#but dream's been imprisoned twice before the events of this story

[godeat]

DUTY AND COMPASSION, DREAMS AND TEARS. I SURRENDER MYSELF TO THE RIVER OF RESENTMENT. ✱ IN REGARDS TO ZEN’IN NO EISHIN, ( 禪院の栄信. ) THE MASTER OF ALL MASTERS, THE ZEN’IN CLAN’S MOST SACRED ANCESTOR.

zen’in no eishin was a legendary sorcerer in the heian era,  cherished ancestor of the zen’in clan,  and first master of the ten shadows.  beginning in disgrace and followed by infamy,  he would die as one of the most formidable sorcerers of his era and would later be recognized as one of the strongest sorcerers in history among the likes of ryōmen sukuna.  in the modern day,  he has been deified as kuraijin,  a patron kami of the zen’in clan and jujutsu society.  although he is regarded as a controversial figure by historians,  eishin’s influence is felt to this day.

note:  eishin’s story contains themes of abuse,  suicide,  violence,  death,  and misogyny.  although eishin is a trans man,  he has experienced the brunt of the zen’in clan’s misogynistic ideals due to his assigned gender at birth.  i myself am transmasculine and have also faced misogyny;  it is a topic i don’t take lightly.  due to the way jujutsu kaisen’s worldbuilding is constructed and the limited information we receive regarding heian jujutsu society in the manga,  i take various liberties in interpreting the events of the heian era.  his inspirations include:  rurouni kenshin,  the filmography of kurosawa akira,  the folklore surrounding the gashadokuro,  fromsoftware’s sekiro: shadows die twice,  the discography of kaji meiko,  japanese folklore,  zen buddhism,  and several others.

¹  LINEAGE. before the ten shadows found itself within the zen’in,  it began as a technique called the dark sea,  which belonged to the itō clan.  the itō were a cadet branch of the taira,  a clan that historically dominated heian politics.  similar to the taira,  the itō were prevalent within military affairs and valued among heian jujutsu society for their martial prowess.  although the taira and it’s cadet branches were a mix of sorcerers and non-sorcerers,  the itō were primarily sorcerers,  and thus established a close relationship with the zen’in during the ninth century.  both clans’ militants and regiments collaborated as a means of empowering each other,  and although this was a means of asserting their individual superiority on the political stage,  their cooperation would turn into an alliance.  due to their cooperation,  the zen’in would be privy to the itō’s knowledge regarding shikigami mastery,  which was their specialty.  the relationship between both powers would peak when itō no satsuki married zen’in no katashi,  who had just ascended to the position of clan head.  a year following their marriage,  satsuki would give birth to her only child,  eishin.  he is five years the junior of his half-brothers,  kentarō and yūri.

two years following eishin’s birth,  the itō’s dissatisfaction with fujiwara superiority and the political arrangement of jujutsu society culminated into an attempted insurrection.  following the footsteps of taira no masakado,  they attempt to insurrect the fujiwara and fail.  for their betrayal,  members of the itō are beheaded,  imprisoned,  or exiled,  and in the matter of weeks,  the clan dissolves.  in the midst of this turmoil,  satsuki is questioned by the imperial court regarding her relatives.  intimidated by her husband and zen’in relatives,  she folds to pressure and claims no further connection to the itō   —   a decision she would ultimately regret.

after several months of grief and reeling from the loss of her family,  satsuki resigns to the most extreme option:  retaliation.  forsaking the zen’in clan,  she leaves the matter of eishin’s upbringing unto her servants.  although zen’in retainers try their damndest,  they cannot find her.  using her knowledge regarding shikigami,  she collects the bones of victims of starvation and conflict.  when enough was collected,  she performed a ritual to create a formidable shikigami and used a powerful intermediary to bind it to her technique.  what’s born from this ritual is a shikigami comparable to makora:  the starving skeleton,  otherwise known as the gashadokuro.  ( がしゃどくろ. )

following it’s creation,  satsuki goes to heian-kyō and unleashes the gashadokuro in the first recorded instance of chimera shadow garden.  the shikigami terrorizes the city until a group of sorcerers are sent to deal with satsuki.  weakened by her opponents and left on the verge of death,  satsuki takes her own life.  in her final moments,  she uses the last vestiges of control over her technique and disappears into the shadows.  she leaves no corpse to collect.

upon her death,  her cursed energy assimilated with her child,  who shared her technique.  at the age of six,  eishin’s cursed technique manifested as that of his mother’s.

² UPBRINGING. following satsuki’s rampage and the manifestation of his technique,  there was no hope for a kinder upbringing.  katashi,  ashamed and scornful of his child’s existence,  gives no attention to him.  likewise,  he neglects yūri the same love when it becomes apparent he had no cursed energy to speak of.  he instead turns his sights to kentarō,  who was heir apparent.  outcasts within their own family,  eishin and yūri developed a close relationship and leaned on one another when there was no one else.  despite knowing his father did not love him,  eishin tried his best to garner any fiber of pride or respect;  efforts that would prove futile.  whereas with kentarō,  there was only animosity.  besides his older male relatives,  kentarō was eishin’s biggest tormentor and would often use his strength and superiority to terrorize his brother.  eishin had no means to fight back lest he be punished.

due to documents regarding the dark sea being destroyed or hidden within zen’in archives,  eishin’s training was left to his own hands.  although yūri’s heavenly restriction negated cursed energy,  he would use the knowledge he gathered during his training with the hei to help eishin in any way he could.  by the time he was thirteen,  eishin would gain an intimate understanding of his technique.  at fourteen,  he asks to join the hei,  but this request is denied due to fear that he would reach the full prowess of his technique and his assigned gender at birth.

for the rest of his teenage years,  he lived his life with little purpose.  his existence is barely acknowledged,  yet he is tethered to his clan’s will,  who expect him to stay compliant and subservient.  without any consideration for the matter,  several marriages are arranged for him as a means of taking him off of zen’in hands,  but all fail via eishin’s own sabotage.  the only source of joy he finds is through yūri’s combat training and secret excursions in the city.  a few months before his eighteenth birthday,  he uncovers various documents written by the itō regarding shikigami mastery and the dark sea,  thus giving him an idea of what he could’ve been doing with his technique all along.

when eishin is eighteen,  yūri leaves the clan and urges him to do the same.  a few weeks later,  he did.  the decision was when he realized he would never live a fulfilling life with his kindred.  he would not be valued in a space where he was demeaned and yūri was the only connection that kept him there.  while yūri was overseas in china,  eishin would pursue vagrancy.  his clan would not find him.

³  VAGRANCY. eishin wanders aimlessly.  a year into his vagrancy,  he is saved by wandering mercenaries after nearly being slain by a powerful curse.  choosing to stay with them for a few months,  he becomes accustomed to mercenary work,  where he hones his skills against enemies other than his brother.  believing it to be a consistent line of work and an occupation that can easily garner notorriety,  he sticks with it.  even though his cursed energy and technique were phenomenal,  heian jujutsushi was to be contended with.  without the zen’in to hinder him,  there was an innate drive to become stronger than those who could subdue him.  more importantly,  he wanted to be a cause of scorn for the clan he despised.  he cared and lived for nothing else.  the means to achieve this would come to him by mere chance.

at twenty,  eishin kills a group of shikigami hunters per a bounty agreement and frees two wolf shikigami they were planning to sacrifice.  although he expects both shikigami to run away,  they stay by his side as a show of loyalty.  these shikigami would become known as the divine dogs.  after months of observing the shikigami and their strength,  eishin would put a theory to the test.  while shikigami were typically summoned using mediums,  it was theorized by the itō that shikigami could be bound to a technique like the dark sea if an intermediary device  —  such as a sacred relic   —  was dissolved within the technique’s shadows.  if this was possible,  shikigami could be summoned without the use of mediums.  to test this,  eishin would acquire fragments of the ten sacred treasures and perform a successful ritual,  thus making the divine dogs the first shikigami to join the ten shadows.  for the next six years,  he would seek out powerful shikigami to subjugate and bind to his cursed technique.

at twenty-six,  eishin is regarded as an infamous mercenary and assassin among the jujutsushi and jusoshi world.  he became known as the kage-akuma  (  影悪魔,  literally ‘shadow demon’  )  and amassed nine unique shikigami in his arsenal.  as his reputation grew,  rumors began to circulate around his past as a former member of the zen’in and brought considerable controversy to the clan,  much to eishin’s delight.  despite being branded as a jusoshi for his efficiency in bloodshed,  eishin would develop a strict set of principles.  his time wandering had exposed him to a great deal of issues:  youth being exploited for their techniques,  persecution of jujutsushi in the countryside,  unchecked corruption of nobility.  although hardened by circumstance,  eishin was, at his core, a compassionate individual and his exposure to such misery would serve as catalyst for his political decisions.

after another two years of freedom,  fujiwara pressure on the zen’in to subdue eishin for his crimes reaches a climax.  kentarō,  now clan head following the passing of his father,  comes up with a plan to imprison and execute his brother.  baited into killing a prominent jujutsu noble,  eishin is finally apprehended and imprisoned.  he would’ve escaped were it not for the inverted spear of heaven being used against him. 

while imprisoned,  kentarō gives eishin a chance at amnesty and a reversal of his death sentence as long as he returns to the zen’in and abides by the conditions of a binding vow,  but this discussion goes nowhere.  lucky for him,  eishin is freed just days before his execution when yūri,  who had returned from china months prior,  breaks him out.  reunited with his brother,  the pair go into hiding.

⁴  MAHĀLA. jujutsu society is thrown into turmoil when the eighth divine general,  makora,  deems jujutsushi as a fundamental threat to cosmic law and order and begins slaughtering jujutsushi.  unable to cut such a divine figure down,  jujutsu society scrambles for a solution.  the jujutsu authority and fujiwara,  desperate to resolve this nightmare,  seek out eishin and invite him to the courts due to the nature of his technique.  there,  they present an ultimatum:  if he manages to either slay or subjugate makora,  eishin will receive full amnesty for his crimes.  this agreement is upheld with a collective binding vow.

a few days later,  eishin,  under the supervision of the jujutsu authority and clans,  goes to a valley outside of heian-kyō and calls for makora’s audience.  makora answers the summoning and the two engage in battle.  with no allies to aid him per the conditions of the ten shadows’ subjugation rituals,  eishin is alone as he goes head to head with the divine.  at some point during the fight,  eishin realizes that makora is on the verge of adapting to his technique and thus uses his last resort.  he summons the gashadokuro to subdue a struggling makora all while performing rites that would bind him to the shadows,  a maneuver that ultimately works    —    albeit at the cost of merely trapping makora,  not subjugating it.  regardless,  eishin stands victorious.  per the conditions of the binding vow,  he is given complete amnesty from his crimes and is hailed by jujutsu society as an unlikely hero.

⁵  THE COURTS. displeased by the jujutsu authority’s failures in regards to makora’s rampage and elated by his victory over a literal deity,  eishin realizes he could use his technique for so much more.  his strength was something to be trifled with,  something that could dominate several jujutsushi and render an entire nation to their knees if he so wished.  he was a nightmare,  unstoppable,  no longer some weak child subject to someone else’s whims.  jujutsu society did not have to be subject to an authority more concerned with upholding power and tradition while their denizens suffered.

a few months following the incident with makora,  eishin challenges kentarō for the position of clan head.  kentarō agrees to settle the matter with a duel and even foolishly doubles down with a binding vow that guarantees eishin’s self-inflicted death if he were to lose.  the battle is overseen by the jujutsu authority and in the end,  eishin wins.  although kentarō demands he kill him,  eishin lets him live with the humiliation of defeat.  upon his ascension as clan head,  eishin expels several of his fellow clan members,  including kentarō,  and begins managing the zen’in clan per his own will alongside yūri.

now leader of one of jujutsu society’s most prominent clans,  eishin establishes himself as a force to be reckoned with.  the fujiwara confided in him more than they ever did kentarō and he quickly became a prominent member of the imperial court.  that being said,  his relationship to the jujutsu authority and its members were not as friendly.  furthermore,  his relationship to clans such as the kamo were far from cooperative.  much of his fellow noblemen were intimidated into fearful compliance.  additionally,  eishin was not shy about political assassination if it meant getting rid of people who aimed to sabotage him or his vision,  nor was he against blackmail.  although several jujutsu nobles had their suspicions,  they lacked the evidence to prove these transgressions.  throughout his reign,  he experiences various attempts at assassination and insurrection,  with one of these attempts at insurrection being done by kenjaku themself.

during his political career,  eishin would push for various reforms.  he would help revise jujutsu conduct,  encouraged protection for jujutsushi in the countryside,  and created a grading system for curses to prevent jujutsushi casualty,  among other things.  alongside yūri,  he also tried to cultivate a society that permitted heavenly restrictions,  an effort that garners outcry from his conservative colleagues.  too intimidated to cross the zen’in,  a begrudging sense of unification was felt among jujutsu society’s clans;  a sentiment that would have many referring to eishin as a ‘dictator.’  following the fall of the fujiwara’s sun,  stars,  and moon squad at the hands of ryōmen sukuna,  the hei and various zen’in jujutsu regiments became their militant successors.

at thirty-three,  his only child,  zen’in no masaki,  is born.  although his political and noble life was consistently marred by conflict,  he was undeniably among the strongest jujutsu society had to offer.

⁶  DEATH. at forty,  eishin is called to exorcise two special grade curses,  both of whom were regarded as deities.  although he utilized all of his shikigami and chimera shadow garden,  both special grades would persist despite their injuries.  already pushed to his limits,  eishin does what he knew would ensure his victory,  even if it cost him his life.  deprived of option,  he summons makora and ropes both spirits into the subjugation process.  upon the summoning,  makora slays both curses before turning it’s sights to eishin.  understanding that makora would only return to the shadows upon subjugation,  eishin begins to fight back.  although exhausted,  eishin gives it his all,  even when the output of his reverse cursed technique hinders and he begins to experience internal hemorrhaging from repeated usage of his domain.  

but for all his efforts,  they are for naught in the end.  tired,  faltering,  and far past his limit,  eishin denies his shikigami the satisfaction of his death and takes his fate into his own hands when makora adapts to his technique.  unsheathing his tantō,  he commits seppuku and dies of spontaneous exsanguination.  legend has it that the divine dogs carried his corpse to his allies before disappearing into the shadows.

⁷  POST-MORTEM. upon his death,  the zen’in clan is thrown into turmoil.  yūri loses the only family member he ever cared for and masaki loses his father at the tender age of seven.  per his written will,  yūri would inherit the title of clan head until masaki came of age,  the first and only time a heavenly restricted individual had held that position.  kentarō and his exiled relatives try to take advantage of the internal chaos,  but yūri does not permit them to curry prominence.  although he was a prominent public figure,  his funeral was relatively private.  his mausoleum can be found on the historical zen’in estate in osaka. 

revered as a god among men for his power,  eishin is then deified as kuraijin,  a patron kami of the zen’in clan and a protector of jujutsu society.  he became a popular deity to worship during the sengoku period,  with the majority of his worshippers being samurai and non-militant jujutsushi.

despite his infamy during the heian era,  kentarō’s descendents would come to view eishin as a symbol of zen’in strength and glory when they permitted back into the clan.  in the modern day,  the zen’in continue to view him as a legendary figure synonymous with a glory that has not been seen since the early edo period.  furthermore,  eishin’s legacy cemented the ten shadows’ god-like status alongside the likes of the gojō clan’s six eyes.  he was,  without a doubt,  the strongest ten shadows user to ever live.  tales of his shikigami and his strength are equal parts captivating and terrifying.

outside of his deification and influence among his clan,  much of his policies and conduct are still practiced among jujutsushi today.  the systems he helped cultivate in regards to exorcism and public safety became groundwork for modern jujutsu conduct.  the modern day grading system can also be credited to him,  although he only ever intended the grading system to be used for curses and not his fellow shamans.  in addition,  he was a scholar who frequently wrote about shikigami and his documents are still studied by shikigami masters.

OTHER NOTES.

eishin’s iteration of shikigami are possibly some of the most powerful and largest recorded,  even rivaling the likes of ryōmen sukuna’s shikigami while he possessed fushiguro megumi.

typical of most zen’in clan members,  eishin was a practitioner of shinbutsu-shūgō,  otherwise known as the syncretism of shintō and buddhism;  although some of his ideas in regards to enlightenment and morality could be considered unorthodox.

he was the first wielder of the soul-splitter katana.  that being said,  he much preferred tantō.

although he was brazenly strong,  eishin usually relied on agility and stealth to aid him in combat due to the umbrakinetic prowess of the ten shadows complimenting both attributes.

similar to the six eyes,  eishin’s birth was marked by the strengthening of all curses in the country.  the same can be true for every other ten shadows user after him.

[xoxothesubwayfugitive]

I updated Be Careful of the Curse...

twice! These chapters contain the events from the aftermath of OTP through HBP, which is one of the most tragedy heavy delicious to write about periods for the Malfoys. Hopefully I did it justice in adding my personal imaginings...little excerpt ahead

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They had not been afforded any leeway; they would see the Dark Lord the next evening. It occurred to her as she rehearsed her delivery in the mirror that they had never really asked Draco to do anything. Yes, occasional small (very small) chores, or attendance at social gatherings he sulked through, but not real trials. Nothing that would stretch him. Never, ever anything that would hurt. The world became very, very slow as they sat, shoulder to shoulder, on the edge of his bed. "I don't…" He was stuttering. "Mummy…" Narcissa wanted to burn the Manor down with everyone inside. This brutal building that she had promised Lucius to never leave, that she had spent her childhood dreaming of as a home – it meant nothing to her now as she saw her son imprisoned in its walls. Their husband and father had failed them; her son, her shy, talented son, was crying to her because he was afraid of something from which they could not protect him. "I know, Draco," she managed to say. "It's not a nice thing. But you'll be like your father. Isn't that a good thought? He will be so pleased when you see him again." "I don't care about…that," he replied. She heard him bite off the word him. "I don't want to be in this position. I don't want to feel like you aren't safe because of me –" "I am protecting you, Draco," Narcissa rushed to say. "Don't think of it like that. Of course I will always be the one to protect you. It’s just the Mark.” Of course it wasn’t just the Mark. It was him as a replacement for a disgraced father. A human sacrifice. They went in to see the Dark Lord and that was unfolded to them both, and she felt her body weaken and her feet turn numb. She reached out for Draco’s hand and it wasn’t there. He was holding his arms tight in front of him and curling in as if his stomach hurt. “None of that now, Draco,” he was chided. “Narcissa, why don’t you help him with his sleeve?” There was blood in her mouth. She had bitten herself that fiercely. She tried, as she reached out again and made contact, to still Draco. To show him some comfort through her touch. She heard him choke, though, and then she couldn’t resist wrapping an arm around his shoulder as his bare skin was presented to their master. She had never let herself observe this ritual before, never considered it beyond hiding her eyes and holding her breath, and she realized as the mark appeared in a winding way, flowing out of the Dark Lord’s wand and onto Draco’s flesh, that in retelling the story Lucius had minimized the hurt he must have felt. Draco was obviously wracked with pain that left him alternately breathless and gasping wetly, and the smell of burned flesh filled the room. It was over within a minute, but the Malfoys had no sense of the time. When the Dark Lord pulled his wand back, Draco collapsed backwards in his chair, sweat beading across his forehead and upper lip, his eyes fluttering open and shut. “I suppose I can say one thing for your father. He took it better than that.”

