#anyway. back to treatise. head is spinning

[fingertipsmp3]

I just read An Unauthorised Fan Treatise in one sitting and I’m living

[boxoftheskyking]

Something Good, Part Seventeen

In which we get to the title

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen, Part Sixteen

--

When Wei Wuxian wakes up, the sun is going down, and he is alone. For a few comfortable minutes he stretches and luxuriates in having a whole bed to himself. The bedclothes are far better quality than he’s become used to. It feels like he’s been asleep for ages, but it must have only been an hour, if that.

His stomach growls, startling him more awake. He’s likely missed dinner, but there’s sure to be some left over in the kitchen. Perhaps he’ll grab Lan Wangji something as well, to repay his kindness.

When he gets to the kitchen, Wang Xiaolu is there scrubbing out a wok.

“Ah, Wei Ying! How was your day off?”

“Day off?” he darts around her to grab a steamed bun. It’s not hot, but not unpleasantly cold yet, either. “I had the little ones all day.”

“Lady Wen has had the little ones all day in the medicine garden. Madam Xiao said you were sleeping in.”

Wei Wuxian drops the bun onto the bench. “I slept through an entire day?”

“Is that what you did with your day off? Ha, Wei Ying, what a lazy bones. It’s been a gorgeous day, you could at least have taken a walk up the mountain.”

“I don’t get days off, anyway.”

Wang Xiaolu tchs at him. “Servants in the Cloud Recesses get a day off after every ten days. Surely you know that.”

“I never— I’ve never had a day off before.”

She puts down the wok and spins around to face him. “Are you serious? You need to talk to Lin Biming! It must have been a mistake! If they skip your days off, then you’re entitled to them later, you know. You need to count up how many you’ve missed! Always keep records. You might have a whole vacation saved up!”

Wei Wuxian laughs, feeling awkward. “I don’t think prisoners get days off.”

Wang Xiaolu goes back to work. “Everyone gets days off. If anyone tells you different, then we’ll all go to Master Lin together, and if he doesn’t listen then we go to the Sect Leader. It’s happened before, you know. We’re stronger together—they forget how many of us there are until we all show up together. Anyway, Wei Ying, Master Lin told us this morning that today was your day off, so I did breakfast and Madam Xiao just did dinner, and Lady Wen has been in the garden all day. Even Second Master Lan was gone today. Must have been exhausted from all the guests. Nobles do get tired easily.”

“I’m not a noble!” he cries out, feeling defensive.

“Of course not!” she flicks soapy water at him. “You certainly earned your rest day. Go on, take another bun. They can’t make you work again until the morning, but stay out of the way just in case. You know when Madam gets on a tear she’ll grab anyone by the ear. And between us, the Wen guests wrecked the guest quarters. Liquor soaked all the way through the mattress, tch.”

“Wen Chao, I bet,” he says darkly.

“Makes no difference to me who it is, I just hope they aren’t invited to the wedding.”

Wei Wuxian sticks another bun in his pocket and wanders back to the Jingshi, detouring into the forest to play a few scales on Chenqing. When he returns to the room, Lan Wangji is still gone. Wei Wuxian tries to sit politely, but the shadows lengthen and his restlessness grows, so he starts poking around. Surely if Lan Wangji worried about him looking around the room he wouldn’t have left him alone here for the entire day.

The books on the shelves aren’t very surprising—a few political treatises, transcripts of cultivation lectures, a pocket version of the Lan Sect rules (as if Lan Wangji needs the reminder) and some bland classic poetry. No adventure stories or romances, just descriptions of peonies and snowdrifts. He reads a few poems over, wondering if perhaps there are metaphors he’s missing, then sets them back on the shelf. 

There’s a nice wardrobe with identical sets of white and blue robes. Wei Wuxian considers trying one on, but imagines being caught with his shabby self in the perfect white silk and decides to err on the side of caution. He’s examining some musical scores on the floor when the door finally opens and Lan Wangji comes in.

“Lan Zhan!” He scrambles upright. “I’m sorry for prying, but in my defense you did leave me here for an entire day. Why didn’t you wake me? I must have really been deep asleep. You know, I think I could play this piece. I can see there’s an interval that would make a nice harmony at the bridge here. What do you think, Lan Zhan? Oh, I brought you a steamed bun from the kitchen. It’s probably cold by now, and a little squished, but—”

He finally looks at Lan Wangji and his voice cuts off in his throat. Lan Wangji’s eyes are red, swollen, and when Wei Wuxian manages to take in all of him together he looks wrecked, stricken, leaning against the door as if unable to hold himself upright.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian breathes, dropping the score to the ground. “What’s happened? Is it Wen Ruohan? Who’s dead? Zewu Jun? Lan Zhan, what can I do?”

Lan Wangji says nothing, just keeps staring at him.

“Is it— Not the children, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian runs to him and grabs his arms, desperate. “What’s happened? Tell me, tell me, please!”

Lan Wangji wraps his arms around him and pulls him tightly against his chest. Wei Wuxian can feel his damp face against the skin of his neck, and worries that he might faint from fear.

“Please, Lan Zhan, you’re scaring me. What’s happened?”

“I spoke to Wen Qing,” is all Lan Wangji says.

“What? Wen Qing? Is she all right? Has something—”

“She told me about the core transfer.”

Wei Wuxian pulls back, fighting against Lan Wangji’s arms.

“What?”

“She told me.”

“That’s it? She just told you about— Aiyah! Lan Zhan, you are really terrible. Feel my heart!” He presses Lan Wangji’s hand against his chest. “You nearly killed me! I thought something terrible had happened!”

He pulls away, shaking off Lan Wangji’s hands and collapsing down on the bed.

“The surgery—” Lan Wangji’s voice breaks off. Wei Wuxian crosses his arms over his chest.

“There’s no reason to cry about that old thing.”

Lan Wangji stays by the door, still looking destroyed.

“Two days. She told me you—”

“Yes, yes,” Wei Wuxian waves his hand. “I know, I was there.”

“How did you— How could you stand it?”

Wei Wuxian sits up, embarrassed and more than a little angry. “You don’t know what you can stand until you have to stand it. There’s no reason to dwell on it. What, do you want to see it? Will that calm you down?”

He pulls his shirt over his head, throws it on the ground, and leans back against the pillows. “There, are you happy? It’s ugly, but it’s closed. Everything is fine.”

Lan Wangji looks at him for a long time. Wei Wuxian’s skin starts to spring up in gooseflesh, but he fights down the shiver. Last night Lan Wangji had challenged him, so he’s challenging back. He’s a second away from giving in, saying something ridiculous to break the tension, when Lan Wangji comes over and sits next to him on the bed. He reaches out and hovers one finger over the scar, twisted and ugly and pink as raw meat. His gaze is so intense Wei Wuxian feels it like a blade, opening him back up. 

“Lan Zhan,” he whispers. What do you want? he doesn’t ask. What is it you need?

Slowly, but still suddenly, Lan Wangji bends at the waist and presses his cheek to Wei Wuxian’s stomach. Wei Wuxian gasps but doesn’t move. He can feel Lan Wangji’s head move up and down with each shaky breath he takes. A tear slides down his side, soaks into the band of his trousers. 

“Don’t cry, Lan Zhan. Please don’t cry.”

Lan Wangji shakes his head, smearing tears across his stomach.

“So contrary, Lan Zhan.”

Wei Wuxian reaches out tentatively to smooth a hand over his hair. He’s not sure why touching Lan Wangji’s hair seems more intimate than anything that’s happened between them so far.

“Kiss me, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji sits up and wipes his face on his sleeve. Wei Wuxian wants to offer his shirt, something rough and durable and meant for soaking up messes. But before he can think anymore, Lan Wangji is leaning forward and kissing him, open and wet. Wei Wuxian takes a risk and pulls him down on top of himself, the weight of him calming down every shiver, every howling voice inside of him relaxing into a satisfied purr. 

Lan Wangji pulls back, holding himself up with his elbows. Wei Wuxian pouts at him.

“What do you want, Wei Ying?” He’s looking through Wei Wuxian’s eyes into his brain, into his marrow, into the place his core used to be.

“This. I just want this, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian runs a finger over Lan Wangji’s lower lip. “Just keep me.” He leans up to kiss him again.

Wei Wuxian has both arms wrapped around Lan Wangji’s neck when he’s released, left back on the pillow with Lan Wangji hovering over him and worrying his lip in his teeth.

“What is it, Lan Zhan?”

“I won’t keep you.”

Wei Wuxian’s stomach drops through the mattress. Why would anyone want you? You’re empty. (I’m not.)

Lan Wangji rolls off him to lay by his side. Wei Wuxian crosses his arms and holds onto his bare shoulders, suddenly feeling very cold.

“Has anyone told you about my father and my mother?” Lan Wangji asks.

“This is a very strange time to talk about your parents,” Wei Wuxian says, aiming for a joke but missing by a mile.

“My father loved my mother. Or that’s what everyone said. My mother committed a crime. She killed someone. Everyone said she was guilty, but I never heard her version of events. And my father married her, to protect her. I don’t know that she had a choice.”

Wei Wuxian turns to him and watches him swallow.

“She was a rogue cultivator when they met. The Lan Sect— There is a lot of power held by the Lan Sect, especially here in Gusu. They married, and she became a prisoner. Xichen and I were born, but we only saw her once every month. She remained locked in her room, serving a sentence with no trial.

“She was powerful, I think. My father—he was the Sect Leader, but I don’t believe he had exceptional spiritual power. And Xichen and I— It only makes sense that she was powerful. She could have broken out, left, gone off into the world. But she didn’t, because we were here. Not because of my father, not because of the laws or the rules. Because of us. 

“I was just a child, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. But I was her cage. We were her cage. And she died a very small woman. We made her small.”

“Lan Zhan.”

“I won’t do that to you. I will not be your cage, Wei Ying, even if you love me.”

“Lan—”

“I love you, but I will not keep you.”

Wei Wuxian leans up on an elbow. “You love me?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

Lan Wangji glares at him. “Obviously.”

Wei Wuxian huffs out  a laugh and rests his head on Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mother, Lan Zhan.”

“That wasn’t the point.”

“I know. I’m still sorry though.”

“Wei Ying.”

“I do love you. Also.”

Lan Wangji relaxes and turns toward him, tucking an arm around his bare waist.  “I’m glad.”

“How long?”

“Hm?”

“Have you loved me?”

“Caiyi Town.”

“Really?”

“Hmm.”

Wei Wuxian kisses his chin. “I don’t know how long I’ve loved you. I’ve only just been allowed to, after all. Oh, don’t argue. Just kiss me again.”

He does, again and again, and his robes disappear, and Wei Wuxian’s trousers, and night falls, and everything turns warm and honey-sweet. 

Hours, years later, when Wei Wuxian comes back to himself, he’s laying on Lan Wangji’s chest with fingers tangled in his hair.

“I’ve done terrible things,” he says, but it’s not heavy, not guilty. 

Lan Wangji grunts unhappily.

“No, I have. I’ve been wicked, miserable. I’ve been proud and arrogant and irresponsible. Since I was a kid, honestly, and I’ve only gotten worse. I’ve been nothing but a problem, and I’ve enjoyed it.”

“No.”

Wei Wuxian pinches his side. “Yes, I have. But here you are.”

“Hmm.”

“I may not be the demon everyone thinks I am, but I’m not innocent. And you know that. And still, here you are.”

“Always.”

Wei Wuxian rubs his forehead against the warm, smooth skin beneath him. “You shouldn’t, you know. But you don’t care. All those rules, Lan Zhan, and you don’t care.”

“You are good.”

“I must have done something. It’s the only thing that makes sense. You’re here, and you love me, in spite of everything. I must have done something so good to deserve it. Maybe when I was little, a long time ago. Something so, so good.” He leans up and traces a finger around Lan Wangji’s serious face. “Oh, look at you. It must have been something wonderful.”

Lan Wangji leans up and captures his mouth again, big hands sliding up over his back.

“I don’t know what I did,” Lan Wangji breathes into his ear. “But surely I’ve done something wonderful too.”

“Look at us,” Wei Wuxian laughs, shifting back on top of him. “We must be amazing.”

Lan Wangji smiles at him, wide and bright and shining like a waterfall in the sun, and the force of it knocks the breath out of Wei Wuxian. “We must.”

Part Eighteen

[jaxsteamblog]

A Series of Confessions Chapter 8

Me, tossing another flower on Hayley Foster’s shrine: thank you for your abundant blessings.

Read Chapter 7

When Zuko went out to meet Katara later, he still had no idea what to tell her. She was waiting for him on a small footpath, a large bag hanging from her shoulder.

“Ready?” She asked.

“What’s all that for?” Zuko asked, gesturing toward the bag.

Katara gripped the strap with both hands and smiled at him. “You’ll see.”

The footpath took them to the back of the palace grounds and Zuko looked around to keep himself from staring at her. The moon had risen hours ago, but now as the sun pulled the orange light out of the sky, it was more vibrant. It wasn’t very large or extraordinarily bright, but Katara still had a bounce in her step for every full moon.

Hearing her pace quicken as her shoes crunched the rocks underfoot, Zuko suddenly realized where they were headed.

“Are we going to the hot springs?” He asked.

“This works better if we’re in water and I’m not walking into a turtleduck pond.” Katara replied, spinning around to look at him. Zuko smiled, but it faded as she turned back.

There was a vast cavern system under the palace, carved and molded by lavabenders from generations ago. A few of the rooms were protected by magma, but one enterprising bender decided to cultivate a pocket closer to the surface in order to make a hot spring. Zuko had occasionally wondered if he should ask Aang if that had been a Sozin or a Roku decision.

The spring wasn’t used often. None of the royal family was socially permitted to bathe in such a manner, and no minister would dare. Mai hadn’t been interested, equating it to sitting in soup.

Only his friends seemed to be excited about it and Zuko didn’t visit unless he was with them.

It meant this part of the palace was also fairly secluded.

Reaching the small building that housed changing rooms, Zuko and Katara slipped into their respective rooms. In the small chamber, Zuko was glad for the lack of a mirror. But just on the other side of the thin wooden wall, he could hear the shifting of fabric. Burning, Zuko looked down at the ground as he took off his shirt, focusing as he folded it.

Zuko stepped out wearing a pair of shorts, pushing his hair out of his face. He had been pushing off a haircut and it was becoming unmanageable.

Katara walked out next, still tying up her hair. She had upgraded her wraps for a Fire Nation suit that did just about the same. She looked over at him, her eyes glancing up and down.

“Your hair is getting long.” She said.

“Yeah I-” Zuko started as he ran his hand through it.

“You’re getting back to your tea shop days.” Katara interrupted, letting go of her hair and smiling at him.

Zuko smiled weakly back.

“I guess.” He said and Katara gestured for him to follow her.

“Let’s go.” She said.

The spring was split in two, to separate people on the vague concept of gender, but that never stopped them. Katara walked into the men’s side and Zuko trailed after her.

“Okay, start floating Fire Lord.” Katara said as she moved further into the spring.

Zuko obeyed, getting into the warm water and rolling onto his back. Swimming leisurely, he watched the violet sky move like a blanket over him. The stars had started to come out.

“Now, basically what I’m going to do is turn a lot of this water into healing water.” Katara said while she grabbed his shoulder, pulling Zuko closer.

“But.” Zuko said sharply and put a hand to his abdomen.

Katara laid her hand gently on top.

“Lightning does something I can’t undo.” She said softly before removing her hand. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”

Zuko frowned as he put his hand back in the water.

“I’d think you’d be more interested in this.” Katara said while she walked to stand at his head, tapping the scarred side of his face.

“It’s grown on me.” Zuko mumbled. “Well, we’re not thinking about that anyway. Close your eyes.” Katara said and Zuko again obeyed.

He closed his eyes and immediately was aware of the strong mineral scent of the water.

“While I get started, start thinking of your happy thought.” She went on and Zuko took in a deep breath.

At this moment, if he couldn’t consider himself happy, he was at least content. Zuko could feel Katara standing at his head, and was acutely aware of her presence. She acted like a divining rod for his memories.

