#blood moon cog

[riot-is-a-boss]

Okay, I never post... But Blood Moon tho 👀

But it was necessary cause screw it, here's some Sergei from the newer Choice Game that was released bout a month ago ---> Blood Moon. 10/10 would recommend, not enough drawings of buff boi, Sergei. Like, I read it as buff strongman vibe, who got a hint of a dad bod. Which is perfect cause the man wants a mate and probs a pup, so what a power move 💪🏽

... yeah, I put his scars on the wrong side, hut sometimes you draw too fast 😭 don't mind one of my chars is there. Played through all the romances and endings with different chars, so I'm having a blast

@barbwritesstuff --- Straight up, you the bomb.com! Your time and effort put into writing is both appreciated and admired greatly! 👍🏽🐺

[voidbears-oc-stash]

Just read the blog banner and description. I'll use this pinned post as a list of my OCs.

Jax and perhaps Springtime, you both know the rules I put for asks. And if you don't, reread the rules on @the-cookies-of-darkness blog.

More OC tags

Even more OC tags

Yeah I think you get the point

OC List under cut

OCs:

Expo, a Sphinx Cat that is half void, and is extremely powerful because of that. He's a bit witty but all-in-all loves adventuring. Lost his mom soon after his birth and his father died in The Great Void War.

Luna The Werewolf Queen. She's a werewolf queen and can command werewolves. She, unlike other werewolves, is not weak to sliver. You'll find her backstory depressing, but I'm keeping a little mystery for now. She typically wears a special gold necklace that keeps her in a between-form. She just looks like a white wolf but her front paws are hand shaped. She's a bit self-conscious about her full werewolf form and doesn't go into it unless necessary. Yes, in the between-form she walks on all 4s.

Vinnie the Velociraptor. He's a Velociraptor from the dream realm and can enter others dreamrelms while they're asleep. He's kinda dumb but in a funny way, though he takes his 'job' to save others from nightmare seriously. He miraculously came from the dream realm of Sky The Cloud Warrior, in which in the realm he though Sky died and had a whole existential crisis when he became real.

Nameless, he does not know exactly what he is, even his own name was a bit of a misunderstanding but he kept it anyways. He stays around special rainbow crystals that keep him 'powered up', though he can still make more if given the energy. Here's some art of him by @maskoni-five. He's basepart wolf, has owl wings, aardvark claws in front, basilisk legs in back, a camel hump, and the venomous bite of a gila monster. His favorite food is eggs.

He dislikes being called rat-like, especially while being AT LEAST the size of a Great Dane. In reality, he's a Demigod, the son of a god of nature from a different planet(named Toadflax). Rumors spread that the new baby demigod had a key to immortality, so he was kidnapped. His dad wasn't too happy, so his papa cursed the species that kidnapped his son with immortality without any of the benefits(As in you literally cannot die but your body can't keep up forever), and for his safety sent Nameless off world with a protection boon so his true backstory would be near impossible to find out even from other godly beings (With some exceptions, those being beings with the same or higher power level of him(the dad-) himself, or just an aching reminder to the species he cursed). This, somewhat unfortunately, lead to Nameless not exactly knowing much about his own backstory and having large gaps in his memory. He got his name because for some official IDs that were made for him, a rather tired worker asked him for his name, and he said "I'm nameless...", which led to his name being named Nameless. He finds it funny and has gotten too used to it to get a 'real' name. He specializes in nature control and healing magic. The rainbow crystals are basically generators for his power, which he got from his mother's side. With enough energy, he can make more rainbow crystals, but prefers to just use the ones he already made. He can also use his power directly through the rainbow crystals, which makes it stronger.

Blacky The Void Demon. He's not exactly a "demon", demon is just the void's word for powerful, like the void's word for the world outside the void is "Osega". He has a pet Shadow Beast named Beastie. He also has a complex backstory, involving him loving somebody who his dad did not allow and (his dad)causing The Great Void War. He left out of hatered of his dad and gained enough power to be able to survive the osega without having to possess anyone, granting him rank of Void Demon. He'd be willing to share his knowledge about what lives in the void. Here's his ref.

Fiqunzur: A full on species of mythical bests I have made. They can shapeshift and fit through even the tightest of gaps, and have the magpie's tendency to just take anything shiny or that they find neat. I'll likely be using Fritz and his two kids, Atsen(male) and Zemryu(female). Fritz's partner was murdered by the superstitious folk, but his kids don't know that. Here's what they looks like typically

(Yes, my pfp is Blacky petting one)

Shadow Beasts. I've already introduced the jist of them on @the-cookies-of-darkness but I'm thinking of moving Raider, Silho, and Buddy here. They're shadowy lions, basically, though their temperament changes on how they grow up. Without supervision (or supervision of ferals), they grow up a feral apex predator. When treated like a person, they grow up acting like a person and are capable of speech, though still stand on all 4s(Raider, Silho, and Buddy as examples). And when treated like a pet, they'll act like a mix of a cat and a dog, Beastie being an example of this. They're weak to attacks of "pure light". Which they describe as "something you can see that does not cast a shadow". AKA mostly just fire. Their scratches typically leave permanent black marks, and when one dies they are reborn. Though they can still have the more 'traditional' kids way. They're all one gender but it still takes two. The ferals have been known for taking over universes.

Sola and Quasar are two space-patterned technically aliens. Sola looks like a and is about the size of a Songbird, while Quasar is a large and powerful-looking dragon. The two are in love. They refuge in this galaxy to hide from a Tyrant in their home one. Quasar, despite looking powerful, the most power he has is the strength due to his size, the typical dragon fire-breath (but, ya'know, at will), and technically being able to move at Faster Than Light speeds, but he's actually a big softie who loves to make cookies(for eating, which might cause awkwardice when confronting cookie run characters.) Sola is a bit more willing to talk about the tyrant dictator of their home multiverse, but is clearly still scared to talk about them. She's a bit more introverted and only really feels comfortable around Quasar. She's prone to nightmares.

Sybeny, said Tyrant Dictator. I do not intend for her to show up yet, but I am at least writing her name down. The warning I have: Do not let her cuteness fool you. That's exactly how she gets you.

Cannibal, one of my Just Shape and Beats OCs. His home world's treeangle had a star on top that often kept our cannibalistic friend fed, but after a lot of trouble and the world starting to fade, he and 2 remaining others had to leave. Will Of Fire (will be referred to as "Will") made the mech and infused his soul into it, giving the mech his ability to make golden fire that has like a midus touch effect. However, it did not have enough time to charge with solar power, so Cannibal grabbed his other remaining friend Fusion, who was already in a comatose state, and put him into the backup power source spot and managed to flee the world before it faded. Fusion will ne near impossible to wake up again unless another star-topped treeangle is found, Will's soul does have some mild influence in the mech, but Cannibal is the main guy controlling it. He controls it all from the head portion like that scene in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 where Berry controls the sentinel of safety suit. He can leave the suit if he wants, but usually only opens the visor to eat, and only ever leaves to go to the bathroom. But here's a ref of him outside the humanoid mech suit! Due to not having a star treeangle piece to keep giving him the required food he needs, he usually eats cacti as it's the closest to what he could eat in home world that lives up to his cannibalistic instincts(as long as it works to keep him from self-cannibalism, that's what he's concerned about). He is not corrupted, he is just naturally pink.

Fusion, another Just Shapes and Beats OC. When not able to be powered by a treeangle, Fusion will be in a comatose ball form that's all rainbow-y that constantly leaks energy. When powered by a treeangle, Fusion is a force to be reckoned with. With powers from each boss from Just Shapes and Beats with looks to boot, he is essentially a demigod. He takes his job to protect the innocent very seriously. Sometimes even too seriously. Threaten anyone he deems innocent, you're in for a bad time. If he's in a good mood, you'll likely just be punted. In a bad mood? Better start praying to what gods you believe in. His favorite attack is lasers, which he, like annihilate, can shoot from his mouth. He can also summon things like sawblades and scythes, fire and spider webbing. Arms can also detach and regrow like Blixer/Fresh/whatever you call the main boss guy.

Quinton the Hydra. Good friend of Luna's, ended up in a minecraft world that's basically single-biome of cherry grove. So has gotten used to eating cherries, pigs, and sheep. Ironically, when I first made him I imaged him looking like the hydra from minecraft's Twilight Forest mod. He's kinda goofy, with his center head being in control, and the other heads tend to not exactly care, which leads him to limp now-and-then when the other heads are lazy and sleeping. He does take his job as a guardian seriously, however. He's covered in scars, though at least it seems people are smart enough to not cut any of his heads off. He calls his other heads Lefty and Righty

Swifty the Jagfox. She lives in the trees and is very quick in them, that's even how she got her name! And her jaguar spots help her camouflage. Was also in the cherry grove world. She tries to be friendly, but sometimes her hunting instincts take over. (Drawing was made when I was still, like, a freshman in highschool and was starting to get into drawing, so don't judge how bad it is :b)

Silver the Giant Snake. She's an albino Burmese Python who is slightly bigger than a Reticulated Python. She's sometimes seen like the mom of the group, she's kind and caring, but can do the 'I'm not mad I'm disappointed' attitude. Sadly and ironically, she's infertile. She did take care of a baby turtle named Ellipse for a while before the shadow beast invasion, in which Ellipse was killed in front of her, which has caused her to be a little more depressed. Ellipse was friends with Swifty. She ended up in the Cherry Grove world

Desmond the Phantom Witch. He's a Phantom from Minecraft mixed with a Witch(which makes him humanoid). He makes potions for a 'living' and is always trying to find new things to use to make them. Being a phantom, however, he sometimes has a hard time controlling himself when he's around somebody who hasn't slept for days and feels the urge to aggressively leech the energies off of them. He wears a hat with mending and curse of binding to keep him from burning in the sunlight. He has a knack for showing up in random worlds when testing out potions. He always carries brewing stands and potion making supplies with him at all times. No matter what light, you can't see his face under the immense shade of his hat, just his glowing green eyes. He does mention he has fangs and a nose. Here's his ref and a poster he made! (Ignore the "in the thread" part, I used that for roleplays on Discord then the server got closed down =/)

Firefly. A Windchime Squid from The Void. Ended up in the Osega when Void Cookie (from @the-cookies-of-darkness) had a power surge. He and Stinger both now control a body made out of scrap coredroid parts with a void-infused core. He controls the upper body. He uses fancier words and is quite smart, and often instructs Stinger where to go. He takes responsivity cleaning up most of the void-related messes

Stinger. A Monstera-Mimic The Void. Ended up in the Osega when Void Cookie (from @the-cookies-of-darkness) had a power surge. He and Firefly now control a body made out of scrap coredroid parts with a void-infused core. He controls the lower body. As a predator species from The Void, he's more physically strong than smart. While he often now listens to Firefly, his predator instincts will sometimes get the better of him and he starts using his thousands of microscopic stingers to consume sugars of those he gets close enough to. While Firefly insists they flee most squabbles, Stinger prefers to try to fight anyone off.

Notebuster. A Superhero on basically the other side of the world or at the very least a different country from where most of the OCs hang out. He's a superhero there with superpowers that relate to music! But he's also half-void on his mom's side, so he also has void powers like Expo! Just slightly ones, at the very least by color. He is somewhat ironically a cousin of a famous (in the towns nearby at least, anyone who knows void people would hate him) void demon hunter and killer named Oggy Budderhorn (who has since died and has a memorial). He wears a cyan suit with a screen, speaker, and special fingertips that allows him to control music in a way to create attacks. He also doesn't talk verbally most of the time. He can talk, but he prefers to just scroll through videos to talk for him, like that one scene in Animation Vs YouTube. Basically, he's mute by choice, like Henry Stickman.

Rzore. Notebuster's mother. She's one of the last surviving members of the pink tribe that was wiped out in The Great Void War. She wasn't aware the war ever happened, and had been in hiding in the Osega for a few hundred years before finally having a child. She became a Void Demon through mostly determination, rather than killing fake people in a fake world like Blacky did. As for why? She found the Osega much more interesting than the void.

MINOR (for now) OCS:

Sky The Cloud Warrior. I do not intent on having him be very relevant other than being Vinnie's 'dad'. He's retired and loves pizza parties, though he gets his nickname "The Cloud Warrior" for a good reason. He lives on the top of a mountain. Here's a ref with a little bit of info on it(Via a very inexperienced OC maker past me). The clouds he makes are always the perfect comfortable temperature and he can choose whether or not they're tangible.

Plobettba(Goes by "Plob" for short). I don't intend for her to actually show up in a long time, but she will be mentioned by Expo and the others. She's a cyborg dragon with the ability to melt planets, and only the metal on her could resist such high temperatures. She's killed her maker, Snatg(which is a shorting of "Snatgbbgu"(back when I was obsessed with Rot13 names lol), he was a mix of an Okapi and a Rhino, and is a more horrible and powerful tyrant than Sydeny could ever dream to be.), and has the source of his power on her. She's currently residing in the center of a star about a thousand lightyears away in hypersleep mode, and has connections to Expo if she wakes up and wants to talk, or if something goes horribly, horribly wrong to the point she can't handle it alone.

Qwarkon, The Blood Moon's Ghost. He's a weather elemental that looks ghost-like, though he can only seem to charge up his powers at night when the moon is out, and when he charges up, anyone nearby sees the moon turn to look like a blood moon. So he kinda typically stays away from the crowd and usually can't get himself the confidence to start a conversation.

Fred. He's just a grouchy scrooge Komodo Dragon who would kill just for peace and quiet.

These four. Not adding as much info as I've already shared it all in DMs with Jax and I'm pretty sure it's just me and him on this blog lol

Phantasma the Ghost. He's a humanoid wolf-panther mix who is, of course, a ghost. His tail is completely clipped off and he has no idea what happened to it. He's a quiet guy who enjoys the little things. His favorite thing to do is watch Fireflies, which he hadn't done in a long time due to first being stuck underground and then being stuck in the cherry grove world (even if Minecraft added Fireflies, they would've only been in swamps). He is lacking a good chunk of his memories, and only remembers that he died due to his best friend betraying him and thus doesn't trust easily.

adding the mutants to the more OC Tags post

Avtug. One of the few of the elusive Void species called Lucem. He's one of the more braver ones of the species, but still flighty. He hides in ghost towns of the world, fleeing when any explorers or tourists or the like show up. He isn't afraid of being seen, he is afraid of his picture being taken and the world knowing about his species because of him.

Willy The Wanderer and Vlad The Destroyer. Two mice people (who I made using this Picrew) who are adventurers. They're cousins, but are as close as brothers. Willy is the one in black and has brown fur. He knows magic, and has somehow wound up in the wrong place multiple times. He's adventurous and has a knack for solving problems. Vlad is the one in read with gray fur, he's a sailor who sometimes tells tall tails, once saying he rode a shark with nothing but his fishing hook steering it. He's a bit more serious, but has a soft spot. The two live in the same area as Notebuster and Rzore

Pyth (Previously named Decidoreal). A Green Tree Python helplessly in love with Silver, ended up foolishly saving Geno. In return, he ended up getting fused with a cacti and changed himself up to try to impress Silver.

Ellipse. Silver's adopted turtle daughter who was killed in front of her. Revived using corruption by Pyth in an attempt to woo Silver, she ended up fairly unstable due to Shadow Beast DNA being in her.

Echo. Echo is an Undertale OC. Her father was a Spelunker who explored the caves of Mt Ebbot before the barrier. She was named after the Echo Flower. After her unfortunate death due to a car crash, she ended up being buried in what would become Waterfall. When the barrier was made, the splurge of magic turned her into a boss monster(a boss monster because she was once human and had some leftover determination in her), a Zombie. She has Echo Flowers growing into cracks in her skull. She's become an adult since her awakening, but has no memory of her life before being a zombie, other than her name.

[gamingtrashbasin]

Gaius should just buy, have it fixed up and gift it to them honestly - it'd be on brand for his creepy obsession with them 💀

If the pack was renting the warehouse, what uh happened with that after rental agreement post Blackwell's uhhh free demolition service? I'm guessing they didn't get their deposit back 💀 do they still live at the warehouse? have they fixed it up or moved somewhere else? PLEASE tell me if they stayed that they have proper walls and a better kitchen and bathroom situation eventually 😭

I actually go back and forth on this.

Part of me thinks they'd have moved on. Vampires now know the werewolves' den and that's not really a great thing... and there are other nearby locations that could've been converted to house a bunch of werewolves.

But another part of me thinks that the werewolves know they'll be discovered wherever they are (it's not hard for humans to spy on them) and they've made a stand here now.

Also, I'm still not over the werewolves living in a warehouse pun. I doubt I'll ever be over it.

So... I dunno. If they're still in the city, they might still be in that warehouse (post renovations), or they might be somewhere else.

[coeurify]

repost the period vampire ellie fic!

middle of the night,, vamp!ellie

a/n: this is a repost from early this year so excuse any change in writing style!

warnings: vampire!ellie. period sex. oral!r receiving fingering!r receiving. sort of a dreamy, less modern vibe. if u aren’t into it.. just don’t read it.

˚✦　.　　. 　  ˚　.　 . ✦　˚　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔

Some times--Most times, you only saw her at night. When darkness enveloped the small town you called home, when the stars rocked the sleepy eyed humans to sleep and the moon hummed the lullaby that quieted the crickets outside, she came.

Only then did you ever hear the distinct creaking of the splitting wood on your window panes being pressed up. Only then did the white of your sheer curtains move with more than the wind, the grip of the air nothing compared to the long hand that often wrapped around the fabric and pushed it open. When the moon was the only light filtering into your room, you saw the green of her eyes.

Tonight was no different, despite one little issue. Often, the woman who visited you under the cover of midnight would arrive to your eyes closed in sleep. She would press a hand to your warm cheek before waking you, greeted by your sleepy excitement each time.

This time, you had not been able to sleep. A heat had taken over your body, tight in your stomach with a pain you would compare to that of claws gnawing at your insides. Sweat beaded between your brows with every swift turn under your uncomfortable sheets, lip tugged between your frustrated teeth to stop any whines of discomfort. That had been what your favorite visitor heard as her shaking palms found the wood of your window. Your pained grunts floated through her buzzing ears as she quietly made her way into your room, auburn hair messy behind her ears as her figure became visible, head tilted as she looked across the room to your heated body.

“El,” you whined, wiping your forehead with a hand, not at all concerned about her chosen point of entry. “Go away.”

Ellie’s gaze softened, a scoff sounding from behind your squeezed shut eyes. “Go away?” she mused, her voice much closer now.

The split second your eyes had been closed, Ellie had somehow silently made it to your bedside. You don't question it, you never do.

When a girl like Ellie sports small fangs and a taste for blood, her speed is the last thing you think to question.

“I don't feel well, don’t want you here.” you add, mouth pulled into pout as you look up at the freckled face of Ellie.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, bunny? Instead of shooing me away,” Ellie requests, sitting on the edge of your bed. Her cold hand finds your sweaty arm, sighing. “You’re burning up.”

Your neck tickles with heat as Ellie questions your current state, and you fall wordless. Somehow, it was more embarrassing to admit to your vampire visitor that you were starting your period than to simply tell her to leave. Obviously however, Ellie was not taking the second option as a valid answer.

“I started my period, nothing is helpin’ the cramps,” you explain softly, pressing your hand into the sheets of your bed to try and sit, to maybe find some sort of relief to the growing tension in your stomach. But the other set of hands is faster.

“Lay down,” Ellie insists, glancing down at you. You can almost see the cogs of her brain turning behind the evergreen in her eyes, a sort of fogginess settling over the color.

“Let me help you,” she eventually says.

“What? I told you nothi-”

Ellie presses her lips together to hush you, one wandering hand finding the dip of your hip, blunt nail tracing the goosebump coated flesh there. Sometimes she liked being so cold, simply because she enjoyed seeing how you reacted to it. If she was damned for what she was, she may as well use some of it to her advantage.

“What are you doing?” You couldn't help the shiver that followed her movements.

Suddenly your mouth feels dry, tongue unable to wet the plump fat of your lip. The scratching in your throat finds no comfort when you swallow, only further irritating your vocal chords. A choked noise finds the heavy bedroom air as fingers tug at your cotton shorts.

“Helping you,” Ellie repeats, her own mouth much more wet than yours. Even in the dim light of the moon you can see the glistening dew on her parted lips. Usually the look she currently wears is saved only for when her pearly teeth find the sensitive and already scarred skin of your neck. Not for.. this.

Your hands immediately slap to your heated cheeks. “Oh my god Ellie, no fucking way.”

The vampire, who had now moved below you on the bed, hums in disagreement to your little show of kicking feet, a hand too strong to be that of a human halting all movements.

“We always have fun when I come over,” The freckles of her face disappear as she glances down, fully pulling down your shorts.

“Not when I’m on my period,” you hiss quietly, the words feeling cracked and embarrassed as they leave your mouth. You could deny the growing arousal in your belly simply by how *mortified* you felt. Even with the churning feeling of deeply settled embarrassment, you make no further moves to stop Ellie. Not as the shorts fall to the floor with a dull thump.

“It’ll help,” Ellie soothes, the near frigid temperature of her hand calming the heat that rises on the skin of your legs. “Haven’t you heard things like this help with cramps?”

The words that are spoken almost teasingly fall upon deaf ears as her wet lips press right above your knee. “Please,” the auburn haired girl whispers, sounding a lot more breathy than before. “Please, let me taste you. Let me make you feel better. ”

Ellie had a tendency to become a little less cold, figuratively at least, when she found her body nestled between your own. The unwavering voice you had grown oh so accustomed to always slid into a more mushy sounding version whenever it got intimate. Today, it seemed even worse. The words dripped with the sweet sounds of neediness, a sound that tasted sweet on your tongue, which swiped nervously over your dry lips.

“El..” Another kiss pressed further up the flesh of your warm thigh broke any following denial. “Fuck..” your chin wobbles, almost too embarrassed to actually say your following words, “Yea. Please help.”

You were sure if you believed something was watching down on you from the sky, it was with horror. Some people may call what Ellie was doing sinful. The angels in the clouds would shrilly gasp as fingers wrapped around your panties and tugged them and everything else from your bottom half, tossing them into the growing pile of clothes. Her shirt came next, the simple white cloth acted as something to watch as it pulled off of her chest, likely to avoid any mess. Some may call the sight of her dipping down again, green eyes looking up at your quivering lip, sinful. Maybe it was, surely the mewl you made when her lips found the heated flesh of your inner thigh was. But if you had to describe it, that wasn't the word you would use. You may even swear it was heavenly.

