#bc shadow is just so. bitter and angry and hostile.

[sugarsnappeases]

Can you yap about ritawalburga

hello yes i certainly can!! okay this is all still pretty fresh from the womb and stems from a vision i scribbled down in my notes app a few nights ago when i didn’t have wifi and therefore couldn’t text jen, but it ties in w my mission to make grimmauld place more Fucked Up (can’t remember if i’ve ever spoken about said mission before but. it’s fairly self-explanatory… i want that place haunted and semi-sentient and hungry)

so. basically. we’re post-first war. regulus is dead. sirius is in azkaban (and also disowned so as good as dead, really). orion is deathly ill and then later dead. and it’s just walburga and kreacher living in that big old house.

and grimmauld place is angry.

the wards in grimmauld place have been fed by the blood and the magic and the Presence of centuries of head of houses. lords of the noble and most ancient house of black. and walburga has failed them. sure, she provided the house w an heir and a spare, she did her duty, but then she lost both of them, she Failed. and now there's no heir. no spare. no lord bc orion is dying dying dead. no future for the house of black and grimmauld place is angry and dying and collapsing in on itself, shadows wrapping themselves around walburga's neck and squeezing, filling every crevice with despair and rot etc etc etc

and in canon... one could argue... that walburga's portrait, permanently fixed to the wall in the entrance hall, bigger than any of the other portraits, is her way of trying to assert some control over the house. she can be angry and bitter and hungry too. she is a part of the house too. a part of the legacy of the blacks.

in this au however, there's rita. tenacious reporter going to great lengths to get the scoop on the mystery surrounding orion's illness - he died at 50, he's a wizard, he should've lived a lot longer and it's unusual for illnesses to be incurable in the wizarding world. and she's nasty and determined and she shows up at grimmauld place again and again and again. she tries to ask for an invite to tea, tries to break in, tries to sneak through some sort of crack in her animagus form, tries to spy from outside through windows; she tries all sorts. grimmauld knows, obviously, and is incredibly hostile.

eventually, she asks again if she might visit walburga, and she says yes, because she's lonely or bored or curious or perhaps because she wants to spite the house. they have tea. they talk about nothing for half an hour or so. rita asks if she can visit again. walburga says yes. because rita is interesting and company and she pushes back against the things walburga says in a way that she never gets from kreacher (and she misses that pushback, which left the house with sirius, with orion. not w reg obvs lol). and the house hates it but walburga is angry and bitter and hungry too and she keeps letting rita back in. over and over and over again and they talk and they drink tea and the house is rotting around them, bearing down upon them w it's misery and it's fury, but rita is a spark of life. and maybe she kindles a bit of a fire in the ashes of the hearth. and maybe walburga likes her.

and maybe one day rita says why don't we go somewhere else for a change, and walburga (who hasn't left the house at all in years) says okay. and so she leaves and never comes back.

then, i was texting jen about this, obviously, and she said.... what if the house just completely crumbles when she walks out which is sooooooo sexy. like it just collapses in on itself. slumps down into a lifeless heap until sirius crosses the threshold again later. we also spoke about this ritawalburga happening in the context of the bellareg marriage au which makes me crazy and i would be happy to scream about if anyone wanted. but yes this is my ritawalburga.

[awellboiledicicle]

Keep pondering Felix just. Adopting many young woman he runs across bc they remind him of his little sister in some regard.

Roderika is going to know how to kill a man five different ways using only a whetstone. Hes decided.

Theres no Walter Beck and Hewg isnt a fighter. So he takes it upon himself.

Likewise I feel like he cheerleads Diallos a lot. Lots of sparring to build his confidence. He reminds him of Logan before they started learning things-- but Logan had a steel to his backbone that Diallos lacks. Diallos would like less help because ow.

I also think D would get along well enough with Felix. Not because they agree on things, but because weeding deathroot is something Felix is also good at.

Felix has no quarrel with peaceful members of Those Who Live In Death. Fia is fine. Undeadness is creepy, but he's willing to work with people that work with him. He knew the hollow men under the cemetery personally-- once their diamond was secure they were peaceful. The ones in mourningwood were pricks about it. His problem is indiscriminate attacking.

Which D can meet him half way on, but only because he took "I will fight those that fight me" as being a summation of all of those that live in death-- since the more decayed ones are almost always hostile.

Like Felix just.. death is wildly different to him than it is in the lands between and that shows. In the lands between, death only happens in terms of your body returning to the erd tree and your spirit going... somewhere in there too. You get called to it. Outside of that calling, you have infinite shelf life, provided you aren't killed. And even then its iffy, since something's only dead when it reaches the erd tree. Everything else just returns eventually. The Tarnished just do it faster.

In Albion and surrounding areas, if a regular person gets hurt bad enough they die. If a Hero gets fatally wounded, no they didnt. Any fatal wounds simply magically scar over and they get back up. Death only happens to them by old age, extreme illness, or supernatural levels of damage in a very short time. They'll still be fucked up if hurt and will generally need time to heal once things calm down, but death is different for them. And in the case of hollow men, the corpse itself is just a corpse. It's being inhabited by a spirit that never moved on-- they usually are angry, or protecting something.

