#as someone who has written too many tens of thousands of words about precisely this subject

[astringofmadhousefloozies]

Ghost Wedding: The Remix

So, uh, here’s the first actual fanfic I’ve written, and the first full length piece I’ve written in literal years. I wrote it for my own amusement, after weeks of eating up various bits of TWST lore and scenes and going “But, how would the whole Ghost marriage story have gone with a Yuu who was more like me a goth bisexual disaster?

What follows is a series of vignnetes, starring a Yuu who’s the only girl in NRC, with deeply questionable taste, told in the second person. Please let me know if you enjoyed it, I crave positive feedback and like when other people enjoy the things I like.

Contend warnings for blood, body horror, emeto, coarse language and pretentious word choices.

You've been here a while. En-Arr-See wasn't precisely a safe place, what with your dorm being a condemned hellpit of tetanus and black mold, and powerful magicians having mutagenic psychotic breaks only curable by kicking their ass so hard it flies out their mouth. But certainly, it wasn't boring, and you'd made friends. You had your scrappy ginger Ace in the hole; your serious mamas-boy Deuce; your funny little not-a-cat Grim. Hell, you even have your Horned Boy, he of the poison-coloured eyes that never seem to leave your face when you talk about fun things like books and music and the moral imperative of dissolving the monarchy. And, you were on speaking terms with a good chunk of others. So, when your favourite little robot came up to Crowley, yelling something about ghosts kidnapping his brother, you took his hand and said, "Ortho, show me what's going on." After all, you won't let anything happen to Idia. You have plans for him yet.

~*~*~*~

Some beauties might launch a thousand ships, and in your (objectively correct) opinion, while Idia's beauty wouldn't lead to a ten year siege of Troy, he'd certainly convince everyone attending Whitby Goth Weekend to haul off into the sea with a beat of his lashes. The first time you'd seen him, you'd simply stared in slack-jawed awe. He was luminescent; even leaving behind the fiery hair that flashed and swelled behind him, his eyes were a bright clear amber, and his skin translucent, with his own blue veins serving as the detailing in the marble. Add in the deeply circled eyes and the bluish discolouration of the lips, and the figure he presented was arresting, astounding, more beautiful and unreal than anything you'd conjured up after staying up all night reading ghost stories. "Magnificent," you'd said to yourself, and if your friends gave you a strange look, well, fuck 'em. They have no sense of beauty or taste.

Unfortunately, the intensity of your gaze proved too much for him, and he'd fled. You'd had no time to pursue the object of your infatuation either, class would soon begin, and Grim was yelling. Later, then. There's all the time in the world to ask after the fine young man with the lamplight eyes.

~*~*~*~ "Oh no," you said when Ortho showed you the video. "She's really hot."

Grim gawked and Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you take from this?"

"You're the one with an all-boys school. What's a girl like me to do when a pretty girl pops up?"

"She's a ghost, Yuu."

"That's the best part."

"My brother-"

"I'll help you, dear." You set a hand on Ortho's shoulder. "He must be so frightened, right? I'll do what you need." 

Before anyone could say anything else, a racket started up outside, and things got a little busy.

~*~*~*~ "Do you mind if I sit?"

Idia looked up at you. starting at the intrusion. His face was awash in blue from the conjured screens around him, his lips gone black. "...Why?"

"Tables are full. I'd rather not eat standing." He didn't explicitly say no, so you settled across the table, a few chairs down. He made a fascinating tableau as you picked at your lunch, flicking through and typing at the screen. Lines of code, schematics for all sorts of tech, occasional comics all flit across the pane of light in a million shades of blue. Until...

"Could you pretend I'm a bug?"

You squinted. "What." What the actual hell did he mean by that.

"Pretend I'm not here. I'm beneath notice."

You stop for a moment and smile, faint enough that he can't see the devil in it. "You want me to treat you like an insect."

"Yes." Hard to see in the light, there was a small twitch by his temple, a barely perceptible shake in his long fingered hands.

"Alright." With that, you slide down the table to directly across from him, settle you chin in your hands, and stare at him unblinkingly.

"?!?!?" The squawk he made was undignified and deeply, deeply endearing. "What are you doing?"

"You asked me to treat you like an insect." You smile at him, full of mischief and good cheer. "So I'm looking at you very closely. I'm taking in every sweet action, and delighting that the day has conspired to put something so wonderful in front of me."

Oh, who would have thought that this blue boy could turn so pink! As he pulled his hood up, you chuckle and move back to your tray. "I'll let you be," you say, and did indeed, for the amount of time it took him to close up shop and flee back to the depths of Ignihyde. When you waved at him as he went by, he nearly tripped in his haste.

~*~*~*~ "Stop laughing."

The boys did not listen.

"May others show you the kindness you've shown Idia if you're in a bind."

"You're just mad because she's gonna kill your-"

"Grim? Shut the fuck up. Now; who's helping."

After a chorus of 'no's, you drag your fingers through your hair. "I hate all of you so fucking much right now... Ortho, your ideas?"

Ortho's idea was deeply enticing but Crowley would not have the school leveled, and thankfully, the two of them threatened and guilted the others into helping. You'd have to say thank you later, but god, then Crowley might think you actually liked him instead of just finding him funny, and who needed that in their life?

"Alright, so... A plan?"

~*~*~*~ As badly as he might've liked to have escaped, there was only one empty seat in the class, and it was by him. So, Idia threw his hood up, along with his headphones, and started blatantly ignoring you.

"Idia." Silence.

"Idia." A faint grunt and he turned away from you.

"Shroud," you intoned in the most sepulchral tone you could, setting you hand in his field of vision. He whipped his head at you, the fire in his eyes nothing compared to the changing colours on his head.

"WHAT."

You raise your hands in supplication, trying to still your racing heart. "I'm sorry dude. I wanted to ask where you got your screens?"

"My screens?" His eyes flicked back to his schoolwork, hovering in the air. "I made them myself."

Your face lit up in awe. "That's amazing dude, holy shit. How'd you do that? It's a damn miracle."

"Ah... well..." Two sides warred within him - pride that someone recognized his tech genius, and his deep seated anxiety that anyone trying to be nice was just fucking with him. Fortunately for both of you, pride won out. "It's certainly something complicated for a magicless normie like you to understand." He raised a questioning eyebrow. "Do you really want to hear?"

You fixed him with a level look. "Never call me that again. Now, start like I'm five and go from there."

He stared back at you, and you stared right back. "Indulge me, Idia."

He gave you a smile full of sharp, crooked teeth, and while you tried to still the palpitations the sight of them gave you, he started with very basic theory, and went from there.

~*~*~*~ "You are not going to seduce the ghost bride, Yuu."

"Why the hell not?"

"You're a girl?"

"You're kinda plain."

"You're fat."

"She's probably straight?"

You point in turn at Leona, Azul, Vil, and Kalim. "So?, no I'm plenty hot actually, get fucked, and... Okay, That is a good point. But Kal, you have no idea how many straight girls I've managed to kiss."

"I think you'd die, Shrimpie," Floyd said as he flopped heavily over your shoulders, giggling as you attempted to untangle yourself. "And you're short."

"Yeah, but you have no idea how hot I am when I'm actually try- Shut up, Vil - Like, I clean up so good you guys. I even made a suit a couple weeks ago -"

"That's convenient? Weirdly so?"

"I found suiting that wasn't moth eaten and decided to have fun, at least-" You finally escape from the noodly arms of Leech the Wild One. "Let me suit up and show you? I can be so sexy, you guys. Come on."

In answer to the confused silence, you took your keys out of your pocket and chucked them at Deuce's confused face. "Adeuce! Grim! It's on the vanity in my room!"

"But ghosts?"

"Say you're clearing out things so that we won't bother... No, actually just go the balcony way."

"You can't unlock the balcony from the outside without a lockpick, it only locks from the inside."

A moment of silence. "Lilia, what the fuck?"

He shrugged. "I moved everything two inches to the left once to see if you noticed."

"I wasn't imagining things?!?"

This'll take a moment to sort out, and the clock is ticking...

~*~*~*~ You truly liked the woods! Green and quiet. Full of things that crawled and scurried, little friends that squeaked and croaked and hissed. The occasional precious treasure of a small bone or edible mushroom. So, you were quite surprised when you found Idia, miserable, crouched beside a fallen log.

"... Skipping gym?" Going by the uniform, the most likely answer. "Or did you finally realize that outside doesn't always bite?"

He scowled at you, and you stifled a giggle when you realized that yes, he was actually covered in bug bites. "They should replace this with a mall."

"You hate malls. Too many people." You reached out a hand, and pulled him to his feet. Idly, you wondered if he'd let you try and fit your hands around his waist, but thought better of asking.

"Game stores are alright. No one bothers you in one, or in arcades. And." He stopped, as he brushed the dirt from his legs, before continuing in a mumble you only got the gist of.

"Me and Ortho will be your big, scary guard dogs?"

"... Who'll notice me with both of you?"

"Everyone." Because he's the most beautiful person in the room, and they'd be mad not to look. "Because you show up so rarely. It makes it all the more noticeable when you are out, so everyone pays attention." You held out a hand. "I'll take you out the back way so you don't get in trouble."

No dice. He held his hands in close. "I'll just follow."

"Alright. Why'd you go out this far in the woods with no map, anyways?"

"There's no cell service..."

"Clearly, we need to turn your blood into a wi-fi signal, instead of liquid sugar."

He huffed, but he did follow you, and was actually approaching a good mood once you escorted him through the Ramshackle gates.

~*~*~*~ "Hey, what did I miss?" It took entirely too long to get a single lock of hair to to a perfect insouciant flip over your forehead, even with the eternally stylish Sam's help.

"She's slapped everyone who went to propose, and when she does you're paralyzed for 500 years."

"Christ," You say as you adjust a pin on your lapel. "We have to get Idia back, he'll get what? A week before he gets the hand."

"She's so fussy!" yelled Grim. "You have to sing and have a dog and she hates poison flowers."

"Clearly, she has no taste." Honestly,you thought her taste was just fine, what with thinking Idia was the finest of the bunch. He was very princely, if your tastes ran to exquisite corpses with the personality of a neurotic goblin. "Who wouldn't want poison blossoms?" Tie? No tie? Tie? No tie? No tie. And unbutton. Leona wishes he had this chest.

"We know she has no taste because she chose Idia."

You chose to ignore that, and clapped. "Okay, Round Two!"

~*~*~*~ The truest tragedy of this school was that it was all boys. Not that boys were bad by any means, you certainly enjoyed them, but... girls. Tall girls! Short girls! Busty girls! Petite girls! Butch girls! Femme girls! Fat girls! Girls!

So many kinds of girls, and you, in all of your plump and handsome glory, were the only girl in an entire high school. Welcome to hell.

You accepted no gifts that came unvetted. You had friends ward the everloving bajeezus out of your dorm room. Grim was more than happy to test your food and drink for tampering, but it was exhausting. You at least knew that any food you ate at the Mostro Lounge was clear, but that was only because everyone was too damn scared of the eternally hovering Floyd to try anything while there.

 So, you eat a lot of vending machine snacks.

You've been standing there for fifteen minutes, trying to figure out the best combo with your limited funds, when someone coughed behind you.

"??? Oh, hey Idia." You stepped aside while he shuffled up to the glass and peered in. "Anything to recommend? I got this." You waved your bill in the air.

He only looked at you a moment before looking back at the machine. "That won't get you much."

"Ah, don't I know it. But it's all I got."

He still wasn't looking directly at you, but a smile started to creep across his face. "Get your bag."

"Wha-" He was already tapping out a beat with the keypad, blue sparks flying from his fingertips, the machine starting to groan and shiver. With a final note, the snack machine gave a final heaving shudder - and every single snack fell to the bottom of the machine.

He was so proud as he smiled at you, reaching down and pulling a single bag of gummies from the spilled mess. "You first."

And, as you stuffed your schoolbag and pockets full of thieved goods, praising his genius, his cleverness, his skills, he just glowed.

~*~*~*~ "I guess you were ahead of the game, Yuu. She hates that no one's dressed up properly. And..."

"And? You raised an eyebrow at Ace.

"You do look stylish. But you need backup."

"Of course. You'll all rescue people while I distract her!”

"But what if she slaps you?"

"You'll step in if that happens. But we have to dress you all up."

"Did you makes spares?"

"No." Tragic, everyone would look so cute in summerweight green wool. "Let's ask Sam, he's got everything."

~*~*~*~ "Okay, Ortho, you see?" You held his back to your chest, and raised your hand in front of his face, palm away from him. As you wiggled your fingers, you could see movement on the back of your hand. "Those are tendons. Those, and the muscles, are what move the bones, make your hands move. If you put your fingers here," you say as you place his fingertips over the moving lines, "you should be able to feel it."

"I do! They go up and down. What's the popping?"

"That's my faulty joints, we'll cover those another day. Now," you flipped your hand over, and moved his fingers to your wrist. "You feel that?"

"That is your pulse! It's not as string as it should be."

"I'm not always in the best of health. So, Ortho. My hand moves by muscles and tendons when I think of it. My blood moves through my body, one beat at a time, and you can feel it. Right?"

"Right."

"You," you say, as you take Ortho's other hand. "Your hand moves by motors and servos, when you think about it. Electricity and magic moves through your body, in beats so fast we can't perceive it, and it's as measurable as my pulse."

"... Because I am a robot."

"Because you are a bit different. But we're both alive, we're both real, just in different ways." You turn to look at Ortho directly, and he looks back at you with yellow eyes that are actual, real lamps. "Don't let anyone ever say you're not real, or alive, or good enough, just because you're different."

And though you can't see it, you can feel Idia smiling from the corner of his room.

~*~*~*~ Alright. No more time for memories, only the here and now. You've got a heart full of love, a pocket full of ring, and a head full of stupid. You're as prepared as anyone else who went in. Start on your left foot, and...

"Hello? Excuse me?" You make a cursory knock at the doorframe before stepping in. "I heard there was a wedding."

The bride - Eliza - whirled on you, and stopped. She was even more of a vision in person, airy translucence and fine, sweet features currently arranged in confusion. "Ah- Yes! I'm getting married to my darling Prince Idia! Right away, so-"

Not if I have my way about it, you thought to yourself as you arranged yourself in a perfect bow, one hand behind your back. You pretended not to notice Idia trussed up with rope, but you filed the sight away for later. "How wonderful. I wish you only happiness. But it must wait."

Before she could get her hand ready, you straightened and fixed her with your best smile. "My dearest princess, I cannot let this happen until I dance with the most beautiful person in this room. It would be improper to do so with a newlywed, and I cannot know peace until I dance. Would you be so kind, my fair princess?"

She was still baffled. "Aren't you a girl?"

You keyed up the brightness. "I am, and I dance very well. Would you indulge me, my dear?"

You could see her considering it. "You... are rather princely. Can you lead?"

"Of course. May I?" Again with the bow, and to your delight, she returned with a flawless curtsy. Hand in hand, you began.

~*~*~*~ It was delightful, to dance with this silly ghost girl. Everywhere your bodies touched, from her hand in yours to what would have been a fine chest, but was instead a clean and elegant ribcage festooned with pearls, heat seeped away and left only a chill as cold as clay. Her footwork was flawless, considering she no longer had feet, and she was so easy to chat with. She asked you about your dog (none currently, but you'd love to have one, and there was Grim in the meantime), your singing, (little voice to speak of, but that was what vocal coaches were for), and why you wanted to dance with her (because when would the chance ever come again? Unless fairest Eliza considered her for forever and a day.)

"But what of dear Idia?" She'd almost looked towards where Idia no longer was, having been unknotted long ago, but you drew her back in before she could notice the chaos around her.

" 'Dear Idia', though as beautiful as the moon in the sky, has cold feet, my love. He's afraid of dying. But I? I'd cherish you for all of eternity." You leaned in closer. "I am not afraid of dying, beloved. To journey with you through realms beyond mortal reach. I can think of nothing more exciting than to cross the barrier to the other side, hand in hand with you. In the words of a fine sir from my home, 'to die by your side/the pleasure, the privilege is mine'. Please, please consider me, please..."

Here's how it should have gone: She said yes, and you put the ring on her finger, and all was well. But you'd awakened such a sweet hunger in her, she could not wait for propriety. Instead, she grasped your face and kissed you with the passion of five hundred years search, found.

~*~*~*~ It was so pleasant at first, that you couldn't help but return it. When had anyone ever kissed you with such passion? But quickly, the chill began to overtake you. It could have been bearable, but after that was pain. You started to shake, uncontrollably, as every nerve in your body was scraped away with a rusty blade, and as you weakly tried to push away, as blood began to flow from your eyes, your mouth, every pore and orifice, she still would not let go. All you could think was it hurts it hurts it hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts and, as you slipped to a grey place beyond where pain could touch you, you barely noticed the cacophony around you, or something hurtling towards the two of you from the corner of your eye.

Something blue.

~*~*~*~ When you finally woke up, through a drugged and painful haze, you couldn't tell where you were. When you jolted up, the pain of it sending you into a nauseated fit of blood-flecked coughing, a familiar yelp sounded, and you turned to see Idia, little the worse for wear.

"You're up, uh..." He fumbled something onto the table, behind his back. "I."

You just looked. At him, at the surroundings. A hospital bed, with gifts and flowers (most filched from the wedding venue, but someone had stuck Jade's poison blossom into a vase and set it in the far corner). Idia was the only one present, seeing as it was the middle of the night.

"Ortho's getting things you might need. I... I hate hospital scenes..."

"Hurt's over.” You tried to settle yourself more comfortably, failing miserably. “Here comes the comfort." You reached out a hand, as he looked anywhere in the room but you.

"Idia." Silence.

"Idia." More silence.

"Shroud." He hesitantly placed his hand in yours, tinting pink as you pulled the sleeve up. The sight of it made you gasp. His fine wrist, so small even you could put your fingers around it, was mottled with deep bruising, blacks and purples set so deep into the skin that there was crusted blood on the surface, despite being unbroken. It was so, deeply, incredibly...

Beautiful. It was all you could do, not to press your lips to his wrist and taste his pulse as it flitted under his skin. To clean the blood away with your own tongue and cover the marks that your hungry ghost princess had made with your own teeth. Not hers. Yours.

Really, no wonder you'd been so enchanted with Eliza. You're cut of the same cloth.

"It must hurt."

He jerked his hand away, making you both wince. "What the hell is wrong with you? They only reason you're not dead is everyone pouring so much healing magic into you that it exhausted almost everyone. I." You could see flickers and flashes of orange sparking along the full length of his hair. "I'm not worth dying for. Why?"

What do you tell him? That it was the right thing to do? That you wanted to prove that you could woo a pretty girl? That you didn't want him dead? That you were a possessive bitch that couldn't stand the idea of someone else having him, even if unwilling on his part? All were true, but what do you say?

It proved a moot point, as when you opened your mouth to say something, anything, something shifted within you, and the only thing Idia received was a gout of blood square in his face.

~*~*~*~ After you'd slept, you reached for your phone in the thin morning light. Your friends where texting well wishes and condolences, and explanations of what happened after you went down (It seemed Idia had tackled Eliza clean off of you, and after some chaos she ran off with her retainer, rending this entire day moot). Even more interestingly, you found a text from an unknown number:

- I'm still mad at you.

You huffed to yourself, and after a bit of thought, start to text back.

- Dude I'm so sorry about the uh. blood puke. - I'll pay for cleaning - Also you know, you could have just asked for my number a long time ago? - Like a normal person? - Who doesn't break into phones to steal said numbers while I was unconscious next to you, what the fuck dude - That's not what this is about though. - You've got every right to be mad - That whole day was traumatizing, and you didn't deserve any of it - I'd rather sort this out in person but if text is easier for you right now we can do that - One last thing though

You stopped, and thought Do I actually do this? and went what the hell.

- I still need that dance I went in to get from you

[andmaybegayer]

Long Poetry Wallowposting

One of my favourite poems is William Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow” (or “XXII” if you’re being dipshit about it), not because it’s an exceptional poem, but because of the circumstances surrounding the first time I read it.

In 2015 I convinced two of my friends to join me for a multidisciplinary academic competition thing. One of the rounds was the independent essay, which has an interesting twist: your team of three gets all three essay topics (critique a given essay, write an essay on a topic, and analyze a poem) and you have 30 minutes to discuss and split the topics before a 90 minute solo writing period.

(I could write another extended post about the bureaucratic shenanigans I went through surrounding that competition, someone remind me to tell that story sometime.)

I don’t remember what the other two topics were, but the poem was to analyze William Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow”, a poem which looks like this:

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

Now, I got roped into this competition by a teacher who I did not know and who gave us no more detail other than “Get a team of 3 together and I’ll vouch for you to skip a day of school and attend this competition” so we did not know that there was actually a published list of poems, books and artpieces that you should have studied before coming to this competition, including John Campbell’s “Hero with a thousand faces” and Jeff Koons’ “Puppy”.

So we were in for this Sight Unseen, No Background. We didn’t even know who Williams was.

Fortunately for me, my friends are horrible nerds. We’re not the dead poets society but we were still the kind of people who, bored in the back of english class, would write short poems and read each other’s shitty writing and who had fun proving that the integral of e^x was e^x and we took part in OTHER competitions and would show off obscure academic skills to each other and we thought that was cool. We were not lost at sea here.

So we stare at this for a second. With zero context, what the hell does this mean. Chicken is an implicitly funny word, of course, but that’s the 2000′s talking and this must be the 1900′s sometime. The enjambment is interesting but nothing crazy here, this isn’t e.e. cummings (not a fan by the way) and so, there’s really not a lot to look at. We spent ten minutes throwing ideas back and forth before almost simultaneously coming to the conclusion. This is just a scene, being described in poetry.

We discuss this idea for a few more minutes, and we allocate the actual writing of the essay to a friend (I messaged him about this to make sure I had my story straight) and then time was up, and we turned to our individual essays.

Reader-response analysis is a school of literary theory that is, some would say, kinda garbage. It asks the reader “what did that work make you think of, what did that work make you feel” and treats that as ground truth. The reader is an active element in this, and the way the reader feels is of course very flexible, leading many people to conclude that it is useless, since the reader is an unknown quantity here. Well, reader-response analysis is not actually garbage and can be a very useful tool in your literary toolkit if used appropriately. We all found we had the same reader’s response: a clear mental image of a scene. Maybe the floor is gravel, maybe it’s grass. There is a wheelbarrow leaned up against a shed, gleaming with the last drops of rain. A chicken pecks around nearby, with more close at hand. The smell of a heavy night of rain persists, the light is the bright cold glow of a wet morning that can shine without burning off the dew just yet.

So, that’s what we found. There’s no deeper meaning here. This poem is simply conveying to you the idea. We, of course, being dweebs, took it further. Attempting to find deeper meaning in this poem demonstrates an inability to take information at face value. Sometimes the pipe is just a pipe. Sometimes the red wheelbarrow is just a red wheelbarrow.

Turns out, that analysis is correct. At the time this was written, Williams was busy doing Imagism, which means he was being economical with words and precise with meaning. The poem is short because it needn’t be long. There’s some chickens and a wheelbarrow. The Wikipedia article for this poem is hilarious, there’s a section of quotes from people who believed there was a deep hidden meaning about a dying child Williams had cared for (he was a doctor) who had a red wheelbarrow as a toy. This explanation is nonsense, and I have rarely enjoyed reading someone being wrong as much as I have enjoyed reading phrases like:

At the time, I remember being mystified by the poem. However, being properly trained in literary criticism, I wondered what the real meaning of the poem was, what it was really about. ... What is left out of Williams' poem is the fact that when he conceived that image he was sitting at the bedside of a very sick child (Williams was a medical doctor). The story goes that as he sat there, deeply concerned about the child, he looked out the window, saw that image, and penned those words.

Of course you can't figure it out by studying the text. The clues aren't there. This poem was meant to be appreciated only by a chosen literary elite, only by those who were educated, those who had learned the back story (Williams was a doctor, and he wrote the poem one morning after having treated a child who was near death. The red wheelbarrow was her toy.)

and knowing that, you’re all wrong, get fucked. It’s just a wheelbarrow. According to Williams himself, he just saw this scene in a fisherman’s backyard and wrote a poem about the scene. I looked all this up the day after the competition, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt as good about a literary analysis.

Now don’t get me wrong, the curtains are sometimes blue for a reason. But in this case, absent any information indicating otherwise, the wheelbarrow really is just red because that’s what the author saw. In some cases you can draw additional meaning out of a work but it requires just as much discipline to read deeply as to prevent yourself reading too deep. We avoided the trap.

I think about this poem infrequently, maybe once every couple months. I can still recall it from memory. It is still an influential point of reference whenever I try to write something. I tried writing some Imagist works in high school, and I had those same friends read them. They thought I might prefer realism instead. Unfortunately it turns out that most of the time, I don’t find realism to be the best fit.

XXII by William Carlos Williams is a good poem, but maybe, not for you.

[chanelpirate]

OP this is blatant Prussian state propaganda

Absolutely hot take but the Baron Alexander has a huge cock

Just look

[sarcasmisakindofmagic]

And I, seeking safe harbour, found it between the pages of a book

Pairing: Santiago Garcia x fem!reader

Word count: 2,200

Warnings: Tom prefers the movie to the book. one (1) swear word. This is a yearning sort of fluff.

A/N: This is unbeta’d so please forgive any typos 

It started, as so many things did for Santiago Garcia, in a bookshop.

The bookshop of his childhood had been haphazard and dusty, second hand books piled high above his head; unending towers of adventures waiting for him to read. They had been browning at the edges, marginalia scrawled in a rainbow of colours in thousands of different hands - previous readers accompanying him on his journey and adding wry remarks to the story. 

His abuela had taken him there every Wednesday after school. It had just been the two of them, the cousins relegated to helping abuelo on the farm, but Santi as the baby could help abuela with the town errands. She always got him one book to add to his collection.

Le Morte d’Arthur was a favourite, the binding long since giving up the ghost. Pages held together by string and Santi turning each page with a gentle caress, weighting down each pile with carefully selected rocks - flat, nothing to tear the paper.

Santi had gone back to the bookshop once after Abuela died. The day before he was due to leave town to hit bootcamp. He handed a fresh copy of Le Morte d’Arthur to the volunteer behind the desk, complete with scrawled annotations and inscription.

There hadn’t been many bookshops on the tours he’d taken, occasional lingering moments of perusing the shelves. Frankie knew to leave him alone with the potential stories, a quiet nod and he’d be off to stake out a quiet spot. The whole team would find him later, passively guarding enough space for them to guard each other’s backs. Tom never got the message always hovering, making comments about how he always preferred the movies anyway, Santiago stopped looking for bookshops with him around. Will and Benny usually came as a pair. Benny burning off energy, as Will followed more placidly. Ironically it had been Benny who understood the most, Will losing himself to music more easily than the written word.

“Books, man, I could do that anywhere. It’s active, y’know? Music just happens to you, but i can lose myself in a book.” Benny had told him once, dropping a Du Maurier novel in his lap with a sly grin and only offering a shrug when anybody asked where he’s got an english copy in the middle of bumfuck nowhere redacted.

On the long flights where Benny literally couldn’t sleep, and Santi had too many possibilities running through his head, they’d swap books, making little notes and hiding dicks in the centre folds so they’d get bigger as the book opened.

Half their friendship had been little doodles of dicks, drawn at the most heartfelt and profound moments of classics. Oddly it completely summed Benny up.

The local bookshop was a hidden gem. After Colombia he hadn’t sought out the written word for so long the impulse to go in surprised him enough that he was inside before he’d really thought about it. The shelves inside were crammed full, small hand-painted signs letting him know the genre in which he found himself. There was no military precision to be found here, plenty of space to get lost and find a gem no one had wanted to read in years. The ghost abuela murmured approvingly in his ear, old advice echoing ‘Books need readers, nieto, always find a story that has taken someone on the journey before.’

Occasionally, there would be little stacks of books as new orders came in, the shelves too full to make room for the new arrivals. Regulars moved round them, or paused to run the pad of one finger down the spines, a momentary introduction to a potential new companion.

Hidden around a corner was a tiny café area, only enough to seat maybe ten people, it wasn’t advertised outside - Santiago had never seen every seat taken, though he certainly recognised the regulars by now.

There was the local Rabbi who would tuck himself in the corner with a hot tea and write, occasionally muttering under his breath in Hebrew as he wrestled his sermon into existence. Two students, who were not dating but should be, occupied the table with book wedged under the leg to make it stop wobbling. They were always in contact with one another, limbs seeking the other’s warmth. They didn’t have a schedule but were never in before noon and had only once been spotted on a Thursday. 

A young mum who sat by herself on Saturday mornings and absorbed the quiet, she’d once fallen asleep, resting her head on the shelves. Santiago had woken her at her usual departure time, to flustered thank yous, ‘her twins were at ballet classes and her husband was away-’. She’d been out the store and earshot before she’d finished speaking but a little plate with a huge slab of shortcake had been waiting for him the Saturday after, with ‘Thank you’ iced across the top. There had also been a card with a little boy and girl dancing ballet together impressively drawn in crayon, with capitalised signatures.