“Relax,” Ellie drawled, spreading your thighs further apart, despite the slight tremble to them. “I’ve got you, don't worry,” her voice soothed you enough to tilt your head back against the pillow, squeezing your eyes closed. The embarrassment simmered low in your belly, even more so when you could feel the arousal that dripped from you, which your vampire visitor had no problem pointing out. “So wet for me,” she groaned, lips still refusing to find home anywhere other than your thighs. Teeth sharper than your own nipped at the skin there, bucking your hips up. “You want this, don’t you?”

It was an obvious request for another confirmation of what was to come, but your chest felt too tight to reply, no air finding your lungs the moment her breath hovered over your pulsing core. “Tell me you want it,” she requests again, voice dipping into a softer territory again, searching for your approval. Her resolve was cracking however, jaw clicking as she tried her best not to dive straight into where she craved to be.

“I do,” you whine, eyes still closed as you answered, words met with the quick and overwhelming feeling of her tongue pressing flat against your wet center. You couldn’t think too hard about the fact she was doing this right now, not when the sharp gasp had come from two mouths instead of one, a quick call of, “Fuck,” from only you this time followed. Ellie had no words, not as her tongue made another long stripe up your pussy, going much slower than you liked. It led one small roll of your hips down into her, a sign for what you searched for.

It resulted in a hand gripping your hip, pressing you further down into the mattress, ceasing any attempt to control the movements. Her mouth pressed further into you, licking at the same excruciatingly slow pace, seemingly taking her time to enjoy the taste she found between your thighs. “El,” you gasp, eyes fluttering open to glance down at her. However her eyes were closed, another press further into you came, her nose bumping your clit as she licked into you. The rush it brings is almost enough to completely paint over the lingering cramping in your stomach.

The dizzying mixture of pain and pleasure seeps into your bones, making you feel too heavy to do much else than move a hand to find Eliie’s hair, fingers tangling between the auburn strands. You tried again to guide her movements, but she was much stronger than you, paying little mind to the shaky hand that tugged at her locks.

“Taste so fuckin..” she sucked in a breath, unable to keep from dipping back into your folds, humming. “So fuckin’ good,” she finishes, words reverberating against your throbbing core. It had you trying to squirm, held down by the stone light weight of Ellie’s grip. The deeper she licked, the more you fought against her. Your body ached the do something.. anything to find comfort in the overwhelming feeling of her still slow pace. The fingers in her hair tugged again, finding a low groan in response.

The air of the room had already been heavy on your feverish skin, but now it was nearing a state of unbearably humid. Every time Ellie’s tongue made a particularly aimed movement you felt another round of fire straight in the mess that was your clenching core. It all felt so heightened, so much better. The sticky feeling on your skin did not slow either of you down, and you had little care for the sweat beading on your flesh. Not when your favorite girl’s lips were doing such mind numbing things to you.

Had you told your past self, even that of just an hour ago, that you would have allowed it to happen.. They would have laughed in your heated face. The past version of you would have sworn up and down, prayed up to the mysterious sky, that this would never happen. But now- now you have no room for denial or regret. Your mind was becoming too cloudy to house thoughts of shame, questions of if this was right. Because it felt right. The slick sound of Ellie’s mouth against you sounded right, as did your little huffs and puffs that you couldn't hide. The cramps had subsided in tandem with the tightening band in you. But you needed more, and you were gone past a point of being embarrassed to ask for it.

“I need..” you try to speak, but Ellie’s lips wrapping around your clit is the cause of the death of the forming words. A jolt of your hips is one finally strong enough to rupture the heavy hold of the vampire’s hand. Your lame attempt at a command did not go unheard by Ellie, who for the first time since this began, pulled herself away from your cunt. Her eyes darted up, looking to meet your own. But you were far too focused on something else. Her lips were glassy with your wetness, which she licked without a second thought. But the usual clear sheen that you had been no stranger to seeing on her face was more of a rosy color, a stark reminder of the reason this had begun in the first place. The slight tint of red smeared onto her chin, across the corners of her mouth, and it was oh so addicting to see. You felt no lingering shame, no shiver of disgust. Instead it made you feel even more desperate to have her against you again, but first you had to listen to her speaking. “Need what, babe?”

The urge to simply shove her face right back into your cunt flipped through the pages of scenarios in your head, but the moonlight that painted the side of your lover’s face, illuminating the red paintbrush stroke of you, had you a little too separate to risk such a bratty action.

“I need more, El. Need to cum,” you manage to whine, one light push of her head to prove your point. Ellie dipped her head down again, pressing small kisses to your sticky inner thighs. “Just love taking my time with you,” she muttered, a few more pecks planted on you were a search for forgiveness, one you graciously accepted with a loud moan when the lips finally found your clit again.

Ellie seemed to take your beg to heart, the hand that held your hip slowly dipping between your thighs. Her searching fingers met just below her chin, one long digit sliding over your slit, teasing the weeping hole with a slight press. The air feels like it has been punched from your lungs when the finger sinks into you, just as evil as her mouth as it curls into you the exact moment her lips suck a little harder. You were sure she was looking to torture you with how slowly the finger pumped in and out, working and exploring around your walls that gripped around her so tightly.

You had always heard the mythical vampire was sadistic. Ellie had never been much of that, but with ever slow movement into your aching cunt, you began to believe the whispers. Your head turned lightly to stare at the open window, the stars that dipped in the night sky were surely spotlighting your body splayed out on the bed, the auburn haired vampire between your thighs was quite the show for all the celestial beings up in the night air, every single being held its breath and watched on, you were sure of it. You didn't blame the stars, or the moon, or whatever else may have their attention focused on this tantalizing sight. If you could, you would float right out of your body to watch on yourself.

Surely you looked a mess, chest heaving with the heat of the air, with the heat of Ellie. Your limbs shook just lightly, your fingers knotted your companions hair, the messy pile of clothes on the floor, the red that painted her cheeks. Surely it would make your cheek turn bashfully if you could see it. Maybe this was sinful. The little dip into your rushing thoughts is ended with the raspy tone of Ellie’s voice.

“Relax, bunny. Gotta relax for me,” Ellie cooed against you, a few more languid presses into your cunt causing you to finally loosen around her, coupled by the continuing ministrations from her mouth on your clit. Soone another finger joins the mix, the large fingers stretching you just right. She reaches spots that have you remembering the stars you had just seen behind the black of your squeezed shut eyes, a pathetic cry falling from your lips. This reaction only encourages her to continue, the pace of her suckles and thrusts into you speed up. It's harsher everytime she plunges into you, your hips moving lightly with the pure force.

“That’s my girl, there you go,” she compliments after a long moan, the words causing another clench around her fingers. You let out another string of incoherent whines and moans, grinding down into her messy face and fingers. Somewhere in the back of your mind you cursed yourself and Ellie for the certainly ruined bedspread under your ass, but it seems like the much smaller issue when you had *this* to focus on. You were nearing your peak, and it was no secret. Your grinds against Ellie became sloppy, ununiformed and more needy than before. No words could form on your tongue, only whimpers and unintelligible begs.

The vampire never lets up, curling her fingers, your walls clenching. her teeth grazed against your clit lightly enough to have you trembling, whining softly. She knows your body as well as you do, every small sign you were reaching the final moments before your world would explode. She knew what moves of her fingers would have your legs shaking, knew where to press, how hard to go. She was no stranger to making you cum, and she definitely was on the mission to make it happen now. Her free hand grips your thigh, pushing you even more impossibly open for her, fingers pressing into you harshly enough to draw another cry. She readjusts slightly, sinking even deeper into your folds. “C’mon,” Ellie whispers, the word slightly broken, shaky and pleading. Pleading as if she needed you to come as much as you did.

Maybe she did, because the moment your back arched, a near pornographic moan filling the heavy air, spilling out of the window and swirling against the peeping eyes of the stars and moon, she moaned with you. Her fingers still within you as you gushed around her, her lips still pressed to your clit. But as your thighs shook, she slid the fingers out and replaced them with her tongue again. The pink muscle flattened against your slit again like it had earlier, this time with no attempt at going slow.

If anything, she was ravenous. Every drop your pulsing center gifted her, she sucked down like she needed it, ignoring your desperate whines of overstimulation. You attempted lamely to press her head away with the hand still tangled in her scalp, but it was no use. The pleasure of her tongue was much too overwhelming to fight.

After a moment that felt like hours, she pulled away. Her tongue licked over her lips again, collecting the rosy colored cum from where it smudged there. Her eyes stayed on your own blinking irises as her fingers raised to her already messy lips. They were coated with the same mixture of red and clear shining wetness, and she sunk them into her mouth with a moan. The debautchary that took place in front of your eyes should have your stomach queasy, should have your legs closing and pressing far away from Ellie.

But of course it doesn't, instead you watch on with morbid curiosity, watching her tongue curl around her fingers, sucking the last bits of you, leaving a glistening layer of her own spit behind. She found no shame in this situation, no shame in drinking down evey single thing you would give her, so why should you?

“Fuck,” you breathe, eyes transfixed on the fingers as they fall from her lips and down to her lap, her eyes back on your own. She makes a move to crawl over you, arms locking you in from either side.

“Just got a taste of you bunny,” she mumbles, nudging her head into the crook of your neck.

Her lips pressed there, and this time you could feel her fangs under the plump fat of her lip. “Gonna let me have more?” she questioned.

Of course you would, of course you did. As you tilted your neck for her, the curtain to the side of you blew in the wind, and you closed your eyes.

“Yes.”

[jkl-fff]

The monster we all made in Silly Game Time

must necessarily have two forms: their humanish disguise (one that can pass for human at a glance) for when they must pass among humankind … and their true form.

When they don their humanish disguise (to hunt or to seek companionship or to get a cold drink out of the fridge—though they almost never refill the ice cube tray when they do, like the monster they are), a sense of unease still surrounds them that has nothing to do with their uncanny appearance. Perhaps we instinctively sense that they aren’t human? Perhaps we remember reading about that one time they cut down the trees in Danny DeVito’s yard so fast no one could stop them, and for no other reason than they wanted to annoy DeVito specifically (like a jerk)? Usually, though, we’re either too preoccupied with our own affairs to care all that much. Or we write it off as eccentricity that’s harmless enough, but still seems off-putting; their hair is an unnatural purple and styled in uneven spikes (like a punk rocker or an anime character), for example, and they always wear a dumb cape like from a Count Dracula costume, they’ll howl at the moon in an almost ironic way, and they can do that tongue trick like the singers of KISS that makes it seem way too long and way too prehensile (it’s forked, though, so it must be a fake extension … right?).

If you take more than a glance, though, you might notice the way their skin is stitched together and mismatched in places. Look closer, and you’ll see the stitches tend to secrete a slime that bears an unpleasant resemblance to Velveeta “cheese”. Yuck. Maybe you might notice that they don’t cast a reflection in mirrors and can’t be captured by cameras. Or maybe you’ll notice that one of their eyes is larger than the other and has a yellowish glint to it (the other has a reddish glint), and both have pupils that look a bit too slitted; see them at night, and you might notice that their eyes seem to glow in the dark.

Most likely, though, you won’t see their eyes at night. In fact, you most likely won’t see anything of them at all at night (until it’s too late), save for a gleam of teeth. Because they can hide everything else of their appearance in shadows—everything but the gleam of their teeth for some reason, unless they choose to let that remain visible as a kind of joke. And those teeth, when you look close at them (if you have time enough to look close at them) are always too numerous, too big, too sharp, too rowed like a shark’s teeth. Or like the more feral depictions of vampires (the ones that are more beast than Bela Lugosi). Which is appropriate, since, like nearly all monsters, they have an incredible appetite for human blood.

Their true form might almost be considered majestic in an ineffable, eldritch horror sort of way. They are big, of course—huge, mammoth, colossal—stretching longer than a city bus from head to the tip of their spiked, foxy tail. They stand on an uncountable number of short legs that all end on big, velvety paws as large as a siberian tiger’s (and just as silent). From their sides (their countless shoulders?) sprout an asymmetrical distribution of limbs with asymmetrical sizing. Some are like humanoid arms (the foremost ones are these, with the left one being massive but clumsy and the right one being puny but very deft), some are like tentacles, some are like wings, and one might be an actual snake that got itself absorbed into their mass. The arms end in long claws, the tentacles end in pincers and scissors, and the wings resemble those of bats (with claws at the joint) or ravens or albatrosses (they shouldn’t be able to fly, and yet they can).

They’re covered in fur the same color as their humanish disguise’s spiky hair. Except for patches of rotting flesh where muscle, bone, viscera, cogs, gears, and internal combustion engines are exposed (yet still somehow function, occasionally bleeding the black ichor like evaporative oil they have instead of traditional blood) or where unearthly mushrooms sprout. And except for along their back, of course, where the skin grows scaly and plates (like a stegosaurus or Godzilla) jut out of their spine. Speaking of their hair, it corresponds nicely to their true form’s horns: on the top of their head at the end of their long neck, their horns are long and stiped and swirling, one set like a ram, three sets like from different antelopes, and one single horn like a unicorn.

You might easily miss their bat-like ears among the horns, save that they swivel constantly to-and-fro tracking what they hear. You won’t miss their teeth, though; those carry over to their true form, even if their mouth tends to change its location on their face, slithering like a snake between their too many eyes (big yellow ones and small red ones scattered around their face). And, almost glorious, above their head floats an interlocking of many-eyed halos like some sort of angel during one of Heaven’s many drag competitions (the drag they got up there is wild, since they’ve got so many more and wild genders than here on Earth).

This has led some scholars to theorize that the monster (that we just made up yet has also always existed) actually *is* an angel. Specifically one of the Gray Angels who remained neutral instead of siding with God or Lucifer, possibly one overseeing fungi and decomposition. This would explain why they do neither good (apart from maybe making sure fungi continue) nor evil (apart from killing some humans and drinking their blood, but there are over 8 billion of us, so it’s not really that big of a deal when you think about it), and are willing to exploit and disregard the safety of mortals to perform their own tasks. Some say this means they represent the worst of humanity (egotism), some say they’re still objectively more decent than their creator (God, who is indisputably the biggest criminal in this universe’s history). Some say they can be viewed as an allegory for being trans, but since *all monsters ever* can be viewed as an allegory for being trans (one of the many reasons monsters are awesome), that’s a bit like saying the sky is blue. Everyone agrees, however, that it’s pretty cool they can spit acid and breathe fire, and everyone is right on that point.

The final question we might ask is: How can we protect ourselves from our monster? There isn’t anything we can do to harm them, however they do seem to be averse to complex geometry (mobius strips and tesseracts and the like) (it doesn’t hurt them, they just seem to find them too tacky to be tolerated). So maybe wear a pendant with one of those on them. Can’t hurt. Probably can’t help, but can’t hurt, either.

Thanks for playing!

[d3m0l1t10n-lvrs]

☀️🌙DCA AWARDS: FIC NOMINATIONS!☀️🌙

Note:If you do not want your fic to be in the awards, please tell me so I can exclude your fic from the polls!

Polls will start tomorrow!

Click on the Xes for the fic links!

Abyssal lights by @phoenixdaneko X

Sunshine by @wacky-nameless-inventor-24 X

One Who Holds a Star by @justaduckarts X

Solar Lunacy by @bamsara X

The Night Shift by @certified-handler X

Cryptid Sightings by @naffeclipse X

Two Hunters and a Bloodsucker by @robinette-green X

Dead Mall Dare by @muzzlemouths X

Dealer's choice by @certified-handler X

Devine Pact(s) by @girlwiththeblueblood X

Fishy Business by @robinette-green X

Weal and Woe by @weal-and-woe X

Sleuth Jesters by @naffeclipse X

A Tail of Sun and Moon by @Omenofthevoid X

Coiled Around the Fine Line Between Love and Fear by @crazedauthor X

404:Personal Space not Found by @crazedauthor X

Forever Friends by @restinsodaroni X

Enthralling you, Enthralling me by @justfangirlstuffs X

you move to dayshift but aren't paid any more, go figure by @tuzesdays X

Days of Laughs and Nights of Screams by @justaduckarts X

To be Hunted by @celticwolfie X

Crimson Skies by @celticwolfie X

Astral Bodies by @venomous-qwille X

Sunspots, Craters and Mortal Things by @storytellingbadger X

I see you, Sundrop! By @shirajellyfish X

You Call This an Upgrade? By @writing-forever X

Holding the World by @anangelcalledinquisitor X

Scars and Scales by @intistone X

Death Games and Robots by @lets-zofifi-stuff X

And There You Are (A Shooting Star) by @wakkodoodle X

Copper Cogs Rusted Through by @paper-lilypie X

Visions (or lack thereof) by @sleepyjuniper X

Permission Slip by @thedemonscrawler X

Call of The Abyss by @bri-does-art X

Blood and Oil by @dragoncxv360 X

Twin Animatronics With Too Much Time on Their Hands by @twinanimatronics and @dana-chan-the-control-brain X

[dalekowrites]

What would your favourite choice of the games interactive stories be? Would you have a favourite type? Romance, Fantasy etc. and did any of the inspire you with the ones you are currently writing? 😁

Oh boy! This is going to be a long answer, brace yourself lol

Let me start by saying that I have a degree in English literature (in fact, I'm going to do a PhD on it), so reading, in general, is one of the core activities of my life.

As for text adventures, even if not from Choice of Games Ltd., I'd like to mention a few inspirations: my passion first came from the original Choose Your Own Adventure series, and I still remember which numbers obsessed me as a child: Mountain Survival #28, The Dragons' Den #33, and more than any other, Space Patrol #22! (The latter may have also fueled my unhealthy obsession with Star Trek TOS, actually). For those unfamiliar with this fantastic book series, the genres of the three books I mentioned are, respectively, adventure, fantasy, and sci-fi. This gives you an idea of how varied my tastes are...

Later on, I discovered interactive fictions and text adventures. Dude, it was a dream come true. I started with Adventure ('76, never finished it, of course) and Zork ('79, never finished that either… of course. How damn hard were they?!). Then Mystery Mansion ('78), Castle Adventure ('82), and too many, many others. I'm a sucker for Sorcery! from inkle, and I deeply loved Magium (RIP Chris, you won't be forgotten). For my Italian-speaking friends, I also really enjoyed the Fra Tenebra e Abisso series (although its current status is unknown).

But back to CoG-related things. I've read a lot, and I'd probably be faster telling you what I didn't like! As you may have figured out by now, I don't have any particular genre preferences as long as a story is well-written, though horror-thriller stories usually grab my attention more easily.

Important note: I've read a lot of stories and, with a few exceptions, I liked most of them. To avoid writing a too-long list, here are the published stories that really impressed me:

A Crown of Sorcery and Steel,

A Midsummer Night's Choice,

Blood for Poppies,

Blood Moon,

Broadway: 1849,

Choice of the Cat,

Choice of the Vampire,

Donor,

Doomsday on Demand (1 and 2),

Gilded Rails,

Golden Rose: Book One,

Jazz Age,

Lies Under Ice,

Life of a Mercenary,

Life of a Space Force Captain,

MetaHuman Inc.,

Noblesse Oblige,

Paradox Factor,

The Evertree Saga (all four books),

Rent-a-Vice,

Revolution Diabolique,

Siege of Treboulain,

Tally Ho,

The Daily Blackmail,

The Dragon and the Djinn,

The Fernweh Saga: Book One,

The Fog Knows Your Name,

The Gray Painter,

The Grim and I,

The Ghost and the Golem,

The Lost Heir,

The Midnight Saga: The Monster,

The Parenting Simulator,

The Play's the Thing,

The Soul Stone War (1 and 2),

The War for the West,

Tudor Intrigue,

Vampire Regent,

Vampire: The Masquerade (all of them),

Way Walkers: University (1 and 2),

Welcome to Moreytown,

Werewolves: Haven Raising,

Zombie Exodus,

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven.

And now, onto works in progress! There aren’t that many because I barely have time to follow my own (heh…), so here, in alphabetical order, are the ones I'm following with the most interest:

Adoriel's Tears (@adoriels-tears-if),

A Father's Love (@kal-down),

Crown of Ashes and Flames (@coeluvr),

Dawn Chorus (@dawnchorus-if)

Disenchanted (@disenchantedif),

Dragon's Edged (@dragonedged-if),

Elysium (@elysiumcircusif),

Fallen Lights (@fallenlightsif),

For King and Country (@forkingandcountry-if),

From The Ashes We Rise (@kal-down),

Hubris (@hubris-the-if-game),

Kingdoms and Empires (@kingdoms-and-empires),

Return to Misty Cove (@fluorescent-if),

The Abyssal Song (@ri-writes-if),

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - An affair of the heart (@doriana-gray-games),

The Lonely Shore (@thelonelyshore-if),

The King's Hound (@the-kingshound),

The Reaper Watches Me (@thereaperwatchesme),

The Bureau (@thebureau),

The Unseelie (@theunseelieif),

Van Helsing (@vanhelsing-if),

When Life Gives You Lemons (@when-life-gives-you-lemons-if).

Okay, that was… a lot. As for direct inspirations, I don't have any direct ones, but I can say I felt like writing a post-apocalyptic story after reading Doomsday on Demand! Other than that, I guess the collection of narrative, text adventures, and interactive fiction I've read have led me to where I am now.

Damn, it took me hours to write this answer. I hope it's satisfying at least! Thanks for asking ☺

[rise-my-angel]

Heart of the Great Wolf

60 - Glimpse into the Rains

Pairing: Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader, Robb Stark x F!Baratheon!Reader (Past)

Length: 16.4k

Warnings: angst/hurt comfort, references to trauma/traumatic childbirth, past character deaths, blood and violence, disturbing imagery, mild smut, illusions to abuse

Notes: Certain events specifically told in a non linear fashion. I apologize for no update last week! Previous Chapter Here, Series Masterlist Here

The rules were simple. A game of hunter and prey, Jon and Robb would hunt you and Theon through the wolfswood like you were the prey and they the predators. If you one or both of you could stay hidden until the moon rose to the middle of the night sky, then you win. But the two wolves knew this place like the back of their hand. It took a good few hours at the start in the afternoon. Yourself and Theon were fast runners, and were clever at tricking the two of them when you went in different directions. Sometime as evening begun, Jon and Robb had stood in a clearing to catch their breath as Jon begun to look up and around with a smirk. “What is it?”

