with even the slightest breeze. Everybody in Japan is really into panties.

Unfortunately, most of the male attention I got from the new wardrobe was from middle-aged men who took advantage of crowded trains to touch my butt. But I wasn’t about to get discouraged! I mean, it’s not ideal, but if I’m getting attention, than I must be on the right track!

And then one day it happened! I was in a public park a short walk from where I was staying. I had my headphones on, listening to my Japanese language-learning app when this guy came out of nowhere and yanked my little school-girl skirt up to my waist and then pulled my white panties down to my knees!

I always thought that if I ever got sharked myself, that I’d do something really sexy, like wink or do a little pose or something. But honestly, the whole thing happened really fast so I hardly had a chance to react. And I didn’t even see where the camera guy was. I was just sort of… frozen. I just stood there with my panties halfway down my legs as the guy in the hoodie ran off.

A part of me thought that I wished I’d been more prepared for it, but on the other hand, that’s part of the fun! Unlike most Japanese girls, I keep everything totally shaved down there, so they definitely got a shot of my naked pussy. And there were going to put it online! How exciting is that! Once I pulled my panties back up they immediately got soaked. I felt like I’d just won the best prize ever! Now any-time somebody is looking at sharking videos on the internet, there would be a chance that they’d get to see me! I just hoped that the camera guy was good enough that I’d be popular.

I spent the next week looking at sharking videos more than I ever had before, but sadly, I still couldn’t find mine! I knew it would take time, but I just couldn’t wait. Part of me hoped that it’d go viral. Maybe it’d become the most popular sharking video of all time, and I’d get to be the poster-girl for the whole fetish! I’d be so famous that when people saw me in the street they’d yank up my dress and take pictures of my exposed body while I pretended to blush. I mean, I knew it wasn’t likely, but a girl can dream!

After a week of looking at every sharking related site I could I eventually came across this post written in Japanese that looked like it was a local casting call for a girl to be in a video! They must have been a really bad writer, because I could hardly understand it and my Japanese is perfect! I mean, I watched One Punch Man without subtitles and totally understood every word…. well most of them… I mean, at least half…

…

Let’s get one thing straight! I’m a Japanese girl so I obviously speak Japanese! They must have been speaking a weird dialect and that’s why I didn’t understand them that well, okay?!?

Anyway, the post said they wanted a girl to be in a sharking video, and I knew I wanted to be that girl. In all the videos I saw, it was always boys running up and exposing unsuspecting women. I’ve never seen girl-on-girl sharking! What a concept!

After a few messages back and forth, I ended up meeting them at this cute cafe by the beach. That’s when I got really excited! Bikini sharking is one of the best ways to get a girl totally naked in public! I’ve even seen it done where a guy gets two girls tops and bottoms off at once!

I didn’t catch the camera guy’s name, but the one who did most of the talking was named Kaito. I started asking them if there were any special techniques I should know so I could undo a girl’s bikini faster, but they seemed confused. I don’t know how, but there must have been a miscommunication. It seemed like they wanted to me to go somewhere private and stage a fake sharking. They said they were going to make sure to do it where no one would see me and they’d give me my clothes back at the end!

What a cheap trick! I told them that there’s no way. Either they have to shark me for real or I was going home!

I was pretty mad, so I laid out my terms and made sure they knew that there would be no negotiation! One: They had to strip me completely naked! Boobs, ass, pussy, it all had to be on display. Two: They had to do it someplace where lots of people would see. Three: sometimes in the really good sharking videos the guys would spread a girls legs or pull her butt-cheeks apart while the camera guy runs in close, that way everybody on the internet gets a good look at her vagina and butthole. I told them they had to do that, too! And four: Under no circumstances were they allowed to give me my clothes back or let me have anything to cover myself with afterwards.

If I was getting to be part of planning a sharking video, I was going to make sure it was the best one ever! There was no way I was going home unless it was completely naked!

Kaito and his friend whispered to each other for a minute, and then they asked me if I’d be willing to ditch some of my clothes in advance so that they could get me naked faster. Finally! They were saying something that made sense! And honestly, they had a point. I’m ashamed to admit that before that day I used to dress in a terribly un-sharkable way. Ever since then, the only question I ask when choosing an outfit was “How easy would it be for someone to get me naked in public?”

Anyway, I slipped away into a public bathroom to ditch my shirt, bra, and underwear. So now I was just wearing the zippered hoodie I put on when I thought I was going to get to shark a girl, and my mini-skirt. I told the guys that I was going to try to find a place off to the side of the boardwalk, far enough so that nobody could intervene, but close enough that everybody could still see my naked body.

I waited there for about five minutes, and I was starting to think they had gotten scared off, but then I saw the one with the camera sneaking up around the corner of a nearby building. I tried not to look directly at him, but I still wanted my front-side facing the camera.

My heart started racing as I heard Kaito coming up behind me! They must have been discussing technique, because he grabbed the bottom of my skirt and yanked it up until it gathered along with the hem of my hoodie. In an expertly practiced maneuver that seemed almost like a matador with a cape, he swept both garments up over my head and then down off my arms!

Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of a wide open public space in the middle of the day and I was completely naked! The sun seemed like a spotlight that shone down to reveal every private inch of my body.

Kaito tossed my hoodie and skirt and then grabbed my arms to bend me over a nearby bench. That’s when I saw the camera guy running in close while I felt his hands on my butt-cheeks. He reached down to the very bottom and spread everything open wide. The camera guy got in so close he must have been within a foot or two of my most private areas! I sure was glad that I’d shaved that morning; I mean, with the close-up he got of my pussy and asshole, everyone on the internet would have seen if I had even the tiniest bit of stubble.

I’d almost forgot! This was going on the internet! My heart was racing and I wasn’t sure if it was from fear or excitement. As scary as the whole thing was, I was still getting really wet really fast! I hoped that that camera could pick that up so that everyone would see how much girls like this kind of thing! I sort of moaned and wiggled a little bit, but then the two of them ran off. Thankfully they remembered to grab my clothes on the way, so that I wouldn’t have the option to cover myself!

I stood up to see two middle-aged ladies running up to me and yelling something at the men. I must have looked freaked out because they seemed a bit confused and frantic, like they wanted to help me but didn’t know how. Honestly, I was a little freaked out, too, but it was in a good way! Like when you ride a roller-coaster. Like, it’s really exciting and so scary that you scream but it’s also really fun! When I think back on it, I’m pretty sure I actually did scream when he first came up behind me and pulled all my clothes off.

The shorter lady had a jacked that she was unbuttoning, I realized that she was going to try to cover me up! What a prude! She must have just been jealous that a pretty young thing like me was getting to walk around naked in public and show off the goods when she was never brave enough to do anything like that!

I decided I was going to rush off down the boardwalk before she got a chance. I was still super nervous and excited. My heart felt like it was pounding in my throat and I was out of breath from the thrill of it all.

I had the temptation to cover myself with my hands, but I half-resisted. I must have looked kinda shy because I kept sort of covering my pussy, and then half-covering my boobs, and then I put both hands behind me to cover my butt. So anyone who kept looking for more than a second would have seen everything. And there were people everywhere, so even if I wanted to cover myself (which I totally didn’t), there was no way I could have.

I kinda figured that everyone would be staring at me and taking pictures and commenting on my body; I hoped that by the time I made it a hundred meters that I’d have a whole crowd of men around me, but honestly, no one said a thing! Some people glanced, and now and then someone would stare for a few seconds, but the majority of people averted their eyes and just pretended I wasn’t there!

They seemed almost… scared to look at me. This was even better than I could have imagined! I mean, at first I was a little disappointed that people weren’t excited to take in the sight of my naked, young body, but then I realized something! It wasn’t just fun and sexy to be naked in public, it also felt kinda… powerful!

Once I realized that, I stopped acting shy. I stopped trying to cover myself at all. In fact, I slowed down my stride and put on a cocky grin. By the time I reached the end of the boardwalk I was staring people right in the eye, but nobody had the guts to look back at me.

It was about a ten-minute walk back to where I was staying, but I decided I was going to make it take fifteen! There was even a spot where a dozen people were waiting for a train, and I decided to stand in front of all of them and check my phone for a good two minutes! Fortunately, I had the foresight to stick my phone, wallet, and apartment key in my sock before I had those guys steal all my clothes. I made sure to bend down in front of everybody when I took my phone out so they could have a chance to admire my naked butt.

I hoped that at least someone noticed how wet this was making me! I mean, I was starting to literally drip down the inside of my leg! I figured I’d better make my way home before my socks end up getting soaked.

When I got home I retrieved my apartment key from my sock and saw my neighbor coming home with a bag of groceries. I smiled and gave him a big wave, but he acted like he couldn’t see me. I unlocked my door and went inside.

The first thing I did was down a can of green tea, as fun as the whole walk was, my mouth was dry as a desert. As much as I enjoyed myself, it was nerve-wracking. The whole time I was sort of afraid the police were going to show up any minute, but that never happened.

All in all, the whole thing was way different than I expected. I guess that since I’m a perv, I expected that everyone else would be one, too. But everybody else was so well behaved. So I guess that makes me special!

Realizing that I was a pervert who walks around naked in public and gets off on exposing myself to strangers was the best moment of my life. It made me feel like I could do things that regular people couldn’t. Kaito sent me the video of my full-sharking the next day. Apparently, they had followed me almost all the way home without me even realizing it! They sure got some amazing shots and I’m proud to say that it has over a hundred-thousand views and counting.

I never found out the name of the guy who pulled my panties down that first day in the park. But a couple years later when I met Piper she’d tracked down the original video of me that he made. I posted a thank-you message in the comments telling him how grateful I was that he chose me, and how he changed my life for the better.

Ya know, it’s funny. Of all the girls that I’ve exposed in public and put online since that day, not a single one has posted a ‘thank-you’ message to me under their videos. Then again, I don’t do this for thanks, I do it for the knowledge that I’m helping others live the life that every girl wants! I’m helping them to be the perverts that deep down they all definitely wish they could be!

#pervertpentet sharkingsherry

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battleshell · 5 years ago

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. tagged by: @dansiere whom im care tagging: extremely informative meme for ppl who have lots of cross-over interactions, i encourage u to steal it from me anyway BUT @sternenteile @twelvians @stellamris @grandtales

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [ he is a very, very minor NPC that i’ve essentially wrested from the game with my grubby hands; Gerson is a merchant NPC found in Waterfall, the third area of the game focused with water themes. he has less than 100 lines of dialogue (but jam-packed full of info) and doesn’t even have an overworld sprite. although noted to have a history with multiple major characters, it’s not often i’ve seen him be the main focus of any fanfics or art pieces. ]

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. [ put that faaaaaaaar away from me please tyty ]

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. [ i personally believe that Gerson is a strong and potentially powerful monster with fighting capability that could rival some of the stronger Monsters in the Underground due to his background as a fighter during the Human-Monster War, but since has waned in both reputation and fighting skill. we never fight him in game and as such, will never see how he compares numerically, but it’s clear from his dialogue that he knows how to fight professionally/cleverly and would have given a hard challenge. ]

Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK. [ i mentioned before that Gerson has ties with lots of major characters - I hardly see it being put into action or talked about! i also have a soft spot for elder/older characters in general since they seem to be overlooked in favor for younger characters that carry the action of plots - which I understand and totally get, but I still like to put these characters out there for the sake of it ]

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [ he was a funny merchant dude that said “wahaha” a whole bunch of times and carried a magnifying glass; sure he and Frisk would have been good friends after the golden ending but most people have forgotten about their interaction with Gerson once out of Waterfall ]

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. [ as one of the older if not oldest Monsters in the Underground, or from his reputation as the “Hammer of Justice” from wartime. he is also a historian and is noted to have written a few of the books in the Librarby. definitely known in the Underground, but probably only in that community ]

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. [ as mentioned before, a benefactor to the community and maybe even a sagely figure. a source of wisdom (even if cheeky) and a person of stability ]

How strictly do you follow canon? — ehhhhhhhhhh both extremely canon compliant and then hands off the wheel, let jesus drive me away~ i only have so much canon material to work with so i have milked as much as offered to me, then went off to forge my own path in order to patch up the missing holes then add a few sprinkles. the base of the character is all there, but if you really want to get invested with him (or me) then we have a lot to walk through.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — old tortoise (NOT TURTLE) guy sells knick-knacks and cracks jokes, knows everyone’s dirty secrets but thinks they’re just funny to think about them than use them. an elder in the community who has stories to tell and lessons to teach, who has lived through half of recorded history and now spends his time just trying to make things around him interesting. a war veteran who protects his community and understands the horror of the world, but keeps eyes looking into the future even in the face of grimness itself. plays the accordion and harmonica, could probably square dance if he knew what that was. will call you kiddo.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — little to no motivation to find a passion for himself that would benefit or service just himself; his entire sense of worth comes from servicing others in some way (being a soldier and protecting people; recording history in order to teach future generations; maintaining a shop in order to literally service others) and lack of action due to decrepitude in old age. close-minded compared to other Monsters, as he doesn’t actually take to think of humans or outsiders kindly; judgmental to the point of being racist. proud and dislikes being one-upped that it could lead to pettiness, and despite his positive outlooks, very pessimistic worldview.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — funfact: Gerson is my first tumblr RP muse ever, and since i was worried about duplicate anxiety when i first started i specifically wrote him since he was a smaller character with less attention - i’ve since learned i have no anxiety about it so it’s no longer a problem, but what keeps me going today is the challenge of writing someone so different from me. the elder aesthetic along with homely, almost cottagecore kind of vibe is also appealing, and the humor that comes with gerson is a joy to write out.