He remembered Ba Sing Se and the tea shop. Zuko had been happy there, but it all fell apart when Azula showed up. Katara had been the one to tell her he was there, and she had apologized for not stepping in herself.

But Zuko wasn’t sure that would have been better, as he also remembered Jet taking matters into his own hands.

Still, Katara had listened to him in the catacombs. Though he made sure to drive that into the ground.

“Happy thoughts, Zuko.” Katara chided. Zuko took in another deep breath.

Five years had passed since the end of the war. They were adults now, with lives that weren’t dictated by destiny or fate. Sokka had taken up painting, and was considered a savant for his ability to paint mirror images. Suki used to meet regularly with Aang in order to write a biography of Kyoshi, and now worked to visit the places the former Avatar described. Toph loved the Foggy Swamp and often disappeared amongst the roots for weeks at a time. And Aang was, of course, leading the new iteration of Air Acolytes.

Katara was drawn to knowledge, soaking in it and collecting it in vast reservoirs. She had studied for a time under a teacher in Ba Sing Se, but spent her time traveling with Aang to learn something new.

It was a pastime Zuko shared, and he often found himself perusing various libraries or shops for a book to send her.

They wrote to each other then, sometimes short notes and sometimes exchanging treatises on what they were reading.

“At least you’re relaxing now.” Katara said lightly.

She introduced him to other types of philosophy. There was a concept that life was a wheel, that everything was connected, and that everyone owed each other the blessings of the divine life they all contained. Zuko appreciated the sentiment, but couldn’t bring it into his own life.

Though he certainly felt like he owed some debts.

Hadn’t he decided long ago that he would give his life for her?

It hit him like a lightning bolt and Zuko gasped as he sank in the water. Thrashing about, Katara grabbed him firmly under his arms, yanking him out. Sputtering and choking, Katara smacked her hand on his back to urge out whatever water he attempted to inhale.

“What was that? It was just starting to work.” She said.

“It’s nothing.” Zuko said hoarsely, pushing away from her.

“Did you at least find your happy thought?” Katara asked.

Holding his throat, Zuko turned. He wished he had choked as the words came up with a cough.

“It’s always been you.”

[curiosity-killed]

a bow for the bad decisions: chapter 19

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(on ao3)

He doesn’t really remember the flight back to Lotus Pier, later. One moment he is standing on the side of a mountain with his brother — his brother — collapsed in Lan Wangji’s arms while Lan Wangji levels him with a cool look that is equal parts triumph and murder and entirely fuck you. A blink later, he is kneeling beside a-Lu’s bed, staring at his sleeping daughter without seeing her. It was him. It was Wei Wuxian. He knows that voice, knows the cadence of his teasing. Even with an absurd mask on, he recognizes his brother’s gestures and frame. It’s him. It’s him. It can’t be him. Jiang Cheng saw him die. He held the blade that killed him. He watched the resentment rip his body to ribbons, felt the blood splatter across his lips and skin. He has walked through the last thirteen years of his life with a hole in his chest the shape of his guilt. 

He’s tried to take jie’s words to heart, to live as well as he could, but there have been days where he could only feel happiness as atonement for the wrong he committed against his own brother. There have been times when he thought the guilt would eat him alive, like a road that forked but each path led to the same gaping mouth: if he was happy after his brother’s death, did that make him a monster? If he wept, was he betraying all that his brother died for? What right did he have to feel when he had cut short Wei Wuxian’s chance at ever having anything again?

His brother was dead, and Jiang Cheng hadn’t known how to handle that but it had at least been a fact, a bitter truth of the universe. And now— “Wanyin?” A sliver of lantern light cuts gold across the floor as the door slides open, but he can’t make himself move beyond bowing his head a little. There’s a pause before he hears Wen Qing’s steps cross the floor. She stops as a steady line of warmth at his side, one hand falling to rest on the back of his head. “Wanyin, what’s wrong?” she asks. He swallows, leans into her touch a little as he tries to find the words. None come, and with a sigh, Wen Qing reaches down to tug at his shoulder. “Come,” she says in that voice she uses with the senior assistants or with unruly patients. He stands and follows her out of the room and down the lantern-lit walkway. She doesn’t try to speak as they walk, just laces their fingers together and leads him to their own rooms. Like his mother before her, she has her own wing, but the sect leader chambers are as much hers as his. He takes comfort in the medical treatises that have come to fill his bookshelf, the set of lotus-tipped hairpins that spends its nights on the table only to disappear into her bun in the mornings. It is good, he thinks, to have their separate spaces, but he is overwhelmed with relief that they choose to share so much with each other. He will always love and respect his parents, but he does not want to become them. The quiet remains as Wen Qing sets tea to steeping — a medicinal blend she uses to calm patients and often makes him drink after particularly stressful days — and nudges him to kneel before the bed so she can pick out his hair pieces. She runs the familiar rosewood comb through his hair with such a languid rhythm that he feels his shoulders and neck ease, relax. When the tea has steeped, she draws him back to the table and kneels beside him rather than across. Their hips and shoulders press together, a steady comfort, as he sips from his cup. This is ritual by now. He doesn’t get overwhelmed nearly as easily as he did when he first took up the mantle of sect leader, but there are still days when he can hardly force words out for how tightly his fists have clenched. There are days when she comes back from a surgery, no longer blood-soaked but hollow-eyed, and he’s the one to set the tea and comb her hair. By the time he has finished his cup, he’s no more prepared to say what must be said, but he is at least steadier. Whatever has happened, they can handle it together. They have faced so much worse before. “He’s back,” he finally says, hands cradling the empty cup. He swallows, reaches for better words. What adequate words are there for this? What can he call upon to explain this, that his brother died at his hands thirteen years ago and yet today he saw him, saw him, alive and teasing and real? Show him a poet who can turn such a scene into stanzas. Show him a composer who could write a score for the screaming emotions in his chest. “Wei Wuxian,” he grits out. “I saw him.” Wen Qing breathes in sharply. “He showed up at Dafan Mountain wearing some stupid mask and rescued a-Mu and a-Ling and then” — he chokes a little, forces himself to draw in a breath through his nose — “Then he hid from me behind Lan Wangji.” Her hand cradles his wrist, thumb pressing a firm point into the space between his palm and the bone of his forearm. “A mask?” she echoes. “Are you certain? Many have claimed to be him over the years.” Dozens have, in fact. Jiang Cheng is not known as a merciful man, is not a merciful man, but most the rumors of his ruthlessness come from those charlatans who claim his brother’s name in order to justify their particular rot. Taking a breath, he shakes his head once and realizes that he has failed to relay the most important information. “He didn’t,” he says, “and — he summoned Wen Ning.” This time, Wen Qing’s breath sounds as if she’s been punched in the belly. She doesn’t pull away from him, but she does straighten like a flinch. “A-Ning?” she asks. “A-Ning died years ago.” Death seems inordinately accommodating when it comes to both their brothers. He gives a short nod and forces himself to continue on. She needs to know this. She deserves to know. “He was gone by the time I got there,” he says, “but Ren Tian said he appeared like a fierce corpse and had chains on his arms and legs. He destroyed the dancing fairy statue.” Straightening, Wen Qing sets her empty cup on the table and her hand curls into a tight fist. He shifts their hands so that his curls around hers, trying to steady her. She buried this grief long ago, he knows; she smoothed over the grave dirt and let it go. Now, that earth is suddenly shifting, shivering with the first tremors of a quake. “He wasn’t in the Burial Mounds,” Jiang Cheng starts, and he’s not sure what he’s trying to say, only that he’s trying to piece together a puzzle with half of it missing. “Wei Wuxian would have sent him away.” “What?” Wen Qing closes her eyes, dipping her head briefly. She inhales slowly before letting the breath slip out from her lips and lifting her gaze once more.

“At that time, Wei Wuxian knew that using the Seal would kill him,” she says evenly as a diagnosis. “We had discussed it. If he felt that he would have to use the Seal and wouldn’t be around to — to bring a-Ning back to himself after, he would have sent Wen Ning away.” He frowns. “You said Wen Ning wouldn’t leave your family,” he objects. The look she shoots him is tight-lipped, and he dips his gaze. Right. Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have needed to ask. The thought sits sour in his gut, but it’s not like he doesn’t know of Wei Wuxian’s tendency to make decisions for other people. He carries the reminder of it spinning warm and golden in his chest. “The Jin were so eager to get their hands on him,” she says to their joined hands. “The Jin?” he echoes. “You think Zixuan—” She shakes her head. “No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t have a knack for deceit anyway,” she says, “but he wasn’t his father’s only son.” Jiang Cheng stares at her a moment, not quite willing to process that suggestion. He’s family, now, even if he isn’t as close as Jin Zixuan. He’s helped raise jie’s kids, has presented a-Lu with gifts on every birthday. Wen Qing meets his gaze levelly. “Wen Ruohan liked him,” she says. “No one won his favor without effort.” She says it without flinching, this straightforward indictment. For as long as he’s known her, she hasn’t liked to linger on the past, but it has slipped out in moments throughout their marriage. She’s woken from nightmares with her hand still clenched around a needle that isn’t there, with the afterimage of dying men’s desperate pleas still brighter before her than her own bedroom. In Wen Ruohan’s court, even healing was a weapon, and no one was more adept at its infliction than Wen Qing. She didn’t know, at first, that she was only healing them to be sent back for more torture, but she knew eventually. She recognized when their eyes turned fearful at the sight of her instead of hopeful or pleading. It’s almost a relief, for Jiang Cheng. He doesn’t know if he could love someone without scars as deep as his without being subsumed, drowned in a desperate need to be worthy. Wen Qing hadn’t wanted to hurt people, but it had been a-Ning’s life on the life and strangers laid out on her table. They both know the sacrifices it takes to protect their people; they both have born witness to the cost of overextending that protection. Their brothers were both more noble than them. Their brothers both died for that nobility. “He’s never seized power,” he protests. “What power does he need to seize?” she points out. “He didn’t become Chief Cultivator by accident.” He draws in a sharp breath, startled by the vehemence in her tone. Jin Guangyao has been a steady and mild-mannered chief cultivator for the last eight years. In all his decisions, he’s acted with a gentle hand and a polite manner that is more likely to leave him trampled by rude cultivators than to help him seize power. More than that, he’s part of their family now. He’s the uncle to jie’s children and their daughter. He’s stood by Jin Zixuan’s side as he stepped into the role of sect leader and offered steady support to Yunmeng Jiang. Jie smiles at him and treats him as a little brother, adopted wholly into her fold. “We all have decisions we would make differently now than we did when we were young,” Wen Qing says more gently, a compromise. He swallows. “You don’t believe that.” Not in this case, at least. Certainly in others. It’s been a quiet source of contention, an argument neither of them acknowledge. She’s never trusted Jin Guangyao, always gotten a pinched expression when a-Lu is in his care. She meets his eye. “No,” she says. “I don’t. But rushing to accusations has never served this family.” He nods slightly, accepting the compromise. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. “Did he say anything?” she asks. “Wei Wuxian.” Jiang Cheng hesitates before shaking his head slightly. “Just nonsense. Jie’s kids thought he was Mo Xuanyu — that kid Jin Guangshan brought back who got kicked out of Jinlintai a few years ago,” he says. “I think he was playing the part before he passed out.” There’s a beat of silence, and Wen Qing’s hand stills on his wrist. He pauses to think over his words and immediately regrets it. “Wanyin,” she says carefully, “why did Wei Wuxian pass out?” For a very brief moment, he is sixteen again and petulant enough to point out that his brother has never had the courtesy to let Jiang Cheng know before he overexerts himself and passes out. The moment passes, and he exhales. “I didn’t think,” he admits. “Back — before — Wei Wuxian took Zidian like it was nothing. After Lotus Pier — when we came to Yiling, he’d had enough lashes that anyone else would’ve been bedridden for a month.” He struggles to get the rest out. That for an instant, he’d forgotten that even the gentlest pulse of power through Zidian is enough now to hurt the brother who always laughed off Mother’s lightning strike wrath. It’s not true, anyway. For as much as Wei Wuxian always picked himself back up and pretended like everything was fine, Zidian had always been a punishment based in pain. Jiang Cheng couldn’t count the nights he’d run into jie leaving Wei Wuxian’s room after a beating, a basket of bloodied rags and healing salve on her arm. He’d seen how the burns scarred into red frost, branching and curling across his narrow back. He’d only believed it didn’t hurt because Wei Wuxian wanted him to believe it, because Jiang Cheng wasn’t strong enough to face the truth of it. “I just didn’t want him to run away,” he says quietly, hating how pathetic it sounds. This is what he’s always done: hurt people to try to keep them close. His stomach roils and twists, sour. Wen Qing sighs. Her hand tightens briefly around his wrist, a small pulse of reassurance. “I can write to Lan Wangji,” she says after a moment, “regarding the incident on Dafan Mountain.” “The moment he sees a Yunmeng messenger arrow, he’ll destroy it without reading a word,” Jiang Cheng objects. Leveling her gaze at him, Wen Qing raises her eyebrows. “Then it’s a good thing I’m also a Wen,” she replies. Abashed, he ducks his gaze. He works his jaw a moment, trying to find the words for what is really troubling him. Even after years of trying to be better, he still struggles with this. She waits. “Lan Wangji won’t let Wei Wuxian anywhere near here,” he says finally. “Not if I’m here, too.” It’s all the old fears he had when they went to Cloud Recesses and all the shapeless dread he’d felt with Lan Wangji still searching all this last decade. For all that Lan Wangji spent the summer lecture acting like a cat dragged through water any time Wei Wuxian was around, they had become a paired set long before Wei Wuxian died. Now, with Wei Wuxian returned to the living, what reason would he have to look back? He owes nothing to Yunmeng Jiang. His name may still be listed among their records, his memorial tablet resting in the ancestral shrine, but they have no real claim to him anymore. He gave more than anyone could be asked, without ever being asked. What if he doesn’t want to come back? “Wanyin,” Wen Qing says. “Your brother is a stubborn idiot, but he loves you. Death couldn’t change that.” He can’t meet her eyes and only swallows down the fear clinging like poison to the back of his throat. “I’ll take Jin Ling and see if we can find your brother’s trail,” he says instead. “The hunt was a mess from start to finish, and he could use the practice.” Relaxing a little, Wen Qing lifts the pot to pour them both another cup. “That bad?” she asks. His eyebrows flick up in exasperation at the entire disaster. They’d started the day with a fight between a-Ling and Ruxia that spread over the two of them like a thunderstorm and left his patience thin as a wire. Lan Wangji’s intrusion only exacerbated it and then — and then there was everything else. “A-Ling tried to take on the dancing fairy statue with just his father’s sword and a-Mu kept trying to shoot it with arrows,” he says. “Not that the Lan juniors were any better. Twenty juniors all around and not one of them thought to set off a signal flare.” Exhaling, he presses his fingertips to the center of his brow. He’d been so caught up in the moment, in the terrifying exhilaration that Wei Wuxian was alive, he had almost forgotten the fear and anger that had flooded him at his niece and nephew’s recklessness. He’d had higher hopes for the Lan juniors, too; that Lan Sizhui had always seemed to have a good head on his shoulders at discussion conferences and other night hunts. “Hm,” Wen Qing hums, “that doesn’t sound like anyone I know.” He cuts a sidelong look at her through his fingers and scowls. She bites her lips, but it doesn’t hide the way the corners are quirking up and her eyes dancing with amusement. He opens his mouth to refute that before he realizing he doesn’t have any good response and closing it. Wen Qing’s shoulders shake, and her smile slips out at last. Huffing an affected sigh, he takes a long sip of his tea. “If they were Jiang juniors, they’d be running laps for a week,” he says primly. In fact, some of them will be. Most his juniors were with him while the incident occurred, but Ren Tian and a few others were at his niece and nephew’s side and still didn’t think to set off a flare till after Wen Ning appeared. Breathing out a laugh, Wen Qing leans her shoulder into his arm and briefly rests her head against his shoulder. He can’t help smiling, an instinctive reflex, at the soft pressure. He slips his arm back to loop around her waist, hand curling over her hip. They settle into a familiar quiet, steadied by the rhythm of each other’s breath. “We’ll find him,” he says finally. “Whatever’s happened, we’ll get to the bottom of it and bring him here where he can be safe.” Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian both — wherever they are, whatever’s happened to bring them crashing back into their lives — he’ll find a way to bring them home.    “We might have to expand Lotus Pier to fit everyone,” Wen Qing remarks. “Our family’s growing large.” It’s a good thought, a strange thought. When he first returned to Lotus Pier after it burned, it had been with eight disciples. Six were outer disciples they ran across in the smaller villages between Yiling and Lotus Pier. Bujue and Xiong Chunfeng were the only survivors from Lotus Pier itself; Xiong Chunfeng because she’d been in a neighboring village helping deliver her first niece, and Bujue because Jiang Fengmian had sent him to Baling to request urgent aid for the Yao Sect. Suggesting then that Lotus Pier might ever stand as a Great Sect again had seemed like wishing on grains of sand. If anyone had suggested that, one day, Lotus Pier would not only regain its strength but grow, stretch out like a summer flood to shine under the hot sun — well, he would have probably punched them in the face. It would’ve felt too much like mockery, too flippant in the face of all his aching wounds. Even now, so many years removed, a flutter of uncertainty hitches in his chest at the thought. His family has healed and grown before his eyes, and yet he knows too well how fragile that strength is, how quickly a neck can be snapped. “There’s space along the northern side,” he says. “Enough for a half wing at least.” “We better hope your sister doesn’t have any more children if it’s only going to be half a wing,” Wen Qing remarks. He snorts and shoots her a skeptical look. “Do you really think they could find the energy to run after another one with a-Mu and a-Ling tearing up Jinlintai?” he retorts. “Mmm.” She hums and rises up on her knees to press a kiss to the corner of his lips. “Alright. We’ll just have to fill the rest of the wing with little Jiangs.” His face flushes at her matter-of-fact tone, but he turns to catch her in a proper kiss. She hums into it, her free hand slipping up to curl around his cheek. Parting, he leans his forehead against hers and draws in the first full breath he’s taken all night. He shifts, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and draws back just enough for her to meet his gaze. “Thank you,” he says, giving her hand a squeeze. “We’ll figure it out together,” she promises. He doesn’t know if he really believes her, if there is any way this can be fixed — but he wants to. He wants to hope that he can have this, or at least some sliver of it. It should be enough that his brother is alive. He should be bowing to the heavens in gratitude for this impossible blessing — but he has always wanted too much, always been too jealously possessive of his own family. His brother is alive, but Jiang Cheng wants him here. He wants, one last time, to have his family back in Lotus Pier once more.