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

never gonna stop thinking about the fact that desire is the only one of dream's siblings who has never ignored him when he's asked for help

[meenah-chan]

Solace

A Belphegor x GN! MC fanfic

3.14k words

Genre: Angst

Trigger warning: mention of death. Read at your own discretion.

Requested by: @belphiesimpalways thank you for patiently waiting for this. Supposedly, this is for your birthday but still, belated Happy Birthday to you!! This became a little bit too long, and I actually changed the whole thing twice 😅😅 I changed the title too to prevent confusion, hope you don't mind.

He lost it the day he lost his beloved sister. A place to call his home. Yet he met them. The one who brings light to his dark days. But what shall he do, when this solace was never been his?

“How I wished I didn’t met you at all.”

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

He can hear the harrowing sound of the clock, ringing inside the closed space. As if it were imitating his increasing pulse. Belphegor couldn’t open his eyes. He won’t though, even if he can. He fears he’ll see it again. The agonizing sight of that cursed attic, where he is trapped, cold and lonely. Each click, each clack drives him on a brink of madness.

Somebody please make it stop..! Curled up in his bed, writhing in anguish, Belphegor tried to block the sound with his trembling hands.

Let me out… I hate this place...

“It is for your own good.” Lucifer’s voice reverberates throughout the whole room. His guide light and the hero of his stories… once upon a time, that is.

For my own good? This place was a nightmare! He was imprisoned! He was trapped inside his head, with nothing but bleak thoughts!

He felt cold, with no one to hold onto. With no Beelzebub or Lilith, ready to embrace him when he’s afraid…

Ahhh…

Right…

Even if he managed to escape that place, there’ll be no more Lilith to hold him. To comfort him. To make him laugh of joy and happiness. No more… Lilith is no more…

“...Belphegor?” he snapped his eyes open and suck in a deep breath, as if the voice pulled him out of the deepest pit of the abyss. His heart was beating fast, bathed in his own sweat.

It was just another dream. He was not trapped in the attic any more. He was freed, by the person with him right now, sitting beside his bed, a few weeks ago. “Are you alright? You’re sweating buckets and squirming in your sleep.”

“I’m fine. It was just pretty hot in here.”

They stared at him for a moment before replying. “...If you say so… Wait, let me get you some water and a change of clothes.” unconsciously he raised his hand, fingers tugging on the hen of their shirt which stopped them from their tracks.

“Don’t need one… Just stay here and be my pillow.” Still, feeling a bit anxious of being alone, he didn't let go.

“That won’t do. You’re so drenched. If you don't change clothes and rehydrate, you might get sick. I'll be back in a jiffy.” Yet as they swiftly pried his hand off their clothes, he couldn't do anything but to watch them stride out of the room.

He sighed, recollecting the series of events from the time he met them. “...What a weird person...” He muttered under his breath.

A few weeks ago… Just a few weeks ago, they succeeded in freeing him... Just a few weeks ago, they died by his hands... Yet, they kept on approaching him like nothing had happened.

But oddly enough, he also couldn't get them off his mind; to want them by his side. The only time he could find his peace of mind is when he's with them.

I guess I'm weird too...

Silently, he observed them. The way they speak and walk. The way they would scold him when he chose to nap over catching up his missed lessons. The way they tap and hum unconsciously, while studying with him to encourage him to do so. Those awkward laughs they made as they tried to mend the rift between him and his brothers. The sighs left their lips as his brothers fought over who would have them. The slow and silent steps they make to slip away. The way they wink and place a finger over their lips and pull him with them.

Especially the way their eyes disappear when they're smiling. He can never describe how soothing it was, that smile.

...until he suddenly felt it wasn't.

The way they make the very same smile to Lucifer, Belphegor couldn't help but feel a little bit too irritated. Yes, it was Lucifer. He’s naturally annoyed by him, after what he's done. But this is a little bit different from his usual displeasure.

The youngest just wanted to pry the human off him and drag them away. He knew he couldn't suppress the burning sensation rising from the pit of his stomach. He also knew he'll regret what he wanted to do. He'd look possessive. Delusional. He may even hurt them in the process. So, he chose to escape the scene instead, into the attic which was once his prison.

“Belphegor! I got... and you're asleep.” the demon dares not open his eyes as he hears them make their way to him. “You didn't even remove your uniform...or your shoes. I'm really amazed how you can fall asleep in a matter of seconds.” They carefully remove the shoes and socks from his soles.

Oh no... That's not a good thing. For every touch of their skin sends tingles throughout his entire body. Each cell screaming in a way he never felt before. The bed shook as they crawled in, reaching for the buttons of his vest. He was at his wit's end, completely conscious of the human's presence.

Before they could ever reach for the last row of buttons, his hand stopped them before he lose it.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“Y-You're awake?!” Before they could ever pull back, he tugged them in his chest, flustering the human even more.

“H-Hey, let go. Your uniform will get wrinkled.” They tried squirming out to no avail. The demon is just too strong to make him budge.

“Don't want to.” To hide his warm and probably beet red face, he clasped their nape and keep their face over his shoulder.

“I still haven't changed out of mine.”

“Hmm, goodnight...”

“Hey...” after a few more stirring in vain, they just sighed and let the youngest have it his way.

This is bad. Thought Belphegor. The annoyance he felt a while ago dissipates as fast as it builds up inside of him. Still, his heartbeats and head were in utter chaos, the time he held them so close. He said he’s returning to slumber, yet his heart showed no signs of ever slowing down. He bet they could hear it, but he have no more energy to even mind it. After all, amidst the chaos in him, could also feel he won’t be getting any nightmares right now.

“Say Belphegor. Do you have a fever? You’re hot and your heart’s beating a bit too fast.”

“Just tired from the extra work a while ago. I just need some rest.”

“If you say so...”

He could no longer deny this feeling inside him.

He… fell in love with a human. He found it, the peace to his raging storm. The salve to his wounds. But they can never be his solace.

He lost it the day he lost his beloved sister. He lost his home. His freedom. He doesn’t have anything but his disgusting self, who could only obsess over keenly observing each and every move they make. Like a stalker. Like a creep. Like a predator eyeing its prey.

But they were never been his. And the day they learnt of his habit is the day they will be disgusted by him.

“Lucifer!” and the fact that they were attached to his eldest brother— the one who robbed him of his freedom once— didn’t help.

They would link arms around his. Heck, even snuggled to it as they do so, with that widest smile upon their face. The small giggles they give off as the abomination in the form of his brother praised them while petting them. Oh, how he wanted to just cut off that hand straying onto them! How dare he touch–

…them that might have already belonged to him, long before he could enter the picture…?

No. There's just no way that heartless brother of his to fall for a mere human. That brother who bowed down to a demon the day his sister died. And the human who taught him how to love again, to fall for Lucifer. That’s just… impossible… It’s just too cruel…

But I love them too! I can love them more than that fiend who chose a demon over his family!

“No, you’re much crueler…” He could hear the whispers at the back of his mind. “Have you forgotten what you did? You killed them. Do you think you have any rights to even lay a finger on them? You spiteful, wretched, monster…”

…Right… He has no rights to have them… He lost it before he could realize the weight of his actions… It was the painful truth. A punishment for a sinner like him. He could regret it until his last breath but he could never be forgiven.

He doesn't deserve to have a place in their heart. Never. Never…

The door to the twins’ room creaked open and he knew exactly whose footsteps it was without the need to look. “Belphegor, Lucifer gave me some sushi. You like this, right? Let’s eat it while it’s fresh.”

Lucifer again, huh...

“It’s yours. Eat it yourself.” There’s no more point in fighting a lost battle.

Let it grow, “Ehh? But you like—”

“Let’s stop this.” … or let it go.

“…Huh? Stop what?”

He also fears what he might do in the future due to this rotten affection of his. “Just as I thought, I couldn’t stand humans. You’re so naïve and trusting. I’m already fed up with dealing with your antics.”

“Wait, I don’t understand…” They asked, confusion and unease were all over their face.

“You don’t? Then let me explain in a way you’ll understand in that small, gullible brain of yours.” He took a deep breath. He needs to keep his cool or he will definitely break in front of them, “Everything is all an act. You thought I like being with you? Think again, fool. Having a human around me fills me with nothing but wrath and anger! Who do you cause my nightmares!? Your race disgusts me to death! Just looking at you makes me want to puke!”

“B-Belphegor… please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Kidding? Do I look like I’m joking?” he scoffed, holding back the pain clawing in his chest. “Be thankful for my brothers. If not because of them, you won’t be alive the second time, nor your ignorant race are.

“I won’t touch a hide of you or any human. So please, stop bothering me anymore.” being unable to stifle the emotions on the verge of bursting, he turned his back on the devastated human.

This is for the best. He’s back in his cage. Staring at the lacework of the long-lived spiders on the ceiling. He already witnessed its threads wear and replace countless of times. That might not even be the same spider he saw on his first night there. He could care less. After all, the only time he was truly curious of a being is when he met them.

How he wished the thread of his feelings were as flimsy as the spider’s. That way it’ll fall off over time. It can simply be cut off when it comes on his way.

“How I wished I didn’t meet you at all.” He knows it well. He is a big liar. In some way or another, just like the firstborn. But they deserve him more than his wretched self.

Lucifer, he was the morning star. The fact that both heaven and hell were captivated by his beauty and excellence. But Belphegor… he was nothing but a bleak abyss. He once dreamt of his brother’s greatness. Yet he couldn't be anything. He, miserable and empty, who only had nothing but guilt, regrets and a broken heart— as he watched them weep.

It’s been weeks since then. They never approached him like he said. Neither in the dining table nor classroom do they discern his presence. It was painful, but he can take it. The only unbearable one he felt is catching them cry— in Lucifer’s arms.

How long are they going to cry? Is it still because of him? No… This is for the best...

This is his atonement. His fate. He still couldn’t have anything, yet he already lost everything. His—

Lucifer… He is staring at him straight in the eye. I should leave.

But Belphegor couldn’t leave. Not after the eldest gave him that sly smirk. What does that mea…

Lucifer didn’t give him time to think. “Wha, Lucifer…?” Sound of confusion left their mouth as Lucifer grabbed their chin firmly between his index and thumb, with the menacing look on his face. “What are you—!”

And the gap between their faces disappeared. “Hmph!” The sight of the futile struggle of his beloved in the hands of the man he entrusted them to… made the youngest snap.

“LUCIFER!!!” His horns and tail materializing, he lunged towards him. His clenched fist flying in the air, aiming for his jaw. Yet, as if expecting it, Lucifer evade him, loosening his grip on the stunned human in the process. Belphegor saw this as a chance to pry them away from his brother’s hands, before jumping a few meters away from him.

“When are you going to learn to clean after your own mess, Belphegor?” As if the devious smirk were never been present on his face, Lucifer looked at them with his usual expression.

“What the hell?! You’re the one who assaulted them!!” He snarled like a wild animal, holding his treasure protectively from the threat.

“I didn’t do anything. Ask them yourself.”

“Ask? Do you think I’m blind?!” His stance became stiffer, fangs sheathed and glaring sharply at his brother, who is unfazed.

A light tug on his collar made his eyes soften, and caused him to realize his tight grip on them in which he loosen. “Are you hurt?”

“N-No… Lucifer’s saying the truth… He didn’t kiss me. I was just a bit confused he pressed his thumb over my lips.”

“.... What? Okay, but still—!”

“Do you think I’m a fool, Belphegor?” Lucifer cut him off, “I know what you’re planning. I'm already your brother for thousands of years.”

“...”

“Do you now understand the consequence of your foolish action? You left someone important to you in the care of others. But you didn’t think that sort of thing might actually happen?”

“But it’s you who they love!”

Lucifer’s frown deepens, “Even if it were some lesser demon they’re in love with, I bet you'll leave them in their care.”

“I...” He… Lucifer’s right… No one's more dangerous for them than himself.

Belphegor's horns and tail disappeared as he calms down, processing what his brother is saying.

“Everyone’s dangerous in Devildom, you fool. If you really are sorry for what you did, protect them instead.”

“Protect? But… But I...” Ignoring him, the eldest glanced at the person between the youngest’s arms.

“Do you already get what I’m saying Y/N?” They nod. “Not only are you both foolish and stubborn, but also blind. Now fix this yourselves. I’m done with your drama.” pinching the bridge of his nose, Lucifer left them in that awkward position without another word.

“...I’m really sorry. I was afraid to hurt you more than I already did.” After a moment of silence, Belphegor decided to break it first.

“You already did, you idiot.” Wiping the stray tears on their puffy eyes, Belphegor gave them a sad smile. “I guess I did.”

“But I still don’t think this is alright. Shouldn’t you be a bit more wary around me? I mean you already… died in my hands once.”

“You brat. Do you think I’d cry like that if I we’re okay with not being with you? I've never held a grudge against you in the first place.” They pout.

“Why? How can you forgive me that easily?” The demon frowns at them.

“Well, wouldn't life be more wonderful if we know how to forgive and forget?”

Frustrations were evident in his eyes, Belphegor's frown deepens. “That's not right… I killed you mercile—”

“Then shouldn't I be asking you? Why can't you forgive yourself?” He didn’t answer. Mistakes have already piled up as is.

Forgive himself? Why? Does he hate himself?

...Yes... I probably do... He loathed himself. terribly so... But they, who tasted the his abhorrence. He couldn't understand how they didn't.

“You want you to find happiness.” They cupped his disgruntled face in their palms, foreheads touching as they gave him comfort.

“I can’t.” with glassy eyes, he held a hand on his cheeks, “Not when you are my happiness. Not when you liked my brother.”

“You really are blind. And here I thought I was just assuming things.” their giggles were like music to his ears. Their orbs were like the placid sky set upon him. “You really are blind. And here I thought I was just assuming things.”

“I love you, idiot.” And their words, with no hint of doubt or hesitation, hit him like a surge. It made his feelings overflow, coursing throughout his entire body, and finally spilling on every corner of his eyes. It made him unable to speak. “I’m not even hoping for you to feel the same. I just wished to stay by your side… and for you to cherish yourself like how I’ve been to you.”

Belphegor felt so happy beyond words. Such indescribable feelings swirling inside him, one that he can’t put into words. With so much running inside his head, the only line he could form is… “Thank you.”

Weeping, but from so much joy this time, they huddled in each other's grasp, not caring of their setting, until their hearts finally felt whole again.

And after such a blissful moment, “...that’s it? No I love you too?” They spoke.

“What are you saying? I already said I love you.”

“No you didn’t. Saying I’m your happiness and confessing are separate things.” they frown at him, expecting.

“It’s the same.” Yet knowing how stubborn the demon is, the human raised their white flag, although disappointed.

“Okay, alright…” They sighed, wiping his eyes with a tear-stained handkerchief. “Why am I the one comforting you anyways? I’m the one crying because of you.”

Belphegor smiled mischievously, like he didn’t cry a while ago. “Because I’m the youngest.”

“Ugh, why did I fall for a spoiled brat?” Another sigh left them as they pulled him up, “Let's go, I’m sleepy.”

Yet as soon as he rose on his feet, he placed his arms on the back of their knees and shoulder blades to carry them, gaining a small yelp from them.

“Hey...” no protest managed to leave their lips as he sealed it with a chaste kiss. Probably not their first but it was the sweetest one. It only last a few seconds, but Belphegor knew fully well. This memory will last forever.

“I love you more, my solace.”

[definitelynotscott]

LINK TO TOP TWEET OF THREAD HERE

LINK TO THE EPISODE OF HER PODCAST WITH GLADWELL HERE

Transcription below the cut.

[44-Tweet thread by @amandaknox

Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER

/ a thread

This new film by director Tom McCarthy, starring Matt Damon, is “loosely based” or “directly inspired by” the “Amanda Knox saga,” as Vanity Fair put in a for-profit article promoting a for-profit film, neither of which I am affiliated with.

I want to pause right here on that phrase: “the Amanda Knox saga.” What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No. It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede.

It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice. In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency.

Everyone else in that “saga” had more influence over events than I did. The erroneous focus on me by the authorities led to an erroneous focus on me by the press, which shaped how I was viewed. In prison, I had no control over my public image, no voice in my story.

This focus on me led many to complain that Meredith had been forgotten. But of course, who did they blame for that? Not the Italian authorities. Not the press. Me! Somehow it was my fault that the police and media focused on me at Meredith’s expense.

The result of this is that 15 years later, my name is the name associated with this tragic series of events, of which I had zero impact on. Meredith’s name is often left out, as is Rudy Guede’s. When he was released from prison recently, this was the NY Post headline. [Picture of headline reading “Man who killed Amanda Knox’s roommate freed on community service By Lee Brown December 6, 2020]

In the wake of #metoo, more people are coming to understand how power dynamics shape a story. Who had the power in the relationship between Bill Clinton and @MonicaLewinsky? The president or the intern?

I would love nothing more than for people to refer to the events in Perugia as “The murder of Meredith Kercher by Rudy Guede,” which would place me as the peripheral figure I should have been, the innocent roommate.

But I know that my wrongful conviction, and subsequent trials, became the story that people obsessed over. I know they’re going to call it the “Amanda Knox saga” into the future. That being the case, I have a few small requests.

Don’t blame me for the fact that others put the focus on me instead of Meredith. And when you refer to these events, understand that how you talk about it affects the people involved: Meredith’s family, my family, @Raffasolaries, and me.

Don’t do what @deadlinepete did when reviewing #STILLWATER for @deadline, referring to me as a convicted murderer while conveniently leaving out my acquittal. I asked him to correct it. No response. [Picture of text from his article reading “The 2007 case of Amanda Knox, the American convicted in an Italian court of murdering her roommate, was the impetus for writer-director Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater, but in the 10 years since beginning, abandoning and starting over, it has evolved into something much more - and much better.”]

And if you must refer to the “Amanda Knox saga” maybe don’t call it, as the @nytimes did in profiling Matt Damon, “the sordid Amanda Knox saga.” Sordid: morally vile. Not a great adjective to have placed next to your name. Repeat something often enough, and people believe it.

Now, #STILLWATER is by no means the first thing to rip off my story without my consent at the expense of my reputation. There was of course the terrible Lifetime @LMN movie that I sued them over, resulting in them cutting a dream sequence where I was depicted as killing Meredith.

A few years ago, there was the Fox series Proven Innocent (@InnocentOnFOX) which was developed and marketed as “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer?” The first I heard from the show’s makers was when they had the audacity to ask me to help them promote it on the eve of its debut. [Picture of text reading “During the panel, one TV critic wondered if the series sets out to imagine “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer.” as an exchange student, Knox became a headline when convicted in the murder of a fellow exchange student with whom she was sharing an apartment. Knox later was acquitted by the Italian equivalent of the Supreme Court. Strong acknowledged he’d said virtually the same thing when developing the series, after seeing a documentary about Knox on Netflix. This series is a “very fictionalized version of her story, obviously,” he said.”]

Malcolm Gladwell’s last book, Talking to Strangers, has a whole chapter analyzing my case. He reached out on the eve of publication to ask if he could use excerpts from my audiobook in his audiobook. He didn’t think to ask for an interview before forming his conclusions about me.

To his credit, Gladwell responded to my critiques over email, and was gracious enough to join me on my podcast, Labyrinths. [Link to the episode of her podcast with Gladwell]

I extend the same invitation to Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon, who I hope hear what I’m about to say about #STILLWATER

#STILLWATER was “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.” Director Tom McCarthy tells Vanity Fair, “he couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to be in Knox’s shoes.” ...But that didn’t inspire him to ask me how it felt to be in my shoes.