Gesturing up to the trees, Jon mentioned your name. “She’s climbing the trees to escape. Leaving tracks one way, probably walking backwards in them until she reached a tree to climb.” Robb noting that they were thick enough you could go from one to another if need be.

Taking a large drink of water from his own skin, Robb handed to Jon. “I don’t think she’s ever given us this much of a chase before.” Jon only jested asking if he wasn’t up for it, and Robb looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re the one who needed to stop, Snow.”

It wasn’t much more then an hour later, did at the same time a loud ruckus come about in the woods, as both wolves found and tackled Theon into the ground. Recruiting him, Theon noted that he hadn’t seen you in a long time. That you went your own way and he lost track of you, but that it was hours ago. The two of them debating how far you would’ve gone, but Jon stayed silent as he looked around the woods. You didn’t go far at all, you were watching them right now. He was sure of it.

But as the rain begun, drop by drop before an outlandish pouring of water that drenched the three of them instantly, did Robb call it. “We should go back, before it gets too dark.” Theon asking what about you, and he and Robb tried calling out to you saying that the game was over. But you didn’t make a single sound. Jon’s eyes grew darker in the night rain as he looked over to one specific little cliffside that kept calling to his attention.

“She thinks it’s a trick. Taking it as a challenge not to come out.” Turning back to them, Jon later wondered if perhaps he knew what he was really doing when he said it. “You two go on, I’ll find her and drag her back.” Of course, Robb and Theon thought nothing of it, and jested to take it easy on you. Jon waited until he knew the two of them were long gone before he turned back to scour the trees.

Now, it was just him and you alone in the wolfswood and the pouring rain.

It was clever, what you were doing. Slowly moving from one dark backdrop to the other, only using the sound of the heavy rain to hide when you needed to be any stealthier. But Jon was stealthy as well, you knew how to climb, but Jon knew he was the one who taught you to be quiet and quick. He knew all your tricks.

Was he toying with you? Absolutely he was. Not making any move towards you, just watching. Your dress much more light then your usual ones. More of a leather like fabric in the skirt with cuts in the sides for you to run easily in, and your hair had fallen from the braid down loose around your shoulders. No doubt, you thought stopping to fix it would take too much time.

So Jon followed. Your eyes switching from confident to unsure to sporadically tracking back and forth in a fear attempting to figure out what was around you. He loved watching it. Seeing the cogs turn in your mind, knowing that it was Jon whom was stalking you and seeing what kind of reaction it was giving you.

The path you were making was clever. The lake you were trying to make it towards was closer to the castle, if you got there, you could make a run for it before Jon caught you. Back pressed against a tree, Jon slunk through the rain to come to the other side. The tree trunk thick enough that he could kneel slightly to brace himself. Jon felt just like a wolf.

Dark narrow eyes waiting to catch his prey when they were none the wiser. The very second you made a run for it, did Jon leap up and grab you. Arms winding around your front as he yanked you back into his chest. Your hands first attempted to pry off of him, but to no avail against his strength. “Alright, alright. You win, now let me go.”

But he didn’t. And as soon as you settled, Jon felt it.

Something was different. He had been this way with you more then once, but as he stood here now, something felt not the normal between you. His voice a deep rasp, almost as if something within him was trying to allure you like searching for a mate. Leaning down to speak it right into your ear, “I think you’re forgetting who the wolf is here.”

He knew it was different. The way you stiffened up, but too could he see that your breathing was getting heavier. Not catching any breath, but as if it were pure nerves running through your blood. Too did you no longer make any move to leave his touch, but your voice was high pitched, and pretending to be calm when Jon could feel how vastly unsure you were. “Stags are bigger then wolves, Snow.”

Jon either knew the truth, or he was losing his mind. You felt it. He wasn’t sure if you understood what it was you were feeling, but you felt it. The charged air between you that was almost addicting. Not parting from your back at all, but Jon let go of you only to rest his hands on your upper arms to pin them gently to your side. His rasp no longer something he put on, but the husk which came accompanied by such dark eyes looking down at you. “Stags are male. Besides, you’re too small to be one anyways. You’re more like a deer. You know what deer are to wolves, Baratheon?”

Just as he leaned over you shoulder to look at you better, did you turn your head slightly as if to catch a glimpse at him right back. The dark curls of his hair brushing against your cheek as you seemed too afraid to look up at his eyes, even though he could see yours were wide and uncertain. You had no breath to speak with, despite not at all out of air. The nerves in you were almost tingling the skin under his touch as you answered him with almost a whisper. “Prey?”

The chuckle was genuine. The answer from you so innocent and cute, but it made the part of Jons mind still in hunter mode growl deeply. He knew. You might not have the words to speak it, but Jon did. You felt whatever this was between you. There was no mistaking it, what Jon felt, he knew you felt for him. But alone with him in the woods and the dark in the rain, it was making you more nervous then you could handle to deal with it.

As if making a run for it, like the game still on you tried to leave his grasp. But he couldn’t let you go. If you made it to the castle, you’d both just go to your separate chambers and never speak of the electrifying sensation whirring between you. Jon had the courage, and if you ran from him now, he may never have it again. So he called your name, grabbed you by your arm and with a bit more force then he intended, moved you so your back was essentially tossed against a tree.

Coming up to your front, he called your name again but too words were caught in his throat. Looking down at you, your eyes in the rain so bright and green. Hair loose and beautiful down the sides of your head. Your chest heaved as you looked up at him. The rain had made your clothes cling to your body, showing off what you hid away everyday on purpose.

Jon’s eyes flickered down only enough for you not to notice, but he saw it. You had the body of a woman, soft curves, breasts that his hands itched to feel under his palms. But your eyes were so innocent. You looked up to him, confused not understanding what this was and wanting him to help you.

But words wouldn’t make it easy. It was a risk, and if he was wrong in anyway, you’d reject it and he’d have ruined everything. But Jon was sure you felt it too. So before even saying a word to you, Jon cupped both of your cheeks. Leaning down as he brought you up, and pressed his lips to yours.

Soft and perfect, your eyes closed as his did. Following his every movement. Jon had never kissed a girl before, but it was no great trick. He kissed you exactly as felt natural, and every movement you followed like you were an animal being leashed to your next destination. Just following Jons kiss, your arms without even realizing, had moved up. Wrapping around the back of his neck, your hands sunk into Jons curls for something to grasp onto.

One hand on your cheek, Jon let the other slide over to your hair, running his fingers through the soft strands as he tilted your head to an angle much better for him. Only as a sound like a high pitched whine came from you, did Jon finally pull back. Not letting go of you in the slightest, he looked down. Your eyes fluttered open slowly before looking up at his. Your hands grasped tighter into his curls, and you needed to only say one thing in a gentle, innocent voice for Jon to feel that need grow. “Jon..”

Pulling you back to his lips, Jon suddenly pressed you against the tree trunk behind you. His front tight against yours, your hands never leaving him as Jon let the hand at your cheek leave to smooth along your waist before wrapping around your back and pulling you close. Almost as if to give him leverage to kiss you even deeper when he stepped forward to crowd over you.

Breathless he made you, your lips so sweet tasting that it pulled a grunt up to his chest as he kissed you with a bit more roughness to savour that taste. His hand in your hair almost acting as a refusal to let you leave his kiss, his hand behind your back sliding to your hip more, fingertips toying just at the lowest point of them before his fingers could barley trace the top of your ass.

Once, twice he tried to pull back. Only to do so enough, that as his eyes opened and yours stayed closed, Jon gently nudged your nose with his. Prompting one more chaste and gentle kiss, pouring the remainder of feelings Jon didn’t know how to say he felt for you. Every feeling that walked him right up to the edge before just outright saying it was love.

Finally pulling back. Strands of saliva traced between you both. Snapping only as Jon muttered your name with a gentle rasp. “How are you feeling?” Such an innocent tone you gave with a jest that you were a little cold, both of you laughed into the others touch. Tilting your head to look up at him, and that uncertainty was still there, but it read something else.

He couldn’t be sure, but once more Jon let his nose run the length of yours before leaving one last, slow kiss to your lips as if he couldn’t help himself. “Let’s get you back to the castle.” Turning you in his arms, Jon never let you walk without feeling his touch on you somewhere.

The shiver on you likely both the cold and the nerves from what just happened. Lips tingling, Jon would glance over to yours. You gently biting down on them before stopping as if trying to recall what it felt like when Jon was kissing you. Not many were around so late, and none who cared to question why you both came back from the rain this way.

Jon had never done anything to give the reputation he would attempt a single thing out there with you. Walking you to your chambers first, Jon prompted you to open the door. Not yet stepping in, something much more uncertain came over your eyes. Hands grasping the edge of the door frame as you looked nervously at him. Voice but a whisper, “Jon, about what-”

Shaking his head, Jon cupped one of your cheeks, his rasp just as low only for you. “It’s late. Get warm, and get some sleep for me first. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Waiting for you to nod, Jon didn’t want to linger. He would bombard you with too much of his feelings if he stayed and he needed to be more easy on you. His heart carving a place just for you, as you muttered in such a sweet tone that he was certain no one but him ever heard, “Goodnight, Jon.”

Jon didn’t notice that you watched him walk the entire way of the hall until he could no longer be seen. That your hands and nails dug into the wood and you bit down on your tongue so hard it would hurt come morning. As Jon walked to his chambers with his head in a cloud, he had no idea that you were the opposite.

Shaking in hands and breath, you swiftly closed your door. Only to hide your mouth in your shaking palm as the tears finally fell free, and a single shaking breath wanting to turn to a sob, came with it. Unable to bring yourself to sleep yet, you quickly wiped away any tearss until you came to your window. Lighting a small candle before you sat down on your bed before it.

Your voice shaking and tears still falling, you prayed to The Maiden that night, a heart wrenching confession through fallen tears that you had just ruined everything with your best friend. That you had sinned, and tempted a man who was good and honourable into being physical with you. That you didn’t mean to do that to him, but tears saying you were sorry for it.

Your only ask that in the morning, the Maiden allow you to keep your friendship with Jon, as long as you would apologize to him for everything.

As Jons eyes opened, it was still the pitch black of night outside his window. Strange he had thought, that such a memory came to him then. Stranger even, that he had seen parts of you he hadn’t really known before. Of course, he knew later how you had not reacted to his kiss the way he thought, but still did he live through his own recollection of the night and yours. Sitting more up with his back against the headboard, Jon could only look down to you in wonder.

Still fast asleep, he wondered as he did many times. Did he dream it on his own? Or did he dream it because you were dreaming it? It had gotten stronger and happened more often since he took you far north. Walking your dreams as if they were his, and too often were they memories. But he would take that over his normal dreams anytime.

It was a rare night since returning home that Jon had dreamt of anything else. Normally his dreams the past few weeks were plagued with one memory turned nightmare to torment him. The shaking fear you couldn’t hide anymore, the screaming, the blood. Those few terrifying seconds where he himself had pulled his son into the world trying to prompt him to cry. Those seconds where he knew his son was too early, too small, and it would be so easy for him not to make it. He couldn’t even explain that fear, but he relived it every night.

He would relive that moment where his son finally made a sound like a cough before it turned to crying like any other newborn. Only for him to look up, his eyes trailing passed the blood only to not know for another few seconds if you were alive. But in Jons memory, they turned to the nightmare he had feared almost in tandem with the truth.

His little son would never cry, his eyes would tear up to you and find you truly gone, and by the time his eyes returned to his son, he was gone too and it was Jon and Ghost alone. In the echo of the cave he could hear your screams after you were gone, and the moment they became so loud they were painful in his ears would Jon startle awake.

Most of those nights, Jon would find himself repeating a process he did at the start. Tearing off the fur from you and his hand would hover over you. No blood or anything, and you were merely fast asleep. Then he was searching for the wounds that bled you out, but now he searched for blood in general. There never was, but now he couldn’t go back to sleep right away. Now Jon had another step as he slowly did so in the present.

Carefully climbing out of bed, a hand running over your hair before he pressed his lips to your forehead as if to calm yourself from waking up. Making his way to his sons cradle, he’d lean down. Rest a hand on his front, and feel his tiny little breaths as well. Sometimes little Eddard would shift to lean more to Jons touch, his thumb now running what he could of his sons cheek as something emotional choked within his throat.

Were anyone to ask, Jon would say in the just over a fortnight that passed since his birth, likely only three or four nights Jon had gone without having that nightmare. Without dreaming of that night in the horror it already existed within before it turned to what he then feared. It made his days more difficult after that. The more hours he would spend away from you and Eddard the more agitated and paranoid he got that something was wrong.

It never was, you both were always fine and almost always together. But it didn’t change the truth, that he wasn’t handling it well. Being home after having you to himself for months, being away from you and being away from the baby. The dream turned nightmare only adding to that pain, and making him frustrated that he couldn’t just keep his eyes on you both at all times.

Sighing deeply, his eyes closing for just as long as it took to do so, Jon let his muscles relax just the slightest. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to the top of his sons head before returning to you. Never having stirred awake even slightly, did Jon crawl back in beside you. But he knew the look on your face when he did so. If he shared your dream earlier, you were now having a nightmare of your own without him.

Pulling you close into his arms, Jon ran a hand soothingly down your hair as he could only hope his presence was enough to calm it away from you. As much as Jon never told you he was having nightmares, you never told him you were having them too. And that they had all gotten worse since that night in the cave.

It wasn’t a coincidence, you knew that much.

That the days Littlefinger spent skulking about the halls of Winterfell more, were the days things became more tense amongst the Starks. The more his weasely face made itself known, the more everyone felt on edge. You kept away from him the most, normally the baby with you and you wanted nothing more then to keep him from that man as far as possible. Everyone distrusted him, and something felt wrong about it.

The way he watched certain people more then others. You knew he watched you, and you knew partially why. But to be so hasty in acting on it was a mistake, and you and Jon both knew that. You knew he had something to do with many events which fell upon both you and the Starks but it felt as if there were pieces missing. Something to connect that you couldn’t put your finger on, something that it seemed no one else was picking up on.

But they picked up on enough. They picked up on the simple fact that he was still hovering around Winterfell for a reason, and that reason along with his hidden one, was a problem. But, the problems stemming from Littlefinger was one thing. Trying to pull Sansa back to the side of trusting her family more then him, was another.

That was not a task so easily done, and whatever lies and manipulations she had been taught and told by Littlefinger were only clashing more with the girl wanting to be with her family. He could not seem to find a way to drive a wedge between Sansa and yourself, so it seemed he was going into this very heavily and very manipulatively to drive a further wedge between Sansa and Jon.

As you were not sure you had ever seen their dynamic more broken then it had been lately.

It was as if from the very moment Sansa had joined early in the morning to eat, had she begun the determination to argue with Jon at nearly every interval. Not raising her voice, but a calm yet condescending tone attached to multiple disagreements no matter what the topic at hand would turn too. From morning to evening, if they were in the same room, she found a way to voice a frustrating disagreement towards him.

You weren’t even sure you had seen her and Arya get along that poorly. As if scraping away at Jons patience, but few felt the compulsion to chime in about it. It was no uncertainty that the biggest source of tension was between the two of them already, considering what Sansa had thought was to be here for her and what she found no longer with the rights too.

How on earth they had gotten onto the point of discussion regarding events neither were even there to witness, arguing to this degree you did not know. Right in the time which a meeting was to be held, did little Eddard make himself known as Jon had been the one holding him. Small arms worming their way out of the blanket keeping him warm to make a somewhat grabbing and waving motion towards you, a gentle smile shared between Jon and yourself knowing what such dedicated attempts to go to you meant.

Assuring Jon that should the baby finish feeding in time, you would join him but he had told you passingly not to worry if you couldn’t. Murmuring against your hair as he pressed his lips there, “Don’t worry about all that. You’re priority is him, I’ll handle the rest.”

What you had not been privy too, were the words shared as Jon arrived in the meeting hall without you. The main long table which sat a King and his council within the halls of Winterfell had shifted somewhat. Jons seat was that of his fathers, right in the middle. This time though, to his right did not sit different lords or whatnot. Instead there was a new structure to the order. Your seat next to him presently empty, followed by now Maege Mormont, then Howland Reed and with Maester Wolkan lastly.

Beside Jon for the previous while had been Arya, now though sat one seat down from him. Bran normally would’ve found home next to her, but found it far easier to sit at the end seat which he did not even need assistance with in shifting himself now from his new wheelchair to proper seat. At the edge of the closest table rather then by her father on the other side was Meera. She and Bran through everything they must have been through, thus far had not found it in them to at all part ways, and many including Jon had found himself enjoying her presence. She and Arya were alike in some ways, which had made it very easy to almost treat her like his own little sister something which seemed as new to her as likely comforting.

Sansa sat as the second eldest, at Jon’s other side. At first unsure about being up there but Jon had insisted that she was a Stark, of course she belonged up there. But that afternoon, something it seemed had struck her from within. When Jon arrived alone, she had asked rather stiffly where you were. Jon hadn’t thought much of his response in truth, and those who were not seeking things to poke holes into also had not thought much about it. “She’s with the baby.”

Jon found brief words with another about an entirely separate matter, but Sansa had stood there. Gripping the edge of her chair to the point she wondered if she should put on gloves to simply side the strain in her knuckles as she thought about it. Only as they all sat down did she more quietly follow her question up with one much more notably drenched in a tone. “Will she be joining?”

In his own mind, he knew how soon ago you would’ve been able to sit and start to feed the baby, and knowing how the little one liked to take his time, not to even mention how after, he’d almost always end up dropping his head down onto your shoulder with a snuggle to fall asleep. If you got lucky and he was quick about it, you would. But Jon simply knew his son and how unlikely it would be. “Probably not.”

Again, he said little but without malice. So why was it, as he sat, did he feel the eyes of Sansa from the side trying to glare into him. And he had thought, she would at least find it within reason to withhold whatever contempt she was feeling from out bursting here of all places.

None of any context though, was within your knowledge. Perhaps you would not get there in time for much, but you’d rather put your effort into making it for minutes rather then none at all. Slipping into the side doors with as much quiet as could be found, few even noticed your presence, nor as you slipped into your seat beside Jon, who was far more tense then when he had left you. That however did not seemed to be helped, by the one he was going back and forth with.

You hadn’t any idea the discussion before but Sansa had been the one you heard first with a stern and frustrated tone looking over to Jon beside her. “So there’s no punishment for treason and no reward for loyalty?”

The tension in the room was thick, and glancing sternly to his sister without any question, Jons voice projected through the hall without having to even attempt raising it in volume. “The punishment for treason is death. I executed Ramsay Bolton, the men who fought for him died on the field at battle.”

Sansa however, whatever this was, vocalized something which did not quite register to you once she had already said it. “They died fighting for Ramsay. The castle should be given to a family of men who died fighting for you.” Jon only looked at her for a short moment, lines in his head connecting in a way that only told him a clearer story about a man not within this hall.

Again, his voice was firm and without the same level of condescension and yet it rung with a narrowly conceived veil of anger few could detect which were not you. “Who is the youngest member of House Karstark?” No one answered as his eyes were towards Sansa from where he stood, and your brows only narrowed even further in a confusion. But when Sansa had not said anything, Jon turned swiftly to the men before him with the same question to one in particular. “Smalljon Umber, who is the youngest of the Karstarks as of today?”

“That would be the little Lady Alys, your Grace.”

Jon did not yet turn to Sansa, and continued to look more knowingly at Smalljon, his tone not yet changed from even and calm to all but your ears. “And could you tell my sister how old Alys Karstark is?” At the answer of fourteen, Jon nodded and the later sat down. Jon not turning back to his sister, but the crowd. If it would ever need addressing once, he disliked needing to do it again but did not hesitate this, just as he hadn’t the last which you struggled still, to remember. The only notion he was aware you had joined, as he had directed towards you saying your name and Robb’s as all paid close attention.

“Rickard Karstark was executed by my brothers own hand as punishment for his crimes. Harald Karstark was not punished too for his fathers crimes, nor Alys either. I will not punish a son for his fathers sins. If I were to strip Karhold from their name, where’s the justice in forcing a young girl from her home when she did not commit her father or brothers crimes. Where would any of us tell her to go if not the home which has belonged to her family for centuries?”

Nodding more to the crowd further, Jon elaborated. “When I led men to march against Ramsay, the only Northerners I had at my side were a few hundred between House Mormont and House Glover. I had only a few thousand free folk and a few hundred of my own people. My Lady,” turning to where Maege sat with a stern pride in her own eyes he asked, “Would you have me strip the men here all of their homes for not coming to our aide first?”

Firm as she was serious, a louder answer of “No I would not, your Grace.” Was enough for the room to be clear on what this was. His people had bled enough, Jon was finished with punishing them further for things which needed to by now, be forgotten amongst them all. None here seemed at first to know, why it was Sansa had dug up this issue now.

Jon of all people however, was curious as to why her plight of the Karstarks loyalty had matched so close to the argument put forth a year ago by Barbrey Dustin. “If we’re going to survive this winter together, we have to look past what led us here. Who did what before does not matter, all that matters is what we do going forward. The Boltons, Ramsay, all of that is behind us now, I won’t hear anymore of it. We all need one another, not to turn on each other for this reason or that. That isn’t the kind of kingdom my brother trusted in me to build after him, and I will not allow us to start now.”

You felt almost daft, not understanding in any way why it was her response in silence was a seething irritation, as she spoke no more of the meeting and allowed Jon to lead it unencumbered. She more then once you noticed, tried to seek your attention out but squarely you kept yours on Jon and whomever else it was which spoke. More and more you found yourself asking the same question again and again the closer the meeting drew to a close.

Not what it was Sansa truly wanted, but what was it which Littlefinger had convinced Sansa was what she was supposed to want? And why did such animosity for Jon become included in that?

The fallout was no prettier, as most had left from the meeting hall Jon firmly called Sansas name once she had made her way to stand and depart. Turning, there still was the same degree of a hardly concealed glare within her eyes, only for a moment did she scatter the to you and back and narrowed then further. Little had you thought merely continuing to sit as long as Jon still had reason to be in here would have been the reason her frustration grew.

His voice was low enough it became no ones business but the small bubble between the three of you yet did not at all lack the seriousness which demanded a listen to authority with respect. “You’re my sister, but I am King now.”

The judgment thick in her tone was almost petulant like a child. “So because you’re King I’m never allowed to question you on anything anymore?”

Tilting his head a little, Jon spoke the same without talking down to her as it was as if she attempted to do to him, your eyes unsure between the two of them what was ramping this up without any provocation between the previous days. “When you question my decisions in front of the other Lords and Ladies like that, you undermine me.”