Santiago had it in a frame at his house and refused to explain it to anyone that asked beyond a bland, “It’s a thank you card.” 

Only Will had taken more than a beat to move on, absorbing the bright colours and wobbly letters. The clap on Santi’s shoulder and soft look had been enough. Will had never needed words to get a point across, but a gesture like the card? Will understood that well enough.

The boys all knew about you, heard stories about the book shop owner who could make Pope blush with a well timed smile and look in her eye. 

Abuela would have liked her, was the way he explained it to Frankie, blaming the hushed tones on the baby cradled in his arms, rather than the strength of his crush. Little Nina was as placid as her daddy and slept like a rock from day one, Santiago could have yelled his love to heavens and she would only have huffed a little and snuggled closer.

Frankie had only cuffed him on the back of the head and asked if he would pick up some Spanish children’s books for Nina. Santiago didn’t need the excuse to go in there, but he grabbed it with both hands anyway.

You’d been delighted to help, piling his arms high with options before whittling it back down again, selecting tough to rip cardboard and silly rhymes over the school year novellas.

“I’ll pick those up once she’s grown a bit.” He promised, eyeing the reject pile guiltily. “If she takes after her godfather she’ll have her own library soon enough.”

“I was the same,” you laughed, stacking the books neatly by age group and sub-genre, “I used to drive my mother spare reading the book the same day we’d bought it.” “Would you like to go to dinner?” Santiago asked impulsively, talking over the end of your sentence, flushing a little at how abruptly he’d blurted it out. “I’d like to hear about your favourite books.” Your smile made his stomach flip, as you nodded fumbling with the book in your hands.

“I’d like that.” You agreed warmly. “I have quite a few favourites though, it might take more than one.”

Will met you first; in the bookshop without Santi’s supervision. There had been a break in at the shop and Will only lived five minutes away, rushing to calm you down as Santi drove like a madman to get to you.

The shop was in shambles, shelves torn down and books strewn everywhere. Loose leaves littered the floor, glass shards gleaming cruelly in the glaring streetlights. Will had wrapped you up in his jacket, careful of the bruises and nasty gash on your leg, lifting you off the floor and out onto the sidewalk.

He didn’t leave your side until Santiago arrived, waiting until Santi had you in his arms before heading back into the shop to check out what needed fixing.

Frankie met the shop before he met you. His house had the biggest yard, opening out into the woods without anything fencing him in. Will commandeered the space, Frankie happily helping out with the book repairs. His hands had never shaken under pressure, always sure on the controls of the choppers. He learnt the art of bookbinding quickly enough, humming along to Will’s playlists, the two quietest members of the team content to let the music fill the quiet for them.

The first time Frankie met you was when he and Will showed you the shop. The shelves Will had built, now firmly fixed to the wall and floor - they’d prop up the walls before anybody toppled them again. The undamaged books were separated from Frankie’s repairs, in case they weren’t up to your standards. He was pulled into a hug before he could summon up an apology for the amateur job. A stream of thank yous echoing in his ear as you hugged Will just as tightly.

Santiago was smiling, bringing him into hug with a quiet cabron. He always knew when Frankie was overthinking something. You pulled Santi away, demanding Will give a tour of the new, improved shop. Happily calling for Frankie to keep up, you needed to know everything he’d done too.

Benny volunteered to stay at the shop during the day, doing the heavy lifting while your bruises faded. Santiago worked from home but couldn’t help hovering in the shop, too concerned for you and too distracted by all the books he hadn’t got a chance to read.

Somehow this had turned into Benny painting little murals on any spare wall space and the edges of the shelves.

“Have you always painted?” You asked curiously,

Benny shrugged, scratching his chin and leaving tracks of paint over the stubble.

“Pops always had Will out back helping with the farm, he learned the woodworking with him. I helped momma round the house until I was old enough to help paint the stuff they built together.” He broke off to gently shoo Hades away from the paints, the shop cat meowing plaintively at his curiosity being denied.

“Come here puss, you don’t need a paint job.” You coaxed, clicking your fingers to entice him up onto the counter. There was no way your bruises were going to let you bend down to pick him up.

“Anyway, momma was an art teacher she taught me the basics, after that,” he flushed, “a friend helped me practice.”

You had to bite down on your cheek to keep from smiling or asking anymore questions. Benny’s friend sounded interesting but his expression screamed please-don’t-ask-questions.

“My mum could knit anything.” You said instead, finally convincing Hades to have a cuddle and scritching under his chin. “I tried to copy her one summer, ended up having to be cut free from all the wool.”

Benny laughed, all the tension leaving his shoulders at the image of you all snared up like a kitten.

“Me and Will used to track footprints through the house all the time, ‘til we did it with whitewash after painting the barn. Momma had us camped outside for a month before she let us back in.” Benny said sheepishly, a smudged green handprint marking the back of his neck as he confessed. “Pops snuck us in for showers, said he felt bad we’d got punished for chores.”

Hades leapt out of your arms, startled by your laughter. 

“God, I dropped a whole bowl of tomato soup on a cream carpet? Does that count?” You wheezed, leaning back against the shelves to try and stretch out the bruising seeing if the new position would help. Benny winced in sympathy

“Sorry. I’ll try to be less hilarious.” He quipped dryly. “And no, not unless you camped out for a month.”

The decision to marry you was the easiest one Santiago ever made. How on earth to actually ask you to marry him, turned out to be a harder thing to pin down. The ring went on half the trips you made for a year: down to Hawai’i on a group holiday, camping up in the mountains and even the near weekly hikes you took on Mondays, shutting shop up and leaving the town far behind.

It was an old copy of The Princess Bride that eventually spurred him into action. Santi was helping with organising the basement which was full of donations and books to be shipped out across the county.

Golding’s novel hit him square in the chest, the achingly familiar cover making Santiago’s throat tighten. Abuela had loved this book, taking great pleasure in dramatically clearing her throat to read it to him when he was sick. The grandpa in the story was replaced with Abuela as she told him the tale of true love: Inigo Montoya switching between Spanish and English and easily as he switched his sword hand.

He’d long been enamoured with pirates and fighting evil kings, but The Princess Bride had been the book to remind him to find something to fight for. Perhaps he’d been clinging to the doomed romance of Le Morte d’Arthur for too long.

“The Princess Bride? Santiago, this is true love - you think this happens every day?” You quoted easily, pressing a kiss to his cheek as you passed.

Santiago sent up a garbled prayer of thanks to Abuela, she always knew what he needed before he did anyway.

And so, Santiago Garcia asked the love of his life to marry him on a rainy Thursday in a bookshop. And it was perfect.

‘But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.’ -William Golding, The Princess Bride.

[twoidiotwriters1]

Written In The Stars LVII (Harry Potter xF!Oc)

A/N: I’m IN LOVE with this gif -Danny

Words: 3,044

Warnings: None.

Series’ Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

Listen to: Love Somebody -Maroon 5

Chapter Sixteen: Buckbeak's Appeal.

Mel had been pacing around the dormitory for five minutes, unable to put into words what she was going through. 

She sort of did it, but Hermione didn't understand, how did she know she was falling in love?

"Can you at least tell me what happened?" Hermione stood up in exasperation, interrupting her pacing.

Mel was originally going to say 'I don't know!' but her mouth blurted out something completely different.

"I almost kissed Harry!"

Hermione's frown grew.

"That's it?"

"What do you mean that's it?" She widened her eyes. "That's everything!"

"Mel, if you could see the way you're always ogling at him you'd think you're always trying to kiss him."

"What?! No! Not always– Not ever... Or do I? I mean, sometimes when... and he's so clever... Wait, no! I almost kissed Harry for real, I leaned in to hug him and he turned and I..." She felt the shivers running down her spine. "Our lips sort of touched, but not really..."

Her friend snorted, going back to her seat on the bed.

"What's so funny?" Mel huffed. "I'm in the middle of a crisis and you decide to have a laugh!"

"What'd you want me to say?" Hermione giggled. "Everyone knows you like him, and he likes you back– We're just waiting to see who's the first to give up and say you've got it bad for the other."

"That's the problem, 'Mione," Mel's lip quivered. "I don't know if I want to 'have it bad' for him..."

"Why? He's your best friend, so far one of the most decent boys at school."

"Precisely," Mel sat on her own bed, hiding her face behind both hands. "He's my best friend–  What if I'm just confused? What if I ruin a perfectly good friendship because I think there might be something and everything gets complicated–"

"You're overthinking," Hermione moved to sit on her bed, patting her knee lightly. "You and Harry have something special, I think it'd be worth the risks..."

"We're too young!"

"I'm not telling you to ask him to marry you!" Hermione rolled her eyes. "Yes, we're still children but it wouldn't hurt to talk it out– at least let him know that if he thinks there's a possibility in the future... well, you're more than disposed to try."

Mel hugged her legs close to her chest and sighed. Was she ready to try? She's not even sure she's falling! This could be a new level of platonic appreciation, he's the oldest friend she has, maybe what she's feeling is normal?

Right, wanting to kiss your best friend is a clear sign that you love having him as your best friend.

She shook her head, tired of the uncertainty.

"What if he doesn't want the same?" She asked quietly. "What if then he steps back and then I'm just another of his lovesick fans?"

"You could never be that," Hermione assured her. "Not with the way he talks about you."

"He talks about me?" Mel inquired with the smallest glimmer of hope.

"Yes," The girl smiled. "He rambles– Ron has to shut him up because he could pass a whole hour talking about the new lessons you completed, or that funny thing you told him during lunch... when you're either with Dumbledore or... Erick," The name slipped easier out of her mouth, but still bitter on her tongue.

This could mean many things, but all of them concluded on the same little thought: He thinks about me.

Although this helped her a great deal with her embarrassment, she was incapable of spending time alone with him now, Mel would make up an excuse to walk the other way or Harry would mumble something about forgetting his quill. She didn't know if he was doing it out of kindness, maybe he could sense she was on edge.

Or perhaps, he was just as confused as her.

Harry was the normal amount of talkative with others on the daily, but there wasn't a day where they didn't share inner jokes or spend time ranting about something that annoyed them that day (usually Malfoy). However, after her mistake during the Quidditch final, things simply couldn't move forward with them.

The exams were right around the corner, and the common room was deadly quiet most days, with Fred and George finally deciding to take their studies seriously, the only distraction she had from time to time was Erick. Unfortunately, his friends were almost always accompanying him to the library to study, which had him in an awful mood and unable to join her table. With the arrival of their exams schedules, the realization that Mel was yet to find out how on earth was Hermione taking two tests every hour hit her. She didn't want to explain it to her, which made her terribly suspicious.

"Hermione?" Ron said cautiously, because she was liable to explode when interrupted these days. "Er — are you sure you've copied down these times right?"

"What?" snapped Hermione, picking up the exam schedule and examining it. "Yes, of course I have."

"Is there any point asking how you're going to sit for two exams at once?" said Harry.

"No," said Hermione shortly. "Have either of you seen my copy of Numerology and Gramatica?"

"Oh, yeah, I borrowed it for a bit of bedtime reading," said Ron.

Mel let out a tiny giggle, locking eyes with Harry.

Both kids snapped their heads in opposite directions, clearing their throats and pretending to be busy with something else. Luckily, Hedwig arrived immediately after.

"It's from Hagrid," said Harry, walking towards the window and taking the note his owl was offering to him. "Buckbeak's appeal — it's set for the sixth."

"That's the day we finish our exams," said Hermione.

"And they're coming up here to do it," Harry continued. "Someone from the Ministry of Magic and — and an executioner."

Mel's thoughts of unrequited feelings disappeared, her outrage bigger than her shame.

"They what?!"

"They're bringing the executioner to the appeal! But that sounds as though they've already decided!"

"Yeah, it does," said Harry bitterly.

"They can't!" Ron replied just as angry. "I've spent ages reading up on stuff for him; they can't just ignore it all!"

They were ignoring all, though. The last day of their exams they run into the minister himself, the executioner, and the representative of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. It was endearing and all.

Mel had the feeling that she'd done well enough in all her exams, even Potions. Her favorite was Defense Against the Dark Arts, a whole obstacle thingy– Her uncle made sure to tell her she'd made the full marks of it. She was quite proud of herself.

Their last test was Divination, and she had a jolly time throughout the whole fifteen minutes Trelawney forced her to sit down and stare into a crystal ball, decks of cards, a teacup, and her own hand.

Not.

She stayed around to wait for the boys, but she'd forgotten that their Professor was alternating the names, so instead of being Harry the first one to pass, it was Ron.

They stood there awkwardly for about ten seconds in which Mel pondered what she should do. She could either be a child and run away from her own feelings, or she could move past them and take care of the actual important things they were dealing with, like Buckbeak's trial.

Mel let out a defeated sigh and walked over to her best friend, she leaned on the wall and slid to the floor, tired of not being able to act normal around him.

"Everything'll be all right," Harry tried to cheer her up, sitting down next to her.

"I hope so, it's the first time I see Ron reading thousands of books so passionately," She chuckled lowly. "They still have one last chance."

She looked up and locked eyes with the boy, his stare was just as welcoming as always, even eager, it had been quite a while since they started avoiding each other.

"Glasses," She cleared her throat anxiously. "What I did during the Quidditch final..."

"You don't have–"

"I was euphoric and I acted out of impulse," She pressed on, ignoring him. "I am so sorry for making you uncomfortable– Please don't be upset, I promise it won't happen again."

She braced herself for the impact, hoping to see him visibly sigh and thank her for the apology, maybe even saying that he was afraid she was trying something when he clearly didn't want it.

Harry's chest deflated and his brows knitted together when his mouth opened to speak. He didn't get to talk though, not at first, but when he saw the worried expression on her face he cleared his throat, nodding shortly.

"It's okay, Mellow," He said with a small -was it sad?- smile. "I wasn't upset, just wondering why were you acting so oddly..."

"I thought I had stepped out of boundaries..."

"That must be the first time you care about those," Harry snorted.

Mel let out a tiny laugh, this time more comfortable.

"Shut up," She shook her head. "We're still friends?"

"Always," Harry smiled. "You won't get rid of me that easily, remember?"

Mel smiled, leaning her head on his shoulder and missing the look of mild pain in his eyes.

"Hey," She said, remembering something. "Why was Snape so pissed about the map? What did it do?"

"Why are you asking me about it?"

"Just curious, I've been meaning to ask you for a while now..."

"Well, at first nothing came up, but then words started to appear– they were insults towards Snape, all coming from the people that made the map: Padfoot, Moony, Wormtail, Prongs, Ruddy..."

"Hmm," Mel's eyes narrowed. "I feel like I've heard those before..."

"Fred and George had the map first, maybe they told you about them?" The boy offered.

"Yeah," She yawned.

Harry told them to go once their friend climbed down the stairs. Ron was so eager to start relaxing that he happily obliged, dragging Mel with him. Harry promised to join them after his examination.

"Let's play chess!"

"I'm awful at it," Mel huffed. "You'll win!"

"Gobstones?

"The winner gets to ask whatever they want from Hogsmeade the next time we go?"

They found Hermione in the common room, way more relaxed than before.

"I'm so proud of you!" Mel sat down next to her, giving her the biggest hug.  

"I told you I could do it!" Hermione groaned, pushing her away lightly. "I told you!"

"It's different said than done," Mel grinned.

One of the School's owls tapped on the window and she got up to open it, the owl dropped a piece of paper on Ron's lap and left just as soon as it had appeared.

"What does it say?" Mel rushed over to them, reading above Ron's head.

'Lost appeal. They're going to execute at sunset. Nothing you can do. Don't come down. I don't want you to see it

Hagrid.'

"No!" Hermione gasped.

"I can't believe it!" Mel flopped on the armrest, completely devastated. "Poor Buckbeak, poor Hagrid!"

Harry arrived at that moment, he was breathing harshly, for some reason he'd run all the way over to the tower.

"Professor Trelawney," He gasped, "just told me—"

But he stopped once he noticed their expressions.

"Buckbeak lost," Ron sounded deeply affected. "Hagrid's just sent this."

Harry took the note and read quickly, his face fell.

"We've got to go," He said. "He can't just sit there on his own, waiting for the executioner!"

"Sunset, though," Ron looked out the window. "We'd never be allowed... 'specially you, Harry..."

Harry ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

"If we only had the Invisibility Cloak..."

"Where is it?" Hermione asked.

"Under the one-eyed witch– there's a passageway, but if Snape sees me anywhere near there again, I'm in serious trouble."

"That's true, if he sees you..." She quietly got up. "How do you open the witch's hump again?"

"You — you tap it and say, 'Dissendium,' " said Harry. "But —"

Hermione held Mel's wrist and dragged her out of the common room.

"All right– Sure, I'll help," She said with amusement. "Are we seriously going to get Harry's cloak?"

"Shhh!" Hermione replied. "We ought to be with Hagrid, he needs us!"

"Merlin," Mel continued, jumping lightly. "Why so eager to break the rules, Miss Granger?"

"I'm not trying to break anything," She scoffed. "But they have been terribly injust to Hagrid, the least we can do is be there, besides I remember someone telling me I could do both, relax and be the best student?"

"That's true," She grinned. "You're a fast learner."

"Oh, bugger off," Hermione blushed.

Ten minutes later they found themselves standing in front of the witch. Mel kept an eye on the hall for any unwelcomed visitors while Hermione entered the passageway and quietly retrieved the cloak.

"All done?"

"The cloak's safe," Hermione grunted, cleaning the dust off her hands as she stepped out of the statue.

"Cool, let's go!" She turned around only to see Faustus and another Slytherin boy coming their way. "Oh no! – Go back, go back!"

"Look!" She heard an unfamiliar voice say. "It's the nutt-head!"

"And the Know-it-all," Faustus replied with a nasty smirk. "Alone."

"Unlike you, we don't need to be guarded," Mel frowned. "Leave us alone–"

"We don't enjoy the company of scumb," He sneered. "But we got matters to attend with you..."

She heard Hermione gulped next to her, but both girls (tiny compared to the boys' height and size) stood their ground.

"What?"

"You haven't apologized."

"Oh, sod off! Your friend didn't care, you're just looking for an excuse. Now, if that's the best your bird-brain can do, we've more important things to–"

"You're staying," The other boy pulled out his wand.

Mel felt her blood run cold, she had forgotten her wand back in the tower and she wasn't allowed to used wandless magic at all. Hermione raised hers, but against two older Slytherin... they had very slim chances to get out of there unharmed. That, until Erick appeared around the corner the Slytherins had come from.

"Griffin," He frowned, not noticing who were they talking to. "Isn't it a bit late to be tormenting first yea–"

His eyes landed on Mel and Hermione, he stopped four feet behind his housemates. His eyebrows raised ever so lightly, as if his interest had increased, but barely.

"Hello?" He looked at the boys. "Are you guys planning a double date?"

His voice sounded casual and controlled, the other two boys snickered at this.

"We found them here on their own, thought you might appreciate to get a proper apology out of this nut-head's mouth," The boy, who now Mel knew as Griffin, explained.

Erick's eyebrows fell into a frown.

"Apologize?"

"She crashed into you the first day of school, remember?" Faustus made a face. "That Potter tried to fight you because of it."

"If my memory doesn't fail me, he was trying to fight you, not me."

"All the same, we have them cornered!"

"We're standing in the middle of a hall," He stated.

"You want payback or not?" Griffin spat.

"I don't," Erick tilted his head, his frown never leaving his expression. "Are you twelve? I couldn't care less about what a pair of Gryffindor girls did to me by accident months ago."

Faustus' eyes widened, he wasn't expecting that reaction.

"But– She's... She's the Dumbledore girl."

"Yeah, and you're the Gibbon boy," He raised a brow. "Griffin is a Singh boy– I'll say it again, I don't care who she is, I won't risk my Prefect badge just because you're bloody bored, Faustus. Let. Them. Go."

Faustus and Griffin lowered their wands, grumbling and walking past them, pushing harshly on Hermione's shoulder. Mel held her in place.

Erick stayed behind. He seemed to be struggling between asking them if they were fine or just walking away. Mel was about to talk when Griffin yelled from the other side of the hall.

"Flint, what're you doing?"

Erick jumped lightly, his frown increasing as he looked over to the boys.

"Nothing! – Just checking you didn't do anything stupid like hurting the Headmaster's grandaughter!–"

"Niece..." Mel grumbled.

"I know," Erick whispered without looking at her, his frown never disappearing.

He left after that, hurrying to catch up with his housemates. The girls stood there in stunned silence until Mel turned to Hermione.

"Was that enough proof of his loyalty?"

"Please," Hermione huffed, starting to walk towards their tower. "I don't doubt him since our last session– No person would sit for hours and weeks to hear us talk about how muggles' lives just to hurt someone. I'm yet to find out why he needs to know all that, though..."

"You can ask him later, if he trusts you he'll tell you," Mel shrugged. "But see? He's a good boy! He wasn't hiding anything!"

"What about you?" Hermione asked while walking through the tapestry.

"What about me?" She frowned

"I don't worry about Erick's loyalty, but I worry about yours..."

"What?" Mel laughed. "What are you saying?"

"You haven't told Harry about Erick," She retorted. "You promised months ago, but you haven't. You don't trust Erick enough to let him meet Harry, or you don't trust Harry– I don't know which one's worse."

"That's not it," Mel replied calmly, though she could feel her heartbeat racing. "I trust them, I just..."

Hermione didn't pressure her to speak, she waited until they were climbing the stairs towards the Fat Lady.

"They'll get upset– It's been three years, I promised I'd keep our friendship a secret and then I go out of my way to tell you– it's not fair to hide things from my best friend, and it's not fair to talk without Erick's consent either..."

They walked into the common room concluding their discussion, Hermione handed the cloak back to Harry, Ron was beyond amazed.

"Hermione, I don't know what's gotten into you lately! First you hit Malfoy, then you walk out on Professor Trelawney —"

"Best Gryffindor in our year," Mel smirked, putting an arm around her friend's shoulders.

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

@tiphareth2018 @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @celestialhayi @mikariell95 @omiwashere​ @thesuitelifeofafangirl​ @reverse-hxlland​ @steve-thotgers​ @kylosleftbuttcheek​ @tomshollandz​ 

[puffwriter1998]

The Things We Let Go Ch.3

Summary: Addison’s experience at the 422nd Quidditch World cup.

Character Pairings: Fred Weasley X OC (not really in this chapter)

Word Count: 2.2K

A/N: This is a shorter chapter, but I really enjoyed writing it. If you’ve been following along: thank you so much! I can’t wait to let the rest of this story unfold. I have so much written. Some dialog in this chapter comes from the original works.  

As the day wore on, the excitement amongst the ever-growing crowd of wizards around me multiplied. When the sun began to go down, it boiled over and all pretense of a muggle façade was dropped. Merchants for both teams were Apparating here and there, carrying armloads of hats with dancing shamrocks and red scarves with lions that really roared. Children flew through the rows on toy brooms that only rose a few feet off the ground. Surely the ministry would be modifying a few memories before it was all said and done. 

 The Weasley bunch left us a little early with Harry and Hermione in tow, to be able to make their way up to the Top Box to sit with the Minister of Magic and a few other top officials who organized the Cup. Harry looked about as excited as I felt, gazing around at the scene in wonder as they walked away through the crowd. 

It soon came time for us to head into the woods towards what I assumed would be a pretty large stadium. Mr. Abbott led Hannah, Charlie and me onto a trail that was magnificently lit with floating lanterns. The excitement of the thousands of people, all walking through the trees, was contagious. A smile had spread across my face from ear to ear and there was no chance of losing it. There were chants supporting both teams, laughter, and from a little further off, a lighthearted song in favor of the Irish. 

We walked like this for a few minutes before I began to be able to pick out glimpses of a gargantuan stadium through the trees ahead. As we grew closer, I got a sense of just how big it was. 

 “Mr. Abbot,” I called to him, a few feet ahead of me, “Just how many people does this stadium hold?” 

 “A hundred thousand!” he replied gleefully. 

 A hundred thousand. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that there were a hundred thousand magical people on the globe, let alone at one event. Magical communities were so few and far between in Britain, and there were so few students at Hogwarts, that I had assumed we had relatively small numbers. 

 The golden walls surrounding the field rose higher and higher in front of me as we approached. A stream of wizards narrowed into one of the nearest entrances in front of us. A ministry witch at the gate peered down at the tickets Mr. Abbott handed her. 

 “Not too bad, not too bad. Straight up the stairs, about halfway up, there’ll be someone there to show you to your seats,” she said and waved us through. 

 We began our climb upwards on the carpeted stairs amongst the tight crowd of people. People exited through doors at various levels and filed into the stands. About half way up the height of the stadium, Mr. Abbott said “Ah, here we are,” and led us through a doorway. He handed another Ministry worker our tickets, and we were pointed into a long row of folding seats.

 As we sat, I looked out over the field and marveled at the sight of a hundred thousand wizards all taking their seats around me. The entire stadium seemed to be bathed in a marvelous golden light. The field was a smooth green lake below us, and the stands rose like a fortress above us. We were seated about halfway up, and halfway between the towering golden goalposts. Beautiful gold script danced across a huge blackboard at the top of the stadium on the side across from us that flashed various advertisements for magical goods and services. 

 I was in absolute awe. I tried to remember why I ever felt guilty for loving this life, and I couldn’t. The scene in front of me was almost too good to be true. The excitement radiating through the stands was tangible. My cheeks were aching from smiling so widely, but I knew they’d be getting no relief anytime soon. 

 Before I knew it, the voice of Ludo Bagman was audible over the roaring of the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen… welcome!” The crowd exploded in response and Bagman waited for the noise level to go back down before continuing. “Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!” 

 Flags of green and scarlet waved all around the stadium as fans clapped and cheered. The blackboard across the stadium was wiped clean of the golden advertisements and they were replaced with BULGARIA: 0, IRELAND: 0. 

 “And now, without further ado, allow me to introduce…” Mr.Bagman’s voice shouted, “the Bulgarian National Team Mascots!” 

 The Bulgaria side, an endless sea of scarlet, erupted in excitement. At that moment, a least a hundred beautiful women strutted out onto the field. 

 “Their mascots are women?” I leaned in and asked Charlie. 

 “They’re Veela! Look closer!” She shouted back over the deafening crowd. 

 I started to ask her what Veela were, but I was immediately distracted by the perfection of the creatures on the field. Charlie, was right, they definitely weren’t regular women. Their skin looked like porcelain that was reflected in a most beautiful moonlight. The platinum, white-gold hair that hung down their backs splayed out behind them like they were walking in front of a wind-machine. I had never seen such dazzling creatures. 

 And then they started to dance. They twisted their bodies and moved across the field as if their feet weren’t touching the ground. It was such a wonderful display of beauty that I couldn’t tear my eyes away. That was, until Charlie’s voice cut into the blissful emptiness that had overcome my mind. 

 “Dad? Dad, what’re you doing?” she asked. 

 “Huh?” Mr. Abbott had risen from his seat and looked like he was about to swan dive off the edge of the wall in front of him. He blinked like he had just woken up from an incredibly confusing dream. He cleared his throat, “Goodness, forgive me. Those Veela, they’re really something aren’t they?” 

 His face flushed red with embarrassment, but as I gazed around the stadium, it seems that he had no reason to. About every man in the stadium had risen from their seats and were in varying states of trying to climb down the rows in front of them to get to the field. The Veela dance came to an end, and all around me, people began to wake up the way Mr. Abbott did. 

 “And now,” Ludo roared over the crowd, “kindly put your wands in the air… for the Irish National Team Mascots!” 

 As the words left his mouth, a great ball of gold and green light burst into the stadium. It did one full lap around the perimeter and then broke off into two smaller orbs and shot towards the goalposts on the ends. Then, just as suddenly as the balls of light had appeared, a magnificent rainbow arced down and connected the two. Hannah, Charlie, and I gazed in amazement, along with the rest of the crowd. 

 The rainbow faded and was replaced by a giant shimmering shamrock, that rose high into the sky and began doing laps over the stands. A beautiful golden rain seemed to be falling from beneath it as it flew. When it soared over us, I realized they were Galleons, the biggest and most valuable of the wizard currency. 

 “Goodness!” I exclaimed as I ducked out of the way of the heavy gold coins.

 “You won’t want to pick any of that up,” yelled Mr. Abbott to me over the girls’ heads. “That’s fools gold!” 

 “Fools gold?” I hollered back and squinted up at the shamrock. 

 “They’re leprechauns!” As soon as he said it, I realized that the entire shape was made up of hundreds and hundreds of tiny bearded men, all holding a small lamp of gold or green. Many people around the stadium were scrambling around, and it looked like a few fights had even broken out over the gold. 

 “It’ll disappear before the night is out,” said Charlie, “That’s why it’s fool’s gold, only a fool would think they’d rain down millions of real Galleons at the World Cup.” 

 The giant shamrock finished its parade, and the leprechauns put out their lanterns to drift down onto the opposite side of the field as the Veela. 

 Ludo Bagman then welcomed the Bulgarian and Irish players to the field, but my eyes never left Krum. His thick black hair shone in the golden light that I still hadn’t found the source of. He looked much too big to be able to control his broom with such precision. He didn’t even look nervous, he looked like the whole thing was beneath him. 