What keeps your inspiration going? — reading literature, music, artwork, pinterest, replaying the game, and doing little hobbies that would embody the character (collecting or sewing, for example) are things i can do by myself, but with other people i have the most drive when i can have friendly and nonpersonal arguments/debates about character motives or about source material like what made a character act like this or that, or about really anything as long as it makes me seriously think about characters critically and force me to recognize flaws.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? [ unfortunately i’m not a tortoise monster who lived for probably centuries if not decades older than myself, but i enjoy writing older characters and hope that other ppl see the potential gerson has like i do ]

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO / SORT OF? [ you know when you have a concept and in your own mind you can see it clearly, without fuzziness or confusion, but you can’t seem to put it clearly into words without it turning into an essay because you need to connect all the other points that’s in the single concept you envisioned? yea. ]

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO [ bro i should.. ]

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO [ hmu if you got pinterest and i’ll give u tons and tons of boards ]

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF? [ this is unfair to answer as (AFAIK) i am the only person writing Gerson in... any capacity. despite that i like to think i bring out the humorous side of him, and show ppl that he and other NPCs are tons of potentials and shouldn’t be overlooked because they aren’t popular ]

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO. [ i always believed my style and my skill in not only PSDs or aesthetics, but analysis or understanding was always a bit plain, without much flourish or complexity. while that is appealing on its own and has its own merits, i can’t help but feel i can always push myself to do a little more, add a little flavor, or paint an image that could only be done in writing. although i am doing enough to get the job done, i’m searching for a certain voice of writing that i like and want to integrate into creative writing in order to make it more personalized and more engaging. ]

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO. / SORTA. [ i despise pussyfooting and will often tell ppl straight up if i have a problem with them or something about them; straightforwardness, honesty, and integrity are some of my core values and that includes being harsh if it comes to it in order to keep order ]

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — assuming it’s rooted in goodwill or from a point of analysis, absolutely! it’s one of the direct sources for growth and getting better at any craft, but as Tumblr loves to be.... jumpy, i’m always cautious when its not from someone i know.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — YEA BUDDYYYYY

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — absolutely, i thrive off friendly discourse as i mentioned.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — if we don’t discuss it as above, in lit any other case i’d say “well there are other blogs to follow” but since i’m like 99% sure i’m the only gerson blog that isn’t applicable lmao; the point still stands that everyone has the freedom to write a character as they wish. there are valid reasons to dislike a portayal but not a lot of valid reasons to attack someone for it - with the exception of ppl being gross. stop that, nasty.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — strangely. it’s not my job to make people like a character, you either like them or not. if you dislike them for unreasonable points then, to leave in the previous response, “clowns will be clowns, no matter what you do. I just don’t get why you would follow someone if you hate their character to begin with.”

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — of course, as long as it’s polite and all that jazz!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — depends on the meaning - i like making new friends and i find it easy to talk to new people, be it about roleplay or other things like organizing video game play sessions. however, i also have on multiple occasions have approached ppl privately saying “this is annoying/this is problematic/this is inappropriate, stop” and been met with general disdain for voicing such so Who Knows..... (tm). at least on a private level. here, publicly, i’m pretty relaxed! memes and jokes are abound. as long as a person can be mature and responsible for their actions we can vibe, yo.

#definitely plan to link this in rules or something #as a guide for newcomers #what a nice meme!#* verbatim ⟐ meme.

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brightly-painted-canvas · 6 years ago

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hey!!! i loved the hogwarts!au and i couldn't help myself. do you have more headcanons? like subjects they like the most or excel at? the "blood status" (muggle-born, half-blood or pure-blood)?? or the things the school remember them for (like i picture babe never being able to remember the password of their common room... bc chaos child)? thnks! it was GREAT!!

Hey! I’m finally getting back to you.

I’m always thinking about this au in the back of my mind so here are some other headcanons and replies to your questions:

- yes of course Babe forgets the password to the Gryffindor’s common room. He usually argues with the Fat Lady about knowing the password and just not remembering it right now until someone comes to the rescue (usually Bill Guarnere going ‘What the… Babe? Seriously? AGAIN?’ all the time)- once it was Malarkey’s turn to get the Hufflepuff’s sequence of taps on the barrels wrong (he was high on a sugar rush after a trip to Hogsmeade) which resulted in him, Skip and Penkala running around the basement corridors drenched in vinegar- talking about sweets: you wanna buy Liebgott’s silence? Give him chocolate frogs (procedure tested and approved countless times by George Luz)- favourite subjects: it’s no secret that most Slytherins excel in Potions, but Toye, Snafu and Hoosier are also top DADA students (and professor Speirs would never admit it not even under torture - except he maybe mentioned it to Lip one or a thousand times already - but deep down he’s proud of his little snakes);Sledge and Christenson are History of Magic maniacs, so much that professor Haldane already suggested them to pursue a career as historians and won’t shut up about their brilliance ever (and there’s just so much ‘I wish I could just adopt them’ talk Hillbilly can take before he attempts to strangle him with some dangerous plant he keeps in the greenhouse);everybody loves studying Cares of Magical Creatures mostly because everybody likes professor Lipton so much. Top students of this course are Tab, Bull and Webster (the latter mostly interested in aquatic creatures);everybody, on the contrary, hates professor Sobel with a passion and professor Sobel seems to reciprocate the sentiment. When first year students have their first flying lessons and come back with a month long suspension per person, you can hear principal Sink’s enraged “SOOOOBEEEEEEEEEL!” resonate all around the castle;once the students managed to lure professor Sobel inside the Forbidden Forest with the help of Luz’s favourite voice modifier spell, convincing him it was an order from minister of magic Horton. Sobel got chased out of the forest by the centaurs. Legendary.Transfiguration is not an easy subject, but professor Winters manages to keep it interesting and everyone is glad for it. It’s also common knowledge he might look stiff and serious but deep down he’s a softie who dotes on all his students equally;(your theory about professor Dike never showing to classes and the students predicting his absence all the time without fail? Brilliant. Perfect. Outstanding.)more under the cut!

- blood status: I haven’t thought much about it, but I think I’d love if the students where all mixed up and didn’t care one bit about their friends and classmates being muggle-born or half-blooded or pure-blooded… the common sentiment is ‘eh guys we’re all in this together: I don’t care if magic has been running in your family for ages or if your father is a muggle train conductor, if you got Potion notes you’re not sharing with the rest of us you still a hoe’;yes, even in Slytherin there are mixed-blooded students and no one gives a shit (especially because you wouldn’t mess with, say, Snafu mentioning he’s the son of a witch and a muggle or him and Liebgott would immediately swing their clubs at you) (you would also be hit with Lieb’s club if you called Webster a mud-blood so just… don’t) (rule number one: don’t be an asshole about blood status)- tiny digression about ships: Burgie falls in love with the school’s librarian the day he finds out he forgot to do his Ancient Runes homeworks and sprints to the library looking for cheat sheets Leckie has mentioned existing… he ends up without the cheat sheets (’Bob why the hell would you suggest me to get things that are in the restricted section? And how do you know what’s in there in the first place?’) but with a date;speaking about Leckie, he and Vera have been neighbours and friends since the day they were born but he never showed to her the letters and poems he’s written all through his life about how much he’s in love with her. Until one day Webster accidentally publish one of them on the school’s newspaper. Vera eventually figures everything out and they get together (Webster may be scarred for life by their first reactions at his mistake but no one really cares anyway);speaking of Webster, he and Liebgott have got the most excruciating and annoying ‘odi et amo’ kind of relationship the school can (or can’t, depending on opinions) handle: they’re always arguing, but they’re always together;the only other couple that match their weird display of affection are Sledge and Snafu… sometimes they get along perfectly well, some other times Eugene has to hide in the Gryffindor’s common room to escape Snafu’s teasing or absurd requests (’Look at ma eyes, Sledge! I’m dying!’ ‘Shut up Shelton, you just ate a weird flavoured Bertie Botts’ bean!’);everyone is convinced miss Lemaire (a part-Veela from Belgium) and ‘Doc’ Roe are a couple until at a Christmas dinner Renée invites her girlfriend. After confirmation that the nurse apprentice is single, everyone (but especially Guarnere and Buck) try to play matchmaker between him and Babe. It’s soon obvious that they are extremely difficult subjects to match (cute, oblivious and awkward being the main issues);there’s not really a ship going on between Lena and John, it’s just that John ships himself with Lena so much. He’s the ultimate fanboy (hope he succeeds in asking her out!);on nights when Nixon wanders around the school completely shitfaced, he usually talk to the castle’s ghosts about his unrequited crush on Richard Winters. On nights when Dick finds Nix sleeping on the floor of the main hall and has to drag him back to his room, the ghosts just shake their heads and go ‘unrequited love my long dead ass’;as an unwritten rule, it’s not allowed to talk about how professor Speirs and professor Lipton have been (legally!) married for years.As always, there are more to come!Let me know if you have other questions or requests :)

#headcanon #hogwarts au #the pacific #band of brothers #sledgefu #webgott #baberoe #winnix #speirton #leckie + vera #john + lena #burgie + flo #persipneiwrites

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ncfan-1 · 6 years ago

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Tacenda

Upon hearing of a Sith holocron loose somewhere in the plains around the Enclave, the Exile and Mical go looking for it. They find the past along with it. [Fanfic written for Fictober 2018, prompt: “Impressive, truly”]

[Also on AO3]

[CN/TW: Trauma; PTSD; suicide; suicide ideation due to a malevolent outside force; mentions of debt slavery; disturbing imagery]

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Kalani had been raised with tales of the damage that could be wrought by misuse of even a Jedi holocron. She didn’t know of any initiate taken into the Jedi Order after the days of Exar Kun who hadn’t been. Those below the rank of Knight were only permitted heavily-restricted, heavily-supervised access to the Order’s holocrons, and this was one of the few things true of all Temples, all Enclaves, in a time and a galaxy where the Jedi Order was yet decentralized and the different communities could almost call themselves completely autonomous. Even Jedi Knights contended with some level of restriction—oh, how Atris had complained when she ran up against those restrictions herself.

The Jedi holocron was a wellspring of knowledge. It was wondrous and wonderful, and also dangerous. Caught unawares, they who opened a holocron could find their mind flooded with more information than it could process. The brain might ‘overload,’ the way a droid would if overtaxed, and the slow recovery from that was the least of what could happen to you. Open your mind too wide to the holocron, and it might just cause your mind to splinter.

Exar Kun was not the first Jedi to turn after delving too deeply into a holocron, and Kalani had the weary feeling (if the Jedi Order was ever reconstituted, if any holocrons were recovered, if any of them were meant to survive this), he would not be the last. Too many people equated knowledge with wisdom. Too many people, upon being exposed to the true scale of the universe, lost hope.

Sith holocrons, Kalani had not learned of until much later. The Order did not teach of them, except to warn its members never to open one, and if they found it already open, to by no means listen to anything it said. Her ignorance had not served her well when she had found an abandoned temple on Dxun full of glowing scarlet holocrons. It had not served her men well.

She didn’t like the idea that there was one lying in wait somewhere in the fields of Dantooine, just waiting for a hapless farmer to stumble across it.

“And we are certain that it is a Sith holocron that Kaevee found, and later discarded? Could it not be that it was a Jedi holocron, corrupted by some outside influence?”

Kalani shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of a Jedi holocron being corrupted before—though I suppose it’s possible; maybe if you synced it with a Sith holocron…” She tried to remember how the interface worked, how new information was uploaded into a holocron, before dismissing it as irrelevant with a shake of the head. “But there is one thing that makes me certain that it was a Sith holocron she found. She said it spoke to her.” Kalani twisted the pen she had been holding in her hands; if she slipped enough, harsh voices speaking no language she understood, and yet knew the words to anyways, echoed in the back of her head. Whispering of power and madness and death. “No matter what else is true, a Jedi holocron does not speak. It has no will of its own.”