Asking shortly when she would ask then, you had turned to look up at her, feeling almost on instinct the subtle shift of warmth as if Jon moved towards you the moment your voice finally rung in his ears. “There is a time and a place for disagreements, but in front of everyone in that manner is not it. You are family, Sansa. You discuss such issues in a more private setting, just as you are doing now. Arguing with your King in front of his men is the last place to voice such concerns.”

Were you invisible, you wondered? As she hardly looked at you before directing her still terse nature towards Jon, other eyes such of the Starks to the side trying not to look as if they were trying to hear things. Jon’s voice fell to a softer tone, dropping much of what remained in lecture from his voice and stance. “You’re still new to this, you can’t jump in assuming you’re the smartest person in the room only because you disagree with what’s being said.”

“Don’t treat me as if I’m a child.”

That got attention, loud enough any eyes remaining turned to look as Jon and Sansa stood as if in a competition of who would break first, but Jon you knew held his ground better then anyone else. Though, in your attempt to stand he had all but read your mind, knowing you only meant to stand between and deescalate the tension. Jons hand reaching out to cover yours as it braced by the top edge of your seat to stand, the slight squeeze was an ask to trust he handle this here and now.

Again, you did not notice Sansa’s eyes flickering to the movement. Jon did. Even if neither said a word regarding it. “I’m trying to help you-” Cutting him off she once more threw the idea in his face by rewording it in an ask if he really meant trying to coddle. Such wording implying in your mind as if he was treating her like someone weak in need of protection, when that was far from what any else was deriving from the tense moment. “That isn’t what I’m doing, but if you feel like I am, I’m sorry. I won’t coddle you, but you can’t undermine me. Understood?”

It took no skill or magic of mind reading to sense she did not like that, not the tone, nor the soft brotherly way it was said or the absoluteness of the way it was phrased. Something akin to a huff left her lips as she falsified a smile if you’d ever seen a fake one. “Would listening to me really be the worst thing?”

Jon though, was almost passing when he said it, not entertaining the steering of her back to an argument. “When you’re suggestion isn’t that I make an innocent girl without a home for crimes she didn’t commit, then maybe. That isn’t rewarding men for loyalty or punishing men who did wrong. That’s treating a child only a year younger then Bran with a cruelty she doesn’t deserve. That isn’t the way we do things, it never has been.”

Strangely enough, Sansa only glared between Jon and yourself before an unconvincing nod, just as mocking and non committing as her attempts to appear like she was not glaring openly between Jon and yourself, before leaving the hall without another word.

Though that did not stop the three watchful eyes, the first naturally coming from Arya. “What in seven hells was that all about?” Looking to Meera as she commented how disrespectful Sansa had been the entire meeting, with Bran adding he had seen Sansa in a mood or two as a girl but nothing ever quite that openly hostile.

Glancing down to the hand still against yours, Jon only squeezed it tighter, adjusting his grip as you too moved to try and hold it back best you could from such an angle. His brows furrowed and with a frustration returning to the weight of his shoulders, shaking his head with a dismissal gentle on his words. “Go easy on her, getting used to being here takes time. Especially with how different she left it.”

Meera and Arya spared a glance, the former nodding between the brother and sister she stood between. “They’ve gotten used to being back, I don’t understand why she would have such a harder time.” But you and Jon both knew the root of it was more simple then what was guessed aloud between the three teens. Grey eyes looked down to you, a lightness bright in his eyes almost begging to have time with alone alone so this weight attached to him would disappear, you knew the truth as well as he did.

It was not being home Sansa needed adjusting too, it was something, or someone, putting it within her head that she shouldn’t get adjusted to Jon. Not being around nor being King. And again you asked yourself, what did Littlefinger tell her, convince her what she wants and why did putting her at such odds with Jon play a role in that to this growing degree.

It had been later when strange events all occurred at once. The afternoon was one thing, but then evening came for the other, and the sun begun to drop down away from the skies of Winterfell. The castle normally teeming with life always begun to subdue in those sort of hours, and as wishful you felt walking the corridor of wanting to have quiet to simmer the whirling mass of thoughts within your head, two others had very different paths.

Sansa would return to her room after, pulling out the papers hidden away of her journal and scribbled down what to her, looked like even more evidence of what she was worried about. She had gone to find you, wanting to reach out to you, clear her head and shake off these distrusting thoughts that had her doing little more then spitting in anger everytime she spoke to Jon. But Jon had found you at the same time, but was the first and only to be noticed.

Having watched from a corner, she was too far to hear what either of you said to one another but she knew she did not like the rest of it. Thinking he had you all alone, it seemed you had tried to brush him off to go off to your own business as was your right, but Jon was not having that.

Grabbing your arm with a yank, he pulled you back to him and around before what looked to be a violent shove towards you against the wall and held you to it. Crowding you he spoke lowly and was too close for Sansa to even guess what your reaction was but she felt that shiver of uncomfortable the moment Jon had snapped and kissed you aggressively, grasping at your sides forcing you to not try and move away from him, and that was when she turned to leave.

Her father and mother were never that way with each other, she had never seen a man be so aggressive with a woman in a manner that way, and it looked nothing but wrong in her eyes. She had wanted to talk to you about these very thoughts, but only served to allow herself to watch a scene she did not understand and let it fester her down further into a poison she hardly could tell she was to drown in.

Turning the time back to the same instance, it was Jon which you saw a usual weight on his shoulders as at first it was as if he hadn’t even seen you. In a gentle teasing you spoke only enough to try and catch his attention without startle but the words were far more daring then you intended. “A young, pretty maiden his Grace is off to sneak around with tonight?”

Jon had turned just in time to catch your teasing tilt of head with a mock knowing glance as if in on a ludicrously false secret. Mumbling your name, you could hear the attempt to hide a smirk begging to be painted across his handsome features, but you merely turned your head enough with a lightness decorating your tone as if sad and defeated.

“Perhaps I will have to find some other mans company to serve myself it seems.”

A large hand wrapped around your upper arm, almost gracefully spinning you around as it to fall into his arms as he with more of a gruff teasing in his tone as he did so. “Oh no, you’re not getting away with that one.” The moment your world ceased its sudden spin, it moved fast as Jon grabbed at both of your hands and yanked them up in the same motion which he pressed you harshly against the wall.

Hands tightening as best you could to interlock, his hair still pulled back from the day meaning not a thing was to hide the dark gaze in his eyes. Sudden his hips were pressed close as it to tease you that should you entice his cock enough, you wouldn’t yet even feel him this far apart, despite his hot breath dancing across your face. A gentle whisper innocent against the way his smirk slowly fell out of favour the more large and black his eyes became. “Was it something I said, my King?”

Exhaling roughly, you felt every bit of its warmth seep into your skin and shiver down your spine, but then the slight scent found it’s way to your senses as a much more amused but gentle smile came about instead. “Have you been drinking?”

Nudging your nose with his, running along almost as a nuzzle you felt his hands against yours lighten to something as they shifted. Attempting to interlock his fingers much more sweetly then before. “Not much. You try saying no to any man of House Wull when he’s trying to offer you your body weight in wine.” Your smile remained against your lips a light amusement now dancing in your heart at the sight in your mind.

Your reluctant King giving in with a sigh and grumble to the pressure, other rowdy Northerners ready to mock him for how little it was when he stopped. “Should I be worried that encouraging this behaviour right now is taking advantage of you?” If by the narrowing in his brows and dark painting across his eyes completely said anything, you knew you had teased more wolf then man.

Letting go of your hands, Jon grabbed at your hips with a possessive, tight hold you could feel bruising as you continued to stand there, your hands reaching up right away to press gently against his chest and by his shoulders. The rasp shivering down your spine further as he muttered, “Would you even know what to do with me on your own?”

Oh your lack of response only fuelled that animal within more you were too aware. Looking down what he could see of your form from here, his eyes had found themselves trapped looking to your chest, knowing how easily he could undo the precarious wrappings of your dress to his want. Nudging your nose again, leaning down enough to meet your eyes, Jons tone dropped as if his voice could vibrate deep into your person. “I hold any alcohol far better then you do, darling.” Waiting not even three seconds passed, his voice softened to something far more comforting and genuine. “I didn’t have have enough to feel anything.”

Your palms smoothing up and down the leather of the tunic across his chest your inhale was deep, brows furrowing before peeking back up to meet his eyes. “I didn’t mean you shouldn’t drink the amount you wanted, I only wanted to be sure that I wasn’t crossing any boundaries by-”

The smile on him was wide, a bright look with always struck deep in your heart as it was a beautiful smile attached to such an unfairly handsome man. “I said I’m alright, you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t worry so much.” Cutting off the moment you spoke it into the world, Jon’s tone dropped lower again. “Stop being sorry. Just let me enjoy you.”

Leaning up to try and meet his lips, from the very second your eyes fluttered closed did Jon take over for you. Pressing his lips to yours as his body fully pushed you into the wall. Rough at first and yet as he guided your lips, you felt that softness melt into your body, no matter how harsh Jon could treat you, there was nothing quite like the way he kissed you. Refusing to part no matter what, small kisses turned to longer more passionate ones as he held your hips rather tightly, almost more tightly then when he was speaking low and dark with scouring eyes.

Your palms sliding up to the soft skin of his neck and wrapping around to the back of it, sighing into his kiss as Jon wrapped his own arm more behind your back to pull you right up close into his front. Other hand reaching to your jaw, tilting you up at such an angle there was no escaping his lips, even though he kissed you slowly, gently, yet deeply and a need which bordered on a greed should you allow it.

Once, twice, Jon tried to pull back. A furrow in his brows despite none asking him to pull away bit himself, only to deepen the kiss by pulling your jaw up closer to him. Your lips tingling from the rough pressure and insistence he keep you to him, so did your lungs burn. Pressing your front more against him with a blatant need, it was a tell he was quite literally making you lightheaded. A sign for him to not yet pull away, not until you would whine in his kiss.

A strain in your chest at his ability to keep your lips so perfectly pressed to his, but Jon had lungs much better then yours. A need for him fighting with the lightheadedness he could gift you with both came to the same conclusion as your arms wrapped tighter around him. Only with a small nibble to your bottom lip did Jon slowly pull away. More then three times returning for a gentle kiss, always longer then a peck yet not quite deep and passionate to be chaste, almost as if he simply was as not ready as you to leave the feeling together.

Nudging your nose again, Jon reached up to grab the hands from behind his neck, sneaking another kiss in as he turned your palms up. Pulling up to press a gentle kiss to each, his thumbs smoothed over the soft skin only to find, they weren’t that. There was that jaggedness which he knew too well came from a carving of blades.

Pulling back, Jon held your hands between you both to look over. His face dropping to a worried yet stern looking concern, “What happened?” Your words caught in your throat, which had his eyes dashing up to meet your own ones full of a guilt. Tilting his head he murmured your name, “Tell me what happened.”

Biting your lip ever so slightly, your shoulders deflated. Head dropping to gaze the peak of Longclaw’s pommel rather then his actual eyes. “Not here.” Jon dropped one to tilt your chin back up to look his way, the sternness melting only to a tender concern mixed with the bleeding of grey eyes so suddenly urgent looking you over. That same hand sliding to run along the side of your head with a caress to your hair.

He pulled you forward only to press a kiss to your forehead, turning you gentle and into his side. Rasping with such a confusing mix of warmth yet darkening need in his tone, your own blood rushed as if not understanding the feeling either. “I wanted you to myself this evening, anyways.” His loving touch was rushed into your heart, and much more shamefully the rasp in his voice hot across your ear had your blood burn down to heat between your legs as if it was all you were for him.

Not that the most utterly depraved parts Jon pulled out into the open, would have a problem with submitting to him without any more question or care. A dangerous mix it was, his darkness fuelling your innocent but genuine want to give yourself to him and your innocence and raw want to be with him in such heavy trust made that dark, addicted, obsessed animal within grow even more lustful.

Yet came the switch, the changing from teasing to soft the moment you entered his chambers alone finally. Informing him that little Eddard was spending some time with your mother until he should need you, Jon nodded silently. Waiting for you to walk a step or two more into the room before wrapping both arms around your front. Pressing his chest into your back, one stayed wrapped across your stomach, the other shifting to hold much more gently at your hip.

His face soft but serious as it dropped over your shoulder to nudge the side of his head into yours as if a wolf in gentle need of affection. Your hands grasped his forearm, pushing the material of his sleeves up to run across and hold gently, the feeling as if he somehow pulled you tighter back into him. “When you tell me what happened, you need to be honest with me. I need the truth. All the truth.”

You nodded, but it was not enough. Turning back to meet his head more as if to press your forehead to his, your eyes closed despite his watching yours. Something akin to a childish worry found it’s way into the air. “I didn’t want to upset you, or make you mad.”

Reassuring as he rasped into your ear, you felt so warm surrounded by him no matter what cold existed where you two stood. “I know sometimes with me it’s hard, but I promise, I haven’t been angry with you since that night, and I never will again.” Neither of you needed the elaboration, the only night Jons ever yelled at you. It lived to haunt both of your memories as if the only stain on your love together, that horrible night. But Jon continued on, “I worry about you, but I’ll never be mad with you again. So stop worrying about that sort of thing.”

A kiss pressed to the side of your head, part of you wondered why that night even came across to his memory. You both had put it behind, despite the hurt haunting you both never in months had either of you spoken of it. The truth of its words were revisited, but not the anger which came from it. Odd as it was that night was at all on his mind, Jon turned you more into the room. Muttering in your hair to sit atop his desk so he could tend to your hands better. Only speaking again after you had said all of what happened.

“I never knew about this.”

Shaking your head, both your palms face up as one had just been finished. Jon thoroughly cleaning and wrapping it, having it rest carefully atop your thigh now using such gentle strength to clean the cuts in the other. Your murmur was as light as his touch it felt. “I’m the only one left who did. It happened so long ago and so much happened since then..I’m not sure why I saw this now.”

Nodding with a troubled look gracing his face, Jon had not yet looked up to your own eyes seeking his out for your own need of calm. Still low speaking he if not close would hardly be heard overtop the crackling of his fire burning on the other side of the room. “When you said this may get worse, I didn’t think it would start hurting you this way.” Your lack of response was taken up by a shrug which you suspected he barley saw from his focus. The frustration now dripping from his tongue, “Its starting to feel like our fault you have to deal with this.”

“Jon it isn’t your-”

Rising up with dark, sharp eyes silencing you without effort, Jon opened then closed his mouth before a deep sigh left his lips. Meeting your eyes softly before turning to grab at the wrappings to finally cover your other palm properly. “Bran seeing things like that, I could see you when we were apart and sharing dreams with you. You didn’t grow up this way. None of this happened to you until it happened to my family first. Whatever this all is, however it works, it feels like we gave it to you.” Arguing firmly he couldn’t possibly know that, Jon shook his head again no longer meeting your eyes. “I do know that. My family is different, and you know why, but yours isn’t.” Neither of you had addressed that yet, neither of you had any idea how to even comprehend it, and so Jon almost pushed right passed it back to the topic at hand. “Now two of us now have connections to these dreams and visions you’re having, and they’ve gotten worse since you’ve been around more of us. I don’t know what else could explain it. I barley understand any of this as it is.”

Tying the wrappings off, you spared no time in reaching up to again gently trace both hands around to the back of his neck. His hands happy to find your hips while your knees spread enough Jon could step closer between them. The soft fabric of your dress sliding up just enough Jon flickered his eyes down to the bunching material before focusing once more.

Opening your mouth to speak. Jons brows furrowed with a shake of his head. A quiet needed for whatever rattled in his mind while his hands slid from your hips down smoothing along your thighs, each rise up pulling more and more of the first of your dress with it. Occupying yourself, your fingertips reached up. Letting loose his curls, raking your nails through them to smooth them out as you scratched against his scalp.

Muttering your name, you hummed in answer but he still did not yet look to meet your eyes. Your own hands continued as if each run through the black locks both tensed his muscles and relaxed them within the same strand pulling. Yet the courage he found when he spoke was again, returning to the direction he had seemingly been considering out of nowhere. “Why have you never worried about being with me?”

Head jolting back a little, “What?”

One hand still flat against your thigh, the other hand trickling its way along the dress toying with the laces tied carefully to keep your front all wrapped together nicely, but not with a commitment to such a thing yet. His voice was low, the uncertainty on his face was somehow tenfold then before. “You’ve never cared that I’m a bastard. But I know you’re smart, you know what’s said about people like me. I know what people say and think about me.” Nodding slowly, he seemed to register it as if through his much more keen vision despite his gaze dropped so low on you. “You’ve never worried about any of it with me. Why?”

Slowly, your hands dropped from his hair back down along his shoulders, still somewhat dancing along his neck. You did not seek his gaze out, but spoke with eyes bright and soft towards him no matter what as if he could feel it. “I’ve never been given a reason to think such things are true, let alone about you.” Jaw clenching, and his hand on your thigh now forming more of a fist gathering the material of your dress much faster but not moving beyond. “You’ve always been a good man, Jon. You’re not lying, deceitful, you’ve never simply used me for your sake and tossed me aside, no matter how much I’ve told you to.” Almost a chuckle you got, your smile growing wider on your lips. “Coming back the way you did had made parts of you more intense, maybe even whatever this strange connection with dreams is, is because of that. But none of those things are your fault, you have no control over the broken ways we’ve come back.”

Not at all did you see coming the next thought which skipped around to prominence in Jons head. “No one ever had to be worried about you when it was Robb you were married to.” Finally a peek up the wide grey eyes meeting with your face twisting in something of a blend of incredulity and almost insult on his behalf. Asking with barley a breath what that meant, Jons hand toying with the laces of your dress managed to slightly pull one loose before skipping up to cup your cheek. Angling you to meet his gaze better only for those wide eyes to drag themselves back down and up your figure. As if he could not make up his mind of what he felt. “No one ever worried you weren’t safe with him, worried he was mistreating you, worried he was using you. No one ever looked at you both and thought he was only with you to get you pregnant, as if having a child was all you were good for.”

You hadn’t even thought about it by the time you said it, such a notion sounded that ridiculous to you. “Jon, no thinks that about us. No one. These men out there, your people, they adore you-”

Eyes trained back down to the now looser fabric around your breasts knowing if he just let go of where he held you he could tear it off in a moment. Interrupting though, he said yet another thing you didn’t see coming. “People used to say those same things about Rhaegar Targaryean once.”

Now that had your eyes blown wide open, almost placing you into a shock as you stammered silently to find any form of words. “Jon, I- where in seven hells is any of this coming from?”

The hand on your cheek though, slid back as he both held firmly a fist full of your hair as he did your dress but also balanced the act with holding the back of your neck to not let you move away from how he pressed his forehead against you. “My father wasn’t possessive of his wife. My brother wasn’t like this, certainly not with you and I’ve met more then enough bastards at the Wall to know the way I feel about you isn’t normal amongst people like me. I know the way I treat you isn’t normal.” Only a gentle murmur tinted in soothing as your hands returned to gently raking through his curls that there is nothing wrong with the way he treats you, but Jon cut in with an edge almost as soon as you finished speaking. “My sister thinks so.”

Almost you had forgotten that only an hour previous did this same man have you against a wall of his home playful and laughing as you simply enjoyed teasing one another with your words. Though, in a truth you had no idea what he meant by that. Sansa you knew had a difficult time accepting Jons circumstances here but that was not by any fault of Jons doing. Certainly he didn’t mean Arya, considering twice now in the week since your return has she stumbled upon Jon having you pressed against something wrapped up in kissing you and commenting almost in an amusement that the brothel was outside the castle walls if you two wanted to put on a show.

Jon had suddenly pulled form your kiss with an angry yell asking why she knew anything about brothels. Arya only answering back that she was fifteen, not seven which did not make Jon feel any better, but such interactions were never seen as negative to her. You didn’t even know what Sansa would’ve seen to think so negatively about him this way.

Which you attempted to explain as such. “Thing are tense with her right now, I know. But you have to see that she would never think that way about you. She’s known you since she was born, she doesn’t even know-”

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t still looking at me like I’m..” He struggled to use any form of word as abuse even in a hypothetical regard about you, and yet he continued along this treacherous path in his mind. “Everything we’ve ever done it’s been me pushing for it. I kissed you without asking, I convinced you to let me touch you for the first time. I’m the one who desperately wanted to fuck you that visit, and I did without even thinking about anything else the moment you were back with me. I was trying to put a child in you from the first moment I ever slid inside of you. Every step of the way I’m the one whose ruined something about you.”

You felt something almost offended at the word. “Ruined? Jon none of that ruined me, we love each other, we loved each other back then. I wanted to do all those things with you.” As if he was trying to talk you out of something that wasn’t even debatable he shortly asked if you really did want them or if he had convinced you that you wanted them only after he wanted it first.

Had something come and hit him in the head? Only days ago you both had discussed something just like this, and neither of you came anywhere near close to a conclusion in this manner. His hand fisting the skirt of your dress had moved. Now actively pushing the material up your legs as his warm but calloused hands were rough against your bare skin slowly exposing, his eyes once more tore down your body as his voice rasped out deep and as conflicted as it was wanting. “The entire time I’ve known you, I’ve obsessed about keeping you all to myself. And you don’t think that isn’t anything like what he did to my mother?”

Baffled, that was what you felt. Something had clicked within his mind and now the obsession was nothing more then a heartbreaking stream of self loathing to things not even his fault. Hands trying to caress the locks of his hair and nails against his scalp almost trying to distract him as much as your soft voice meant to calm him. “You and I love each other Jon, and we always have. There’s nothing even minimally comparable. You are not him. You never have been, and I don’t know whats given you the fear otherwise but I am telling you it is not true.”

Sliver of hope shined as a much more genuine honesty managed to peek through the darkness brewing before you. “I still worry about it. I’m terrified I’ll wake up one day and turn into him.” About to interject that you know that won’t happen it felt as if maybe he had come back around to his initial bothering issue. “Sansa already is looking at me as if I mistreat you and that’s only because she sees me as a bastard. If she knew the truth-” Attempting to talk him down saying that she doesn’t, Jon shook his head as much as he could pressed against you this way. “If she did, I know she’d be doing anything to keep me as far away from you as she could.”

You still didn’t understand where any of this had come from. It felt out of nowhere, but whatever he had been seeing as distrust in his sister about you, he had let it fester and spiral to an unstable degree over the past few days. So you did the only thing you could be as honest back to him as he was to you, but your softness contrasted the tight grip he had taken of your inner thigh.