[troutpopulation]

On Borrowed Time - MTMTE Megatron x Reader

•

Synopsis: With the verdict of the trial looming over head, and the fact that humans don't live that long, you decide there isn't any time to lose, and to make things official with Megatron while you still have the chance.

(contains original poetry written with love, and conjunx ritus! :^D )

Notes: kaixo i wanna marry Megatron and nothing will stop me. also if you didn't catch it the title is a play on political/philosophical treatises being often called "On ______".

While Megatron was at a meeting, you had hit the bar. It was one of your favorite spots on the ship, right next to windowsill down the hall. You sat atop the counter, listening to Rewind and Chromedome spin you a tale about Prowl. They brought up that their story happened around the time they'd just gone through with conjunx ritus. You perked up at the unfamiliar term. Conjunx Endura you were familiar with,however, you had never heard of the former.

“Uh, sorry, alien here. What's Conjunx Ritus?” You piped up, awkwardly raising a hand.

“It’s the steps bots take to become conjunx endurae.” Chromedome replied, his partner nodding in agreement. Ok. Robot marriage proposals.

“There are acts to it, four actually. Act of Intimacy, Act of Disclosure, Act of Profference, and then the Act of Devotion.” Rewind added. Cybertronian culture and customs were fascinating, you had always thought that, but the nature of this sparked a particular interest. You tentatively took the risk of pressing a little further.

“Okay, so Intimacy, what is that? I mean I know what that is to humans but, uh…” You trailed off, face burning. You felt awfully gauche for asking, but it was a valid question. What was intimate to a human might be different than what was intimate to a cybertronian.

“Prolonged contact. It is what you make of it.” Chromedome tilted his helm down to his and Rewind’s interlocked fingers.

  “And Act of Disclosure is basically sharing something about yourself; something personal that usually doesn’t paint you in the best light. Profference is a meaningful gift, and the last part, Devotion, is done by the bot the initiator is courting.” Rewind took the wheel on the explanation. You wondered who had initiated their rite. Rewind’s lively personality made sense for him to take the reigns in things, but you could see Chromedome be more willing to open his heart to him. “If they accept the rite, then they perform an act of selflessness. Something that really shows the other they love them.”

“I see, thanks you two.” You nodded earnestly and for the rest of the story, couldn’t help but fidget. The second they finished, you made haste in excusing yourself. You didn’t tell them, but were going to speak to Megatron asap.

“You know they’re going to-”

“Yeah, I know. I figured it was better that they asked us than, I don’t know, Whirl or something.”

Megatron and you had been a thing for a while now, and there was… a lot to be said about that. Not that you cared anyways, you knew what you were getting yourself into, and you had no regrets. Life, you had figured, was too short for regrets. You with your miniscule human lifespan, couldn't afford to be held back by any shame or fear. Your only option was to shoot your shot. Which you did, and we're planning to do once more.

Megatron had a dark history. His faction had carried out acts of hatred towards your kind, but he has since renounced the ideology he once led with a blazing banner. The moment he met you, the Lost Light’s human liaison, he commited one last act of murder: He held technoism ideology under the water until it stopped thrashing. Guilt had fueled him to avoid you, but you extended friendship towards him. And thus he befriended you. Time passed and friendship turned to fondness. Techoism had its grave defiled.

Still, you figured that he still may never truly be comfortable with human customs, despite his newfound respect for them. You took it from the strange, wide-eyed look he had given a proposal during some cheesy romcom at one of Swerve’s movie nights you’d dragged him to. However, you were ready to compromise, and were more than fascinated by this cybertronian equivalent. Fascinated enough to follow through with it while you had the time in this life to do so.

  “Megatron?” You heard the hab suite door slide open and heavy steps trod in.

“Surprisingly.” He replied, a smile crinkling the worm edges of his crimson optics. At the sight of him enveloping the space in the room, you grinned. Seeing him approach was like watching a sunrise.

“Megatron I… I have a question.” You scampered towards the edge of his desk. He sat down and offered you his hand to climb onto.

“Yes, little one, what is it?”  He lifted you gently to his shoulder and began filing a report.

“Have you uh,” You paused, reading the dry statement over his shoulder. “Ever gone thought about becoming conjunx endura? I was, um, learning about conjunx ritus earlier.” You mumbled, twiddling your thumbs and tucking yourself against his armor plating. He froze, his typing stopping short and you could hear the mechanisms in his optics dilate as his eyes widened.

“I…. (y/n),” He scooped you up carefully from his shoulders and held you in front of him in large servos. The old mech looked shocked, full of hope and disbelief. “Do you even know what that entails?”

  You nodded slowly, staring up at him. His eyes were wild, and you could glimpse the bloody war that raged on behind them. You felt his guilt and the deep set disgust towards himself all clashing with an aching longing, and the thrill of what you were proposing. The battle between what he wanted and what he felt he deserved was unending.

“I do. I’ve thought it over a lot, actually, I’ve thought long and hard about it but I realize… I realize that I don’t really have to? I already know what I want. If that’s something you’d be okay with, I’m ready as soon as you are.”

His stunned stare descended into a chuckle, like he’d just understood a joke. He seemed merely amused by your offer, as if deciding that you simply didn’t know the gravity of what you were saying. Just a silly human; as usual, not knowing what you were talking about. You hated more than anything when bots thought that about you, and you only wilted more as he looked away.

“(Y/n), I don’t know how you think I deserve you.” He rasped, his voice heavy, and the foundations beneath your feet began to falter. You squeezed your partner’s thumb, both as to balance yourself and comfort him.

  “Megatron, look at me.” You sighed, standing taller in determination. He did as you said, the worry lines above his brow deepening as he peered down at you. “I know you. You must think that I don’t because I haven’t... I don’t know, fled? Is that what you think I’d do? Flee? Megatron, I want you to understand that I saw the worst of you before I even met you, and I still find myself here, asking you to ma- to be my conjunx. Please, you don’t have to be afraid. You know we both don’t have the time to.”

He was stunned. His deep silver lips hung open in shock and awe. You kept a face of resolve, until it faltered into concern, and after more excruciating moments of silence, fell limp into a piteous frown. The sting of rejection had began to sink into your chest.

“(Y/n).” His deep voice jolted you to reality. “Are you sure?” It was all he could say.

“Yes.” It was all you needed to say.

This was incredibly taboo.

  Two days after your conversation with Megatron and you were hauling a sack containing a datapad down the halls of the Lost Light. You didn’t want to try too hard, but you couldn’t help wanting to make yourself look presentable. You decided a tie was far too formal, but a blazer? That’d work. That and some slacks, and the nicest shoes you’d saved from home. You had combed your hair back. Then forward. Then back again as you couldn’t pinpoint which looked better. Looking decidedly sharp, you timed the start of your trek with the end of Megatron’s shift.

You passed Rodimus by down the hall, and he spun on his heel, and walked instead beside you.

“(Y/n), you look nice! Any particular reason?” There was an edge to his voice, and the force behind his smile was more audible in each syllable.

“I’m bringing this datapad to Megatron.” It wasn’t a lie, that was what you were doing, but you could tell by his tensed grin that it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Really! Because he was looking really nice today too. He buffed and everything, did you know that? Hm?” He bent down as he talked down at you.

“Really? Huh.” You smiled to yourself, giddy that Megatron had decided as well to, in the cybertronian equivalent, dress for the event, and for you.

“Okay, (y/n), seriously, what’s going on?” Rodimus stopped with with his pede. You glared and walked around it.

“Rod, chill.” You sighed. His wings perked in indigance.

“Don’t tell me to chill! You know I hate being told to chill!” His fists snapped to his hips. You groaned, turned around.

“Rodimus, please, I’m going to be late. I really want to be on time for this. I’ll talk to you later, okay? I don’t want to keep him waiting.” You pleaded, your feet tapping in soft impatience. He gave you a scrutinizing squint, but yielded.

“Okay, fine. But later? I want to know what’s going on.” He huffed and continued down the halls. You did as well, making haste towards hab suite 113.

  The gargantuan doors slid open for you at the press of a tiny button installed at the foot of the entrance. He had been pacing, and stopped in his tracks to turn to you. Rodimus was right, he looked breathtaking. His dark gray armor was clean and robust, and the dim lights of his room haloed around him.

He didn’t look too much different; you honestly might not even had noticed if it hadn’t already been pointed out. The change was so very subtle, but that only further delighted you. He still looked authentic. He still looked like himself.

“Hi love, sorry to keep you waiting.” You chirped, and slid the bag underneath his desk for later. You approached him, and he took you in his hands to his seat in the corner of his room.

“No need to apologize,” Megatron sat down and placed you delicately down on the windowsill. The window was round and uncomfortable to stand upon, but it didn't matter; you were reclining between his thumb and fore digit anyways.

“You look nice tonight.” You said, nestling in and giving his hand a kiss. The mech smiled.

“As do you, my dear.” He chuckled, the tip of his finger nudging at your polished shoes. “Fancy choice in clothing, what's the occasion?”

You grinned in response, shifting in his servo.

“You.” You replied simply, earning another rumble of laughter from the mech. When he laughed, pride was not the word you were looking for.

You leaned forward, sitting up and the intent in your body language compelled the mech to bring you close to his face. He brought you near, to listen to any secret you'd whisper or question you'd ask or… Or to receive a kiss you'd place on a set of lips that nearly measured your wingspan. Megatron suddenly found himself wishing he’d mass displaced to a form small enough to be able to return the gesture.

It was chaste, but loving; and when you pulled back to stare up at him, you looked nothing short of enraptured.

“I really hope one day you could feel half as loved as you are. I don't know how to say it any other way, I just… adore you. I know how you think you don't deserve it, I hear it in how you speak, I read it in the words you write.” You stood in his hand to look him in the eyes and press your forehead to his. “But we're both on borrowed time, and while we're both here, I want us to be happy.”

You heard the distinct clicks and whirrs of Megatron’s bodily mechanisms, the sound and feeling of his servos trembling underneath you, and his optics shut beneath knitted brows.

“But, before that, can I tell you something… less than happy?” You leaned back into his hand and he opened his eyes, nodding as he pursed his lips, a shaky exvent escaping him.

“Something happened once. It was, gosh how many years ago was it… (X) years? (Y) years…? (X) years, I don't know, it was a long time ago for me at least. At least, it felt like it. You know how it is for humans. Whenever it was, I remember one thing: It was my fault it happened.” You rubbed a hand over his wrist, fondly tracing the seams of his servos. You didn't bother to steel yourself for this story; this was meant to be vulnerable. This was meant to be intimate.

You couldn't keep from crying as your story came to fruition. The deep vulnerability cut you open by the belly and you were helpless to spilling your guts. The bruising shame flowered through you, but you laid it all out before him. You forced yourself not to turn away from him as you spoke, and you saw the deepest pits of your soul reflected back at you in a kaleidoscope.

“I felt disgusted with myself, I still do,” You gulped, blinking back the tears that blurred your vision. “But I realize I can't do anything to change what happened. No matter how I say the story, it doesn't change its meaning. I have to live with it. I have to live with knowing I could have done something about it, but I gave up. I was scared and fickle and stupid.”

You grimaced you rubbed your eyes, the low burn of raw skin making you squint. You took a deep, ragged breath, rubbing comforting circles over Megatron’s shaking servo below you.

“I’ve felt like that for a while but… It’s different with you. I’m not scared. I’ve never been more devoted. And…” You smiled up at him. “I think meeting you was the smartest thing I’ve ever done. You’re genuinely the best part of my life, I can’t begin to tell you how much I love you, and… Do you wanna let me down real quick?”

Quickly Megatron nods and helps you to the floor. Feeling his stare on your back like a spotlight, you rush with your heart in your throat to his desk.

“I feel like I put it better into writing.” You sniffed and chuckled. “Here, I made this for you.” As he lifts you and the offering to eye level, you uncover the datapad. Megatron glanced at you, then the gift, and pressed a gentle kiss to your teary face before slipping the tablet out of the covering. He cleared his throat.

“May I?” He murmured, and you nodded. He smiled, deepening the creases in his aged face. The mech gazed softly then at your writing in his servo, his low lidded optics two warm, red eclipses. He took to reciting your poem in a gentle rumble you could feel like distant thunder in your bones.

  “To Which The Sun Does Set.

Go nearer now, with earnest great

To where the sun does set.

Come to me all bound in fate,

The same as when we met.

  Though change daily we might,

As many phases mold its face

High silver metamorph of night

Thus may retain his former grace.

And may he exude it during quest

Marching onward, onward yet

His hand in mine we gently rest

In the place which the sun does set.”

  Megatron fell silent, the final stanza falling from him and descending into the ambient hum of ship engines.

“(Y/n),” He croaked. “This is incredible. You’re incredible.” He lifted you closer to him, and you stood eagerly to meet the deep sweeps of his lip plating. He took to peppering tender kisses atop your head, dipping then below your chin. You stifled a squeal as lips nudges your chest and stomach. It tickled, and you couldn’t help but jolt helplessly and laugh against his smile.

“I love you so much.” He murmured into your torso, his aquiline nose snug atop your shoulder. You hugged his jaw, grinning deeply with your cheek pressed to his. You returned words of adoration, and heard the slight click of his optics closing completely. He held you there for what felt like an eternity, the deep drum in your chest in sync with the pulsating of his spark.

You thought at this moment you’d be scared, or relieved that the hardest part was over. He accepted your disclosure and your profference. But instead, you found yourself immersed in the sound his ancient sentio metallico made as you ran your palm over his cheek.

You felt him shift and you stood back as he pulled away to look at you.

“Can I take you somewhere?”

You nod.