 The match began as flashes of scarlet and green raced around the field. Bagman tried to keep up with quaffle, but they played at such speed that he only had time to say the player’s names. “It’s Mullet! Troy! Moran! Dimitrov! Back to Mullet! Troy! Levski! Moran!” 

 I had never seen such a display of skill and athleticism. The speed of the players was so great that my eyes were having trouble following them. Ireland scored three times within the first ten minutes of the match, and I could see why. They worked flawlessly as a unit, rather than individual players. It was simply amazing. 

 A while later, Ireland was pummeling Bulgaria. They were up 170 to 10, with no intention of going easy on the players in red. Krum had just had his nose smashed by taking a bludger square in the face. The official had been distracted by a Veela who had thrown a handful of fire and set his broom ablaze. Blood sprayed out from behind Krum has he flew through the air.

 Suddenly, Lynch, the Irish seeker had gone into a dive. It mimicked the Wronski Feint that Krum had used earlier in the game to get Lynch to crash into the field, but this dive had much more purpose to it. 

 “Look, Lynch is after the snitch!” I cried and pointed towards the streak of green rushing down at the field. Irish supporters, including the Abbotts screamed in support of their seeker. However, Krum was right behind him. Blood covered his face, and I wondered how he had any earthly idea what direction the snitch was in. He was catching up to Lynch though, every milisecond that passed gaining another few feet. As they drew level, they were hurtling towards the ground at an impossible speed, and I sensed a second crash coming. 

 I was at least partly right, as Lynch collided with the ground with a thud that I swore I could hear over the roaring crowd. A mob of vicious Veela, so different from the beautiful creatures they were when they took the field, surrounded Lynch and blocked him from view. 

 Krum rose slowly into the air, blood still pouring from his nose like a faucet someone forgot to turn off. The tiny golden snitch was clasped between his fingers in a raised fist. My eyes flashed up to the scoreboard and my heart dropped; BULGARIA: 160, IRELAND: 170. 

 The Ireland supporters slowly began to realize what had happened and a deafening roar came from the green in the crowd. 

 “IRELAND WINS!” Exclaimed the voice of Ludo Bagman, obviously surprised by the sudden end to such an exciting match. “KRUM GETS THE SNITCH – BUT IRELAND WINS – good lord, I don’t think any of us were expecting that!”

 The Abbotts next to me began jumping up and down and cheering with the rest of the people dressed in green. 

 “Blimey!” yelled Charlie. “Wonder what he did that for?” 

 I knew exactly why Krum caught the snitch when the Bulgarians were 160 points behind. He saw that they were being destroyed by the Irish, and he wanted to end it himself, before it got any more messy. 

 “What a match, eh Addison?” called Mr. Abbott from over Charlie’s head, “bet you didn’t expect that one. That Krum is a wonder though, I’ll admit.” 

 I felt slightly deflated, a feeling that usually came to me after we lost our own quidditch match at school. I had really been hoping for Bulgaria to win, but seeing Krum beat Lynch to the snitch almost made up for it. 

 Suddenly it dawned on me that Fred and George had won their bet. Against all odds, Ireland had won, but Krum caught the snitch. They’d probably be rich after they got done with Bagman. A small grin spread across my face as I realized this is the outcome I should have preferred. 

 The Irish supporters were already beginning to celebrate as we made our way back down the purple carpeted stairs. I’d have to congratulate Fred and George on their win. I’m sure the high they were riding right then was on a whole different level than the rest of the fans. The joyous energy pouring from the sea of green in front of me was infectious. The night was still young, and I couldn’t help but have the feeling that the most exciting part of my world cup experience was yet to come.

[v-hope]

They have feelings for you but you like/date another idol

Pairings: OT7 x Reader

Genre: Angst

Request by @incrediblybiased: "I've got a reaction idea- the BTS guy who's your friend and has a crush on you, but you've just been asked out by someone from another group."

Kim Seokjin

Jin had pictured this moment to be different. Very different.

You see, two months ago you told him the great news about your group joining Stray Kids on tour, and although he was the happiest for you, he couldn't help but be disappointed, for he had wanted to confess his feelings for you by the end of that week and he felt then like waiting until you came back would be the best option.

So now, as he waited with everyone else at the welcome party that was being thrown for your group and the one you had gone on tour with for you to arrive, he thought you'd enter the door and you'd lock eyes with him, going straight to hug him and then… then he'd take you out of the crowded place and into a more private one, where he would finally pour his heart out to you.

That was what he had truly believed would happen.

Instead, what he got was his heart sinking the second you entered the room – hand in hand with no other than Bang Chan, and gazing up at him like Jin had never seen you look at anyone else before.

Your eyes did lock with his like he had planned... after you removed them from the other guy. You did go to hug him... after you let go of the other boy's hand. And then? Then you called said guy to go over by your side, placing your hand lovingly on Chan's shoulder as you introduced him as your boyfriend, and Seokjin... Seokjin having to fake a smile and act as if his heart did not break a little further when you introduced him as your best friend.

Not confessing when he had first planned to would be for the longest time his biggest regret.

Min Yoongi

Yoongi fucking hated timing.

It had been you the first one to catch feelings. Back in your teenage years, when he felt nothing but platonic love for you. He knew. And you knew he knew. That being the reason you decided to say nothing and get over him instead.

Now, eight years later, the tables had turned.

He knew you had successfully moved on from your feelings for him back then, but he had been willing to make you fall for him once again.

Only to be hit with the hard reality one night.

You had suddenly started brushing off his invitations to his studio for over a month now, and there was this one song he really wanted to show you – one he had written for you. That being the reason he decided to call you one night to ask if he could go to you instead, feeling lightheaded when who answered your phone was not you but a man, more precisely, Baekhyun, who politely told him you were currently asleep at his, and that he'd let you know he called the next day.

That was the first time his heart broke.

The second one? When a few weeks later you introduced him to your new boyfriend, the same guy who had answered your phone before.

That's when he reached his breaking point, because he had hoped that was a one time thing – a one night stand he could deal with, but you being in an actual serious relationship with someone else? That he could not handle.

So now the song he had written for you was long forgotten, replaced by many more as he practically lived in his studio – replaced by heartbreak ones you would never hear nor would the rest of the world.

Because it was his most precious secret, the one of him being in love with his best friend… of his taken best friend.

The one of him being too late.

Jung Hoseok

“Y/N and Ten?” Yoongi frowned – eyes fixed on you locking lips with the other idol, as he offered Hobi a drink after having reached his side.

Hoseok shrugged, taking the beer in his hand and chugging it like his life depended on it.

“I mean, I knew he had a thing for her since the last after party, but I didn't think she… I thought she…”

He thought you liked Hoseok. He really thought you did; that you genuinely returned his friend’s feelings for you. The way you would look at him, talk to him… act around him… everything was right there to make anyone believe there was something else going on besides a simple friendship.

The worst part of all? So did Hoseok.

That Yoongi had just found out at the sight of his bloodshot eyes.

“In her own words, how could she not fall for his killer dancing skills, pointy nose, smile so bright it could leave her blind, and how good he is to her?” he bit the inside of his cheek, finishing his drink in one gulp.

Yoongi gasped at that description. “Hope-ah, you–”

Hobi shook his head to stop him from speaking. “I need another drink” he excused himself from there.

He knew. He knew that fucking description fit him as well, which only made his heart hurt a thousand times more. Why couldn't you see him the same way you saw Ten?

Kim Namjoon

The worst part of you dating Yoo Youngjae?

That Namjoon had not noticed he had feelings for you until after you started dating him.

And it wasn't even when you first told him about your new relationship. Yes, he found himself not completely liking the idea but that had been it.

It was actually one month later, when he went to your house one morning to see how you were doing with your outfit for that night's award show, and what he found as soon as you opened the door was you in a dress that hugged your figure beautifully.

You took his breath away the very second he saw you, realising right there you were not his to look at like that. That fact hitting him like a punch to the face when you excitedly told him you were going with Youngjae to the event.

He didn't know why he had thought you'd go with him, like you had for so long done; even if you were taken now. Instead, he ended up going with just his members, which wasn't boring at all, but they weren't you. And he wanted you by his side during these kind of things... during all kind of things.

After that, he couldn't help but distance himself from you, because he'd hurt every time he saw your eyes lit up when you spoke about your boyfriend, every time you would smile in his presence, and let's not even talk about all the times you'd show any kind of affection towards Youngjae when he was in the room. What hurt him the most was that he didn't even get a chance to act on his feelings. He had just been too late. Too late to notice the amazing person he had by his side the whole time, too stupid to take you for granted.

Park Jimin

Loud banging on your door was what woke you up in the middle of the night – only to be met with a very miserable looking Park Jimin once you opened it moments later.

“Please tell me the rumours are not true” he begged with teary eyes.

“What?”

“Please” he stumbled forward, “tell me you're not with Taemin” he slurred his words, making the red flights show in your head.

“Jimin-ie, are you drunk?” you rushed to his side, wrapping one arm around him and closing your door with the other, helping him inside your place.

“No, no” he whined, closing his eyes as he tried to remove your touch from him. “Answer me, Y/N”.

The thing is, you didn't even have to answer him – your eyes alone letting him know what he dreaded the most was true.

Jimin took in a shaky breath, feeling a sharp pain on his chest. “Why him?” he mumbled.

You stuck your lower lip out, not understanding why he was so upset by it.

“Am I not good enough for you?”

That's when everything made sense.

“If you wanted a boyfriend why couldn't it be me? I've always been here for you, you know I love you, why can't you just…”

“Let's go to bed” you stopped him from pouring his heart out.

“No, Y/N–”

“I don't want you to regret this in the morning, Jimin. You can decide whether you want to tell me this or not once you're sober”.

And so he followed you to your room, instantly falling asleep, whereas you were left with a halfhearted insomnia.

Kim Taehyung

“I'll get you a date with any idol you want if you change places with me” you peeked your head from above his shoulder.

Taehyung shook his head. “If that idol is you, then sure…” he mumbled under his breath as he fidgeted unconsciously.

“What?” you wondered, moving closer so you could listen to him better.

“I said I don't want to date anyone” he raised his voice this time, making the mistake of turning his head in your direction, for your faces were dangerously close and he felt the urge to touch your lips with his.

“Okay then. I'll give you ten dollars”.

He scoffed. “Ten dollars for a seat that's one row in front of yours, meaning a much better spot? Why would I–”

“Dammit, Taehyung! I'm begging you, please change seats with me”.

Yeah, dammit.

Damn him for giving in to your pouty lips and pleading eyes.

Damn him for always wanting to give you what you wanted and see you happy.

Damn him for having feelings for his best friend.

But most importantly, damn him for not noticing the seat next to his was assigned to Kim Jungwoo, your crush since almost four months now and also who was currently in front of him, with you by his side looking at each other with the biggest heart eyes.

Heart eyes Taehyung had for so long wished you would look at him with, but much to his heartbreak knew you would never.

Jeon Jeongguk

“Who were you talking to?” you wondered as you entered your living room with snacks for your monthly movie night.

“Oh, Jaehyun called you” he said as if it was nothing, wanting to drop the topic right then by stuffing his mouth with food.

You stared at him for a few seconds awaiting for an explanation, finally shoving his arm when you noticed he had no intentions of speaking.

“What did he say, you idiot!”

“Easy” he whined, rubbing his arm. “He wanted to take you out tonight” your mouth fell open, “but I told him you were not available”.

“You told my crush what now?”

“I told him you were busy with me” Jeongguk shrugged, not looking at you but at the TV he had just turned on.

“Jeongguk, what the hell” you scolded him.

“You've gone on dates for weeks now, it's nothing new”.

“But what if he wanted to make it official now” you furrowed your eyebrows. “What if this was the date”.

“Then he should've planned it ahead. This is our night”.

“Oh my God” you ran your hands through your face. “I can't believe you”.

“No, Y/N, I can't believe you” he snapped, finally looking at you. “Everything now seems to revolve around him. I barely even get to see you and you're willing to sacrifice our movie night for him?” before you could even say anything, he stood up, throwing the remote to your side. “Well, your wish has been granted”.

He had been okay with you seeing him just like your best friend. He had been okay with pushing his feelings aside when you started dating Jae if it meant he still got to have you in his life. But if he couldn't even have that anymore then what was even the point.

[invertedeidolon]

The Longest Library #3: Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock (Or, Eidolon again talks way too much about previous relationships, also, pretty art!)

(This is a series in which I attempt to read and review all (or most of) my library of 297 books.)

Rundown: Postcard artist Griffin Moss gets a weird letter from a weird lady who can apparently see what he's drawing telepathically. They form an ill concieved bond over it. The story is told in colorful postcards and envelopes you can open and then read the mysterious things inside. 4.5/5 for calling me THE FUCK OUT and having some BOMB ASS ART.

I can't give it a full 5 because not everyone is going to have that experience when they read this. It's just going to look very strange and floaty and things won't make very much sense. This book hits close to home with me because it heavily echoes (more like yells about) my first long distance relationship. I'm not really able to see this book through any other lens, so that's what my commentary is mostly about.

So for the part that ISN'T about that stuff though: The art is amazing. Even though it's made by one person technically, both fictional artists have their own, distinct style. Let's be real: The art and the interactivity is the main draw of this book. There are envelopes inside with letters carrying a myriad of little details: Griffin uses a typewriter for his long-form letters, and bits where he's crossed out typos or added in letters with pen, or that Sabine's correspondence is something I now recognize as someone who uses quills or manual dip pens. The inconsistency in the color of her writings suggests she's using a homemade ink, brownish in color, slightly too watery. Maybe it's even watered down watercolor and not even ink at all. They've also made the background of her letters and cards a rich dark gray, while Griffin's is a clean, sterile white.

"Will you explain to me about those geometric paintings you did at Art college? I want to understand their hidden language of color and shape. It's so alien to me."

So this is about the fourth time I'm reading this book since I first got it, and now that I have to write about it, I'm noticing so many more details. Here the line "It's so alien to me."is written in smaller, slightly more rounded letters. The ink is much darker here too, suggesting she wrote this slowly, thoughtfully. What a detail!

Anyway that's it for the objective bits of the book, the rest is entirely subjective from here on out.

"The phenomenon that links us has taught me much about you, yet I am ignorant of your history."

My years and years of suffering emotional abuse set me up to be able to read and predict what was going on in your head perfectly, as well as respond in the most helpful ways with eerie precision, yet I am ignorant of your history, and who you really are (because you use such obtuse floaty language and metaphor. Who were you really? Suffering, but that's about all I could tell.)

"Why doesn't this alarm me as much as it should?"

Because we're already "in". And I "feel safe" to you because I've been trained to be the least offensive, most placating being in the universe. If I could build a business model on conversational comfort, if I could sell my goddamn empathy like the capitalist machine really wants me to, *I'd be so rich*. It would be like, a step down from therapist. Anybody want a virtual friend for like an hour? Gimme 20 and we can watch stupid videos or I can calmly talk you through bread making. It's okay, you can cry. GOD PLEASE LET ME JUST SELL MYSELF SAFELY, I WAS MADE FOR THIS GODDAMNIT.

"I want to hear everything. Write in detail. Tell me all about yourself. I demand to know - please."

This is like fucking CRACK to those with a suppressed self. An unwitnessed self. "Someone who's interested in ME, and won't yell at, ignore, or dismiss me for talking! Holy fuck I love you!"

"Finally I knew who you were. I counselled myself to be cautious and find out what you were like before revealing myself fully."

Sabine at this point is to the reader who I was to Him. A weird mythical creature, the non-human monster of your lonely adolescent imaginings, who is intimately aware of your secrets, "I've been watching you" it says before introducing you to a wondrous world free of the pains of living, where you actually feel loved and all is well forever and ever. Except I wasn't as inhuman as I wished to be.

"Occasionally I'd come home to a re-enactment of The Battle of Britain in the front room. [...] My entrance would make no difference to their dogfight, but when one of them accidentally (and inevitably) knocked over a pile of books, they'd stop instantly and unite to examine the extent of the damage."

The whole 'making light of a not-great home life because it was your normal for so long that you still haven't learned that you need to be horrified about it' thing. As well as passing it off as something funny. Thankfully this character's parents (SPOILER?) get literally run over by a truck and he gets sent to live with his mom's step sister who is really good and lets him ditch school to become a potter's apprentice and eventually go to art college. He never really deals with the grief when the step sister dies, OBVIOUSLY.

"And hearing that my existence eased your pain made my heart race. We have found one another, and I give thanks."

Hearing that my existence wasn't going to be punished but instead, made someone happy? Fucking HEROIN. Downplay it a little with grateful gentleness, I don't want to be punished for being presumptuous or for seeming like I like it too much. If I like things too much they get destroyed, hard.

"My kinsmen are responsive to me - but there is no one to reach my heart, and you who are so far away, have been closer to me than any man on the Islands."

This is something I remember. So far all they've done is shared eachother's life stories and gushed about how close they feel now. She (like my past self), has confused the feeling of 'finally, a witness! they're witnessing me! I've been Seen!' with the feeling of attachment. Of course she would feel infinitely more attached to this man. She's witnessed his most private moments as a creator for a good portion of her life. It's been a mainstay throughout her adolescence through adulthood, so of course an unwarranted sense of intimacy is going to be attached to this mysterious figure. The whole thing wrapped up in a dream like sense of mysticism.

"I remember your first erotic drawing; I was trembling from head to foot by the time you'd finished. Was that Sarah? No don't answer; I'm only teasing."

...Unless? (Man the implications hurt to think about. I REMEMBER THIS FEELING. This author has unintentionally called me out. I wonder how much of Sabine’s writing is actually calm, or if she’s reigning herself in almost constantly?)

"I was finding it hard to get over the idea of there being other men in your life when I reached the part in your letter about my erotic drawings. I stopped being jealous. We were lovers and I hadn't realized it. The drawings weren't of Sarah; they were of you."

ow ow ow ow ow ow JUST SAY IT ow ow ow ow, Also, I REALLY wanted her to be like 'bitch that looks nothing like me, what the fuck', but instead she's all like "So you've been making love to me ten thousand miles away - how tantalizing." URGH. TOO CLOSE, TOO FAST. DISENTANGLE YOURSELVES NOW. GRIFFIN GET HELP.

"I had failed to understand how unhappy you are. You cover up with jokes and a front of being self-contained. I'm worried for you."

EVEN SHE SEES IT, GET HELP.

"When you found me, I thought my loneliness had gone for good. I was kidding myself. I desperately desire your company. I haven't talked to anyone in three days. I was sure I was going to start seeing your pictures like you see mine. I've tried so hard. [...] How can I miss you this badly when we've never met?"

BECAUSE YOU MISS HUMAN CONTACT AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FAMILY LEFT YOU NERD, GET HELP. DON'T HANG IT ON ONE PERSON WHO IS TOO FAR AWAY TO HELP YOU IN THE WAY YOU NEED.

"Island magic works on island souls. You and I will heal eachother."

ANTIDEPRESSANTS MAYBE UUUUGGGGHHHHH

"I've started to hate this city, this country, all these stupid fucking people [...] I finally snapped. [...] I want to know what you look like."

*HEAVILY RECOILS*

"Why, my kindred spirit, are you prepared to settle for a postcard of my face? If you wish to see me, why not come here? What is there to stop you - you're clearly unhappy where you are. Come."

Yes. I offered and I offered and I offered. What's to stop you from just fucking TALKING TO ME instead of DISAPPEARING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. and then COMPLAINING THAT YOU'RE SO HURT AND LONELY. I'M LONELY TOO. WHEN I HAD THE MONEY YOU DIDN’T TAKE MY OFFER FOR ME TO COME SEE YOU, SO WHAT THE FUCK IS UP KYLE?

"Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened."

This kind of sentiment is what lead to the breakup. This feeling of being large, and dark, and slighted. Being real and supernatural. Make your choice. Say REAL words instead of just flagellating yourself. Do I exist to you?

"If you will not join me, then I will come to you."

Unfortunately, Sabine has what I definitely did not: Mobility, the ability to make things real. She had a job and money and her own life and the ability to travel. I had a shitty little shared room in my parent's house where I spent most of the time partially starved and dodging devils in one form or another. Many many times I wanted to spontaneously show up and give him the closeness that he needed. But I couldn't. And he wouldn't take my words. He wouldn’t take me.

3 down, 294 to go.

[promiscuous-jalapeno]

Vignette

{Jumin Han/Jihyun Kim} 

Summary: A look into Jumin Han’s upbringing, relationships, and his friendship with Jihyun. 

Word Count: 2,660

A/N: This piece was created for Heir Exclusive @juminfanzine ! A huge thank you to the contributors and mods. It was such a wonderful experience to be a part of this incredibly talented team and watch this project come to fruition. <3

[It is not often we come across an individual who is, first and foremost, described as a powerhouse of business intellect and savvy. A person such as Jumin Han; heir to the renowned C&R International company. Even rarer, the opportunity to speak with them. But that is precisely the position this writer, happily, found themselves in.

The burning question on people’s minds when they find themselves staring up at such greatness is simple—how? What made them the way that they are? What culmination of experiences and decisions lead to being a successful director, maven, heir, philanthropist, and businessman? And what do the relationships of someone so accomplished look like? How have they molded the person we see before us today? Questions that, perhaps, help satiate our hunger for a taste of a life where we wake up to suits worth thousands and private planes just a call away.

Mr. Han, as eloquent and cultured and kind as one would expect someone of his standing to be, graciously offered to sit down with this writer, providing a rather detailed glimpse into his past and effectively answering some of those very burning questions we no doubt all share.

The following is a glimpse of the result of these interviews, with the final exclusive approval of Mr. Jumin Han himself. It was described to this writer exactly as it is presented here, written from the point of view of the subject, with minor changes in narrative style to preserve the truth and voice of the story.]

     “Jumin. You’re still reading these books, I see. You really like this stuff that much?” Jihyun asked. He sounded impressed. There, on the shin-high table, Jihyun began to lift and inspect the stack of text Jumin had culminated. Sometimes he thumbed through, sitting in silence next to Jumin in that quiet library. Sometimes, he looked incredulously as he set them aside before opening his own to study from.

     Jumin nodded half-heartedly, eyes never lifting from the text before him. Anyone who did not know Jumin well enough, anyone aside from Jihyun that is to say, might have written the gesture off as high-handed and insensitive. “I wouldn’t say I enjoy them any more than others.”

     He knew it was the last thing people might expect from someone of his standing. That, to even his peers, he must seem a bit foolish. A corporate heir, spending his time in the library reading books on the occult, animals, language, and whatever caught his eye. Whatever he could find that was of interest or piqued his curiosity. Jumin found he enjoyed roaming these silent aisles.

     The library was such a soothing place for him. He could think clearly, or he could think about nothing at all. It didn’t matter here. He’d listen to the pleasant sounds of his steps in the silence, the rhythmic clunking of his heel-toe, heel-toe. His expensive oxblood loafers treading the carpet while running the pad of his index finger over the spines of various text. 

     There was not much in these passing days more enjoyable to Jumin Han than feeling the grooves of the lettering underneath the pads of his fingers. He’d traced countless names and titles, making note of the various textures. The smells.

     On the walls, plate-sized canvases among some as large as windows. Ornate brush strokes in vivid oils, portraits of esteemed, broad-shouldered men standing straight, or vacant feasts with bountiful bowls of fruit illuminated in hazy sunlight. They reminded him of the opulent paintings in his father’s home. Bordered by ornate, heavy frames. Their surfaces cracking. Visages, worn and marked by the years, only serving to further their antiquity.

     Sometimes Jumin would stare at those cracks in his quiet, empty home. Those cracks, thin as spider webs as they crossed one another in cryptic chaos. They reminded him of those tangled threads he’d seen inside of himself when he closed his eyes at night. Crisscrossing and twisting all the more each year. Perhaps, he had thought, this is just what happens with age. His threads. Like this painting, a person could crack on the inside. Of course, it wouldn’t look exactly the same for everyone.

     But maybe it started off small. One crack here, there, a chip of your former self, flaking away into the darkness to reveal something new underneath. Until you’re a different person entirely, a hybrid of what you once were. Each hardship or experience in life as the years progressed only deepening those cracks and tangling those threads.

     He wondered when his first thread tangled. When did it begin? He was so young, it would probably be something trivial. Perhaps the first time his father had been too busy to offer his attention. It would seem silly now, given how much he knows his father loves him despite the responsibilities of his work. But at the time, perhaps…

     In his loneliness he’d wander the halls of his empty home, soft black socks sliding on freshly waxed floors as white and brilliant as the ivory tusks he had seen in books on foreign lands. He had wanted to travel, to see them. One day, his father had said. As fathers do. But one day never came, and now he found himself preoccupied with work and women. So Jumin spent his time wandering alone. Sitting idly on the bench of their grand piano, plunking at single random keys and listening to the tune echo and reverberate in the space. His left elbow dug into keys as he propped his sinking head onto his hand with a sigh. He never much cared for playing.

     He’d balance his steps on the thin cracks of the floor tile while creeping around corners, listening to the sounds of his meals being prepared and dishes being cleaned. Or sit in his father’s office, in a large wooden chair by the window. Letting the warmth it had gathered from the sun soak into his arms and back like an embrace as he studied. He’d dig in the dirt to build hills for his car, staining his small fingers dark brown with soil. He liked washing his hands, seeing the contrast of the tan splotches against the stark porcelain sink before it swirled down the drain. But whatever he did, he was used to doing it alone.

     Even now, he enjoyed the feeling of solitude the library afforded him. Sometimes he’d pass by study rooms with glass windows and casually watch as groups peered over thick pages and handwritten notes. He’d wonder about them, sometimes. Who they were, what their home life was like. What made them study so intensely? Was it their own drive and determination to be top of their class, or simply pressure from their families to succeed. Their fathers? He wasn’t sure what that was like.

     He had never needed pressure. Not from his father, not from anyone. It made him feel a bit…strange, at times. But he enjoyed what he learned, and it came quite naturally. He was curious and intelligent, by nature. At least, that’s what his teachers had said. Part of him thought it was perhaps a pleasant coincidence, but the other part believed it was nothing more than understanding his responsibilities and putting in the work. As one should.

     He should be more like the others, so wrapped up in inheritance and business studies that his whole world revolved around it. But that was the last thing he wanted. And in truth, the thought that this semi-rebellious act might surface and vex his father had Jumin a little more than delighted.

     “Well, in any case, you look pleased to me. What’s this one about?” Jihyun asked.

     “Vineyards.”

     “Wine? But you can’t drink,” Jihyun laughed a boyish laugh.

     “No. But I still find it all so fascinating. Did you know there are over ten thousand different types of wine grapes in the world?”

     Jihyun sat down. “That many?”

     “Yes. Quite astounding, isn’t it? And the numerous factors that go into growing them even more so. Soil type—the acidity, weather, rodents and pests, geography. Even the slope of the earth in which they are grown from can have an effect on the harvest.”

     “Sounds complex. I don’t think I’d have the skills or patience to handle something like that.”

     “I’d have to agree,” he laughed as loudly as a library would allot, “you get distracted too easily.”

     Jumin never understood why Jihyun, for whatever reason, was always so intent on listening to him talk. He wasn’t used to being heard, honestly. His father was understandably busy, His mother, well…And of course, there were the other kids in their class. Most of which had already written him off due to jealousy or perhaps his peculiar nature. 

     But time after time, Jihyun sat with him. Eyes focused and face expressive in wonder or contemplation. That’s what people loved about him. What drew them to him the way drops of dew converge on a leaf. That spark of wonder in his eyes that, when he looked at you, told you that you were important. If not to everyone, then at least to someone. To him. He was thoughtful and extremely intelligent in his own rights, surely. Jumin saw that. And after far too long Jumin had come to realize that, perhaps, this is what friendship was. He enjoyed it.

     “Wine has an intriguing complexity. The smallest change in detail renders one vintage completely different from another. A bottle is essentially a time capsule. Open it, and you’re transported to that year, that province, that vineyard. No two are the same.”

     “You sound like you’ve thought a lot about this, Jumin. Maybe it’s your calling,” Jihyun smiled. An almost sad sort of tease considering Jumin’s future had been set from his first breath, the day he was declared a Han. Not that he minded in the least. The self-deprecating joke only made his heart ache for his dear friend, who was not so lucky in that regard.

     “I wouldn’t say that. Though, it got me thinking about the similarities between wine and people.”

     “Like what?”

     “Well, for example, me. Jihyun, how much of who I am do you think is due to my father and status? If I had been born someone different, somewhere different? Or perhaps if my father never started dating…who do you think I would be, presently?”

     “Jumin…are you upset about your father dating another woman?”

     Jihyun cast his eyes down with a somewhat somber tone. It was so like him, to put emotions ahead of anything else. Especially the emotions of others. It’s what Jumin had grown so fond of. Perhaps, because he found it so absolutely opposite of the way he lived his life.

     “I would be lying to say I wasn’t bothered by his behavior. It’s embarrassing. But I did not bring this up on account of my father if that’s what you’re asking.”