He became interested in the family dynamics of the “Amanda Knox saga.” “Who are the people that are visiting [her], and what are those relationships? Like, what’s the story around the story?” I have a lot to say about that, & would have told McCarthy... if he’d ever reached out.

“We decided, ‘Hey, let’s leave the Amanda Knox case behind,’“ McCarthy tells Vanity Fair. “But let me take this piece of the story - an American woman studying abroad involved in some kind of sensational crime and she ends up in jail - and fictionalize everything around it.”

Let me stop you right there. That story, my story, is not about an American woman studying abroad “involved in some kind of sensational crime.” It’s about an American woman NOT involved in a sensational crime, and yet wrongfully convicted.

And if you’re going to “leave the Amanda Knox case behind,” and “fictionalize everything around it,” maybe don’t use my name to promote it. You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind very well if every single review mentions me.

You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind when my face appears on profiles and articles about the film. [Picture of Vanity Fair headline “Stillwater: How much of Matt Damon’s New Movie Was Inspired by Amanda Knox? By Julie Miller” with a picture from the movie below and a picture of Amanda Knox superimposed over it.]

But, all this I mostly forgive. I get it. There’s money to be made, and you have no obligation to approach me. What I’m more bothered by is how this film, “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga, “fictionalizes” me and this story.

I was accused of being involved in a death orgy, a sex-game gone wrong, when I was nothing but platonic friends with Meredith. But the fictionalized me in #STILLWATER does have a sexual relationship with her murdered roommate.

In the film, the character based on me gives a tip to her father to help find the man who really killed her friend. Matt Damon tracks him down. This fictionalizing erases the corruption and ineptitude of the authorities.

What’s crazier is that, in reality, the authorities already had the killer in custody. He was convicted before my trial even began. They didn’t need to find him. And even so, they pressed on in persecuting me, because they didn’t want to admit they had been wrong.

McCarthy told Vanity Fair that “Stillwater’s ending was inspired not by the outcome of Knox’s case, but by the demands of the script he and his collaborators had created.” Cool, so I wonder, is the character based on me actually innocent?

Turns out, she asked the killer to help her get rid of her roommate. She didn’t mean for him to kill her, but her request indirectly led to the murder. How do you think that impacts my reputation?

I continue to be accused of “knowing something I’m not revealing,” of “having been involved somehow, even if I didn’t plunge the knife.” So Tom McCarthy’s fictionalized version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guilter version of me.

By fictionalizing away my innocence, my total lack of involvement, by erasing the role of the authorities in my wrongful conviction, McCarthy reinforces an image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person.

And with Matt Damon’s star power, both are sure to profit handsomely off of this fictionalization of “the Amanda Knox saga” that is sure to leave plenty of viewers wondering, “Maybe the real-life Amanda was involved somehow.”

Which brings me to my screenplay idea! It’s directly inspired by the life of Matt Damon. He’s an actor, celebrity, etc. Except I’m going to fictionalize everything around it, and the Damon-like character in my film is involved in a murder.

He didn’t plunge the knife per se, but he’s definitely at fault somehow. His name is Damien Matthews, and he starred in the Jackson Burne spy films. He works with Tim McClatchy, who’s a Harvey Weinstein type. It’s loosely based on reality. Shouldn’t bother Matt or Tom, right?

I joke, but of course, I understand that Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon have no moral obligation to consult me when profiting by telling a story that distorts my reputation in negative ways. And I reiterate my offer to interview them on Labyrinths.

I bet we could have a fascinating conversation about identity, and public perception, and who should get to exploit a name, face, and story that has entered the public imagination.

I never asked to become a public person. The Italian authorities and global media made that choice for me. And when I was acquitted and freed, the media and the public wouldn’t allow me to become a private citizen ever again.

I went back to school and fellow students photographed me surreptitiously, people who lived in my apartment building invented stories for the tabloids, I worked a minimum wage job at a used bookstore, only to be confronted by stalkers at the counter.

I was hounded by paparazzi, my story and trauma was (and is) endlessly recycled for entertainment, and in the process, I’ve been accused of shifting attention away from the memory of Meredith Kercher, of being a media whore.

I have not been allowed to return to the relative anonymity I had before Perugia. My only option is to sit idly by while others continue to distort my character, or fight to restore my good reputation that was wrongfully destroyed.

It’s an uphill battle. I probably won’t succeed. But I’ve been here before. I know what it’s like facing impossible odds.

If you’re on @Medium reader, you can find this all here: [link to article shared above]

[ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife]

MAG 020 - Desecrated Host (part 2)

Summary: Jonathan reads the second half of the statement of Father Edwin Burroughs, regarding “his claimed demonic possession.”

I’d like to propose an alternate title for this one: “Bartleby”. I couldn’t help but see the parallel between Bartleby the Scrivener’s “I would prefer not to” and Father Burroughs saying, “seeing those bound corpses before me, I made the decision to take no action ever again.” Ah, Burroughs! Ah, humanity!

I mentioned in my last post that this episode was very heavy in the “altered reality” theme. I’d like to amend that: this entire episode was one long, terrifying fever dream. I’ve never been high but I think this might be what a bad trip feels like.

Jonny Sims et al. really outdid themselves on this one though, in both the writing and the performance. So many episodes really suck you in (not literally, fortunately - we’re luckier than some of the characters that way) and grip you ’til the very end. But this was one of the best so far for that. We get more than standard descriptions of things - we get things like that small, whispered “it was bright...so bright” in Father Burroughs’ description of the “church” and the resounding, gonging bell sound accompanying the bell-speech Father Burroughs hears. You can almost feel his throbbing head and blurring vision, and at times it just feels so real.

But it wasn’t. At least, not in the way that we like to think of reality. Whatever an outside observer might have seen that night, this statement was Father Burroughs’ reality. We do know that at least some of this episode was real in the normal sense of the word though. There are snippets, like Father Singh’s reaction to seeing Father Burroughs in the small chapel, and Father Burroughs later seeing Father Singh in the hallway, that seem like they were part of objective reality. Was this slip between reality and the illusion just so that we, the audience, knew that it wasn’t real? Or was it because whatever was affecting him couldn’t keep an airtight grip on his senses? I’d like for it to be the latter, but I’m worried that’s not the case. I do not like how powerful this thing seems to be.

During the “confession”, “Father Singh” recounted all of Father Burroughs’ past sins...so this thing either actually knew about all of those events, or it made Father Burroughs imagine that “Father Singh” was naming all of his sins (a la the psychic paper in Doctor Who). Also disturbing was the detail about its accent during the “confession” - it had “a crisp and clipped RP accent”, as opposed to Father Singh’s Indian one. The change in accent made it obvious for us that it was not Father Singh speaking, but otherwise it just makes no sense to me. Was it unable to imitate Father Singh’s accent for some reason? That might fit if it’s the same thing that spoke in a “low, grating voice” to Laura Popham in episode 15. But those are the only two times (that I recall) that the person making the statement has noted a change in the person’s voice when that static appears.

There are two possibilities I’m seeing for how this thing operates. Either it’s little more than an illusionist, or it can actually alter reality itself. The first would certainly be easier to deal with, but I’m leaning towards the latter. My main reason for thinking that is not strictly things seen in this episode, but more how things in this episode seem to relate to things in the rest of the season so far. We hear that recurring creepy static/interference twice in this episode, once when Father Burroughs reads Genesis 4:14 (after opening his Bible to Luke, no less) and once when “Father Singh” says, “Spiritual pride that has led to quite a fall.” And of course we have another appearance of creepy eyes: “the church’s large round window shifted as I watched, as though it were a tremendous eye that were turning to focus upon me.” The eye and the staticky voice tie these events to many others from the first half of this season, including a few times when reality itself seems to have been affected, rather than just people’s perception of it.

There were two Bible passages referenced in this episode. The second was Mark 9:14-19, which appears to be a pretty straightforward reference to Father Burroughs’ situation, as that passage tells the story of a boy “who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech” (NIV). But the first, as mentioned in the paragraph above, was Genesis 4:14: “Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the Earth, and from they face shall I be hid. And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the Earth, and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.” And the writing around it seemed to swirl and was “obscured by dark stains”. This is obviously significant, given the static and the unexplained stains and the fact that this verse is actually quoted in the text (unlike the passage from Mark also in this episode, which was referenced but not quoted). But I can’t figure out the significance of this verse. Cain says the text of this verse to God after God banishes him for killing Abel. Cain is more or less saying that his punishment is too much to bear and that he fears for his life, presumably from others who will surely be angry about him killing Abel. The only possible parallel I can see between Cain and Father Burroughs is that they’re both cut off from God. If there’s anything more to this verse, I’m not getting it.

I’ve also been wondering about the various figures Father Burroughs sees throughout this hallucination. He sees shadowy figures along the street that “were always gone when I approached” - and then there were the parishioners in the pews at the “service”. Were the shadow figures the parishioners? Or were the shadow figures actual, real people, and his inability to reach them just a reflection of how trapped in this hallucination he was? And why did the parishioners come and go like that? Why were they leaving before the “service” was over? If they were real people then I think they had to have been members of the People’s Church of the Divine Host (episode 9). I just feel like there was something else going on at the “service” that Father Burroughs wasn’t privy to.

At the end of the episode, Jonathan calls attention to the man who met Father Burroughs at the Oratory door: “the altar server he described seems out of place with most of his other delusions, in that he appeared to have active agency.” We aren’t given much of a description of the “altar server” - he is tall, pale, and has thin, bony arms. None of that rings any particular bells (haha) to me, but I guess I’ll be on the lookout for a tall, pale guy with thin, bony arms. *shrugs*

“Cause of death was listed as blood loss from multiple lacerations all over their legs and torso, as well as removal of both their faces with a sharp blade, possibly a scalpel.” However, no tools or weapons were found at the scene, and “at no point did he perform any actions that might be analogous with the binding and actual murder of the students,” leading Jonathan to believe a second person was there. HMMM. I WONDER WHO THAT COULD HAVE BEEN.

The cause of death is very unusual, though, when you consider it from a real-world standpoint. It’s pretty easy to die of blood loss if, say, your carotid or jugular is cut. But lacerations on the legs and torso? Those lacerations would have to be extensive to cause fatal blood loss. It just doesn’t sit right with me - and it reminds me of another death we heard about previously. In episode 8, Ivo Lensik says his father was found dead in his study “with deep gouges along his wrists and arms”, and the coroner couldn’t identify the tool used on his arms. Robert Montauk (episode 9) also bled out, but that was after being stabbed 47 times, so it’s similar but not quite the same. The common threads I’m seeing in all three deaths are (a) cause of death being blood loss and (b) the idea that someone committed the murder who was not known to be there at the time.

Coincidentally, Father Burroughs was imprisoned at Wakefield Prison, the same place where Robert Montauk died a few years prior. I thought something might be up with that prison, so I did a quick search and apparently it’s a high-security prison for those who’ve committed crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, and kidnapping (Wikipedia). So there may not be any kind of supernatural connection there, but now I’m wondering if we’re going to get statements from or about anyone else in that prison.

One last observation. The sickly yellow color seen so many times in episode 18 made two appearances in this episode. Father Burroughs describes the parishioners at the “service” as having “fevered, jaundiced yellow” skin, and the stole that Mystery Altar Server gave Father Burroughs was “a pale, sickly yellow.” Oh, and that stole from Father Burroughs’ fever dream? An identical real one was delivered to the Oratory a few days prior to these events by Breekon and Hope Deliveries. And it must have been one of their last deliveries, since they liquidated some time in 2009, the year these events occurred.

Curiouser and curiouser...

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

[dearlazerbunny]

Lie to Me (Ch. 26 of 27)

Pairings: Loki x Reader

Genre/Ratings: M eventually (aiming for a slow burn here); warnings for kidnapping and subsequent anxiety/PTSD (will be marked before every chapter)

Words: 5100

Summary: If you had to guess what the captured, traitor, trickster god Loki Laufeyson wanted or needed at this moment, a babysitter would be far, far down on the list. (Set after the events of Avengers 1.)

SHOUTOUT TO @molmcb and @jessiejunebug, honorary deities of Asgard

Requested Tags: @deraniel, @iamverity,  @yasnooshka24, @wegingerangelica, @themusingsofmany , @dark-night-sky-99, @tarynkauai, @stuffandstuff-stuff, @angelicshinigami, @my-current-fandom-is, @geekysimmerthings,           @lokis-butter-knife, @help-i-need-a-social-life, @vodka-and-some-sass, @pandacookieowo

WARNINGS: here is the aforepromised and questionably okay smut? If you want to skip it, read to the asterisks, then scroll to the next set of asterisks and pick up from there.

In an instant, you have a gun aimed at the shadowy figure standing in your living room. “I suggest you back away very, very slowly.”

“Please do not shoot me again. It was not pleasant the first time.”

“Jesus- Loki?”

“I told you, he isn’t real.”

“And I told you you wouldn’t even know if he was,” you automatically reply, fumbling in the dark for the lamp switch. But really, you don’t even need to turn on the lights to know that it’s him. His voice will be engraved into you until the day you die.

He looks the same, surprisingly. Maybe a little more exhausted; a little more worn down. He’s in regular clothes, jeans and a tshirt, but the tshirt is in his characteristic green, which makes you smile. And then you stop smiling, because “…are you really here?”

“No dreams this time, Witling.”

Something breaks in you hearing your nickname sound so real for the first time in a year. In an instant, you’ve got your arms wrapped around his neck in a hug you expect to end very quickly and very awkwardly- but you can’t help yourself. To your surprise, strong arms cradle you and hold you just as tightly as you’re holding him. You take a chance and let your head tuck into the crook of his neck, and even though you’ve never been this close to him you’d swear on your life you’ve smelled this mix of spices and clean snow before. You can’t even begin to comprehend the feelings pounding through your chest, so you don’t- you just hold him, and let yourself be held, and Loki swears there isn’t a God but the simple fact that he’s hugging you right now makes you beg to differ.

“Um-” you pull away, and so does he, but not entirely. Your forehead is pressed against his shoulder while you try and catch your breath, and neither of you have let your arms move from each other’s waists. “Sorry.”

He nudges your chin up so that you’re looking him in the eyes. Beautiful, mesmerizing green eyes that are dancing like they have a life of their own. “Do not be.”

To keep yourself from throwing yourself at him again, you carefully extricate yourself from the… whatever this was… but you let your hand linger, so he knows you don’t really want to pull away at all. “It’s, um. It’s been a while.”

He breaths out a laugh. “So it has. Too long.”

“Does the Trickster have feelings after all? Is he really capable of missing the constant thorn in his side?” An extremely dramatic eye roll complements your teasing like nothing else.

Gently, he tugs you hand into his own, inspecting it like he might glean the secrets of the universe from its scars. Crescent moons dot your palms from your nails digging into the skin during various nightmares, and you have to bite back an apology. “I’m okay. I promise.”

He smiles ruefully. “God of Lies, love. You looked about as well in your dreams.”

“That really was you?”

He nods. “I am still not sure how,” he admits, “And I am not sure it made things easier to handle.”

You cringe a little at the thought of him seeing you like that, desperate and pathetic, but he soothes you by twining your fingers. “It is alright, darling. You did the best you could.”

“How are you here? What did Odin say? I thought-”

“I was banished,” he says simply. “Exiled. Per the Allfather’s decree I am never to return to Asgard or travel the Bifrost again.” He hesitates, like he doesn’t want to end his sentence there. Unspoken words hang between you.

“Is… is that all?” You venture, trying to coax the rest of the story out of him.

“Love?” You look at him. “Do not ask,” he says firmly. “Not… not right now.”

“But you will tell me someday.” He concedes to this with a nod

“So your mother- will you be able to see her? Or… Thor?”

His eyes flash, and you know you’ve touched a soft spot. “Not technically, no. But… we have our ways.” A few crackles of green energy lazily circle his fingers before winking out.

“You’ve got your magic back.”

“Indeed.”

“Lord help us.”

He snorts. “You have nothing to fear from me, Witling.”

“I’m well aware, but… SHIELD? The Avengers?”

“Have already been dealt with,” he says dismissively. “Apparently they have acquired some new magic users in my absence. In exchange for not being tossed to rot in a cell for millennia, I have agreed to train them.”

“That’s awful generous of you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “It was that or imprisonment.”

“As if they could really expect to hold you twice.”

“So much faith, darling.”

“More like cautious admiration.” You very much enjoy the way he lights up when he processes your words. “How long have you been on Earth then?”

“A few days.” A touch of your happiness melts. He’s been so close and you had no idea… “I very much wanted to see you, Witling. Make no mistake. But I-” he pauses, as if sorting his thoughts. “I had to make sure it would be a welcomed visit.”

“Are you crazy?” Now you do shove him away, if only to look at him better. “In what world would I not want to see you, Loki? The whole year-” you stop yourself before you say something stupid. He doesn’t need to know the small black hole that had opened within your chest in his absence. “Well. That was stupid of you.”

A smirk darts across his lips. “I appreciate the sentiment.”

“So what happens now? Are you- do you have a place to stay?”

“Somewhat. Stark is not exactly eager to house me in that monstrosity of a tower, but SHIELD has barracks…” you can hear what he’s not saying. Those barracks probably aren’t any better or any different than the cell they shoved him in for the better part of a year.

You look around your tiny apartment. Well, more like a room- the only part of it walled off is the bathroom, and technically the living room is also the bedroom. But- “I mean, I doubt it compares to Asgard. But you’re welcome here. As long as you need.”

“A dangerous thing to say.”

You scoff . “I’m not afraid of you, Trickster. And I know you’re not going to hurt me.”

He gives you a small smile. “You mistake me. If you let me stay, I may never want to leave.”

Your cheeks tinge a bit red at that. “Who says I would want you to?” You counter.

His laugh is the happiest you’ve ever heard, and could probably rival all the splendor of the entirety of the nine realms combined. “I did miss you, love,” he says, and the pure fondness in his voice- for you, that happiness in his voice is for you- makes you completely unafraid to reach up and place a hand on his chest and brush your lips against his.

Time seems to slow. Everything goes soft, and a little out of focus, and you try to ignore your heart, which suddenly seems intent on beating straight through your rib cage. Loki blinks at you, his lips still parted from your soft kiss, and despite everything a giggle burbles out of you. “The God of Silver Tongues, speechless. I must be in a very lot of trouble.”

“You have absolutely no idea,” he whispers in your ear, and a shiver barely has time to crawl its way down your spine before he takes your face in his hands and kisses you back.

He is gentle, and gives you time to pull away if you choose. You laugh a little at that, because you’ve waited a whole goddamn year for this stupid silver-tongue menace to waltz back into your life and you sure as hell aren’t going to let him get away again. So you do pull back, just a little, and whisper back, “You don’t need to be careful, love.”

His eyes flash, and a vague thought of oh, shit flits through your mind before the both of you connect as one, propriety and nerves be damned, two year’s worth of jesting and lingering glances and whispered promises in the dead of night begging to be let out. You think you do them justice, if you do say so yourself.

Somehow he tastes exactly like magic- effervescent, all consuming, and incredibly, indescribably intoxicating. His are lips made for enchantment, made for divination, for speaking stars into the sky- and he is kissing you as though you stand far higher than those enchantments and divinations and impossible things ever could. He kisses you like this is what he is made for, and all he’s ever wanted to do.