As much as you could, running a hand through his hair while the other cupped his cheek, letting your thumb run back and forth. “Look at me.” Tied between his own want and need, you had only moments to decide which was stronger and it was still the brightness shining through the greys doing so. “You didn’t let me spiral, so I won’t allow you to. You’re with me, despite how difficult I make every step of your life.” The gentle way you said it finally peeked a huff of a smirk through on him. “And I’ll always be here, happy with you. No matter what that means.”

Both hands on you softened, Jon slipping his lower from your legs and finding your hip, while the other now raked much more gently through your hair, coming back to you as quick as flipping a coin. “Do you want the truth?” A nod of yes and his eyes shined brighter. “I’m struggling to get used to this again. Not having you to myself every hour of the day. I miss you, and it’s making me angry because I can’t do anything about it.”

You knew he was serious, and perhaps it was why you took the route you did. Leaning forward, you gently traced the length of his nose with yours until he nudged you back, returning the gesture over. “I’m yours, Jon. Your wife, your Queen and I trust you, with everything I trust you. You can have me, whenever you need me. In whatever way you want.”

Oh the growing grin on his face filled your heart far more to replace the sorrow. “I want you for more then just that, darling.”

Your grin matched, as he wrapped an arm around your back. “I know, I said whatever way you need me and I meant it. Just tell me before being apart too long starts to bother you to the point it leads to this.” Needing to gesture nowhere, both knowing the relaxing of his muscles had finally sunk in.

Only quiet sat between you for a while. Quite a while, only enjoying the others presence before he spoke up, life not tensity filling his rasp for the better. “I know you’ll have the with you baby by then, but I have a meeting later tonight, and I’m tired of going to so many without you.” An easy comment that you’d be honoured, and Jon grinned before leaning back in but to capture your lips.

His kiss was slow and gentle, deep but without urgency as you followed his lips until no more breath was found in your lungs, and still he kept you there for more.

Jon was so much more collected so much more often, that perhaps you knew you had faulted in being there for him. Forgetting that he had as much pain in his heart and soul as you did. Knowing you needed to do better, needed to be there for him when he doesn’t know how to say he needs you before it festers into whatever this was tonight. You hadn’t realized his thoughts had strayed into that much concern of themselves, but true or not that didn’t matter. Not to you.

It wasn’t until Jon implored you both to lay down for just a little while, just to keep you to himself a little more did either of you feel better. Both on your sides as his hand ran firmly along your hip, yours swapping between tracing his facial hair to toying with his curls. Did you and he broach the subject once more, but with far more clam.

Your voice came out just as soft yet more reassuring then his own much earlier. “You know more then anyone else, we cannot jump into handling this without everything right in front of us. All of us. Only having half of the story is whats led him each and every time to harm your family. And he so far had managed to talk Sansa out of putting the blame on him, but this time the only way to convince her otherwise is to lay out the full truth.” Asking if you were sure, considering she had found excuses for every other one. “I’m sure. I know Sansa, and somewhere she’s still in there. He’s never come close to admitting he’s tried to have me killed, because he knows not even he has her manipulated enough to forgive this. We show her the truth, and she’ll come around.”

Sighing deeply, Jon ran his hands up and down your hips refusing to allow the frustration return over his shoulders. “Is this how you felt living in Kings Landing? Having to spend every single day plotting around everyone you know all day long?” Your eyebrow raised in a knowing with a single nod, and with another much more exasperated sigh did Jon drop his head into your neck with a muffled rasp. “I knew I never liked you going back there.”

The tone was gentle, and the words attached were amused. “Why do you think I was always so excited to come back here?”

Raising his head you saw the hint of a smirk attempting to be covered up. Bracing yourself on the inside, knowing a numerous, nearly endless list of clever yet teasing words could come slipping from his mouth, and sure enough he did not disappoint. “Of course you were. Who else was willing to put up with you the way I do everyday.”

As if you had anywhere to escape his grasp, you playfully tried to pull away only for his stronger self to yank you back as a breathy laugh let loose, followed by a deep chuckle from Jon with bright eyes to watch as he looked at you, a hand slipping up to run through the strands of your hair loose in front of you. Only a murmur in response you had. “Truly though, I know this is complicated. It always has been with Littlefinger is involved and now that it’s right in front of us refusing to go away, we need to deal with this as soon and clean as possible. Whatever ire he’s held for your father and uncle half of his life, he isn’t hesitating this time to take it out on the rest of you in any way he can, including using me and Sansa to do so. And if we don’t deal with this now-”

Cutting you off with a seriousness, a darkening in his eye you knew Jon could sense where you were headed. “He’ll do more then hire men to try and have you killed for him thousands of miles away.”

“The closer Aegon gets to taking the Iron Throne, the more Littlefinger knows his influence there is dead. Lord Varys knowing the man he is and what he’s already done will never let him get anywhere near Aegon. His own grip on the Vale is tenuous the older Robin gets, soon all he’ll have left as a tool is to use Sansa against us. He knows now if he loses her he loses the North, and everything he’s spent decades lying and killing to get will disappear.” It was the only option which made any sense, he was losing his carefully crafted control and soon it will all be gone.

Jon was firm though. “So we find a way to stop him before he catches wind, and flees with my sister with him.”

Littlefinger had risked coming to the North, because he was getting desperate. If he could use the North through Sansa, he had a very large, very tough Kingdom in his pocket. Either you all dealt with this now, or you never would again. But it had to be careful, if he flees now he will take Sansa with him and the Starks had only just all come back together. Losing her now would likely to be losing her for good.

But Littlefinger wasn’t the only one who knew her, and how to appeal to certain sides of her. She was nearing a woman now, but when you had last seen her she was still only a girl, a girl whom you knew just how to reach out too. How much any of it was working you couldn’t tell, but you couldn’t stop trying now.

The first attempt had been all without words. Sansa had retired to her chambers on your second night back, and right away she had spotted it. Sat purposely on her bed a brown fabric wrapped at each end with strings keeping its insides a secret, and a small note sat atop it waiting. She hadn’t even recognized the writing at first. The note saying that whatever the bags contents was, was not the same one but as close as could be. Pulling one end then the other, the feeling was almost too much at first sight.

Inside lay a doll. A fine made doll, with skin drafted from a white porcelain. The hair long down the back of her head a yellowish gold colour, and her clothes a long dusty pink dress. A blue short sleeved overcoat atop it with a trim which closely matched her hair.

“Don’t you like it?”

She did. She did then and she had hated herself for not saying it when she had the chance. Slowly Sansa had picked the doll up, running along her hair at the back as something built up within her chest and choked at her throat. It had looked the same. Almost as identical as it could’ve possibly been. When Sansa had married Tyrion Lannister, some of her only things sat within a chest in his chambers not to disrupt where he already lived. The day Ser Dontos helped her run from the scene she had nothing on her but the clothes she wore. The doll had been left behind because she could not go back for it.

Sansa had long since imaged that doll, and the rest of her things had been destroyed, burned, whatever Cersei saw fit as appropriate in her anger. It was the only thing of her father she had besides the images in her head of his end, and she had to leave it behind. But here a new one sat, just like the one he tried reaching out to her with.

Right away there was no question who wrote the note. Only one other person then her and her father were there and it was you. Sansa had not said anything, but that night when she had left it on the table, her pretending to be asleep you had quietly snuck into her chambers and placed the doll on top of her cabinet. You knew what it looked like, and what to tell the doll maker here to do specifically.

The doll had once been all she had let of her father, and you went out of your way to have it made again for her and did not even rub in that you did it. You wanted her to have a reminder of who she really was. Unable to sleep, she had taken it with her. Walking the snowy courtyard of Winterfell when she had spotted you.

Exhausted and almost as if you looked upset did you make your way to the crypts in the dead of night. Not a clue what she was going to say, she moved almost on an instinct. Hiding away by the glass gardens to watch for when you returned. First noticing Theon seemed to have followed you, and finally when both of you emerged you stood alone for a moment in the cold air. And she called your name then.

Perhaps that was why that same evening in the present did she sit in her chambers, reading and rereading the notes she scribbled out. It still did not make sense. She knew you, and while not the same she too knew her brother. Why was she so convinced of this?

Why did she watch her brothers aggression with you, the way he was so forward with his lust thinking he had you alone. It was not a dynamic of man and woman she had seen before. Not even compared to the insufferable sounds of Petyr and her Aunt Lysa’s bedding together when they married. That was almost torture trying to sleep to the sound of, but never did she think of it in such ill light.

But again, it was too Petyr who had told her it over and over. Both when she had to masquerade as one, and now here too. Telling her not to trust Jon, that he was a bastard. That Petyr had taught Sansa all about what bastards were like and she should not be fooled into thinking her actual bastard brother would be any different, only he would be real where her image had been false.

You were confused when she tried to bring up your marriage, or asking if you love him, not grasping why she’d ask the questions she did. You never seemed unhappy at Jons side and his men all looked to you with the same respect he got. When she had told Petyr of the way her brother was with you physically, he had assured her she was on the right track. Using sex to lure you to him more and more. The more devoted his highborn Queen was to him, the more children he would give her, and the harder it would be to dismantle his claim against Sansa. Who was young, with no children and married to a Lannister no matter how distant they were in extremes.

Petyr had told her what she thought was the truth. Jon was using you to stay in power. The same way Renly Baratheon had married Margaery Tyrell, knowing putting a baby in her belly would be the fastest way to be unable to tear them apart. She had wanted to talk to you about her confusion.

Petyr always spoke to her as a lesson when she was confused, but you spoke to her like a sister. But she had spotted an encounter she was not used too, and should not have been watching in the first place and tricked herself into sending Jon further down the path in her head as manipulative. There was no one else she knew who to talk too. She knew little about mens physical relationships with women, and no one to talk to which would not see her confusion as trying to sway opinions against Jon.

Thats what she was supposed to be doing now, but everytime she would look to her desk again and see the doll you had remade for her, she’d feel that confusion and guilt. Sometimes she still did not know what girl came here.

Alyane Stone or Sansa Stark, she was not always sure who she was anymore.

The only other strange incident that day, had taken place many hours in the early afternoon light. It too, had happened without either of you realizing it was going to. Bran had been out in the godswood by the heart tree, your figure following not so long after as he sat in the calmness of the snow covered fauna around him in a quiet, but his eyes were trained up on the tree itself with unblinking eyes difficult to read. Though he needn’t not look to notice you had arrived, not even look at Summer’s watchful eyes to determine it either.

He jumped right into something neither of you had really tackled quite yet. “What was the first vision you had?” Head turning to look at your brows narrowing as you closed the gap, he elaborated with a more clear version of his words. “Not just strange dreams, or glimpses of something. The first serious one you had since coming back?”

You wished you could not recall it, you could still hear her screams fade into nothing and the black charred bones of which all that remained. Even worse, now you had a name to their faces. All of them, and speaking them outloud felt no amount of comforting. “I was in a field, somewhere across the Narrow Sea. A little girl, Hazzea...I watched as a black scaled dragon rose up from a cliff and scorched her so much her father only had her bones left.” You paused, but Bran did not change his expression almost as if waiting for an answer he already knew. Your head dropping it’s gaze down to a spot of nowhere in the snow as something troubled blocked the clarity in your throat. “Then it felt as if I was in the mind of her father. Presenting his daughters black bones to Daenerys Targaryean, as she told him he could bury her in the Temple of Graces and be given a vast payment...only if he kept secret it was her dragon which murdered his little girl.”

Still further Bran stayed in silence, now you know we was waiting for the end of a story he already knew. So you continued, keeping to the facts as if to push through the feeling coursing through your veins that you wished you could’ve killed the Targaryean Queen then and there for what she allowed her dragons to do. “The guards pulled him away, but..it felt as if part of me, not the father but me was screaming at her..and almost like the guards pulled the father but someone was in the vision with me trying to pull me out. When I did, I was on the deck of the ship. I had no idea what had happened, like I forgot that was my actual reality and not wherever this was.”

Quick on the draw Bran asked but one question, “Do you remember who they were? The person trying to pull you out of the vision?”

First shaking your head, you came close further to sit on the stone next to where Bran was sat himself, eyes still not quite looking at anything but your face a clear indication that you did not quite follow his path yet. “No. I saw them more then once, but it was as if I knew who they were then but the moment I came to the real world, I couldn’t envision them or hear their voice anymore. The words were there but not whom spoke them. Then they stopped showing up all together.” Asking when, you hesitated. You’d have to say his name, but there was not a shred of ability to hide from it anymore. “I don’t remember exactly the last, but the first dream I ever saw Euron Greyjoy, that’s when that person disappeared. And the crow and the raven showed up.”

You were vauge, not knowing what you should or even could possibly explain. As Bran too sat in thought with the same dilemma. Quiet for a moment when he finally came to a conclusion. “It started after I woke up from my fall. The dreams, the warging, the three eyed crow..I didn’t understand what any of it meant. I’m not even sure I do now.”

Your voice was thin, held back to a degree you both could pick up on. “In these dreams, did you ever see a raven with red feathers?”

The no was quick, but what as not quick, was the understanding to come to with how Bran said it next. “I never saw him then, because he was still the three eyed crow when I first saw him in my dreams. I didn’t even know he was human until I got there. To the-”

“The great Weirwood far beyond the Wall.” Both knew you had never been there, but you had been forced there in these visions. All concepts far beyond your understanding. Though you were not yet sure what relevance it would play revealing you knew exactly who he was yet. What that meant to Bran or you. “Is that why you went out there? To find him?” Nodding, you could feel the weight of loss which came with such a journey, one you knew was not known how to be discussed let alone when pressed on it. So you let it sit in the air for now. “What did he want with you?”

Bran spoke with a distant lowness, far away as he looked to you and away as if unable to choose one focus beyond his memory. “He told me, he was going to give back what was taken from me. That he was going to teach me how to fly.” Your brows narrowed in a question, but nevertheless stayed quiet. “Taught me, or was trying to teach me how to be him. That I had to learn to do as he did, to be the three eyed crow.”

Eyes drifting to somewhat meet his to your side, words chosen with careful consideration. “You were the boy, and you were the crow.” Bran nodded yes to both, holding back a lot of what looked like guilt. “He trained you to become him, which is why he would appear like a raven, because the crow would be you.”

To tell yourself any of this from six or seven years ago, and you would think your future self had simply gone utterly mad. Beyond what this already had you feeling.

“So how exactly do I come into any of this?”

That had an answer Bran gave immediately, but only made you feel once more as if a headache was to begin hammering away in your mind. “It was an accident. I was..I wanted to know what I could do. So I kept trying things he never taught me, things he warned against. But I just wanted to know. Somehow I can connect to people’s minds, see their memories or dreams. Jon was the only one who I knew was alive out there, so I tried to reach out to him. But when I tried to do that, I would always end up at you. Like any way I tried to see Jon, I’d see both of you and then eventually I only kept seeing you. I didn’t know what I had done until..a lot later. That I had-”

The way Howland Reed had spoken to what his son endured, you could put the connections together with a relative ease at this point. “The three eyed crow gifts people the sight, and you gave it to me.” Bran nodded again, while it was an answer, was it really? Did you grasp any of this? You felt as if you didn’t, but you also held much in your mind that neither you nor Jon yet spoke to a soul. Bran was not alone in withholding incomprehensibly complex information of powers beyond believing.

Slow your voice piped up, attempting to bridge more questions with answers but not wishing to give the impression the blame was his. “When this first started, I used to see through others eyes. Forget myself and who I was, and live their lives out without knowing. Is that normal?” A short and quiet no, you knew the guild had already seeped into the boy. “You did that?”

Bran made no attempt to look you in the eye. “I didn’t know- he never said I could do that..he never mentioned anything like that at all until I started doing it with you. I would see something, some memory and I think I accidentally would force you with me. Put you into someones eyes without realizing what that meant for you.” Asking how did he stop it, Bran almost looked a hint of amused in his eyes looking back up to the snow around you both. “I didn’t.”

Your head tilted at him, looking with a flat expression needing him to elaborate seriously, and only then did the small laugh of the boy Bran still was peek through.

“I swear on all the gods, I didn’t. You did that yourself.” Arguing you didn’t know anything about controlling that, Bran shrugged a shoulder. “Sometimes we learn to do things we don’t mean to, or without realizing.”

Silent for a moment, you broached the topic that needed addressing. “What happened today, that was you. Trying to see if you could still do it, put me in a memory.”

“Sometimes seeing something in there is easier when I do it through someone else. Like I don’t know how to do it all on my own, but I can if I’m forcing someone else into a memory and watch that way. It’s difficult to explain..but I wanted to see if I could do it here. If the heart tree here was enough.”

Glancing down to your hands, slowly pulling them off in the cold you could only ask. “Lord Howland told me that this ability I have took a toll on his sons health. Everything I’ve seen or dreamt, I passed out once but nothing worse then that. Until this.”

Your hands not yet wrapped at that point hours earlier, but the remnants of blood still visible on your palms. “Maybe it’s different for everyone. Maybe for you, your reactions are physical instead of making you sick. I can’t always control what I’m seeing, so I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

Your head snapped back up to Bran from putting your gloves back on in the cold. “You didn’t mean to see that night?” Affirming he didn’t, you suddenly asked with much more insistence, “Why that memory then? Why would you see that if you didn’t choose too? We never even told you about that night, you wouldn’t have known it happened until today..”

Were Bran still the poor boy confused and not understanding of the events surrounding his family he may have been upset they never told him about that night, but now he did. Just not why the Sight deemed it important now of all times. Many conflicts were bombarding the Starks but that night nor the Lannisters were one of them.

Looking to the other, you and Bran both had the feeling that this power was not done. Reuniting Bran with his family, or his power to yours, that did not seem to be the final interference this power held over you two. As if there was one more missing piece of the puzzle which had not previously been laid at your feet since the harrowing months leading to Ned Stark’s murder.

Winter on one side and Littlefinger on the other, why was that night the thing the Sight demanded you both experience?

It was nothing if not a stoke of luck you had been alone when it happened looking back to it just an hour prior to meeting Bran in the godswood. At one point having just put the baby down to rest, the next you were not you. Nor were you in this room, nor even anywhere near the year present.

Catelyn Stark was sat at the bedside of her ten year old son, still unconscious from his fall and still she had hardly found it in herself to leave his side. Her husband and daughters nearly on the other side of the country after something like this and she found no resolve in her to handle it but put such focus into taking care of Bran. But that night it seemed she was not the only one considering the degree which she was not handling things right.

Interrupting a rather unproductive talk with Maester Luwin, Robb had moved to open the shutters to let the air in. The howling of wolves heard in the night air. Hand gripping the edge of one shutter, she could hear the tone held back in her son as he questioned her without even making eye contact. “When was the last time you left this room?”

Back and forth they argued about it. Robb imploring that Luwin had ensured Bran was not going to die, and Catelyn fighting back that they couldn’t be sure. “Bran needs me.”

Robb however, let that frustration and stress sit right in his tone as he became the one scolding his mother as if she now were the child, and she felt the guilt of his words sink into her heart right away. “Rickon needs you. He’s six. He doesn’t know what’s happening, he follows me around all day clutching my leg, crying.” Catelyn as if unable to let her guilt stop, she almost let it lash out at something that didn’t matter, telling him to close the window as the wolves howled louder and more insistent. Robbs next words however, snapped her from it. “Fire.”

The men down outside had begun ringing the bell as the sounds of fire crackled in the distance, Robb running from the room with an urgency. Standing up, Catelyn sat down her work making her way to the window. Indeed a fire had started by the library, but strange as it was that it was not natural. Not a place it could start by accident, but she could not comprehend why she’d think that.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Turning in an instant, Catelyn was startled into silence. A tall but lanky man dressed in drab black clothes and a hood stood before her with a very eeiry calm, a man she knew she did not know. “No one’s supposed to be here. It’s a mercy.” Looking towards Bran in his bed, did Catelyn realize what was about to happen. “He’s dead already.”

Pulling a blade out from his side, Catelyn shouted “No-” Without a hesitation to go right for him.

The man was much stronger then he looked, slapping her roughly across the face before she felt that feeling in her veins. A strong overpowering feeling of anger and a protective desperation. Leaping back to stop him, she did not hesitate to do whatever she needed keeping this man from Bran. Trying to move her off of him, Catelyn ended up with her back against his front as she used the momentum to try and slam him into the wooden cabinet behind multiple times as he begun to bring the blade up up to her neck.

Each second she had held tightly to the blade, sharp and the sting and tearing at her palms already soaking her in her own blood but never once did she falter on her grip. The man was strong at his blade and she knew if it slit across her throat as it did her hands it was over for Bran. Instead taking him off guard she let her teeth sink deeply into his hand to the point of pain he begun to yell.

Twisting her off, he grabbed her and slammed her head roughly into the edge of a chest as the dizzy and disorienting feeling hazed her mind as she was now on the ground. Looking up to see him heaving to gather himself he turned right back to Bran. Only he got no further.

From beyond the room did Brans direwolf leap forward beside Catelyn and slamming the man into the ground. The yelling of pain erupted from him turning into a garbled mess as Summer incapacitated the man before using his sharp teeth to tear out his throat.

The man dead and bleeding on the floor of her sons room, Catelyn perched her elbows up on the chest as the sting in her bleeding palms begun to sink in. Summer jumped up onto the bed with Bran, checking himself that he was alright before settling onto the fur. Facing Catelyn and blood now staining both of them did the wolf give a small whine as they both looked at one another.

Little could Catelyn have known what that night would eventually lead her into, but as you were once more in Jons chambers, your position almost seemed to match where Catelyn had been. On the ground as if thrown there in a fight, and yet without having been in one truly, you looked with a shaking breath to your hands.

Just as Catelyns had been, slices were clear against your palms bleeding like you were the one gripping the dagger yourself.

[13rurururi]

Can I request head-cannons on how the Hantengu clones deal with their shared female crush and how they confess to her. Along with what it’s like to date them? :)

Russian Roulette: Hantengu Clones x Reader (SFW Headcanons & Imagines)

Pairing/s: Sekido x Reader, Aizetsu x Reader, Karaku x Reader, Urogi x Reader

Content: female reader, jealousy, the demons fighting over you, etc.