To this, Mical nodded. Kalani could practically see the gears turning behind his blue eyes. “Yes, that is true,” he murmured. He glanced out of the window of the small, disused office in the Khoonda administrative building Administrator Adare had given him the run of, glancing out in what Kalani knew to be the direction of the Enclave. “A Jedi holocron is meant only to instruct, not persuade or corrupt.”

Something about his tone caught at a thread in Kalani’s mind. “You told me yesterday that the Republic let you study a Sith holocron.” She peered intently at Mical’s face, a frown stealing over her mouth. “What exactly did that entail?”

In a tone that reminded her of nothing quite so much as Atris, a very long time ago, after being told she didn’t have the clearance needed to look at something in the Archives, “I may have misspoken earlier; I don’t think I can really call the access I was allowed study. I was permitted to look at the Sith holocron, the better to be able to identify one in the field, if need be.”

“Just look at it, then?” What was the name of the man who had opened the first ghastly red holocron they had found on Dxun? “Not touch it?” How had he died? “It wasn’t open when you examined it, was it?” Had it been the long drop from the pinnacle, or the swift end of a lightsaber plunged into his own heart?

Mical seemed to guess at none of what was passing through Kalani’s mind—or if he did, he was very good at schooling his face always into neutrality. “The holocron was shut when I was shown it, and now, I wasn’t allowed to touch it. The Republic knows how dangerous such tools are; the holocron is typically contained within a sealed durasteel crate, and was shown to myself and the other researchers sealed in a transparisteel display case.”

Well, at least some good had come of that horrific episode on Dxun. “Good,” Kalani mumbled. Her eyes strayed to the map lying out on the table between them, all the Xs and circles Mical had drawn, with the Enclave at the epicenter. “Now, these are the spots you think Kaevee’s most likely dump sites?”

“Yes. I’ve heard enough reports to know the strange influence a Sith holocron exerts over its bearer. Kaevee would have been drawn to a place with some power in the Force.”

Kalani narrowed her eyes. “You know a great deal about Dantooine’s local ‘hot spots,’” she said slowly, watching his face carefully for any sign of reaction. The morning sunlight pouring through the window made the air in the room hot and still and close.

If there was anything to give away, Mical did not let it slip. “As I have said, I am a historian, one who specializes in Jedi history and traditions. I did my research before coming here.”

And perhaps that was all there was to it. The information Kalani had just mentioned was restricted—under normal circumstances, you would have needed to be a Jedi to know it—but after the emptying of the High Temple, the Republic government likely took charge of the Coruscant Archives and databases. Mical was given access, however brief and however restricted, to a Sith holocron. A certain measure of access to the Coruscant Archives didn’t seem so far-fetched in light of that. And yet…

But that was not Kalani’s primary concern. “Even so, we have no guarantee that the holocron is still at the initial dump site. It might have been carried off since then.”

“And it’s a lot of ground to cover.” Mical leaned back in his chair, shoulders sagging as the prospect of a long, long search settled on them both. “If it were something less dangerous, I would say that we need to organize search parties. But a Sith holocron—“ he waved a hand wearily in the air “—it’s just too dangerous to the unwary mind.”

“And we don’t want word getting out that there’s a holocron here.” Kalani couldn’t even look out the window without catching sight of a crater; the one closest was still ringed with massive clods of earth and stone, the broken bones of Dantooine left to bleach and dry in the sun. “I think Dantooine has had enough unwanted attention to last until the end of time.”

Mical smiled sadly—and that sadness struck at something inside of Kalani whose name she couldn’t quite recall. “That, too.”

They sat, a bit too tender in that heavy, weary sadness to say anything, the sadness paralyzing them too much to go on. It hit Kalani all over again what had become of the home of her childhood, and she wished she could leave this place and never return, and let the memories of the broken shell of the Enclave become less real than her memories of the place whole, even as she knew she was going to have to lay eyes on it broken open again today. Whether or not he was being entirely honest with her, the fellow-feeling that shot up between them was real. The warm, soft sadness that rolled off of him was real. It might have been naïve—it was definitely naïve—but she couldn’t believe he meant her or her crew any real harm.

“Oh, hell.”

And then Kalani remembered something.

Mical’s eyes snapped to her face. “What is it?” he asked, concerned.

Kalani pressed a hand to her mouth and groaned. “Yesterday, when I was first heading towards the Enclave, I passed by a camp of salvagers. One of them said he had a holocron for sale. I thought he was just running some sort of scam, but if he was telling the truth…”

Mical nodded decisively, suddenly much firmer than the young man Kalani had known for a little less than a day. “There’s only one way to know for certain.”

-0-0-0-

“You certainly seem to know your way around.” Kalani had let Mical lead the way, just to see what would happen. He led them towards the Enclave with such surety that the idea that this was only the second time he had been there grew more and more ridiculous with each footstep.

“I was given very detailed maps,” Mical told her airily. “I studied them diligently before I arrived.”

“Liar,” Kalani muttered, and trusted the wind howling across the grassy plains of Dantooine to drown out her voice.

The little spires of smoke from the fires in the shantytown the salvagers called a settlement came into view before the settlement itself. Again, there was that fetid odor of sweat and feces and rotting food, but this wasn’t Kalani’s first exposure to it, and she had smelled far, far worse in her time—she was inured to such odors. A glance at Mical caught him wrinkling his nose, and no more. She smiled at him in spite of herself. (And told herself not to ignore the way her memory was pricking at the front of her mind.)

The man who had claimed to have a holocron for sale was hardly difficult to find again; Kalani and Mical found him half-advertising-to, half-harassing one of the locals who sold the salvagers food. Mical’s eyebrows shot up as they watched the poor Twi’lek try to extricate herself from a conversation about the supposedly wondrous baubles the salvager had scrounged from the Jedi Enclave. “He certainly knows how to make himself popular, doesn’t he?” Mical murmured.

“He’s potentially about to become a lot more popular,” Kalani replied, “and I don’t think he’d like how that feels. Come on.”

The Twi’lek, her black-dappled blue lekku twitching irritably, stormed past them as Kalani and Mical neared the salvager and his little “stand.” “Good morning… Ralon, wasn’t it?”

Ralon’s narrow, weather-beaten face lit up at their approach. “Ah, you have returned!” the eagerness in his voice was equal parts hunger and desperation. Maybe desperation was stronger, and Kalani wondered uneasily if it had been absent yesterday, or if it had been there and she just hadn’t been looking for it, because she was convinced he was just a scam artist. “Have you rethought looking at my wares?”

“Yes, I have,” Kalani said firmly, if significantly more quietly than Ralon’s bombastic tones. “Specifically, the hol—“

“Ah!” Ralon’s dark eyes darted around the camp; he understood some need for caution, at least. “Say no more, madame! If you and your companion would follow me?”

Under other circumstances, Kalani supposed she might have been concerned that this shifty man was leading her and Mical—who, while capable enough at evasion to reach the Enclave sublevel unharmed, had yet to give any indication of what he was like in close-quarters combat against an intelligent opponent—to a tent at the far edge of the camp, a position that would be difficult to escape from if need be. But she was armed, blaster pistol and vibroblade both, and if it wasn’t safe (for multiple reasons) to use the Force here, she could say with confidence that she was feeling much stronger in body than she had when she woke up on the Peragus mining station. A cause was good for that. She wasn’t feeling worried. Just a little impatient, and better not to let Ralon see that.

The interior of Ralon’s canvas tent didn’t smell any better than the rest of the camp. If anything, the close quarters and lack of air flow made the tent smell worse than the rest of the camp. A flutter of movement to her left, and Kalani looked to see Mical visibly struggling not to gag as they sat down on an overturned crate.

Careful, she mouthed to him, nodding to Ralon, who stood with his back turned to them as he rummaged through a crate full of odds and ends.

Mical quirked a rueful smile, and mouthed something that might have been I am trying.

At last, Ralon pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth and sat down on the overturned crate opposite them. “Behold, my friends, the rarest find imaginable from the Jedi Enclave, an intact holocron, and it can be yours for a mere one thousand credits.”

With a flourish, Ralon whipped off the cloth and showed them the “holocron.”

Kalani heaved a sigh. Eyebrows raised, she looked into Ralon’s entirely too eager face. “Impressive, truly,” she said tiredly.

“I know. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I went through to—“

“Again, impressive.” Kalani fixed Ralon in a flat stare that saw him wilt slightly, even before going on: “Looking at this, I can well believe that you have at least seen a Jedi holocron at some point in your life, which does suggest some things about your background. But this?” She jerked the “holocron”—a lovely recreation, really, but cold and lifeless in her grasp—out of Ralon’s hand and held it aloft, frowning first at it, then at him. “Is not a holocron.”

Sweat began to bead on Ralon’s forehead. “I assure you, madame—“

“It isn’t real.” It was Mical who interjected this time, and though his voice might have been soft, there was a steely certainty to it—so he, too, could tell at just a glance?—that made the words die on Ralon’s lips. “As she said, it is a good forgery, but a forgery is all that it is.”

Ralon had nothing to say, this time—judging by the way he was starting to shake, he seemed to realize he’d been had. Mical took the fake holocron out of Kalani’s hand and actually started to go over the inconsistencies one by one, while sweat began to drip down Ralon’s face in earnest. Kalani, meanwhile, pulled the scarf draped over her head a little closer—it was not warm in here, for all that nervous sweat—and began to think.

All she had needed was to look at the holocron and not feel the Force flowing through it to know that she was looking at a forgery. Mical might have been allowed to study Jedi holocrons as well as Sith, but given just how quickly he, too, had become convinced the holocron was a forgery… Given how quickly, he had likely seen—and felt—just what Kalani had.

But more than that, they were no closer to their goal than they had been when they set out this morning. They’d gone looking for a Sith holocron and found the simulacrum of a Jedi holocron, and wasted daylight doing it. And there was something else she needed to deal with, in here.

“Who are you people?!” Ralon burst out at last. He eyed each of them in turn, his face twisting in something close to a snarl. “You’re not Jedi, are you?”

“No,” Mical said in decidedly clipped tones. “I am a historian working for the Republic. I was tasked with taking stock of Jedi sites; as such, I am well-versed in distinguishing real artifacts from false ones.”

“I am no Jedi,” Kalani murmured, “but you, Ralon, do you know what a holocron is?”

“Well, I…” Ralon squirmed in his seat, sweat bathing his face so that it looked as if he’d dipped his head in one of the aqueducts near Khoonda. “It’s a… The holocron’s…”

“A holocron,” and Kalani worked to keep her voice soft, keep it measured, because this was important, “is a repository of knowledge. Not simply on matters of the Force—though there is plenty of that; they are tools of the Jedi, after all—but also star charts, planetary maps, lexicons, starship blueprints, books of medicine and poisons, historical data, and more.”

A weak giggle escaped Ralon’s mouth. “Is that what it is?”

“And do you know, also, that with the Jedi gone, their holocrons are highly sought-after? By the Republic, by people of wealth, by bounty hunters and crime lords and assassins? That there are people in the galaxy who would stop at nothing to possess one?”

“Of course I do!” Ralon protested, and Kalani supposed it was just as well that he had missed the potential implied threat in her words—it would be easier to make her actual point. “Why do you think I wanted so much for it?”

The silence that followed could have felled a rancor.

Mical blinked once, twice, three times. “…You… truly do not understand the value of a Jedi holocron, do you?” came out in the sort of tone as if he couldn’t decide whether or not he was being scammed again.

Kalani had to resist the urge to tip her head back and groan. Once she trusted herself to speak calmly—this really was important—she fixed Ralon in a piercing stare and asked him, “So you understand how dangerous it is even to claim to have a holocron in your possession? You understand how many people might come looking for you and your prize, what kind of people they are? And what they would likely do to you once they discovered the deception?”

“I…” Ralon jutted out his jaw. “I do.”

“Then why take that risk?” Kalani pressed. “I don’t think you’re doing this purely out of greed. Why take such a horrible risk when there are other things you could sell, other ways you could make your living?”

There came another charged silence, and from the way Ralon’s face contorted, Kalani wondered if she hadn’t miscalculated. But then that sweaty, strained face crumpled, and Ralon hid his face in his hands. “You don’t understand.” His voice was muffled, but Kalani would have recognized the quality of despair even if he had remained silent.

“I might. Tell me.”

He tried to straighten, though with his shoulders still sagging couldn’t completely manage it. There were tracks on his face that Kalani couldn’t tell if they were from sweat or tears. “Okay. I… Before the bombardment, I worked in the Enclave as an electrical technician. You wondered where I’d seen a holocron; that’s where. When Malak came—“ he licked his lips, eyes going white and wild as memory coated the present day “—when Malak came, my family and I lost everything. I can’t get proper work; guilt by association,” he said with a grimace. “Salvaging’s the only way I can get any credits.”

“That’s not all there is to this, though, is it?” It couldn’t be. It didn’t cover the breadth of his desperation.