Your lips are nothing special. You can speak a few languages and tell a few jokes. You smile sometimes. They’re a little chapped. But now, you let them tell stories that would rival the epics of any ancient civilization. You let them say everything you never have, everything you never thought you’d get a chance to say. You hands snake around his neck and twist themselves into his hair, as though you’re afraid he’ll pull away just as quickly as he came.

Loki deepens your kiss, teasing you with things that are to come, but the unexpected weight makes you stumble a bit, and you have to bite back a curse. “Goddamn ankle,” you mutter, righting yourself against his body. “Sorry. It never really healed quite right…” He looks at you in surprise, green eyes still hazy with kisses. “It’s fine, I promise. Just annoying.”

“It most certainly is not fine.” In one swift move, he picks you up and then deposit you gently on your bed, where you blink at him. Loki kneels by your feet and inspects them, honing in on the ankle that’s a little more misshapen than the other. Slender fingers brush over it and glow a faint green, reducing the ache you’ve come to accept as permanent to nothing more than background noise.

You prop yourself up on your elbows to carefully flex your foot. The bones still grind against each other like they shouldn’t, but the pain is gone. “Wow. Thank you.”

He shakes his head. “It is not permanent. My skills do not extend to mending.” When he stands, he almost towers over you, and you sit up on the edge of the mattress so you don’t feel quite so small beneath him.

“You’re ridiculous. You literally saved my life, I can deal with a little pain.” Loki looks at you with soft eyes, making a bolt of warmth shoot through you. Then, very carefully, as though he’s been practicing the expression in a mirror, he wrinkles his nose in an approximation of your own quirk. Your habit on his face makes you grin like nothing else ever has, and in an instant you’re reaching for him- but your hands pause at the hem of his shirt. This is- he’s- he’s so close, and you’ve never touched him with purpose before, not like this. And you want to- god, you want to run your hands over his body and feel every single inch of him under your palms, map every twist and turn with your fingertips- but hesitation is turning your arms to stone. He’s a god. He’s a thousand years old; he’s had immortal beings in his bed alongside him. You had a couple trysts in college, sure, but a goddess you are not. There’s no possible way you could live up to any sort of expectations-

“You can touch, darling.” His voice is easy, gentle, chipping away at your sudden paralyzation. “If you want.”

“I-” I want to. I’ve wanted to for so long, but if I mess this up I don’t know-

“Stop this.” One of Loki’s fingers reaches out and taps you lightly on the forehead, and the wrinkles that have appeared there. “Whatever derision is running through that mind of yours, I can promise you it is completely unfounded.” He smooths a thumb over your temple fondly. “I am not the only one who dismisses my worth.”

Hs words give you the courage to let your hands rest lightly on his shirt’s hem, latching on to the soft fabric. His eyes are on you, refracting light into shades of green you’ve never seen before. Slowly, you let your fingertips slide underneath, just barely grazing against his torso. His skin is soft, and cool to the touch. You don’t have to wander far before you meet your first imperfection- a ridged scar that streaks over the soft parts of his hipbone. You pause, unsure if it’s forbidden territory, but Loki only smiles apologetically. “I am afraid I do not come without… defects.”

You know he isn’t just speaking of his scars. “Can I see?”

He seems to internally debate for a moment, but eventually sits down next to you, deftly tugging off his tee by the neck and revealing himself as one might rip off a bandage all in one go. As you take in his taught stomach, the muscles just peeking out from under his skin, and the old wounds crisscrossing every which way, he only looks at the fabric now puddled in his hands and not you. The sting of old rejections is fighting hard against the trust you’ve grown little by little, inch by inch.

You desperately want him to know you won’t abandon him. Not now. Not ever.

“Where did this come from?” You lightly trace the deep-set flaw that curves along his hip, not wanting to scare him away.

“Mmm, I believe that one was Sif.” There’s a faraway look on his face, one that you’ve come to recognize as his mind wandering to stories that played out long ago in a land far away. “She nearly eviscerated me after a lark of mine went particularly poorly.”

A smile touches your lips. Hell hath no fury. “And this one?” A swooping white arc decorates his left shoulder blade, cutting so low it crosses paths with his spine. It’s lighter than the rest- you can barely feel it- and if you closed your eyes you might not believe it was there at all.

“Training. Thor took a swing at me when my back was turned. We were young, and he cried when I bled.”

Standing out amongst the healed wounds are ones still purple at the edges, not yet faded into the poems of his skin. They are harsher, sharper- deliberately cut, and maliciously given. Just below his shoulder are thin parallel rings decorating his upper arm, too neatly aligned to be anything but intentional. When you explore these, he stiffens underneath your touch. You don’t have to ask where they came from.

Gently, you lean in to press a kiss to the mending scars, hoping to ease at least a little of the pain they’re causing their bearer. “None of us are flawless, Loki,” you murmur, resting your chin lightly on his shoulder. “They’re a part of you, and you’re beautiful, so they’re beautiful too. Wearing your story on your skin only means you’re strong enough to have lived to tell the tale.”

************************************************************

This time, you aren’t surprised when his lips find yours, because you’ve already met him halfway. It’s smoother, but no less insistent, and now you’re less afraid to take exactly what you want. You hands once again find their way into his hair, running your fingers through it from the roots just to mess up those infuriatingly perfect tresses. His own hands are winding their way into the hair at the nape of your neck, creating a heady sort of pressure. He pulls your bottom lip into his mouth, lightly running his tongue over it before biting ever so gently giving it a bite. Heat flares through you, and without thinking you tug hard at his scalp, wanting more.

Loki growls at your grip, a low rumble that echoes all the way through your chest. When you nip back, using your teeth to drag and release his lips from yours, the quiet noise of want that escapes him is enough to ratchet the heat you’re feeling up to ninety.

Your fear melts away with every brush of the hand, every small sigh, every moment where you have to pull away just to catch your breath and try to slow your racing heart. It’s a push and pull, give and take, learning each other in this new space where you can touch and taste and feel and revel in all of the above without worry. Because really, you know each other in every way but this- how hard can it be to translate?

He pulls you onto his lap, strong arms flexing at your waist as he settles you onto his thighs, and you hum appreciatively as you press your body to his, enjoying his bare skin underneath your hands. When he tugs at your shirt- and unspoken request- you don’t hesitate before pulling it off over your head. Loki, for his part, looks absolutely starstruck at the picture of you in his lap in your bra and jeans. You giggle, taking your time fiddling with the clasps behind your back, loving the wonder on his face as he takes you in. Just as your bra unclips, he hesitantly reaches up and undos a few pins from your bun, letting your hair tumble down onto your now bare chest.

“Beautiful,” he whispers, mapping out your own scars just as you did his own. Every touch and trace sends goosebumps down your spine, and you have half a mind to take his hands into your own and force them to stop being so careful.

“I won’t break,” you mumble, arching your back a little when he palms a particularly sensitive spot on your side.

“No, but you are something to be worshipped, and deserve to be admired as such.”

You huff out a laugh and press a not-quite-bruising kiss to his mouth. “Goddamn silver tongue.”

“Good for more than just pretty words, I can assure you.”

He twists and lowers you onto your back, nestling you amongst the blankets. Loki very much notices when the sudden chill makes your nipples perk and your stomach tighten. Making sure you’re comfortable, he lays himself next to you on one elbow so that you can still take in the curve of your hips and the rise an fall of your chest. “Are you alright? I do not mean to overstep my bounds-”

“No, nope, absolutely not. You do not get to kiss me like that and then back out on me.”

He grins a little wolfishly. “I am not reconsidering, love, believe me.” He smooths a hand over your lower belly, making you shiver. “I want nothing more. Only making sure my lady is willing.”

“More than.”

He hums, obviously pleased at the ache in your voice. “And have you ever…?”

You wrinkle your nose. “A few times, in college. But nothing… nothing that meant anything, I guess.”

“I see.” He leans down to kiss you softly, then wanders from your lips to your jawbone, then letting his words drip down into the hollow of your neck. Your head arcs to the side, giving him more room to play. “I suppose I shall have a lot to make up for, then.” His tongue darts out and flicks your earlobe, and when he pulls it in between his teeth and drags, all coherent though leaves your brain.

You tug on the loop of his pants, inviting him to lean on top of you. Your stomachs press together, the heat of your skin tempered by the coolness of his own, and the combination is heavenly. He’s hard; you can feel him through the fabric of his jeans, and that pressure against your thigh and hips makes you want to roll up into him. He continues his ministrations, kissing and nipping all the way down your neck and grazing his teeth over your collarbone. Completely lost, your eyes slip closed, and you don’t even notice his hand on your breast until he rolls your nipple between his fingertips.

You gasp, sharp pinpricks heightening every sensation. His mouth joins his fingers; his tongue alternating between teasing you gently and tracing rough patterns onto your skin. Everything in you is wound tight, hyper focused on every place he’s touching and your own labored breathing.

“I can’t- I need- christ, Loki, just-”

“What do you need, love? Tell me, and it shall be yours.”

“Touch me,” you get out. “Please.”

“May I?” His fingers drag underneath your waistband, and at your nod he quickly rids you of your jeans, letting every inch of you be revealed. You’re laid bare before him, and for a fleeting second you have a thought to be embarrassed before it’s banished by curious hands wandering lower to exactly where you want them.

He pulls you close, cradling you against him, supporting you as he begins to slip through your folds, sliding easily around your clit. You’re already so wet you’re aching, and his finger pushes into you so nicely it’s almost sinful.

“Oh, god-” It’s been years since anyone has touched you like this, but even back then it was never this sensational.

“You’re so beautiful, my dear,” he murmurs, his words making his actions even sweeter. “You have no idea how long I’ve dreamed of this. To be close to you, to feel you under my hands.” His ring finger joins his middle, stretching you wider. “I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted.’

‘You,” you breathe, tying to keep ahold of yourself. “That’s all I want.”

“Then you shall have me; tonight, and every night after. I am yours, as you are mine.”

You’re already working on the button of his pants. After a hasty suck of his fingers to clean them off, he helps you remove them, tossing them somewhere on the floor. His briefs are the next to go, giving you a spectacular view of his cock and exactly how much he wants you. It’s a dangerously heady feeling, knowing that you do this to him.

Experimentally, you grind your hips into his, and you’re rewarded with an absolutely delicious whine from the man on top of you, and Loki buries wet kisses into the crook of your neck, completely taken with the feeling of you beneath him. “This is what you do to me,” he says against your skin, and you turn to kiss the top of his head while letting your fingers trail down his back.

The constant friction is driving you mad. “God, I can’t-”

Loki lets himself linger above you, a small smirk on his lips. “Wrong deity, darling.”

You rise up to meet him for a kiss, not caring if your teeth clash against his. “Loki,” you say, intent on letting him feel his name as it falls from your mouth. “Loki fucking Laufeyson, would you just get on with it already.”

At that, he lines himself up with your center and rocks into you.

You tense. It’s good, it’s so good, but it also hurts- it’s been a while, and he’s stretching you so wide you have to grip at his shoulders for some kind of purchase.

He can see the hesitation on your face. “Darling? Am I hurting you?”

“No, no, just- slowly. Please.”

He drops a kiss to your lips. “Anything, my love.”

Carefully, he works himself inside you, letting you adjust little by little to the pressure. Eventually, as your grip on his shoulders lessens and the pain gives way to more and more pleasure, he begins to move, his hips setting an even pace that match the lazy kisses he’s placing anywhere he can reach. Your nails make an appearance, digging themselves into his side in effort to steady yourself. You’re sure you must be hurting him, but when your hand slips and rakes across his back, he snaps his hips so hard you gasp at the sudden fullness.

Loki’s attention never wavers from your eyes, your face- constantly watching, both for the pleasure of seeing you undone and to make sure he never pushes you too far. He said you deserve to be worshipped, and the way he’s treating you- so in tune with exactly what you need, cataloguing all the spots that make your breath hitch and your hips roll, never letting you go too long without a kiss- makes you feel more loved, more known, than you ever have in your life.

Ever so slightly, he begins to speed up, thrusting with more force, and moves one hand down to your clit to send additional warmth pooling to your core. You’re moaning now, filthy noises escaping your mouth, unable to do more than hold on and remind yourself to keep breathing as the heat spirals up and up and up-

“Loki- Loki I can’t-”

“It’s alright, love. I’ve got you.” You whine, an unspoken command to keep going- you’re so close- “You can let go.”

His name echoes in the small room as you crack apart, clenching around him until he’s all you can feel- his hands, his mouth, his hips, all of him inside you. Your own undoing seems to tip him over the edge, and nothing has ever made you feel so wanted as seeing every single one of Loki’s walls crumble as he loses himself inside you; crying your name in a language you don’t know as you find your pleasure in one another.

You bury your head in his neck, biting his shoulder with a groan as the two of you ride through the aftershocks. Loki’s fingerprints are branded onto your hip, and you’ve left marks on his neck and shoulder. You kiss each and every one. Sweet nothings of encouragement are whispered into your ear as the high recedes, leaving you with stuttering breath and shaky limbs. You can feel your face is flushed, and your hair is a mess behind you, and who knows how you look at this angle, but Loki’s small praises stay constant nonetheless.

A piece of hair is pushed from your forehead, and you open your eyes to see Loki gazing at you with nothing but love. “There, darling. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

“I know,” you whisper. Because Loki means home- he became that a long time ago- and seeing his eyes shine so honestly tells you he’s finally found his as well.

******************************************************************

In the end, you’re in your bed, legs tangled together, both you you trying to catch your breath. He hugs you to him protectively, possessively, with an arm wrapped around your back and anchoring you to his side. Your arm in turn is wrapped around his middle, feeling the rise and fall of his chest and the stuttering of his heart and taking vague pleasure in the fact that you’re the one who did that to him. You breathe, and you feel absolutely full somewhere in your chest, and the heat of your body plus the chill of his somehow melds together into perfect harmony.

“What are you writing?” You mumble against his neck, where your head has been tucked for however long you’ve been laying there. His elegant fingers have been tracing patterns onto your shoulder, soothing you into a hazy sort of comfortable.

“How did you know it was writing?”

“I may occasionally study ancient languages, strange as that may sound to you.” You’re rewarded with a laugh you can feel all the way down to the tips of your toes.

“This,” he says, marking a symbol carefully onto your skin, “is for protection.” His fingers glow faintly green in the dimness of the room. As one line fades away, another appears. “This means loved, roughly translated. And this,” he writes carefully, every touch deliberate, “is my sigil.” The last one almost stings a little as it works its way into your skin.

You shift a little, ignoring his little noise of protest, so you can look at him. “Did you just magick me, Trickster?”

“I would not, without your consent. Though a protection rune might make me feel better,” he admits softly, obviously not over the incident. Neither are you. But now you have him here, really here, to help you through the nightmares. “And I believe my name would look excellent on your skin,” he whispers to you, making you giggle to hide the hot streak of want that runs through you.

“Possessive much?”

“Mm. Forgive me; I do like seeing myself written on beautiful things.”

You scoff and roll your eyes. “You’re a god, Loki. You’ve seen things I can’t even imagine. And I know you’ve had plenty of other people,” you point out. “I highly doubt I measure up to any of them.”

“I will not lie.” You raise an eyebrow at him that seems to suggest that’s wise. “I have had others. Some after feasts and too much wine, some because they surprised me enough to attract my attention. Others simply because I was bored.” You try not to get too jealous, imagining others’ hands where yours just were. Loki seems to know what you’re thinking, and pacifies you with a kiss placed amongst your mussed hair. “But they were just people. They wanted me because of lust, or for power, or for the things I could give them. I would wager the nine realms that not a single one of them would have sat and read to me while I was hurting, or dared to challenge me when my temper got the best of me, or talked with me on opposite sides of a cell for months because they were genuinely interested in me. Not the prince. Not the god of mischief, not my silver tongue, or my magic. But me.”

“It sounds very lonely.”

“It was, but I did not realize it until a thousand years later.” There’s a sad resignation in his voice, and you tighten your arm around him. “You are something of a trickster yourself, my lady.” You look at him, confused, and then he graces you with the most beautiful smile you’ve ever seen, bar none. “I do not think I fell for you, darling. I think you tripped me.”

“You and your silver tongue,” you grumble, but you have a hard time kissing him on account of the own smile on your lips.

“I was afraid you might have become immune to it; I am pleased to see that is not the case.”

“I don’t think I ever could.”

“I do not ever intend for you to.”

You say nothing more, and neither does he, just continues his etchings of affection onto your shoulder as your eyes flutter closed, safe in the little world you’ve created for just the two of you. It’s almost like you can feel your soul and his intertwining, weaving together, a mortal and a god choosing each other over the universe itself. When he begins humming the faint strains of an Asgardian melody, ancient and warm, peace descends, a glow you’ve never known but can’t wait to claim as yours for as long as you possibly can have it.

A/N: I AM SO NERVOUS ABOUT THIS CHAPTER GOING UP BUT HERE IT IS ITS DONE ITS UP

Only the epilogue left now :”)

[rainbows-fanfics]

Two Dearest Friends (Chapter 26) ENDING

Summary:

Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, meets Sally, a ragdoll created by Dr. Finklestein. A friendship blossoms between them as he introduces her to the world outside of her tower. Sally is falling for him as their relationship grows into something more, and Jack finds the same is happening to him.

A story where the Christmas incident never happens, and Jack and Sally find their happiness on their own.

Pairings: Jack Skellington/Sally

--

Sally's life feels absolutely miserable. After that horrendous evening, she has experienced nothing but pain and suffering. It felt like something was ripped out of her when she saw Jack leave that day, and its absence has left a very cold feeling in her leaves. Like she is missing something crucially important to her functioning. She feels lonely and miserable, just like she was before she met the man of her screams. And now she remembers why she wanted so badly to leave this life - all of it is absolutely unbearable. She spent the next two days after the incident sobbing to her heart's content. She couldn't think or do much of anything - not with Igor lingering behind her, constantly watching her in her room. She hasn't had a moment's worth of privacy, as the assistant would follow her around the tower and constantly block the exits if she was in the near proximity of them. Sally has begged countless of times for him to let her go, to let her escape and see Jack again, but no matter how many times she's bribed him with bone biscuits, Igor was very strict to stick with Dr. Finklestein's orders. The man would even stay awake the whole night while she was left sleeping. She is very depressed. She hasn't felt happy ever since she saw Jack, and she misses him dearly. She knows, deep inside of her, that he's missing her, too. The most the ragdoll has seen of the skeleton is his small silhouette that rarely comes in his window from his observatory. She is only allowed to look through hers from a certain distance, but even her eyes could make out Jack's figure, and they would never leave it until she couldn't see it again. In those moments, she could feel the hope and happiness surface in her leaves - but they were ultimately temporary, as the moment those lights would go off, she'd feel very cold again. She is sitting on her bed now, her head in her hand looking sorrowfully at the ground, slowly kicking her dangling legs. Igor is across from her watching her intently with his one working eye. He is very close to her closed door for obvious reasons. Not that he should be concerned of her leaving - the last thing Sally wants to do is to see the Doctor's face. She'd rather be trapped up in her room than be around a man who crushed her hopes and dreams right before her eyes. "Funny how he wants to keep me here so badly when he rarely leaves that lab of his..." She mutters to herself.