Synopsis: Despite their clashing personalities, the four clones of Hantengu always upheld their ultimate goal of serving the Demon King. Aside from their loyalty and shared blood, they never entertained the possibility of having anything else in common — that was until they met you, an ambitious demon slayer that they can't get off their minds. In other words, they have a crush on you, and you've never been so conflicted in your life.

Being a demon slayer involves plenty of sacrifices and hardships that warrant unshakeable mental strength. You've lived your life with the threat of death looming at the back of your head, yet you only continue to hone your sharpened sword with a mask of courage and certainty.

One day, you arrive at the well-hidden Swordsmith Village to have your chipped blade repaired; unfortunately, your supposedly peaceful time at the hot springs is interrupted by swarms of killer goldfishes and four — annoyingly attractive — clones of the weeping, whining demon.

You release a battle cry as you witness your comrades get swept away by a strong blast of wind unleashed by the demon equipped with a fan. At this point, you were alone, knuckles whitening due to the swift build-up of rage and anxiety pooling in your stomach.

You unsheathe your katana, adapting a steady stance amidst the four demons who peered at you with their piercing, colored eyes.

However, you notice something quite odd hidden behind their peculiar gazes. Behind the kanji of "Upper Moon" and "Four," you curiously note a humane emotion that is rarely attributed to demons. Your instincts turn cogs in your head, and you arrive at a bewildering thought that sent a shiver through your body:

The four demons you are tasked to kill seem to be enamored with you.

SEKIDO

Something other than infuriation is stuck in his throat.

He will be in great denial when it comes to his infatuation for you.

He's a demon that is so straight-laced and strict; he never entertained the possibility of a developing a crush.

He'll be blushing a hue that could match the tint of his eyes — fiery red. He'll feverishly deny it, though.

If he is close to you in proximity, he'll turn so stiff and rigidly cling onto his staff, not uttering a word. This makes you think he dislikes you, but he's so enamored with you that he's actually rendered speechless.

If he manages to get over his raging anxiety when it comes to talking to you, he'll confess to you, very ambiguously.

You'll be confused if it was a declaration of love or war — his flustered expression and clamoring hands betray him, though, and you'll gently take his hand in yours, understanding settling in your chest.

It takes a while for him to truly shed off his stiffness and awkwardness; in time, he is quite the clingy lover. He ensures to always be by your side as you go sightseeing or stroll under the bright moonlight.

He enjoys quality time with you, after all.

Your first kiss is messy, a little awkward yet full of genuinely potent feelings. He smiles as his lips are pressed onto yours, grateful to be the man that will protect you for the rest of your mortal life.

The rage sitting on his tongue tasted different the moment he laid his eyes on you. He is a demon that gawks out consistent, clear orders to his fellow clones (who he considers as absolute buffoons that don't take their duties seriously).

However, he uncharacteristically wavers when he sees your subtly shivering form in front of him. He gulps and muffles a conflicted growl under his breath, stealing a glance at the other three, who seem to be as intrigued as he is.

What are you? His erratic mind considers the possibility of you being a Marechi, but he quickly dismisses that thought when he realizes that you are not wounded or bleeding in any way.

That's good —

Wait. Did he really feel relief when he confirmed your safety? He is a demon, for crying out loud!

His head spun with a mixture of confusion and rage towards the uncomfortable thump in his chest. What makes you so different, and why do you engulf his thoughts and bloodstream as if you were in control of him?

Whatever such an unfamiliar feeling may be, it should not deter him from accomplishing his duties under Muzan's orders; however, he couldn't bring himself to electrocute you.

Damn it. He harshly grits his teeth in realization: he wants to keep you alive and safe — you're too damn interesting to kill off. Sekido is undoubtedly in denial of his developing infatuation for you.

Unfortunately, his stubbornness prevents him from even approaching your glowering, quaking figure. He remains rooted on the same spot, opting to simply intensely gaze at you from afar.

KARAKU

His whole body tingles with excitement at your mere presence — you're so pleasing to look at.

He is an expressive suitor, and he spoils you with gifts and trinkets that remind him of you. Yes, his love language is gift giving.

Even if you appear closed-off, he will remain persistent yet patient. You wake up to various snacks, jewelry, and love letters scattered across your room.

You initially think that his feelings for you are superficial, but little did you know, no one has ever made Karaku's heart pump as loudly and powerfully as you.

You are already aware of his infatuation for you, but he still opts to declare his desire to be in a relationship with you through an immensely romantic gesture: rose petals scattered around a garden, lanterns sparkling brightly amidst the dark night, and an entrée of your favorite meals stacked on a tree stump.

He hates human food, as do any other demon, but he still makes an effort to ensure your happiness and satisfaction.

You may think his efforts diminish once you accept his proposal, yet it only heightens and strengthens.

You realize he truly loves you when he showcases how consistent, attentive, and patient he is. Even if you aren't always partaking in fun, exciting, and heart-pumping activities, Karaku is more than happy to be by your side.

You are his greatest pleasure, after all.

Cute, cute, cute! You are the cutest, prettiest little thing he has ever seen.

To him, you appear as a shiny, new plaything that could relieve him of his boredom. The night is still young, and he would love to spend it with you.

He remembers the hot springs by the slope of the mountains. His green-tinted eyes shine in excitement. If he invites you, would you come? He'll spare your life in exchange for a date!

He's much more straightforward and accepting of his feelings due to his insatiable nature that seeks novel and exciting experiences. He believes you could be the next best thing to happen to him after hundreds of years. Be a dear and accept his proposal, would you?

He approaches you cheerily, putting away his fan-like weapons. You step away and remain guarded, which only makes Karaku pout at you flippantly.

"Aww, don't be shy now. I won't hurt you if you agree to soak with me in the hot springs. How about that, pretty?"

He ignores the heated gazes aimed at his head by the other three behind him, well-aware that all of them feel a shared, unexplainable attraction to you.

The smirk on Karaku's face doesn't waver as he steps closer once more, and to his delight, you don't widen the distance between you and his tall, muscular figure.

Standing mere inches away from you, Karaku observes you with curious eyes — you're so cute with your quivering lips, dilated pupils, and glaring expression. You are unable to repress the shiver that runs through your veins when he licks his lips as he stares at yours.

Karaku is quite expressive with his evident infatuation for you, and he shortly sighs at the imagery of you and him entangled in one another in the hot springs. It's an unfamiliar feeling, but he is accepting of everything new and exciting. In this case, the new and exciting is none other than you.

Opting to close the inches of distance between you, he raises his free hand to caress your face; however, before he can make any contact with you, his movement is ceased with a firm grasp on his forearm—

Aizetsu?

AIZETSU

He wants to rid of all the sadness in your soul.

He shows his affection towards you through attentive and caring actions.

He isn't verbally expressive, and he oftentimes averts his gaze away from you if you catch him staring.

With how reserved he appears (paired with the tiny frown that settles firmly on his mouth), you initially assumed that he is indifferent towards you.

However, his actions speak louder than words — whenever you strain yourself too much, he quietly offers to massage the tension away from your shoulders; when you have a subtle downcast expression behind your smiles, he instantly picks up on it and sits you down, gently intertwining his fingers in yours.

"You can talk to me; I'm here to listen."

He is an amazing listener, and he will never pressure you into accepting him as your lover.

In fact, you're the one who decides to propose to him, assuring him that you return his feelings in the same magnitude.

His lips would quiver, and his his eyes would widen in surprise for a fraction of a second. Then — to your immense shock — he smiles. His smile is gentle, soft, and warm — a testament to his affection for you.

Once you begin dating, the trust you have for each other only deepens, and many sweet secrets and burdensome tales are shared between you.

You've never felt so safe with someone before, and you're certain that he'll love you no matter the circumstance; you will never be a burden to him.

You are the sole warmth of his gloomy heart, after all.

The constant whir of depressive thoughts seem to halt for a brief moment. His downturned eyes and furrowed brows twitch in awe at the mere sight of you.

You are so magnetic.

He silently gapes at you from where he stood, realizing that you have entranced the others as much as you've enticed him. He catches Sekido swallow a flustered expression and Karaku approach you with overflowing excitement in his jovial movements.

Aizetsu remains in a trance of bewildering yet intriguing emotions; however, seeing Karaku raise his hand to grasp you makes him instinctively — in a nearly primal response — sprint towards you, ceasing Karaku's hand from even touching a hair on your body.

"What do you think you're doing?" Karaku's carefree expression melts away, now replaced with restrained annoyance that slips through his voice.

"A lady under stress cannot give you proper consent to touch her," Aizetsu calmly yet firmly declares, releasing his uncharacteristically tight grip on his fellow demon's forearm.

"Hah!? Who are you to say what's right or not — you're a damn demon, for crying out loud! You're always so boring as hell, Aizetsu!" With each sentence, Karaku's chipper voice grew into a deeper, rougher bark.

You notice him curl his fists into a ball, veins bulging out due to irrepressible pressure. Aizetsu faces him calmly, his ever-present frown deepening.

Are these demons — clones of the Upper Moon Four — about to fight each other over you?

As you stand there with a flabbergasted expression replacing your initial look of determination, Aizetsu cranes his neck to gaze at you; his gaze softens.

"I'm so sorry you have to witness this. It saddens me to see you in great distress."

Your mouth gapes at his polite and genuine tone. Before you could utter some sort of response, the demon adorned with massive wings interrupted the bubbling confrontation.

UROGI

He'd sacrifice his joy if it means you could live your life in eternal happiness.

His flippant personality turns down a notch once he realizes his attraction towards you.

He doesn't want you to think that he's pursuing you out of boredom.

However, he gets a little too overwhelmed with bursts of happiness circulating throughout his body when he's near you.

For the most part, you bear witness to him intently ogling at you with dilated pupils, wings fluttering in intermittent jitters.

He's like a puppy! Well, he has the literal anatomy of an eagle, yet you can't help but internally swoon at his dog-like mannerisms.

If you invite him to spend time with you under the stars, it's with utmost certainty that he agrees with unhidden glee.

He gets so wholesomely joyful when you reciprocate his display of affection.

He is quite the smooth-talker, tongue always prepared with a quip that makes you burst in wheezing laughter.

He's also well-equipped when it comes to comforting you with soothing affirmations of love and comfort. You can't help but fall into his strong embrace as he whispers promises of a better tomorrow.

When he engulfs you in a hug, his wings act as another layer of warmth and protection, making you melt deeper into his body as you sigh in contentment.

You establish a relationship without even needing a direct confession — which you initially found ironic, considering how his words and tender touches were the main driving force of your intimacy.

In the end, your presence fills him with indescribable happiness, and he would spend the rest of his life ensuring that you feel the same sensation of joy.

For the first time in his centuries as a demon, he feels the smile plastered on his face falter. Why, why, why — why are the other demons obviously enticed by your presence?

When you caught his gaze, he felt a cold shiver rush through the span of his body, up to the tips of his wings. It is terrifyingly unfamiliar, yet he wishes to feel more of the ecstasy your mere existence makes him feel.

He wants you all to himself — he wants to grasp you by your waist and fly you above the clouds. He wants to feel your warm palms pressed against his chest as he flies through gorgeous sceneries that he wishes to witness with you.

However, that's easier said than done.

Sekido — that annoying stick-in-the-mud — is quiet in deep contemplation for once in his life. Apart from that, you are currently in between a raging Karaku and an uncommonly unyielding Aizetsu.

Urogi feels his talons chip at the coarse dirt below him, and as if he cannot bear to see the shadow of fear in your eyes any longer, he slacks his jaw and screams.

His attack won't harm the demons around him; after all, they share the same cells, but it still effectively brings the attention to him and away from you. He wants to give you a moment to breathe, and you somehow deduce the intent of his gesture from the slight crinkle of his bright eyes.

Urogi's head-splitting screech results in all four demons glowering at one another. A realization settles in the air and a twinge of possessiveness and unbridled desire become potent.

No words are spoken, yet they all seem to finally comprehend the situation: they all want you, and you won't be shared. The cells in their bodies furiously screech in yearning for your touch, attention, and entirety. It was a terribly atypical feeling, but who are they to restrain themselves from attaining satiety? They're demons, after all, and they want you — even if it means fighting each other.

It felt like forever until all four pairs of eyes gazed at you once more. A painful rush of fear, confusion, and anticipation courses through your body. However, before you could regain a fighting stance, the one with the blood-red eyes spoke,

"Slayer, we have decided to settle our differences in private. Until then, know that we will be returning, and one of us will take you as our lover."

You simply leave your jaw hanging low, rendered speechless by the bewildering declaration. You hear the distant shouts of Tanjiro and your fellow slayers, and you turn your head towards the direction of their presence for a mere second, quickly gazing back at the demons —

They're gone.

The field is left empty and you are left baffled in a spiral of conflicting emotions. You feel your legs wobble, and you fall to your knees. Your heart hammers in your chest as you heave loudly at the demons' intentions:

They will be back, and one of them will take you — a human — as their bride.

A/N: I tested out a new format involving (hopefully) discernable switches from headcanons to imagines. The bulleted points are basically the clones daydreaming about dating you — they're simping, for real.

Anyway, I hope it's to your liking, Anon, even if I diverged a little from your request. I just wanted to see some internal conflict from the Hantengu clones, hehe. Maybe in another life — another post — they could be reincarnated into the modern era and actually spend time with you.

[lilspooky-doll]

True Happiness — pt. 1

pairing — Aegon II Targaryen x Handmaid! Reader

summary — All Prince Aegon wanted growing up with the parents he had was to experience true happiness; not happiness from drinking, not happiness from inflicting insults against others but real happiness you can only experience with someone you feel deeply for. Even at a very early age, he believed he was going to end up drunk and worse than his absentee father until she came along to clean up the pieces.

themes — fluff, aegon is a soft boi, language, blood descriptions, alicent using others to fix her problems, brat! aegon, au! aegon, au! house of the dragon, female! reader, clingy! aegon

author’s note — here’s part 1 of True Happiness. i had to split it into two separate parts. this part is more of the starts of their relationship and part two is more of the “adult” parts. there will probably be ‘themes’ / warnings the next part as well so please be on the lookout for those. please enjoy!

ñuha hūra - my moon

ñuha jorrāelagon - my love

part 2

Looking through the shine of a blazing sun, the Red Keep was a marvelous stronghold that housed Kings and Queens of old, experienced the biggest feasts throughout the Seven Kingdoms and protects the very rulers of said Kingdoms. From the outside looking in, it seemed to be a peaceful day with the usual commotion that the royals and the Council lived in. However, this day was anything but normal.

In the dead of the night previously, the great King Viserys had finally greeted the Stranger leaving only his dear second wife, Alicent Hightower, the witness to such a tragedy. With the King gone from this world, the plans set in place by the Hand and his daughter would get to see the light of day and be pursued wholeheartedly — the plan of usurping the eldest of Viserys’ children from her throne and fitting the eldest son to the Iron Throne. Now upon discovery, There’s only one fatal flaw in this plan. Aegon has seemed to have just vanished, almost as if he never even existed with those hallowed walls.

Searching high and low, through the streets of Kings Landing and even down in Flea Bottom, not a single living soul has seen the prince in almost two full sun rotations. His chambers were tidy but empty of a few worldly possessions and some very homely clothes he had requested be made months ago. This abrupt vanishing had caused the Hand to fervently badger his child for answers as if she would know where he went.

“Father, the Cargyll twins and Aemond have been searching for him since we first discovered his chambers empty of him in the early hours.” Alicent flinched as Otto violently twisted his body in the middle of pacing to make eye contact with her.

“If he is gone, all I have done will be for nothing! Do you understand that? Everything will fall and that whore of a Targaryen will be the queen of the Seven Kingdoms!” Otto screamed into the flush face of the now widow seemingly blaming her for the faults of her eldest.

Stepping back a tad bit, Alicent placed some space between them before trying to look back up at the anger beaming down at her. “Well… Why not fit Aemond for the crown? He’s much more adept and would be a much more reliable King than Aegon would.”

The mere suggestion of Aemond caused the cogs in the Hand’s mind to rapidly turn as he began to place the second son in the spots where Aegon originally fit into his scheme. Slowly, a devious smirk stretched the aging wrinkles on his face as it appeared the prince’s disappearance brought a blessing down from the Seven that albeit was going to be much more successful in Otto’s dark eyes.

“Have Aemond fetched and brought back. I believe we have a more perfect opportunity in seeing the second son be the King.”

━━━━━━━━━━━

Life at the moment seemed impossible to the Queen. While handling the Council with her father, the Hand of the King and her ailing husband, her eldest son has apparently made it his purpose to deal with his problems. At ten name days old, Aegon has been through at most three handmaiden— each leaving the staff of the Red Keep due to his… antics. Every woman has reported back to her stating that he was the most arrogant brat who had it out for anyone who wouldn’t bring his mother to him.

Granted, Alicent could be blamed for his behavior as she has actively avoided personally handling her son — only seeing him as the end of her friendship with Princess Rhaenyra and the end of her girlhood. On a deep down level, she resented Aegon for what he represented in her eyes since she was only just a pawn in her father’s sick, twisted game. But, she wasn’t the only one to be blamed for why he sought so much attention so often. Viserys had a hand in all of this being that after his second name day, he has refused to acknowledge her boy as the heir to the Iron Throne and has gone to even ignore all of his children outright.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, was all Alicent chanted in her head as she sat in her solar waiting for Ser Criston to arrive with what she deemed her last ditch effort. Picking at the skin around her nails, the waiting made her anxious. She felt guilty for what she was about to do but, she’s at her wits end with Aegon and she hoped that this person would save everyone’s sanity.

A knock disrupted Alicent’s incessant thoughts as she bolted her head to watch Ser Criston open the door and made room for her so-called ‘saving grace’ to walk through. A girl of about two and ten shuffled through between the guard and the door keeping her eyes down at her feet. Once the girl made her way through, she dipped into a curtsy and muttered out a quiet Your Majesty.

Brushing off the imaginary dust on her emerald green gown, the Queen stood up from her seat on her cushioned bench and gracefully walked to set herself in front of the girl. She examined the young child making note of her neat hair that was braided away from her face and the typical clothes that most of the maids wore in the keep: a plain brown dress covered by a sullied white apron.

“Some of the maids tell me that any coin that you have made is sent to your family. Is that correct in their assumptions?” Alicent questioned using her hand to gently guide the girl’s chin forcing her to make eye contact.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she whispered out hoping that was the answer the Hightower woman was looking for.

“Good. I will be upping the amount of coin you receive but, you will only receive the extra amount as long as you stay on as Prince Aegon’s personal handmaiden. If you leave your duties as such, the extra coin will be revoked. Am I understood?”

A sick feeling of satisfaction filled Alicent’s belly as the young girl nodded and whispered out her affirmation. With a pat on the head, Alicent signaled for Ser Criston to lead the girl to Aegon’s chambers hoping that this all works out in a positive way, not ending in another maid gone from the keep to be replaced.

━━━━

Pitying looks could be seen from every servant that passed by the guard and young maid duo as if they all knew what her fate was. They all made it seem like she was on her way to the executioner, not to the prince’s chambers. Even with all the looks, it didn’t settle the feeling in her chest, the closer that Ser Criston guided her through the hallways to his room.

She’s heard all of the rumors from the other women and girls she worked with. She heard that the prince played nasty pranks, spoke in vulgar ways to disturb the maid or just flat out made their job living Hells. It was suspected that he did all of this as a way for the maids to report what he’s done to his mother, the Queen in hopes she would personally come to see him. Behaving like that just to receive some sort of attention from a parent seemed like a very sad way to live and no matter what kind of wealth they had, feeling loved was better than any riches a person could have.

As they rounded the last corner before the hall that led to the eldest prince’s chambers, all that could be heard was the muffled yells of an enraged child accompanied by the splintering of wood against the stones. A shaky breath expelled from your lips in an attempt to calm her down. Even though this became a less than ideal position to have in the Red Keep, all she knew was that the extra coin you would receive would go a long way to help out her family. She’s doing this for them, to make sure they have everything they need even if this could all end badly.

Nearing closer and closer, the racket became more and more clear making her more and more nervous. Now was not the time to let emotions control her; time to regulate and wipe any traces of whatever it was she was feeling off of her face. Getting up close to the door, she began to realize that the behavior her young self was going to deal with was destructive.

Just as they reached the door, Ser Criston knocked on the chamber door breaking the noise into silence. After a moment had passed, the knight opened the way and revealed the scene to them. There he was — young Prince Aegon — arms frozen in mid air holding what looked like a splintered wooden chair leg and surrounding him were the remains of said chair, shattered by the stone that made up the structure of the room.

Shocked to be interrupted, Aegon quickly composed himself brushing his silvery blond hair away from his eyes before he decided to lay into his mother’s knight.

“Where is she? Is she coming to finally speak with me?” Aegon pressed Ser Criston, his voice slowly rising in octave and cracking with emotions. “Why is she refusing to see me? I JUST WANT MY MOTHER!”

These were the ramblings of a child desiring affection from someone— or rather someones —who could not spare them any care or love. It was very evident to every soul living within these walls that the King cared for no other child than his eldest, Princess Rhaenyra regardless of how he behaved during Aegon’s first years as only child to his mother. Moreso, it was very subtle but it was becoming more obvious as the prince grew older that the Queen preferred her other children to him.

Unperturbed by the outburst, Ser Criston cleared his throat before speaking, “Her Majesty has assigned a new handmaiden to you. She kindly requests for you to be more pleasant with this one.”

Red began to seep into the pores of his pale face at the knight’s declaration. How could his mother make such a demand through the guards when she so blatantly avoids seeing him at all costs. If she could just visit him on good terms once, Aegon would stop it all; the pranks, the vicious words, Hells even the drinking that he was beginning to indulge in more.

“I don’t care what my mother wishes for me to do. I do not need a handmaiden, let alone a new one to replace the others. I wish for my mother, the Queen. Why won’t she come to visit me?” argued the Prince hoping to receive some kind of message from his mother that meant she wanted to actually be around him for once.

Using his argument as the prompt to leave, Ser Criston turned around, patted the young maid’s head before dismissing himself from the chambers. An uncomfortable silence filled the air as the maid stood at the door with her eyeline directed towards the ground and the prince’s violet eyes stared her down. There was a burning sensation alight on her exposed neck like the prince’s glare was burning through her head and down her spine.

Knowing her place, she never looked up towards his face. She knew that making eye contact with a royal or anyone of status would incur their wrath and they would punish the worker how they see fit. That was something that she would never do unless she was ordered to do so. Just feeling the prince’s stare on her was enough to break down her composure but now was not a time to be afraid; she needed to be composed and do her job.