And sure enough, Ralon shook his head choppily. “I… I borrowed some money. Trying to get enough to get off-world, but they hiked the passenger fare right after, so we’re stuck.” His hands were shaking now, and his voice listed between high and low. “If I don’t pay off my creditors, my wife and our daughter, they’ll be…”

Sold. That much, he didn’t have to say aloud.

Kalani sighed heavily and leaned back on her crate, thinking. She had an idea of what to do. She’d catch it from Kreia later, and probably from Atton and Mira, too. But it was like Atton said of her all the way back on Citadel Station—she never could turn a deaf ear to a sob story. Even one that she knew could be a lie.

“Alright.” Kalani drew up to her full (not at all impressive, but the effort counted) height and stared firmly at Ralon. “Here are my terms. I will not pay you a thousand credits for that box. It is a pretty recreation, but a recreation is all it is. As it stands, I certainly don’t have the credits to pay you the true value of a real Jedi holocron. I’d be surprised if any individual person on this planet does.

“What I will do is pay you the money you need to pay off your debts, and take your family and leave Dantooine.” Kalani frowned sternly at him. “And do not lie to me.”

She was definitely going to hear about this from Kreia later—it wouldn’t be any use hiding from it; she would just know, as if she had been here herself. Likely something about weakening this man by saving him from his troubles instead of leaving him to struggle out of them himself, and strengthen himself from the results of conflict. Atton would complain—and truth be told, Kalani could hardly blame him—about what the sudden loss of the credits would do to their finances. Mira… It was hard to tell with Mira. To an extent, she was very much a “you made your bed; now lie in it” sort of person. But needless callousness and cruelty were things that just seemed to disgust her, and the potential collateral damage of this matter…

Oh, well. In the end, this was her decision to make, and she couldn’t regret it.

They worked out a figure of five hundred credits, and given the way Ralon’s lips kept twisting, Kalani suspected that if he had exaggerated, it wasn’t by very much. All the while, Mical watched them in silence, watchful and frowning thoughtfully, as if he was a teacher evaluating some sort of verbal exam.

Before they left (with the box; if someone came looking for it, at least Ralon could claim truthfully that he had sold his “holocron”), Kalani spared a last line of questions for Ralon. “Where will you go, when you leave Dantooine?”

Ralon shrugged. Credits in hand, he seemed much calmer than he had earlier, though the shreds of nervous energy still clung to his back and shoulders. “I… I haven’t really thought that far ahead. Everywhere nearby’s gone to hell and I was just concentrating on getting anywhere that wasn’t here.”

“Have you thought of Telos?”

“Telos?” Ralon laughed incredulously. “Lady, Telos got fragged straight to hell in the war. There’s nothing there but poison and dead bodies.”

So Kalani too had thought when she first laid eyes on that world. Death had reached out to her mind and screamed in her bones, and it hadn’t drawn back its hooks until she went down to the surface and stood in the Restoration Zone. “There’s Citadel Station,” she said, instead of suggesting the Restoration Zone. “The Telos Security Force is short on personnel; so long as you don’t tell them about…” She held the box aloft again “…this, I don’t think they’d blink at your application. It’s not the safest work in the world, but it’s honest work, at least. Something to think about!”

And they emerged back into air that was not fresh, but at least promised to become such once they were well away from the salvagers’ camp. That was how far they walked, before Kalani and Mical stopped to decide where they would search next.

“I’m surprised,” Mical said softly, as they pored over the map they’d taken from Khoonda, “at how you handled that man. There are many who wouldn’t have shown him nearly as much patience—or compassion. After discovering he had tricked us, you could have just walked away.”

Kalani shrugged her shoulders, looking at the map rather than his eyes. “I… It’s difficult to explain.” Certainly, Kreia had tried to make her explain herself more than once, and she’d never been able to find an explanation that satisfied either of them. “When I see someone in need of help, if there is anything I can do to help them, I do it. It’s… You may think it naïve, or meddlesome, but that’s how it is with me.”

“I’m not complaining,” Mical told her hastily. “There are so many people in the galaxy who care for nothing beyond their own good; it’s refreshing to meet someone who cares for others in need. But I am curious. You really could have simply walked away after the deception was revealed. And I think we both know he could have been lying.”

Kalani shrugged again, if a bit more easily. “If he was lying about everything, about being in debt, about having a wife and child who would be sold—“ her lip curled “—to pay for his debt, it’s still true that he was in danger of being killed by anyone who came looking for the holocron he claimed to have. I don’t think he was lying, though, not about everything. And if he was telling the truth, then if nothing else is true, it’s certainly true that Ralon’s wife and child don’t deserve to pay the price for his poor decisions.”

“They don’t, no.” Mical smiled at her then, but it was not a happy smile, not exactly. It was something wistful and nostalgic, something old, something familiar. Something of this place, and Kalani was certain he didn’t know he was doing it, because there was no effort made to wipe the look off of his face.

-0-0-0-

In the end, their next choice ended up being made on account of Mical’s curiosity. There was a site some distance from the Enclave, but still within reasonable walking distance of their own location, that had been heavily bombed when Malak attacked Dantooine. Mical thought, and surveys of the area seemed to back up the idea, that that particular site might have been more heavily bombed than the Enclave itself.

The site was a mystery to Kalani. When she had lived in the Enclave, Jedi had been forbidden to go there unless ordered by the Dantooine Council. She knew nothing of it, and that combined with the moratorium on travel, well, she would have been lying if she said it didn’t pique her curiosity as well, just a little.

“Let’s go there, then.”

As they walked, the day was silent but for the howling of the wind over the grass and the occasional gnarled, wounded tree. The kath hounds and kinrath (and Kalani was still trying to puzzle out what possessed the later to leave their haunts during the daylight hours) didn’t seem to want to go near this part of the planes. The brith that Kalani had been so fascinated by as a child were gone—all dead, or else gone seeking greener pastures, where there was nothing to shoot them out of the sky.

Even when you discounted the bled-dry wreckage of the Jedi Enclave, Dantooine had been wounded nearly unto death. The scream echoed in the minds of the residents who had been here when turbolasers cascaded upon the landscape, and even among those who had not been here, the scream sometimes emanated, more faintly, as if it was just beginning to take root there. The craters that marred the horizon were like the pitted holes in rotting fruit, but there was still life here regardless, clinging to dry earth watered only with tears. It was difficult, telling whether vitality would ever truly return to Dantooine, or if it would die by inches until it was empty, and the wind traveled forever, and never met anything with the ability to leave a lasting impression upon the surface.

What can anyone do against something such as this? When the wealthy can be persuaded to lend their aid and the powerful actually care to do something, then there is a chance, but when it’s the poor scrabbling against the tide of entropy and everything seems arrayed against them, trying to knock them down and scatter them into nothing, what are they to do?

I suppose Kreia would say this is the test of their right to exist, or something like that. Kalani pursed her lips, and wondered what it was that had so thoroughly convinced Kreia that offering or accepting help in matters such as this was an evil. What it was that had convinced her that the only way someone could become truly strong was by becoming strong alone, without help from anyone else.

She could worry about that after they had found the holocron and disposed of it.

As they neared the site, jagged spires of broken stone reaching up to the yellowing sky like pleading fingers, Kalani and Mical both stopped, standing very still as they stared down at the mounds of rubble.

This had been a place of great power, once. She did not need to read a report or listen to Kreia telling tales of Dantooine to know that. She could feel it in the air, the echoes of that power, mostly gone, but still present enough to carry a charge. It sang to her, and though it sang with no words that any mortal ear could have discerned, she knew what it was saying, nonetheless.

Not this again.

And beneath it, there was something she knew entirely too well.

“You told me your name, yesterday.” Mical’s voice came to her as though from far away, though she could not hear the wind in her ears, and she doubted he could, either. “You said that it was Kalani Nuna. Now that we’re here… You, you were General Nuna during the Mandalorian Wars, were you not?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded like nothing she could ever remember coming out of her mouth before.

“You were the infantry commander for the Dxun campaign. There was an…” He paused, brow furrowing and mouth working, like he was struggling even to get words out. “…An incident on Dxun related to Sith holocrons.”

“…Yes.”

“…What happened?”

Kalani took a breath, having to fight against the air to draw air in. “If you know there was an incident, you should know the particulars.”

“It’s buried under redactions, and I don’t have the level of clearance necessary to know the whole story. But you… You did encounter Sith holocrons on Dxun, did you not?”

“I……… Yes.”

Another long pause, and Mical struggled to even speak. “You… Are we in danger?”

At this, she laughed, but it was a bitter, hollow sound. “Oh, yes. But so is everyone else, if it is not disposed of.”

She walked down the slope towards the ruins. She didn’t tell Mical to follow her. She didn’t signal him to follow her in any way. But she could hear footsteps against the grass anyways, and she didn’t bother telling him to stay back. She didn’t think he would have, and of the Sith holocrons she had contended with on Dxun, she had never been able to figure out just how far their influence stretched. It had varied. She had no guarantee that he would have been safe at the crest of the slope.

Every step down the slope was a step back into the past. The grass grew longer and longer, pulling on her knees, then her waist. The air grew closer and closer, became charged with static electricity and thick with rain and suspended condensation. The smell of water and earth and blood and oil and ozone filled her nostrils, and Kalani thought she heard voices that were right in her ears, and yet were faint and whispery, as if coming from far off. She clutched at the hilt of her vibroblade and realized only when her hand clutched at a hilt that felt very different than it should have that she was clutching a vibroblade, and not a lightsaber. She reached for her blaster instead.

The spires of stone cast long, dark shadows across the ground that bled from dark brown to black with scarcely any effort. They made it difficult to see the ground, see if it was grass there or stone, if the ground was smooth or broken. That feeling that had buried itself inside of her, that undercurrent of bitter cold grew stronger the deeper Kalani went into the ruins.

“Do you see light?” Mical was whispering to her. She didn’t know why he was whispering, didn’t know why whispering felt right to her.

“I…”

She didn’t, not at first. She looked ahead of her and saw only shadows. But Kalani blinked once, twice, three times, and she saw light winking at her from some thirty feet away. Red and flickering and pulsing with a power she recognized immediately.

“That’s it.” Her voice was choked. “And I think… I think it’s open.”

At this point, Kalani would, in retrospect, reflect that she really should have told Mical to turn back, even if the likelihood of his listening to her was slim to none. In the moment, she barely remembered he was there as she stepped forward, towards the source of the light.

In her nightmares, the holocrons were always bigger. Sometimes they swallowed men whole, and for that they needed to be bigger. They were twisted, distorted things that pulsed and writhed and sprouted vines with which to strangle everything that crossed its path. They needed to be bigger for that.

In her nightmares, the holocrons were always bigger, and it had been more than ten years since she had last laid eyes on a real one. So when she found this small pyramid of a box, glass and metal and a glowing red core, slightly open, it was a shock. Of course it was. She didn’t expect it to be so small.

It was open, the holocron was open, and that had its consequences. It had a voice to speak, and that had its consequences.

Last time, Kalani had not been among the first targeted—it was probably the only reason she was here to freeze before an open Sith holocron now. She had had other duties outside of the abandoned temple, and had sent teams in to survey the area and determine if it was fit for habitation. And the men she had sent in, they hadn’t succumbed immediately. The holocrons had yet to glut themselves on death and grow powerful enough to have immediate effects. But there had been signs. There had been…

There had been…

It spoke to her. They liked to talk, Sith holocrons, they had begged and pleaded and berated as she ordered them packed into a crate and fired into the sun.

Behind her, there was a dull thud like something falling, but she couldn’t imagine what that might be. The voice of the holocron filled her ears and it spoke of death, gloried in the death that clung to her like a noxious veil. There was a way out of everything she was feeling, it told her, a very simple way out.

Her arm lifted the blaster almost of its own accord.

There was such a simple way out, and she could have it right now if she just—

The holocron exploded in a spray of glass and shards of red light, and Kalani knew no more.

-0-0-0-

When Kalani woke up, she wasn’t in the ruins anymore, but lying flat on her back on the slope leading down to it. The scarf she had been wearing over her head had been folded and placed under it as a sort of pillow. The sky was a dark, ochre yellow, tinged ever so faintly with red. Her head hurt terribly.

“Oh, you’re awake.” Mical’s voice, taut and a touch unsteady, filtered to her after a moment of confused disorientation. “That’s… That’s good. Here.” A hand slid between her shoulders and pushed her upright. “Sit up. I need to check for a concussion.”

Kalani frowned at him. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“Not long; about a quarter of an hour, I’d say.” That hand moved to her shoulder, and it was impossible for Kalani to miss the way it shook. “It’s not really good practice to move someone who might have a concussion, but I didn’t think it wise to stay in the ruins. I…” He licked his lips. “…I was afraid it would have certain effects.”