Her eyes come up to the shorter, hunchbacked man, who remains quiet. He's rarely spoken to her, except the times where he'd inform her of the Doctor's orders or warn her not to leave. It seems that even Igor has changed into an emotionless robot, helping imprison her from the outside world...oh, what did she ever do to do deserve this? She thinks of everything that has happened, and remembers all the reasons why she can't be happy. This sadness overcomes her as she is swept into tears again, holding her hands over her eyes and attempting to cover her sobs through her fingers. Igor merely watches from the side, his posture loosening after witnessing her crying for what has to be the fifteenth time today. She then brings her head into her pillow, muffling her cries so she won't be shouted at again for making a ruckus. -------------- Dr. Finklestein is also not feeling very well. This is very strange to him, experiencing such negative emotions at what has to be a very positive moment in his death. He has finally finished something he has been frivolously working on for weeks! The end result came out better than he ever anticipated, and he was thrilled to show off his new creation. But then came the realization of what position he is in - he cannot show his King of his proud work, and he can't brag of his newly-improved ragdoll to Sally...that would only stir more trouble from the girl, and that was the last thing he wanted! Yet, he can't help but recognize the unfathomable sadness in him. He got very little pleasure out of his abrupt session with Jack Skellington, as much as he believed otherwise. He still can't get this sour taste out of his mouth, and every time his mind comes back to the boy, he feels very...guilty. This feeling is very new to him considering he previously thought nothing but positive of the man before Sally ever came into either of their deaths. Ever since then, things between them just became more and more...troubled. And as much as he'd like to continue blaming this on his creation, Finklestein understands that a part of it leaves himself to blame. It is because of him that his ragdoll has been crying endlessly for days now. It is because of him his assistant is away, constantly ensuring Sally will not escape. It is because of him The Pumpkin King can never set foot in his laboratory again. And it is is because of him the peaceful death he once had no longer exists, and is now replaced with a false image of a better one. He should be happy he made himself a new wife. He should be relieved that she will be much better than Sally. They will have much more in common sharing a brain, and she will willingly obey everything he says and wants. It is everything he ever wanted...just like he believed before. But he can't envision himself dying with this guilt - the twinge in his chest every time he passes by Sally's room and hears her cries, every time he looks out of the window and finds the Skellington Manor darker than usual, and every time he is left alone with his thoughts of his future. Dr. Finklestein observes the inanimate figure laying in his lab, bowing his large head to stare into his lap. He has many plans and hopes for this woman, but in order to accomplish them...he has to do something he doesn't exactly want to do. It is very different from what he initially planned, but this one will be better in every circumstance. At least, he believes it will. All he can hope is that it will work out, and that he can be given a second chance by those he has wronged in these past few days... ------------- The pale man heads into town, much to his own surprise. He already knows where to go and what his business will be, so he doesn't stop for anything on the streets. He doesn't think twice of the strange looks from the citizens who see him or the confused mumbles of the children he passes by. He is looking straight ahead, determined to get to the Town Hall and find Jack Skellington. ------------- Unbeknownst to anyone, the skeleton is dozing off from his work. He has, understandably, been doing this for awhile lately. Ever since his...visit to Finklestein's tower, his mind has been elsewhere. His spirits have been particularly crushed on the account of the events that happened there, and he hasn't had any nightmarish thoughts nor dreams since then. In fact, he'd confess to feeling downright miserable. His displeasure is very similar to how he felt before Sally came into his death. He feels disconnected from his work in every possibly way, and finds little meaning in it without the slight hope of being inspired by the woman he loves. The only person that has kept him on his feet with Halloween for these past couple of years... Jack managed to finish a few meetings with some citizens and politicians, and is sitting at his desk attempting to conclude the decisions made in their consultations. But he can't quite remember what was discussed from what was decided...whatever he writes down will find its way into Halloween this year, and he understands how important this is! But he just can't seem to focus...all he can think about is Sally, and he can feel is how weak his bones are getting. He's been fidgeting a lot more lately and he can't find anything in him to stop thinking about her. He hid himself in his mansion the rest of that evening...he spent a lot of his night laying in his bed, staring at his ceiling, and wondering to himself how things could have went so wrong. How he should've stood his ground more and prevent all of that from unfolding...he's done a lot of self-loathing these past few nights, but ultimately, he just felt very sad. He came very close to crying -- as close as a skeleton could come to shedding tears, that is -- but he had to use the last of his strength to keep himself from it. He can't let his facade down when he has to wear it every day for his people! That was the best thing about Sally... He thinks to himself, the frown deepening on his lips. I never had to do that around her... His thoughts are interrupted when the door to the room opens, and he stands in his chair believing it's his next scheduled meeting. But then he finds the pale face of Dr. Finklestein peeking inside, and that beckons him right away to sit back down. In this second, he wonders to himself how professional he should be - the Doctor couldn't have come here on his own wish, so it must be something formal that urged him here. He should act as his Kingly self if that's all Finklestein saw out of him. Instead, the spite manages to leave his mouth. "-Come to throw more books at me, Doctor?" The man across from him clears his throat as he slowly brings the rest of himself into the room, shutting the door behind him and approaching his desk. Jack doesn't bother to look at him in this time, pretending to actually work for once. He can't bring himself to look that man in the eye after what was said. He can actually feel himself getting hotter in his presence - feeling the similar rage that had come from that fateful day...The skeleton clenches his fists to stop himself from doing anything rash so soon. Finklestein's tone is serious, "I know I didn't inform you of my appearance, Jack, but...I really need to talk to you." This fails to get the skeleton's attention. He keeps his focus on his work while scribbling away with his pencil. "I doubt anything you say will be of any importance to me." "It's about Sally." Oh. "She's not doing so well...I'm sure you can understand why." He rubs the back of his large head and takes a deep breath. "Jack, I'm sorry for what I said, that day..." The expression on his skull shows his disbelief. The Doctor catches on and waves a hand in the air. "I know you might think I'm dishonest about this, but believe me...it isn't good to hear her crying every night. And every time I pass by her room...It's rather bothersome, actually." He flinches at this information. Has she really been crying that much? "What I came all this way to say was...I understand how rash I was. I refused to listen to anything you said because I believed I was right. I did think Sally was entitled to marrying me because I created her, and everything you said I did...they were all awful to do. I didn't realize how bad these things were until it was shoved right back into my face. And I just wanted to say...you were right of it all. I shouldn't have done what I did." He arches an eye socket. Finklestein catches this and looks away. "I understand if you don't forgive me for my behavior...but I want you to know, Skellington, that I've been thinking a lot ever since our fight. I regret everything about it. You're an old friend of mine, and to risk our friendship over something like this just seems foolish. To lose the respect I had for you over a woman seems so senseless. But that was exactly what I did - and it was a very poor decision on my part." Jack takes in these words, but he doesn't believe them. The Doctor is naturally stubborn and hard to change in opinion; for him to suddenly change his views and apologize for his rash actions in only a few days seems impossible, if not caused by something else. The skeleton leans forward in his seat, wondering what could have possibly gotten the Doctor to change his mind. Finklestein takes this a cue to continue. "I especially apologize for the anger I took on you. I was just frustrated with Sally, you see, and after seeing the two of you-" "-I'm not the one you should be saying sorry to." The skeleton cuts him off. "You owe Sally an apology for what you said to her. She's the one you should be speaking to. Not me." The shorter man stiffens in his seat. He sighs in defeat, resting his hands in his lap. "Well...yes, I suppose you're right. I just didn't think...after what happened-" He seems to be struggling with his words and decides to change topic. "The truth is, there's another reason I came...I finished my project-" "And why is that important to me?" "I built myself a new wife. I am going to share half of my brain with her, and after today, she will be brought to life and will finally become apart of my death." The confusion on Jack's face is apparent. He attempts to make sense of his words. "What? A wife? You mean you-" "Built her from scratch! I based her more off of myself, so we should have a lot in common. We'll have enlightening discussions that I think will be most pleasurable." He smiles for a moment before realizing their situation. "I was going to come in a few days from now and ask for your signature on a proper marriage certificate. I will be more than happy to introduce-" "I can't believe this." He gawks at him. "You...you replaced Sally? Just like that?" The Doctor grits his teeth. "Ah, yes...that's another thing I came in here for." He clears his throat again. "I plan for my precious wife to live with me in my tower, but we only have 2 bedrooms...Igor and I will move her things into Sally's room, and she will have to go someplace else." "But where would she go?" He sounds frantic at this point. He can't help it. "You wouldn't just kick her onto the streets, would you?" "That's what I came to you for, my boy...You see, I was wondering if you'd let Sally live with you?" Things suddenly go very quiet in Jack's nonexistent ears. He pounds the side of his skull until he can hear the Doctor talking again. Sally...living with him?? He doesn't know what to- "I only ask because I know it's the best for her. She adores you, and I've only seen her happy when she's around you. I have no doubt that you will take better care of her than I ever could. You've proven to me just how much you care for that girl, and I believe that you truly love her. I may have doubted it before, but after seeing how hurt she is...I know it's true, now." The Pumpkin king is speechless. He is still mesmerized at the idea of sharing his house with another person. For most of his death, he's only shared it with Zero. He's used to the rooms being so barren and empty except when he was in them, and only expecting the bark of his dog when he announced himself home. To think of all of these otherwise...having Sally around him more, seeing her so frequently instead of sparingly, hearing her voice every morning and every night and getting to share things with her...he couldn't imagine anything better. As if this was what he truly needed all along... The Doctor awaits his response, but he doesn't need to wait long until the skeleton nods. Relief washes over the scientist, and he eagerly leans over the desk to offer his small hand to the skeleton. Jack hesitates before taking it, and they both exchange a respectable handshake. As the two make eye contact, a smile finally grows on both of their lips. ---------------- Sally has spent all day crying into her bed. She doesn't even remember when she began or when her tears became dry, but she found nothing in her to stop. Even when there was nothing else to shed, she still hiccuped into her pillow and whimpered for as long as she could. Fate seems to want to keep her here, and she can at least show her displeasure by expressing how miserable she feels. There is no reason for her to leave her room so giddy or do whatever the Doctor wants of her. She's stuck in this cell of a prison, and there seems to be no escape... In the midst of these depressing thoughts comes a knock on her door. Igor quickly comes to it and checks for who is behind, and makes a surprised but pleased noise. He disappears behind the door without another word, causing the ragdoll to sit up in her bed in confusion. The door is then slowly pushed open, revealing three figures from the other side. But one in particular comes close to the door, and enters her room as soon as it is available. Sally can't believe what she is seeing. Jack Skellington looks at her, then opens his arms. "Hello, Sally." "J-Jack?" She pinches herself very quickly to check if she is dreaming. He smiles at her, and it's then she knows this is real. She jumps out from her bed in under a second and goes into the skeleton's arms, hugging him tightly and bringing her head into his chest. His arms wrap around her figure as he holds her close, and she absorbs everything about his presence. Her leaves grow warm at his scent, his touch, his voice...she feels completely at ease being in his arms, and forgets all about her tears that have been falling for hours. "Wh-what are you do-doing here...?" She asks quietly. Jack looks over at the doorway, and when she follows his gaze, she finds Dr. Finklestein and Igor watching them from the side. The Doctor is the one to explain. She notices how hesitant he sounds. Very unusual for him. "Jack here is going to...take you somewhere, my dear." "Take me somewhere?" She repeats, looking between them and squinting her eyes suspiciously. "But...But I thought-" "-No need to waste your time! You better go off with him before he changes his mind!" Sally wants to ask more about this. To know why everything suddenly changed, and why she is no longer restricted from the man she is holding. Jack looks down at her and squeezes her hand, then slowly takes her and leads her out from her room. The Doctor and Igor wave to them as they climb down the ramps, and neither of them are stopped as they leave through the door. The ragdoll says nothing as she is assisted down the stairs, but as soon as they are far away from the tower, she turns to the taller man and begins asking the questions that have been killing her. "Jack, I thought the Doctor didn't want you around! He said you couldn't come back, and I-" "I know, I know. I thought so, too." The skeleton replies hastily, looking around a few times. "Let's, ah, go to the Graveyard! It's been quite some time since we've been there, hasn't it?" She stares at him without any words, feeling confused and lost. The skeleton takes her silence as a 'yes' and begins leading her to their favorite place. She can't help but smile the moment they're wrapped in the fog and find the Spiral Hill sitting in its proper place. She's even greeted by Zero, who happily jumps out from his grave and rubs his muzzle on the side of her face. He gives her a happy lick of the cheek before barking his greeting, and she laughs as she pets his head. "Aw, Zero! It's so nice to see you...how I've missed you..." The dog relaxes in her touch and allows her to kiss the top of his head. He barks a couple of times before getting ahead of them and waiting at the top of the hill. Jack naturally leads the two of them on the top, and sets them both down carefully in their usual spots. Sally refuses to let go of his hand as she settles herself down, using her other hand to pet Zero. They both relax in the peacefulness and quiet atmosphere of the Graveyard, neither of them saying anything. Eventually, the curiosity starts to hurt her. She turns to her beloved and frowns. "Jack, I-I'm so confused...what's happening?" "Everything's alright, I assure you." He lowers her hand and rubs the top of it slowly. "I'm here now. There's no reason to worry." "I'm not. I'm very happy." She brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear. "I'm just...confused. As to how this happened." "I don't intend on leaving you in the dark, my dear." He runs his hand through her hair, sitting himself closer to her. "Earlier today, I had a visit from someone in my office....apologizing for what he said a few days ago, and throwing books at me." "Really? The Doctor came to you and...apologized?" "Mm. I was just as confused as you. But he apologized for everything and said I could see you again. I didn't want to wait a moment further. I left right away to come and see you. And may I say...this is the happiest I've been all week!" He lays a kiss on the top of her hand. She smiles and curls her fingers on her cheek. "Jack, that's so sweet...I'm glad you came. I didn't think the Doctor would apologize...he's never said he's wrong about anything before!" "Well, there's a reason he came to me, besides saying he was worry." Something in Sally tingles as Jack bites his lip. "He also told me he finished that project of his. He finally told me what it was, but the thing about it is, well-" "You know? I've been dying to hear what it is!" The ragdoll exclaims and leans forward. "What did he make?" "Sally-" This is harder than I thought... "He...he replaced you." The smile falls from her face. Softly, she asks, "What?" "I don't know a better way to put it." He sighs. "He made himself a new wife. One he'd share his brain with. She was built to be an...an 'improvement' of you, for him...and he's going to marry her in a few days. He wanted me to tell you." Her voice comes out in squeaks. "But, but if he's replacing me...what am I going to do...?" He can hear her sniffling and brings her into an embrace. She holds him and buries her head into his shoulder, where he can feel the tears start to moisten his suit. He allows her to cry for as long as she needs, rubbing her back in consolation and whispering gently in her ear that everything is going to be alright this time. He feels her nod slightly as he tells her these things, but the tears continue to fall. He has a feeling she already knows what this means, but it feels especially hard for him to say it. Eventually, she pulls away. When he finds how moist her eyes are, he rubs the side of her cheek as she leans into his touch. She looks worried now, and he feels guilty for putting it so abruptly like this. Another part of him is starting to grow nervous at the idea of this - wondering if Sally will reject the idea of living with him. He doesn't know what he'll do if that was the case. Surely he'll find somewhere for her to live - but he dearly wishes, more than anything, that she'll want to leave Finklestein and come with him... "What he's essentially doing is...making you move out. To make room for his new wife. He wants to put her in your old room, meaning you'll have to leave." This hurts her down to her core. He can just see it in her eyes. "What? But-but he wouldn't-" His grip on her hand tightens. This is getting harder for him by the minute. It's difficult just getting these words out off his tongue! "It's why he didn't tell you what he was working on. He didn't want you to know he was replacing you until she was finished. I don't know why that is, but-" "Where will I go...? Jack, I-I don't know what to-" She places a hand over her mouth, whimpering slightly. "I know I've said I always wanted this, but...but I....I just..." She begins to shake, having to hold onto his arm to keep herself steady. He decides to move her into his lap now, facing her towards him so she can rest her head on his chest. She does exactly this and brings her arms around his neck, crying a little more in his shoulder. He continues to rock her gently and trails his fingers through the ends of her yarn hair, staring at the ground and inwardly wishing he hadn't been the one to break this awful news to her. But he was a much better choice than the Doctor - he can at least offer her comfort and assurance, and even more than that... "I promised you everything would be okay. And I don't intend on changing that." He tells her softly. "Sally, I was wondering...after learning about all of this...is if you'd like to come and live with me?" She stiffens in his grip. Hearing her lack of response, and panicking slightly, he continues on: "The Doctor was the one who suggested it, but I think it's a great idea...you've always wanted to leave him, and I can give you everything you need. I have plenty of bedrooms, I've got everything to take care of you, and you'll be in better hands. I won't do the things he did to you and you won't be forced to do anything anymore so long as you're with me. I'll make sure you're happy and you're healthy, and I...I'll do anything for you." It's now that she relaxes, her eyelashes fluttering against his undershirt. "Oh, Jack...do I really deserve all of that?"" "After all you've been through, you deserve everything. And I can give you all of that." He can feel her clutching at his back. "-What do you say?" She pulls back to look at him, batting her eyes with a smile. "It's like you're offering me the whole world right now..." She keeps him on edge for a few moments before grinning. "Nothing would make me happier!" He returns the grin, absolutely delighted at her answer, and leans in closer to her face. She takes this cue and does the favor by initiating their kiss, pressing her lips eagerly against his and bringing her hand to the back of his skull to pull him down. Jack savors this moment by bringing his own hands to the back of her head, resting himself against her. He's elated having her in his arms again and kissing her - he hasn't wanted anything more these past few days. As for Sally, she can feel the tears falling from her eyes as she kisses him - tears of joy at the news that she will now have a new home, and it's going to be with the man she loves. --------- "Is this everything?" Sally turns her head when she hears Jack's voice, and after finding the box that contains her trustworthy sewing machine in his hands, she gives him a firm nod. He gently places it down with the rest of them in the doorway, leaning upwards to crack his back. She returns to what she had been doing before, taking one last look through her window. Her eyes are transfixed on Jack's mansion from afar, still in disbelief that she's going to be living there from now on. In a few minutes from now, they'll begin bringing her possessions in there, and she'll be standing in the Skellington Manor again. Someplace she hasn't set foot in for a very long time...yet she can still remember everything she saw in there. The taller figure joins her side, resting his hands behind his back and sharing her view. She turns to see what he is looking at and notices that his gaze is also in the direction of his home. Then he glances at everything else she could normally see - the town center, the edges of the Outskirts, and the place where the Band usually settles. He doesn't have much expression looking at these things, unlike her....she knows this is the last time she's going to see it. This was the only part of her life here she recalled liking - looking out of her window and daydreaming of a better world outside. "This was a lovely view," He tells her. "I know," She replies, still staring at his home. He turns to observe the troubled frown growing on her lips. "Is something the matter? It looks like something's on your mind." "There's a lot on it right now." She sighs. "You don't know how happy I am to be leaving. It's everything I ever wanted. But the only reason I am is because the Doctor replaced me. I've always wanted to leave, but I never realized how unwanted I was here...Things are going to be better after I'm gone." "Of course it will be better. You're not going to be stuck with the man who tried to force you into marriage and trapped you here." He places his hand on her shoulder. "-Things are going to be a lot better for you, and I think that's what's most important here. It doesn't matter what death he's going to have after you're gone - I think he'll realize what a mistake it was taking you for granted." She smiles before a look of hesitation comes on her face. "Jack...you don't think we're moving too quickly, do you? We've only been together for a few months now, and starting today I'll be living with you even though the town still doesn't know about us." The Pumpkin King takes in her words and contemplates it for a moment. He wouldn't have imagined himself helping Sally move in with him today, nor would he have predicted the Doctor suddenly tossing her out so soon. The idea of living with her hadn't even occurred to him until Finklestein mentioned it. He was far too occupied with wondering how to reveal the news of them as it is. But once he accepted it, it hasn't felt anything but natural to him. Nothing seems sudden, just acting on hidden impulses more than anything. He wasn't aware of the desire to want her around more until the opportunity presented itself. And he wasn't going to let that slip away, no matter how unexpected it is. "Well, you and I have known each other for a few years now. It's not like we're complete strangers still getting to know each other." He chuckles. "But if anything seems sudden to you, you can tell me. I can always-" "No, no this is perfect to me. I was just hoping you'd say the same thing." She gives him a kiss before looking at her things right by the door. She doesn't have very much to take with her. The most she has are the dresses and clothes she's made, as well as her sewing machine. Other than those, she really has no valuables she wants to bring. She doesn't want anything that will remind her of this old place. With a confident smile, she takes the box with the clothes while Jack grabs the one with the sewing machine, accompanying her down the ramps so they can finally get things over with and leave. They are, however, stopped when Igor comes tromping over to meet with them. He gazes curiously at the boxes in their hands before stepping to the side, giddily looking at the laboratory. They follow his view and find Dr. Finklestein coming out, much to the dismay of Sally. But then he is joined by a taller figure - his new creation. She bears an uncanny resemblance to the Doctor, except she is wearing makeup and has blonde hair with a complimenting swirl to the side. Around her neck is faux fur and an orange pearl necklace, accompanied by similar-looking bracelets around both of her gloved wrists. She wears a plan green dress but from this angle, Sally could see the stitch patterns along her skin. She wheels him into the room looking at Jack and Sally eagerly while the Doctor rubs his hands together in excitement. He holds a hand up seeing how close they are to the door. "-Before you two leave, may I at least introduce you to my new creation?" The skeleton looks at his girlfriend for approval, who hesitantly nods while discreetly showing the displeasure on her face. The aforementioned creation removes herself from behind Dr. Finklestein and presents herself to them. She happens to trip the moment she's in front of them, and Igor comes right away to help steady her. She looks up at them and blinks apologetically, revealing her gray eyes from under her curled eyelashes. "I'm sorry...I am still learning how to walk." Her voice is very feminine and a little soft. Sally is too busy gawking at her, so Jack takes the chance to speak. "That is quite alright. It's nice to meet you..." The creation looks at Dr. Finklestein, who perks up in his seat and answers for her. "-Jewel! I have named her my precious Jewel." "It's nice to meet you, Jewel." He finishes properly, moving in front of her to offer her his hand. "I'm-" "-Jack Skellington!" She finishes excitedly, shaking his hand numerous times. "Yes, I know a lot about you! You're the Pumpkin King, and you rule the town!" "That's right." He can't help but notice something airy about her. "On behalf of myself and my people, I'd like to welcome you to Halloween Town. I hope you're going to enjoy it here." She thanks him with the bow of her head, then skips over to Sally, who has remained quiet until this point. Jewel looks her up-and-down before greeting her with a shy wave, clutching her gloved hands together and jumping slightly in enthusiasm. She certainly seems cheerful. "You must be Sally! I've always wanted to meet you. The Doctor has told me a lot of things about you." She hesitates before offering her hand. "I'm Jewel..." The ragdoll looks at her hand before slowly taking it, where they both shake it once. Jewel lets go and rubs the side of her arm. "It's unfortunate to hear you're leaving so soon...I really wanted to get to know you." She doesn't know what to say. "Oh...um, thank you. I guess I...wanted to know you, too." "That's enough, my dear." Dr. Finklestein beckons Jewel back, who happily skips back over to him. He turns to Jack and Sally and allows his creation to wheel him to them. "I suppose this is goodbye, Sally..." "I suppose it is," She replies, holding her head high. "..." "..." "I, eh, I'm sorry for what I put you through while you were here. I understand there are many reasons why you may never come back, but...just understand that you're welcome anytime you'd like. Jewel here may be taking over, but that isn't a reason I can't see you again." Sally doesn't say anything to him. Instead, she turns to Jack and says, "I think I'm ready to go." The disappointment can be seen in the Doctor's posture, but no one pays attention to it. Jack bids their farewells before leading Sally outside. After the door closes behind them, it's very quiet in Finklestein's Tower. Jewel looks over at her promised-husband to find he is still staring in the direction they left, a frown left on his lips. She leans down to pat his head once or twice before disappearing back in his lab with Igor following behind. --------------- Their walk to Jack's house is tense and quiet for the first few minutes. She doesn't understand why he decides to go the long route and lead them through the Outskirts longer than necessary, but she doesn't want to pry. Sally is still caught up in what has happened, and she can't stop thinking about it. This is the most free she has ever felt, no longer under the chains of Dr. Finklestein. But leaving her past life is more difficult than she anticipated. This is exactly why the skeleton chose to take the longer way, wishing to speak to her. Wanting to make sure she's okay with this transition - supporting her every step of the way. He understands meeting Jewel was a big deal, and seeing the way she acted and what she said to Sally might be affecting her more than she is leading on. Jack shuffles the box into his other hand and turns to the ragdoll with a smile. "Jewel seemed nice," He comments aloud. "I think she got the better half of the Doctor's brain." She nods along. "Yeah. I wasn't expecting her to...say that." "I wonder what will happen to the Doctor having someone like her around." He taps his lip in thought. "Maybe she'll help him become better?" "I don't know what to think of him anymore. I'd rather not think of him at all." He respects this and remains quiet for a few minutes. But in this silence, she begins to feel guilty. Guilty of focusing so much on the Doctor and how he's impacted her life when everything better is coming her way. She has the man she loves helping her move on and welcome her into his own home. She should at least show him how thankful and appreciative she is, because nothing more could make her happier right now. "When I first met you, Jack, I...I wouldn't have imagined anything like this. Falling in love with you, us courting, and you asking me to move in...Sometimes it still feels like I'm dreaming because every part of this feels too good for me. All it took was being with you for a few years and some months, but I know this is something I want dearly. I'm always happy around you, and I know this will make me happy, too. I just..." She shuffles the box in her hands. "-I just wanted to thank you for letting me have this." He lays a skeletal hand over his chest, his eye sockets filled with emotion. "Oh, Sally...those are such sweet words. Really, I should be thanking you. I didn't expect any of this, either, but it's...you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. I didn't think you'd agree to this, but I'm ecstatic that you did. I want this just as much as you do." She tears up slightly, quickly wiping one away before any more can fall. "You mean it?" "Absolutely. Having you much closer to me...with me every day...I couldn't ask for more! And you know what? You risked a lot with what you had. If you hadn't ever left that tower, I wouldn't have gotten to know you. And that sounds like a true nightmare to me." He reaches for her hand and holds it delicately in his own. "I love you, Sally. And from now on, I'm going to be taking good care of you. I won't do anything the Doctor did to you." Now she allows her tears to fall. She can't help it - they're out of pure joy. "I trust you, Jack...I believe you...no man would ever treat me better than you. And I love you, too. I'm just...so happy..." As if there was nothing else to this situation that could make Sally happier, the sight of Jack's mansion comes into view. It's sitting in all its glory on its high foundation. It's then this truly feels like a dream to her - the steps she takes on the stairs, the helpful, guiding hand of Jack's held in her own, and the awe-inspiring sight when the doors open all feel unreal to her. The moment she's inside and Jack closes the door behind her, Sally already knows this life is going to be more than everything she's ever dreamed of. She turns to Jack and grins the widest she's ever grinned, then runs towards him to hug him tightly. Without any warning, she interlocks her lips with Jack's, and they both share their first passionate kiss inside their home together. THE END ... ... ... ...To Be Continued?