Felix was able to chat with the ones below the cemetery because he was the son of the person who ensured no one fucked with them. So the spirits just danced in their bodies and chatted as they were able before falling apart. Others were just angry and trying to kill anything that still breathed.

Though he does have a bitter hatred against shadow anything given the Crawler and its shadows are what killed him.

The cold and how pale Rogier was while afflicted by death blight made him deeply nervous. It was like watching what killed him, from the outside. Only it didnt have the decency to be something Rogier could stab.

Also Felix is 90% sure Tarnished and Those that Live In Death are essentially mostly the same thing.

[odogaronfang]

Oh please give us a bonding green and shadow. I need some fluff between them like the " you're one of us " kind of fluff that would be mixed with a hint ( or like a ton of, oops start the waterworks ) angst. Please?????

[[oof shadow is not exactly Here for that kind of sentiment]]

“You know you’re one of us, right?”

Shadow glares at him from his perch atop the four-poster (?). “That’s a sad and tired rhetoric, Link.”

“It’s Green.”

“You want to claim title because you’re the original-” He spits the word like it’s poison- “-I’ll call you Link.”

Green wants to snap at him, but he knows that isn’t going to help anything- he’d rather Vio be doing this, he’s better at not falling for baiting, but with all the bad blood between them it’s better to wait.

“But it’s true,” He says, and it sounds pathetic even to him.

“I’m as much one of you as a wolf’s one of a litter of puppies,” He sneers. “Lemme ask you somethin’, Link. If I’m one of you, why don’t I have the same privileges, huh? Why can’t I wander the castle? Why can’t I be out of the castle walls past dusk? Why can’t I be around anyone that isn’t armed? Why do I have people watching my every step?” He waits for an answer and doesn’t get one. “That wasn’t fucking rhetorical, Link. If I’m one of you how come I’m not treated like it?”

“Well-”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You know why, Shadow.”

“Yeah, I do, so don’t keep coming in here with this bullshit! You wanna come in here and say okay, you’re a lot different and I acknowledge that, wanna offer me something more concrete than a stupid empty lie, then we’ll talk. I’m not one of you and I know that and you know that and so does everyone else in this entire fucking country.” Green thinks he can see tears in Shadow’s eyes, but the light’s so bad he can’t tell for sure, and his glare is so intense that Green’s a little scared to look closely. “I don’t fuckin’ belong here and I’ve got no fuckin’ clue why you even brought me back.”

“You could belong here,” Green suggests, as delicately as he can, and wishes, not for the first time, that he could bring Vio in to deal with this. “With time, I mean.”

Shadow laughs at that, harsh and bitter and not at all sincere. “Right. Like that’s gonna happen.”

“Well, it won’t if you’re acting like… This.”

“You really are just the epitome of bullshit, aren’t you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re one of us,” Shadow spits, in a perfect imitation of Green’s voice, “Well, with that attitude you’ll never fit in, you can redeem yourself.” He scoffs. “Bullshit. All of it. You wanna know where that shit works? It works if you’re talking to a bully on the playground. It works if you’re reading a pretty little fairy tale where the bad guy just didn’t know any better.”

Green is at a loss for words, if he’s being honest. He’d expected hostility, but not like this, hadn’t expected violent rebuttal at every attempt to help. “I’m trying to help you,” He says gently, “We all are-”

“That’s a fucking lie. You think Blue wants to help me? You think your sweet little princess wants to help me? You think Vio wants to help me? You know what I’d give for one fucking shot at that lying piece of shit-”

“Stop,” Green says, firmly, and is wholly and completely ignored.

“And guess what, bastard, you wanna think you’re Hylia’s little chosen pet, but you made my life a living hell,” He snarls (Green can think of no better words to describe it, later).

“I never did anything to you until you came here-”

“Yes you did! Yes you fucking did! Maybe you don’t know it but my entire life is your fucking fault! You know how hard it is to look like the hero where I come from? You know how fucking miserable it is to be the stupid hero’s shadow?” Green starts to speak but Shadow doesn’t let him, points an accusing finger and spits at him to shut his mouth. “You don’t! You don’t and don’t you even try to pretend you know what I had to go through ‘cause of you! I don’t even have my own fucking name because of you, you know that? I had to spend my entire Hylia-damned life literally in your shadow ‘cause that’s what I am. You lived your life being brought up to be someone, and I lived my whole life brought up to not be someone, and from day fuckin’ one I was being raised against you!”

He’s unsure what to say, whether he should, whether he can. It isn’t his fault, he knows, deep down, because it isn’t his fault he was born, but he can’t help but feel bad about it. “Shadow, look-”

“Don’t. I know you’re just trying to pity me and I don’t fucking care, I don’t fucking want it, so you can just fuck off.” Green makes no move to leave so Shadow forces it, melts into the darkness and reappears in front of him and shoves him towards the door, nearly sends him sprawling to the ground. “Get the fuck out,” He hisses, and slams the door in Green’s face and locks it.

Green stands there staring at the door for a long minute, dumbstruck. Distantly he feels the little trickle of blood on his neck where Shadow’s claw had nicked him, wipes it with his sleeve. He’s really starting to doubt that anything can be done with him.

Shadow, on the other side, is back in his perch atop the canopy, crying. (Which he vehemently denies later.)