With a straightened posture and a deep breath, she began to move towards the mess as carefully as possible. Anyone looking in on the situation would think she was approaching a skittish animal not the eldest son to the King of the Seven Kingdoms. It was almost laughable being put into a situation like this and at the same time, it couldn’t have been more dire of a situation.

Slow in her approach, she brought herself to her knees and one by one, picked up the splinters of wood placing them within the linen of her apron. She was careful to make sure none of the wood sunk into the plush pads of her fingers and careful to not warrant any of Aegon’s wrath. Even with the tense situation, she remained as unbothered as she possibly could be and just did her duties as a personal handmaiden to the prince; keep his quarters tidy, keep his life simple and everything should go splendidly.

It was a little unsettling, watching the maid tidy up the mess piece by piece. Granted, it wasn’t abnormal for a maid to clean but it was when they provided an outright reaction to his behavior. Aegon has seen it all; the older ones would try to discipline him like he was the child and the younger ones had a habit of being too noisy. But, this one was the youngest one yet — well he could only assume — and she was not acting like how he expected she would. He was waiting for something— a snide remark, shifty eyes, twitchy fingers— just something that would allow him to scare her away like he did the rest.

Just watching her collecting the broken wood made something bubble in his belly. Aegon couldn’t place his finger on what that feeling was but, whatever it was, it was not a feeling he wanted to relish in. It was a change to the anger and deep sadness that he has been experiencing and he wanted to latch onto them, keeping them close to his chest. In his deep observation, the young royal began to backpedal away from the center of his room making his way towards his messy bed covered in his plush blankets and fluffy pillows.

Violet eyes stayed focused on the hunched figure in her dirty apron and plain maid’s dress. Each piece of splintered wood being collected was like a piece of his anger being neatly brought back to him in the form of something calmer. The process of focusing on her smooth hands working so carefully yet so diligently caused the boiling rage that exploded earlier to simmer down to an eerie calm; a calm that he feels that he only experiences when he’s blissfully asleep in his cozy bed.

The blazing sun of high noon reflected through the window onto the carpets of Aegon’s chambers decorating the floor in fractured iridescence. After being focused on her working form for so long, Aegon’s anger had calmed into a gentle stream of just peace. He doesn’t remember the last time where he hadn’t felt anger towards his treatment from his parents or sadness from only ever seeing his mother at supper time or even when she came to admonish him. It seemed like forever ago when his mother had begun to push him on maesters, the guards or Ser Criston Cole hoping for their teachings to rectify his bratty behavior.

“Your Grace, allow me to take a look at your hands,” a small voice broke Aegon’s deep seated concentration drawing his attention to her delicate face that was honed in on his clasped hands.

Without so much as a fight, the young boy dropped his hands into her outstretched ones. He could feel how soft they felt brushing over the lines and details of his; he wondered how they were so soft considering all the work he knows that the maids do in a day. Soft twists and turns with feather-light touches brushed against the contours searching for something that marred the skin of the royal.

“May I say something, Your Grace?” Yet another soft whisper answered by a noncommittal hmph before the young maid continued, “I hope I am not speaking out of turn but, whenever anger roams free, it could easily turn into wrath. Never allow your emotions to reach that point… Please try to find a way to redirect it by putting more focus into training. The Queen would be devastated if you allowed this anger to fester to the point where you harm yourself accidentally.”

With the end of her advice, she gently folded the prince’s hand back into his lap before she stood up resuming the position she had when she first came into the chambers. A curtsy to signify herself leaving, out she went with the broken pieces of Aegon’s anger and a scent of delicate flowers lingered in the air.

━━━━

Weeks have passed since the first encounter between the new handmaiden and the prince and Aegon has tried relentlessly to see if he could rattle her like he did the others. Every little prank, tantrum, cruel words and even the occasional childish attitude was being met with almost a deadpan expression and an unperturbed Your Grace before she would continue about her duties as his handmaiden.

Aegon’s breaking point came much sooner than he thought when she came to his chambers with his tray of food to break his fast in the ambience of the rising sun. As she filled his cup with fresh water, Aegon decided now was the time to see what her problem was; why she seemed so unaffected by his brutish ways when even some of the knights have cringed at his behavior.

“I have done every little thing that I possibly know to get some reaction out of you other than that dead look you seem to have on your face. Every other handmaid my mother has sent my way would’ve been gone by the second insult or the first prank I have played.” Aegon took a second to catch his breath in his ranting before he continued with, “Why are you still here?”

The trickle of water into the metal cup ceased as she placed the pitcher back onto the tray with the rest of the morning food. Taking a moment to collect herself before facing the prince, she breathed out a deep sigh at his words. Of course she should’ve been gone by now but, honestly, dealing with the foolish ways of the boy made her miss her brothers and the wild activities they would do. If anything, working with Aegon made her feel at home oddly enough. The money she was receiving from the Queen could definitely be a motivator for some people on holding their wits but, the handmaiden started to think that the money was starting to not be a main factor in her staying; she actually was beginning to enjoy the extent Prince Aegon would go to try to torment her.

“I’ll be honest with you, Your Grace. You remind me of home, of my brothers who would endlessly try to startle me or torment me in the ways you have. Yes, some of your words were hurtful but, I quite enjoy being your handmaiden. Dare I say, I am beginning to see you as a friend.” She stopped for a brief second looking up into the violet eyes trained on her. “In our short time together, I have come to believe that you are just a boy who is lonely, who longs for a companion that understands you. I wish I can be that for you, Your Grace.”

At her bold admission, Aegon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Someone wanted to be near him, to be a friend to him despite all of the awful things that he has done and said to his maid. His eyes began to blur the image of his… friend and waterfalls of tears streamed down his soft, pale cheeks. For once, someone willingly wanted to be close to him and it made the well of emotions in his body overflow. He was feeling too many emotions at once and it overwhelmed him a bit. Happiness at the admission of having someone on his side. Sadness at wondering why it took so long for anyone to see through the misery he often bestowed upon others. Angry that his mother’s plans for a maid almost as young as he is to fulfill any of his tasks had worked. The flooding of feeling had started to fill in the cracks of his broken self.

Without even a second thought, Aegon in his teary state threw his body at his handmaid’s form wrapping his arms around her torso and burying his streaked face into her shoulder. Startled by the physical contact the prince initiated, she was quick to wipe the look of shock from her face before replacing it with a gentle smile. Her woolen sleeve arms wrapped around the shaking form attached to hers pulling the broken prince tighter in their embrace. Soothing whispers were spoken into the silvery-blonde hair tickling her flush cheek. No response to her words needed to be spoken; Aegon’s reaction was proof enough that he appreciated his kind handmaiden.

━━━━

After that tear-filled day, it became common knowledge that between the two of them, they could depend on the other. His sweet handmaid began to switch out the ale and mead he was consuming increasingly throughout the days with water or flavorful teas that were much more beneficial to his health. Aegon was quick to pick up on the changes and was ever so grateful to have her at his side as a confidant and his closest – only – friend. He actively sought out to spend time with her in any way that he could whether it was having you mend torn clothes in the training yard when he was there or just peaceful strolls through the courtyard when he had time in his busy schedule.

In exchange, the Targaryen prince made sure she had plenty of newer clothes that fit her much more than the old maid dress she usually wore. If it was up to him, his maid would be wearing gowns as beautiful as his sister Helaena’s gowns but she stopped him before he could even give her one. On top of the new dresses and aprons, Aegon made sure that where she slept in the servant quarters was perfect and that there was nothing that could make her sick and unable to enjoy the fresh air with him. Sometimes, he would sneak extra coins into the letters she sent out making sure whoever received the letters would have all the extra money they needed. He even put aside a few gold dragons for her to spend on herself when needed.

It was obvious to the inhabitants of the Red Keep to the changes Viserys’ eldest son exuded. The change for the servants and the guards was a very welcomed one as they no longer had to hear the words the prince would hurtle at people and the pranks that brought misery to many unlucky participants. The council thought of the change as Prince Aegon had started to mature and was trying to prepare himself as heir to the Iron Throne. But, even though many thought of this change as a good thing brought upon them by the Seven, it was hard to ignore the rumors that were spreading.

Of course, many were witness to the first rumor: the prince was almost never seen without his dutiful handmaid walking beside him. Every person who had been witness to this sight could all testify to the fact that every time the prince and maid were caught together, the prince was animated in talking with her and the maid was listening to him with a soft smile etched into her face. Some people have rumored to see them holding hands during walks when the Keep was too busy to pay full attention to the boy of ten name days and the girl of two and ten.

Others whispered that there was something more nefarious going on between the maid and the prince but no one would lend their ear to hear such conspiratorial ramblings. Those odd few always sounded the same; the young girl is a witch and has come to steal away the Targaryen for whatever dark and evil deeds she needed. It was very strange for such a rumor to spread but in the end, it was gossip that kept the maids giggling and snickering every time she moved past them.

Although there were rumors that could damage their reputation, no one could deny how much happiness radiated off of the two of them.

━━━━━━━━━━━

For a two and ten name day celebration, it was tiny compared to his first two name day feasts but tiny meant that it would all be over fairly quickly without cutting into his evening schedule. Aegon was anxious to leave the hall and make his way to the Godswood where he knew that she would be waiting there for him.

The feast consisted of mainly his family, the council and any of their family that lived within the stone walls. It was very simple and that made Aegon happy; he didn’t need to have a giant name day feast like his half-sister Rhaenyra gets. Simple was enough for him now. No longer was he the young spoiled brat — even though he’s still very young. Now he’s changed for the better and he’s been enjoying the smaller things in life for the past two years.

After waiting for the perfect chance, his mother, Alicent, announces her leave from the feast giving Aegon the opening he needed to escape the hall. He wanted a few moments after she left the sight of everyone before he took his leave as well except he didn’t announce it like his mother — just a silent slip through the hall doors and out into the corridor. The large doors were shut without so much as a little click as it slid back into place. Once he was out of view of all the attendees, Aegon swiftly made his way through the corridors out into the breeze of the early evening air.

The cool breeze coming off of the sea made the rest of his walk more enjoyable as the prince continued on his way towards the Godswood. Leaves rustling in the gentle wind and light slaps of bird wings filled the air around the steps of Aegon’s boots against the soft natural ground. Soon came the sight he was so anxious to see. His lovely handmaid dressed in just a plain brown dress without her normal apron resting against the heart tree with a book in her lap. This was what made the boy most excited about today; spending time with her as she read aloud to them both and Aegon used the sturdier trees as practice dummies.

“I see that you have started without me, ñuha hūra,” Aegon’s words came out almost too cocky but she knew that he meant to be teasing in his statement. “What tales will we be learning tonight?”

A girlish chuckle left her lips at his responses. “They are not tales as they are more history. I thought it would be very fitting to learn about the first of your name, Aegon the Conqueror,” the girl of four and ten paused for a moment before she started back up again. “I’ve noticed that you have been calling me something other than my name. Will you ever tell me what it means?”

A sly smirk stretched itself across the planes of his pale face. “I don’t think I will. Guess you’ll just have to learn Valyrian to understand it.”

At his statement, the handmaid took his words as a challenge—determined to figure out what he has been calling her recently and to possibly be able to speak the royal language to surprise him. Shaking her head at his antics, she looked down at the book in her lap and pulled the cover off the pages to reveal the title page, The Life and Conquest of Aegon I Targaryen.

While his maid got herself ready to read aloud to the two of them, Aegon reached into the roots of the heart tree to pull out a wooden sword he had stolen from the training yard and positioned himself in front of a scrawny tree that was growing only a short distance away. He was far enough that if the sword or the tree splintered, the fragments wouldn’t be anywhere near her but he was close enough that he could clearly hear her angelic voice speak of bloody history.

Readying himself into the proper stance, Aegon began to slice away at the tree acting as if the tree was like one of the practice dummies used in the training yard, like the ones Ser Criston Cole is constantly making him and his brother work on for the hours they do training. Practicing twice a day like this was his way of getting better hoping one day he could surpass the skill of the kingsguard and of course, it was a bonus that during this time, it was uninterrupted moments of peacefulness with his maid — who he was beginning to think of as more than his closest friend.

With wacks and thuds, Aegon let the melodic sound of her voice and the repetition of the wood put his body into a trance. His mind drifted away to sweeter moments than this one where he would confess his feelings to his beautiful handmaid, where he could see a future outside of his royal duty, where he could be free from the scheming eye of his grandsire and live a life like the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. They were dreams that were so far out of reach, ones that would move further away just as he came close to reaching out to them but it never hurt to think of life being more fulfilling outside of the walls of the Red Keep.

From her distance, she had kept reading aloud the passages detailing the life of Aegon the Conqueror finding it all riveting and oh so captivating that Aegon’s form started to blur out of focus from the rim of her peripheral. She was fascinated and consumed that the present Aegon would have to live up to such high standards for his name. It caused a seed of worry to plant itself in her chest just thinking that Aegon had more on his platter purely because he was second of his name and the first was the one to unite the kingdoms. Being so enthralled with this piece of history and her worry, she failed to notice the difference in Aegon’s form; his eyes zoned out and his form was atrocious at best. It appeared that the both of them had the same dazed look in their eyes as their minds drifted away from this reality.

“Ah, fuck!!” A loud curse and the sounds of something shattering broke the dazed states of the young duo. Startled by the noises, she broke her attention from the aged pages and bolted up from her seat rushing over to the prince’s hunched form.

“My prince! What has happened?” she questioned rotating her body to be face to face with him. All she could see was the top of his silver head and his arms tucked into his body.

Looking around, her eyes laid upon the broken practice sword lifeless against the soft, grassy surface. Turning her attention back to Aegon, she gently pushed on his shoulder to reveal his face red with pain and his right hand protectively covered by his left keeping it close to his chest.

“Let me have a look, my prince,” she stated slightly tugging on his hands in hopes for him to reveal the problem.

He resisted shaking his head and clutching his hands tighter against himself. Gritting his teeth in pain and using his hair as a shield, he was hoping she would just leave him alone so he could recollect himself and make himself out to be a man in front of her. Gods forbid if she thought of him as anything other than a man — even though he was in the early stages of changing into one.

The pain was consistent in the deep scratch of his dominant hand after his sword — a pathetic excuse for one — had snapped under his sloppy tactics. So distracted in his painful misery, he couldn’t see that her delicate hands made their way towards his face cupping his flushed cheeks. With her hands lightly clasped around his face, she pulled his head up from his chest and forced him to meet her eye.

Violet eyes met the twinkling stars that appeared to be her eyes. They captivated him on a deeper level like watching the sky light up at night when the moon is hiding out of sight. It was a deeper bond forming between them, a bond that differed greatly to his bond to his golden dragon, Sunfyre. This very moment was working its way to be a pivotal event in their lives and Aegon was doing all he could to soak up her attention and the feel of her hands on his face.

She carefully removed her left hand from his face and used it to remove the protective hold he had over his injured right hand. Pulling apart his calloused fingers exposed a deep gash pooling dark crimson blood around the angry flesh that’s riddled with splinters. The crimson hid the kind of red one would only see when flesh was marred past its original state. Just on looks alone, the wound had to have been painful and she knew that Aegon was trying to be strong about it despite the tears.

Gently and softly, she maneuvered his shaking body towards her previous seat of the heart tree making sure he kept his eyes on her and away from the wound. She helped lower Aegon to the nestling of roots making it comfortable for him as she positioned herself in front of him on her knees. Once she had him situated, she tore a strip of fabric from her underdress ripping it further into smaller pieces; one piece to clean and the other to wrap it until they could reach the Maesters.

“My apologies, my prince. I know this will hurt but only for a short while,” she spoke reassuring him as she placed the injured hand in her lap to pull the tiny splinters out before wrapping it up.

One by one, the pieces were removed being tossed to the soft grassy floor and with each removal, the young Targaryen hissed in pain as he only allowed himself to do that instead of tears.

“Not crying and holding in your pain does not make you a man. Crying shows that you have emotions and are more than capable of being compassionate to others. It releases energy that has been brewing over time.” Her words startled the boy causing him to reveal his unshed tears in his bright, wide eyes.

Wiping his face quickly with his free hand, he snarked, “And who had told you that? Hmm, ñuha hūra? I would presume it was your mother.”

“My father, actually. He would always remind my brothers that crying would never make them less of a man. It made them more of one because they weren’t afraid of being emotional and it helped release anything that was being kept locked away from within,” she retorted, continuing her work seeing as there were only a few wood pieces left before she needed to clear away the blood that kept pooling.

Aegon paused at her words before he sputtered out, “So, you would still see me as a man even if I cried in front of you? You won’t want to be rid of me?”

A giggle broke the delicate planes of her face quickly being replaced by a smile. “Why would I rid you? I feel like you have forgotten that you have cried in my presence quite a few times already, Aegon. You are just a boy in many people's eyes but to me, you are more of a man than some of the men that sit on the Council!”

“Could you say that again?” Lavender fields gazed into starry skies at her words.

“Say what again, my prince? That you’re a man..”

“No, my name. Say my name again. I beg of you.”

Stunned by his declaration, a sigh escaped her lips before she whispered out, “Aegon.”

No longer focused on the pain, Aegon could feel his heart soar like it was flying through the skies and bursting through the clouds. His true companion in life sounded so delectable saying his name. It was an almost tangible taste in his mouth just from her calling his name like that. Of course, the way she initially said it was in every form, an innocent and friendly way but, he’s a growing boy who was beginning to feel the effects of his body turning him into a man. His name was like a drug that now he had a taste of it, he is going to want it always.

A sweet smile contrasted the redness in the whites of his eyes as he gazed at her. “From this day forth, I want you to call me by my name. It’s so lovely coming from you, unlike from everyone else.”

“As you wish, my prince Aegon,” she answered him, causing his heart to soar yet again.

They continued to gaze into each other’s eyes like the sunny day shining down on fields of lavender petals and the stars twinkling in the inky darkness of the night. They both felt a bundle of warmth unfurling in their chests accompanied by the feeling of pure happiness. Being together in this moment made them feel as if they were the only people in all of Westeros and absolutely nothing would tear them apart from one another. In that moment, the friendly love they both shared was blossoming into a love that Aegon was beginning to feel for his beautiful handmaid, a love that she would soon share with him.

Blinking away their locked gaze, a subtle blush graced her cheeks as she brought her focus back down to the wound. She scanned his hand one last time making sure she removed all the splinters that she could find and began to gently gather the deep blood with half of the torn underdress strip. The starch white of the underdress absorbs the sanguine fluid transforming the fabric into its deep seated color. Fully saturated, she removed the cloth, putting it into the pocket of her plain dress and using the other piece to wrap up the exposed injury.

Finished with her work, she sighed out, “Well, we shall make our way to the Maesters for them to fully take care of the wound.”

She stood up from their spot and brushed off the dirt and grass that had accumulated at her knees. Looking at the prince, she could see a dazed look in his eyes and a soft smile that she has only seen him use when she was around — she’s seen peaks of a different yet similar smile when he would listen to Helaena’s bug-related monologues.

Aegon, still dazed and heart thumping hard in his chest, gracefully removes himself from the tree roots standing opposite to her as she lowered herself down again to grab the history book from its nest in the greenery of the floor. Waiting for her to straighten herself out, he held his uninjured hand out for her to interlock their fingers when she was ready to. Even with the wound throbbing in his right hand, all he could focus on was the beauty next to him. The way her hair flowed over her shoulders when she took out the braids she put in it everyday, the light flush that would mark her cheeks when she laughed too hard, or the touch of her soft hands that seemed to stay in its delicate state regardless of the hard work she did.

Interlocking their hands, Aegon refocused his sight on the current situation at hand and started back to the castle slowly making their way back to where one of the Maesters under Grand Maester Mellos could help.

“I do hope you know where we are going, ñuha jorrāelagon. I would hate for us to be lost so late in the evening.”

“Of course, I know where we are going. It’s just a lovely evening to take a slow stroll towards that way, Aegon.” A bright grin filled the lines of her face at her prince’s remark. “And don’t think I won’t figure out what you have been saying to me in High Valyrian. One day, I’ll figure it out.”

In that moment, Aegon was convinced and determined that his amazingly beautiful handmaid would be the only one for him — in life and in death.

taglist

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[kalekare]

AGATHARIO ONESHOT

(I just have a lot of feelings okay. My first attempt at fanfiction so be kind. The inner turmoil of a witch in love with Death)

______

The flight feels like liberation after three years nailed to the ground. 

Agatha does not share Lilia’s abhorrence for hexenbesen; her pragmatism outweighs any lingering disdain toward the old halloween aisle clichés. If her life has proven anything, it’s that no tool, however co-opted by humanity, can not serve as a means to an end. 

The same is true of people. Although Agatha has no particular affection for the living, they too are necessary cogs in the machines of life. Take, for example, the collection of bedraggled hags with whom she now walks the road. They are witchfolk’s discarded detritus: a kooky beldam, a new age mystic, mommy issues incarnate. Powerless, saurian insects of witches. 

Agatha, too. Though she will never admit it. 

She straddles the misshapen limb, body lunged forward to gather speed. The squalls and hollers of her moth-eaten syndicate settle in the base of her skull, distorted by the rush of eventide air that presses like daggers into her ears. It is a booming quiet that slips away as she raises above the velarium of forest and into the carmine glow of a Herculean blood moon. 

When she is sure she has saved herself, Agatha looks back to the bohemian trail of bodies that emerge from the murky depths. Even Teen has managed to keep up - unsteady but feigning confidence in his first flight among the damned. Agatha purses her lips at the sight of Lilia, at one with the broom she rejected moments before. Alice and Jen fly side-by-side like school girls. 

Beside her, Rio arches her back and closes her eyes against the red-wine moonlight which spills across her olive skin like blood. The horror of her beauty, a savage history painted across her eyelids and lips. Every moment across the centuries that they had together stolen life and bathed naked in the ichor. 

Agatha does not look away. She drinks her in, inch by inch: the gentle curve of her jawline, the way her cupid’s bow traces the journey from supple upturned nose to softly parted lips. Her hair, raven dark, disappears against the midnight milieu save the whisps that flutter against the wind and rest upon her face. 

That face. That haunting, malevolent, beautiful face. 

Agatha’s heart speaks independently inside the mold-ridden confines of her mind. To die, here and now, alongside that face would be no death at all. 

In a moment, she remembers who she is supposed to be and quickly turns away.