     “How very like you to dodge answering about your emotions in-detail,” Jihyun shook his head with a grin.

     “It would be a waste of time, truly. My father will keep acting as he sees fit, regardless of my feelings on the matter. Same as yours,” Jumin replied, mouth sullen and blunt as it had been since he couldn’t remember when.

     “I see,” Jihyun said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ll still be here, if…”

     Jumin could see by the quiet of his voice that he must understand, and wouldn’t press the issue further. But he didn’t look up from the glossy pages of the book. Instead, he turned the page, engrossed in yet another photograph depicting trim rows of vines covering several sun-kissed, rolling hills.

     “I’m not sure,” Jihyun continued, and Jumin looked up to listen. “To answer your question, I’m not sure. Maybe you would be a bit different had you been raised by another family. Though, I bet you’d still be a bit strange,” they both laughed.

     “Unique,” Jumin corrected with a haughty smirk.

     “Unique, then,” Jihyun grinned.

     “You’re unique as well, you know.”

     “That’s true. I’ve always felt…odd. Perhaps that’s why we make such splendid friends.”

     Jumin agreed. The truth was, ever since they met, all of those days of empty rooms and hours of solitude seemed like distant memories. Since they met, he hasn’t felt as completely…alone. He wanted to thank Jihyun for that. One day he would tell him. About the lonely times and the tangled threads inside of him. Perhaps, Jihyun had threads of his own.

     “Even if it were true, that you would be different under different circumstances, I like the Jumin that crashed his car into my house. I am grateful I got the chance to meet your particular vintage, Jumin Han.”

     A warm comfort spread through Jumin at those heartfelt words. “And I, you. Despite the fact that you are exceedingly sentimental at times,” he teased.

     “Ha, maybe so. And I imagine you will be as well, one day. When we’re old and reminiscing over a bottle of wine at one of these vineyards you’re reading about.”

    “You’d drink?”

     “I don’t see why not. I had a taste, once. One of father’s dinner parties, you know the ones. But, I have to say, it wasn’t entirely dreadful.”

     “I should like to see you drunk.”

     “I bet you get drunk before I do,” Jihyun replied.

     “I’m not so sure about that, you are smaller than I am,” Jumin teased.

     Jihyun, ever the pacifist, made no attempt at a rebuttal. “Alright, alright. I guess in time, we’ll find out. When we’re old enough, we’ll take a trip to one of these vineyards and you can show me all you know about wine, Mr. Expert.”

     “It’s a promise, then. When we’re old enough, we’ll share our first bottle of wine together,” Jumin smiled a soft smile.

     “Yes,” Jihyun returned a smile of his own,“it’s a promise.”

[seeaddywrite]

stars, hide your fires

this fic has been started approximately four different times, & no matter how much i cut or rearrange, it still ends up as a multi-chapter, so i’m giving up the fight & doing it. it’s been a challenge, but one i’m enjoying. currently, i’m guessing this will end up at about ten chapters, depending on how it goes. my goal is to update twice a week -- feel free to keep me accountable. :)

based on this prompt from @roswellprompts: “post-finale. malex eventually, preferably. alex goes undercover with his brothers to learn about the weapon they're developing and pretends he's on their side. everyone suspects he's truly gone dark. even alex can't tell the difference sometimes.”

thanks to @soberqueerinthewild for letting me rant about this fic, reading over it, & for basically being the best. also, thanks to @ubiestcaelum for Hunter’s name & being generally awesome. 

“Manes, come on,” Valenti whines from behind Alex, sounding more like a disappointed teenager than the fully grown, mature man  he’s supposedly become. “Liz is cooking at Evans’ tonight, and neither of us get enough home cooking to miss it.”

The feel of displaced air on the back of his neck as Kyle steps up behind him makes Alex tense a little -- it’s hard to relax with people out of his line of sight, even when it’s someone he trusts. Old habits die hard, and Alex has plenty of reason to remain vigilant. But since Kyle Valenti has somehow stepped back into his life and decided to fill the position of ‘best friend’ that he’d vacated back in high school, Alex doesn’t react, and only rolls his eyes at the whining.

“You’re only this desperate to go because you know Liz is bringing Arturo’s enchiladas,” Alex teases him, knowing full well that no one would be this excited over Liz’s cooking. The woman is a genius with lab equipment, but she lacks when it comes to measuring cups and kitchen timers. He’s learned that the hard way over the many dinner get-togethers their little circle has held in the last several months. It’s a habit Liz started when Rosa was first brought back, and she, Michael, and Isobel were still grieving Max, and it’s continued even now that Rosa has fully reintegrated to Roswell living and they’ve successfully managed to bring Max back from the dead.

Alex won’t admit it aloud, but those dinners have quickly become his favorite part of the week. Having Liz and Rosa around so often is a balm to the loneliness he’s been battling for months, and when Maria joins them -- still, unfortunately, in the dark about the alien truths -- Alex can almost pretend everything is back to normal. And on top of that, he’s found that he actually likes Max and Isobel Evans, despite rocky beginnings. In some tangential way, they’re family; no matter what his relationship status with Michael, that will always be true.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that those dinners are the one time that he’s guaranteed to see Guerin smile. They’ve passed the awkward exes phase, and now that the relationship with Maria has died a natural death, Alex doesn’t even feel guilty when their eyes meet and he feels that old, familiar chemistry flare between them. It’s a slow, delicious burn, and he’s looking forward to the resolution.

“Obviously,” Valenti agrees with an unconcerned shrug, drawing Alex back into their banter and away from distracting thoughts of Guerin. “But if you tell Liz I said that, I’m telling her that you fed the last meal she left for you to the beagle after she left.” He shoves playfully at Alex’s shoulder, and takes the return swat in stride before returning to his attempts at persuasion.“But, seriously, we’ve been through those files a thousand times already. You’re not going to find anything we haven’t already seen, so I think whatever this is can wait until tomorrow so we can go get some decent food for once. Don’t you?”

It probably could wait until tomorrow. There’s no reason for Alex to believe the incongruous firewall he’d just run into in some of Project Shepherd’s newest files is hiding anything more than the usual information on alien torture disguised as science -- but something in his gut is telling him that he needs to dig deeper, to find out what lies behind the wall of code that had been cleverly hidden in plain sight. And if Alex learned anything during his time on active duty, it’s that he should always trust his gut.

“You go ahead,” he tells Kyle, most of his attention still directed at the complicated coding sequences he’s creating with sharp, precise movements of his fingers over the keyboard. “Tell everyone I’ll see them soon, but there’s something here, and I --” Alex blinks in surprise, cutting himself off. “-- wow. It’s like they’re not even trying to keep me out.”

Like most of Jesse Manes’ sad attempts at cyber security, the firewall keeping Alex from the information he wants buckles under the weight of less than five minutes of Alex’s direct attention. He’s not even surprised, anymore -- his father has always been more of a bruiser than a thinker, and coding takes a certain kind of creativity, an ability to create. A man who only knows how to destroy could never possess that skill.

Both men go silent and still as images begin to pop up on the screens, and Alex swallows convulsively to quell sudden nausea. Surveillance footage from Roswell -- all from the last six months. Somehow, Project Shepherd has remained up and running despite Alex’s father’s sudden disappearance from the scene, and whoever’s behind it has been watching both Evans’ houses, Michael’s trailer, and the Crashdown, from the looks of things.

Panic begins to swell in the back of Alex’s mind as he remembers all of the things that have happened in those locations -- all of the suddenly not-dead people who have walked through those entryways, all of the alien powers that are showcased so cavalierly in the sanctity of their own homes. Michael’s got his bunker beneath the Airstream, for crying out loud! So many secrets. So many possibilities for discovery. And if Project Shepherd knows the truth, it’s only a matter of time before Michael and his siblings are dragged off to another off-books facility to suffer the same fate as the people they’d watched die at Caulfield.

Fuck.

If the surveillance was the worst of it, Alex could have dealt with it. Deleting the photos and video is the work of a moment, and he knows that his brothers -- who have to be heading things up in Jesse’s absence -- don’t have the skills to protect anything online from him. It’s a pain, and he’ll have to keep checking to be certain that new cameras haven’t been positioned, but overall, the situation would be manageable. He could control the intel received, could make sure there was never enough solid evidence to move against Michael or the twins.

But Alex has no power over the half-drawn schematics of the weapon he’s staring at now.

At least, that’s what he thinks he’s looking at -- he’s no engineer, and the scribbles on the scanned paper may as well be written in Mandarin, for all Alex knows. But the info dump says it’s alien tech of some sort, geared toward taking out their own kind -- and Alex knows, immediately, that he cannot risk his brothers or any military personnel gaining access to it. Not when Alex’s world still at least half-revolves around Michael Guerin, despite their newly minted status as friends. Not when Max and Isobel have somehow become part of his family, too, through his determination to keep Michael in his life and help bring Max back from the dead. Not when Liz and Rosa and Kyle could lose everything, if all of this were brought to light by the wrong people.

“What do we do with this?” Kyle asks finally, breaking the tense silence in the bunker. It’s been at least twenty minutes of staring, horror-struck at the screen, and Alex is no closer to an answer than he was when they started. “We have to warn them. There’s no way whoever’s running the show --”

“Flint,” Alex interrupts, his voice hard. “It has to be Flint. And probably the others, too. Dad always drags Charlie along with him on whatever he’s doing, and Hunter’s never too far behind.” Alex’s comment to Flint about mindlessly following the flock is accurate for all of his brothers. With the occasional exception of Charlie, who Alex knows tried to be a better brother to him for a while, they’re all soldiers, highly decorated and respected in their fields -- but none of them have ever been willing to go against their father.

Kyle’s lips thin, but he nods agreement. “Fine. There’s no way Flint knows about all this and isn’t planning a move, Alex. We’ve gotta get them all out of town. And probably ourselves, too. If they manage to develop this weapon --”

“We’re not running,” Alex snaps, punching the power control on the monitors so that the screens go dark. He spins his chair to look at Valenti, and knows that the expression on his face is far from reassuring -- he’s simultaneously panicking and furious, and he can’t contain it all within himself without just a little spilling over into his features.

Because slowly, an idea is forming in the back of his head. No one is going to like it -- God knows Alex doesn’t, but it’s the only way out of this fucking mess that Alex can see, and he’s desperate enough to protect Guerin and the others that he’s willing to take the risk.

“Alex, I don’t think we have a choice,” Valenti tells him firmly, and Alex’s eyes aren’t the ones that are wide and full to the brim with a frantic need to move, to do something. He starts to pace around Alex’s chair as he speaks, picking up speed with every word and step until it’s hard for Alex to understand. “Even if I was okay with the idea of your dickhead family marching in and kidnapping Evans and the others, I’m the one who put your dad in that coma. How long do you think it’ll take them to connect those dots? They’ll find him. They’ll wake him up, and it won’t just be the aliens they’re after anymore.”

There’s a moment of tense silence as Alex levers himself out of the computer chair and takes a few steps, working the stiffness from sitting too long out of his bad leg. “We’re not running,” he repeats, and this time, his voice is full of purpose. “I have an idea. It’s -- awful, but it’s the only way we’re going to be able to live out our lives without constantly looking over our shoulders.” Alex straightens his spine and stands at his full height, regarding Kyle solemnly and making it as clear as he can that he’s not going to hear any arguments.

“I’m going to infiltrate Project Shepherd, and we’re going to bring them down.”

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Three : THE DESOLATION OF THE GRINDR USER

« Grindr is a sociopath nest », Anonymous 

Grindr was launched on March 25, 2009. About a month or so earlier, I lost my virginity to the sweetest guy you could imagine. I met him on what we could consider one of Grindr’s ancestors, Gaypax— I still have that account, out of nostalgia. The design is so ugly I wonder now how I did spend so much time on it (we weren’t picky back then…) So Grindr was born at the exact time my sexual and romantic life was unfolding. It means that, except for the few years I’ve spent frenetically masturbating to La Redoute’s underwear catalogues and downloading dirty pictures of Brad Pitt naked with a very slow wifi, I’ve always been accustomed to gay apps.

Recently, the new and improved french magazine Tétu published an article called « Faut-il brûler Grindr?». Though not as detailed as I was hoping it would be, it did not changed my general opinion about the dating app paradigm. 

FLASHBACK France, 1971. A young gay man living in a beautiful city called Paris. Mike Brant just released his first major hit, Rock’N’Roll is slowly dying and Les Bidasses en Folie is this year’s biggest success at the box office. Unfortunately for him, the Gay Rights Movement is just at its infancy, homosexuality is still considered a mental illness and sodomy is punishable by law. So he shut his mouth and do his dirty business privately. he spends time around Place de Clichy and finds very discreet bars that can welcome him without too much judgement. He takes long walks toward the Tuileries bushes and sucks a stranger’s dong without any verbal exchange. He ends up marrying that fine young Marie, daughter of a friend of his dad, makes a couple of kids and from time to time, goes back to those places, shameful of himself.

That was the life of a gay man in France. If he didn’t get killed along the way. CUT TO 2009. Grindr is the first official gay dating app launched around the world. In France, the ban on sodomy disappeared in 1981 and since 1992, you are no longer considered a crazy person for being attracted to a person of the same sex (well, not from an official medical point, anyway). The app came to fruition through a simple question asked by its creator, Joel Simkhai : « WHO ELSE IS GAY AROUND HERE? ».

By 2012, 4 million people were using the App. 27 million as of 2017. Tinder followed in 2012 — you are welcome, straight people. Then SCRUFF, GAYROMEO, HORNET, BLUED, … What is wrong, then ? You damn well know something is wrong.

SMARTPHONE, 21st CENTURY’S NEW BACKROOM

If you go to a bar, you have to talk to the bartender, exchange a least a fews words with strangers, even dance as your look around and are being seen by others in the flesh. If you go to a gaybar, the same thing happens. If you go to a gaybar then the gaybar’s backroomn, rules change.

As the dating apps was closing in on worldwide domination, it became clear that the natural human kindness and respect would ultimately have no effect on the way people would communicate with one another on Grindr. I’ve been working in a bookstore for the past four years, you see. I expect a “hello”, “goodbye” and a smile during any interactions with clients — from them and myself. So there’s nothing more annoying that someone coming up to you, barking what they want to and leaving without any civility whatsoever. The Grindr equivalent would be Step 1 : A DICK PICK (or ass pick. I once had a fisting commemorative photo sent to me) straight up. Step 2 : A terribly convenient “cc sava tu ch?” or a “cho?” Step 3A : If you are polite enough to answer something, a conclusive “tu reçoi” or “tu bouge” Step 3B : you did not answer a singe word and the guy either sends you a “????” or insults the shit out of you. I sometimes do not answer impolite clients at work. Guess what ? Bitches say hello if you stare down at them long enough. On the internet, never gonna happen.

I remember the first couple of times I went on Grindr. I tried to answer everyone, even a “no, thank you”. There was always some “Hello”s, “How are you?”s, a few “My name is”s. But as the years went by, gay men (as I mostly talk to gay or bisexual cis men on these apps, I can only give my opinion on that category of people) adopted a series of unofficial rules to talk to each other.

1. If we are on this app, we are ready to fuck. 2. We do not have time for small talk. 3. We do not need your name, but dick size and multiple nudes are welcome. A picture is worth a thousand blablablahs. 4. We need to be very precise about what we want, so as not to waste our precious time. 5. Seriously, give us a full diagnosis of your body shape through pics, boy. 6. Chems ? 9. There are no rule 7 & 8, because 6 & 9. Now, turn around.

There are also lots of personal rules users seem keen on sharing them publicly as to implement unofficial rule number 4.

NO FEMS, NO BLACKS, NO ASIANS

“Pretty chill guy here. Very open minded and friendly. I love men from different cultures. Just no Asians. Asians leave me alone. I’m not racist” “Don’t message me. I’ll message you :). No Blacks Asians or fems. Love it when fats call themselves masc. hahahaha.” “Tell me if top/btm. Don’t really believe in “vers”. […] Attracted to Latin & White (trying to sound PC)” “Chill masc sane… just described nobody on here… Over 35, Asian or fem = block.. haha” “99% of you are losers. I’m the top 1%. So prove yourself first” The last one was written by a white male, by the way. They all were.

In our modern society, we’re not fools enough to believe that racism disappeared and everyone is accepting of others. Just look at the whole series of events called “while Black” where white people called cops on black folks for getting out of their airbnbs, talking in a Starbucks without ordering or falling asleep in a communal room at college. Nevertheless, you don’t see parades of racists proudly marching with “NO BLACKS” signs on the streets — you see another type of marches, yes. Free speech and stuff, sure. So why has it become acceptable in people’s minds to shade light on their racism in their profiles, barely hiding behind the “sexual preference” bullshit excuse ?

In an article dated September 2018 called “Why is it OK for online dates to block whole ethnic groups?” (2), the Observer related the appalling anecdote of an elderly white man who responded to a Grindr user of asian descent : “Asian, ew gross”.

I myself was told that I was too fat, too small, too twinkish, then not enough of those, or too white (but so we’re clear : RESERVE RACISM IS NOT A THING. STOP TRYING TO MAKE IT A THING!).

Racism also works with the beliefs that if you look or act a certain way, you obviously are what someone’s fantasy is. You are a black man so I assume that my hole will expand by ten once you’re inside me. You a blond light weight with feminine traits. You’re a submissive bottom and a real whore.

The world works on assumptions (ex : the myth of the BIG BLACK DICK or the for-sure global instinct that Tom Hanks would never have to face any #MeToo accusations) and apps follow that same path but without any policing. The absence of ramifications from someone’s actions further implement a feeling of unapologetic mindfulness — the same way being in a dark backroom with strangers you can’t see does not seem to add any consequences to what you’ll do next.

Recently, Grindr tried to course correct its past errors by creating “Kindr” (3). Was it a new app that would prevent people from actively using hate speech ? WELL WHY DON’T YOU PREVENT IT ON GRINDR THEN ? Was it a new platform to exchange ideas and experiences so that we can find another way to communicate together ?

Here’s how they introduce Kindr on their official site : At Grindr, we’re into diversity (MONEY), inclusion, and users who treat each other with respect. We’re not into racism, bullying, or other forms of toxic behavior (YOU ARE THE TOXIC BEHAVIOR). These are our preferences, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to better reflect them. Same app. New rules (DID YOU THOUGH?) Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Their type. Their tastes. But nobody is entitled to tear someone else down because of their race, size, gender, HIV status, age, or — quite simply — being who they are. (AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT PUT YOUR BUSINESS IN A RISKY POSITION) Join us in building a kinder Grindr. (DO YOUR OWN DAMN WORK). Express yourself, but not at the expense of someone else (OR US). Report discrimination when you see it (LIKE WITH THE JEWS BACK THEN. ALSO, WE THE USERS, ALREADY DID THAT). Use your voice and share your story to call out prejudice and spark change. Together, we can amplify the conversation and take steps towards a kinder, more respectful community (SEE, WE AT GRINDR ARE WOKE).

There you have it. A marketing scam to ease the pain of millions of users whose relationships and self esteem were affected by Grindr’s lack of interest in their consumers. How many years did it take for a simple statement from the CEO ? What’s actually concrete about these actions ?

in the community guide lines, it is stated that they “will remove any discriminatory statements displayed on profiles. […] Profile language that is used to openly discriminate against other users’ traits and characteristics will not be tolerated and will be subject to review by our moderation team”. FINE. So, if someone says “no short fat asians”, theoretically it would be removed from the profile. But if it says “more into vanilla and spice than chocolate and rice. So hit me up if this is you” (an actual Grindr profile, by the way), what can a Grindr moderator do about it ? The racism is still there. Are we to believe that EVERY single profile is being reviewed in detail ?

#deletegrindr was a popular hashtag over a year ago. I’m not on twitter and I still heard about it. Was it a cultural shift in the way gay people wanted to treat other gay people ? Were we on the verge of a revolution ? Nop. Grindr released data informations of thousands and thousands of profiles about HIV status (something that you can put on your Grindr profile) to third party companies. Since then, Grindr released the Kindr initiative and rewrote its policies.

I’m not against dating apps. I think it was a wonderful tool back in the day to extend one’s horizon, explore and experiment with love, sex and adventures. It no longer works that way. I didn’t even talk about the spreading of drug using through profile description and the real danger of stimulants in someone’s sex life.

#deletegrindr should come back and this time, it has to work. Silicon Valley, go make an app from scratch. One that would implement actual kindness to the machine, not based on popularity. Think of what people need, not what they want. People are shitheads. I’m a shithead. What I want is never good for me.

And YOU. You, little queer boy reading this. Don’t go on Grindr before going to bed to check the hotties in your area. Forget about that 6'2 monster cock Swedish god that lives nearby and offered you a quick hump for the ride. Ask him for a drink, put down your phone, get to know him a little and then fuck his brains out. You’re still gonna fuck but you’ll find humanity where there was once none.

That’s my preaching for the night. I gave up long ago on apps. I delete them all and stay away for months. Then, I feel lonely and get back to one or two. I met this new guy that way (4).The nice thing about it was that we did not talk dick sizes, favorite positions or any sexual desires until way after we actually met (and we’re talking two full weeks of messages). I’m not on any dating apps now.

(1) https://tetu.com (2) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/29/wltm-colour-blind-dating-app-racial-discrimination-grindr-tinder-algorithm-racism (3) https://www.kindr.grindr.com (4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Miller

[ventrue-rosary]

Kingdom of Decay - Chapter 1

I renamed and rehashed Through the Dark Veil. Reblogs, comments and coffees more than welcome

Daughter of both destiny and disgrace, Amaranthe has had the weight of an entire kingdom upon her shoulder all her young life. But when she finds herself in the damned and decaying lands of Barovia, she faces her greatest challenge yet...

Chapter 1: Of Monsters and Men

Small droplets of blood slide off the low-hanging leaves, falling into the soil with a subdued, wet thud, releasing the metallic stench of blood. Theodrin stalks through the underbrush, chasing the trail of red that eventually leads him to his quarry: a creature that is a crossbred abomination of man and beast, bipedal in structure with overtly long limbs coated in coarse, thick fur. Triangular ears sit atop its head, which in place of a mouth holds a canine-like snout uttering bestial growls as  Theodrin corners it. The claw-tipped hand clutching its wound tightens its grip around it as it hunches defensively over itself.

‘What will it be? Will you die with your last shreds of dignity, or as wretched at the beast you have become?’

Its jaws open to unleash a scream that spooks flocks of birds into flight. Theodrin grins as he unsheathes his blade with a flourish, cutting it across his wrist to wreathe the metal in shards of ice.

‘Like a beast it is, then.’

The doors to the courtroom swing open. Theodrin walks in with a swagger to his step, caked in a fine layer of sweat and dirt from his hunt, holding in his hands the severed head of his kill. Courtiers gasp and eagerly part to let him pass. Narcissa rises from her perch atop the throne fixing him with a look of contempt. Theodrin feels his teeth grind together as he bows his head to his younger sister and her bastard daughter.

‘Narcissa…’

‘You Grace.’ Alestir corrects.

His teeth grind together even harder. To think a human nobody would order him how to address his own family. Nevertheless, he maintains his calm facade as he straightens to look his sister, nay, the Queen, in the eye as he throws the beasts head at her feet. Shocked gasps and murmurs ripple through the crowd. The bastard turns her head with a shudder.

Narcissa’s lips curl in disgust. ‘What manner of creature is this?’

‘A lycan, or werewolf to the laymen. A creature that can masquerade as man to hide its monstrous form, in which it has the strength to rend limbs from their sockets and talons capable of tearing through skin, flesh and bone. It is said only a bit is needed to transfer the disease. Likely there are more hiding in the forests, or even in the towns, right under our very noses.’

People in the crowd cry aloud in horror. Women fan their faces to fend off fainting.

‘And you think it is suitable to bring its severed head into my court, in front of my people–my daughter!’ Narissa’s trembling hands gesture to the young girl, her head still tilted away from the scene.

‘She has to grow a spine at some point, my dear sister. One day she will be the one taking up the sword to protect these lands.’

‘No, the sons fight. The daughters rule.’    

Theodrin spreads his arms and glances about the room. ‘Forgive me your Grace, but where is your son?’

‘Out! All of you out!’

The courtiers quickly scramble to hasten out of the room, carrying their mortified whispers with them as they go.

‘You as well, Amaranthe, Alestir.’

With far much more reluctance, the little Princess stands up from her throne. She pauses as she reaches Theodrin to glower up at him. He always hated her appearance–the dark hair and purple eyes of her human father butchering the sharp angular Darcelle features. She wasn’t right, her ears too round for elven society yet too pointy to pass as human. When Theodrin looks at her, all he sees is a crossbreed, a mongrel. An abomination.

Alestir places a hand on her shoulder and steers her out, hardly sparing his brother-in-law a glance as he passes. Theodrin for one is glad to see the back of them. He just thinks it a shame their departure is not permanent.

He turns his face towards his sister only for it to be snapped back again to the side when she delivers a hard slap to his cheek. A thousand pins tingle in his skin under the force of the blow. Narcissa’s entire frame trembles, her face beet red. The hand she used to slap him now points at his face with accusation.

‘You will never storm into my court again, make a spectacle and then humiliate me in front of my people, nor presume to tell me how to raise my daughter! Do you understand? I am not just your sister, I am also your Queen! Remember your place.’

‘And remember who hunts down those monsters from the tales your people use to put their children to bed, who you fear lurk in the shadows of these ivory towers you stand in, so haughty, so righteous, so entitled. I might err one day, my sword slip from my grasp, and one such creature may find its way into your hallowed halls.’

Narcissa steps toe to toe with him. Equal in height, her glare meets his, her emerald eyes practically wreathed in the flames of her ire.

‘Is that a threat, Theodrin?’

‘Of course not, sister. That would be treason. I would never even dream of such a thing.’

‘Get. Out.’

He stiffly bows before he takes his leave. Theodrin knows he has already crossed one too many a line this day. As much as he enjoyed irritating his sister, he very much liked the position his head currently held atop his shoulders.

As he exits the palace, he sees his niece sat by the fountain, a book between her hands. He strides over and plucks the red leather-bound tome from her grip. She makes a grab for it but Theodrin stands a foot taller than her, and he holds it out of her reach as he angles to cover to read its title written in obnoxious golden cursive.

‘ “Of Men and Monsters”?’ Intrigued, he flicks through the pages and sees it is purely fantastical drivel. Romanticised tales of armoured knights rescuing fair maidens from fearsome dragons. He scoffs and flings the book over her shoulder, into the fountain water. ‘Here I thought you were making a headstart in studying for your inevitable induction into our order. And yet you disappoint me again. It’s all you live to do, isn’t it?’

Amaranthe isn’t paying him any heed. Her back is turned to him as she drags the ruined dregs of her book from the water.

‘Are you listening to me, bastard?’ he snarls, grabbing her shoulder.

With a cry, she pivots and slams the wet book square into his face with far more strength than he could have anticipated. He feels his nose crumple with a wet crunch, chased by the overwhelming dull ache that slowly consumes his face like a fire sweeping across a dehydrated forest. It leaves him stunned for a few seconds as the pain blackens out his vision. He resurfaces from the abyss with a deep breath, hoping the Gods lend him the will he needs to stay his hand that is already inching towards the pommel of his blade.  

‘That’s now two Darcelle women that have hit me today. Two too many, I must say.’ He swipes at the blood dribbling from his ruptured nostrils. He admits it was a good hit, and a more gutsy move than he expected from her, but the problem still remained a bastard raised a hand at someone of legitimate lineage, and to him of all people. The one people should be bowing and grovelling to as thanks for lengthening their miserable little lives.

Theodrin removes his hand from his blade, raises it over his shoulder.

‘Here, bastard, treat this as your first lesson from the Blood Hunters. Never raise your hand to your betters!

Another hand snags his wrist as he strikes down. Looking over his shoulder, he is greeted by the familiar, unwelcome visage of Addenus Killglave, a human man with a full head of long red hair and a well-kempt beard. He is young, probably only seen five more winters than Alestir, but well-respected in their order, and quickly climbing the ranks, which only serves to add more insult to this injury.

‘If that is an ideal you live by, then pray tell me why you are raising your hand to Princess Amaranthe?’

Theodrin wrenches his arm free, and straightens out his coat. ‘What?’

‘You said never raise your hands to your betters but I believe that’s precisely what you just did.’

Theodrin sputters, almost choking on his words. ‘She…she’s a bastard!’

‘Aye, but a royal one at that. Not to mention that the wee girl has hardly seen ten winters. Our order doesn’t condone beating children.’

Theodrin feels the unwelcome bite of anger and shame. Addenus’s stiflingly calm nature only serves to exacerbate his foul mood as the order elder regards him coolly, waiting for the next move. A fast friend to Alestir, Theodrin knows Addenus would rebut any further words–he is in league with the lot of them.

‘Get back to the order, Theo. We’ll speak more of this when I return.’

‘Glady,’ Theodrin hisses as he turns on his heel and marches out through the open portcullis.

[confrontingbabble-on]

“Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey.  This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.