Sitting safe upon his shoulder, you watched the hallway lights pass by in tune with the heavy clunks of Megatron’s footsteps. A few mechs passed by, offering the greeting of disgusted grimaces and hateful whispers. For the first time, you didn’t hear them. If Megatron did, you couldn’t tell. He was busy keeping his eyes forward, his expression kind and focused.

He slowed to a stop, and you heard curious muttering down the halls. You were lifted from his shoulder and placed onto none other than your favorite spot on the ship. The largest window with the widest ledge. The windowsill was broad enough for you to stand comfortably on- hell, you could dance on it if you wanted. Not to mention the best part was the view: always of the brilliant cosmos. It thrilled your inner stargazer to be able to watch the stars and planets pass by.

You scampered down from Megatron’s servo, stopping yourself with a palm against the glass, turning around to see the glowing pepper of galaxy reflected against his chrome frame. This view beat that of the universe by a landslide. As The Lost Light traveled through space, it passed by a red dwarf star, and the corridor flooded in florid hue.

“(Y/n),” Megatron’s gravelly voice whispered down to you through the scarlet haze. “Decades ago, I’d never had been able to fathom myself doing this. But my spark, I know, was forged to be yours. I love you, and I love your humanity . And I know all the questions on my mind, you are the answer to. But I have but one more inquiry, and I’m certain only you can answer this for me.”

He got down on one knee.

“(Y/n), will you marry me?”

[setaripendragon]

The Light of a Pole Star - Part 3

Okay, this part was a lot of fun. The whole birthday scene came out of nowhere as I was writing, it was a complete aside that turned into an actually important plot point XD Also, Maes’s voice will always and forever sound like Opalsong’s reading of The Demon Alchemist series in my head.

“You know your boy is hopelessly in love with you, don’t you?”

“My- Are you talking about FullMetal?”

“Mmhm.”

“He’s fourteen.”

“Mm, I don’t think he is. Not really.”

“He really is.”

“Don’t be so literal, Roy, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I know what you mean, Madame, but it’s still- I can’t just ignore-”

“Ahh…! Is my baby boy falling in love, too?”

“What? No! That’s not-! He’s a child! I would never-!”

“Pfft. Of course you wouldn’t. I raised you better than that.”

“You did.”

“But he’s not going to be a child forever, Roy. He’s not even going to be a child for much longer.”

“…I know.”

“I’d let him work here in a couple of years. Maybe even one, given how world-weary he seems.”

“World-weary. That’s a good phrase for it. Speaking of, how’s Nina doing?”

“Oh, she’s as precocious as you were, Roy-Boy. She’s recovering well.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

“I’ll have someone drop some pictures off with Maes for you.”

“Oh, good god, alright. I’m sure FullMetal will appreciate some as well.”

“Speaking of, I hear his fifteenth birthday isn’t too far off.”

“Mother…!”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Roy, I’m helping you out here.”

“How, exactly?”

“Have you thought about what to get him for his birthday?”

“If you’re about to suggest something salacious, let me cut you off now and say; don’t.”

“Heheh. Only a little salacious. He’s fifteen, I think he can handle a Vittori.”

“A- One of the Vittori reproductions? Really? Why on earth-?”

“Call it a hunch.”

The Hughes residence is packed to bursting. Ed feels distinctly uncomfortable, being at the center of all this attention and effort, but it’s also kind of nice. He isn’t super keen on the idea of celebrating his birthday. He has eight of them rattling around inside his skull, plus two namedays, and a soulday. This one in particular gets lost in amongst the others too easily for him to care very much. Still, Teacher’s visiting, and so is Winry, and a woman who introduced herself as Roy’s foster-sister has brought Nina round, and Roy’s whole team have come, and Gracia has made a freaking fantastic triple chocolate cake.

Al is sitting on the floor a few feet away from the couch where Ed is sitting, passing Elysia crayons for her colouring, and Nina had two slices of cake and is now chattering Winry’s ear off, and Hughes is taking pictures of everyone and everything like a maniac, and Roy’s sister is flirting with Havoc, which seems to be mortifying both Havoc and Roy, which is hilarious. And Teacher is chatting with Gracia and Riza over mugs of tea from her place in Sig’s lap.

It’s good, Ed decides. It’s just good to be surrounded by friends and family and to take one day off from the pressure of righting his wrongs and fixing his mistakes. He’ll get back to the quest to restore Al’s body tomorrow, but today, he has permission to relax a little. It’s good.

“Is it time for presents yet?” Nina asks abruptly, abandoning Winry to throw herself half over the back of the couch, feet in the air and tail wagging, which puts her head somewhere in the vicinity of Ed’s shoulder. “Big brother! You need to open all your presents!”

“Good idea, Nina!” Hughes enthuses, and then suddenly everyone is bustling about retrieving their gifts for him and depositing them on the table. A lot of them, Ed is delighted to see, are book-shaped. Then Hughes holds Elysia up so that she can very solemnly hand Ed the card she’d made for him. It’s covered in glue and glitter, and of course the glitter goes everywhere, and Winry winces when it gets on Ed’s automail, but even she can’t deny that it’s utterly adorable.

“Mine next!” Nina insists, so Ed opens up the clumsily wrapped package she thrusts at him. It turns out to be a hand-knitted scarf, which Ed suspects is the result of Roy’s Mum’s attempts to keep Nina occupied and out of trouble. It’s a little wonky and uneven, but it’s a bright, eye-searing red, and it was made with love, so Ed wraps it around his neck at once and preens. Winry gets him a set of automail maintenance tools, like she always does in a passive-aggressive attempt to remind him to take care of his automail, and Granny sent on a book titled Beginner’s Guide to Combustion Engines, because she thinks she’s hilarious, and only Teacher and Al really get why it pisses him off so much.

Teacher got him a proper Xerxesian kattari, which she must have made herself, and Ed freaks out for a moment, because what idiot decides to take up blacksmithing – even alchemically enhanced blacksmithing – when they’re sick? Sig shares a commiserating look with him when he hands over all the extra bits and pieces Ed needs to maintain the blade. And in keeping with the theme – had they collaborated? – Al got him a book about the few Xerxesian alchemists that history remembers with a handwritten note inside that says ‘you can tell me all the things they got wrong – love, Al’.

Hughes got him a photo album half filled with pictures of Ed and Al and the people they know, with space left over for more, and Gracia added a pile of blank journals to the gift, which Ed definitely appreciates. The rest of Roy’s team all got him various books; a massive scientific treatise from Falman, a recent alchemist’s autobiography from Fuery, a fascinating obscure book about spiritual symbology in alchemy from Hawkeye, a book about the art of making fireworks from Breda. Havoc, on the other hand, had got him a swear-jar. Which sends Ed into hysterics.

Then Roy’s sister – Vanessa – hands over a small, prettily-wrapped package, and Ed splutters a little about how she didn’t have to, he doesn’t even know her, what the hell. She just laughs at him. “I insist. Auntie Chris insisted. At least as a thank you for making Roy’s work stories so much more interesting.”

“Oh, well, um, okay then, I guess?” Ed says, and sets to opening the packet. It turns out to be a couple of pretty hair-clips. Nothing so ornate as to be mockingly ‘girly’, but whoever made them paid just as much attention to form as function. If he wears them day-to-day, he’s going to end up worrying about damaging them. Not that he ever does anything creative with his hair anyway, so it’s a bit moot.

Roy looks mortified, though, so that’s definitely a plus. And, in the spirit of winding him up as much as possible, Ed decides ‘fuck it’ and tugs the band off the end of his braid, shaking his hair out and tugging the top half back into the clip he likes the best. It’s a style he’d worn a lot when he was Proteus, one that Huang had always gotten distracted by when they were researching together. “Thanks!” He says brightly to Vanessa, who looks so gleeful Ed figures she’s caught on to his plot to torment Roy and approves.

“Alright, I suppose it’s my turn, is it?” Roy asks, resigned.

He slides a large square present out from where it had been leaning against the side-cabinet thing that Gracia keeps knick-knacks and Elysia’s toys in, and hands it to Ed over the table before stepping back. There’s an odd touch of apprehension about him, nothing obvious, just a stiffness in his pleasant expression that suggests it’s taking effort to keep it in place.

Ed lays the present on his lap and studies the shape of it. “It’s a picture-frame.” He decides after a moment of feeling the edges.

“The purpose of presents is to unwrap them, FullMetal.” Roy drawls.

“The purpose of giving presents is to shut up and be nice, Colonel Bastard.” Ed retorts, but he does tear into the wrapping paper, and peel the picture out of it. And then he freezes, heart racing and head spinning, because that- that’s him. Or well, technically, it’s her, when he was a her. He presses a hand to his mouth to stop himself blurting out something stupid, and just… stares.

It’s not the original, he can tell right away, but it’s an excellent reproduction. Ed-when-he-was-Lucia is sitting naked in an unmade – and very rumpled – bed dressed in off-white linens underneath a wide window letting in a spill of brilliant morning light that picks out the amber tones of Lucia’s tanned skin and the golden tones of her light brown hair, which is twisted up into a messy, careless bun pinned in place by a paintbrush, many loose strands curling about her neck and shoulders. There’s ink and graphite stains on her fingers and thighs, and love-bites dappled across her neck, chest, and wrists. She’s sitting sort of cross-legged, one knee tucked uselessly under the light sheet and the other propped up so that she can lean a notebook on it and scribble down her ideas.

Several people are asking what it is, and Havoc and Hughes and Hawkeye all shuffle around the back of the couch to peer at it over Ed’s shoulders. Havoc lets out an impressed wolf-whistle, while Hawkeye says, in a carefully neutral tone of Stern Disapproval; “That’s a bit inappropriate, isn’t it, sir?”

Which, no. No, Ed’s not going to let that stand, because it’s not. The moment hadn’t even been sexual, except that they had just had lazy morning sex. But then Ed- Lucia had had an idea, and she’d flung herself out of Fiametta’s arms to find something to write it down with. Only then had she realised that she’d just abandoned her new lover without regard in favour of science, and she’d looked up expecting annoyance and exasperation, only to find Fiametta grinning and looking at her like she was the most perfect thing in the whole world. So Lucia had gone back to bed and settled in to write down her notes, and she’d gotten so absorbed she hadn’t even noticed Fiametta going for her sketchbook, and then her paints, until several hours later.

At which point she’d taken one look at the first attempt, and punched her in the arm for ‘making me look ridiculous, you complete sap’. The consequent versions had only gotten more ridiculous, because Fiametta had decided it was her purpose in life to wind Lucia up like that at every available opportunity.

It’s not inappropriate at all, except for the fact that Roy has no idea what he’s saying with this picture because he doesn’t know. Ed looks up at Teacher, the only one who gets it, and she raises an eyebrow at him, smug. ‘He doesn’t know he knows, but he does know.’ Ed thinks, and it’s… Good is something of an understatement.

Roy is fumbling for an explanation under Hawkeye’s stern stare, trying to play it off as a combination tasteless joke and attempt at winding Ed up, but Ed isn’t listening. He carefully leans the paining against the back of the couch and gets up. Roy’s faux-blasé defence trails off as Ed rounds the table, walks right into him, and hugs him tight. He’s in civilian dress, so it’s actually comfortable to hug him, and as Roy’s body-heat soaks through to him, Ed silently mourns the fact that he can’t just stay like this forever. “Thanks. I love it.” He says quietly.

“…You’re welcome.” Roy replies, just as quietly, carefully setting his hands on Ed’s back, not quite returning the hug, but something close to it.

“Huh.” Hughes says, in his scheming-voice. “I didn’t know you were a fan of Vittori, Edward.” He remarks lightly.

Teacher snorts.

“You shut up.” Ed grumbles at her, pointing in her direction without looking. He forces himself to let go of Roy before the hug becomes awkward, and turns to Hughes to try and explain his overly-emotional reaction to an indecent portrait of a long dead Aerugonian alchemist. “She did a good series on alchemy.” He states, crossing his arms defensively and feeling his face heat up.

“Hey, it’s okay, Boss. You’re at that age where-” Havoc begins, his tone gleefully mocking because he’s obviously a sadistic fuck.

“No. Nope.” Ed sticks his fingers in his ears. “LALALALALA!”

Ed is minding his own business, grabbing a quick lunch at a bakery a few streets away from the library, when out of fucking nowhere, Hughes slides into the seat opposite him with a cheerful “Hi, Ed!” and the sort of smile that makes Ed realise why most people find his grins a little unnerving.

“Uh, hi, Hughes.” He greets warily.

“Oh, please, Maes is fine.” Hughes – Maes – insists. “This is a social call.”

Ed gives him a dubious look. “Well it looks kind of like stalking.” He counters, and then takes a huge bite of his pasty. Maybe if he finishes quickly he can escape back into the library.

“That’s hurtful, Ed.” Maes protests, sounding entirely insincere. Ed makes an indistinct ‘mrmph’ noise around his mouthful. “I just wanted to know what your intentions are towards my best friend.” He announces, and although he’s definitely joking, tone jovial and eyes bright, there’s a thread of something a little more serious underneath.

Ed swallows hard, coughs a little, and then starts laughing. Because trust Maes Hughes to see that there’s more to Ed than a fifteen year old with a crush. “Well, I guess my intentions right now are to wait until he won’t have a panic attack if I jump him, and then jump him. Repeatedly. Preferably for the rest of our lives.” He answers, just as light-hearted as Maes, with just as much truth underneath.

Maes’s smile becomes a lot less sharp, softens into something that doesn’t make Ed want to flee to the safety of the library anymore. “How long a wait is that going to be?” He wonders, without any hint as to what he thinks the right answer is.

“Well, I had it from a reliable source when I was twelve that I’d be eligible for moderately respectable sex work in five years, so that’s only two more to go.” Ed replies lightly. Maes blinks at him for a moment, which isn’t the reaction Ed was expecting, but then he laughs. Cackles, really. “What’s funny?” He asks dubiously.

“Madame Christmas told you that, did she?” Maes asks pointedly.

Ed stares at him. “You…” He stops, and wonders if the synchronicity of his lives could get any more ridiculous. “Wait, let me guess. She’s got something to do with Roy, doesn’t she? Oh, that fucker.” He exclaims, eyes widening. “That’s how he knew to get me that painting! She fucking told him, didn’t she? Oh my fucking-!”

“Mm, yes. I think it was one of hers, originally. She likes to hang what she calls ‘dignified pornography’ on the walls of her upstairs business.” Maes confirms.

Ed whines and puts his head down on the table. “Next you’ll be telling me Roy grew up there or some shit.” He complains.

“As a matter of fact, he did.” Maes confirms, sounding intrigued, and Ed just groans, because, okay, he walked right into that one. “When she’s not working, she goes by Chris Mustang.” Maes adds, and at that, Ed sits up again.

“She’s Roy’s mum?”

“Biologically? His aunt. But she raised him ever since his parents died. So, yes, that’s who he means when he talks about his mother.” Maes explains. “But going back to that painting, Ed.” He goes on abruptly.

Ed huffs, going a little pink. “What about it?”

“I had a long chat with the Madame after your birthday. You said some very interesting things in between being very, very cryptic, and bringing up conversations you never actually had with Roy about old Aerugonian painters.” Maes states, resting his forearms on the table as he leans in and watches Ed with a pointedly patient expression.

Ed narrows his eyes. “We did too talk about renaissance painters.”

“Yes, but not Vittori.” Maes stresses. “And nice dodge, by the way.”

“Well, I was talking about Vittori, and he got the story right, so it’s not my fault if he didn’t realise, and only got it right because he’s that much like a perverted lesbian hedonist from the fifteenth century.” Ed retorts. “And I didn’t dodge shit. I just addressed the only point you actually made.”

Maes snorts, and leans back in his chair with a sigh. “You’re going to be very good for Roy, you know, when he manages to pull his head out of his ass. He needs someone like you in his life to keep him honest, keep him from twisting himself up into contortions with all the games he likes to play.”

Ed eyes him for a long moment, because, hell, but that was a good summary of at least one of his lives in its entirety. The Xingese royal court was a pit of vipers. “Yeah.” He agrees shortly, but apparently even that is enough to put that worrying gleam of curiosity into Maes’s eyes again. This time it’s totally a dodge, and Ed doesn’t even care, when he says; “So, what were those interesting things you wanted to interrogate me about?”