[warnersister]

Star Cross’d

Jerome Valeska x Gordon’s daughter!Reader

Jerome Valeska x Reader

This couldn’t last forever. Nor could it last the remainder of the night. Your father; Jim Gordon, would find out soon enough and put a stop to all to all this nonsense.

Nonsense: the nights you’d both spent lying awake in eachother’s warm embrace, discussing all inevitable components that make up the matrix melancholy of the cogs of life. Shivering slightly under the thin covers, an early winter’s morn and nearing-replacement window panes sending an extra sharp gasp of cooling freeze, compliments of some state north of here. But the delicate gushing of blood through the fingertips that dance with solider-like coherency remind you of being alive.

Nonsense: the candy floss he had bought you the night you met, unknowing of your disliking to the sickly-sweetness of a fairground staple but you ate it regardless, noticing the dust particles falling from his wallet as he handed you the carnival delicacy: wide grin decorating a pearl-filled grin making your heart remind your head that regardless of your economical struggles recently, you truly were rich. An odd sparkle of a concoction of unintelligible senses that overwhelmed your consciousness with a haze-like hypnosis of enamour for the boy yet to receive a name.

Nonsense: having you sat in the front row; against your father’s wishes at his court hearing, eyes flickering mindlessly between you and the judge - amnesty ignoring his court-presented attorney to delicately study the breathing work of art sat behind him. Allowing his own fate to unfold if it meant he got to look at you that little while longer. His sentence to Arkham emitting a gasp from your lips, yet a sense of comfort knowing this somehow meant he wasn’t a mindless killer; he was ill. He wrestled his restraints to give you a finalising kiss to the back of your hand with a sincere tone, voice barely above a whisper as he made you vow to him to forgive him.

Nonsense: the letters stashed in the small shoe box in the bottom of your wardrobe, beneath a well-word pair of disregarded sneakers that acted as gatekeepers for some abhorrent alternation of Romeo and Juliet if Shakespeare was mentally disproportionate. The daily recorded scrawl of proclamations of love and mourning for the distance between the both of you, a somehow best yet illegible cursive getting progressively more dissipated as the page descended - adapting Lamark’s unacceptable theory as the boy evolved from a maladjustment killer to a love sick poet.

Nonsense: crying when you visited him, breaking down into a pool of tears as he appreciated your presence and worshiped your being to an alternative offspring of the Antichrist’s teaching; praying and begging for your mercy - your living self a shrine for his selfless obsession of palpitating sickness of his desire. Your small, naïve smile as you told him you understood, those countless, sleepless nights you lay away shivering in the cold and you ponder your own sanity.

Nonsense: being the first person whom he adheres to when broken out of the Asylum, climbing up a three-story dtysfunctioning drain pipe in the dead of night in the dismal rain of an autumnal Gotham oldhallow’s eve - thunder cracking as you shared a romantic desperation of the age old locking of lips, holding one another on the floor as though terrified the other would painfully disappear if they disimbedded their claws; leaving crescent shaped moon imprint on the skin.

Nonsense: having dates in the darkest hours to avoid disruption; dominating Gotham at three hands of two desperately pining adolescents; insanity of love a proclamation of their secession from the rest of world and society, a religious-like devotion to the other promised by a kiss at every goodbye and a smile at every hello.

Nonsense. The relationship between you and Jerome Valeska was utter nonsense; but the soft whisper-like kisses he leaves on the parting of your hair and down to the nape of your neck makes you alternately shiver as you allow yourself just that few more minutes of sinful indulgence.

[annacory-blog]

Dance or die

I fell in love with another fic by @ulysses000 and then Spotify provided me with a perfect song. I had to draw them to exorcise that image from my head.

As per tradition - below is my attempt in translation. I want to make complete translation so badly (this is probably one third)! I believe this story deserves more attention. But can some kind English speaker confirm it is readable???

Love this fic specially from WoD perspective, it cultivates such delicious feeling of emptiness. And while technically, it has a happy end, you can not get rid of bitter taste of loss. Their requiem is not life, and there no way back. All is gone!

—————————————————-

Music stops abruptly. The dancefloor is silent, mob looks around in bewilderment. All eyes are focused on a flimsy, dirty stage. There, litten by sophites, stands brunette, cladded in a black robe. Calmly she re-adjusts many necklaces and bracelets, adorning her bosom and wrists. She checks microphone, softly tapping it with elegant finger, nonplussed by screeching sound it makes or the yells thrown her way from down the stage. For a while she silently stares in the drunk faces below, until eventually rowdy voices are reduced to quiet, unhappy mumble in the back rows.

-"What would you like to say, before the end of the world?"

-"Go fuck yourself!" - someone yells back from the crowd. Brunette’s smiles softly. Her blue eyes sparkle. This sight will be their last before headless body collapses to the floor.

View from the stage is absolutely terrific. It reminds of a late spring evening in the mansion by the sea. Bodies sway in panic, almost as grass would in a lush fields. Writings on the wall glitter with red as if they were remnants of the sunset caught in clouds. Screams - voices of seagulls. Sweet aroma that spreads across the room reminds of freshly brewed Irish coffee. Eyes locked on the bright fountains. Droplets shimmer in the air with a multitude of colour. Content. Do not argue with Mother. It is a simple rule every kid should know. Because, no matter how kind, gentle and understanding Mother is, she is not all sweets and praises. She also has an iron glove to treat the unruly child. Anyone who dares to confront her will surely drown in their own blood.

-"Now, dance or die."

Music never heard in this walls engulfs space. Stirring voice of the violin is echoed by screams, cello is perfectly complimented by heart-rending howls. Robin is not at all surprised by this harmony of cries and choir chanting. Clocks have just reached zero and this means, time for celebration has finally come. Perfect night to forge a timeless bond between the beloved child and the dear friend. Trafalgar stands on the stage, as if he always was there. Pity no one minds what is happening in the spotlight. He looks tidier than usual, ceremonial. Shirt, tie, three piece suit, shoes - all in various shades of black, all fitted perfectly. His gaze briefly stops on the couple of cadavers lying by the stage, then moves to the brunette.

-"Playing with food, aren’t we?"

-"Tarao, symbolism never was one of your strengths." - She smiles softly and shakes her head, - "Don’t try to grasp, what is beyond you. Just think of it as a cog in the well oiled machine."

Flowers on wreath along the walls move, as if troubled by the gust of wind, candle lights flicker, and blond man appears by Robin’s side. Sanji fiddles with the hem of his suit anxiously, fixes invisible wrinkles on the bouquet wrap. Trafalgar thought he put more than enough efforts to look decent tonight, however he wouldn’t stand a chance if this was a competition. Sanji's clan has been know for this aura of perfection, but even among his kin - he is special. Where the rest emmit light of the full moon, Sanji’s light would blind you as hot summer sun in zenith. He holds ten white roses - stark contract against his black suit. Pale of petals resonates with pale of the skin, highlights the gold of his hair. Trafalgar cannot possibly look away and no disciplines are to blame for this magic. Little smile slips from under his control “this is beautiful” he thinks.

-"Sorry for being late" - blond tuck one long golden lock behind the ear. Eyes drift towards the dance floor, but do not linger there. Woman chuckles softly - so innocent.

-"I was worried you made your escape."

-"Please, don’t ruin the moment" - gaze of his blue eyes seems to be glued to the wooden planks of the stage, then he looks up, eyes meet with Robin’s.

They nod, almost simultaneously, and only after Sanji musters enough of courage to look to the other man. His gaze shamelessly devours all the minute details he can grasp, it is hard to tell, if he desperately tries to avert attention from the bloodbath on the dance floor, or genuinely admires the sight. Trafalgar thinks he would be happy with both reasonings. Laws lips move soundlessly forming few words. Sanji chuckles and replies in the same manner: “you too, idiot”.

-"Ladies and Gentlemen." - maybe a dozen of eyes flicker back in response to sweet, calm voice of the woman. Short break taken from tormenting the flesh, generously soaked with blood and tears. Bodies contort with the fear for their life. - "Tonight, before the Dark Mother’s eyes, souls of two cursed sons of hers will be united. Every kindred present here shall witness the making of endless, mutual death." - her eyes run across the dance floor, reading the mood of the guests. - "the Vinculum should not be broken. Anyone who dares an attempt to weaken the bond will be hunted by The Circle of the Crone," - she looks for a moment into particularly dark corner - "as well as by our brothers and sisters from Ordo Dracul."

Her gaze shifts to the dark haired man, waiting for him to return the attention.

-"Now you can speak your vows."

Trafalgar makes a step forward, reaches to touch cold pale fingers, swallows heavily before he starts to speak.

-"I, Trafalgar D Water Law, hereby take Vinsmoke Sanji into my Requiem forever." - envelops his hand gently and carefully - "I swear before all that is holy and all that is unholy that we, tonight, seal our fates by bonds of dedication and honor. When my partner is hungry, I will bring food." - Sanji chuckles quite and bright - "When my partner sleeps, I will watch and bear witness upon waking." - He squints, eyes slit, as if targeted by bright lamp. - "When my partner is afraid, I will give comfort, and when my partner is wronged, I will have vengeance." - Cool fingers caress back side of the hand. - "This I swear on the blood, and the flame and the spirit."

In his blue eyes flashing light reflects, candles burning twice as bright with the last spoken words. Law squises cold hand, trying to reassure, give comfort, prevent flashes from setting kindred's mind aflame.

-"I, Vinsmoke Sanji, hereby take Trafalgar D Water Law into my Requiem forever." - his voice sweetest thing that ever touched ears, in both life and un-life, - "I swear before all that is holy and all that is unholy that we, tonight, seal our fates by bonds of dedication and honor." - His fleeting touch playfully skims through tan fingers, icy sensation brings sober clarity and bliss of inebriation at the same time. - "When my partner is hungry, I will bring food." - Law’s smile is barely there. - "When my partner sleeps, I will watch and bear witness upon waking. When my partner is afraid, I will give comfort," - he is the most gentle and kindhearted, so much is obvious in every syllable of every word. - "And when my partner is wronged, I will have vengeance. This I swear on the blood, and the flame and the spirit."

Sanji’s hold on the hand gets firmer as he expects another rise of firy glow to radiate the room. Little girl steps forward from behind the stage, she is silent and obedient. So small, seven years at most, her deep chocolate eyes glazed with indifference, strawberry blond hair braided in two pig tales, white gown hugs fragile figure. She stares ahead absently, woman’s hands leading her by shoulders.

-"Time to make the sacrifice." - hand outstretched to pass the ritual knife. Fingers gently support ragged blade.

Trafalgar feels how kindred’s claws pierce his skin. He might have broken few bones, if older wouldn’t strengthen his grip in response. It is heard for Sanji. This is easily seen, his eyes shift frantically, his lips stripped of smile and crooked. Even his touch feels colder than before. He never have taken the life of a sentient being. Even in death Sanji remained pure, his hands and soul unmarred by murder of mortals. Law knows other is hurting, in his eyes this child is seen as a spit image of the older sister. Trafalgar himself lost in the shattered memories for a moment. Girl reminds his late sister, who died too young too long ago. Despite that he knows he will have enough resolve to put this innocent child to rest, as she obediently waits for her own demise.

This is essential part for the completion of the ritual. Sanji knows it. This is not news, but he can’t keep his long dead heart from burning and spasming disgusted by creeping acceptance. He was the one who proposed marriage. He organized most of the celebration. He thought about it many times, about this particular moment he has to take someone’s life, scenario played in his head on repeat. But it is not something you can be prepared for. This is wedding. They are about to enter mutual un-life, their souls are to be bound for the eternal death, forfeiting innocence, killing personification of their past. Together.

His hand is shaking, but Sanji hides it, only grip on the hilt gets stronger. Her face is gentle and soft, with neat childish features, but her eyes are dead already, trapped under Mother’s hypnotic influence. Embroidery on the gown matches hair colour. She looks like a little princess. Sanji forgets to imitate the leaving, his thorax freezes mid inhale, mechanical movement abandoned. He thought he would be able to do it, to confront the past, to kill for the sake of something new, for the sake of future. But this first step is terrifying. All his being is trapped, Staring in the eyes of the Beast, unable to move. Sanji doesn’t want to lose his humanity, he is afraid to slip, to get comfortable with the idea of supremacy over humans, his own strength, his right to take life. Few months in his death, as soon as fog of newly obtained supernatural powers thinned, allowing him to think clearly again, he made a decision to give his all to keep whatever “human” have left in this damned shell of the body. Once he got accustomed with business run by The Circle of the Crone, he found plenty of friends in each and every city morgues and knew without failure when fresh carcasses were delivered to local butcheries. When ritual required freshly drawn blood he used his own vite with no second thought. And now all workarounds are closed, blocked by unmovable boulders. Only one way ahead.

-"We are both dead. It’s not going to get any worse." His whisper is scolding hot against the skin, it reminds to expand lungs, air forced in with fake inhale. Warm palm touches softly, fingers carefully wrap around the hand that holds the hilt, the touch reassures, hand redirected slightly - outward and up.

-"Beheading is better."

For once Sanji is genuinely grateful that Trafalgar never listens and reads his thoughts at any given moment. -"One." He angles cutting edge . -"Two." Skin is burning hot -"Three." Thud. Mortal dread frozen in the eyes of the dead girl.

_________________________

And song that was a catalyst for all the efforts

[barbwritesstuff]

Free Demo ✦ KoFi ✦ COG Forum ✦ Blood Moon

Story

You’re a newly created vampire. After an encounter with the city’s werewolf population, you’re thrown headfirst into the turbulent politics of the undead. Take control of your domain and make the night your own.

It’s time for the vampires to bite back.

Features

The option to play as a woman, a man, or a nonbinary person.

Multiple story paths and endings.

Nine romanceable characters, all with unique personalities. In the current demo you can meet: Tracy, Iliya, Marcel, Freya, Erin, Nathan, Ravima, Minjo, and Chris.

Content Notice

This game contains strong language, violence, major character death, optional explicit sex scenes, and other mature themes. Please use discretion when deciding if this game if for you.

Also:

I’m really nervous about this. I know there are so many good vampire games out right now, many of which are probably better than anything I’ll ever be able to write. I really don’t know if I will be able to finish this game. But, it’s my birthday this month, so I thought I’d share it, just in case.

I really hope you enjoy it.

I have a website now: BarbaraTruelove.com

And, if you enjoy my writing and are able, I would feel honoured if you’d consider buying me a coffee: Ko-Fi

Current Word Count: 396,230 (excluding commands)

Art by the amazing @dahliadrawthings

[gmanwhore]

I made. An au based off a personal story concept I have! The basic gist of the story itself is that after a catastrophic global event (basically the Cold War ending because someone exploded a nuclear warhead in the ocean which terrified everyone and caused an intense amount of radiation poisoning) some people started being born with odd growths on their brains. These growths cause a disorder called Michelle's Disease or Songkindism. The disorder itself means that everyone effected is tied to a song (the song doesn't have to exist yet, don't have lore for that so just bear with me) and thus they have a defect based on said song. The defect can by physical (something on your body changes, you have weird things inside your body), internal (usually magic adjacent) or both. Songkindism usually manifests around age 11, no one is quite sure why but it's theorized it's tied to puberty. In this world every child must get screened for Songkindism, and if they are found to have it they are sent to a facility to be studied.

In this au, a few things change. The inciting incident instead happens in World War 2, and the odd extra part of the brain was found way earlier. The inciting incident is also tied to the creation of the Doppler, who are theorized to all be attached to one song which is a VERY rare occurrence. Your neighbors are songbound who were allowed to leave their facility to experiment on how Doppler react to other snowbound in their environment, and also just to see if they can live normal lives. Below is each character and their song and defect. If people like this I may do more with it!

Roman: Song: Starman (David Bowie) Defect: Made of stardust, if you breathe it in it causes a surge of hope in you. 

Lois: Song: Killer Queen (Queen) Defect: High charisma, can levitate anything dangerous/that can be made dangerous 

Albertsky:  Song: Burn It Down (The Cog is Dead)  Defect: Can burn things with hands, exceptional strength. 

Robertsky:  Song: Ragtime Punk (Abney Park) Defect: Able to see the past with perfect clarity. 

Angus: Song: Mind Brand (MARETU) Defect: Knows everyone's secrets by just looking at them. 

Selenne: Song: Mowgli's Road (MARINA) Defect: Made of plants/covered in plants, is constantly in a state of desperation though she is unsure why. 

Elenois: Song: Hermit the Frog (MARINA) Defect: Made of glass (can see organs), is constantly in a state of rage, but she’s not sure why.

Gloria: Song: Cara Mia Addio (Portal) Defect: Eyes glow, she can calm anyone down by being in the room, though nobody can pinpoint it’s her. 

Arnold: Song: 100 Years (Or3o) Defect: If he likes/is crushing/is in love with someone and they are songbound, the lyrics of their song appear on his body. 

Izaack: Song: Touch Tone Telephone (Lemon Demon) Defect: He can stick pins into himself, and when it has information attached to it he can permanently perfectly recall that information. 

Margarette:  Song: Dream Sweet in Sea Major (Miracle Musical) Defect: Moon eyes, can “wash away” things but you have to work with her.

Nacha: Song: Decepticon (La Tigre) Defect: She’s made of metal and can explode herself at will. Exploding herself has no negative consequences on her. 

Anastacha: Song: Brass Goggles (Steam Powered Giraffe) Defect: She is a robot. Like that’s it she’s a robot. 

Dr. Afton: Song: Browser History Defect: ???? (Defect hides itself)

Mia: Song: Whose Eye is it Anyways??? (Jhariah) Defect: Gave her eye for knowledge. She can see through any facade and always know the truth, but she is still missing an eye. 

Francis: Song: There's No Love in February (The Orion Experience) Defect: The sadder he is, the more he freezes over. 

Steven: Song: Toes (Glass Animals) Defect: Can steal people's aggression/anger and give it to himself. 

Mclooy:  Song: The Boys are Back in Town (To Kill You) (Jerryterry) Defect: Goes crazy when he smells blood, like a shark.

Alf:  Song: The Haunted Phonograph (Thoushaltnot) Defect: Record effect over his voice, and can steal your soul and put it on the record in his stomach area.

Rafttellyn:  Song: Girl With One Eye (Florence+ The Machine) Defect: Rotting from the inside once someone steals her eye. Stealing her eye usually requires her making a mistake and it becoming loose from her guilt. She currently only has one eye. 

Arcade Clown/Mono: Song: Devil’s Train (The Lab Rats) Defect: Can just kinda. Summon a ghost train. Hands out tickets instead of papers.

Mask Ghost/Julia: Song: A Crow’s Trial (Vane Lily) Defect: More bird-like (feathered arms, bird like hands and feet, wing-like appendages), and her mask looks too tight and like it hurts. Like an iron maiden.

[hpowellsmith]

my brother in law and i have made our ways through all of your available cog stories (you have become a household name); i wanted to ask if there are any choice of games or other interactive fiction you recommend? i saw you answered in 2020, but wanted to see if there's any more on your radar since then!

I have a bunch of links and recommendations over here including my top ChoiceScript games ever. And I am here to recommend lots more!

Please note that I have the time and energy to play very few games and a vanishingly small number of WIPs. This only a tiny snapshot of the amazing interactive fiction out there. Do check out IFDB, sub-Q, the IF Comp and Spring Thing archives, the Narrascope and AdventureX speakers and exhibitors, and the interactive fiction tag on itch.io.

More below because there are A LOT:

Here is a big bunch of ChoiceScript games that I had a great time with!

Choice of Broadsides by Adam Strong-Morse, Heather Albano, and Dan Fabulich

Choice of Romance by Heather Albano and Adam Strong-Morse (note that it is not romantic and is not a dating sim!)

A Crown of Sorcery and Steel by Joshua LaBelle

Blood Moon by @barbwritesstuff

Deathless: the City's Thirst by Max Gladstone

The Dragon and the Djinn by @atharfi

The Eagle's Heir by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Fine Felines by Felicity Banks

Hollywood Visionary by Aaron Reed

Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents by Dora Klindžić

An Odyssey: Shadows of War by Natalia Theodoridou

The Play's the Thing by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Rent-a-Vice by Natalia Theodoridou

Siege of Treboulain by Jed Herne

Stronghold by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Their Majesties' Pleasure by Leia Talon

Thieves Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat by Dana Duffield

Tower Behind the Moon by Kyle Marquis

Turncoat Chronicle by @zincalloygames

Weyrwood by Isabella Shaw

Visual novels:

Analogue: A Hate Story by Christine Love

Dream Daddy by Game Grumps (writers: Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray)

EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER by Heather Flowers

Ladykiller in a Bind by Christine Love

Other IF-adjacent games with visuals that I have loved:

80 Days by inkle (writers: Jon Ingold and Meghna Jayanth)

Fallen London by Failbetter Games

Overboard! by inkle (writer: Jon Ingold)

Over the Alps by Stave Studios

Twines:

There are so many more that I've enjoyed but these were what popped into my head right now - this is one where it's essential to check out itch.io:

Anything by porpentine charity heartscape especially With Those We Love Alive and Vesp

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds by Abigail Corfman

Cactus Blue Motel by Astrid Dalmady

Detritus by Maz Hamilton (published as Mary Hamilton)

Faith by @kithj

Invasion by Cat Manning

Human Errors by Katherine Morayati

If I Die, Consume Me by @fiddles-ifs

Mama Possum by Kevin Snow

Nine Months Out by @nellplays

Salvage by @atharfi

Tangaroa Deep by Astrid Dalmady

To Spring Open by Yoon Ha Lee and Peter Berman (as Two-Bit Chip)

Parser games:

The Boot-Scraper by Caleb Wilson

The Compass Rose by Yoon Ha Lee (note that I didn't finish this one because I am bad at puzzles)

Galatea by Emily Short

Gun Mute by C. E. J. Pacian (as above)

Laid Off From The Synesthesia Factory by Katherine Morayati

Lime Ergot by Caleb Wilson

Midnight. Swordfight. by Chandler Groover

Take by Katherine Morayati

Games made with other tools:

Cape by Bruno Dias (Raconteur)

Honeysuckle by Cat Manning (Texture)

Prospero by Bruno Dias (Raconteur)

I play such a vanishingly small number of WIPs that it's ridiculous but I did really enjoy what I played of these two and am looking forward to more:

Body Count (@bodycountgame) by @nellplays (Twine)

Chop Shop by Becky @losergames (Twine)

Fervency (@fervency-if ) by Niko Charos (ChoiceScript)