A well-written book should be clear and concise, with all factual statements accurate and characters neither two-dimensional nor plagued with multiple personality disorder—unless they actually are. A book written by a god should be some of the best writing ever produced. It should beat Shakespeare on enduring relevance, Stephen Hawking on scientific accuracy, Pablo Neruda on poetry, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on ethical coherence, and Maya Angelou on sheer lucid beauty—just to name a few.

Why does the Bible so fail to meet this mark? One obvious answer, of course, is that neither the Bible—nor any derivative work like the Quran or Book of Mormon—was actually dictated by the Christian god or other celestial messengers. We humans may yearn for advice that is “god-breathed” but in reality, our sacred texts were written by fallible human beings who, try as they might, fell short of perfection in the ways that we all do.

But why is the Bible so badly written? Falling short of perfection is one thing, but the Bible has been the subject of literally thousands of follow-on books by people who were genuinely trying to figure out what it means. Despite best efforts, their conclusions don’t converge, which is one reason Christianity has fragmented into over 40,000 denominations and non-denominations.

Here are just a few of the reasons for this tangled web of disagreements and the generally terrible quality of much biblical writing (with some notable exceptions) by literary standards.

Too Many Cooks... Far from being a single unified whole, the Bible is actually a collection of texts or text fragments from many authors. We don’t know the number of writers precisely, and—despite the ancient traditions that assigned authorship to famous people such as Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—we don’t know who most of them were. We do know that the men who inscribed the biblical texts had widely different language skills, cultural and technological surroundings, worldviews and supernatural beliefs—along with varying objectives.

Scholars estimate that the earliest of the Bible’s writers lived and wrote about 800 years before the Christian era, and the most recent lived and wrote around 100 CE. They ranged from tribal nomads to subjects of the Roman Empire. To make matters more complicated, some of them borrowed fragments of even earlier stories and songs that had been handed down via oral tradition from Sumerian cultures and religions. For example, flood myths that predate the Noah story can be found across Mesopotamia, with a boat-building hero named Gilgamesh or Ziusudra or Atrahasis.

Bible writers adapted earlier stories and laws to their own cultural and religious context, but they couldn’t always reconcile differences among handed-down texts, and often may not have known that alternative versions existed. Later, variants got bundled together. This is why the Bible contains two different creation myths, three sets of Ten Commandments, and four contradictory versions of the Easter story.

Forgery and Counter-forgery...  Best-selling Bible scholar Bart Ehrman has written a whole book about forgery in the New Testament, texts written under the names of famous men to make the writings more credible. This practice was so common among early Christians that nearly half of the books of the New Testament make false authorship claims, while others were assigned famous names after the fact. When books claiming to be written by one person were actually written by several, each seeking to elevate his own point of view, we shouldn’t be surprised if the writing styles clash or they espouse contradictory attitudes.

Histories, Poetries, None-of-These...  Christians may treat the Bible as a unified book of divine guidance, but in reality it is a mix of different genres: ancient myths, songs of worship, rule books, poetry, propaganda, gospels (yes, this was a common literary genre), coded political commentary, and mysticism, to name just a few. Translators and church leaders down through the centuries haven’t always known which of these they were reading. Modern comedians sometimes make a living by deliberately garbling genres—for example, by taking statements literally when they are meant figuratively—or distorting things someone else has written or said. Whether they realize it or not, biblical literalists in the pulpit sometimes make a living doing the same thing.

Lost in Translation... The books of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, though not in the modern versions of these languages. (Think of trying to read Chaucer’s Old English.) When Roman Catholic Christianity ascended, church leaders embraced the Hebrew Bible and translated it into then-modern Latin, calling it the Old Testament. They also translated texts from early Jesus-worshipers and voted on which to include in their canon of scripture. These became the New Testament. Ironically, some New Testament writers themselves had already quoted bad translations of Old Testament scriptures. These multi-layered imperfect translations inspired key doctrines of the Christian faith, the most famous being the Virgin Birth.

Most English versions of the Bible have been translated directly from the earliest available manuscripts, but translators have their own biases, some of which were shaped by those early Latin translations and some of which are shaped by more recent theological considerations or cultural trends. After American Protestants pivoted away from supporting abortion in the 1980s, some actually re-translated a troublesome Bible verse that treated the death of a fetus differently from the death of a person. The meaning of the Bible passage changed.

But even when scholars scrupulously try to avoid biases, an enormous amount of information is simply lost in translation. One challenge is that the meanings of a story, or even a single word, depend on what preceded it in the culture at large or a specific conversation, or both. Imagine that a teenager has asked his mom for a specific amount of money for a special night out, and Mom says, “You can have $50.” She is communicating something very different if the kid asked for $20 (Mom is saying splurge a bit) versus if the kid had asked for $100 (Mom is saying rein yourself in).

As the mother opens her wallet, the son scrolls through restaurant options on Yelp and exclaims, “Sick!” Mom blinks, then mentally translates into the slang of her own generation which, her son’s perceptions aside, doesn’t come close to translating across 2000 years of history.

Inside baseball...  A lot changes in 2000 years. As we read the Bible through modern eyes, it helps to remember that we’re getting a glimpse, however imperfectly translated, of the urgent concerns of our Iron Age ancestors. Back then, writing anything was tremendously labor intensive, so we know that information that may seem irrelevant now (because it is) was of acute importance to the men who first carved those words into clay, or inked them on animal skins or papyrus.

Long lists of begats in the Gospels; greetings to this person and that in the Pauline epistles; instructions on how to sacrifice a dove in Leviticus or purify a virgin war captive in Numbers; ‘chosen people’ genealogies; prohibitions against eating creatures that don’t exist; pages of threats against enemies of Israel; coded rants against the Roman Empire. . . As a modern person reading the Bible, one can’t help but think about how the pages might have been better filled. Could none of this have been pared away? Couldn’t the writers have made room instead for a few short sentences that might have changed history Wash your hands after you poop. Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t want to. Witchcraft isn’t real. Slavery is forbidden. We are all God’s chosen people. Answer: No, they couldn’t have fit these in, even without the begats. Of course there was physical space on papyrus and parchment. But the minds of the writers were fully occupied with other concerns. In their world, who begat who mattered(!) while challenging prevailing Iron Age views of illness or women and children or slaves was simply inconceivable.

It’s Not About You...  The Gospel According to Matthew (not actually authored by Matthew) was written for an audience of Jews. He was a recruiter for the ancient equivalent of Jews for Jesus. That is why, in the Matthew account, the Last Supper is timed as a Passover meal. By contrast, the Gospel According to John was written to persuade pagan Roman prospects, so the author timed the events differently. This is just one of many explicit contradictions between the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection.The contradictions in the Gospel stories—and many other parts of the Bible, are not there because the writers were confused. Quite the opposite. Each writer knew his own goals and audience, and adapted hand-me-down stories or texts to fit, sometimes changing the meaning in the process. The folks who are confused are those who treat the book as if they were the audience, as if each verse was a timeless and perfect message sent to them by God.  Their yearning for a set of clean answers to life’s messy questions has created a mess.

A good culling might do a lot to improve things. Imagine a version of the Bible containing only that which has enduring beauty or usefulness. Unfortunately, the collection in the Bible has been bound together for so long that Christian authorities (with a few exceptions) don’t trust themselves to unbind it. Maybe the thought of deciding what goes and stays feels overwhelming or even dangerous. Or maybe, deep down, Bible-believing Evangelicals and other fundamentalists suspect that if they started culling, there wouldn’t be a whole lot left. So, they keep it all, in the process binding themselves to the worldview and very human imperfections of our Iron Age ancestors.And that’s what makes the Good Book so bad.”

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.

https://valerietarico.com/2018/01/28/why-is-the-bible-so-badly-written/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT COMPUTER

In the US it's ok to be overtly ambitious, and you have to do much more than enter a credit card number. At Viaweb we sometimes ran into trouble on this account. Prose has readers, but software has users. And the programmers liked it because it meant they could help the users, instead of where it should be. If someone gets murdered by someone they met on Facebook, the press will treat the story as if it were some sort of cosmological constant, I'm certain it isn't. If there are x number of customers who'd pay an average of $y per year for what you're making, then the total addressable market, or TAM, of your company is $xy. It wasn't that they were stupid. It's hard to design good libraries. So most hackers will tend to be running Linux or FreeBSD now. Now, as Yahoo Store, this software is the most powerful force over the long term. They rush to develop a product, launch it with no marketing and initially have only a few fanatically devoted users. Several journalists have tried to interpret that as evidence for some macro story they were telling, but the creator is full of worry.

Whereas when they don't like you, you'll see them reaching for ideas: they'll be saying but what about x? It has always seemed to me the solution is to write your first draft the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask Is this the way I'd say this if I were talking to a friend. The nature of speed, as perceived by the end-user applications. We did. At Viaweb, as at many software companies, most code had one definite owner. Mostly because of the increasing number of early failures, the startup business of the future won't simply be the same or even better. There is a train running the length of it, and look bold. We worked the usual long hours of an early startup.

Indians and Chinese seem plenty entrepreneurial, perhaps more than Americans. 7 billion. And this is one reason intranet software will continue to be lead investors in the sense that it lets hackers have their way with it. With server-based applications, more and more programs may turn out to be, it will be consumer electronics: something that costs about $200, and that work means working for a big company, for whom ideally you'd work your whole career. From other hackers. It is by no means a lost cause to try to create a silicon valley; these are all good things in their own minds why they like or dislike startups. What's more, it wouldn't take very long. The phrase personal computer is part of the language now, but when they do get paged at 4:00 AM, they don't usually have to do much more than enter a credit card number. The famously rigid labor laws hurt every company, but it didn't seem like a winner or a loser, and once their opinion is set it's hard to have odd ideas about politics. With Web-based software gets used round the clock, so everything you do is immediately put through the wringer.

If this isn't precisely how hackers think, a language designer would do well to act as if it were. That's the characteristic failure mode of VCs. To many people, Lisp is a natural fit for server-based software, no one needs Windows. 40% used to be common. Maybe. In How to Become a Hacker, Eric Raymond describes Lisp as something like Latin or Greek—a free implementation, a book, and something to hack. Inexpensive processors have eaten the workstation market you rarely even hear the word now and are most of the change is small and incremental. Though the way that happens won't necessarily be that the behavior of existing investors will change; it may instead be that they'll be replaced by other investors with different behavior—that investors who understand startups well enough to take on the hard problem of predicting their trajectory will tend to be running Linux or FreeBSD now. You have to be big, and it will seem to investors no more than necessary. We would leave a board meeting to fix a serious bug. In effect the valuation is 2 numbers. Many evolve into real programs, with real features and real users.

Imagine the obelisk of startups. VisiCalc was not merely a microcomputer version of a mainframe application, after all—it was a team of eight to ten people wearing jeans to the office and typing into vt100s. Right now the limiting factor now. White. Only a few do so far, but the world hasn't exploded as a result. Mostly because of the increasing number of early failures, the startup business of the future won't simply be the same shape, scaled up. Not understanding that investors view investments as bets combines with the ten page paper due, then ten pages you must write, even if you only have a few users you can be lost or stolen.

If you only need a browser for a client, you don't need the current. Programming languages, especially, don't get redesigned enough. Lots of small companies flourished, and did it by making cool things. The trick is to realize that there's no real contradiction here. And those are the users who are ready to try new things, partly because it seems kind of slimy. But we all know the amounts being raised in series A rounds aren't going away, and the threat to them isn't mortal. A round. Development machines were expensive, and because the customers would be individual people that you could easily surpass Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco. But they were still only about a tenth of a second for a click to get to the end of it they had built a real, working store. I think what holds back European hackers is simply that they don't meet so many people who've done it. You might think that people decide to buy something, and then try to simulate what would have happened in your country. If Microsoft and AOL get into a client war, the only thing sure to work on both will be browsing the Web, and it will seem to investors no more than an instance of a very ambitious German presses a button or two, doesn't it?

As long as you stay on the territory of truth, you're strong. Founders hate this because it's a recipe for deadlock, and delay is the thing a startup can least afford. They're the ones in a position to tell investors how the round is going to work. Ditto for PayPal. This talk was written for an audience of investors. They were also a kind of proxy focus group; we could ask them which of two new features users wanted more, and more informal. That's a new problem, but skeptical about the value of whatever solution you've got so far. Or more precisely, lack of syntax, ever become popular? For companies, Web-based applications. There don't seem to be thriving, you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. I wouldn't be surprised if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand. Indirectly, but they all wait to invest.

We did it because it meant they could help the users, instead of forcing people to keep buying and installing new versions so that they'll keep paying you. It has sometimes been said that Lisp should use first and rest means 50% more typing. With server-based applications. Would the transplanted startups survive? That will change with server-based software will be good enough to act as a mecca, attracting talent from abroad and causing startups to form around it. But by starting there they were perfectly poised to expand up the stack of microcomputer software as microcomputers grew powerful enough to support one. That could be a useful language feature. It's something you're more likely to get better service this way than they would from in-house system administrators. All we have to do is make sure this new Lisp will be used to hack. That's an important difference because it means a startup could do multiple notes at once with different caps. The kind of people who are supposed to be doing sophisticated things to see them, advanced users were often proud to catch one. It wouldn't work so well in Sweden.

[robininthelabyrinth]

FFXV: Eschaton - 4/4

Fic: Eschaton (ao3 link) - chapter 4/4

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Pairing: None (gen)

Summary: Sure, it’s the end of the world, but that just means someone’s got to fix it.

And then the world found its somebodies.

(aka, with Noctis gone into the Crystal and no one sure when he’ll be back, Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto end up saving the world one piece at a time)

——————————————————————————————

After Hammerhead, everything happens, it seems, all at once.

They almost don’t know how to act, seeing Noctis – older, of course, but still Noctis, Noct, their friend, their king, who they had begun to fear they might not live to see again. He’s older, the way they are, and strangely calmer, more serene, more centered, but he’s there.

They fall into old patterns almost immediately, looking to him for the way forward, and the way forward lies to Insomnia and the Citadel and Ardyn.

Noctis asks about armor.

Prompto finds him the old Crownsguard armor that belonged to King Regis, once upon a time, and then stored in a Hammerhead closet by Cid, and with it the golden leg brace that Noctis takes with a sigh of relief.

They wear Crownsguard uniforms themselves, heavy fabric forming protective coats, uniforms they wore in his honor during the Long Night and gladly wear now, the symbols of their roles as royal retainers.

And yet –

Something more.

Ignis’ coat is studded, a feature of dual usage: the studs hook together a tough leather underlayer for additional protection, while the studs themselves form formulae and weaknesses of various daemons written out in the blind-language in the event he would like to double-check a reference.

Gladio’s coat is dark, but not dark enough to fully hide the checkered effect given by the writing – hundreds, thousands of signatures, all his students adult and child, signing their names or designations in a massive effort to wish him good luck and safety on his journeys.

And Prompto –

His coat is the simple black of the Crownsguard. Only on the breast does it differ from the traditional: an intricately embroidered design in reflective light, mimicking the glittering stars of the constellations that form the insignias of the Army of Night. But Prompto, their beloved General, favors no squad or wing and bears upon his chest no constellation but rather a face, a breastplate in the fashion of the dreaded Medusa, and the face picked out in stars is the traditional helmet-mask of the MTs.

Prompto marches, head held high, and where he goes his army marches with him.

They are excited, and they are hopeful, and they are happy.

Noctis does not tell them about the blood price until they sit in the camp, just like they used to, the night before they go to Insomnia, and the Citadel, and Ardyn.

The blood price that means that they will lose Noctis almost as soon as they’ve gotten him back.

The Chosen King can defeat the darkness, but only at the cost of a life – his own.

“Wait, what?!” Prompto exclaims. “That’s bullshit!”

They all missed Noctis like a wound in the side, but none more than Prompto; he would rage at the injustice of it, they all would, they're primed for it, fit to burst, but Noctis holds up a hand, seeking peace.

"It's the will of the Six. But let's not waste the night speaking of that," he says. "Let's talk of good times, the past, instead."

They don’t want to – they’ve missed Noctis so much, and the thought of losing him again is intolerable – but it’s what he wants, and they want to see him happy more than anything else.

So they do.

And in the morning, they go to the Citadel.

Ardyn knows, somehow, that Noct is coming, and he has summoned all the daemons he can, surrounding the Citadel.

The areas around have been cleared by Prompto's armies in the ensuing years, but the area that remains Ardyn's is still a mess, rubble on the ground, cars destroyed, nothing human remaining.

"Looks like we're going to have a fight," Noctis says, standing at the barrier between the city proper and the neighborhood of the Citadel, and summons a sword.

"Noct," Ignis says. "Before we go in –"

Noctis looks at him.

Ignis removes from his pack a sword. It glitters silver even in the darkness, and matches the sword in Noctis' hand precisely but for the wings and stars that decorate the one Ignis holds.

Noctis' eyes widen, the first thing that has surprised him since his return.

"Ignis," he breathes. "It's beautiful."

"It's made just like yours," Gladio says. "The first one, the one you brought with you from the Citadel, the first one you summon, every time, even though it's too weak for you to use now."

Noctis looks at the sword he summoned as if seeing it for the first time.

"We found a special metal," Prompto says, beaming. "It's as light as your original, but much stronger – we had to use a special flame to forge it, and diamonds to carve the designs into it once it was done."

"It's for you," Ignis says, and holds it out.

"Thank you," Noctis breathes. "My friends, thank you all."

Ignis hesitates, as if to say something more, but decides against it. "It's nothing," he says. "We would do far more for you, our king and our friend."

After that, they focus on fighting – first the daemons that stand in their path and then Ifrit himself, the Infernian, the last of the Six that they need to defeat to win for Noctis their power.

Gladio delivers his blows a touch too gleefully, and Prompto aims his shots where they would hurt any male most, and Ignis empties what could have been stretched to a half-year's worth of potions and elixirs keeping them alive and curing their burns.

It’s worth it.

And then they fight on, up to the tower at the highest point of the Citadel, the throne room, standing by Noctis' side only long enough to be swatted away by the Accursed's magic like flies.

They can do nothing but watch as Noctis faces Ardyn alone.

But he is not entirely alone: when he wields his Armiger, Ardyn's own corrupted version shining red, there shines an extra point of light in Noctis' circle.

"What arm is that?" Ardyn sneers, surprised: Noctis spins fourteen arms around him, not thirteen.

Noctis appears equally surprised, but stands tall. "Mine," he says, and charges once more into the fray.

He wins, and Ardyn lies dead upon the ground.

His soul has fled, but his body remains intact: the work is not yet done. The Accursed cannot be killed so easily.

They meet Noctis at the steps to the throne room.

"I know what I must do," he says, and he is noble and tragic and beautiful – and far, far too young – all at once. "I leave it in your hands, my friends."

And he goes as they turn to fight the wave of daemons that rise up behind them in a last-ditch effort to stop the Chosen King.

"You know what," Prompto says, watching them form.

His fellows glance at him, eyebrows raised.

"This is bullshit," Prompto says, and he crosses his arms. "The Six created the Accursed, and they gave Noctis all their signs of favor and blessing – fighting him the whole damn way, wrecking the Disc and Altissia and Niflheim and everything while they did it – and then even after that they steal him away from us, damning us to ten years of darkness and unanswered prayers, and even then, that's not enough? They have to kill him, too?"

"The Astrals are cruel," Ignis says; he has said such things many times before, in the Long Night.

"Too cruel, too selfish," Gladio agrees, his usually cheerful countenance twisted into a scowl. "I'm with Prompto. This is bullshit."

"It's the will of the Six," Ignis tells them. “You heard Noctis.”

The two say nothing. They only look at him, their Supreme Commander during the darkness, and wait for his word.

Ignis tilts his head to the side in thought, considering the unspoken proposal, their unspoken suggestion, even as the daemons mass before them.

"Fuck the Six," he decides. "Prompto?"

"With pleasure," Prompto says, and makes a gesture.

Squadron Orion – named for the constellation called after the very first daemon Hunter, enshrined within the stars themselves for his service – fought very hard for the honor of escorting the royal party, and has hung back only on the strength of their orders and discipline, and now, given freedom, their snipers unleash wave after wave of fire, raining down from the rooftops where they have been watching.

The daemons fall helplessly beneath them.

"Let's go," Ignis commands, and they run up, hoping – none of them is sure what they are hoping for. Not to be too late, perhaps.

They find Noctis upon the throne, his father’s sword through his heart, and the magic in the room fading fast.

The air feels lighter.

“Is the curse gone?” Gladio asks, glancing out of the windows.

“It’s 3AM,” Ignis says, consulting his visor. “We’ll find out in a few hours. Noctis?”

“On the throne,” Prompto says, his voice dull. “He’s been stabbed.”

“Well, unstab him, and check to see if there’s any sign of life,” Ignis snaps.

Prompto and Gladio rush ahead, with Ignis making his way up a little slower, but no less anxious.

“Nothing,” Gladio says, his hands on Noctis’ neck, his hands red with Noctis’ blood from where he removed the sword and cast it aside. “He’s gone.”

Ignis presses a phoenix down into the wound, but nothing happens. “Nothing,” he says bleakly. “The Six do not wish for him to live.”

“He’s still warm,” Prompto says. “And like you said, Iggy; fuck the Six.”

He reaches to his breast and tears at it, the beautiful embroidery shredding under his grasping hands, and beneath his clothing there is the ever-smiling mask of the MT.

“You brought one?” Gladio exclaims.

“One what?” Ignis asks.

“A converter! You guys finally got it small enough to carry!”

“Just one,” Prompto says, already fitting the now-familiar smiling green mask over Noctis’ all-too-pale face. “We’ve only been able to get one down small enough; the power requirements are insane, and the army sort of unanimously agreed that I would carry it and that we wouldn’t tell anyone until we figured out a way to make more. Iggy, will this work?”

“The MT process is man-made,” Ignis says, and his voice strengthens with hope. “It owes nothing to the Six.”

“Will he still be Noctis?” Gladio demands.

“The brain can survive up to eight to twelve hours after death,” Ignis says. “But between three to ten minutes is best for full functionality - under three, if we hope to avoid brain damage entirely.”

“Gladio?” Prompto demands.

“I felt the last of his pulse slip away myself,” Gladio says. “We’re at a minute twenty-five seconds and counting. How long will this take?”

“Fifty-five seconds if I’m lucky,” Prompto says, moving as fast as he can to begin the process. “I've never done this before, just practice. Fuck –”

“Minute thirty,” Gladio says. “Prompto –”

“I’m working on it.”

“Keep up the count,” Ignis orders. “Prompto, can I assist?”

“We need the body to start to heal once it's revived, or at least not be actively trying to die as much,” Prompto says. “Anything non-magical would be best, but potions’ll do in a pinch.”

"Gladio, swap with me," Ignis says. "First aid kit is in my pack. Minute forty."

Ignis puts his hands at Noct's pulse-points. Nothing there.

Gladio grabs the first aid kit. "I have a high powered potion," he reports. "Phoenix down, in case that helps once he's revived. Non-magic items include a local, a surgical staple gun, transfusions, and a shit ton of bandages. Prompto, let me know when you need me."

Prompto nods, putting the nodes into place.

"Minute fifty," Ignis says.

"First start," Prompto says. "Five second count –"

"Minute fifty five."

"Now!"

The mask's eyes glow red, activating, and Noct's body heaves upwards, reacting to the strong electric charge of activation.

"Still no pulse," Ignis reports, hands steady and voice calm. "Two minutes."

"To be expected," Prompto says, too focused for any emotion, not even the desperate scrabbling hope-against-hope they all feel. "Setting up second start."

"Two minutes, ten."

Prompto says nothing, even though it’s clear he’s now running behind.

"Two minutes, fifteen."

"Second start," Prompto says. "Now!"

Noctis' body heaves again, and the sides of the mask begin glowing as processing power begins to churn. The first start creates the connection between mask and existing brainwaves; the second activates the mask's sub-tier control systems.

The ones that assist with involuntary impulses.

"I have a pulse," Ignis reports. "Two minutes, twenty – Gladio, we need healing or he'll bleed out entirely now that his heart's beating again."

Gladio moves quickly. His jaw sets as he reports, "Nothing from the phoenix down, and the potion is doing nothing. The Six want him."

"The Six aren't going to get him," Ignis says harshly. "First aid kid, now. Two minutes, thirty. Prompto, remember, more than three minutes risks brain damage."

“I know,” Prompto snaps.

Gladio reaches for the kit. There's no time to apply the local anesthetic first, but if they don't stop the bleeding, it'll be a moot point. He goes for the surgical staple gun.

Man-made technology.

"Wound is closed," Gladio says, drawing a line of adhesive to keep the lines of it further together. "He's lost a lot of blood - setting up transfusion now."

"Niflheim transfuse unit?" Prompto asks, already working on setting up stage three.

"Only the best," Gladio replies. In developing the MTs, as cruel and horrific a process as it was, Niflheim had developed transfusion devices far more powerful than anything Lucis had ever seen. Usually, of course, it's used for daemon blood, but Ignis packed plenty of regular packets with each of their blood types – Gladio and Noctis share the same, so there is plenty to spare.

"Two minutes forty-five," Ignis says, and the tension shows in his voice. "Gladio?"

"Transfuse unit set up, onto bandaging. It's as good as we're going to get. Prompto, go for it."

"Third start," Prompto says. "Activating – now."

Noctis heaves under their hands one more time, shaking and shuddering and finally still once more.

The mask shines with the light of an activated computer.

All the lights are green.

"Ignis?" Prompto asks.

"His pulse is steady," Ignis says, and checks Noctis' mouth. "And he's breathing. But we won't know for sure until we wake him up."

"I've applied the local anesthetic," Gladio says. "I've got plenty of the stronger stuff here, too, if he wakes up in pain - if he wakes up at all. Let's do a check and then put him back out."

"Ignis?" Prompto asks. He doesn't bother laying out the dangers of waking someone so injured and recently revived; Ignis knows them all.

"I think we need to take the risk of waking him now," Ignis says after a moment of consideration. "We must return to Lestallum triumphantly, with a corpse or with a man; we cannot let their hope linger in between only to die slowly."

Prompto nods. "Voice directed remote activation," he says, and his forcefully calm voice doesn't conceal the tears streaming down his face, or the way his hands clench and unclench spasmodically. "User: Prompto Argentum. Access code: star light, star bright."

The mask flickers confirmation.

"Direction: activate unit. Now."

The mask's lights flicker.

They all wait. The mask's sub-tier commands are responding, stimulating the parts of the brain responsible for awareness. The Empire used the function to regulate sleep; they use it, now, as a pick-me-up wake-up call. Or, in cases like this, to get answers they dearly need.

Noctis groans.

They all tense, staring at him.

"Five more minutes," he grumbles.

"He's alive," Prompto chokes, and covers his face. “He’s him.”

"Gladio," Ignis says, and finds he can say no more.

Gladio moves, applying both anesthetic and sedative, to let Noctis sleep in full before the local wears off and he begins to feel the results of the hole in his chest.

Noctis slips back into sleep without difficulty, the lines on his face fading as he relaxes.

Gladio tests another potion, one of the good ones from before the Long Night. "Still nothing," he reports, and his teeth are clenched.

Ignis reaches for one of his spare potions, one that post-dates the Night, one of the ones they made themselves from mining the remnants of the Disc of Cauthess. Less efficient, they've found, than the old ones made with the magic of the Kings of Lucis behind them, but perhaps...

Gladio takes it from him. His exhale of relief reveals the result even before he reports, "It took. He's healing."

Ignis' shoulders slump. "He's alive," he says, his voice blank with sheer shocked relief.

"He's alive," Prompto echoes.

"I'm really glad most of the Six are dead," Gladio says conversationally, his hands still busily bandaging. "Because I'm pretty sure we just said fuck you to the Revelation of Bahamut."

Ignis snorts, comforted, as always, by Gladio's special mix of a fiery temper and down-to-earth practicality. "The Six have had their Night with Noctis ," he says, ignoring Prompto and Gladio's groans at the pun. "Now it's our turn to have the day."

"Today the dies does not die," Prompto immediately jokes, using the archaic word for 'day'.

"What did I do in a past life to get stuck with the two of you?" Gladio grumbles good-naturedly. "C'mon, let's get Orion to bring in a stretcher. I want Noctis under proper hospital watch as soon as possible."

"Agreed," Ignis says, rising to his feet. He can feel the blood that covers him; he suspects it's covering the other two as well. "Another transfusion unit, perhaps."

"I'm already using everything you had on you," Gladio says wryly. "At this rate, Noctis won't have any blood of his own left in there."

"Given that this whole shitshow started with the blood of the kings of Lucis, maybe that's not such a bad thing," Prompto says, standing as well and calling to the Army squadron outside the doors.

"Indeed," Ignis says thoughtfully. "Perhaps not."

"Doesn't matter," Gladio says. "We're heading to Lestallum. It's time to bring the King in Exile home."

Noctis feels warm and fuzzy, mostly. Like maybe his reward for giving his life to his people was to be reborn as a puppy like Umbra – honestly, that would explain a lot.

Unfortunately, the feeling is only 'mostly'.

The rest of him feels like something died in his mouth.