[strawberry-skies-xx]

fic recs

time to make a post about every single amazing fic I’ve read! it’s gonna be a longass post so get ready!

fandoms, ships and tropes included:

Supernatural - Destiel (mostly AUs), Wincest, Sastiel, Sabriel, Sam x Ruby, Sam x Reader // omegaverse / boyking!Sam / God!Sam

BBC Sherlock - Johnlock, Sherlock x Molly Hooper x John and included pairings, Sherlock x Mycroft x Greg x John and all included pairings // omegaverse

Loki - Loki/OC

***this entire list has NSFW fics***

SUPERNATURAL

God!Sam, no ships

The Holy Grail Bird by de_nugis for monicawoe

The God-gun has a divine recoil effect. Sam has to have another try at living with power.

...

Boyking!Sam, no ships

The King’s Guard by monicawoe

Andy had spent the last few hours watching Sam Winchester —King of Hell, God of the Abyss, Bane of Heaven— kill nearly two dozen souls, and feed them all to his pet — the biggest, scariest looking hellhound of them all.

...

Destiel

Twist and Shout by standbyme, gabriel

What begins as a transforming love between Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak in the summer of 1965 quickly derails into something far more tumultuous when Dean is drafted in the Vietnam War. Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea.

...

Blades of Silver, Hearts of Gold by Scribo_Vivere

Corsair Winchester is the most feared pirate in the Caribbean waters. When he makes it his goal to attack the Pride of Heaven, a massive ship that is part of Port Lawrence's Naval fleet, he finds himself ill-prepared in every way to come face to face with Commodore Castiel Novak, the brother of the man he wishes dead. It seems an easy solution to take the Commodore captive, but Castiel's ocean-blue eyes, kissable mouth, and fiery defiance make Winchester begin to question his choice. As a war ensues on all fronts, it remains to be seen who is the prisoner, who is the master, and how far both men will go in the name of prudence, sacrifice, and love.

...

Ninety One Whiskey by komodobits

In the spring of 1944, the 104th Medical Battalion of the United States Army is disbanded, and its men reassigned to various infantry companies in preparation for their invasion of occupied France. For First Lieutenant Novak, this is less than helpful, as he has so far met his platoon’s designated medic a grand total of twice, and has both times found Sergeant Winchester to be the optimum combination of reckless, arrogant, and downright insufferable so as to make cohesive platoon function near impossible. When the time comes to move out, however, Castiel has to reconcile himself to the fact that men are going to go down and trust that Dean Winchester may well be the only person who can put them back together again.

...

Steps by Camerahead12

The moment he saw Dean Winchester dance Castiel knew he was lost.

It wasn’t the way his muscles moved as he leapt across the floor, or even the way the sweat dripped down the man’s freckled skin. It was just simply the way he danced. The passion that bled out from the movements left him breathless and thirsty for more.

And when he danced with Dean that first time, it was like falling in love.

Little did he know that falling for the man would lead to questioning everything Castiel has ever stood for. As the deadline for the studios yearly performance draws closer, will Castiel be able to come up with an idea good enough to save his company? Or will it be too late to pull it away from Crowley, his money hungry investor’s hands?

As everything begins to slowly fall into place, Fate (as She usually does) has other ideas. Just when life seems to be working out, not only will their trust in each other be tested, but their strength they’ve discovered within themselves starts to bend. Will they be able to hold it together before it snaps, leaving nothing but broken dreams in its place?

...

Find Me in the Light by allmystars

Castiel is fine with his life. Really, he is. He’s content with the locals and his prying, if well-meaning, business partner and brother. Everything is just...fine. That’s how he likes it—plain and uneventful.

Until Gabriel hires Dean Winchester to work at the cafe and, suddenly, Castiel's carefully crafted isolation is broken apart like the waves that stole his mother from him, and Castiel hates him for it.

He hates Dean’s attitude—hates his car and his stupidly pretty face with that permanent smirk. He just...hates Dean Winchester.

Until he doesn’t.

Until, somehow, Dean manages to weasel his way into Castiel’s heart and take up permanent residence there. Then Castiel isn’t fine—he’s far from it, actually. He’s great—wonderful and perfect and happy.

But things change—nothing is ever-present—and this loss might kill him. It might just tear Castiel apart. After all, how do you lose something you’ve been searching for your whole life, and survive it? How do you do that?

Castiel doesn’t think he can.

...

Of Twists and Turns by Kitmistry, Piento

When naval surgeon Castiel Novak is captured by the Black Impala pirates, he has no choice but to agree to their terms: He is to serve on their ship for a whole year before they release him. That doesn’t mean he is going to like it, though. Especially when their captain is the embodiment of everything Castiel despises.

Determined to earn his freedom, Castiel settles into the life of an outlaw. When the pirates’ true goal is revealed, though, he can no longer deny that things are not as black and white as he thought they were. And he can’t deny how drawn he is to Captain Winchester either.

...

Sabriel

Fifty Shades of Freedom by Aria_Lerendeair  (omegaverse fic)

Gabriel Novak is a Class-A Alpha asshole and Sam Winchester wants nothing to do with him, especially after that interview! Except then, he maybe finds out a few things about Gabriel Novak that make him hate him a little less, and hey, maybe some of that bondage stuff sounds interesting…

Golden Shades of Freedom by Aria_Lerendeair (PART 2)

After the world finds out about their relationship, Sam settles into something semi-normal, with Gabriel. The paparazzi are desperate for something, but Sam is, well. Happier than he expected to be, dating an asshole like Gabriel. That, of course, is when the invitation from Gabriel’s family had come for the summer. Sam agrees to go, only if he can bring Dean with him. A few uncomfortable family revelations and one epic fight later, Sam’s left wondering if Gabriel actually is his happily ever after.

...

Sam x Ruby (and side-Destiel)

Job & Family by TigerLilyNoh

After Dean's death (at the end of season 3), Sam and Ruby begin hunting down Lilith. Without Dean by his side, Sam finds the world of hunting to not be as black and white as he once thought. He just wants to get closure and move on with life, but outside forces aren't making that so easy. By the time the brothers reunite, Sam is a very different person than he used to be.

The battle for Hell, Heaven, and the Apocalypse begins. In these crazy times, the boys find themselves with new enemies, allies, and bedfellows.

...

Sam and/or Dean x Reader

@negans-lucille-tblr​ is a great writer on Tumblr. I tried making a list of all the series I’d recommend and then realized I was just writing her entire Supernatural masterlist so here’s the link to her actual masterlist.

@winchest09​ is also a great writer. Haven’t read her entire masterlist but her Life for Rent series is amazing.

...

BBC SHERLOCK

Johnlock

The Gilded Cage by BeautifulFiction (omegaverse fic)

In a world where Omegas are the property of the elite Alphas, locked away and treasured by those wealthy enough to buy them, John never questioned his flatmate's secondary gender. Sherlock Holmes was an Alpha through-and through.

Wasn't he?

A chance discovery turns the world on its head, and John is left grappling to come to terms with Sherlock's past as events conspire to threaten their future. 

…

The Stars Move Still by BeautifulFiction

“What could I want so desperately that would make me sell my soul? What could possibly compel me to surrender the part of myself that makes me who I am: the source of my magic, my self-control, everything?"

...

BDSM (aka, thousands of words of pure filth. porn with plot if you squint.)

various pairings between Sherlock, Greg, John, Mycroft, Molly, and Eurus. (Molly and Eurus are non-con relationships)

Something Extraordinary by sherlock1110, sherlockian4evr

In a Dom/sub world, Dom!John and sub!Mycroft have found each other as have Dom!Sherlock and sub!Greg. This is their story.

…

Things Unwanted by sherlock1110, sherlockian4evr

sherlock1110, sherlockian4evr

This series contains variations on non-con/dub-con scenarios, most of which involve abduction and/or imprisonment of one form or another.

…

The Detective, His Doctor, His Brother, and His DCI by sherlock1110, sherlockian4evr

This is the first fic where The Detective and the Doctor and The British Government and the DI come together here.

...

Fics of the Void (aka very dark fics, non-con is a given)

Wincest

A Threefold Path to Redemption by rei_c

Sam finds a way to keep Dean from going to hell: he'll go in his brother's place. He knows it's going to be bad and that he'll emerge changed. He never knew how much.

...

Suite!verse by leonidaslion

This is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends…

...

Sastiel

Like a Nail to a Cross by azazelsocks (unfinished but still posting)

“I want what any god wants,” Castiel said. “I want you. Your life, your soul, your devotion. Everything you have to give belongs to me, your God. In exchange, your family will be safe.”

There really was no other answer. “I agree,” Sam said.

The new God orders the Winchesters to kneel or be destroyed, and Sam, as always, will do anything to save his brother.

...

Sam and Dean-centric, no ships

Semper Familia by KatZen

When his dad comes back into the clearing with a scrawny kid he's just bought in tow, Dean isn't surprised. He knows Lilim aren't human, that they're creatures, like witches or wendigo.

But the kid that John's got by the arm, who's pulled as far away from Dean's dad as possible without actually trying to get his arm back, the kid whose eyes don't leave John and are bright with fear, the kid who looks like he hasn't eaten in a couple of days and is obviously favoring his left leg...

This kid looks an awful lot like a person. And what's more, he's the same age Sammy would have been.

...

LOKI

Loki/OC

Banditry by LoquaciousQuibbler (unfinished but still posting)

Noir, a thief living on the streets of Asgard, didn't realize it was Prince Loki she had pickpocketed. Call it a happy coincidence. She's immediately charmed by him, but how could a thief get her hands on the key to the prince's heart? Oh, no need. She's pretty handy with a lock pick.

...

shameless self promotion

LOKI | no ships

Stories of Innocence

A collection of short stories (five chapters or less) about Loki's youth. For those people who have a sudden craving for when Loki was happy and before Odin happened.

...

The End

The opposite end of the spectrum; where my Stories of Innocence are of young Thor and Loki, these are older Thor and Loki stories. They are part of the MCU and are based on events from those movies. Warning: lots of feels (I made myself almost cry for a character I dislike because of what I wrote).

...

BBC SHERLOCK | Johnlock

Loving a Married Man

I seem to love to make myself cry. A small collection of Sherlock feels stories. Warning: may make you cry.

...

SUPERNATURAL | Boyking!Sam / Sastiel 

Prompt Fight | on ao3

A collection of boyking!Sam short stories written in accordance to prompts given.

[katlyn1948]

An Unexpected Journey: Part 14

An Unexpected Journey

Katlyn1948

Chapter Management

Edit Chapter

Chapter 14

: The Seed Is StrongSummary:

Arya and Gendry begin to pick up the pieces of their life and some news bring family together.

Notes:

AHHHH! I am so sorry that this took so long to get up!! I want to fully warn you that this is UNEDITED and there are a lot of mistakes. I have been writing this chapter for the last month and I just really wanted to get it out. I have one more chapter after this then the epilogue. Next chapter will be the wedding and it won't be a long one. I wanted to add the wedding to this one, but like this chapter was just DRAGGING. I was getting frustrated with it and I knew that it was just time to get it out there. Because it is unedited, there are some choppy bits and doesn't flow as well as I would like it to. I do plan on editing the entire story after I get it done, but that may take some time. Anyway, thank you all for your patience and enjoy!!

PS This counts as my AXG Week entry for "Don't Lie to Me," I will be grabbing the bit that I wrote in this story and post it as a stand alone because it can be, I just have to rewrite it a bit. Happy reading!!

Chapter Text

The sun gleamed through the thin curtains, spraying light heat across Arya’s aching body. The events from the previous night had left her sore and tired; her muscles felt like loose mud and the very thought of rising from the soft featherbed annoyed her. She was content on where she laid, with her very stubborn, very alive bull beside her.