They went through the process of confirming that no, Kalani did not have a concussion. This was not her first go at having to reassure an anxious medic that she hadn’t sustained a brain injury, and the process of proving (out in the field, anyways; in a more formal setting she knew there would have been a lot more tests) that had not become any less tedious in the last ten years. It was over very quickly, despite the fact that Mical kept tripping over the steps, which was a small mercy, at least.

When this was over with, Kalani drew a deep breath, tried to center herself. She’d had training to ignore pain, move past it. It had been so long ago, but surely she hadn’t forgotten all of it. Some things were ingrained too deeply in the body to ever be truly forgotten. And she did remember, after a while, and if she didn’t remember all of it, she at least remembered enough to get the headache down to manageable levels. Enough to ask questions.

“Alright, so…” Kalani forced her mind back—only a few minutes, really, but such a struggle regardless. “I believe I shot the holocron. Perceptions can become distorted around Sith holocrons, so I would just like to confirm: did you see me shooting the holocron?”

Mical leaned back on the grass, scrubbing at his forehead as he apparently struggled to remember. “I… believe so. I came to just after it was destroyed. The holocron had been shattered, and there was a scorch mark on the ground where it had been consistent with scoring from a blaster. At any rate, it is destroyed, and…” His face twisted. “Though I would have liked the chance to study it, that was always contingent on its not having been opened before I found it.”

Kalani nodded, and immediately regretted it, even as the pain was starting to die down. “They really are too dangerous for anything and everything in their proximity. If you had been around it long enough for it to get its hooks in you, you would have regretted it.”

“I suppose.”

They sat on the hillside for Kalani didn’t know how long (it couldn’t have been that long; the sky was darkening to orange, but never went completely dark), catching their breath and their bearings. Kalani supposed she should check in with the Ebon Hawk—she’d never been terribly clear on when her crew could expect her back, and someone was bound to come looking for her if she wasn’t back by the next morning—but she couldn’t find it in her to activate her comm. They weren’t that far from the spaceport. And there was something else she needed to do first.

“You and I,” she said heavily, “we have met before, haven’t we?”

There was a long silence, and she didn’t look over to him, didn’t look at Mical’s face. She could guess at the way his face twisted, could practically feel the way his face twisted. “Yes.” She could barely hear him over the wind. “We have.”

Now, Kalani looked over at him, and the sight of his face wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. No mask of agony here, just the soft bitterness of nostalgia and paths that don’t lead where they had promised they would. “Here?”

“Yes, here,” he said softly. “Long ago, I was an initiate at this Enclave. You guest-taught at one of my classes; the normal instructor was away from the Enclave on a mission. It…” He laughed ruefully. “…Your teaching and your example made an impression. One that has lasted to this day.”

And when she thought about it, she remembered one of the classes she had guest-taught—there had been more than one, there had been a need to keep a Padawan who couldn’t keep a master occupied—and remembered a young boy who had followed after her when the lesson was done, peppering her with questions. It was such a long time ago.

“So you left the Order?” It wasn’t framed as an accusation, nor even meant as one. By the end, Kalani wasn’t certain she would have stayed on as a Jedi, even had she not been exiled. The Order… The Order had not been what it once was. It no longer held true to the principles it had proclaimed when Kalani was young. It no longer held true to a great many things.

But Mical shook his head. “I washed out. I came of age still an initiate, and there was no one willing to take me on as their apprentice. I had to make my way on my own, and that led me to the Republic.”

“Wouldn’t that have been difficult, though? You must have had some training with the Force, and going about half-trained, exposed to the war…”

“You can forget those things, you know.” His voice was very soft. It had often been very soft, but now, there was some quality to that softness that made Kalani take notice of it, separate it out as something different. “It takes work, but you can forget the lessons you learned, forget how to feel with the Force. It can lie dormant within you, and fall into a deep sleep, and it can eventually be as if it’s dead, though if the stimulus is strong enough—“ Mical stared blackly down at the ruins, where the shattered remains of a Sith holocron glittered brightly enough to catch the dying light like stars “—it will awaken again, for a time. That is…”

“Deeply unpleasant,” Kalani supplied wearily. When the Force had first reawakened inside of her, it had been agony beyond anything she had ever experienced, agony beyond Dxun, agony beyond Malachor V.

The jittery laugh that hit the air confirmed that she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. “It felt a little as though my skull was an egg, and someone had cracked it open and poured boiling water inside. Though that may simply have been because the stimulus was something of the Sith.”

And maybe the difference for them, why Mical only felt that way when it was something of the Sith and Kalani had felt that way when the stimulus was something far more neutral for that, was something that originated in them. Maybe she wasn’t whole enough anymore to feel anything normally anymore, so that when the Force that she would have sworn was dead and not sleeping reawoke inside of her, it was a rebirth so agonizing that there was a moment when she wished for the death that should have been hers at Malachor. If someone told her that, she wouldn’t have been too shocked. She wasn’t certain she would even have been offended.

“And now?”

It was, perhaps, not the question to ask. Perhaps it was better to leave it unsaid, leave it in the interstice and let it stay amorphous. Curiosity had always been one of those traits to get Kalani in trouble, though, even if it wasn’t in her in as great amounts as it had been in Atris. And she felt as if she owed it to the past she had left behind. Something to put it to bed.

In the deepening dusk, it was difficult to make out what passed over Mical’s face. A shadow, perhaps; a cloud, perhaps. “Now, I think I can best serve the Republic as I am now. Perhaps that might change, but for now, I do not think it would do any good.”

How things had changed. The Kalani Nuna of twenty years ago would have been horrified by that, to hear someone who was clearly strong with the Force refuse training and listen to them as they regarded it… Improper, perhaps, or inappropriate? The Kalani Nuna of twenty years ago had known only one alternative to being a Jedi, and didn’t understand that there were so many different ways to perceive the Force, and that only a few of them were purely Light or Dark. Now, she nodded in weary acceptance, and tried to bat away the guilt she felt when she thought of “made an impression, one that has lasted” and the ways that might have influenced him, might have led to where he was now, might have done ill.

Overhead, the sunset and advancing twilight were not as Kalani remembered them from years ago. Even the beauty of Dantooine’s sunsets had died away, leaving only a dull, russet red like dried blood to carry the world into darkness. That darkness was a shelter for so many things, and it provided enough shelter for her to ask, faintly, “When the holocron spoke to you, what did it say?”

Mical sighed. “Nothing I can put into words.” He tapped the lid of his first-aid kit with his fingertip. “Nothing I care to recall.”

Kalani knew that feeling. He was going to fit right in on the Ebon Hawk.

“Come on. Let’s go back to Khoonda before it gets too dark.”

#Star Wars: KOTOR II #Fanfic #Fictober18 #Star Wars #KOTOR 2 #KOTOR #Kalani Nuna (The Jedi Exile)#The Jedi Exile #Mical the Disciple #TW trauma #TW PTSD #TW suicide #TW suicide ideation because of a Sith holocron #TW mentions of debt slavery

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hrrytomlinson · 7 years ago

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here are a bunch of fucking fantastic fics I’ve enjoyed and loved reading throughout the month of october. I recommend that you read these great fics in november, if you haven’t already!! also check out the Reverse Big Bang and 31 Days of Smut!

(all fics with a star are my favorites and if there are two stars then it was a favorite favorite)

1. Damn the Dark, Damn the Light 20k

“Why is this face of beauty ringing so true?” The genuine confusion in Harry’s voice causes Louis’ chest to painfully twinge. “You’re a complete stranger in my eyes, William Shakespeare, but not in my heart. How is that possible?”

Louis wants to live out every romance plot he has ever written in his own life. He wants to be the protagonist of his own narrative, the hero who finds true love and gets his happy ending. Instead, Louis is stuck with only dreaming of such wild fantasies and writing them down. He can create entire romances in his dreams, yet he can never live one.

2. Threadbare 20k**

Harry Styles was eight years old when Louis Tomlinson kept him from falling into a machine in a Manchester textile mill. He was 18 years old when nothing, not even the threat of death, could keep Harry from falling in love with Louis.

3. Don’t Come Down 6k

Louis takes Harry home to meet the family.

4. I’ll Take Your Pain 2k*

Or, soulmates have the ability to feel each other's pain, and Harry finds his after getting his arse waxed.

5. We'll Never Be Lonely in the Dark 6k

Detective Louis Tomlinson keeps getting blocked when he tries to use his psychic gift to locate a missing child. One late night he manages to get through but instead of finding who he's looking for he lands in the bedroom of a mysterious man.

Harry Styles, nursing student, baker, and all around exhausted medium, thinks he's having the best sex dream he's ever had when his fantasy man shows up in his subconscious. But is that really what's going on?

6. Aquarius 6k

Louis realises he's slept with a man of every star sign except for Aquarius, and that just won't do.

7. Forget-Me-Not 26k**

“I- I can't move” the elder one finally croaked out, and with more distress Harry came to see that the vines had wrapped itself around the lad's ankles.

With a dumb nod Harry took a couple of steps forward. He could see Louis flinch with his sudden movement but he tried not to think about it. Instead, he lifted his hands, and tried his best to concentrate, hoping his power would listen to him just this once around the other man and untie him.

Ever so slowly, the vines started to detach themselves from Louis's calves, and soon enough, the man was free. With shaking legs, Louis stood up from the position he was in, and suddenly the air around them got thicker. “You're- you're a witch.” Louis hissed under the harsh wind, making Harry flinch at the accusation in his voice.

Or, where Harry had something he did not wish to have. Louis was just trying to figure him out.

8. Gem and the Hunters: The Treasure of Babylon 34k**

Louis Tomlinson wished, for one thing, his whole life: to find the ancient city of Babylon. After one failed attempt, he swore to never again attempt a search for the city. His friend, Niall Horan never pushed the issue, but when his family finds themselves in trouble, Niall’s only option is to convince Louis to try and find Babylon again.

Niall enlists the help of two famous treasure hunters: Harry and Gemma Styles and their friend Liam Payne. Harry and Gemma love ancient cultures as much as Louis and would give anything to find Babylon. Liam is just along for the ride, running from a shade in his past.

The five embark on the adventure of a lifetime… and find much more than any of them bargained for.

9. I Never Did Believe in the Ways of Magic (Through I’ve a Feeling It’s Time to Try) 54k*

Louis can’t shake the feeling that there’s something in the woods, pressing close and watching him with a heavy gaze. It makes him antsy, fills him with jitters. He wants to run, or scream, but he knows to do so would only put him in danger if there’s actually something out there after all. He’s sure he’s just imagining it, but his heart nevertheless pounds in his throat.

When Louis Tomlinson goes on a songwriting retreat to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada, this isn't how he expects his evening to go.

Or the au where Louis is a singer who has been cursed to never make music again and Harry is a reclusive witch of the Canadian mountains who's going to help him break the curse.

10. Cancel Your Reservations, No More Hesitations 10k

Louis still has his eyes on the bill when he barges into Harry’s room without knocking because he doesn’t want to get evicted and the smell hits him first.

It’s overly sweet and unnatural, and his stomach drops because it smells like an omega. Louis eyes widen and he looks up and - Harry’s on his hands and knees, a half spilled bottle of synthetic omega slick next to him and a huge, knotted dildo pressing into his hole. Harry’s face is flushed and he looks fucked-out and -

“I’m sorry!” Louis squeaks out and quickly backtracks, face red, because he wasn’t supposed to see that and Harry’s an alpha but he - Louis isn’t going to judge him.

Louis is an alpha and so is Harry, but Louis helps him through his rut anyway.

11. Foothold 18k

Louis has crossed the galaxy with a ship full of crystals; they’re the only thing he has to offer in exchange for safe harbor. He thought getting to his destination would be the hardest part, hoping that once he got his family to safety everything would fall back into place; Louis struggles to adapt while his sisters thrive. Louis suspects Emperor Styles may have something to do with it.

12. Don’t Want Shelter 76k*

Louis and Harry have known each other all their lives. Friends as children, they danced around each other as teenagers, and have spent the last twenty-five years either screaming at each other or not speaking at all. Except for that one time ten years ago…

When Hurricane Nicole threatens the coast, they end up stuck together in their families' old vacation home that they begrudgingly co-own.

During the storm, and in the months after, they’re both forced to reevaluate their history and what they mean to each other.

13. Wasted Like a Memory 4k

Six years before Hurricane Nicole forces Louis and Harry together, Fizzy gets married. Harry wrestles with reconciling the different versions of Louis he knows. (Part of Don’t Want Shelter)

14. Taste and Plead 3k

Or, the one where Harry wants something, and Louis' never been one to deny his boy anything.

15. Home For Christmas 22k**

The Shameless Hallmark Movie AU you probably didn't ask for.

Or, the one where Harry didn't think he wanted a family, but with a little Christmas magic (and maybe one Louis Tomlinson) he realizes that he is very, very wrong.