"Uuuuuugh," he says, and someone lifts up his head and puts a cup of water to his lips.

The feeling is familiar enough – from his childhood, right after the accident – that he forces his eyes open.

He's not sure what he expects to see – Luna, maybe? During his time in the Crystal, he'd seen a quick flash of their wedding and his coronation, a true king of Lucis at last, and he'd vaguely gotten the idea that he would get that after he died as some sort of consolation prize for not being alive anymore. Not that anything was actually consolation for finding out your whole life was good for nothing but being set up as a sacrificial lamb, and that his dad and Luna had known about it the whole time.

Noctis had some not-fully-formed plans to have a word with both of them once he had a chance.

It's not Luna, though.

It's Ignis.

That by itself would've been fine, actually – what heaven is heaven without your friends? – but Ignis is still blind, the scars and the blankness and the visor he'd adopted, and he also looks vaguely distracted, like he's listening to a phone call.

That's distinctly not what Noctis would consider heavenly.

It's even less heavenly when Ignis suddenly says, "Prompto, we agreed to take shifts. He's just drinking water; if he actually wakes up, I'll tell you. You can stop calling every five minutes."

Heh. That sounds like Prompto.

"Gladio!" Ignis abruptly yelps. "What are – You're supposed to be asleep – what do you mean, you 'had a good feeling'? Go back to sleep this instant!"

Poor Ignis. Even death doesn't keep him from being bossy.

Noctis can't see the phone, but he figures Ignis is using some sort of radio, maybe connected to his glasses-goggles-visor thing.

"Say hi for me," he croaks.

Ignis very satisfyingly drops the glass – it bounces, luckily, instead of breaking – and exclaims, "He's awake!"

"Yeah," Noctis says, wondering why it's such a big deal. If he's dead, he's dead, right?

Unless he's gone back in time or something – man, he hopes he hasn't gone back in time. That'd been enough of a trip when he'd done it with Umbra; if he has to relive sacrificing himself again, he doesn't know what he's done to deserve it – he's done everything the Six wanted from him –

He tries to get up.

"No, don't –" Ignis says, but it's too late.

There's an awful pain and Noctis finds himself on his back again. "Ouch," he says, staring at the ceiling. He hurts. Why does he hurt?

"Because you got stabbed with a giant sword," Ignis says. "Try to avoid that in the future, perhaps?"

Stabbed with a –

Wait.

"I'm alive?!" Noctis exclaims, then clutches at his chest. No more yelling.

"Yes," Ignis says. "We revived you after we found you on the throne."

"Phoenix down shouldn't have been able to work," Noctis protests. He'd suggested it to Bahamut, in the Crystal, but Bahamut had been pretty damn clear that it was a no go. "The blood price –"

"The Chosen King defeated the Accursed at the price of a life, his own," Ignis says. "You willingly gave up your life and were definitely, fully, one hundred percent dead for two minutes, fifty seconds. We were counting."

Noctis chews on that for a few minutes. "But – how? The phoenix down…?"

"Phoenix down didn't work," Ignis confirms. "The magic that powers it is from the Six originally; we think that's the issue. We used man-made tech."

"Huh," Noctis says. That sounds - disturbing plausible, actually.

But what about –

"Is the Sun back? The Scourge, is it gone? What about the daemons?"

If all that had all been for nothing...

"The Sun has risen," Ignis says. "Those afflicted with the Scourge have been tested, and their blood is clean. The daemons – well, they're still around, but they've gone back to fleeing sunlight, so defeating them is going to be a lot easier going forward, and we have plenty of very enthusiastic hunters."

It's done.

It's done, it's done, it's done – and Noctis is somehow improbably, impossibly alive.

"What do I do now?" he asks. His whole life, he was meant to be a sacrificial lamb. The lamb has been sacrificed, and he still lives.

"Well," Ignis says dryly. "I know it can be very convenient to have a script that says you bow out dramatically at the end of the final battle and can therefore avoid all the messy rebuilding business that we've been working on, but you are the King of Lucis, so I'm sure we can think of something for you to do."

"Never change, Iggy," Noctis says, and means it, and that's when Prompto and Gladio burst into the room, shouting gleefully.

Noctis holds out his hands and feels nothing but happiness.

Except for that taste in his mouth.

Ick.

Noctis spent ten years in the Crystal, but it didn't feel like it. He'd thought, before he saw Talcott, that it had been a month or two. A year, at most.

Not ten.

Even when he'd gotten out of Angelgard and sailed to the ruined dock – the ferry port by Galdin Quay, because he hadn't been able to face up to seeing the real city further inland and what was left of it – he hadn't really believed it. Sure, there were lots of dead plants rotting in the fields, but he hadn't really been paying attention. It'd been dark, after all.

And then there was Hammerhead, and his friends, and that wasn't so different, either. The garage was the same, and the diner – sure, he noticed that there was a much larger settlement beyond, but Talcott said that it was a base for hunters. It made sense that it'd be bigger, powered by generators and what power could be spared from Lestallum. Talcott said most people went to Lestallum.

And still, Noctis didn't think too much about it.

The Citadel was surrounded by daemons – he expected that. Perhaps he should've thought about how they'd managed to get so far into the city before seeing one, but no; he would've simply assumed that Ardyn had pulled them back to the Citadel.

It's only now that he really starts to notice that things are...different.

Very different.

Ten years, and Noctis hadn't realized how much would change.

The first change he actually notices is the freaking MT coming into his hospital room and saying – saying! – in a static-y robot voice, "Orion Squadron casualty reports are in, General; less than a quarter of the unit."

"Good," Prompto replies, turning to look at the MT. "Give 'em a moon."

"They refuse the commendation," the MT replies, as if what Prompto said made any sense. "They request, instead, the privilege of Orion being named first unit."

Prompto smiles. "Granted." He glances at Ignis. "Unless you have any objections?"

"None," Ignis replies. "They deserve it."

"Orion?" Noctis asks. He's gotten several glasses of water now, and he's feeling much better now that he's been taken off the strongest drugs. Sure, his chest hurts, but three potions in ('new' potions, Ignis called them, though he hasn't explained what the difference is), Noctis is feeling almost up to conversation.

"The Army squadron that escorted us into the city," Ignis explains, like that makes any sense. "They kept us from being shot in the back, and they escorted us back out. They've requested the honor of being named the first unit – that is, the first unit in the assembly order. It means that they stand in the front during parades, and also that they're the first ones assigned in warfare – "

"I know what a first unit is," Noctis interrupts. "I – we have an army?"

He thought most of it had been destroyed in the attack on Insomnia.

Also. Why is there an MT here? Weren't all the MTs trying to kill them, at least before Niflheim had self-destructed?

"Sure," Prompto says eagerly. "It's mixed now, all units. We didn't want to permit any ideas about segregation settling in." He grins. "We call it the Army of Night."

"You didn't," Noctis says, distracted by sheer horror, but Prompto's shit-eating grin suggests that they did, in fact, call it that. That's Noctis' life in a nutshell; doomed to always have night-themed birthday parties and now, apparently, an army along the same lines. Also - "Mixed?"

"Yeah, regs and MTs," Prompto says. "We made sure every squadron has a pretty decent mix of both." He jabs a thumb at the MT. "Jiten here did most of the heavy lifting organization-wise."

MTs have names? Since when?

"I, uh," Noctis says, then hesitates, but no one jumps in to fill the gap. "Hi," he finally says to the MT. "Nice to meet you."

The MT salutes. "It is an honor to serve, Your Majesty," it says.

"Uh," Noctis says. "I'm...glad?"

"Oh, crap," Gladio says. "Noct, do you even know about the MTs?"

The other two look at him.

"Integration first took place during the Long Night," Gladio points out. "He wouldn't have –"

"—known, of course," Ignis finishes. "Noctis, forgive us. Approximately three months after the Long Night began – that is, three months after you disappeared into the Crystal, and the Sun stopped coming up – the MTs that had been deployed in Lucis, which had been left without any guidance from Niflheim, came to Lestallum under offer of parley and offered their assistance in a joint effort to survive the Long Night."

"They've been really helpful," Prompto adds, nodding at Jiten, who quickly retreats out of the room. "They could go out in the dark without worrying about daemons, which helped a lot in collection efforts, rebuilding, farming – refugee evac –"

"Prompto is their General," Gladio says.

Noctis smiles and waits for them to laugh.

They don't.

"Really?" he asks. "Good for you, Prompto!"

Prompto beams. "It's not that impressive," he says, a touch of that old childhood shyness coming back. "Tifor and Jiten – my aides-de-camp – they do a lot of the heavy lifting."

"Don't belittle your accomplishments, Prompto," Ignis says before Noctis can say the same. Prompto! A General! Of MTs! Noctis wouldn't have called that in a million years, but he can't help but be deeply glad that his friend finally has a position that gives him the respect he deserves. Noctis has always known Prompto was great, but he'd secretly feared that Crownsguard appointment or not, no one else would see the true worth behind the bright smiles and self-esteem issues.

But a General – well, that isn't too shabby.

That isn't too shabby at all.

"You'll have to tell me all about it," Noctis tells Prompto, who shoots him a thumbs-up. "How does the Army work, exactly? You and Gladio are Generals? What about Cor? He's still around, right?"

"Prompto is the General," Ignis says, sounding amused. "Singular; we don't really have enough manpower for more at the moment, though I suppose our Wing Commanders would likely be the next in line for promotion."

"You take away my Wing Commanders, I will tell your secretary on you next time you try to go hunting to avoid a meeting with the Laborers' Union," Prompto says immediately, with something of the cadence of an often-repeated argument. "We can worry about generals when – well, I guess Noct is back now, but he's only just woken up! It can wait!"

"Prompto's pretty protective," Gladio tells Noctis in a stage whisper. "I think he just doesn't want to have to do the paperwork necessary."

"You bet I don't," Prompto says. "And no one, not even our dear Supreme Commander, is gonna make me do it."

"Supreme Commander?" Noctis asks. He hopes that's not him. Being 'King' is enough of a title.

"Ignis," Gladio says with a smirk, even as Ignis sighs. "He handles administration – basically, he runs Lucis."

"Mostly Lestallum," Ignis says. "And the few outposts we constructed, such as the one in Galdin Quay."

"So, basically, everything left in Lucis," Prompto says. "He also manages our trade relationships with the MTs in Niflheim – and the remaining people there, though they took a pretty nasty hit – and takes care of our further outposts in Accordo and Tenebrae, though we figure they'll want some independence now that the sun's up again."

Noctis nods. That sounds – well, he supposes it doesn't sound too weird, given that the world was dropped into darkness and all of humanity had to unite to fight the daemon threat. He could see them reaching out to each other, and he knows better than anyone that there's no better administrator than Ignis.

"Technically, I only oversee our relationships with Accordo and Tenebrae," Ignis says mildly. "They've sent delegations here to be incorporated into our Office, but they run their own countries."

"They report to you," Gladio shoots back.

"What do you do?" Noctis asks Gladio. If Prompto's the sole General, then what job did his warlike Shield take up? Leading the Hunters, maybe? Protecting Lestallum with a home guard? Training new fighters?

"Gladio runs the school system," Ignis says.

Noctis blinks. "Really?"

He can't even add anything like he did with the shock of finding out Prompto's role. This is just too weird.

"I'm just as surprised as you," Gladio assures him, taking no offense. "It's just – you know. Someone needed to do it, and no one was doing it, so I just kinda fell into it. Iris runs the Hunters, so the Amicitias are still plenty represented."

"Don't let Gladio mislead you," Prompto says. "He's the most popular guy in all of Lestallum. He could run a coup any day he wanted."

"Luckily for all of you, I don't want!"

"Awww, is widdle Gladio afraid of some paperwork?" Prompto teases.

"I do more than you do, General," Gladio shoots back, but he's grinning.

Noctis chuckles.

"They haven't changed that much," Ignis murmurs to him.

"Yeah," Noctis says, taking another sip of water. "I'm glad."

"Cor runs the Crownsguard," Ignis continues. "Both the training grounds – he and Gladio share responsibility there, with Gladio responsible for the basics that we've required every citizen to know and Cor responsible for further refinement until the trainees are deemed ready to join either the Crownsguard or the Army – and the actual Crownsguard, which functions as our internal police force and external defense of Lestallum proper."

Noctis nods, then remembers a second later to add aloud, "Got it."

"Cindy runs the Hammerhead garage," Ignis says. "Which is to say, she trains our Engineering Corps and makes them field-ready, and then they join up with the Army or the Crownguard and keep our tech working. Cid helps supervise all the repairs in Lestallum."

"Talcott said he retired," Noctis says.

"Talcott is seventeen," Ignis says. "And an idiot."

Noctis chokes a little.

"That's not nice," Gladio says from where he’s wrestled Prompto in a headlock. "The kid's just naive, that's all."

"Cid keeps loudly proclaiming that he's retired and that all he has to look forward to is sitting on his ass and eating Ignis' occasional foray into gourmet seafood," Prompto agrees, not appearing even slightly ruffled by his current position. "And somehow he still gets up every day at 6AM and finds enough to repair in Lestallum's walls, apartments, and streets to keep him busy."

"He's on the Council, too," Ignis says. "Gladio, let Prompto go." Gladio complies, ruffling Prompto's hair. "The Council represents those of us involved in leadership positions. The three of us, Cor, Cid, Cindy, Eufiv – he's an MT, the first one we made contact with – Rissa, from Accordo, Trajan, from Tenebrae, and Aranea -"

"Aranea?"

"Minister of Transportation," Gladio says. "She and Cor can't stand each other; it's hilarious."

"And Rissa? Trajan?"

"Rissa's the Secretary's niece, representing her aunt and Accordo. The Secretary insisted on having a seat at the council, and Tenebrae didn't have a lot of people left but they insisted on sending one anyway because they weren't going to let Accordo get one up on them," Ignis says. "It's been interesting. The other members of the council are Dustin, Holly, and Hatu, the representatives of the Laborer's Guild – Hatu's MT, and I think you know the others – and Zanib and Dethri, who represent our farmers, both regular and MT."

Noctis nods.

"There's probably going to be another Council meeting soon to discuss the whole Sun rising again thing," Prompto grumbles. "You'd think they'd accept it as a good thing, not whine about it."

"Be fair, Prompto," Ignis says. "This has changed a lot. We no longer have to worry about Vitamin D deficiencies, and we can grow our crops using natural cycles instead of artificial lamps."

"Isn't that a positive?"

"Yes," Ignis says patiently, "but a number of our crops were on an accelerated growth schedule that depended on using the lamps to create faster 'days', which will no longer be possible unless we cover those fields - and that seems a bit counterintuitive."

Noctis never much thought about crops. He picked peppers and onions and other wild vegetables as they traveled so that Ignis would have more to cook, but that wasn't enough to feed a city – and they wouldn't have been an option anyway, with no sun.

Crap.

No sun.

Noctis tries to think of all the things the sun is useful for, and the list grows longer and longer and longer –

"How didn't you all freeze?" he asks.

"Hah! That's what I asked!" Prompto exclaims. “And they call called me crazy!”

"Not crazy," Gladio says. "Just hysterical. Which you were."

"We've generally ascribed the effect to ‘just magic’," Ignis tells Noctis. "Our scientists can get you a more complete answer, if you care to learn more -"

"Just magic is good enough," Noctis says hastily. "Just – wow. You guys did a lot. I mean. I know it's been ten years, but – wow. I just. It's a lot."

"You'll have time to adjust," Prompto assures him.

"Only so much," Ignis says. "People are already flooding the area around the hospital, hoping for a glimpse of him. My apologies, Noct; it was rather inevitable."

"I know how to do public appearances," Noctis says, and he does; he has the distinct suspicion that Lestallum is a lot larger than it used to be, but he's used to the annual parades in Insomnia, which he's sure were even bigger. "I can handle that."

"You shouldn't have to," Prompto protests.

"It's his duty," Gladio says firmly. "The King in Exile has returned; people have been having a non-stop party for the last three days. They need to see him long enough to be satisfied and then Cor can kick all their asses and send them home – speaking of which, you wanna see Cor, Noct? He's right outside."

"Absolutely," Noctis says fervently, only realizing a minute later that he would absolutely freak out if Cor the Immortal had grown old over the last ten years.

Luckily, Cor looks the same – maybe a little more salt than there used to be in his hair, but strong and able as ever, thank the Six.

"Good to see that I only have to count two and a half dead Lucis kings on my list," is the first thing he says. "Do me a favor and try to not make it three."

"It's good to see you too, Cor," Noctis says, because it really, really is.

"I've worked out an honor guard," Cor says. "You ready to go say hello to your people?"

"No more than a few minutes," Ignis warns. "He's still healing."

Cor rolls his eyes. "I'm not new at this. Ten minutes, max, and the entire crowd will be able to take a picture, and then he'll be transferred, safely, to the official residence."

"Official residence?" Noctis asks. "Please tell me it's not for me."

"It's not for you," Ignis assures him. "It's for everyone who works at the Office - that is, the administrative center. Thus, 'official residence'."

"We all hate it, too," Prompto says, rolling his eyes. "Ignis and his puns. But the name stuck."

Noctis smiles and puts his hand to his face, planning on making a snarky comment about Ignis' fondness for puns, but then he notices – "My beard's gone!"

"What, you mean the fuzz?" Gladio asks, badly hiding his laughter. "Had to go, sorry. Doc's orders."

"It's the only thing that made me look older than twelve!"

"No one will care," Ignis says.

"I don't care if no one cares!" Noctis yelps. "I care!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Chosen King of Lucis," Cor sighs.

It's been the busiest three months of Noctis' life – and oh, he's alive! He's alive! That's never getting old, unlike him, because he's alive! – and honestly, he still doesn't actually know what exactly he's supposed to do.

Oh, he's definitely a morale booster. No argument there. People have literally fainted in excitement upon hearing that he's coming to visit their area. He can see the way an entire area brightens with excitement when he's around, and the way that excitement remains afterwards. He shakes a lot of hands, to the point that Ignis literally dumps an entire case of hand purifier in front of Noctis one morning as a not-so-subtle pointed comment on the subject.

Noctis doesn't mind it the way he used to before everything, though, back when he was a spoiled prince who whined about how no one seemed to care about who he really was inside. He's moved beyond that. He finds that he likes talking to people, now, hearing about their lives, what they went through during the Long Night; he likes looking them in the eyes and saying, "You did well," and seeing the multitudes of little guilts and worries and regrets just fall off their shoulders.

He likes learning about what they do, now, and how their days are arranged – all so different from how it was before.

He even gets to spend at least one day every week going fishing in a new spot with a new group of fishermen showing him the best places.

But he's the King. His father always spoke of burden, and duty, and responsibility, and he wasn't always just trying to prepare Noctis for what the Six had planned for him – some of it was about the role of King itself.

Noctis is pretty sure he's meant to do something a lot less, well, fun with his time.

Ignis keeps assuring him that it’s fine, that he can take it slow, that it'll be a good while before anyone expects him to be conversant with the issues of the day, much less authoritative on them. That makes sense, since practically every day there's something new he's discovering.

It's not just the big things, like how there's a full on informal economy bartering things like chores or child-care or even what lunch or dinner shift you're on, or how everyone takes at least one shift working in the fields no matter who you are, or how people seem to forget about their nationalities and immigration and all of those earlier concerns that seemed insurmountable, Accordo and Tenebrae and Lucis and Niflheim all merging to an amorphous mass and re-formed instead into supporters of sports teams representing various animals instead of states.

(Noctis has been informed by Gladio and Prompto that he supports the Dualhorns. Ignis says that the King shouldn't play favorites, but that only led to cheerful accusations that Ignis secretly supports the Behemoths.)

Sometimes it's also the small things.

Like language.

A whole new set of slang has popped up, mostly developed by the younger generation – some who are reaching their preteens without ever having memory of the sun, which is so horrifying that Noctis needs to stop thinking about it right away – and it's absolutely fascinating to Noctis.

His favorite development originated with Prompto's army. Apparently, once they settled on the Army of Night theme (thanks, guys) and assigned squadrons based on constellations and legions based on directions, they began to use moon-shaped medals as commendations, leading to the colloquial use of the word "moon" to refer to getting a good thing.

That, in turn, got translated into the civilian population, and someone, somewhere down the line, thought the moon reference was meant to be to Lady Lunafreya.

And that's how it came about that children compliment things they think are awesome by saying "that's really luna!"

Noctis couldn't stop smiling for two days after he worked out what happened and what the term meant. He thinks that Luna would be happy, deeply happy, to have that be her legacy, not the mournful tragic princess figure she'd been remembered as following the disasters at Insomnia and Altissia.

But language issues aside, Noctis is slowly starting to adjust.

He's getting used to seeing MTs everywhere, both the pale rehabilitated and fully armored MTs of various levels, or even people in the middle of transitioning – in both directions!

Noctis himself spent some time as a partial MT, apparently, as a means to save his life. He still has his mask – Prompto gave it to him after he went from the hospital to the Official Residence (Ignis why), saying that since it was coded to Noctis' brainwaves, it wasn't really useful for anyone else, and also in case Noctis wants to use it again.

Noctis felt really weird about it for a month or so, then realized he was (even if only in private) being a bit of a judgy asshole about the whole thing, so he tried on the mask a few times. It's a strange feeling, having it on – almost like he has an extra wing to his brain, like a phone that he can used to store information to pull up later except with his brain. It's pretty cool, actually, and using it in public once – he forgot everybody's names at a Very Important Meeting – actually ended up helping quiet down some people who'd been trying to start some anti-MT stuff. So there's that.

Said Very Important Meeting was actually about how Noctis doesn't seem to have brought back any magic with him when he got revived – the Crystal is a dead rock (they checked) and Noctis got to tell the story of how the ring of the Kings of Lucis had been used to finally destroy Ardyn's spirit and then dissolved, and how he himself had been on the brink of dissolving when his friends had revived him.

A couple of people asked if he felt upset about it, which Noctis supposes is fair – he did his duty to the Six, he ought to get some heavenly reward – but honestly? He's alive. He can get whatever reward the Six want to give him later; right now, he's just enjoying seeing the sun rise every day.

Okay, not every day. More like once in a blue moon. He likes to sleep in, okay?

If anything, though, Noctis is super relieved that no one seems angry about the whole no magic thing – he can still do some basic stuff, like warping or summoning weapons, but that's it. No magic sharing, no Wall, no more super-powerful potions or flasks of fire or lighting, nothing. Some people did seem a bit regretful about it, but basically everyone took it pretty well.

Noctis supposes that they're not upset because they've been without for ten years, working on alternatives (Iris' new 'stun gun' is basically like a strike of lightning, and wow is Noctis happy that the MT squads he went up against didn't have the new souped-up portable flamethrowers Cindy designed, because ouch), so it's not so much a loss as it is a perk they ended up not getting.

The Sun is more than enough for them.

For the earth, too – everything has started growing like it's trying to win a race, bursting out of years-long dormancy, painting the world green.

Noctis heard a kid once say, in a tone of wonder, that the green in the trees really does look just like it did in the old picture books, and it broke his heart.

So, yeah. He brought back the Sun but not magic, everyone's cool with that.

Still doesn't solve the question of what Noctis is actually supposed to do all day beyond talking with people.

Ignis tries to integrate Noctis into politics, and Noctis knows he should but he kinda doesn't really want to? Besides, everyone instinctively looks to Ignis for answers, and Noctis is no exception, so it seems ridiculous to make Noctis the middleman. Like, sure, Noctis can put on some fancy clothing and be all regal when they need to sign official trade agreements or open up new grounds – he got to cut the ribbon on a whole giant set of new fields to be used for growing, and on a brand new plot for a new research facility – and he's totally happy to take on figurehead duties, but there isn't really that much of it yet.

Nor is he really useful the way his father was, the Commander in Chief of the armies of Lucis. Prompto's actually a really great general, managing his army and making sure they're all taken care of just as they take care of their expansive duties - mostly working with the Hunter Division to clear the countryside of daemons, since there isn't an ongoing war.

Nor is there likely to be, what with Ignis commanding the loyalty of delegates from all over Eos.

Besides, the army loves Noctis in the same impersonal way they love their country, or Lestallum, but they're deeply protective of Prompto. Any attempt to take powers from him would be met with what Noctis has already learned is classic MT-style resistance tactics: obedience, yes, but the least efficient, most time-wasting type of obedience possible.

So that's out, especially since Prompto finally agreed to give his Wing Commanders general-level duties, though they'd all, to a man (or woman), refused to actually be promoted to the rank of General, preferring that that be reserved for Prompto.

Prompto turned bright pink with pleasure when they did that. It was a good look on him: pride in respect well-deserved.

After his forays with the Army hadn't really gone anywhere, Noctis wandered over to the Crownsguard instead, wondering if there was anything he could do there. Which there really, really wasn't. Cor was great, but Noctis barely escaped without being conscripted for fighting lessons because Cor still thinks he's fifteen.

No, not fifteen, because Cor's kids are fifteen and them, Cor respects.

No lie, Noctis does too. Who in the Empire thought having three mini-Cors was a good idea?!

Not that they're all that similar to Cor. Maybe Immie, the girl; she's the most warlike of the lot of them.

So yeah, Noctis is staying away from the Crownsguard for anything other than a friendly hello and a morale-boosting time to talk.

One place he has been able to do some stuff is in Gladio's schools – now plural, dividing the youngest kids from the oldest and both of them from the middle set. Noctis' talks are crazy popular, even when he's just talking about fishing or something like that.

Mostly, though, he shares stories.

The most popular are the stories about Gladio, and Ignis, and Prompto, of course, the sillier the better, but even with their entire childhood to mine, Noctis can't talk about them forever. So he starts talking about the things he sees – the fishermen he meets, the farmers, the scientists, the laborers. He shares their stories, the ones they tell him, and everyone loves it, kids and adults and even the people who told them to him.

Noctis hadn't understood the last – it's their story, he's just retelling it – but Cid clapped a hand on his shoulder and told him, "It's different when it comes from you. For us, it's just our lives; but you? You're the King. It doesn't matter if it was yesterday's boring old routine; when you say it, it sounds like a fairy tale."

Noctis has a standing weekly speech at the schools, a different part each week.

Still, it doesn't feel like enough.

The Hunter Division is always happy to have him, but Iris still has that crush on him (Six, why?) and it can be a little awkward.

So Noctis ends up spending his time touring, talking, and talking some more. He gets in practice with his brand new favorite sword – his own Royal Arm! only the best gift ever! even if some asshole did nickname it the Short Sword of Night and the name stuck and if Noctis hears even one more joke about being short he is going to find that person and do something distinctly un-kingly to them – and he gets to hang out with everyone. His people.

"When do I start really working?" he asks Ignis.

Ignis blinks at him. "You already have, Noct," he says. "You can't even imagine how happy you make people."

Well, yeah.

But it still feels like there should be something more.

And then, one day, there is.

It starts off with something small, something so subtle that Noctis almost misses it.

He's touring one of the student fields – not one of the ones that bring in the majority of the vegetables that feed Lestallum with wheat and potatoes and rice and sprouts, not to mention a truly unholy number of mushrooms that had blossomed during the darkness, but one of the experimental gardens staffed primarily by enthusiasts and students. This one's new, actually – it's just growing peppers, a particularly hardy but still excruciatingly spicy breed bred by one of the local transplants from Galdin Quay – but it's being grown in the ground by the younger kids to teach them how this whole cycle of life thing works when the Sun is involved.

Noctis is being led around by a particularly authoritative nine year old, indulgently oohing and aahing over every pepper she points out, when he notices a glimmer of metal out of the corner of his eyes. Used to scouting out threats, Noctis turns to look, but it's not a threat.

It's a shrine.

Looks like a shrine to Ramah, but Noctis can't tell; it's gotten grown over and dusty from years of sitting in darkness, which is fair enough. There are two buckets on the altar.

"No one's had time to clean it up yet?" Noctis asks, nodding at it.

The nine year old – Ferris – blinks at him. "Clean what up?"

Noctis points.

"Why would we clean up the shelf?" she asks, bewildered. "It's not like we keep fruit on it; it's just fertilizer."

Noctis' eyebrows shoot up. "You guys gave Ramah fertilizer?"

"Ramah?" Ferris asks. "Oh, the one with the pictures. No, it's not for him; if he wants some fertilizer, he can get his own. It's just a convenient place to put it, that's all."

"You store fertilizer on the Fulgarian's altar?" Noctis says, still taken aback.

"Why not?" Ferris asks with a shrug. "He's not going to notice."

"I suppose," Noctis says, frowning a little. It still seems bizarre to him. "The altar is usually used to give him offerings, you know."

Ferris shrugs again, interest clearly lost and eyes already fixed on the next row of peppers. "Whatever," she says. "I don't know why we'd give him anything when he doesn't give anything to us. Come look here – I think we've got shoots!"

Noctis doesn't say anything about it that day, but after, he keeps an eye out.

There are a lot of overgrown shrines and altars.

Noctis could understand why the Fulgarian's forest shines might be left unattended, being as there was rarely a way to tell where a lightning-struck tree could be found without light to see by and the dark eaves of the forest were ripe for daemon attacks.