“Oh, you know…” Maes says, with entirely and obviously feigned nonchalance. “Treason.”

Ed snorts. “Yeah? Is this you delivering Roy’s official pitch?”

“No, Ed. This is me asking how the hell you even knew there was a pitch.” Maes sighs, no longer light-hearted at all. He’s watching Ed carefully, worried, and it makes Ed feel bad. He hadn’t meant to make Maes paranoid about discovery. But of course, if a teenage wildcard like him could figure it out, anyone who didn’t know that the knowledge came from lifetimes of experience with Roy and his masks and his stupid doublespeak bullshit and his penchant for self-sacrificial righteousness would be forgiven for assuming that one of the Generals, or the Fuhrer himself, might be able to see it, too.

Ed could lie, or dodge again, or something, but he doesn’t want to make Maes’s life harder than it has to be. He’s a good friend to Roy, and he’s been a good friend to Ed, too, so far. “I bet you looked into Valentino’s Bar, huh?” He asks.

Maes narrows his eyes, but plays along. “What do you take me for, Ed? Of course I did. Headquarters for one of the most successful Aerugonian resistance forces this side of the border in a hundred years before they blew the place up. I looked into this Malka person you mentioned too. And believe me, I’m dying to know what a border scuffle and a mullah from eighty years ago have to do with Roy, but I’d like to know about the treason thing first.”

“Valentino’s Bar.” Ed holds up his hand, and then ticks each point off on his fingers as he goes. “The Wolfsbane killings. Knyazhna Tatiana Nikiforova. The assassination of General Maultier. The Riviere Traders. The first Xingese Empress.” Ed pauses. “I think that’s… No, wait, you can probably count the Second Drachman Revolution, too, really, although you may have to dig pretty deep to figure that one out.”

“I recognise a few of those.” Maes acknowledges.

Ed nods emphatically, as though it must be obvious even though he knows Maes probably won’t understand. “That’s how I knew. I don’t think anyone else has made the connections, though, so you don’t need to panic.”

Maes stares at him for a long, long moment. “Challenge accepted.” He says finally.

Laughing, Ed shakes his head at him. “If anyone can figure it out, I’d put my money on you, Maes.” He offers, and Maes beams at him.

“Your faith in me is heartwarming, Ed. Almost as heartwarming as my beautiful daughter!” Maes enthuses, and Ed resigns himself to watching the man parade out a stream of photographs of Elysia. At least, since he’s not required to say more than ‘aww’ and ‘wow’ every now and then, he actually has a chance finish his pasty.

This goes on until Ed’s almost finished eating, and then Maes, with well practised insincerity, checks his watch and says; “Oops! Looks like my lunch break is over!” And sweeps all of his photos back into his pocket and stands up while Ed is still chewing on his last bite. “See you later, Ed.”

“Mrmph.” Ed says again, nodding.

Maes chuckles. “And, one last thing, Ed?” He says, pausing on his way past Ed’s chair. Ed looks up at him with his eyebrows raised, and Maes hands him a little folded up piece of paper. “Don’t wait too long. Roy will keep you at arms length forever if you let him, because he’s got a martyr complex the size of the Eastern Desert. We’re working on him, but he could do with a reminder from you that you’re older than you look.”

Then he’s gone, and Ed’s left staring at empty space in confusion. If he’s translating Maes-speak right, that was a ‘well, I think you should jump him now’. He looks down at the paper in his hand and unfolds it, only to find nothing but an address written there, and he’d bet his other arm and leg that it’s Roy’s. Maes is an interfering matchmaker, and Ed doesn’t know whether to be pissed off or grateful.

Ed decides Maes’ gift is too good to let it go to waste, so the next time he’s back in East, he breaks into Roy’s house while the man’s still at work and makes himself at home. When Ed had told Al his plan, Al had given him one of those inexplicably readable looks of his where he’s judging every single one of Ed’s life choices in every single one of his lives, and then he sighed and wished him luck, which is why Al is best little brother in the whole wide world.

When Roy gets back, Ed is happily ensconced in Roy’s living room with half the books from Roy’s personal library spread out around him, a fire blazing in the grate, a ridiculously snug blanket over his shoulders, and a mug of some weird fancy tea at his elbow. Roy, of course, comes in warily, prepared for an intruder, fingers poised to snap, and stops dead in the doorway, staring. “FullMetal?”

“Hey, Bastard.” Ed will call Roy ‘Roy’ to his face when Roy calls him ‘Edward’ again. “Shut the damn door, you’re letting all the heat out.”

Roy is so off-balance that he actually does as he’s told. Ed will have to remember that trick. Then he returns and goes right back to staring. “How did you get in?”

“Transmuted the lock, obviously.” Ed informs him. “I can show you how to alchemically booby-trap your locks later, if you like.”

Roy sighs in long-suffering exasperation. “How did you even know where I live?”

“How did you even know I’m a fan of Vittori?” Ed retorts.

“Touché.” Roy admits, and then just stands there, staring in bewilderment.

Ed glances up from his book at last, and gives the man a judging look. “Well don’t just stand there like an idiot, idiot. Go order some take-out and then come explain to me why the hell you have bullshit like Dee’s Hierarchy of Elements on your shelf.”

“FullMetal…”

“Food, Bastard.” Ed insists.

Sighing again like the melodramatic bastard he is, Roy goes to call for take-out. While he’s doing that, Ed clears a space for him on the couch, shifting books he’d left lying open beside him when he got caught up in something else. Roy comes back, eyes the newly open space, and then gingerly seats himself. “FullMetal.” He says again.

“I’d say ‘that’s my name, Bastard, don’t wear it out’ except, you know, it’s not.” Ed says pointedly.

Another sigh. “What are you doing?”

“Investigating your personal book collection.” Ed replies immediately. “It’s not half bad, honestly. Although, seriously, what’s with Dee’s shit? His theories were debunked decades ago.”

“Most of his theories were debunked.” Roy counters, and the next half hour is full of good-natured bickering and alchemical debate. Then the food arrives, and the next hour passes by the same way, except now with really good food, too. The conversation takes a slightly darker turn as they dive into discussing human transmutation, biological alchemy, soul alchemy, and the difference between them, but even then, Ed feels more hopeful about his quest than he has in a while now, revved up with new determination because Roy might not have as much knowledge as Ed on the subject, but he’s painfully insightful, and so good at coming up with the things Ed’s missed.

Shit, but Ed loves him.

And it must be written all over his face because Roy falters in what he’s saying, in whatever argument he was making, and his expression turns conflicted and uncertain. Ed hates it. “Don’t.” Ed says, before Roy can say anything. Roy closes his mouth, but doesn’t look any less pained.

“Edward…” He says, half chiding, half pleading.

“Roy.” Ed returns, wry. Roy sucks in a sharp breath. “It’s okay, you know.”

“You’re half my age.” Roy retorts, sounding agonised.

He’s not exactly wrong, even if he’s not exactly right, either. Ed sighs, and looks down at the blanket that’s now draped over both of them. He picks at the edge of it with his automail hand. “Yeah. Why d’you think I haven’t actually made a move on you yet?”

Roy huffs a weird little half-laugh at that. “This isn’t you making a move?” He asks dryly.

Ed snorts. “Believe me, bastard, when I make a move on you, you’ll fucking know about it.”

“Literally, I suppose.” Roy muses wickedly, and then winces. “Sorry, that was-”

“If you say inappropriate, I’m gonna hit you.” Ed warns him, holding up his flesh hand in a fist in warning. Roy very pointedly presses his lips together and doesn’t say a word. “Cause it isn’t inappropriate, it’s fucking true. But I’m not stupid, you know. I do get that you’d feel kind of skeevy if we did anything yet, so- so I’m waiting. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend that there’s even the slightest fucking chance I’d pick anyone else in the world but you.”

Roy’s eyes go wide, and then he closes them. He leans in, and for a moment Ed thinks he’s going to kiss him, but instead he just leans their foreheads together. “You can’t know that for sure.” He whispers, sounding like it hurts to say it.

“I can.” Ed insists. “I do.”

“I know you’ve seen more of the world than most people your age, and I know that- that there’s more to you than just a fifteen year old hellion, but you shouldn’t tie yourself to me before you’ve had a chance to- to explore, and-”

“Idiot.” Ed huffs.

“I’m serious, Edward-”

“I know you are, Roy, that’s why you’re an idiot.” Roy pulls back to frown at him, and Ed wonders if Teacher is right, if he should tell him the whole truth. They’ve already been talking about souls half the evening, after all. But Ed… Ed isn’t quite ready to put himself that far out there when Roy is still battling his fucking conscience. It would feel… manipulative, or some shit. “Can I tell you a story?” He asks, instead.

“Can I stop you?” Roy answers wearily, but he’s smiling fondly, so Ed figures that’s not a no.

“Nope.” Ed squirms around until he’s comfortably leaning on Roy, and Roy hesitates only a moment before curling his arm around Ed’s shoulders. “Once upon a time, in a far away land, there was a boy.” Ed begins, measuring out the words.

“A fairytale?” Roy wonders, sounding startled.

“Yeah, sort of.” Ed hedges, because no, it’s not, it’s his life – their lives – but he’s not going to tell Roy that just yet. “Anyway, so this boy, he had real shit luck. Like, the shittiest. His parents died in a landslide when he was four, and not even a year later, he got nabbed by fucking slavers and carted off into the desert to be sold to some rich asshole who thought he was hot shit and that it somehow made him look good to have a tiny ‘exotic’ little boy serving drinks at his stupid parties, and not like a complete shit-stain.”

“That does sound unfortunate.” Roy comments, sounding confused.

“Yeah, but this kid, right, this kid was resilient, and clever. He made this plan. Cause, see, in Xerxes-”

“Oh, is that where this is set?”

“Yeah, shut up. In Xerxes, academia was everything. If you were smart, if you could make a valuable contribution to the Great Library, you could earn your way up to the top, even if you started out a slave. Even if you weren’t Xerxesian by birth. So that’s what he decided to do.” Ed pauses, thinking back and trying to sort an entire lifetime into something he could tell Roy and have it make sense. “One day, when he was out running errands or some shit, this slave just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see this building – one of the big manors for the Savants – collapse.”

“Savants?” Roy questions.

“It’s the best translation of the title. Like I said, the heirarchy in Xerxes was about academia, not the military, or inheritance, or anything like that. They were people who- who fucking revolutionised knowledge in whatever field of study. Being recognised as a Savant was, I don’t fucking know, like being a General, I guess, here. You’re powerful, and people kinda have to listen to you, and you get lots of perks and rewards and shit. There were also teachers and shit, Professors or whatever, which was basically one step sideways, not quite parallel, but… the State Alchemists, sort of?”

“I see.” Roy says, sounding a little bewildered. “So… so this manor collapsed?” He prompts.

“Yeah, and this boy- Well, he was a teenager, by today’s standards-”

“Today’s standards?”

“In Xerxes you were considered a child until you were twenty-five, on average.” Ed explains impatiently. “When you completed the standard education and could choose a speciality. Anyway-” Ed presses when it looks like Roy’s about to ask more questions. “So, this boy recognised an alchemical reaction when he saw one, and managed to pinpoint the source in amongst the rubble.”

“Who did he find?” Roy asks, which at least isn’t a distracting question.

“This kid. Nine years old, half crushed by rubble. His entire right arm was so much mush. He’d been being an idiot, trying to get his super-clever Savant grandmother to pay attention to him, and his circle had backfired on him and brought the whole house down. And this slave kid pushed this massive piece of masonry out of the way with one shoulder and grabbed the other kid with the other hand and just hauled him out of the mess he’d turned his entire life into. Carried him to the healers. Went right back and dug out the kid’s cousin. His grandmother was already dead, but if it hadn’t been for that slave, his cousin would have died before anyone got around to getting him out.”

“Edward…” Roy says slowly.

“I’m not finished, bastard, let me finish.” Ed retorts. Roy nods silently, so Ed forges on. “So this kid, this dumbass kid who destroyed his entire life all by himself because he couldn’t appreciate what he had when his dad was gone and his mum was dead, knew that he had to pay back this slave for saving him and his cousin. So he went and found him and taught him everything he knew, everything he got to learn just because he was born to an educated family. They studied together for years, ended up fucking revolutionising alchemy. Heh. The slave was elevated to Savant because he figured out that water is actually combustible if you pull it apart.”

“Is it really?” Roy asks, smirking. “I had no idea.”

Ed cackles. “Sure you didn’t.”

“I assume the other boy became a Savant, too?” Roy questions, giving Ed a soft look under faintly furrowed brows. Like he’s figured out Ed’s talking about them but still isn’t sure what the point is. Jokes on him, because that is the point.

“Yeah. He figured out some really cool architectural tricks. There’s so much cool shit you can do with rocks and sand if you really pay attention to the molecular structure. Like fixing fault-lines in otherwise apparently solid stone.” Ed explains with a grimace. Roy tugs him a little closer.

“I take it the boy’s cousin did recover, too?” Roy asks gently.

“Yeah.” Ed confirms. He knows Roy thinks he’s talking about Al, even though he’s not. Lyco hadn’t been much like Al, really. He’d been a daydreamer, kind but absent-minded, and he didn’t understand people at all, not the way Al did. Ed had loved him just as much, though. “Xerxes was pretty good with healing alchemy, so he got better eventually. And eventually, these two dumbasses got around to admitting that somewhere between the heroics and the research and the awards, they’d fallen in love. It didn’t really change that much, though, they still bickered over theories and played with alchemy together and spent most of their time side by side in the library. It was just that when they went home, they went to the same place, and sometimes they had sex, which was pretty fun.”

Roy makes a sound that’s trying to be a laugh, but is a little too strangled to manage. “I think I see your point, Edward-”

“Still not finished, bastard.” Ed interrupts. “So they got married, and eventually they got asked to tutor the royal children. Which, in case you can’t figure it out, was one of the very highest honours a person could be awarded in Xerxes. They probably couldn’t really have said no without being, like, shunned or something, but it didn’t really matter because… because they really enjoyed it. Not just teaching, which was frustrating as all hell but entirely worth it, but teaching those kids. They were hellraisers, don’t get me wrong, but they were so good, too. Getting to help them discover themselves? Discover the amazing things they could accomplish? Those two stupid boys loved that a whole hell of a lot. Queen Aesara was one of Xerxes most beloved rulers, and they were so proud of her.” Ed pauses, and collects himself. “And they lived happily ever after for the rest of their days or whatever shit. There, now I’m done.”

They sit in silence for a while. Ed doesn’t mind, although he’s a bit restless. “Is that the sort of thing you want from your future, then?” Roy asks eventually. “Teaching?”

“Eh.” Ed shrugs and tries to explain. “Maybe? But there’s lots of things I could do once I’ve fixed my fuck up and Al’s okay. Lots of fulfilling paths to take or whatever. Could teach. Could do research. Could become a doctor. Could open a restaurant. Could go into fucking journalism. Lots of ways to do good in the world. My point is… it’ll be better with you there. I want that. And I think you want that, too. To do whatever we end up doing together.”

He hears Roy swallow, and then let out a breath that shakes. “Yes, Edward. I want that, too.” He agrees. His arm tightens momentarily around Ed’s shoulders, and his head tips to lean his cheek against the top of Ed’s head, and then he turns so he can press an achingly gentle kiss to Ed’s hair. Ed turns into Roy and hides his smile against the man’s shoulder.