16. A Million Stars 2k

Louis watches Harry perform at the Tower Theater, and the events of the night unfold in an unexpected manner.

17. No One Like You 19k**

Where Liam and Niall are art historians discovering the truth about two nineteenth century painters on opposite sides of an artistic divide.

18. Howls Like A Beast (You Flower, You Feast) 16k*

France, 1754. Château de Versailles.

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

Louis had rolled his eyes, exasperated and flippant in the way only beautiful, young boys could be when faced with the affections of a baby prince. He had run his finger down Harry’s cheek then, had forced him to look into his eyes as he delivered the final blow.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.

19. You Flower, You Feast 18k**

He's King of the Underworld, but don't assume Louis has it all. He could stand for some excitement in his monotonous, eternal life and maybe, even.....a soulmate.

(Despite not having a soul.)

And along came "Harry".

20. The Dead Things We Carry 25k*

September ‘49

He hasn’t seen him since that day in France, that horrible muddy day where for one terrifyingly long second, Louis really thought he was going to die. He winces with the phantom pain, the hand not holding his cane going to his stomach automatically, remembering the franticness, the tenderness, of Harry’s hands while Louis was bleeding out. This is the man who saved Louis’ life.

For one second, Louis fears Harry won’t recognise him, but his eyes widen when he turns to his left and they meet Louis’. He takes a step forward, reaching for him with a shaky hand before stopping himself.

“Louis,” Harry says with a shudder and Louis doesn’t think his name has ever carried more weight. This is the only man Louis ever thought about kissing for real.

“Oh,” Mrs. Padley says, clearly taken aback. “You two know each other?”

There are some things people never fully come home from. Until, one day, if they’re lucky, home comes to them.

21. Do You Like My Sweater 13k

When Harry's alpha fraternity decides to host a Sadie Hawkins dance, outspoken omega Louis has a thing or two to say about it.

22. Yellow 84k**

The city of Gotham turns blood red with a new, mysterious criminal element, a beautiful woman named the Blind Cupid. She threatens to tear the fabric of the city apart, aided by her deadly protégé, the Cat. Can Batman stop them? Will he resist the bewitching allures of the Cat?

A Batman/ Catwoman AU

23. Things That Go Hump in the Night 6k

Louis goes camping. Something horrible happens. Louis is miserable.

It’s science.

24. This Thing Upon Me (Howls Like a Beast) 8k

Harry and Louis weren’t meant to be together. They’d met when they were put together through their university’s AO MatchUp, a program that set up alphas and omegas based on the schedules of their ruts and heats so they had someone to help them through it. It was pure luck that they were put together.

25. Hands Clasped Tight 44k**

Or the one where Harry and Louis are high school teachers and their students have been playing matchmaker for over a year. Little do they know, Harry and Louis are already married.

26. And the Truth Shall Set You Free (...Maybe) 17k

Betism: A religion based on the belief that the beta gender has been chosen by God to protect and defend the purity and dignity of the human race by resisting and condemning the lustful ways and flawed biology of the alpha and omega

Harry is a Betist and Louis is an alpha who runs with a bad crowd. This is what happens when two worlds collide.

27. (We Will Be) As If Chosen 35k**

There's not a royal in the world who doesn't carry some sort of secret, and Prince Louis has more than his fair share. To protect himself and his family, Louis withdrew from the public eye and tried to live a quiet life, biding his time until his sister Lottie could take the throne in his stead. Unfortunately for him, the national media and the worst person Louis has ever met team up to bring him kicking and screaming back into the spotlight.

Under the watchful eyes of millions, Louis has to figure out how to keep his carefully constructed house of cards from falling, and the first step to accomplishing that is to keep from falling in love with the irritatingly charming Prince Harry, who just won't stop showing up and trying to whisk Louis out of the constraints of his boring life.

Or: the course of true love never did run smooth, because sometimes people are stubborn and sometimes people are scared and sometimes, just sometimes, love can cause just as many problems as it solves.

28. It’ll Be 13k

Louis has always wanted children and he decides he's done waiting for love to come first. However, after adopting a baby girl just days after she's born, he quickly realizes how hard parenting is. Louis hires Harry to be his Nanny, and it all works out great. Until Louis falls in love with him.

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vdoesbookrecs · 7 years ago

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the Heartbreak Hoard No. 1 - fuck you homer

Blurb: Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, the boys develop a tender friendship, a bond that blossoms into something deeper as they grow into young men.

But when Helen of Sparta is kidnapped, Achilles is dispatched to distant Troy to fulfil his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Plot: Written from Patroclus’ PoV, the book retells the classic tale of the Iliad with a focus on Achilles.

Good Things to Say About This Book: It’s beautifully written, for one. With almost no dialogue, it reads like an orally told story -- which the Iliad originally was. Those little parts of dialogue are always just snippets, and they stick with you and make you cry later (example: “Name one hero who was happy. [...] You can’t.” “I can’t.” “I know. They never let you be famous and happy. [...] I’ll tell you a secret.” [...] “Tell me.” “I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to his. “Swear it.” “Why me?” “Because you’re the reason.”). Also, even though Patroclus seems to be a relatively neutral narrator at first, you slowly realise that he isn’t. The further the story progresses the easier it is to read something bitter-sweet into his narrative, like grief mixed with nostalgia, and, of course, his undying love for Achilles. Also, the author knows what she’s doing: Madeline Miller teaches Latin and Ancient Greek (she’s got a BA and a MA in both), and it shows. There are numerous passages where Patroclus clarifies which word a character used -- because there are many ways to say ‘I love you’ in ancient greek. The characterisations are on point (™) and the author makes them stand out: I guarantee you will be able to remember all of their names even after a while, even though they aren’t shown to be truly remarkable. Yes, they are kings and warriors and half--gods, but that’s not why they stick with you. They stick with you because Patroclus shows them as human, and you begin to feel that you know them.

How This Book Broke My Heart: The better question is maybe: How did this book not break my heart? (oh, also: *clears throat* MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FROM THIS POINT ON, EVEN IF YOU HAVE READ THE ILIAD AND THEREFORE KNOW WHAT HAPPENS) The first thing was maybe Patroclus’ backstory. He is a disappointment to his dad. It is heavily implied that his mother is severely mentally disabled due to an injury inflicted to her by her father, and often does not recognise her own son. When he kills a boy in self defence, his father exiles him. He is forced to propose to Helen (yes, the late Helen of Troy) at age nine (9) and endure ridicule from not only his father but also all the gathered heroes. He suffers from nightmares, and the other boys exclude him from their activities, claiming he is cursed. Like, he’s a child. He has to go through so much, he’s alone and convinced that he’s worthless right until Achilles ‘adopts’ him. And this is another thing: Achilles. Throughout the first two thirds of the book he’s this radiant boy, full of love and hope and pride and mischief, he’s open and accepting and honest and naive and he truly believes that he will be happy. But then there’s war, and he doesn’t have a choice anymore. He has no idea what’s coming, you know? He’s only ever heard of war in the stories his father tells, he has never seen anyone die, he has never even fought against anyone outside of his lessons. But he is pushed into this war, and he changes. He becomes angry and hardened and bloodthirsty and pride begins to consume him. He’s a child when he kills a man in battle the first time, barely seventeen. The only person who can still bring out that bright boy he used to be is Patroclus, but his mother puts a strain on their relationship. Thetis is traumatised and terrified of losing her son. She tries to scare Patroclus away many times, and to persuade Achilles to leave him, looming over their love like a dark cloud. Speaking of their relationship, they love each other so much, so much it almost hurts. They are completely devoted to each other, they are each others happiness, and they make it blatantly clear that they would die for each other. Eventually they do, and it’s so heartbreaking, because if Achilles would have been a little less proud, or if Patroclus would have been a little more convincing, then he never would have had to get on that chariot, he would never have had to wear that armour, he never would have tried to climb the walls of Troy, and he would never have died. Theres this scene when they bring Patroclus’ body to Achilles and he realises what he has done and he reaches for his sword to kill himself and he realises that he can’t, because he gave his sword to Patroclus, and he just breaks down. That’s the point where I started getting a bit blurry eyed. But wait! It gets better! (no it doesn’t). Achilles finally cremates his lover’s body (after like, five days of just crying over his corpse) and tells everyone who needs to know that he wants his ashes buried with his when he dies, and then he does die, and his f*cking a**hole of a son turns up and is like “I’m not writing the name of dis servant boy on me dad’s grave” so Patroclus’ soul, which has been in limbo because he can’t go to Hades until he’s properly buried, is forced to stay on earth while Achilles’ goes on, and he waits for months but no one comes by, and he watches everyone leave and he just stays there, on Achilles grave, waiting for someone, anyone, to come by and write his name on the f*cking piece of stone. Can you believe it? They’ve gone through so much, they love each other more than anything else in the world, Achilles calls Patroclus his ‘most beloved’ , and because this one f*cker shows up they’re kept apart even in death. It’s not fair. They hurt so much. They deserve to be happy. But that’s not even the worst part (also because they are eventually reunited) (doesn’t make it hurt less tho). The worst part is that when all that shit goes down, you remember all those little dialogue parts from the happy bits, because Miller brings them up again, only in a different (and infinitely more painful) context. When you’ve read the book through, all those soft happy moments in the beginning will make you cry, because they’ll all have a bitter, bitter taste of foreboding. This book will destroy you.

How Can I Make My Reading Experience Even More Heartbreaking? Contemplate this: many historians think that the events described in Homer’s Iliad (the book The Song of Achilles is based off) actually happened in a similar manner and all the heroes are based off real people. Also try listening to sad songs while reading the last few chapters (I recommend ‘Lay Me Down’ by Sam Smith, ‘Unsteady’ by X Ambassadors, and ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd or songs with similarly depressing lyrics) in order to never feel an emotion other than devastating grief ever again in your life. Then think about what would have happened if Thetis never showed up at her son’s grave. Lastly, go reread chapter ten right after you’ve finished the whole book.

Should I read this book anyway? Yes, yes you should. You will cry for hours but you will be happy about it because honestly, the love story is worth it.

ISBN: 978-1-4088-9138-4

T/W: period--typical misogyny, rape, violence against women, religious and supernatural themes, human and animal sacrifices, major character death, plague, war, slavery, underage sex, abduction of a minor, child murder, child neglect, murder, oath-breaking, child soldiers

#the song of achilles #madeline miller #the heartbreak hoard #v does bookrecs #i cried #also fun fact i almost didn't buy this book because a) the normal cover is ugly af #and b) for some reason i thought this would be some overly kitschy historical fantasy #and i really don't like kitsch

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darkhymns-fic · 7 years ago

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So I’ve Been Told

Like nomads they both were. Raine knew that to stay in one place too long - and to believe in another - was to invite suspicion. Besides, only Genis was her family, and nobody else.

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters: Raine Sage, Genis Sage, Dirk, Phaidra Brunel Rating: G Mirror Links: AO3, FF.net Notes: Written for Tales of Symphonia Week 2017, for Oct 9 - Friends and Family. (A day late, sorry!)

What Raine remembered most from waking up that morning was the taste of mana in the air; so light and weak.

“We didn’t sleep much when we traveled, did we?” Genis would ask her sometimes. He’d mutter a spell of flames to put the kindling on the stove to work. Shortly afterwards, there was a scent of spices, topped with freshly cut onions and peppers and parsley, to accompany the buttery rice that Raine held in her own dinner bowl.

“No. You cried every night. Quite a task for a young girl to keep you silent from the wolves, but we managed.” She poked the rice with her fork, ideas of exotic recipes surfacing in her mind. Surely, with rice so soft and fluffy, adding a bit of texture – perhaps of the gravelly kind – would bring about a new dish that people would appreciate. Something to keep in mind when she experimented tomorrow.

Genis was quiet for a moment, taste-testing their meal with a sip from the wooden spoon. “I don’t remember much from that.” He paused. “I’m sorry I was a lot of trouble.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Genis. I’ve already told you.” She took a bite from the rice, appreciating the lush flavors on her tongue, already forgetting her need to improve upon it. “We managed, and now we’re here.”

However, it had not always been that easy.

“An abomination,” one lady had whispered, shutting her door to the starving children. It had not been said as an aside, or as a floating thought that was not meant to be heard by any passerby. It was the words of one filled with utter conviction, whispered like a warding spell that would keep terrible demons at bay. Such words had been thrown at Raine right at her feet, circling around her like a ring of stones, keeping her imprisoned from the rest of the world.

That night once again, Genis had cried.

“It’s okay. It’s alright.” With small hands, the young girl brought forth what little mana she could, inducing calm, wrapped in feathers and cotton, around her baby brother. The patch of the forest they resided in for the night was so dark, and she had thought for sure she had heard the soft sound of padded feet from only a few feet away. Still, even with the world’s lack of mana, she could coax out enough to work her spells. Strange adults had wanted her for her magic, her mother once said. And back home, there was no escaping them.