He was gripping her tightly, her back to his front. They had fallen asleep like this, drowning so deep into slumber that neither had moved an inch while sleeping. Arya sank deeper into his still sleeping form and embraced the warmth that his body emitted. Although they had been apart for only several days, it felt like years had passed since she had been this close to him.

It was familiar feeling to have him cradle her in such a way and Arya could not help but smile as his hand rested over her stomach. She had not told him yet of the babe, but she was sure he would take the news with joy.

As swiftly and as quietly as she could, she turned her small frame to face his large one. She wanted to see his face while he slept. His eye was swollen still and his breathing was coarse; no doubt from the few broken ribs he had received from his beating by Lord Swann’s men. His lip sported a large cut and his nose was a shade of purple. Gendry had gotten the most beatings during their time captured, and Arya could tell on every inch of his body.

It panged her heart that she could not get to them sooner. Mayhap if she did, she could have spared him a few cuts and burses.

Arya wiggled her arm free from under Gendry’s and began lightly tracing his jawbone. She brushed her fingertips over his face, making small circles around his cheek. The light touches has stirred the sleeping bull from slumber. He cracked his good eye open and saw the face of the woman he loved staring back at him.

There was a comfortable silence between the two as he marveled at her beauty. Her gray eyes bore into his blue ones and her brown hair was disheveled in all kinds of directions. She had a small cut above her lip that was now healing, leaving nothing more than a small scar. Gendry also noticed how her face became rounder and fuller in the nearly four moons that she was had been there. Gendry reached up to brush a fallen piece of hair out of her face and leaned to press a small kiss atop her forehead.

“Good morning.” He said in a weak and groggy tone.

Arya smiled, “Good morning.”

Gendry groaned as he stretched his aching muscles, “Oh, I thought surely this was a dream and I was still held captive by Lord Swann, but alas, here you are wrapped in my arms.”

“Mmm, well I hope I am better company than the arrogant Lord Swann.” She mused as she gave Gendry a long kiss.

Gendry happily returned the kiss and enveloped Arya into a tight hug. He breathed in her scent; the smell wafting his nose with familiarity.

“Thank you, for saving me. For saving all of us.” He whispered into her ear.

Arya pulled back from the embrace and looked into Gendry’s eyes. There were welling with tears as she grasped his face in her hands.

“You do not need to thank me. I would have done everything twice over if it meant that you were safe. I love you and I cannot imagine my life without you in it any longer.”

Gendry smiled, “Good, because I do not think I would be able to give you up as easily as before.”

They laid in bed for a better part of an hour before a small knock stirred them from their embrace. Gendry rolled over and hobbled out of the bed, grabbing onto his side and wincing in pain as he did. His ribs were sore and the maester had warned him that the pain would be debilitating. He groaned as he trudged across his chambers; his feet feeling a hundred pounds heavier.

It took him longer than normal to reach the door and with a quick jest he released the latch and sung open the oak barrier.

Jon was standing in the doorway. He had yet to get used to the idea of his little sister having a man in her bed, but that could be discussed at another time.

He was standing with a tray of sweet bread and honey along with a pitcher of water. Gendry pushed the door open even further so that Jon could enter with ease. He shuffled to the small table in front of the fireplace and set the tray down, grabbing a chair to sit as he did so.

Gendry’s cheeks were flushed red and Arya could not help but smile at his slight embarrassment. This man had survived Gold Cloaks and Wights only to be scared out of his breeches by her brother. It was an amusing exchange as Arya glanced between the two men she loved most in the world. She could see the uncomfortable stance that Gendry was holding as he hesitantly sat across from Jon.

With a groan, she shifted out of bed and grabbed her nearby breeches, pulling them over her hips with a slight jump. They had become tight here of late and she knew exactly why. She drifted towards the table and drooled over the smell of the sweet bread. She was ravenous and could devour a whole cow if they would let her. She took the seat beside Gendry and grabbed a piece of sweet bread from the tray, lathering it up with honey. The bread was warm and smelled as if it had just come out of the hot stone oven. Arya shoved the sweet bread into her mouth and moaned with delight. It had been nearly 24 hours since she last ate and her body was craving sustenance.

“Hungry are we?” Jon questioned as he raised a thick eyebrow in her direction.

Arya grumbled, “I’m ravenous.”

She took another bite of her sweet bread and grabbed her goblet to water to wash it down. Gendry grabbed his own piece and nibbled at the baked good.

“I have received a letter from Dany. Lyra is doing well and has yet to question where you are. I think the twins have been keeping her occupied.” Jon states as he hands Gendry and Arya the letter.

Arya smiles at the sweet words Dany wrote. She jabbed Gendry in the shoulder and said, “I told you she would get along just fine.”

“Yeah, yeah, you were right.” He said as he rubbed her shoulder from her jab.

“Bran also sends his regards. He trusts that you will punish those accordingly.” Jon states.

Gendry swallowed and nodded his head.

“Speaking of…who do we have imprisoned?” Arya questioned.

Jon sat up in his chair. He pulled a piece of parchment from his jerkin and handed it to Arya.

“We have Lord Storm along with several of his banner men. Lord Swann’s sons are being held prisoner. His oldest claims full responsibility on behalf of his dead father, but I doubt he is telling the truth. Most of Lord Swann’s soldiers have laid down their arms, and have sworn fealty to Gendry.”

“Donnel is lying. He never wanted any part in this coup. If anyone deserves to be set free, it is he. As for the other son, I do not really know what his role was. Give the lands to Donnel; he will make an excellent lord.” Arya stated through chews.

“And what about Lord Storm? Is there anyone else who can rule over House Carion?” Gendry asked.

Arya shook her head, “Not that I am aware. As much as I want the man to rot, I do not think we should kill him. According to Rena, he was not a part of the original coup against you. I believe he got a little over zealous and followed a stupid Lord thinking he would get more land.”

“That still does not excuse what he did.” Jon stated matter of fact.

“Of course not, but must the man die?” Arya countered.

“What? The all-powerful Arya Stark does not want a man dead. What is this strange miracle?” Her brother teased.

Arya threw her fork at his head, which he narrowly missed. “On the contrary, Jon. I do not want all men dead. I am just…tired of all the killing and death. I have had enough of it.”

She spoke the truth.

What she did the night before was necessary but the feeling of taking a face had not set well with Arya. She hated that she enjoyed so much; that taking a life was a simple as a snap of the fingers. If was indeed with child, then she did not want them growing up around death. She did not want Lyra growing up around death. There were alternatives for men like Lord Storm and she would see to it that there was another option.

“We could send him to The Wall. If that is still a thing.” She suggested.

Jon scoffed, “Arya, the wildlings man The Wall. A man has not been sent north to take the black since it fell five years ago. Although….we could send him to live among the wildlings. Tormund can reform any man.”

Arya glanced at Gendry and he nodded in agreement.

“Good, that settles it then. We send Lord Storm to Tormund and Donnel can keep his family lands. If his brother was a part of this coup, then send him with Lord Storm. He’d never survive a day.” Arya said as she pushed from her chair. She circled around the table and headed towards the oak door, opening it for Jon to exit the chambers.

“We will be down in a few. Thank you for the food, now please leave.” She said to him as she waved her hand to gesture him out.

Jon chuckled and rose from his seat, giving Gendry a sturdy pat on the back, “We will talk later.”

Gendry gulped and gave a slight nod as Jon exited the room. Arya closed the door behind him, latching it for good measure. She did not want any more unwanted guests to interrupt their morning. She crossed the room and embraced Gendry into a tight hug.

“How long do you think we have until the maester comes to check on my wounds?” Gendry whispered against her lips.

She chuckled, “Not long. Besides, as much as I would love to take you to bed and rip your clothes off, we have to get ready to greet your castle. They have been through a horrific experience and they need their Lord Paramount to reassure them.”

“Don’t you mean ‘our’ castle? You will be their ‘lady’ soon enough, they should hear from you as well. After all, you did just save them.” He pulled back to look her in the eyes.

Arya groaned, “Gods, I hate talking to people.”

“You won’t have to do it much, just this once…and maybe after we marry.” He joked.

Arya scoffed, but could not help but have a smile on her face. The word ‘our’ felt nice against her lips and she truly could not wait to experience that life with the man that she loved.

They stayed embraced until another knock pulled them apart. Arya went to open the door, revealing the maester on his morning rounds.

She let the old man in and he immediately went to assessing Gendry’s fresh, but healing wounds. He applied another layer of salve over Gendry’s lip, protecting the gut from any dirt that may make its way inside the cut. He then began to bind Gendry’s abdomen to help relieve some of the pain from the broken ribs.

Arya watched the maester work on her injured lover and tried to suppress a laugh each time Gendry’s face twisted in pain. She did not take enjoyment at his pain, but rather the faces he made towards the maester every time he would jab something painful on Gendry’s body.

For nearly an hour, she watched the maester work. It was a remarkable sight; she had never actually seen a maester work and the intricacies and dedication that they put into their work was extraordinary.

“How long have you been a maester?” She asked as pressed a cold rag to Gendry’s eye.

“Nearly thirty years. I decided to join just shortly after my 21st nameday.” He responded.

Arya nodded, “So, you have seen quite a bit of things?”

“Aye, I have.”

“How many babes have you delivered?” She questioned.

She knew she was walking on hot coals. She did not want to shout she was pregnant, but more so imply just enough for the maester to understand her and for Gendry to be completely oblivious.

“Thirteen babes. All survived, as well as the mother. Why do you ask?”

Arya sighed. She wanted so badly to tell them that she thought she was pregnant. But, what if it turned out that she was not? She could not help but feel a slight panic rise in her chest. For years, she believed to be barren, but now there was a possibility that perhaps she was not. It was not the fear of not being with child that scared her; it was the disappointment that she would feel if she was not. With as much courage as she could muster she said, “Because, I think that I may be with child.”

Both men has swiftly lifted their gaze to her.

Gendry’s expression was that of shock, excitement, and confusion while the maester showed nothing but concern. He quickly finished up with Gendry and shuffled over to Arya’s side, instructing her to lift up her blouse. With some hesitation, she did as he commanded and the maester immediately went to pressing on her soft, yet firm abdomen. He did not seem to notice the scars that racked her abdomen. If he did, he did not mention it.  

“Hmmm, you may very well be. Your belly is firm and there is a slight roundness to it, but it is still too soon to tell. If you are, I can wager that you are maybe three or four moons along. Have you bleed recently?” The maester asked as he finished examining her belly.

Arya’s cheeks turned a bight shade of crimson. She had not talked to anyone; expect Sansa, about her moon bloods. It was an embarrassing topic for her, considering her last bleed was at the age of thirteen.

“I-I do not bleed, maester. I have not bleed since my thirteenth year.” She confessed.

The maester pursed his lips, “No doubt from your physical activities that you’ve endured in your younger years. I have seen it before, especially with young women who do more dutiful tasks than their men do. Not to worry dear, that does not mean that you are not with child. I have encountered at least three other women who did not bleed that had children of their own. Come to me later and I will conduct a few tests to see if you truly carry a babe.”

Arya nodded and escorted the maester out of their chambers. She clicked the door behind him and returned to her dumfounded bull still sitting on the bed with his mouth hung open.

“Why the look of surprise?” She asked him with a smirk and she returned to her chair at the table.

“You are with child? But I thought…you told me…how did this happen?” He stuttered.

Arya chuckled at his utter confusion, “Well, when a man and woman love each very much-”

“Do not patronize me. You know what I mean, Arya.” Gendry interrupted, with slight irritation in his voice. The excitement had worn off, leaving only the confusion and fear.

“I thought you said that you could not bear children. You said that The Waif…what she did to you, damaged your insides.” He looked at her with questioning eyes.

Arya sighed, “I truly thought that I could not. Between missing my moon bloods and the attack from The Waif, I was highly certain that I could not carry a child. I guess I was mistaken.”

She looked over towards Gendry. He is face was still mixed with confusion, but the surprise had now turned to fear. She could tell he was afraid. She was not sure of what, exactly, but it was evident that he was afraid.

“Talk to me. Do you not want this child?” She said in a small voice.

Gendry snapped his gaze to hers. He immediately stood from their bed and made his way to where Arya was sitting. He gently lowered onto one knee and grasped her hands into his.

“Of course I want the child! What would have you think otherwise?”

“You look terrified, Gendry! I thought…well I do not really know what you thought.” She confessed.

Gendry chuckled, “Seven hells, I am terrified! A new born babe is always scary, but we will face it together.”

Arya smiled and pulled Gendry to meet her lips. She kissed him longingly and fiercely and never wanted to let go, but he pulled from her and she suddenly missed his presence.

“Come, the people want to see us and I think we have hidden for far too long.” He said as he lifted her from her chair.

Arya groaned and reluctantly followed behind him.

The descended down the stairs and made their way to the Great Hall. Although the Round Hall would have been a more suitable place to address the loyal liege lords and people of Storm’s End, the wounds of what happened there were still too fresh.

A large crowd had gathered in the Great Hall. Everyone from the liege lords to the housekeepers were accounted for. Even a lowly merchant from the nearby town had made an attendance. Arya was surprised to see such a large gathering, but it was comforting to know that there were still plenty of people that believed in Gendry to be Lord Paramount.

As they entered, Arya noticed that Jon, along with Ser Davos, Lord Archie and his wife, Lady Rena were all seated at the main table atop the large dais. There were two chairs that laid empty, seated right in the middle of the table. Arya and Gendry stepped onto the large dais and took their seats amongst the rest of their party.

Gendry lifted from his chair and cleared his throat before speaking to the crowd before him.

“Thank you all for coming. I know most of you are here to see what will become of those that have betrayed no only me, as their Lord Paramount, but the crown as well. For those who do not know, Lord Swann is dead. He threatened me, my family, and my other liege lords causing me to take action. His own stupidity killed him. As for those who followed him, they have been dealt with accordingly. I know that most of you here felt the tyrannical force that Lord Swann had bestowed these last few days. I can say nothing but thank you. Thank you for your understanding and your cooperation.”

Gendry nodded and the crowd before taking his seat once more. He turned to Arya and smiled, lightly squeezing her thigh under the table. She grasped onto his hand and assured him that he did was what right.

The rest of day was spent speaking to the liege lords and informing them of the pressing matters that did not need to be spoken in front of common folk. Gendry was gone the better part of day, leaving Arya to roam around Storm’s End for the first time in days. She started off by going to the stables. Little Lyra’s horse had been burned with the rest of the dead, leaving only a handful of horses in the stables. Arya was glad to see that horse who have given birth not too long ago, was still kicking, along her babe.

“I am surprised to see you here.” Rena’s voice said from behind Arya.

Arya jumped and turned to see her friend. Her wounds were healing, thanks to the maester, but the glimmer that was once in her eyes were now dulled by the recent events.

“Rena! Seven hells, you scared me.” Arya said as she clutched her chest, trying to ease her racing heart.

Rena chuckled, “Now you know how it feels.”

Arya laughed and looked at her friend. She could tell that Rena was not the same Rena she left just five days ago. This Rena was quiet and reserved and had a weariness to her that Arya was not used to.

“How are you?” Arya asked her after a short period of silence.

Rena scoffed, “The physical wounds will heal, but the mental ones may take longer. What is worse about the whole thing is that my children had to endure it.”

Rena’s voice cracked and she could no longer hold her composure. The tears welled in her eyes and spilled along her cheeks. Her young son would never remember the whole ordeal, but little Ginger had awoken in the early morn with nightmares that plagued her young mind.

Arya could not stand to see her friend in such turmoil. She quickly reached over to Rena and embraced her into a tight hug, letting her own tears weep from her eyes.

Arya knew what it was like to have those mental wounds. Even years after what she endured, there were occasions she would wake in terror. Since she has been in Storm’s End, the nightmares were less frequent, and she likes to think it was because of Gendry.

The two women held their embrace even after their tears were dried. It was comfort for the both of them to have someone who understood what the other was going through. Arya squeezed Rena once more before letting her go. She wiped her tear streaked face and laughed at the fact that the second time she has cried was in Rena’s presence.

“On a better note, I have something to tell you.” Arya said.

Rena perked and Arya saw a glimpse of the old Rena she used to know. “What is it?”

“Well, I am going to the maester later to confirm, but I am with babe.” For the first time since knowing, Arya did not feel embarrassed or hesitant when speaking about her pregnancy. With Rena, it was different. There was an ease when it came to telling her. Perhaps it was because she was a young mother and someone that Arya could turn to if she had any questions, which she was sure she would have.

Rena’s eyes sparkled, and for the first time in several days, Arya saw the old Rena return. She quickly embraced Arya and laughed with joy.

“That is amazing…unless it is not?” She suddenly realized as she let go of Arya.

Arya shook her head, “At first it was terrifying. For as long as I could remember, I never wanted children and there was time where I thought I could not carry them. Then I find out that I may be with child and,” Arya shrugged, “I guess it had to do with who I created that child with. I am not going to lie I am still terrified. I still have some reserves, but I am hoping that you and my sister will be able to help me through that.” She confessed.

Rena gleamed, “Of course I will help!”

The two women laughed and talked for some time before Arya left the stables. Rena stayed behind to watch the horses and Arya thought that with time, she would be the same Rena as before.

The day was nearing an end and Arya had stayed in the stables longer than anticipated. Gendry should have been finished with his liege lords, but that was not the man she was looking for. Jon had stated that he would be headed to King’s Landing come the morn, and she needed to speak with him before he left on his journey.

She wondered the castle grounds until she finally came upon him in the Great Hall. Most of the early morning crowd had dissipated leaving just a few stragglers behind. Jon was seated at the head table munching on stale bread and more often than not, stale ale. She climbed the dais and took a seat beside her brother, who seemed lost in thought.

“Something on your mind, big brother?”

Jon jumped slightly, but chuckled when he realized it was Arya that had greeted him.

“Mmm, everything is on my mind. How’d you guess?” he asked as she shoved another piece of bread in his mouth.

“Because you are brooding.” She stated matter of fact.

Jon scoffed, “I do not brood.”

“Yes, you do. Do not make me ride all the way, to King’s Landing to ask your wife if you brood. I’m sure her answer would be ‘yes.’” Arya laughed.

Jon chuckled. He finished off his ale and turned to face his sister.

For the first time since she had been back from her travels, Jon really looked at Arya. He could see that she was no longer that little girl he had held so close to his heart. She was woman grown taking on responsibilities he never though she would. He could see how mature she had gotten in her time away, and although he hated the idea of her leaving Westeros in the first place, he cannot disagree that it helped her in many ways.

“Why are you staring?” Arya asked after sometime.

“I am just admiring how much you’ve grown in these last few years. I did not see it in King’s Landing, but here, I can tell.” He said as he pushed a strand of hair away from her face.

Arya smiled, “Thank you? I think. So…I hear you ride for King’s Landing in the morning. Are you coming back?”

“Aye, I am. Who do you think asked me to go? I am bringing back the whole troupe.” Jon said with a wide smile.

“Everyone? As in…everyone?” Arya asked, wide eyed.

“Yes, dear sister, everyone. Gendry had mentioned riding up to King’s Landing to retrieve Lyra, but I had a better idea. I think Sansa is tired of the capital and would enjoy an escape. The twins will love it and Bran needs a break from kingly duties. Since I offered to go, Gendry asked me to bring Lyra. It gives you two sometime to yourselves” Jon said matter of fact.