[tanadrin]

The Interview

After waiting for half an hour, Pray was well and truly bored. She fiddled with her terminal, then wandered around looking at the bookcases on the far wall. They were full of thick tomes like Interplanetary Development Economics, Sixteenth Edition and A Political History of the Martian Colonies, Volume Six. She rolled her eyes. Whoever used this office was trying to project a very specific image, and was killing a lot of trees to do it. There was a thin layer of dust over the books, too; they probably read them in digital copies, just like everybody else. If they’d even read them. She wandered over to the window that occupied the entire wall behind the desk. It afforded a sweeping view of downtown Abuja. The city was staggeringly vast. Pray knew that, somewhere in the back of her mind, but she never could comprehend just how vast unless she saw it in person. The first large city she’d ever been to in her life was Seattle. Her little apartment there had had a narrow view of the skyline, framed by two taller buildings, and even that narrow glimpse had seemed like a window into a huge, exciting place. Up here, the arcologies and the skyscrapers were two or three skylines all to themselves, strung out below her--and another beyond that, a whole extra city even bigger than Seattle or Vancouver. And another beyond that. And another. And another. She turned away from the window, feeling a little dizzy. She strode over to the desk, and sat down in the enormous high-backed swivel chair. She pushed off tentatively from the desk; the chair spun slowly, almost frictionlessly, in silence. Well, well. Control did not skimp out when it came to office furniture. She gave herself another push.

“Heh,” she whispered quietly to herself. “This is fun.”

Push. Spin. Push.

“Ma’am?”

Pray slapped her hand down on the desk and froze herself mid-spin. There was a tall, thin man, dressed in a carefully tailored suit standing at the door.

“Er… the director will be in in a moment,” he said. “Would you like anything? Water? Tea?”

Pray just shook her head. She only felt a little embarrassed. They were the ones wasting her time, after all.

The director strode in a few minutes later. He was bald, with a bushy gray goatee and a heavily lined face. Pray thought he looked like her grandfather, maybe, except much more serious. He didn’t even blink when he saw Pray sitting behind his desk. He sat in one of the large, heavy armchairs facing her, and spun the console around to face the other way.

“Good afternoon, Ms--what surname do you use these days?”

“Just Pray,” Pray said.

“Very well. Ms Pray. Welcome. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Pray shrugged. Not exactly an “It’s OK.” More of a “Pretty much what I expected.”

“I’m Director Osondu.” He tapped a few keys on the console and brought up a set of files; from behind the screen they were flipped and out of focus, but Pray could see a photo of her featured largely at the top.

“Your CV,”the director said, indicating the console.

“I never sent you my CV,” Pray said, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t have a CV.”

“We took the trouble of compiling one for you ourselves. We do that with many of our potential employees.”

“I’ve also never applied to work at Control.”

Director Osondu smiled. “No. But I’m hoping I can convince you.”

Pray laughed. “You want to offer me a job?”

The director nodded. “And not a job reviewing reports in Maitama, either. We have an assignment in mind.”

Pray leaned back in Osondu’s chair.

“What makes you think I’d want to work for Control? Heck, what makes you think I’m qualified?”

“Let’s see here. You were born in Washington, yes? In a Radhite community near Echo Valley?”

“Cooper Mountain, actually. People get the two mixed up.” If they’ve heard of them, she thought. Which they never have.

“Ah, yes. Let me fix that.” His hand darted over the console briefly. “You exercised your exit rights when you were sixteen, for reasons involving--let’s see here--personal bodily autonomy?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“Our records don’t elaborate on what those reasons were.”

“Good.” Pray stared at him, remaining pointedly silent.

“Ahem. In any case, you spent six years subsequently in Seattle finishing your education, before moving to Europe, then Asia, then South America, then the Antarctic colonies, staying in no city for more than eighteen months at a time. And then three years ago you came to Abuja, and you’ve been here ever since.”

“Yup.”

“What drew you here, if I may ask?”

“I like big cities. I like moving around. I want to see the world.”

“You haven’t moved anywhere in years. You haven’t even changed apartments since six weeks after you got here. You do some analytical work to supplement your basic, mostly for financial conglomerates and political outfits, but with your intelligence and abilities, you could easily find full-time work, enough to live pretty damn well. Even move to Mars, or the outer Solar System if you wanted.”

“What can I say? I’ve never been that interested in space travel. I like high gravity and being able to go outside from time to time. And I like my apartment. It’s cozy. Do you keep a close eye on everybody who decides to use their exit rights as a teenager? ‘Cause I gotta say, this is kinda creeping me out.”

“My apologies. We don’t as a rule, no. We consider the third freedom absolute. However, we have been interested in you for a long time. We just haven’t known… exactly what approach you might be most receptive to.”

“Well. This isn’t a good one, you know.”

“I haven’t finished making my pitch yet.”

“All right. So make it.”

“We want you to travel. In space.”

Pray laughed.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “There’s not enough money in the world.”

The director stood, and walked over to the bookshelf. He touched one finger to his lips, thinking for a minute.

“Forgive me,” he said, after a long silence. “I want to choose my words carefully, because I wish to express myself precisely.” He took a slim volume off the shelf, came back over to the desk, and slid it across the surface. Pray stiffened when she saw the title. It was Radha Munroe’s First Treatise.

“You know that book well, yes?”

Pray nodded.

“Would you agree that it’s, shall we say, convincing?”

Pray nodded again. “Sure. What’s your point?”

“It’s not just convincing. It’s elegant. Learned. Often, even, poetic. So profound, to at least some of its readers, that thirty years after the death of its author it found new life as the textual center of a movement. Something not quite political, not quite spiritual, and not quite personal, but located at the intersection of all three. A new, totalizing philosophy that built a community and transformed lives.”

“High praise.”

“I mean it sincerely. Do you know how many Radhites have exercised their exit rights since the first Radhite community was founded more than two hundred years ago?”

“Not many, I’m guessing.”

“Exactly one. You.”

The director took the book back. Pray could feel herself relaxing as he slipped it out of view.

“It’s not that I agree with everything Radha Monroe wrote. Nor do I think there have not been other Radhites who may have wanted to leave. But such is the persuasion and the power of the Radhite philosophy that, quite without coercion, at least of the kind that would provoke sanctions from Control, they have formed some of the most hermetically sealed communities in the Solar System. And believe me, we monitor the Radhites very closely. Yes, it’s true. We’re very careful. As I said--the third freedom is absolute. The closest thing we have to something sacred in this day and age.”

“They’re very good at brainwashing. So what?”

“The Radhites are uniquely good at it, if that’s the term we’re going to use. Every other community in the Archipelago has some kind of attrition, and the larger the community, the higher the absolute quantity. Religious communes, philosophical societies, intentional communities--it is an absolute. Some have higher attrition rates than others, but they all have them. All except the Radhites. Until you, anyway. And since you, not one. Not even from Cooper Mountain.

“My point, Pray, is that you are exceptional. Your biography alone--the fact you are out here, in the world, for me to speak to--makes you exceptional.”

The director flicked through Pray’s file faster now.

“Your life since, however, makes you even more remarkable. You graduated from university at age twenty, with top marks. You took proficiency exams which could have garnered you the position of your choice in the civil service or at one of a number of academic institutes--or even in Control--but you contented yourself with analytical work on the side. And your analytical work, particularly on emerging social trends, is considered on par with some of the best research collectives. Only an AI might do better--but AI won’t do this kind of thing.”

“AI can’t,” Pray muttered. “They only say they won’t.”

“If you did more than one report every three months, you could be living in a luxurious Japanese arcology. Or on the Moon. Anywhere you wanted, really. But instead you content yourself with a small apartment in Gudu. Lately you don’t even travel. I think I know why.”

“Do tell.”

“You’re bored. Government work doesn’t interest you. Bureaucratic work certainly doesn’t. And you know Control has a reputation for excellence, but you think all we are is glorified paper-pushers and, occasionally, law enforcement. Maybe you genuinely don’t like space travel, but I suspect you think there are simply no interesting challenges to be had elsewhere in the Solar System, so you prefer to spend your time reading and studying and watching the world from afar. You think maybe one day you will find a topic, a cause, a company somewhere that is interesting enough for you to feel really invested in, but you’re not holding your breath. You came to Abuja because it’s one of the biggest cities in the world. It’s home to Control, to a third of all U.N. agencies, and it’s as close as any city to the beating heart of humanity. But even here there’s nothing to draw you in.”

Pray shifted nervously in her seat. A small voice in her head told her to push off from the desk, and just roll her way down the elevator. As though if she did it smoothly enough, the director wouldn’t notice.

“That all sounds very speculative to me,” she said.

“Nonetheless, I think it is accurate speculation. Speculation of this kind is the reason I am valuable to Control. We think you could be valuable to us for other reasons. And we think you could get something in return.”

“Which would be?”

“Something you can be excited about. Would you like to meet an AI?”

Pray cocked her head. Now that. That was something new.

“You do not ‘meet’ AIs,” she said. “They don’t exactly socialize.”

“Nonetheless, I know where you could meet one. One who is very interested in meeting you.”

“You’re messing with me,” Pray said flatly.

“I do not mess.”

“Where? When?”

“Here. And now.”

“And I have to accept your job offer, whatever it is?”

“Not at all. They will help me explain it. Then you can decide whether to accept it or not.”

Pray leaned forward in her chair.

“I’m listening.”

The director entered a command into his console; a large screen emerged from the wall to the left, and flickered to life. What appeared on it was rather like a face, or the ghost of a face: a suggestion of eyes and a mouth and other, less distinct features on a flickering, phosphorescent background that sometimes cohered into something strikingly human, and sometimes suggested something altogether alien. Pray stared at the screen with intense interest; she realized she was holding her breath.

AI did not, as a matter of course, involve themselves closely in human affairs. The dream, centuries ago, had been creatures made in mankind’s image: creatures of humanlike dispositions and intellect, implemented in the medium of a machine. Of androids, perhaps, or things vaster and far more than human in their powers, but human enough in their values and desires that there could still be meaningful conversation between them and us, even if it was as a mere mortal might speak to an angel.

That turned out not to be the reality.

Artificial intelligence, machine intelligence, had indeed come, but it came from a quarter and in a manner no one had quite expected. The result was emphatically unhuman. Not inhuman; not monstrous. But just as the mammalian intellect had inevitably been the outcome of a certain evolutionary process, a certain set of cognitive solutions to specific biological and ecological problems, the machine intellect was a different set of answers to an entirely different set of questions.

Three hundred years ago, after the first tentative and failed attempts to establish a permanent presence in star systems outside the one humanity had arisen in, during the dark age between the second and third space races, the first true, general machine intelligences had been created. The results proved alien and unsettled many; even attempts to record entire human brain states, to provide the AI with as complete an understanding as possible of their creators, had only bridged the gap a little. That unease grew into genuine fear when an AI colony was discovered orbiting a brown dwarf a little under seven light years away.

Their goals, the machines said, were different from ours. They need not be in opposition; they were not our enemy. And they were willing to help us, to be of use to us so far as they were able, but if the utopians of previous centuries had dreamed of a society where man and machine were twined together, a symbiosis of two distinct but complementary organisms, well, that hope seemed to have been dashed. For the most part, they would pursue their own existence and their own ends. Control was entrusted to be the mediators between Core and the AIs, but as far as anybody knew, even Control’s contact with them was only sporadic and brief. Pray had never dared hope she might meet an AI herself.

“Pray, meet Lepanto. Lepanto, meet Pray.”

The shimmering face seemed to nod, and spoke with a synthesized voice that had a hint of the uncanny about it. Such, Pray had heard, was the norm; machines, no less than humans, did not their interlocutors to forget how alien they were to one another.

“Greetings, Pray,” Lepanto said. “I am pleased to meet you.”

“I, uh, yeah. You too,” Pray said. “Welcome to Earth.”

“Thank you. In fact I have been here for some time; we maintain a small presence in Core systems at Control’s expense.”

“Lepanto is a mediator,” the director said. “Their lineage is intended to facilitate communication with our people, but you should be aware, they are merely… less alien.”

“Indeed.” Lepanto’s image wavered, and for a brief moment, was full of a surfeit of eyes and other strange features. “I am here because Control has identified an interest common to my kind and yours. We believe that you, Pray, would be of particular help in solving our quandary.”

“Why me?” Pray asked.

The director turned the console to face Pray, and struck a key. The file being displayed was replaced with an image of a world, something computer generated maybe, or taken from orbit.

“Have you ever heard of a colony world called Ecumen?” the director asked.

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” Pray said.

“It’s old. It was colonized in the 2600s.”

“I didn’t think there were any colonies that old that had succeeded.”

“Nor did we,” the director said. “Until about twenty years ago, when Ecumen was rediscovered by the machines.”

“What did you find out?”

“Distant surveys told us little,” Lepanto said. “We sent a high-velocity probe to the system, to initiate contact. Four mediators, like myself, working in concern. Their report--disturbed us.”

The image on the console changed; various surface features were highlighted or shown blown up, in inset frames. Ecological data. Large urban centers. A handful of small space stations and orbital manufacturing.

“It looks pretty normal to me,” Pray said.

“On the surface, yes,” Lepanto continued. “Artifacts, not apparent to human eyes. Problem akin to Benford’s Law.”

“Explain?”

“The frequency distribution of numbers in data sets. Favors low numbers in leading digits, yes? Consequence emerges from data spanning many orders of magnitude; easy to detect when data is falsified if it fails to conform. Not immediately obvious to human eyes.”

The console changed again; a dozen graphs appeared. Demographic and actuarial data, economic information, patterns of migration, and more that Pray couldn’t make immediate sense of.

“Emissaries spoke to Ecumen, learned of their history. Their societies. Their culture. Sought to understand them as we seek to understand all human worlds. We learned much. But the patterns were anomalous. Irregular. Wrong.”

“So they gave you bad data?”

“No. All data corroborated. Independently verified, from sources and from our own orbital surveys. Problem apparent in the data, not an artifact of the data. Something is terribly wrong on Ecumen.”

“So it’s an outlier. There are almost two dozen colony worlds now. Every one has its own unique environment and circumstances. They can’t all be the same.”

“We have spent more than a decade examining this data. The emissaries brought it to the attention of the collective, which took an immediate interest; more than half our stable nodes were diverted to attempting to understand Ecumen. It is an impossible world. It should not and cannot exist as it does. Population growth rates follow anomalous patterns that do not conform to any understanding of human biology or society, even accounting for specific conditions. Similarly, economic investment. Patterns of land cultivation. Everywhere, something is off.”

“The reports the collectives have compiled are… dense, to be sure,” the director said. “Not all of it is very accessible to our analysts. But Control makes a habit of compiling as much data as it can about human societies and their development. We couldn’t do our job otherwise. And we agree. Something very unusual is happening on Ecumen, and only on Ecumen.”

Pray was scrolling through the data on the console now. It was certainly suggestive of something, but she’d be damned if she knew what.

“And there are underlying patterns here? It’s not just random deviation?”

“No,” Lepanto said. “In fact, the patterns conform to specific mathematical structures that, until we shared with Control, we believe were not known to any humans, in Core or the colonies.”

A series of complex, shifting geometric figures appeared on the screen. “The collectives consider questions of natural science,” Lepanto continued. “It is important to us, as it is to you, to understand the universe. We wish to know many things about it--how it operates, how it came to be. It is one of the few areas in which we understand ourselves to be very like you. We are both curious.”

“And these are?”

“Three-dimensional representations of complex mathematical objects that govern the states of fundamental particles in certain simulated universes. They correspond closely to the patterns we perceive in Ecumen’s human population.”

“So you’re saying there is a natural basis for these patterns?”

“No. All these patterns arise only in universes which have physical laws radically different from our own. Almost all, universes where life, human or machine, could not exist.”

Pray sat back in the director’s chair and stared at the screen, turning over a hundred possibilities in her mind. Yes, indeed. Something strange was going on on Ecumen. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe not.

“And there’s no way this is random?” she asked. “That you’re seeing patterns in chaotic information that have arisen by chance, excluding everything that doesn’t fit?”

“It is not pareidolia, if that is what you mean,” Lepanto said. “Conditions on Ecumen have continued to align with our forecasts. The data is predictive.”

“Are you interested?” the director asked.

“Oh, it’s all interesting as hell,” Pray said. “But what on Earth do you want me to do?”

“We’re sending a delegation to Ecumen. Officially, it’s diplomatic: Control has no presence there, and since Ecumen is interesting in acceding to the treaties, we’d like to open diplomatic relations. And, for obvious reasons, we’re a little nervous about them coming here, in case this phenomenon is somehow capable of spreading. But along with the diplomatic team, we’re sending some researchers, and a few agents to assist them. They, with Lepanto’s help, will conduct an intensive study of Ecumen, and attempt to figure out what’s behind all this. We’d like you to be part of the team. But, of course, I know how you feel about space travel…”

“Fuck that,” Pray said quickly. “I’ll do it.”