But the local shrines to the Glacian, located at every crossroads, almost universally lack the traditional bowl of milk – the one shrine he found that had one, it had a cat's name on the side and seemed to be in use as someone's front yard.

He looks in the windows of the first out-ward facing house at each village and doesn't see a remembrance-candle for the Inferian.

He doesn't even see the handful of dirt traditionally poured on door-steps in the name of the Archaean – not even on newly broken ground.

"Is there a well around here?" he asks Ignis. "Or a river?"

"Certainly," Ignis replies absently. "Would you like a glass of water?"

"No, just wondering – hey, maybe you'd know. Do the laundresses still pour a glass of water out for the Hydrean before they start cleaning?"

"I doubt it," Ignis says, attention still primarily focused on the report in front of him. "Noct, would you be able to go out on a hunt tomorrow? I think it would be very beneficial to morale in Hammerhead; there have apparently been some disturbances there. The King’s personal presence would be most useful in calming their tempers."

"Sure," Noctis says. "Want me to head out tonight?"

"I'd appreciate that. Prompto will meet you with a guard."

Noct really needs to practice keeping the communication link open at all times; he keeps missing some conversations that he’s pretty sure he should be in on.

"Is a guard really necessary?" he asks instead.

"You're the King, Noct," Ignis says. "Pomp and circumstance is part and parcel with it, I'm afraid."

Prompto isn't able to accompany him, to their mutual regret; they've gotten back into the habit of hanging out every free evening they can. One of the MT squadrons even found an old console and a positively ancient copy of King's Knight for them to play. But Prompto’s duties as General come first, and his presence has been especially requested to clear out a particularly bad daemon nest in Niflheim, so he has to go.

"I'll send Orion with you," Prompto says, holding out his arms as his newest aide-de-camp – Fugit, who's a regular soldier rather than an MT, one worked his way up to the position of aide-de-camp on the strength of sheer enthusiasm alone – clasps armor around him. "You know those guys pretty well by now, and they're used to your antics – you'll hardly notice them."

"Yeah," Noctis says, distracted as he watches the thick metal armor. "Hey, Prompto."

"Yeah?"

"Do you give offerings to the Draconian? Since he's the patron of armored soldiers and all that."

"No," Prompto says. "The MTs don't worship the Six, and neither does anyone else anymore. Pass me the helmet?"

Noctis passes him the helmet. "What do you mean?" he asks. "I noticed the shrines are empty, but...I mean, people still reference the Six in conversation."

"Habit," Prompto says with a shrug. "I mean, some people still do it, but it's not as widespread anymore. After the Oracle died and the Long Night started, and none of the Six were answering anyone for anything, it just sort of...faded, y'know?"

Noctis did not know.

The Orion squad are familiar to him now, and Noctis would even call them friends of a sort, so when they're on the road to Hammerhead, he asks them, "Do you guys give offerings to the Six at all?"

"No," Ifiv, the squad leader says. "I don't know anyone who does."

"What, even regs?"

"Some old people, maybe," Twelf says, but he sounds doubtful. "I think your return was the last straw, honestly."

Noctis frowns. "What do you mean?"

"The Six abandoned mankind long ago," Twelf says. "And set us up for failure and despair. The Oracle gave up her life, and the Six didn't care. The King disappeared, and the Six did nothing but urge it along. The Accursed roamed the land freely, and the Six looked to mankind to fix it instead of doing shit about it themselves. And when you finally returned to clean up their mess, they demanded a blood price to fix what they themselves had wrought. Who’d worship gods like that? And why?"

Noctis stares. "That's blasphemy," he says blankly. "Aren't you all worried about Solheim happening all over again?"

"Solheim's the land that got destroyed by the first Astral war," Vernum, a reg, tells the MTs in the group. "And no, your Majesty, not really. All the stories say that the Inferian turned against Solheim because they actively betrayed him somehow; we're not offending them. We're just choosing not to worship anymore."

"Besides, most of them are dead," Ifiv says. "The Glacian in Niflheim, the Archean in the stone, the Hydrean in Altissia, the Inferian on the steps of the Citadel – whatever's left of them can either be actively helpful, or they can be obsolete, and they've chosen the later." He shrugs. "So fuck 'em. Begging your Majesty's pardon for the language."

"It's fine," Noctis says, his mind awhirl. "And – people agree with you?"

"The Long Night was hard," Vernum says. "The people who thought that praying to the Six would save them tended not to have made it, if you get my gist. The faith’s been dying for ten years now. Though I do think more people would've stuck with it if the leaders hadn't taken a stand against it."

"A stand?"

"The Six wanted you dead," Twelf says. "That's why the phoenix down and the old-style potions didn't work; that's why the magic went away. The Six intended to end the line of Lucis, and fuck whatever people lived in hope for your return. You dying like you were supposed to would've crushed the Triad, you know – Commander Ignis, General Prompto, and Headmaster Gladio, that is. That's when they lost the last bits of faith they had in the Six, and with them everyone else's."

"It's okay," Vernum says encouragingly, slapping Noctis on the shoulder. "We'd rather have you than the Six anyday, your Majesty."

"Oh," Noctis says, because what else is he supposed to say to that? "Thanks."

Less than a week later, the first of the dreams comes to him.

Noctis is standing in that vast emptiness that constituted the center of the Crystal – floating, really, since there's no ground. And before him is the massive form of Bahamut.

Noctis is aware that he's dreaming; he often is, nowadays. He's so distinctly aware of the feeling of being alive, of being where and when he is, that dreams have an immediately detectable difference.

He tries to change the dream – another time, another place.

He fails.

This isn't a regular dream.

“Well-met, Chosen King,” Bahamut rumbles.

Noctis crosses his arms. “Really,” he says flatly. “That’s what you’re going with.”

Bahamut is silent, a moment’s hesitation. He wasn’t expecting that response.

“Now I know why Iggy, Gladio and Prompto gave me such shit for saying ‘Hi’ after being gone for ten years,” Noctis says. “Well, what is it? What do you want now?”

“The present situation is unprecedented,” Bahamut says. His voice is deep and echoing; Noctis thought it was intimidating the first time they met. Now it just feels like a voice ringing in a hollowed out set of armor. “Revelation has been disrupted.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Noctis says. “I am, in fact, alive. Something you might’ve noticed in the last three months.”

He’s angry, he suddenly realizes. He’s actually angry – it’s been so long since he’s been angry at anything, truly angry, enraged. Not even when he was fighting Ardyn – his time in the Crystal filled him with power and with a deadened sort of calm that let him do what he needed to do. The same way a sedative helps you lead a sheep to slaughter, but he supposes that voluntary martyrdom is easier when you’ve had ten years of divine peace poured into your head.

Well, that power – that peace – left him when he died, and he’s back to being just plain old Noctis.

And Noctis, he remembers now, gets angry.

He got angry at Niflheim for doing what it did to his father. He got angry at his father for not telling him the truth. He got angry –

And then he acted.

“The people have foresaken the true ways,” Bahamut says, clearly opting to move on with the conversation. “They no longer call upon the Six. They no longer give forth of the fruits of their labors. The traditional honors due to the Six have fallen to the wayside, and humanity continues on heedless. And so it falls upon you, Chosen King, to –”

“No,” Noctis interrupts.

Bahamut pauses.

“Yes, you heard me,” Noctis says. “No. I did what you wanted me to do – you chose me when I was a little kid, when I was born, you made it so that everyone around me knew I was destined to die –”

His dad. Clarus. Luna. Noctis was just lucky that no one had ever bothered letting Ignis, Gladio and Prompto in on the secret, and Cor had been deliberately sent out of the city, denied the chance to help defend his people, because he was the only one who knew enough of what Noctis needed to do but not everything – because Cor would’ve told Noctis if he’d known. Cor told Noctis as much, and Noctis knew his dad well enough that he agreed with Cor’s conclusion; his dad would’ve lied to spare Cor as much as anyone else.

But the others – every time they looked at him, they knew. They saw someone doomed to die, and it colored every interaction they had with him. His father, who loved him, lived his life with the knowledge that his blood meant Noctis’ death. Luna, who could have been his, knew for years that they would never be together in life; was it ever truly real, the possibility of love between them? Could it ever have been more, tainted with pity and foreknowledge as it was?

That was the true revelation of Bahamut.“– and I did it. I did everything you wanted. I destroyed the Accursed. I returned the light to Eos. I banished the Starscourge. It’s been done. And that’s it. No more.”

“Your duty –”

“What duty?” Noctis demands. “The people losing faith isn’t because of me, it’s because of you. It’s because of your indifference to their pleas for help during the Long Night, because the Six only care about the Oracle and the Kings. We’re the only ones who can summon you, after all. The only ones you give power to – a power with a terrible price. And in the end, all of that was to fulfill your Revelation. All of it was so that I could die to bring light back to the world. Well, I did. I died.”

Bahamut is silent.

“If it was up to you, I’d still be dead. I’d be dead right now and unable to help you – what would you do then?”

Bahamut is silent.

“The Oracle’s line is extinguished,” Noctis says. “The line of Kings died with me upon the throne. Those were the two ways by which the Astrals communicated with mankind – or were you just planning on picking someone else out of a hat?”

Bahamut is silent, still, and his eyes – the only part of him that looks alive – are focused intently on Noctis.

Noctis looks back and does not waver.

He won’t let himself be intimidated. Not this time. Not again.

Never again.

“I was raised with the stories of the Astrals,” he says. “From my father. From Luna, who was your Oracle, and who you let die – no. Who you killed, as part of the price of the covenant, and never mind that Ardyn was the hand that wielded the knife. In all the stories, it’s the same: you are great beings, powerful beyond our knowledge, but you do not claim to be gods. It’s humanity that chose to worship you; that’s what all the stories said. You never demanded it, we just did it anyway. Well, humanity’s made a difference choice now.”

“You will turn against the Six?” Bahamut asks.

“I’m not turning against anyone,” Noctis says. “The Six may do as they please. Humanity will do what it pleases. There is no need for our paths to cross.”

“There are yet threats –”

“If there’s something we should worry about, we appreciate a head’s up,” Noctis interrupts. “But I played your game until the end. I’m done. And judging from what I’ve see, we’re done. Humanity’s done. You helped me, the Six of you, but it was in your interests. My friends? My people? You left them in darkness, and now it’s their turn to leave you in darkness. It’s too late now to think about how much you enjoyed being worshipped and receiving offerings.”

Bahamut stares at him.

“The revelation of Bahamut has been completed,” Noctis says, his voice fierce and unyielding even as his soul shakes within him. “We are finished.”

And then he wakes up with a force of will, eats breakfast while watching the sunrise, and feels –

Pretty damn pleased with himself.

Of course, it’s never that easy.

It’s three days until the next dream.

Three days well spent, in Noctis’ mind. The job’s bigger than Ignis described: nests, multiple nests, of daemons hiding beneath the ground, stalking ever closer to the safety of Hammerhead. They’d been planning an assault for a while, using raider’s hideaways, and the Sun coming up had disrupted but not derailed their plans.

Noctis hunts each day until he’s sore but cheerful, and when the Sun begins to set he does not rest but rather goes among his people. He sees at once the issue that has Ignis concerned: there are those in Hammerhead, hunters and some of the former rich men of Lucis, that are not particularly pleased, and they speak together too often for Noctis’ comfort. The rich men dream of their old positions, the ease and luxury and power they once commanded and feel they ought to command again, greed and ambition lighting their eyes at the thought of all the empty land that could be harnessed for the endless increase of their own wealth, and they speak to the hunters in terms meant to appeal to them. The hunters see their careers, raised during the Long Night to the pinnacle of Lestallum’s defense alongside its Army and its Crownsguard, falling back to the old ways: respected, yes, but a difficult life, a lonely life, and one not compensated by the adulation of the people every time they brought home markers of their progress.

The wiser hunters welcome it. The younger ones – the foolish ones, the ones who follow Iris only in technicality, the ones who think of themselves as a freer, finer breed than those who chose to join the other arms of Lestallum’s defense – grumble, and listen to words they shouldn’t.

Noctis walks through the campfires at night, smiling and shaking hands and talking and listening; the hunters’ complaints fade away at the sight of their King, who hears them speak and asks them what they would think of the installment of a Hunters’ Brigade, separate to the Army and the Crownsguard, designed specifically for long-range missions requiring independent operation.

Ignis hasn’t approved any such thing, but Noctis thinks it’s a good idea – even the hunters who are content with their ways look interested, and Iris is practically overflowing with pleasure. And, hey, in the end, he is the King; he’s allowed to have some ideas himself.

The rich men, though, remain a problem. What use is wealth without power, and what use is power without access to the King? But they don’t like Noctis; they watch him, frowning when they think he’s not looking, and Noctis isn’t sure what to do with them.

He’s still thinking of it when he falls asleep on the third night, and that’s when he dreams.

She comes to him as Gentiana.

“You do know I know you’re Shiva, right?” Noctis asks. He finds himself sitting on a picnic blanket in a field, filled with blue flowers that still strike a pang in his heart: the fields of Tenebrae, where he and Luna went as children, having tea parties and pretending to be so much older than they were.

“You prefer this form, Chosen King,” Gentiana responds, her eyes closed as they always are. “I have seen it in your mind.”

“Well, yeah,” Noctis says wryly, figuring that since she can apparently read his mind, there's no harm in being honest. “Not only is it less associated with terrible memories, it also has the advantage that I don’t constantly feel like no matter where I put my eyes, I’m about to get punched. Or kicked in the balls, and deservedly.”

Gentiana smiles with a touch of wickedness.

“I knew you did it on purpose!” Noctis crows.

“There are advantages to be found in the prudery of mankind,” Gentiana says. She sits next to Noctis. “Do you remember this place?”

“Of course I do,” Noctis says. “Tenebrae. But the fields lie dead after the Long Night.”

“They do not remain so. The Night ends, and the Spring comes, and they grow once more, full and flourishing.”

“Is that supposed to be a metaphor?” Noctis asks, pulling his knees up to his chest and dropping his chin onto them – he doesn’t care if the pose makes him look like a child; Gentiana was there, years ago, when he was a child. “Something about the worship of the Six? Did Bahamut send you?”

“I have always loved humanity best,” Gentiana says, not answering Noctis’ question. He takes that as a yes. “I have always been its defender, and I – I alone – took up arms against the Empire in its might to protect the people of Lucis.”

“There is no more Empire,” Noctis says. “Just people, now. All of Eos has come together to fight the darkness, and that includes Niflheim.”

“You do not blame them for what they wrought?”

“Most of the people who did the, uh, wrought-ing are dead,” Noctis points out. “Many gruesomely. Those who remain disavow the works of their former leaders. I’m not going to hold it against them, especially if they’re not going to be dicks about it. Iggy and the others have done a really good job integrating everyone.”

“You forgive easily, Chosen King,” Gentiana says. “Even in the face of the memory of your father and your people, crushed beneath the Empire’s heel.”

“Are you trying to get me angry or something?” Noctis asks. “I was gone for ten years. Was it easy to swallow, the first time I understood? No. But I wasn’t here. I didn’t do the hard work; I didn’t make the hard choices. And I’m not going to question those that did. We have peace, Shiva - real peace, the sort of peace my father would have barely been able to even dream of. That’s worth a lot.”

“It is,” she conceedes, and the mask of Gentiana fades into the bright blue skin of the goddess – no, of the Astral – beneath. The temperature drops and Noctis feels his skin prickle as the icy winds of the winter begin to blow around them. They sit now picnicking upon a snowy field, the flowers covered, the trees dusted in frost. “And none of that would have happened without the Night. Why then do you turn your anger upon the Six?”

“The fact that good things happened out of a disaster doesn’t actually excuse you for your failure to do anything about it,” Noctis says, ignoring the changes. “Tell Bahamut that he’s not getting out of his own prophecy this time. The story is over. The book is closed.”

“And what of me, Chosen King, beloved of the Oracle?” Shiva asks, her eyes glowing. “Am I to be forgotten too, for all of my love of mankind?”

“You lived and died for humanity,” Noctis tells her, but his voice is gentler now, less angry than when he spoke to Bahamut. “Stories of your grace will be told forever. But your love of humanity has never been contingent on worship – or was Luna wrong to trust in you?”

A moment’s stillness, with no sound but the winter winds.

“The Oracle was not wrong,” Shiva says, and her voice is quiet. “I loved her dearly.”

“I know you did,” Noctis says. He’s always known. “You know, back when I thought my destiny involved marrying Luna, I thought to myself that it was good that you’d be there.”

Shiva looks up, eyes wide and surprised.

“We’d marry in Altissia, then come back to Insomnia,” Noctis says. “Luna’s duties as the Oracle would continue, while I would step up into my role as King-to-be, taking on more and more of the burdens of power. It’s a hard life to lead, being the Queen, and that on top of being the Oracle, far away from her home? I worried that I wouldn’t be able to help her. I worried that she’d be unhappy. And then I thought – no. She won’t be unhappy. She won’t be alone. She’ll have Gentiana, whom she loves.”

Shiva’s eyes close. Her eyelashes are white with frost, but Noctis suspects that if he brushed them now, the snowflakes that would fall would be made of salt.

“Luna believed in you,” Noctis says gently. “What would she think, now?”

“She always wanted to follow in your footsteps, Noctis of Lucis,” Shiva whispers, and Noctis thinks that may be the first time she’s ever seen him as a human being instead of a pawn on Bahamut’s divine chessboard. “Lunafreya was always humanity’s finest champion; you honor her with your actions now.”

And Shiva rises, color filling in her skin until she looks like Gentiana again.

“I will not stand in your path,” she says in her low, sweet voice. “You are right. My love for humanity must be unconditional, lest it be tainted.”

She reaches out and places a finger on Noctis’ lips.

“Go well.”

He wakes up.

In the third dream, he is in a forest.

It starts off like a normal dream, with shifts and changes and strange plots, but then a distinct sense of unreality filters through the dream and it changes. The lines of the trees grow stark and vivid, the bark and each blade of grass suddenly defined so clearly it almost hurts to look at them. Noctis inhales and his lungs fill with the scent of pine and maple and oak, the smell of rotting wood and the faint hints of ash, the comforting petrichor that follows a warm rain.

The sky, which was clear, is covered in clouds, dark and ominous, crawling from each side of the horizon until there's no more blue to be seen. There are flickers of lightning hiding within the clouds, but not a single sound, the dreamland utterly mute in anticipation.

Noctis knows who has come to visit him this time.

"Ramah," he says.

And the ground shifts beneath him, until Noctis finds himself standing on a mountain, looking out at the rolling, endless forests below, and upon the side of the mountain rests the gigantic silent figure of the Fulgarian.

Noctis looks up at him and squints. It’s hard to have a conversation with someone so large. It’s even harder to even think of how to start such a conversation.

“So,” Noctis says after some time has passed without Ramah saying anything. “Hi?”

Ramah says nothing, but Noctis thinks he might be amused, just a little.

Micro-expressions take on a whole new meaning when dealing with the Six.

“I assume you’re also here to demand that humanity worship you again?” Noctis asks.

Ramah shifts, and speaks, his voice as deep and rolling as the thunder.

“The storm comes,” says he. “The storm goes. It cares not for those in its path, but nor does it demand recognition from them.”

Noctis blinks.

That doesn’t sound like an appeal for worship.

“Bahamut sent me,” Ramah says, and his great forehead wrinkles. “He is the leader of the Six. But no one commands the storm.”

“I don’t understand,” Noctis says helplessly.

Ramah’s great face turns to look at him.

“My temples are the trees struck by lightning, that the lost traveler may seek shelter,” he says, and the sound of his voice is louder, now, the rushing of the wind through the trees, the crack of thunder, the inexorable floodwaters rising. “I need no sacrifices. I need no offerings. The Storm has been set in motion from the earliest of days, and the Storm will be there at the end of days, and though it may not be constant, it is everlasting.”

Noctis has to close his eyes briefly to protect himself from the rising wind and rain. “So,” he coughs out. “Does that mean you’re okay with this?”

Ramah rises to his feet.

“Let humanity do as it likes,” he declares, and his eyes are fixed on a point in the horizon. Noctis has the distinct feeling that the Fulgarian is no longer talking to him. “Ramah will not foresake his duties, not even in the face of the Dragon.”

And then he is gone.

“What the fuck just happened?” Noctis asks the air.

It doesn’t respond, and instead leads him down a pathway to a place where the deer have gathered to have tea, while the bears armor up for a daemon hunt.

Typical dream logic.

Noctis finishes the hunt – two weeks of work, all together, and he still hasn’t figured out how to deal with the plotters, because they are plotters. Schemers. He thinks they might actually be considering a coup, based on some easily dismissed hints they’ve dropped around him.

They’re fools if they think they can turn him against Ignis and Prompto and Gladio and Iris and Cor, of course, but he has the feeling that they might still give it a try.

He goes to visit Cindy before he heads back to Lestallum.

Cindy’s taste in clothing hasn’t changed much, and her physical, uh, presence remains just as, uh, striking as ever.

Okay, yes, fine, Noctis still spends a minute sneaking glances at her breasts. He might be a grown man, but those are impressive. He does stop it as soon as he realizes what he’s doing; that’s got to count for something.

He swears he can hear Shiva’s sniggering in his ear.

“You take care now,” she tells him. “Them boys missed you something awful, and the rest of us did too.”

“Thanks, Cindy,” Noctis says with a smile. “How are things going in Hammerhead?”

“Oh, just swell,” Cindy says, beaming. “The Engineering Corps are real fine, don’t you worry – you know, I never did think I’d become a teacher, but then again I don’t reckon anyone thought that of ol’ Gladio neither, so it works. Me and Eufiv, we swap off teaching with the real garage work.” She puts a hand on Eufiv’s shoulder – an old-style MT who looks at her with adoring eyes, and, well, Noctis isn’t going to hold that against him. Cindy has that effect on a lot of people. “I can’t bear to think of not having the old girl running.”

“The garage will outlive us both,” Eufiv says to her, and then, turning his head to Noctis, adds, “We have apprentices.”

“Real ones,” Cindy chimes in. “Ones that care about the work for the sake of the work – the garage work, that is, not the stuff the Engineering Corps needs to take care of. I didn’t think we’d ever get a chance to train people up in cars and engines, what with the need for other stuff, but, well, the Sun’s back up, and here we are.”

She punches Noctis on the arm lightly. “You keep up the good work, you hear me?”

Noctis smiles.

She insists he stay for dinner, which he does, so he only ends up coming into Lestallum when the Sun has long since gone down and everyone’s asleep.

Figuring he can make his report to Ignis in the morning – Iggy hates it when Noctis calls it that, because he’s kind of an idiot about protocol and goes on and on about how he should be making reports to Noctis not vice versa even though Noctis has explained to him that he’s cool with Ignis running everything and also maybe-kinda-sorta being Lucis’ chief spymaster as a hobby – Noctis crawls into his bed in the Official Residence.

He doesn’t even bother changing out of his clothes.

That’s a good thing, he thinks to himself, as he wakes up in the ruins of Altissia still wearing a layer or two of armor, the Leviathan rising above him in all of her terrible splendor.

No – not Altissia, he realizes, looking at it. Ruins, yes, but the columns and the statutary are of a different style, old and crumbled by the sea: copper gone green with exposure, stone faces slicked off by the currents, moss curling up the sides of buildings.

This is not Altissia.

This is –

“Atlantioi,” Noctis says, realizing. “The fallen city, the city beneath the waves.”

Existing in the time of the great Empire of Solheim, Atlantioi had been an island city-state, subordinate to the Empire but run independently. It had been particularly beloved of the Archean, Titan, who had helped build it alongside its citizenry; its destruction by Leviathan had resulted in a terrible feud between the two Astrals.

“A sign of what my wrath can do, pathetic morsel,” Leviathan spits, her wings fanning out, her serpentine body coiling with rage. “I granted you my power, and you turn it against us! You turn humanity against the Six!”

“I thought you wanted to eat all of humanity, Tidemother,” Noctis says, dodging one of her water-bursts. “Wasn’t that what you threatened in Altissia? The Feeding? Are we to think that you care so much about us now?”

“Insignificant pawn,” she hisses. “Lamb to the slaughter; you won over my power for Bahamut’s prophecy, and should have ended then!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Noctis says. “Aren’t you dead already?”

“Humanity has forgotten its place. First to demand power from a goddess, then to cast her aside!”

“You destroyed people,” Noctis says. She spits water at him, guiding it, and he has to run to dodge. He doesn’t think he can die in his dreams, but he’d really rather not find out for sure. “You destroyed Altissia, which was built in your honor! You let the Oracle fall because you were too busy whining about how humanity dared need you! Why should anyone honor you?”

She screams with fury, and lunges at him, massive jaws agape.

Noctis summons a sword – his favorite, the one Ignis and Prompto and Gladio had given him – and tries to parry her, even knowing that the task is likely hopeless.

The sword touches her scales, just barely, and suddenly Leviathan is throwing her head back, recoiling, flinching. The place where the sword hit her is colored sickly silver.

“What have you?” she shrieks. “A royal arm, created without the Six’s blessing? How?!”

Noctis glances at the sword, surprised. He remembers using it in the final battle against Ardyn – fourteen to thirteen – and he’s used it since then, for hunts and other things; it’s his favorite sword, remade in royal glory by his friends, but he hasn’t really thought much of it beyond that.

He sometimes uses it to cut his dinner when he’s feeling particularly lazy, and also because it makes Gladio fall off his chair laughing.

It occurs to him that maybe he should’ve been treating it with more respect, if it can do such damage.

But no, the sword is warm in his hand; he can feel it, suddenly. Warm, loyal and true, a little light-hearted, a little melancholy – it’s him in there, in the sword, his own personality reflected back at him.

It was made just for him. He’s been wearing the sword for months now; it knows him. It is him.

Noctis’ own Royal Arm.

He holds it up before him as the Hydrean thrashses before him, caught in her own ruinous rage.

“It is impossible,” she cries, the moaning of the sea in every harsh word. “The secret of the Arms has long been lost, but for those given by the blessing of the Six.”

Like the one his father had, Noctis remembers suddenly – his father had not had the sword forged for himself, but rather had received it from the Six as a gift upon his completing his own trial, washing up to his feet from the depths of a river, still shining with beauteous light.

A gift from the Six, as if they could make up for the torment they would impose upon him or the knowledge that his son would be doomed to die from the very beginning.

As a child, he’d always wondered why his father had not been more proud to be one of the bearers of the Thirteen; now he knows what his father did, that the gifts of the Six came with burdens and hidden strings attached.

“This sword was not a gift from the Six,” he shouts into the churning waves. “This sword was made by human hands, following the old ways, and if you attack me again, I will use it on you!”

“You cannot defeat me!” she shrieks.

“I’ve done it once already!”

“With the aid of the Six –”

“With the aid of the Empire,” Noctis shouts, pointing his sword at her. “It was the Empire that killed you, in the end! Humans defeated you! And if we need to, we’ll do it again!”

“I am the Hydrean,” she hisses. “The Tidemother. The Leviathan, as endless and enduring as the sea itself!”

“But you’re not the sea,” Noctis says, frustrated. “The sea will be worshiped by sailors, always, but you’re no sea goddess, beneficent and guiding. You gave that up years ago, succumbing to your endless wrath. All you are now is a sea monster, wrecking ships in your path for no cause but fury, and if humanity ever sees you again, so will you be treated!”

She screams again, but this scream is different from the others.

It’s not just rage.

It’s sorrow.

She acknowledges what he’s saying. She knows he’s right.

But she can’t stop being angry, not after so long.

“Go back beneath the waves!” Noctis calls to her. “Go back to being a story to delight children and to make sailors smile! Let them remember the Tidemother that was, long ago – return to the ruins of Atlantioi which you destroyed, and leave us be!”

Large hands reach out from beneath the waves.

Noctis remembers this part.

At Altissia, the Titan rose up to aid him from beneath the waves, and he cast his powers against the Leviathan, huge blocks rising from the deep to slam into her.

Here he does not do anything so gaudy.

His hands wrap around the Leviathan’s snake-like body in a terrible embrace, and he sinks back beneath the waves, slowly, inexorably: the fall of Atlantioi recreated once more, the Titan’s land drowning as the Leviathan screams in fury, but this time it is with the Astrals themselves.

They sink beneath the waves without another word.

And the world begins to disintegrate around Noctis, the ruins falling down and dissolving into dust, and he runs to escape it, but there’s nowhere to go, no land, no –

He wakes up, panting and covered in sweat.

It’s nearly dawn.

Noctis gets up on shaky automatic.

Ifrit's dead, he's pretty sure for good this time, so that's all of the Six that'll come haunting his dreams. They're all dead, actually, for all that they can't seem to accept it.

All but Ramah, who declared his neutrality, and Bahamut, who has not.

What is he doing?

What does he think he can accomplish?

Noctis goes outside. There's a hill just outside Lestallum that he likes to watch the sunrise from, in the instances where he's awake enough for it; he goes there. He still feels cold – colder than he did when the Glacian visited.

It's still dark out, but he's still dressed and has his sword, and anyway there aren't any daemons this close to Lestallum anymore.