So she and Genis had left home, suddenly and viciously. When she had woken up, all she could recall was the taste of mana in the air; so light and weak.

Genis’ cries lessened, and he sunk in deeper in his tattered blanket. Yet as he slept, Raine felt tears leave her eyes. She held her only family close, hoping for the sun to rise as soon as possible. There was the village far-off ahead of her, rooftops coated in silver light, thick smoke from the hearths rising into the air. The door that had been shut to her was hidden by the rise of the hill, its doorknob still twisted off its clasp of poor workmanship, its sole-window still stained from age and wear.

It was not a sight she could forget, no matter how much she slept, or dreamed, or wished.

This house was different.

A trek down well-worn dirt paths led both half-elves to the work of a master craftsman. The ivy crawled up the eaves of the home, hanging from it like a tapestry of rich green. It even clung through the slim openings between the wooden planks of the front door, yet not in the ways of an invader. Soft light peered out through several windows on the ground floor, highlighting the potted plants outside. For decoration? No. Raine looked closer and saw they were plants of a medicinal nature, for treating scrapes and wounds if a doctor was nowhere nearby.

They were not nearby anything, except for this large house placed on private land, seeming so warm and inviting in the night.

“Sis?” Genis tugged on her arm. He already spoke clear and well for a child of four. She said nothing, instead fixing his long, silver hair to hide the sharp points of his ear. An uncanny eye could notice the details; the soft hint of bluntness around that point, indicating a weaker link to the blood of those elves, secreting themselves away into forests beyond human knowledge.

They smelled food. It was too hard to ignore.

“Let me talk,” she told him. At fifteen, she could pull off a maturity that most adults found charming – until she let her tone carry her away into rudeness. But she had learned how to make due in their passage, living off the roads and a few strangers’ kindness. It had not felt right to her to impose herself on that caravan, despite their zoological ambitions. She had immersed herself in their self-written academic texts for so long, but could not give much else back – they were only traveling bags, her clothes, and the precious papers in her pocket. Besides, wandering the world had become the norm.

Wrapped in traveling cloaks that she had bartered for in the fishing town of Izoold, both Raine and and Genis passed stores of barrels – more food supplies perhaps, arranged by an owner who knew the importance of sustainability – and made their way to the door. Off to the right, she could see a stable, and hear the soft huffing of a creature. The moonlight reflected off its eyes, yet it did not growl or come forward like most guard animals. Instead, a little whine left its throat, and it retreated further back into its stable.

Raine knocked on the door. What next she noticed – and stored away for future reference – were the heavy footsteps beyond that door, like a boulder that had suddenly sprouted two feet.

The door opened. Her eyes instantly latched onto the cooking pot to the left of an open room, the ladle having been left within its contents as steam rose. Once she focused in front of her, she was thrown off guard once she saw that the house owner only barely reached her height. “Ah, don’t get many strangers at this time of night.”

Raine knew him to be a dwarf, though she had never seen one before. She had read about them in old books that the kindly historian had once let her borrow. The information in such books had been scarce still. Recalling what little she knew, she inclined her head slightly, yet forgone the female dwarven greeting of arranging one’s long braids before her neck – a gesture of openness, that no secrets shall be kept. All the more fitting, she thought. Her hair was short anyway, and her secrets were as long and as hidden as the lower-most roots of the great everwoods.

“Good evening. I beg of you a favor to show me the way,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Me and my brother are trying to find the path leading towards, Iselia, the village of oracles. The forest has been confusing our senses, and so we have gotten lost.”

Her request finished, Raine stood before the dwarf, unnerved that she had to look down to meet the other’s eyes. She had only ever had to meet such an angle with Genis.

“My, how well-spoken you are, lass! Though if ye want to be more convincing, I’d suggest keeping your eyes rooted to me instead of my dinner!”

Raine could feel the flush rising to her cheeks. She shook it away, hoping it would not highlight the ears she kept hidden beneath the careful arrangement of her hair. “That’s – I apologize. I did not mean to impose. I really am only looking for directions to Iselia.”

“Yet how can you travel on an empty stomach? My forge is still shaping my latest work, and the ringing of my hammer still sits in my ears. Even through all that, I can hear both of your stomachs growling like a mangy wolf searching for his next meal!”

Raine’s voice died instantly. Even through all her travels, she had not met anyone quite like this dwarf – one that caught onto her mind, and who met it straight on with a wide smile. Genis was staring, eyes open and curious, holding tight to her hand while he shifted on tired feet.

“I…” she stopped, then started again. “I do not wish to impose.”

The dwarf waved away her concerns. “Nonsense, lass. I was only cooking some leftovers for myself. My boy ate the last batch all by himself, and now he’s out like a light.” He laughed at that, and there was a genuine happiness there that Raine instantly envied. “You are free to rest yourselves and have a bite or two. I’ve always made it my business to have my home open to weary travelers – though I guess that is so because most of my clients are travelers – traveling to meet with me that is!”

Raine put the information together. She had examined what she could see of the home; the forge that was near the stove, the bundles of swords that lay wrapped in cloth, hanging within a metal basket on the floor. Dwarves were the original metalsmiths of the world, after all.

“The name’s Dirk, by the way. Like the weapon, though I am not as deadly as one! Ya don’t need to give your names if you wish to keep them a secret, but my food is available to the nameless.” He gestured, leaving the door open. So trusting he was. Was it because he was not human? “Come, before you catch more colds than ye already have!”

Genis sniffled at the comment, then did a great sneeze that made Raine flinch. “Sorry,” the child spoke, eyes wandering to that cooking pot.

Raine swallowed.

“I don’t want to impose.” She shook her head. “I must… speak with the priests at Iselia. I have a recommendation.” A secret revealed without her meaning to. She refrained herself from petting the pocket where that paper was kept, scrawled by the kind historian’s writing. “Please. Just show me the way and we will leave you alone.”

She ignored Genis’ sad eyes, tried to brush past the dwarf’s look of slight confusion. She could not let herself stay long here, nor at Iselia, nor anywhere. She would learn, she would adapt, and then she would leave with her brother in tow. Never long enough for one to be curious about their heritage, to question why full-blooded elves would stray so far from their hidden homes.

Dirk seemed to have not heard her then. Instead, he walked over to the cooking pot, reaching out for bowls that were placed conveniently near a work table. Raine was speechless as he proceeded to serve the still simmering food, even going so far as to tear off a loaf of bread that was sitting within a woven basket.

He came back to the door, two bowls complete with utensils in each hand, bread crusts dipped into a concoction of spices, of onions, of peppers and parsley. The ingredients were swimming in sauces steeped from well-tenderized meats, the kind that were probably imported from a butcher’s market. He handed one of them to her.

“For your travels. I can vouch that they will do your empty stomachs good.”

There were suspicions; it would not be the first time a stranger had tried to poison her or her brother, their hatred for half-elves running deep. But none of the tell-tale shiftiness was in the dwarf’s eyes. She took one bowl, and let Dirk hand the other to her brother.

“I will not ask you to stay in my home if you do not wish. But I will say the glade beyond the stream is safe, and a good campsite. No beasts of the night will come near, that I can promise you.”

The dwarf spoke to her as if she were a ready-made friend. Even the kindly historian had taken time to show some hospitality.

“Once you go to Iselia, be sure to ask for Phaidra or Frank. Both she and her son-in-law are good people, and she has the kindliest granddaughter one ever did see. I’m sure that will make your recommendation go down easier, my friend.”

Raine felt warmth in her palms; from her brother’s ever-lasting grip, from the clay bowl she held delicately in one hand. “I hope to teach,” she confessed. “Just for a little while.”

Dirk smiled at her. “Those with brains are what’s sorely needed these days. I’m sure you can teach my son a thing or two!”

She wanted to ask him about his son, suddenly. But she only thanked him, leaving quickly with a stuttering Genis, who could only half-thank him back. The dwarf reassured her to keep the bowls, or leave them by the stream if she so wished.

Past that same stream with the moon shining high, both ate their fill of their meal, savoring the heat and taste, one that never left her through the years. When she woke up the next day, back no longer aching from its rest on the soft grass, with Genis curled next to her, the mana still tasted light and weak. But it was no longer so frightening.

“History seems to be Colette’s favorite subject,” Raine said, arranging her graded papers on her desk.

“Ah, yes. She always asks me or Frank to read a story from one of the Church’s tomes. She loves the tales of Spiritua so.”

Phaidra only rarely visited the schoolhouse, but a newly-arranged priestess took over her temple duties for the day. Raine had guided the old woman to a student’s seat that was just across from her. The imagery seemed a little absurd to her, privately. Here she was, a teacher of only eighteen years, speaking to an elderly, worldly woman in a desk where innocent but juvenile scribbles were drawn.

“Oh my, what a charming picture of a dog.” Phaidra traced one such scribble across the desk’s surface, admiring the detail of the tail specifically. “Is this Lloyd’s work?”

“Yes.” Raine sighed. Even making Lloyd sit at the front of the class could not get the boy to concentrate. “He had been drawing it for Colette.”

“How sweet of him! No wonder she was so happy today.” Phaidra chuckled, still holding onto her gnarled cane in her left hand.

“Anyway… Colette is doing well in all of her subjects. She also seems to be more open with speaking with others, mostly with Lloyd and Genis. Overall, she has been a wonderful student.”

Phaidra nodded before Raine even finished. The knowledge was nothing new, yet she had wanted to hear it from the elf herself. “It is all due to a wonderful teacher such as yourself.”

“Ah… I only gave her the tools. She used them well enough on her own.” The compliment did not sit with her well.

“You have a way with teaching, Raine. Perhaps it is an elven trait, but the village and its children have never been better, I can promise you that.”

Raine only nodded. She shuffled the papers around even more, the peppering of red marks adorning each one, some more than the other.

“I hope that one day you can accept that you have a family here.”

Raine looked up, eyes wide. The old woman only looked on her kindly, dressed in the robes of those who followed Martel, the embossed designs of her dress indicating her high status within the Church. Twin braids flowed past her ears, their shine contrasting the tan wrinkles that was her face.

The elf – half-elf, they will never accept you – swallowed. “Your words are kind, Phaidra.” But Genis is the only family I have.

Phaidra nodded once again. She then leaned upon the cane to stand up, her feet tottering on the hardwood floors. The setting sun reflected off her burnished hair, bringing to mind the young, golden-haired child that Raine could not help but smile at whenever she spoke with her brother. A smile tinged with strain, hoping that her sibling kept his own hair arranged just so, for eyes can be quick and suspicious.

They had already stayed here far too long.

“Then I hope that, at the very least, you can consider us all as your friends.” Phaidra was already at the door of the classroom, startling Raine from her brief daydream. “Colette already believes you are.”

In the morning, Raine woke to the taste of mana in the air; weaker and lighter than the days before.

Her classes would not start again for several days, a fact that gave the children joy, Lloyd most of all. Before she fully roused herself for a cup of coffee, she heard the familiar steps running up to her door, then a swift knocking.

“Genis!” Lloyd’s voice could travel through stone, unhindered, and still as clear as the sky. “Hey!”

Her little brother grumbled from his bed, silver hair in a tangle. She watched silently as he patted it down around his pointed ears – only enough to give his ears their shape if not their details. But few eyes were sharp around here, especially when a high priestess of the Church already gave her word that full-blooded elves would be joining their village. Only truth came from the Church of Martel and nothing but.

After an exchange of shouts between Lloyd and Genis, her brother finally opened the door. An excited human boy – almost as tall as she was – was shifting on his feet in excitement. The red jacket he wore was too blinding for her to deal with this morning. “Come on, already! We have to get to the beach before the day’s over!”

“Lloyd, I wish you would wake up this early for school,” Raine said, knowing such words would fall on deaf ears. Besides, Genis would do enough reprimanding in her place.

“It’s seven in the morning! We have plenty of time. And I need to prepare the sandwiches!”

“Yeah, but we gotta get the best seashells before someone takes them! I promised Colette I’d make her bracelet from the best ones down there!”

Genis shook his head. “I think she’ll like anything you find her from the beach. You could even get her some seaweed and she’d still think it was amazing.” Both continued teasing each other back and forth, silent on the fact that Colette could not join them past the village’s perimeters.

Raine knew as well, and only looked on as both her brother and his best friend left their home to enjoy their day.

I have been here too long.

She curled a lock of hair from her face, placing it behind her sharply-pointed ears – only blunt when you looked past, and when you didn’t trust the words of another.

It was too late. She had already made friends here, perhaps a family if she ever dared, yet that was a fragile concept that she dared not explore.

“Colette thinks of you as a dear friend,” Phaidra once again told her, visiting the young elven woman now aged at 23. Eight years she had stayed, longer than she ever meant to. “And as her friend, I must ask of you a favor.”