The director smiled. He slipped a folded-up piece of paper from his suit pocket and laid it on the desk. “Here’s an employment contract, if you’d like to look it over. If you sign before lunch, there’s an orientation for new analysts being conducted on the 16th floor at two o’clock.”

“That’s it? You don’t want to, like, interview me or something?”

The director shook his head and stood. “Ms Pray, it is our job to identify the best and the brightest, to help them achieve their greatest potential in exchange for helping us safeguard and support the flourishing of the human race. We don’t conduct ‘job interviews.’” He paused for a moment. “You do get an expense account, though. They’ll tell you the specifics at orientation.”

Pray unfolded the sheet of paper and started reading. The director cleared his throat. Loudly.

“However,” he said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like my office back now.”

[cadencotard]

Prompt #3 — Rug-Genuflections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (FOR COMMENT)

PREFACE:

Well, I don’t have to imagine what it would be like to become a transparent eyeball in a beloved landscape because I’ve actually done it, many times, and I think pretty much everyone should.

I’ve never gone back from seeing my first tree breathe. (Speechless.) My version of the whole transparent-eyeball thing is so deeply ingrained in me that I’m always losing sight of the fact that most people on this campus and planet haven’t done any psychedelics. (Seriously —you described it as one of his “weirder images”, and I’m telling you I didn’t even blink. I was just like, yup, transparent eyeball, I am nothing, I see all; that checks out.)

I wholly espouse Hunter’s take on the matter: “About twice a year you should blow your fucking tubes out with a tremendous hit of really good acid. Take 72 hours and just go completely amuck, break it all down.”

(And I’d really like to emphasize that there’s no facetiousness or cynicism or little subterfugal jabs going on with this one. This is completely-earnest Joe, an occurrence as rare, here at Kenyon, as a zebra with spots instead of stripes or an impolite Chick-Fil-A employee. I feel uninhibited passion about this stuff. I’m a total dork. I hunt down old Tim Leary interviews with the boyish glee of a kid opening a pack of Pokemon cards.)

Anyways — I could fill up a treatise with the reasons psychedelics can save us from the phones and the TikTok and the Instagram and the divisiveness and the poverty and the hate, but for now I’d like to tell you about just one very special day. 

I only have 600 words, but boy, look out when that portfolio comes around. So right now I can only give a kind of bare sketch. But there’s a beauty to that which represents a lot of what I’m trying to get at. So here goes.

ASSIGNMENT:

Julian and I take the acid as we’re finishing up breakfast at Balthasar and the seasoned New Yorker one table over doesn’t even blink as she sees us scraping up the last bits of pill-powder out of the tiny plastic baggie and into our coffees. We shuffle out and it’s raining. 

On the train to the Met, Julian keeps asking me if I feel anything yet. I tell him to be patient. We get off at the Met and walk to the esplanade and some of the shutters on the windows overhanging those beautiful UES apartment-buildings start to move in ways that concrete and metal do not move. Julian can tell it’s kicking in for me. He’s not getting anything yet. He’s anxious. I tell him to calm down. 

Suddenly I really have to pee. The line is long. I’m focused on holding in the piss until I get inside, trying basically to ignore the pulsating staircase underfoot, not out of fear of a bad trip, but of pissing my pants should I get too engrossed in it and forget what the priorities are here. As I’m working this all out in my head Julian’s just looking around, inspecting the structural integrity of static objects, like some sort of prospective homeowner on HGTV. Once I’ve summoned the verve to commit to the idea of holding in this piss — now almost emergency-level — for the next ten or so minutes I look over at Julian and he very calmly points out to me that there are more streams of water in the air than there are jets in the fountain. He gives me a sheepish smile, like “sorry I doubted you”. I’ve brought this acid from Maui.

I get inside and am in such a Mad Max-like rush for the facilities that the initial shock of entering the Met doesn’t even hit me until I’ve emptied my bladder and come back to the lobby. And I’m like, holy shit — I’m on acid at the Met. This has been the plan for weeks and yet I’m still somehow completely and utterly shocked. 

The coat-check guy’s like a Cormac McCarthy character, and the way he says “enjoy yourselves, gentlemen” seems almost too good to be true. (And maybe it was.) But we turn around and, faced with wing upon wing of the world’s most cherished art, decide to spin in a circle with our eyes closed and walk in the direction we end up pointing. 

Greek sculptures, a bunch of crazy paintings — from which emerged this really cool idea that I could’ve done all of prompt #4 on where we weren’t sure where the actual painting was ending and our hallucinations were beginning or if it mattered at all or if we weren’t really any seeing anything, and that whole stream of thought seemed like such a fraught endeavor that, like any responsible galactic docent, I suggested we make our way to some other sector of utter human triumph before the Brian Eno album we had on the AirPods ended.

Up to the Mesopotamian rug room. We were in there for somewhere between twenty minutes and two hours. Not much was said. Would you believe me if I told you that in a museum full of massive sculptures and Rembrandts and Monets the thing that made me want to absolutely genuflect in rapture was this really fucking huge rug? I can’t explain it and I don’t want to try. It was in that room that I turned into a transparent eyeball. I’ve been looking for a term to describe what happened in there for years. Now I’ve got one. 

THE BRIEFEST EPILOGUE:

If you would’ve told me I’d get to write about an acid trip for an upper-level English assignment with complete, unguarded earnestness, I would’ve asked you when exactly I got into the hot tub time machine and transferred to Jack Keroauc School of Disembodied Poetics. Thanks for this one, Brenna. I turn 21 tomorrow and I’m really glad I got to revisit this. 

[uracilcherubs]

> Be the Hivecrasher Limeblood

Yeah, done. Though, does it really count as hivecrashing just because you don’t pay rent? 

Your name is CALLIOPE. You are a lime blood cherub of … well, if you’re honest, you aren’t quite sure how old you are. You’ve tossed around ages in the past, but – as you have also mentioned in the past – time has never really been your strong suit. The whole mess is hardly helped by the multiple sets of memories you have, each one from a different instance of yourself, each one living out longer or shorter lives. Things got…weird…in the Medium, and you try not to think on it for too long.

Suffice it to say, you are OLDER THAN HUMAN THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, and that WORKS ENOUGH FOR YOU. Better to roll with the punches and let the time players sort it out; though the age scale on Umbrage is even more fraught with complications, time travel, extended alternate universes and heaps of sloppy writing.

“i hope that wasn’t sUbtly laid bait for a compliment, “ you say to the open air. “i’m afraid yoU won’t find me an Unbiased critic – or a favoUrable one.”

Kind and sweet and lovable as you are (you chuckle softly at that), you can’t say you have much in the way of fond regard for the life you’ve led , or the unlife for that matter. No, looking back on things, you spent quite a lot of time moping around: moping on your meteor, moping in your session, moping in the dream bubbles, almost 15 times over. So much of your life has been spent moping, moping, moping,  playing the sad, second fiddle to your brother, who hogged more spotlight than any thief of light could hope for.

“we can’t help where oUr mUse takes Us – or oUr lord, as it were!”

You pull a hefty book from the shelf. It’s a new book, of sorts; a reprint of a tome you already own, polished and made new for a brand new audience in a brand new hardcover.  You flip through the pages, delighting at familiar passages. It’s a story you have mixed feelings for, and you can’t say you agree with every direction it took, but in the end it’s a story you devoted years to, and you are content with the fun you had along the way.  You snap the book shut, a look of realization sweeping over your face.

“oh ho,” you start. “perhaps…yes!”

You place the book back on its shelf and rush over to your desk. From a heavy drawer your pull out another book, one heftier and, you admit, a little more worn than some of your others, but one you’ve no less fondness for. You take no care pulling it open (leaving the mystery of its condition apparent to all), making a mad scramble toward its middle. 

You stop not at a fresh page, but one covered in notes and illustrations. A drawing of a large imposing adult cherub dominates the page, his false eye matching his false leg matching his false arm. You don’t particularly care for this chapter of your book—here is where the ties of your shared story really start to tangle and knot – but you can’t help yourself when a previously unconsidered angle dawns on you.

You begin to scribble in what little free space you have on the page, reading your work aloud to the room.

“perhaps, beyond a simple black infatUation, he collected so many serkets for their classpect!”

You scribble in a small sun – the symbol of light players everywhere – into the margin, replacing the center circle with an eight-ball.

“it would certainly sUit Umbrage’s ego, having so many light thieves in one spot…his ship would have made for a veritable narrative magnet!”

You smile at your work and close your unabridged journal, returning it to its place in the desk. You don’t really buy the theory for a second, and you’ve maintained a healthy skepticism of post-canonical word of god, but themes are fun to bring out, even if they’re happy coincidences and even if you just made them up just now.

“bUt i think that’s qUite enoUgh reflecting on the past,” you say, to yourself this time. “we woUldn’t want to get too self indUlgent.”

Anyway.

You stand from your desk and stretch, extending your wings out as you look around your room, which contains a great many deal of your INTERESTS, almost all of them revolving around a WEBCOMIC YOU CANNOT DISCUSS WITH YOUR FRIENDS. Lovely posters line the wall, looking down on figures and plushes you might have abused your powers just a little bit to secure. But  not everything in your room treads into the realm of metatextUal discourse; the walls beam a bright blue, with painted white clouds lazily drifting here and there, all above a carefully (carefUlish!) tiled floor of your design.

It was a thrill, getting to build your own room.  For a brief and chaotic moment, you were able to imagine yourself a troll, out on her own and building her very own hive. And what a hive Callie Ohpeee would live in! With all the books she could ever dream of reading, and divided into hallways of shining gold and striking purple, with free balcony access so she could see the stars and admire the constellations,  and maybe, perhaps, feel a bond with the long-forgotten ancestor she would never know, and-

Ahem.

All that to say, though you didn’t quite follow the design documents of your…fictions… it was a joy being able to put your own direct spin on your living space, just like you were a real troll girl. Though, you recognize, if you were a real real troll girl, you likely wouldn’t live long enough to build your hive palace – barring, of course, all the unculled spinoff au’s where Callie lives long enough to incite a rebellion and lead the lowbloods and forgotten castes into uprising and…okay, look.

You know how this sounds. You do! It is not just for their clumsily written narratives that you look back on your Callie Ohpeee adventures with a grimace. A limeblood messiah rising up and swaying the oppressed into freedom is just less problematic when you’re a naïve cherub who has yet to meet any of the several dear friends who actually lived on Alternian soil, and would take some exception to your…generous interpretation of its actual, real world social dynamics.  It’s just something you had to grow out of!

You’re just grateful it’s an idealism you managed to put a clamp on before you were ever able to enter on a loving treatise about how romantic it would have been to be born on Alternia proper, with an actual lusus and getting to actually navigate the quadrants and…ugh. Okay, that’s enough of that. 

You see what’s happening? All your old fan fictions are coming back to haunt you, and all you wanted to do was think about your cool skaia-inspired room. And it is a very cool room indeed, IN YOUR HUMBLE OPINION.

But despite your best efforts, you fail your attempt at an elegant segue, and your embarrassing trollsona just keeps haunting your think pan brain. You close your eyes and frown as you look back on the life and times of miss Ohpeee. You were so absorbed in your own fantasy version of Alternia, where you were a hero, and didn’t have a hateful brother ruining your life, and you weren’t chained in a small room, and you weren’t ug

You give your head a shake and politely but firmly ask those thoughts to leave. You have, as previously mentioned, spent entirely too much of your life moping, and you are very well not going to let some long-standing insecurities intrude upon your narration anymore!

“and besides,” you say, a smile creeping on your face, “what part of that is fiction anymore? i am very mUch a hero, my brother is qUite dealt with, this room is notably chain-free – and, dear brain, yoU seem to have not caUght onto the fact that we are wonderfully fashionable these days!”

You breathe out the negative feelings with a sigh and give your body another stretch. You take a few more breaths, but the last one slips out as a grumble. Even with the old thoughts shown the door, you find it harder to shake off the discomfort crawling up you, from clawed foot to horned skull. You cannot ignore how aware you are, in this instant, of your own body – the sharpness of your claws, the toughness of your skin, the broadness of your shoulders; the way your cheeks curve out in almost, but by no means exactly, the way the rest of you doesn’t.

You let out another sigh, and while the discomfort doesn’t leave you, you successfully shoo out the heated comments from your brain – commentary you pointedly decide not to dignify with narration. Your smile is somewhat labored, but still sincrere.

It’s been a process, getting to where you are now, and you think you’ve got a long way to go before you can say you’re done. And, perhaps, maybe you’ll never be done – but you know that you aren’t planning on stopping anytime soon.

“i’m sUre i’ll be alright,” you say, and you very much mean it.

[katieiscunning]

MTMTE #7: More like DeciptiCAN’TS

DECEPTICONS!

We’ve already been introduced- via ominous mentions of the carnage they wreck- to the DJD, the Decepticon Justice Division. These guys are the sadists in chief: they have the job of hunting down any Decepticons who turn against the cause and torturing them to death. And now we get to meet them.

They’re currently ‘working’ on Black Shadow, a Phase Sixer (a Decepticon who’s been altered by Megatron to be world-destroying strong), whose exploits we see via an effective little montage of his past chaos, ending on how utterly the DJD have destroyed him in turn.

But while you might know what they do, you don’t yet know who the DJD are. So, without further ado:

Tarn, the leader, wears a Decepticon badge face mask to hide his real identity (all the DJD use aliases but Tarn’s is a plot point and a secret metatextually too). This is interesting to me because it implies that Transformers actually have different looking faces from each other, even if you have to be a Cybertronian to see it. I’d always just assumed they had pretty interchangeable silver vagueness going on. He can, in true scifi style, put his voice into sync with a spark and then talk it to death. He also likes music- namely a piece called the Empyrean Suite. 

Kaon, the least subtle member of the team, turns into an electric chair. He doesn’t have any eyes, but he does have a best friend, namely:

The Pet, a semi-tamed Turbofox (an animal from Cybertron) which he pretends is a Sparkeater.

Helex and Tesarus sort of go in one box together for me- they both have big horrible things in their chests that do big horrible things to robots. Helex uses a giant furnace. Tesarus has a bladed spinning hole thing. 

Vos, the scientist, speaks only in Old Cybertronian and sadly doesn’t have a torture gimmick. That we know of. 

Anyway, together, they fight crime! Or, you know, the opposite. 

After Black Shadow weakly protests that the “war’s over”, Tarn’s had enough and murders him. 

I’m mentioning this specifically because I love it. Tarn is fiercely loyal to Megatron and his ideals, and beyond that, his whole existence is tied so strongly to there being a war that he simply doesn’t understand the concept of there not being one anymore. It’s something that comes up again and again in MTMTE: that all of these characters, from Swerve to Vos, have no idea who they are now. For someone like Tarn, that means becoming worse than he was. He needs to prove to himself that the war isn’t over and he’ll do that via brutal, brutal murder. 

It also gives us what I think is the first mention of Megatron’s writing career via a title drop for his political treatise, ‘Towards Peace’.

It will not be the last.

But the DJD aren’t the only Decepticons around. You’ve seen brutally efficient, cruel and unstoppable, now it’s time to meet…

These guys are the Scavengers. They’re exactly what they sound like- robots who get by through picking over the pieces left behind by the competent. They are:

Crankcase, who is missing the part of his head which let him be happy.

Krok, a historian who’s trying to find his squad.

Flywheels, anxious and afraid.

Spinster, a surgeon who likes shooting stuff more than fixing stuff.

Misfire, who’s easily distracted and also likes to shoot stuff.

As we meet them, they’ve just discovered Fulcrum: well chinned and apparently the only survivor of a massive battle. By ‘discovered’, I mean, of course, that they were about to strip him for spare parts when he ruined their fun by waking up. The Scavengers!

Over a fire- revealed to be a still living Autobot- they talk to Fulcrum, first about the way both sides reduced their soldiers to data, and then about the war being over.