He sits on the top of the hill and watches the stars fade out of the sky, wondering if he's insane to do what he's pretty sure he's been doing these last few nights. The Six want him to restore their worship, and as King he probably could do it, too, if he led by example. He's a legend in his own time, the Chosen King of the Six, the King in Exile of Lucis – and of the two he far prefers the latter. But he's refusing the Six's request, spurning them, rejecting them. On humanity's behalf, on his people's behalf – but isn't that the height of arrogance, thinking that he can speak for them against their own former gods?

And even if he's right to do it, that doesn't mean he has any hope of succeeding. Why does he think he can do this – hasn't history shown time and time again that those who go up against the Six ultimately falter?

"Technically false," a voice not dissimilar to Ignis' says from beside him. "The Empire of Niflheim defeated the Glacian, and you yourself defeated the Titan and the Leviathan, not to mention the shadow of Ifrit."

"I meant more long-term," Noctis says dryly, looking to his left. "Callidus."

The King once known as the Clever shrugs. "Your friends seem to be doing all right."

"As much as I hate to agree with the young whippersnapper, he has a point," Prudens, the Wise, says, settling his old ghost on Noctis' right. "The Kings have gone up against the Six before, you know, and sometimes they've been right to do so. The Six are powerful, but they're neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and you do your people a disservice if you think so."

"I suspect the Mystic and the Pious might disagree with you," Noctis says.

"Your suspicions are unfounded," Pius says. He's sitting on the hillside a ways down. "I revered the Six, and honored them at their temples, but I was called the Pious because I built the first of the royal tombs to honor my forefathers."

"You agree with what I'm doing, then?"

"If we didn't, we wouldn't have told your friends the secret of forging a royal arm," Aequitas the Just says. "It is not our place to interfere with the present."

"You knew what I would do?"

"No one may know the future for certain," Aspicio says, the Oracle Queen who is most likely to know the truth of that statement. "But we hoped."

"I kept us hidden from the sight of the Six," Furs, the Rogue, Queen of the Shadows, puts in. "And the others did the rest."

“But why didn’t it happen before?”

"The prophecy of Bahamut was given to the Kings of Lucis alongside the ring and the Crystal," Magus, the Mystic, says, his voice heavy. "By accepting one, we accepted the others; they cannot be separated."

“The prophecy had to be fulfilled,” Supero the Conqueror agrees. “And so it was, through generation upon generation, until at last it came to be fulfilled in you. But being fulfilled, the bindings of the prophecy fall away.”

"Each man's life should be his own," Peregrinus the Wanderer says.

"Not the Six's," Militus the Warrior agrees.

"Yeah," Ferus the Fierce grunts. "Fuck 'em."

"Ferus!" Supero snaps, but Longus the Tall just laughs.

“We’re with you,” Longus tells Noctis, his voice still amused. “We were Kings once, too –”

“And Queens,” Aequitas says mildly.

“Kings and Queens,” Longus amends. “Our duty is to the people first, above all else. You did what the Six wanted because it was the right thing to do, eliminating the Scourge, and when it was done you were saved though the inventions of your people.”

“It is your people now that cast off the Six,” Militus says. “You protect their decisions, as you ought.”

“So, you know,” Callidus says. “Fuck ‘em.”

Pius sighs.

Noctis laughs a little, but the laugh dies in his throat and he swallows before turning his eyes to the last of the figures, standing just down the hill.

Atavus, the others called him; the ancestors. He who bore the Sword of the Father, and that really should’ve given Noctis a heads up that his destiny was something different than what he’d dreamt of as a kid, shouldn’t he? The Father, which meant that he, Noctis, was the Son…

Atavaus, Regis, the Father, is smiling at him.

“You approve?” Noctis asks, and his voice is small. This is his father; the man he idolized as a child, loved as an adult, and the man Noctis convinced to stab him in the heart with his sword so that the Accursed could finally be destroyed and the Scourge ended.

“Always,” his father says. “No matter what path you chose, I would approve; I would be proud. You have always made me proud.”

Noctis smiles.

“And what do you really think?” he jokes.

His father laughs, a side-splitting bellow. “You are my son,” he says. “My Noctis. You can do anything you want, Six or no Six; that’s how I raised you. Go forth and stand tall.”

Noctis closes his eyes and smiles as the first rays of dawn fall upon his face.

“Noctis!”

He opens his eyes.

Prompto is coming up the hill, waving.

The ghosts of the Kings are gone.

“Hi, Prompto,” Noctis says, smiling.

“Want some company?” Prompto asks. “You’ve got some.”

He nods behind him.

Noctis looks, and smiles to see Gladio and Ignis strolling up the hill. Ignis isn’t even using his cane.

“Hey, guys,” he says.

“How did the hunt in Hammerhead go?” Ignis asks. “And please, save the full report for a more human hour. A summary will do.”

Noctis laughs. “I think I’ve got an idea on how to solve the hunter problem,” he says. “But there’s some assholes who spent a lot of their lives being rich and powerful that aren’t too pleased at the idea of having to share that wealth and power with everyone else, and I’m not too sure about what to do about them. Oh, and we got all the daemons, too.”

“Good job,” Gladio says.

“Knew you’d get the hang of the whole King thing eventually,” Prompto jokes, sitting down next to Noctis – right where Callidus had been sitting, actually.

Ignis settles in on Noctis’ left, where Prudens had been sitting. “In fact, Noctis has been doing an exemplary job,” he says. “Particularly in terms of unifying the scattered people of Eos into a single country once again, which I assume is the aim of your planned trips next month to Accordo and Tenebrae and Niflheim?”

“Hey, if we have an opportunity to put aside old feuds, I don’t see what’s wrong with taking advantage of it,” Noctis says, smiling. “People have moved forward a lot during the last ten years. There’s a chance to do what nobody’s done since Solheim, a truly united Eos, and without all the violence Emperor Ieldolas was using to do it, too.”

“It’d be a shame not to try,” Gladio agrees. “So if everything’s going well, what’s got you up here at the crack of dawn? It’s not exactly like you.”

Trust Gladio to notice.

Noctis takes a deep breath and tells them all about it: what he’d noticed, the dreams, the ghosts, everything.

“I agree with them,” Prompto says. “The ghosts, I mean. Fuck the Six; isn’t that right, Ignis?”

“I regret using a profanity,” Ignis says, long-suffering. “If only because you will never let me forget it.”

“It was reasonable under the circumstances,” Gladio says peaceably. “If you want my vote, Noct, you’re doing the right thing.”

Noctis nods slowly. “I think so too,” he confesses. “And I think – I think this is what I want to do.”

“What do you mean?” Prompto asks.

“Refusing to worship the Six does seem like a fairly passive role,” Ignis says.

Noctis rolls his eyes. “No, I mean – I like what I’m doing now, talking with people, going around, trying to make peace and unity. I don’t mind being mostly a figurehead, with Ignis and the Council working out most of the rules – yes, Ignis, I read your proposal about being the executive branch and using the Council as a legislature, but I really do think you’d be better at it than me.”

“If we kept the Council as the executive, and started up a wider body as a legislative, complete with voting, that could deal with the problem you mentioned earlier,” Gladio says. “The rich men who feel like they were robbed. Let them get all their energy out trying to get elected to office.”

“It’s worth considering,” Ignis says. “But I’m more interested in finding out what Noct proposes that he’ll be doing in a mostly figurehead monarchy.”

“Bahamut’s still alive,” Noctis says. “The only one of the Six that’s still alive and has an interest in getting humanity back to the way things were.”

“Hiding away in the Crystal the entire time helps with that,” Prompto says, rolling his eyes. “I guess. So what?”

“He wants humanity’s worship,” Noctis says. “We don’t want to give it to him. He might be content with sending me dreams for the moment, but after a while, he’s going to get impatient. And when he does, he’s going to use all of that power to try to force us back. And I don’t intend to let him.”

“How?” Gladio asks, practical as ever.

“Four of the Six are dead,” Noctis says. He puts his hand on his sword. “If Bahamut starts something, I guess it’s time to slay the dragon.”

“Going up against the Draconian,” Ignis muses. “And uniting all of Eos. You don’t think small, do you?”

“Afraid not,” Noctis says, and sitting there in the light of the dawn of the Sun he rescued, with his friends at his side, it feels right. The questions he’s been having, the concerns, they all fade away, and he feels warm. “You with me?”

“Always,” Ignis says.

“We’ll be by your side the whole way there,” Gladio says.

“You better not leave us behind for another ten years this time,” Prompto says. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“I promise,” Noctis says. “This time, we go together.”

He looks back away from the wilderness, down at the ever-growing metropolis of Lestallum. They have plans to re-enter Insomnia soon and then to expand the pathways between the cities – maybe a nation-wide public transporation system, even, with care taken to protect and prepare each area in case the Long Night and the daemons came back again.

They’re looking at a brand new chapter in human history.

“All of us,” he says, thinking of them: his people. Humanity. “This time, we all go together.”

[hollywoodx4]

Sticking with the Schuylers (46)

It’s late and I’m working all day tomorrow whoops... 

Have some Hamliza happiness, everyone. 

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Tagging: @linsnavi  @butlinislin @adothoe @oosnavi

Warnings: This story is pretty heavy on mentions of both physical and emotional abuse.

               There is a difference between showing and telling.

               Eliza has always been a fan of the first. There is truth in telling, an unbridled amount of trust that can be thrust into a single sentence or syllable. There are quiet moments meant only for particular ears, comradery in secrecy and divulgence that cannot be matched. There is something so magnificent, however, in showing somebody what you’ve meant to say. Words do not take time to tumble from the mouth and into the air, and a lie can be created through little thought or fabrication. An action, an act of kindness or love takes so much more. Thought is poured into showing, into creating a moment that someone will treasure forever. And there can be telling within it, words that are spun with true intention within a moment created out of that feeling. Elizabeth Schuyler admires thought far much more than spoken word.

               Alexander writes; he pours himself into the poetry that he gives her, on the back of take-out menus and napkins and in the margins of notes filled with legal jargon. He weaves his words into stories carried by emotion and spelled out through a glorious arrangement of descriptors and fleeting moments she hadn’t even noticed. And he gives them all to her-tucks them into her backpack, sends them hidden in bouquets of flowers. He isn’t concerned about telling the world about them. He doesn’t even mind if she doesn’t find them right away, as it often happens. Alexander uses his crafting of words to show her how he feels. It is an invitation into his mind that she accepts happily, drinks in and reads one thousand times over. He’s showed her often how much she means to him. He’s been there, through James and moving in and out…even through the social media attack, which has spiraled since his retaliation post to James just a few days ago.

               Which is why this day needs to go off without a hitch.

               She barely sleeps, even though Alex had stayed over again and kept her pressed to his side the entire night. The anticipation is far past sunken in, eating at her racing heart as she rolls out of bed before the sun even rises. There are alarms set on her phone, in perfectly coordinated measures. She’d written times and important names in her floral planner, which she’d then promptly hidden under her mattress for two weeks. As she looks at the date on the calendar, checks on the lack of falling snow outside the kitchen window, her heart is suspended. Today is Alexander’s 23rd birthday.

               She mills about the kitchen with the hushed air of a person with too many secrets burdening her shoulders, although they are pleasant little things that keep her busy with thought. Her body moves to the beat of a song stuck in her head, which she hums as her hips sway. She measures to this beat, stopping often to sing into the scoop or tap it against the counter, creating measures of precise rhythm with a agreeable sort of discord arising from the array of instruments she’s using. Her method of cooking lacks meticulousness which had been wiped away from years of practice, of stepping on the high stool in the kitchen of her childhood home, with a youthful and heavily accented Laurie by her side. She had spent many Saturday mornings with flour in her hair and pride in her eyes.

               Eliza jumps, startled at a sudden presence of hands around her waist and a chin in the crook of her neck. It doesn’t take much to recognize the morning sounds that come from Alexander; a slight yawn, a tickling rumble in his throat as he stretches his shoulders to his ears. She turns to kiss the corner of his lips before swiveling around completely, her lower lip putting on a show of becoming larger than the upper.

               “This was supposed to be a surprise,” she gestures to the kitchen, a mass of ingredients splayed upon the counter in no particular arrangement besides the few white powders in a large glass bowl. He is thankful for her work but doesn’t make much out of it, unable to piece together the ingredients to form a resulting product. She guesses this by the way his eyes scan the counter, over and back again, and laughs. “Birthday breakfast is a very serious tradition in my house, and I won’t let you live without it.”

               “And I wouldn’t make you. But I can help?” The inflection of his voice poses more of a question than an offer but she accepts it anyway, handing Alexander two small spoons and directing him to the last of the ingredients.

She cracks eggs with one hand, adds them to the batter and beats until it’s smooth and bubbling. Alexander props himself against the counter and watches; her expressions are ever-changing, flickering from a thin line of concentration to the continuation of a song that she fades in and out of. His hand trails the counter, where he’s left a sprinkling of flour and baking soda that dusts it like fresh fallen snow. It sticks to his hand, softens and dries it as it annunciates the print of his finger. One corner of his mouth turns up then, looking between the flour-dust and Eliza with a decisive, mischievous air. With a sweep of both hands along the counter he then wraps them around her waist, pressing on her hips and leaving the white print of his hands on his old shirt.

Eliza looks down at the mess and then over at Alexander, who has already brushed another layer of ingredients onto his hands. Her face lights up but before she can move he has her cornered, backed into the counter. Laughter escapes her in bell-toned giggles as he lifts her. She sits on the counter with a glowing lift of her lips, with the radiance of her dimples and the firm pressure of her hands snaked around him. It seems to be his mission to leave his handprint on each part of her body. She’s tipping her head, exposing the milky skin of her neck and sighing his full name through half-parted lips. She’s well-aware of the warmth that has traveled through him-that sends a drunken sort of ecstasy through her own muscles as her hands find their way to the back of his neck. He groans against her lips, involuntary and animalistic. Eliza’s legs wrap around him, pulling him closer and pressing him against the counter. The pressure of her body so close to his has hastened his pace; he tugs at his shirt where it ends mid-thigh on her, prodding until she’s taken it off with one swift movement and tossed it to the floor. Her musicality has translated to a series of sounds sung happily, desperately, through her gasping soprano. With each note he holds her tighter, presses himself further until the counter becomes nothing more than a cumbersome division between eager bodies.

He lifts her again, this time his destination clouded by the sighs that brush his ear with warmth, sending shivers down his spine and driving him further into the drunken oblivion that is Eliza with her legs wrapped tight around him. He indulges her, sinks to the floor and presses her back against the rug she keeps in front of the sink. There are stars, like the bubbling of champagne, that cloud his mind and coat his body in an eagerness not yet felt. Her vocal responses, the force of her hands as she pulls him further onto her, makes his legs buckle and his lips continue their roaming along her bare skin.

He’s sure he’s gone too far when a bang reaches her ears, strong and sudden, and her body jolts underneath his weight.

               “I need you to help me win an argument.” Emily bursts through the door without knocking, ten minutes earlier than expected. It’s a notch in the long devised (and emailed several times) plan that sends a dulled row of daggers from Eliza’s eyes. Alexander is upset too, although his is more from the need to roll off of her, and the immediate covering of her bare skin with his shirt along with a redness that completely coats her cheeks. His response is more of irritation; he rolls his eyes at his middle sister, helping Eliza from the floor and brushing off the flour that coats his body in a dry, ashy, and thickly caked layer. Emily lingers in the doorway, looking between her brother and his girlfriend as if they are children who have just been caught scribbling on the walls with marker. It is a good-natured scolding, with an exasperated release of breath and the clicking of her tongue. It isn’t unlike her brother to find himself caught up in his own world-his emotions have been on consistent overdrive since she’d met him. But this animated lift of his posture and soft, doe-like shining in his eyes each time he lets them cross Eliza’s gaze? This shift is a new side to him, and a welcome one at that. She is, after all, the first person who has gotten him to stop his incessant talking for more than a minute’s time.

               “You know I live to help you argue but is now really a good time? On my birthday?” Emily huffs at this, shutting the door behind her before trailing around the apartment. She gathers his things in a heaping pile; coat, wallet, and shoes, tossing them at him expectantly.

               “But you’re my brother, Alex. Isn’t it your job to help your poor little sister?”

               “Don’t you have three biological brothers for that?”

               “Do my three biological brothers have two and a half years toward their law degree?” Emily tugs on his arm, rolling her eyes and pulling him from the middle of the kitchen. “Just help me with this and then I’ll let you go.”

He casts a glance at Eliza, who’s holding back laughter as he slides on his scarf and coat. It hasn’t taken much convincing, not with Emily’s electric energy and mischievous smile, painted on features kissed by the radiance of the sun even in the middle of the winter. He merely shrugs and follows, as life would have it with the Laurens’ girls as his sisters. On their way out Emily turns her head back to throw a smirk at Eliza, the corner of her lip turning as her eyes light with the mischief of what she’d walked in to.

“I promise, I’ll let you finish later as long as you’re safe!” Eliza can hear Alexander’s groan from the hallway as the door closes behind them, moves hastily to clear the mess they’ve made.

               Emily’s set to come back much later in the day, a row of diversions beginning and ending with her keeping Alexander away from Eliza’s apartment for the rest of the day. It’s unfortunate now, as she tidies the mess they’ve made. Sweeping the piles of flour and clearing out the uncooked batter, half of which has produced blackened pancakes, it takes her several moments to compose herself enough to begin thinking of the party at hand.

               It’s fortunate when her sisters come half an hour later, dressed in clothes to clean and shop. Angelica carries a print-out of Eliza’s email series; a task list she’d divvied out with please or thank you again dotted within every other line. She’s more prepared than Eliza at this point, who’s just getting out of the bathroom with shower-dampened hair. Peggy takes to the shopping list immediately, the bribe of buying her coffee for a week clearly a large enough incentive to complete the daunting task. Angelica turns on the music, a playlist of 80’s pop songs reserved for busy dance parties, and follows her middle sister’s lead as they clear her furniture. By the time they are done they’re covered in dust and beach, satisfied with their work.

               John comes with decorations then, a large banner to hang over the entrance to the kitchen and a few black and white balloons. They’d argued about this a bit, John and Eliza; he’d fought for the simpler colors while Eliza insisted on green, his favorite color. In the end it had taken an influx of Pinterest posts sent angrily to her inbox to get her to agree. Now, the simpler color scheme lets off a more mature vibe, less invasive and brassy. They’re the only real decorations around, save a small gathering of presents that’s increased with each person to step through the door. Hercules brings the food, a rather flustered Peggy in tow with several bags of necessities Eliza had forgotten about with the rush of the day. They hang streamers and Eliza’s phone rings several times-an exasperated Alex, who is now being dragged blocks away to begrudgingly help Emily shop for a gift for her father. Did she forget that it’s my birthday? Did she not see what I had to leave to help her? The familiar warmth spreads up to her cheeks, and she has to look away from Valeria Laurens, who has made herself at home in the kitchen with Hercules; who’s standing on the rug in front of the stove.

               By the fourth time he calls they’re nearly ready; the guests, which consist of her sisters, his family, and John, Herc, and Laff, have all arrived. Hercules and Valeria still amble about the kitchen, but they are more relaxed as mismatched plates of food now cover the island and coffee tables. There is a pleasant warmth that comes from their chattering voices, loud and raucous over another Angelica-crafted playlist. Eliza takes a step back, admiring the room and its occupants with joy bubbling over her anxious expression. It’s taken an entire day-the sun is just about to set in the bitter air outside-but the preparations have been worthwhile.

               It isn’t how she expected the moment to happen; he bursts through the door after another string of annoyed (and particularly suggestive) messages, asking for nothing more than her company and a quiet night. He isn’t angry that she’s forgotten his birthday, not at all, but the task of keeping her occupied all day has put its toll on him. Emily Laurens has an innate habit of trapping people, getting what she wants with the bat of an eye or the divisive mischief she hides behind her dark, doe-like eyes. He is so exhausted of her company, in fact, that he argues with her the entire way up the stairs.

               He flings open the door mid-sentence, somewhere between reminding her what she’d promised him before they’d left and chastising her for walking into Eliza’s apartment unannounced. He freezes when he’s met with the array of familiar faces. They’re the people that mean the most to him, who come up and pat his back or engulf him in hugs (or, in Valeria’s case, kiss the top of his head and cry because another one of mis bebes is growing up too quickly). It’s Eliza who lingers in the background, letting him greet everyone with a slack-jawed, illuminated grin. His eyes wander over the decorations as if they’ll disappear if he’s not quick enough, taking in the change of scenery as he attempts to get over the surprise factor. He hadn’t expected much of anything, not after Eliza had promised him a night in for his birthday, or his roommates had insisted on giving him their gift a bit early on (a new chair for his desk, as his old one had been rickety and annoying after years of all-nighters).

               There is dancing and laughing, a harmonious gathering of noises and scents that turn his senses into overdrive. His New York mother (Valeria refuses to be called anything more or less by her ‘adopted’ son) and Hercules have made small foods in large quantities; chips spill from their bowls, a pile of affectionately arranged egg rolls are stacked high on a rectangular plate. There are her famous tapas, and one larger platter filled with arepas with cheese oozing from their centers. Then, behind it all, is Eliza.

               Her cheeks lift instantly when his eyes meet hers. She shrugs, a cheeky sort of motion, and he crosses the apartment in minimal strides to draw her to him. He’s amused-that much is evident from the incredulous shaking of his head.

               “What’s all of this?” He can’t help the repetition of kisses he presses to her lips, not when her eyes are bright with the fulfillment of her plan and warm with her gentle sort of love.

               “I found out that you’ve never had a birthday party here, and that you hardly even celebrate. I had to fix that.”

               “This is...my family’s here! And the guys…this is amazing.”

               He draws her to him again before remembering the guests, and the party she had thrown. There rhythmic Latin sounds coming from the living room and he pulls her over to dance, tucking the other plans away for safe-keeping, for when the guests would leave. A Laurens family affair is never one without music, and they fill the floor of her apartment with swaying hips and a level of confidence that has Eliza both laughing and stunned. Their sisters dance together although Mari, young and boisterous, gravitates toward Herc and Laff with a glimmering in her eyes. This doesn’t last long before her mother shoos her away, back to the other side of the room where Emily shares her shot with Peggy as they dance. The time wears on but no one leaves the center of the living room, only to get snacks they consume with the fervent need to get back to their endless dancing. The hours have long passed before the first few bodies leave the pseudo-dance floor. Angelica and Amaia sit on the sidelines, in the middle of a long-winded and fact-backed discussion that Lafayette attempts to follow. His business-sided mind gets bored of this easily, and instead he trails over to Alexander and Eliza.

               She’s dancing against him when Lafayette crosses the room, her back pressed against his chest and his arms tight around her waist. He translates his happiness to her in the run of his fingers along her hip-bone, or the ghosting of his lips on her neck. Lafayette’s presence pulls them apart immediately, but Alex’s friend manages a nod and a smile, gesturing around the room.

               “Happy birthday, Hamilton. This party was an excellent idea, Eliza. Pas mal.” He winks at her, shares a smile laced with the underlying meaning of their conversation just a few weeks back. He is still finicky, clearly a bit put-off by their proximity and her dancing, which the shot of tequila had loosened considerably. There is no longer an anxiety within her heart upon seeing him; no awkward air or feeling of darkness with his smile. The praise he sings is genuine, and it fills Alexander’s heart more than hers to see his friend’s sudden change.

               “How did that happen?”

               “I’ll tell you later…maybe.”

               Their sisters are the last to leave the party, trailing out with one another after helping clean up some of the mess. She appreciates the help, loves the company of so many helpful hands and chatting voices, getting along so splendidly. Amaia and Angelica are still debating, taking down streamers and tossing the trash. Peggy and Emily have stationed themselves in the kitchen, where the volume of their voices spills out and the pile of dishes diminishes. Eliza finally has to prod them into leaving, throwing suggestion after suggestion into the air until ordering them to leave the rest of the mess. It isn’t much, and as much as their help is appreciated it has been much too long of a day to continue on this way, with guests and social expectations she no longer wants to meet. When they’re finally gone, after Eliza has all but slammed the door on them, she lets out a heavy sigh of relief before looking up at Alexander with lightened posture and the bite of her lip.

               He’s already sitting in the armchair, allowing his eyelids to drop for a millisecond before she’s joined him, sinking onto his lap and running a hand through his hair. Her hips are met with the weight of his hands, holding her there and moving her closer. She sighs contentedly, wishes him a happy birthday through a silk-spun whisper against his ear.

               There is a difference between showing and telling…she is sure of it with the way his eyes ignite with flame-driven passion, a hearth fit for sitting at and chatting, growing old and rocking in front of. When she says that she loves him her words are soft and gentle, whispered late at night or gasped between breaths of necessary, involuntary air. The words are used so much that they would almost lose their meaning if they were not said with such decisive tones. It isn’t a guess, or a maybe. It slips from her lips so often in part because she can’t believe that it has happened, so fast and so sure. There is Alexander, who she’d met on a whim, with his sleepy smile and ink-stained hands and an obsession with the line of her skin just above her collar bone. There’s her Alex, with his incessant speech and crazy passion. He’d pulled her from the wreckage of herself just in time, when she’d started to give up hope on life after James. ‘I love you’ has taken on an entirely new meaning. When she hears it, she knows that it’s true. It sinks into her skin with all of the permanence and brilliant coloring of a tattoo she never covers. It spreads her lips and lifts her cheeks, brings out the dimples of the childhood and sparks her glimmering eyes.  

               Eliza rises from the chair, holding his hands on her hips. She needs him there-she wants him there-but the sinking of his cheesy paper birthday crown to the floor has reminded her what her true intentions had been.

               “Get on the bed.” She pushes his hands away, her voice with an unwavering strength as she prods him away. His lips turn up in a wide smirk, eyelids narrowing as he follows her instruction. He is moving painfully slow, his steps treading light on the hardwood. Each time he turns around Eliza groans; she is following him, close enough to feel her presence but just far enough away from hands that have grown cold from the lack of exploration. When Alexander sits, his hands finding the silk of her dress, she presses him away. Her breath is tight in her throat, anxious and impatient. She leaves him.

               “This isn’t about me, this is about-just wait here.”

               It doesn’t take long for her to return. She’s changed her mind, crossing the length of the room in two strides and pressing herself onto his lap. Alexander groans in response, picking up where he had left off with the eager prod of his tongue on her closed lips. She backs away again, just enough to let her nose press against his. Her breath is warm and eager against his lips but still she waits, holding him back by the cradle of his face in her hands.

               “I had something in mind.”

               “Oh?”

               Her hand holds his, moving it from her hip and up to her thigh and pinching at the indulgent and completely unnecessary fabric that divides them. He takes his time with her, letting the backs of his fingers slow in passing over her hips and up her side, stopping when they brush against fabric that draws them back, then forward and faster as he pulls her dress up over her head. He sits himself back then, incredulously, and lets his eyes roam freely across her figure. He wants her to stand up, to let herself be seen fully, but his words have been taken by black lace against white-rose skin. She seems to understand-in a motion of confidence she accepts his silent request, only to be drawn back in by his calloused hands on her hips, his mouth finding the space between her breasts. The warmth that spreads visibly to her cheeks spans the distance between them, travels hastily to the pants she slides from his legs with ease. Her head tips involuntarily; she sighs, and he speaks between a row of reddened marks along her neck and the base of her collarbone, a farmer’s favored spot filled too lovingly with its crop.

               “Eliza, you are exquisite.” He can barely take pause long enough to squeeze in his words; they’re warm against her neck and send a shiver through her body, cause him to work slower and attentively. It takes a great deal of power to release herself from the showering of affection but she manages, pushing his back against the bed and swinging her leg over his hip.

               “It’s your birthday, Alexander.” Her hair swings over one shoulder, brushes against his chest as she hovers over him. “Shut up and let me show you how much I love you.”

               His head moves once, in a nod clouded slightly by delighted confusion. He has never heard this voice from her; not his sweet, gentle Eliza. She covers her smile with the press of her lips against his, lets him tug at the hair that hangs in loose curls from her head before sinking more of her weight against him. She trails slowly down his skin in dust-pressed lips and light brushes of her teeth, stopping at the tattoo on his chest to trail her fingers over the name his mother had given him. From there her pace is even slower; as her head sinks between his legs his fingers curl into her hair, nails digging and scratching and egging her on further. This is where she finds her measure. Alexander moves from buckled hips to her name, the only three syllables he’s able to handle with Eliza working such magic with her tongue. Her fingers leave indents on his hips and thighs, where she’s holding and dancing to the rhythm she has set-the rhythm he attempts to replicate with his own movements. When he has finished; when she crawls back up to press her reddened, moisture laden lips against his one last time, he fights against the paragraphs of words that have begun to write themselves into his memory. Eliza is sleepy, her head against his chest and her slightly sweat-dampened hair splayed out over it.

               She is the last thing he sees on his first day of being twenty-three years old.

               There are two things he is certain of as his own eyelids blissfully drift shut; he is undoubtedly, very deeply enamored with the girl who hogs the covers and kicks him in his sleep, and showing is far better than telling.

               Twenty-three is going to be the best year yet.