Raine set her mug back on the breakfast table. Graded papers met her eyes from the same place, the red marks on them a familiar pattern.

It had taken so long of her to find such friends. How cruel it truly was for her to lose one of them so soon.

#tosweek17 #tosweek2017 #tales of symphonia #raine sage #genis sage #dirk #phaidra brunel #fanfiction #one shot

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purplesurveys · 5 years ago

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Do you listen to music while you fill out surveys? I have moods where I can and moods where I can’t. But when I do listen to music while taking surveys, I can only ever listen to lo-fi tracks because they’re super chill and great as background sound. Right now is one of the times I have them on.

In the past week, what song have you listened to the most often? I think I’ve mostly been stressed about updates on the virus, so I actually haven’t been listening to any music all week. This is the first time I’ve sat down and let myself listen to my go-to lo-fi playlist.

What was the last thing you shared with someone else? I shared some of my dinner with my dog, if that counts.

While playing video games, do you prefer being first or second player? Second, because I definitely don’t know how to play most video games all that well haha. I’d rather be the second player just cluelessly/aimlessly following around.

What is the most difficult word for you to pronounce? I cannot pronounce ‘bureaucracy’ for the life of me. ‘Mirror’ can also be a bitch but because i watch too much American media, my Filipino ass just goes right ahead and says it as ‘mirr.’

What did you have to do for the last homework you were assigned? The last homework I turned in before the lockdown happened was the weekly article I had to submit for my business reporting class. I gotta say, as a mostly introverted journalism student, I’m SO GLAD there’s been a way out of having to do interviews and produce articles haha. I see you looking out for me for once, universe.

You’ve planned a roadtrip. Where are you going, and who’s coming too? Tagaytay. It’s always a good destination for a chill roadtrip that’s not too far, doesn’t require a full tank of gas, and not too much of a hassle. I’m bringing my college clique with me – JM, Luisa, Jo, Aya, Kate, Kezhia, Blanch – and Gabie, too.

Do you have an overactive imagination? I have little to zero imagination. I mean I guess I like thinking of scenarios, but beyond that me and creativity just don’t mesh well at all.

What was the last important thing that you thought about? That five minutes ago it was time for me to put eye drops on my left eye once again. That eye been working well in the last few weeks, so I had it checked by an opthalmologist, who said there’s most likely a scar somewhere in my eyeball and proceeded to prescribe drops for me.

Generally, do you call people, or wait for them to call you? I would never call people first other than Gabie. Thankfully mostly everyone I know hates calls as well and would never call first, so no one ever calls me either.

On average, how many texts do you send out each day? On a normal day, maybe 50-100 texts? It’s my main mode of communication with my girlfriend, but it also depends on how busy we are during the day.

If a cop pulled you over for speeding, how would you respond? I don’t think speeding is a traffic violation here because 1) the congestion EVERYWHERE is horrible and the traffic is a crawl all day long, and 2) I’ve seen people drive like maniacs on expressways and they never get pulled over for it. On the hypothetical instance that I do get stopped for speeding, I’d obey and apologize for it, and just hope they aren’t rude as fuck.

Has anyone ever questioned your sanity? I have questioned it MANY, many times in the past, mostly when I was in my early teens and still battling with a lot of anger, depression, and a lot of other emotions like I’m guessing most teens do.

How many people do you depend on? As much as I’m not the closest with my parents I do depend on them for basically everything. For now.

How many people do you think depend on you? I dunno if there’s anyone that does. I rather they don’t - I’m pretty unstable.

What is the worst color combination? I’d imagine red and purple to look so jarring.

Have you ever injured yourself walking around in the dark? I don’t think so.

When you get a papercut, how do you react? I thankfully haven’t gotten one in a while, but in the past I’ve usually never noticed the moment it happens, and I only ever find out when the pain hits like a few hours later. That said, I don’t really have a choice but to sigh and grit my teeth through the pain for the next few days.

Can you type without looking down at the keyboard? Yes. The only time I do is when I have to use the keys that aren’t letters, like |, }, and $.

At what age did you develop an interest in the opposite [or same] sex? Opposite sex: Probably literally never. I did attend soirees in high school and got invited to a senior ball – but these were only because I did what I thought a high school girl was supposed to do. I was never genuinely interested in boys. Same sex: I’d say Grade 6, when I had a feeling that I had a crush on Andi.

Are you or members of your family religious? It’s safe to say my entire family – both sides – is devoutly Catholic. They share Bible verses, go to Church, say a prayer before meals, all that crap. I am definitely not. I’ve seen so many people use the religion stuff to justify their being an asshole/hypocrite/both, so it was very for me to let all the bullshit facade go from a young age.

What is your opinion on religions other than your own? They’re valid, especially if it helps one become a better person. Don’t use it to strip others of their human rights, though.

What’s so scary about clowns, anyway? The make-up makes them humans that do not look like humans, and that has always been unsettling for us I think.

When was the last time you acted like someone you’re not? I don’t really do this; I like wearing my heart on my sleeve.

Have you ever wished that something bad would happen to someone else? LMAO yep from time to time.

When was the last time that you cleaned your room? My room is generally clean. My mom likes keeping the entire house tidy, so I just help her out and do my part for her mild OCD.

How many hats do you own/wear? I have one sun hat but it was an impulse buy. I’ve never worn it out because IT’S JUST SO BIG AND FLOPPY and I hate wearing stuff that’s flamboyant enough to give me attention.

What was the last thing that you printed? The aforementioned business news article I had to submit.

Did the last song you listened to hold any special meaning? I love the song, it’s profound and beautifully written but it’s also a particularly sad one, and it’s not one of the songs I’d want to be attached to because that would just make me sad all the time. The song was Hayley Williams’ Leave It Alone.

Are you experiencing problems within a current relationship? No, not at all.

When you’re upset, who do you turn to? Depends on the problem. For most crises I’d turn to Gabie, but sometimes I’d talk to Angela, and sometimes I’d keep to myself. Does winter weather depress you? I’ve never experienced winter. I always say that I have a feeling I’d like it because I like being cold and hot chocolate and wearing socks and feeling fuzzy, but now that I think about it, given how miserable Christmas already makes me, I feel like winter may probably just be the worst thing ever for me.

Who was the last person that you called? Gab, just before she fell asleep a few hours ago.

What product was being advertised on the last commercial you saw? A website for online shopping. It played before a YouTube video.

Do you ever wonder who sings the catchy commercial jingles? I don’t care for them, tbh. When you think about your last relationship, what song comes to mind? I Forget Where We Were by Ben Howard reminds me of my first stint with Gab. Six years ago when we first got together, she introduced the song to me and was being emotional to me about it, and I remember feeling unsettled right off the bat with her sharing such a somber song. I never really got over that feeling and to this day I still listen to it only when I’m sad.

Are there any lyrics to describe your current crush/relationship? Maybe if I wanted to think about it, but I don’t care to right now. <– Same <- Also same. I hate survey questions that make me think of lyrics on the spot.

Who in your life makes you the most uncomfortable? [continued from like a day and a half ago, lmao] My mom has comments and criticisms for everyone and everything, so I always find myself getting anxious around her.

Do you ever receive comments on your weight? That’s literally the greeting of choice in Filipino culture. No one here ever says “hi!” they all just remark how fat or thin you got from the last time they saw you.

Is there anything that you do just to make other people happy? There isn’t any one thing that I do. I’ve realized the people around me have different needs for them to be happy, so if I’m able to and if I’m mentally stable myself, I do those things for them.

When you need a temporary escape, what do you do? Open Tumblr and take a survey or two. If I don’t feel like it, I go on YouTube and watch Friends recaps.

What was the last lie that you believed in? If I believed in it I wouldn’t know it was a lie, if that makes sense.

How long did your last feelings of heartbreak last? I stopped actively mourning for Nacho (i.e. crying randomly while in school, listening daily to the playlist I curated to deal with his passing) around two months after he passed, but I would be lying if I said the heartbreak isn’t there anymore. I still think of him every day, and it makes me sad every day.

Is there any sport that you would want to learn to play? Volleyball would be cool to learn.

What band would you most like to meet? Paramore, obviously. Or One Direction, if they still count :((

Do you ever have difficulty opening pill-bottle caps? I mean I’ve never really had to, so I wouldn’t know if I’d find it hard.

Do you gain weight around the holidays? My metabolism’s always been pretty fast so even if I do eat a lot during the holidays, it’s barely noticeable.

Are you related to anyone famous, or to any historical figure? I’m related to one of the Filipinas who sewed the first Philippine flag; to a historian whose works are now widely used in history courses; and the diplomat who represented the Philippines in the signing of the Treaty of Paris. As a kid I often thought my love for history was rather odd (because no other kid seemed to like it), but now I have a reason to think it has always run in my blood. Today I’m related to a political clan in my maternal grandfather’s home province, but I wouldn’t use ‘famous’ as the word for them.

If it was an option, would you take a trip into outer space? Oh yeah absolutely. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid.

What was the last thing that you wrote down [with a pen/pencil]? I practiced my high school’s penmanship, both because I really do practice it from time to time so I don’t end up being rusty, and because Andrew is dating Leigh, a friend from high school, in the weirdest crossover episode ever, and he is currently invested into learning our script hahaha.

Has anyone told you that you have a nice smile? Sure.

Are you uncomfortable with being photographed? Yeah ugh I hate it, especially when I have to be photographed or posed all by myself.

How vivid are your memories? Very vivid. I have a number of memories from every age, most of which I can remember pretty much as clear as day, from where I was down to the conversations that took place.

What’s the earliest you’ve woken up in the past week? Like 7:30 AM.

How many people have you talked to today? I’m too lazy to count so I’ll just name them: my mom, dad, sister, Gabie, JM, Apple, Hannah, Rick, Reiven, Ed, Kate, Laurice, and Abby. I’m also in Messenger group chats for each class I’m part of this sem, and all day we’ve been talking about how we’ll move forward now that my school has suspended online classes as well, so long story short I’ve talked to a buuuunch of people.

What was the last reason behind why you went to the hospital? Haven’t been in one since I was admitted myself a decade ago for a low platelet count, which we nearly thought was dengue.

When journaling, are you honest when documenting your feelings? Yes, I get super honest in this blog because this is the only place where I can be that way, and that’s why I’m super hesitant to open this up to anyone.

If you have a journal, do you ever worry others might find it? Gab asks me about it every now and then and it innately makes me anxious haha. Outside of her, I don’t think anyone in my circle would ever check for surveys on Tumblr.

When you go camping, do you sleep in a tent or an RV? I’ve never camped before but I think an RV would be convenient.

What’s one ridiculous thing that you do? Before I eat fried chicken, I will always peel off the breading/skin first so I can save it for last. I don’t like the actual meat, so I’ll only eat some of it and give the rest to my dog. My mom has since called the chicken skin portion my ‘finale,’ so I eventually adopted the term as well haha.

Do you feel that you must wear make up to be attractive? No dude. I never wear makeup and I’ve always felt confident, looks-wise.

What was the last thing [other than the keyboard] that you touched? My phone, just now.

Ever done anything dangerous while driving with someone else in the car? I’ve texted and taken calls whether I’m alone or driving with someone. If I’m running late I’ll also comb my hair with one hand. I’ve done sexual stuff while I was driving also hahahgdjshgfsf but there’s no need to get into that.

Name someone you wish you could be closer with? The newly-inducted members of our org, and the newest applicants as well! Everybody seems like cool people, and it sucks that the virus has prevented us from getting together.

Have you ever played the license plate game on long car-trips? Sure, but we also have other games to entertain us because car trip games can get boring pretty fast.

Are you a secretive person, or are you open with your thoughts? I have secrets but I’m very open about them if they happen to be raised. Like with me, all you have to do is ask haha.

What is the worst question that someone could ask you? Those dumb ones on surveys that ask if I’d rather kill my mom or best friend lol.

Do you talk to your pets? Every single time I see him.

Do you have a least favorite day of the year? Either Christmas or New Year’s Eve. The loneliness is something I wouldn’t wish on anybody.

What traits do you look for in a potential BF/GF? I’m demisexual, so I never really compiled a list of traits.

Would you date someone that had a different religion from you? Only if they didn’t let it get in the way of my atheism. You do you, but don’t drag me to your thanksgivings, rituals, holy texts, etc.

Right now, what’s in your bookbag/backpack? I honestly have no idea. I haven’t looked inside for so long HAHAHA

What’s unique about your city or town? We have an elevated part that we call ‘higher [city name]’ because it’s the part of the city that’s on a mountain and a base that we, understandably, call ‘lower [city name]’. I live in the lower area, which is busier and nearer to the metro. I don’t know of any other city in the Philippines where one half is situated higher and another lower.

If you could say something to the world, what would you say? Don’t panic, don’t hoard basic necessities, and don’t be fucking racist.

#survey #surveys

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