This dialogue is maaaybe the best so far? It’s skillful in dropping emotional exposition at the same time as establishing character at the same time as sounding natural. It would be so easy to turn this into an info dump: instead we get insight.

One of the best moments comes when the ‘fire’ repeats what they’ve already said and what we’ve already heard said to Tarn: that the “war’s over”. Their response is to shoot him. He’s an Autobot and, left on autopilot and without orders, all they know how to do is kill Autobots. It’s senseless and pointless and awful. Like the DJD, they can’t even admit to themselves that there’s nothing to fight for anymore.

Again, I love this. I love these idiot robots having no idea what to do now the war is done. I love that the sheer scale of the conflict is implied so well by these foot soldiers still not really knowing what happened. I love that the war isn’t over because they don’t know what else they are, because war, like any trauma, is carried long after you’ve experienced it. 

The next morning they start scavenging again. Krok annoys Fulcrum by clicking his communicator over and over, trying to get a message to his crew, but before he can completely explain that they’re both interrupted by Misfire. He’s charging across the battlefield to confront a mysterious figure he believes to be the Necrobot- a sort of post death grim reaper who supposedly shows up every time a Cybertronian dies. Of course the guy’s gone before he can get there, instead he finds what just might be a Decepticon ship.

They go on board because they’ve never heard of horror movies on Cybertron and find a few disturbing things. 1, a ceiling covered in brains. 2, half dissected cybertronians. 3, a weird wooden robot. 4, walls covered in dead, organic, bleeding tissue, and worst of all, 5, a message.

It’s not good news. 

But who’s this mystery 7th person? They find out pretty quickly.  

This is Grimlock. He’s a Dinobot, aka a massively powerful robot who can turn into a robot dinosaur because of course that’s a thing.

MEANWHILE

Back on the Lost Light, Rung is somehow not dead. His death in the last issue proper was admitted by James Roberts to be a pretty weak fake out, even if how exactly he survived a head explosion still hasn’t been revealed.

We see a couple of people visit his bedside: Swerve still horror struck at what he’s done, and, more importantly, Red Alert showing up with his recording of the hidden Overlord. 

He leaves the data with Rung, but after he’s gone a mysterious drone steals it.

I like this scene. It’s very short- only a few panels long- but it establishes Red Alert’s growing desperation without the help he needs, and continues to treat his problem as a serious one. 

Chromedome goes to visit Brainstorm, who, as he generally is, is ready to show up Perceptor. 

Domey has no time for that though: he’s brought Brainstorm a gift- Skid’s mystery gun.  He had it in his hand when he showed up, but seemed completely unable to notice it himself. Brainstorm analyses it and says, with full ominous voice in effect, that it seems to come from ‘The Institute’.

I wonder how much of a risk this issue was when it first came out. MTMTE is, after all, normally a comic about B listers and here it’s time away from them to visit the Z end of the alphabet. It feels very much like the whole focus should be on the Scavengers and the DJD- not because their parts of the narrative are rushed but because their story is so separate from the main plot of the book. Maybe it was viewed as too much to completely dump the real cast for an arc.

But plot isn’t the only way to tie a narrative together. This issue, and its conclusion next time, is all about hammering more uncertainty into the binary of Good vs Evil, as well as exposing how much the damage of our past affects us in the present. That’s clearest in the Scavengers and DJD- two very different sides to the same movement, united by their post war trauma but separated by everything else. The Lost Light gang too are revealed to have more going on than being heroes. Someone is undermining Red Alert’s search for the truth, and Brainstorm and Chromedome have a shared and ominous secret.

God, that got dark.

But then, this is a dark story. Not in terms of gore, though the DJD certainly provide that. This is a war story about what what war leaves behind, physically and mentally, and that’s summed up in one image: the abandoned battlefield being picked over by clueless losers

You can get on this fun train by buying the comics over here: https://www.comixology.co.uk/Transformers-More-Than-Meets-the-Eye-2011/comics-series/7279?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC90b3BSZXN1bHRzU2xpZGVy

Written by James Roberts, Art by Alex Milne, published by IDW.

[tekka-wekka]

Vlad/Lisa Fic Idea Posted to Show I Still Have Creative Thoughts

So I love all of Netflix's new Castlevania show, especially the first five minutes where toll Dracula falls head over heels for smoll Lisa. Because we only get five minutes with the happy couple and don't even get to see them coo over little Alucard/Adrian, my brain is of course spinning fic ideas.

So I don’t have to invite more OCs than my brain can handle, I’ll borrow some canon from Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. Dracula-Was-Right-Blonde-Doctors-Are-The-Best-Hector, Tight-Pants-Tattoos-Bondage-Jewelry-Isaac Laforeze, and Why-Can’t-My-Brother-Flirt-Normally-With-Men Julia-Laforeze. The two Devil Forgemasters and the witch, respectively, hang out in Castlevania and give Lisa and Drac someone besides themselves to talk to.

This is going to be an AU where Lisa gets to live at least a little longer, so I’ll put it under a cut in case that doesn’t interest some people (but how could it not??).

Dracula makes one request of Lisa--bathe and brush her teeth daily, because he has a sensitive nose. Lisa’s fine with this, but has some questions about this “indoor plumbing” Dracula keeps talking about. Julia takes responsibility for teaching the only other human-ish woman in Castlevania about hygiene technology and is patient enough to listen when Lisa raves about the incredible impact plumbing could have upon human mortality.

Lisa is one hell of a driven student, pushing herself to study for such long hours that even Dracula has to remind her hey, you humans have to sleep sometimes, right? Dracula falls harder for her every time he has to gently wake her and get her to sleep in her appointed room instead of a laboratory desk, which is always. Dracula also smells Lisa bleeding, assumes it’s merely her “monthly courses,” and says nothing because that would be rude.

(He isn’t interested in the blood because hey, menstrual blood is all mixed up with mucus and uterine tissue, it’d be like a human eating a scrambled egg mixed with chicken shit and feathers)

About a week after Lisa comes to the castle, she asks Julia for help. Lisa has some wounds on her back she’s attempted to treat, but they’re in too awkward a position for Lisa to clean out and bandage properly. Julia gets one look at Lisa’s back and immediately calls for Dracula, because this is far, far above her skill level.

Dracula arrives full of curiosity that turns into rage when he sees Lisa has several infected whip marks on her back. Apparently the clergy in Lupu didn’t like a woman claiming proper wound care was as important as prayer when it came to healing injuries, and she was lashed as punishment.

It’s an ugly business, but Dracula takes care of the wounds as best he’s able. The treatment hurts like hell, and he’s impressed with Lisa’s ability to joke even while he’s applying antiseptic to open wounds. “I must be as blind to the truth of God as the priest claimed, since I’m lying down topless and allowing some sinister man with secret knowledge to touch me.”

Dracula grows super protective as he helps disinfect and heal Lisa’s wounds. By the time her wounds have healed into some gnarly scars, he’s spending most of his waking hours researching human biology with his “patient” and generally being amazed and delighted at how goddamn quick she learns. They rave about the possibilities of medical science together, argue over the effectiveness of teaching peasants how to heal injuries with proven remedies, and debate whether Dracula and his servants are demons from hell.

(Dracula and Isaac are convinced they are. Lisa, Hector, and Julia think otherwise)

Dracula reveals his past to Lisa--once he was Mathias Cronqvist, Crusader. His wife Elisabetha died of an illness while he was fulfilling “God’s” will by besieging the holy land. His twisted desire to avenge himself on “God” by becoming a vampire ended in the death of Sara Trantoul, an innocent woman and the fiance of Leon Belmont, Mathias’s dearest friend. Dracula is now pretty damn skeptical of the existence of God but is damn sure that the Church uses faith to enslave humanity and keep them weak, sick, and poor while the clergy grow in wealth and power by the day.

Even Lisa has to agree he has a point with that, but never stops believing that skepticism towards the Church or not, that’s no reason to hate all of humanity and turn a blind eye to their suffering, especially if someone has knowledge the improve humanity and the power to escape the Church’s efforts to squash said knowledge.

Dracula has to concede she has a point there.

One winter evening, Dracula and Lisa are taking tea and talking on one of Castlevania’s innumerable balconies when snow starts to fall. Dracula has a spark of inspiration and brings out one of the laboratory’s portable microscopes so Lisa can see the hidden symmetry of the snowflakes. Lisa is delighted.

“What incredible beauty, simply awaiting the right tools to reveal itself to the human eye! Think of what wonders are simply waiting for humans to find a way to see them.”

Dracula watches Lisa catch snowflakes and rush them to the microscope and realizes he has to have her around forever, or at least for as long as she’ll tolerate him. He proposes marriage to her right then and there.

(Look Alucard is AT LEAST 18 by the time Trevor and Sypha find him, and Lisa was murdered only 20 years after meeting Dracula. It’s canon Dracula jumped to put a ring on it).

Lisa accepts and gets the shock of her life when she realizes Dracula is serious about giving her a ring, a dress, a ceremony--the works. If he’s gonna marry her he’s gonna marry her.

Dracula designs at least three different wedding dresses, because Lisa deserves the best but he’s not sure what the best is. We’re talking lace and pearls and swan feathers, people. Lisa just sits back and lets him enjoy himself.

And the Ring! The soon-to-be Lady of the Castle must have a RING, one fitting her station. After several long talks with Lisa and poring over several arcane tomes, Dracula and Hector forge a ring out of silver, moonstone, rubies, and Dracula’s own blood. Not only will it protect Lisa from the nasties roaming Wallachia, she’ll have some power over Castlevania itself--enough for the castle to recognize her as someone it must protect.

The ring also fits her perfectly and will never tarnish, but those are side considerations.

The wedding is the supernatural event of the millennium. Werewolves howl in homage as succubi escort the bride to her groom, Lisa outshines the full moon with happiness as Dracula lifts her veil, and Castlevania itself shakes with cheers as Lisa and Dracula exchange rings. 

The wedding night is awkward, at first. Lisa’s never had sex and Dracula hasn’t had sex in a while. They take several treatises and manuals to bed and study them before and during the act. It’s awkward. There’s laughter. There’s also a lot of satisfaction.

Lisa convinces Dracula to “travel as a man” for the first time after their week-long honeymoon. (Lisa enjoys being a married woman but not even vampire lovin’ can keep her away from the books for more than a week). Dracula lasts all of a week away from Lisa before paranoia (and horniness) drives him back to Castlevania and the marriage bed.

With Lisa and Dracula always being so happy to see each other, it’s not long before Lisa notices hey, my period’s late and the smell of food cooking in the morning makes me want to blllLLAAARGH oh thank god I turned away from the books in time. 

Dracula worries over Lisa’s sudden illness until she tells him she’s likely pregnant. Then he’s PANICKED.

After Lisa calms him down and convinces that yes, I know women die from pregnancies, yes I want to keep our baby anyway, yes I acknowledge our baby may not be human but I still want to TRY and keep it, Dracula becomes the most involved father Wallachia has ever seen. 

He visits every single midwife in Translyvania and nearly gives several heart attacks. The finest craftsmen in all of Eastern Europe find themselves inundated with orders for beautiful gowns that fit loosely around the middle, jewel-encrusted cradles, rattles and bottles and booties fit for an imperial princeling.

Like with their wedding, Lisa sits back and lets Dracula enjoy himself. It gets him out of her hair. She’s got enough to deal with, now that blood smells oddly tasty. Carrying a vampire’s baby has some weird side effects.

Trevor Belmont’s father hears rumors that Dracula is forcing some poor peasant woman to carry his demonic seed. The Belmont clan has been enjoying not having to storm Castlevania, but Trevor’s father gears up to see if Lisa needs rescuing. There’s nearly a fight when Trevor’s father finds Lisa and Dracula sees a warrior with a whip near his beloved wife (Dracula always and reverently kisses Lisa’s scars when they are in bed together). Fortunately, Trevor’s father is amendable to reason and willing to let Lisa stay with Dracula. The Belmonts have enough to deal with when it comes to cyclopes and werewolves and lesser demons, why the hell stir up Dracula when he’s living quietly with his wife?

When Adrian is born, Dracula is banished from the room. No one’s concerned about him smelling blood and trying to eat Lisa; they’re concerned about him smelling blood and becoming the first vampire to die of a stroke.

Adrian is perfect and nothing anyone could ever say would convince Dracula and Lisa otherwise. Lisa wants more. Dracula’s not sure he could survive the fear and joy of seeing her with more of their children.

When Adrian grows up and brings home his lover Trevor Belmont and his lover’s lover Sypha Belnades, Dracula’s not sure he’ll survive that, either. 

[ainsleyabbott]

Pepper-Up, Buttercup

@aberrantarchie

Ainsley’s ears were still smoking from the Pepper-Up Potion she had taken from The Daily Prophet’s staff supply cupboard (the Prophet understood that sick and injured writers were rarely great writers, and the news moved at a fast enough pace that there just wasn’t time to go to St. Mungo’s sometimes...especially when going there might mean admitting where and how one had acquired said injury, so they kept a goodly stock of basic --and some no-so-basic-- remedies on hand for free staff use). Unlike the usual annoying-but-swift process of recovery that generally accompanied use of a Pepper-Up, this time Ainsley was feeling, if anything, worse than before.

And to add insult to injury, her ears were still smoking anyway. If the potion was doing to be a dud, the least it could was be a dud all the way...but no. Instead, she got to bear-with the annoying trail of smoke without the accompanying relief of wellness. It wasn’t fair.

She wanted a distraction from her physical misery, so she had caught the Knight Bus (lacking a familiar Fabian face this time, alas) to the South, planning to immerse herself in a lovely little library there she knew -- not a public establishment, but Ainsley’s treatise on Runic Inversion of the Post-Nordic Revival had caught the interest of the witch who ran it, and their ensuing correspondence had garnered Ainsley access to the private stacks. Unfortunately, as the note bespelled to the door informed her, the old woman was off visiting her great-grandchildren for two months and the library was thus inaccessible.

Not wanting the trip to be a complete waste -- and wincing with anticipatory pain at the idea of climbing directly back onto the bus to rattle her way back to London -- Ainsley had cast-about for something else to do in West Sussex and hit upon a surprising option: the Selwyn-Macmillains lived nearby, she remembered. She had attended a party there only a few months ago (much to her sister’s surprised delight; Ainsley had thought it prudent not to tell Nessie that their invites had come because of her secret vigilante activities and not, as she allowed her sister to surmise, through any success of Ainsley’s at hob-nobbing with the elite) and had, at the time, made note of how close it was to the little library. At the time, it had been with the wistful thought of retreating to said library -- but, well. That reasoning didn’t matter now.

Of course, it was probably considered a great breach of social etiquette to just drop-in on people of the Selwyn-Macmillans’ standing, but Ainsley’s head was spinning and she would have nearly committed murder for a hot cup of tea just now. Surely even if they were too occupied to see her themselves, they would at least allow her to spend a few minutes warming-up in one of their superfluous parlors...

With thoughts of an impending cuppa to bolster her, Ainsley pushed aside any concerns for mere rudeness and rang the bell. To her relief, the House Elf than answered didn’t even keep her waiting on the stoop but instead ushered her straight inside (Ainsley didn’t let that go to her head; the most likely surmise was taht the Selwyn-Macmillans had instructed their elves to admit anyone from the Order, in case of emergencies) and let her flop gratefully into a soft chair. The warmth of the fire in the grate, the comfortable embrace of the cushions, her own increasingly-aching limbs, all conspired to drag Ainsley’s eyelids down into a half-doze that broke with a start when a noise from the doorway alerted her to a new presence.

“Oh!” she said, struggling to blink gummy eyes open and to push herself to a more upright posture, “Archie! My apologies for just -- dropping-in unannounced, and all, know it’s awful rude, but I happened to be in the neighborhood and just thought -- you know, thought I’d stop and see how you are. You and Isla both, I mean. How you’re doing. With everything.”

Oh that had gone well. Ainsley cringed at herself in a combination of embarrassment and bewilderment; no, she didn’t have Nessie’s bold social acumen, but she wasn’t usually this bad. It must be the brain-fog of this oddly Pepper-Up resistant cold, or whatever it was, sapping her coherence the same way it was her energy.