Arya did not miss how Jon mentioned her time with Gendry. She could tell that he still felt uneasy about their pairing and perhaps a little betrayed that Gendry did not mention to him sooner that he knew Arya. It made telling Jon all the more difficult. She knew that he was a man of honor, so his reaction to her being with child is one she does not look forward to seeing.

With a deep sigh and quick clearing of her throat she says, “I have something to tell you.”

“You’re with child.” He said before she could even muster her response.

Arya stared at him with wide eyes. She did not think that it was yet noticeable, but perhaps she was mistaken. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, trying to avoid Jon’s gaze. She could feel his eyes dig into her skin and the lingering silence only made the situation tense.

“How…how did you know?” Arya finally asked after she mustered up whatever courage that was left in her small body.

Jon shrugged, “Gendry told me. ‘Bout killed him when he did. He was not thinking when he told me. Figured you would want to tell me, but it came out in a rush. I think he was just excited.”

“Well if you did not kill him, I certainly will!” She exclaimed.

Jon waved his hand dismissively, “Oh leave the poor boy alone. It was an accident.”

Arya furrowed her brows in confusion. She was oddly surprised at how well her brother was handling the news of her pregnancy out of wedlock.

“And you are okay…with all of this?” She asked as she gestured to her stomach.

Jon sighed, “If I am being honest, no, but I also know that if you did not want it then Gendry’s cock would be cut off. I also know that he loves you and you love him and you two would protect each other to the ends of the earth. As an older brother that is all I can ask for.”

“Thank you. Truly.” Arya said to Jon. She lifted from her chair and embraced her older brother.

He returned the embrace and tried to hold the tears that were threating to spill.

Jon released his sister and watched her sit back into the chair. He finished off his ale and began picking up the remnants of his meal when Arya asked, “Where is he?”

“Who?” Jon inquired.

“The bull headed man that spilled my secret?”

Jon shrugged, “Try the forge. He mentioned a scuffle with one of his liege lords and wanted to blow off steam.”

Arya nodded and watched as her brother departed.

She stayed at the grand table for a short time, munching on whatever left over bread there was. Dinner would not be served in the Grand Hall today, which meant her meal was most likely waiting for her in their chambers.

The sun was beginning to set and Arya had contemplated on going to Gendry in the forge, but the idea of the taste of honey and stew was consuming. Despite her better judgement, she went towards the forge where she could see Gendry hammering away at a hot piece of steel.

She could tell that each swing hurt more than the previous. With his injured ribs, she could not imagine that the task was an enjoyable one. She watched him swing and swing; the sweat pouring down his face. Even with the light breeze of night, the air was still sticky causing the forge to feel like an inferno. Arya could feel the heat wafting from the fires causing her leather breeches to stick to her skin.

Gendry was shirtless, aside from the leather apron that adorned his body. His focus was solely on the steel in front of him. Within the last several years, he had gotten better at drowning out the world around him. He knew that the only place that he would feel content was in the forge, hammering away. It reminded him of simpler times. Albeit, those times were dangerous, but at least he did not have a whole damned kingdom to run.

“I thought lords weren’t supposed to work in the forge?” Arya said as she creeped from the shadows.

Her sudden presence made Gendry jump with fright. He eased once he realized that it was just Arya.

“And I thought that princesses were not supposed to lurk in the shadows.” He quipped as he set his hammer down on the table beside him.

Arya smile and crossed the forge to where he was standing. She wrapped her small frame around his and breathed in deep, basking at the scent he was emitting.

“When have I ever been a proper princess?” She grumbled.

“Never. But when I have ever been a proper lord?” He countered.

Arya chuckled, “Never.”

They remained in silence as she embraced him. She was careful not to hug him too tightly, for his ribs were still bruised and broken.

“So, about Jon.” Arya chimed after some time.

Gendry’s face paled and he shifted uncomfortably in her embrace. He moved from Arya and returned to the fires, stoking them to burn brighter.

“What about Jon?” He asked innocently.

“You told him?” She questioned. He could see from the corner of his eye. Her arms were crossed and her stance was that of annoyance.

Gendry cursed silently under his breath, “Told him what?”

Arya grumbled in frustration, “Stop trying to deflect the question. You told him about the babe, did you not?”

Seven hells

“Mmmm, I do not recall.” He was digging a bigger hole for himself with every word that came out of his mouth. He should have known better than to believe Jon.

I will not tell her you told me, Gendry recalled their conversation. He had scoffed at the proclamation, knowing it was nothing more than a load of horseshit.

“Don’t lie to me, Gendry. It doesn’t look good.” Her hands were now placed on her hips and he knew that he was in trouble.

With a defeated sigh, he dropped his head and nodded, “Aye, I told him, but it was an accident! I swear!”

Arya burst into laughter, making Gendry’s scared expression turn into one of confusion.

“Oh, I know it was an accident. I just wanted to see what you would do if you were confronted. Now I know that you will never be able to lie to me.” She laughed.

Gendry scoffed, “I was never able to lie to you when we were children.”

She crossed the room and gave him a small pat on the chest, “It was a valiant effort. Now, please, come to bed.”

Gendry nodded and leaned down to peck her lips, “As milday commands.”

------------

Jon had left the following morning, leaving the couple to themselves. Although she wanted nothing more than to spend her time with Gendry, she knew that he was still a lord and had lordly duties to attend. She herself tried to keep busy with archery lessons to the small folk that worked in the castle. Most of her students were young women eager to learn the trade. Rena had even decided to learn how to shoot from the famed Arya Stark.

Between her archery lessons, she would practice her water dancing. She wanted to get in as much as she could before her belly swelled, preventing her otherwise.

As the night came, she would trudge up the stairs, muscles aching and stomach growling, only to be greeted with her stubborn bull half finished with his supper.

For nearly a week, they maintained this routine. It was becoming familiar to Arya, yet she still could not wait for her family to arrive. Storm’s End had been rather quiet without little Lyra causing a ruckus. Arya was sure that the little lady was enjoying her time, especially with her new found cousins. She was preparing herself for all the stories that Lyra would be telling her in the coming nights.

When the royal envoy was spotted just beyond the tree line, Arya became giddy. She was like a little girl again, running up to the gates to await their arrival. She stood for nearly an hour waiting for the envoy to enter the gates. Three large carriages came through, each for members of the royal family.

The workers around Storm’s End were scrambling to make the castle presentable. It had been ages since royalty had made their visit, exciting everyone from the young to the old.

Sansa was the first to exit her carriage. Podrick was right behind with their babe nestled in his arms. Arya nearly toppled Sansa over when she ran to embrace her sister.

“It’s good to see you too.” Sansa exclaimed with a chuckle.

The housekeepers began to loosen the trunks from the carriage, taking them to their respective rooms.

“Oh please do be careful with that one.” Sansa chastised to a young girl who had dropped one of her small trunks in the mud. The young girl blushed and nodded quickly as she retrieved the trunk.

Bran was the next to exit his carriage. Meera was close behind, along with Tyrion and, who Arya assumed to be, his wife.

“Lady Arya.” Tyrion bowed as he passed her.

“Lord Tyrion.” She bowed in return.

He and his wife went to stand behind the Lord of Storm’s End as they awaited the exit of Jon and Dany.

Just a few short moment later, the third and final carriage’s door burst open. A mop of brown curls jumped out and immediately ran to Gendry’s open arms.

“Papa! I missed you so! I had a lot of fun with the princesses. They are my new best friends. I cannot wait for Ginger to meet them!” She shrieked as Gendry lifted her up into a giant hug.

Gendry chuckled, “I am sure that Ginger will be enthralled with them.”

Lyra threw her arms around Gendry’s shoulders and hugged him fiercely. It did not take her long to realize that Arya was standing just a few short feet away. She wiggled out of Gendry’s arms and ran towards Arya with a toothy grin.

“Arry! Arry! Where were you?” She asked as Arya lifted her.

“Oh, sweetling, I had to come back her and help your father with things. You were having so much fun that I did not dare bring you back. I’m sorry if I worried you.” She whispered to the young girl. Tears were threating to spill from her eyes. If she had not been able to save Gendry, then she would not know what would happen to little Lyra. She was sure that her family would protect her, but there was the chance that Lyra would never truly be safe.

“‘sokay.” She shrugged. She quickly placed a snotty kiss on Arya’s cheek. Arya smiled and hugged her tightly, taking in the faint smell of lavender and coal that the child emitted.

She placed Lyra down and Lyra immediately when bouncing back to the carriage where Jon and Dany had finally emerged, their twins as their heels. Lyra grasp each of the twin’s hands and pulled them from their parents, running off towards the Great Hall.

Arya smiled as she saw the young children depart. She turned towards Jon and pulled him into a tight hug.

“Thank you.” She released him and turned her gaze to Dany, “Both of you.”

“I do not mean to interrupt our greetings, but we have a wedding ceremony to plan.” Sansa intervened.

Arya’s eyes widened and she glanced over to Gendry, whose face was full crimson.

“What do you mean?” Arya slowly asked as she looked around the courtyard at each of her family members.

“I told you it would be a surprise.” Jon had said from behind her. She shot him a glare before turning gaze to Gendry.

I am going to kill him.

[ao3feed-gendrya]

Stardust

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2O7Sd5G

by MoodyAshe, Slytherin_Princess_Nysa

Sansa's wedding is the event of the century- overflowing with colourful decorations, loud music and even louder guests. It's all too much for Arya, she just wants a breath of fresh air before her mother ropes her into dancing with every eligible bachelor. But that's before a group of hooded figures grab her and drag her off to their ship to be ransomed. She doesn't expect to finally belong somewhere- with a group of resistance fighters and a steel brained engineer.

Arianne is trapped on Harrenhal, being hunted by (once imprisoned) insane men who now run the ship. Her once fearsome crew being reduced to nothing but terrified prey. Hunted one by one.

Robb has been burned by love before, but that won't stop him from doing his duty to the North. Lady Margaery could be a cruel troll for all he knew, but he would marry her for the honour of their families.

Margaery knew she would be married off one day, she expected a nobleman twice her age or perhaps someone loyal to House Tyrell. But then she's carted off to Robb Stark, a man she knows little and nothing about, a man scorn by lost love and guilt for a missing his sister.

Words: 2615, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Game of Thrones (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/F, F/M

Characters: Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Robb Stark, Margaery Tyrell, Arianne Martell, Daenerys Targaryen, Missandei (ASoIaF), Hot Pie (ASoIaF), Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, Catelyn Tully Stark, Edric "Ned" Dayne, Ned Stark, Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Nymeria, Nymeria Sand, Jon Snow, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon, Myrcella Baratheon, Tommen Baratheon, Loras Tyrell

Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Robb Stark/Margaery Tyrell, Arianne Martell/Daenerys Targaryen, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark, Grey Worm/Missandei

Additional Tags: Smut, Romance, Alternate Universe - Space, Space Pirates, Kidnapping, Arya Girl Group BROTP, POV Gendry Waters, Sassy Arya Stark, POV Arya Stark, POV Robb Stark, POV Margaery Tyrell, POV Arianne Martell, POV Daenerys, Eventual Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cyborgs, Teamwork makes the dream work, fuck David and Dan, Space Stations, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Love, War, Death, Gendry and Dany are best friends, Torture, Blood and Violence, Rebellion, Don't Have to Know Canon, if ASOIAF and the original SW trilogy had a baby, it would be this story, david and dan are personally invited to square the fuck up

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2O7Sd5G

[ao3feed-theonsa]

Stardust

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/30Kaoj3

by MoodyAshe, Slytherin_Princess_Nysa

Sansa's wedding is the event of the century- overflowing with colourful decorations, loud music and even louder guests. It's all too much for Arya, she just wants a breath of fresh air before her mother ropes her into dancing with every eligible bachelor. But that's before a group of hooded figures grab her and drag her off to their ship to be ransomed. She doesn't expect to finally belong somewhere- with a group of resistance fighters and a steel brained engineer.

Arianne is trapped on Harrenhal, being hunted by (once imprisoned) insane men who now run the ship. Her once fearsome crew being reduced to nothing but terrified prey. Hunted one by one.

Robb has been burned by love before, but that won't stop him from doing his duty to the North. Lady Margaery could be a cruel troll for all he knew, but he would marry her for the honour of their families.

Margaery knew she would be married off one day, she expected a nobleman twice her age or perhaps someone loyal to House Tyrell. But then she's carted off to Robb Stark, a man she knows little and nothing about, a man scorn by lost love and guilt for a missing his sister.

Words: 2615, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Game of Thrones (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/F, F/M

Characters: Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Robb Stark, Margaery Tyrell, Arianne Martell, Daenerys Targaryen, Missandei (ASoIaF), Hot Pie (ASoIaF), Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, Catelyn Tully Stark, Edric "Ned" Dayne, Ned Stark, Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Nymeria, Nymeria Sand, Jon Snow, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon, Myrcella Baratheon, Tommen Baratheon, Loras Tyrell

Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Robb Stark/Margaery Tyrell, Arianne Martell/Daenerys Targaryen, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark, Grey Worm/Missandei

Additional Tags: Smut, Romance, Alternate Universe - Space, Space Pirates, Kidnapping, Arya Girl Group BROTP, POV Gendry Waters, Sassy Arya Stark, POV Arya Stark, POV Robb Stark, POV Margaery Tyrell, POV Arianne Martell, POV Daenerys, Eventual Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cyborgs, Teamwork makes the dream work, fuck David and Dan, Space Stations, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Love, War, Death, Gendry and Dany are best friends, Torture, Blood and Violence, Rebellion, Don't Have to Know Canon, if ASOIAF and the original SW trilogy had a baby, it would be this story, david and dan are personally invited to square the fuck up

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/30Kaoj3

[bougainvillieas]

It was at 2:20 pm on the 6th of September 1966 when Dimitris Tsafendas, a parliamentary messenger, stabbed Hendrik Verwoerd to death—South Africa’s prime minister and the so-called “architect of apartheid”—inside the House of Assembly in Cape Town. In a frantic scramble, Tsafendas was pulled physically off Verwoerd by members of parliament, dragged from the chamber and taken to Caledon Square Police Station. There he was interrogated at length and tortured frequently. In a statement to the police on 11 September, Tsafendas said, “I did believe that with the disappearance of the South African prime minister a change of policy would take place… I was so disgusted with the racial policy that I went through with my plans to kill the prime minister.” Questioned by a senior police officer, Tsafendas gave a coherent account of his life, including his decision to kill Verwoerd, in a statement which covered eleven pages.

In a second statement on the 19th of September, Tsafendas articulated in detail how he planned the assassination and gave an account of his prior movements. He revealed that his initial intention was to shoot Verwoerd at an evening social event, then take refuge in a Greek tanker, Eleni, anchored in Cape Town harbor, and hopefully escape when the ship sailed. When this plan failed because he could not find a suitable firearm, he decided to use a knife. He believed that it was his duty to kill Verwoerd when he had the opportunity. He spelled out his reasons as follows: “Every day, you see a man you know committing a very serious crime for which millions of people suffer. You cannot take him to court or report him to the police, because he is the law in the country. Would you remain silent and let him continue with his crime, or would you do something to stop him?”

Tsafendas knew that using a knife, because of the necessity for intimate physical contact with his victim, meant that he had no chance of escape. However, he told the police emphatically that he did “not care about the consequences, for what would happen to me afterwards.” He said, “I didn’t care much and didn’t give it a second thought that I would be caught.”

In a story that can finally be told in full, decades after his death and long after the end of state-sanctioned racism in South Africa, it can be revealed how the apartheid regime squelched discussion of Tsafendas’ motivations by having him declared mad—after all who would want to kill whites’ beloved leader—in order to stifle the left.

Tsafendas was born in 1918 in Lourenço Marques, now Maputo, capital of Mozambique in East Africa, which had long been a colony of Portugal. His father was Michalis Tsafantakis, a Greek from Crete, and his mother was Amelia Williams, daughter of an African mother and a European father, who grew up as a member of the Shangaan tribe. Tsafendas spent his first two and half years with his biological parents before he was sent by his father to Egypt to be brought up by his grandmother and his aunt, Michalis’s sister. He returned to Mozambique when he was seven, by which time his father was married to a Greek woman with whom Michalis already had two children. Tsafendas grew up in a highly revolutionary environment. His father’s family was famed for producing rebels who fought for Crete in the War of Independence against the ruling Ottomans. Tsafendas was named Dimitris after one of them, an uncle who was widely known as a rebel leader. Two cherished objects, which the boy Dimitris took with him when he returned to Mozambique from Egypt, were a bayonet and a flintlock pistol which belonged to two rebel relatives. Tsafendas’s own father, though he did not participate in war, was an instinctive revolutionary, an anarchist at heart and a prominent member of the Italian anarchist movement while he studied in Padua. Michalis spoke often to his first-born son about independence, social justice and his family’s famous forebears. Tsafendas grew up dreaming that one day he would be a rebel, too.

Michalis’s surname was officially Tsafantakis and this infuriated the young Dimitris. The original name was in fact Tsafendas but the Ottoman occupiers had ordered that the suffix “akis” be added to Cretan family names. This was intended to belittle them since “akis” at the end of a name meant “little boy.” Tsafendas found this deeply offensive and akin to black slaves in America being given names by their owners. He urged his father to change his name back, but Michalis argued that such a procedure would be overly complicated since the family was recorded as Tsafantakis in all official documents. However, when Dimitris grew up, he changed his name back to Tsafendas.

While Tsafendas was in custody, the South African police questioned about 150 people from South Africa, Mozambique and Rhodesia who had met Tsafendas. To their horror, the security forces discovered that Tsafendas was a former member of the South African Communist Party and that he had a long history of political activism. This included fighting with the Communists during the Greek Civil War; being arrested and imprisoned twice in Mozambique and twice more in Portugal because of Communist and anti-colonialist activities in Mozambique; being a member of the British anti-apartheid movement in London, where he associated with Tennyson Makiwane, the ANC’s representative there; being exiled for 12 years from Mozambique and being banned from South Africa since 1942 because of his political activities in both countries. Among the 150 questioned was Edward Furness, a South African citizen who had met Tsafendas in London six years earlier. He informed the police that Tsafendas once told him he was willing to do “anything that would get the South African regime out of power.” Other evidence included a submission to a subsequent Commission of Enquiry into Verwoerd’s death that, also in London, Tsafendas tried to “recruit people to take part in an uprising in South Africa.” Further, two witnesses, Nick Vergos and Father Hanno Probst, had reported Tsafendas to the South African police as, respectively, “the biggest Communist in the Republic of South Africa” and “a Communist and a dangerous person.” This was about a year before the assassination.

[mon-blanchetts]

Can we please get and update or a sneak peak ?? any story would do !! Dying to know what happened in Winning means losing, so let's go till the end !!! PLEASE !!!!

I’ve wanted to re-write Winning means losing for the longest time so that it was set in the late fifties/early sixties, à la The Crown, but, man, that just feels like so much work right now. Instead, here’s some material for Thieves Among Us I wrote way back when, though I still don’t know if I’m actually going to use it or not. It’s an unedited version, so forgive me for any glaring errors/plot holes:

“She’ll need a room for herself,” she mused out loud, before returning the figurine to the desk, “though I’m not sure it will be her old one.” Their old one, she thought—when they were forced to share a room, a bed, despite both of their protests, all of which had fallen on their mother’s deaf ears. Arya’s feet were always cold as ice; how she used to enjoy pressing those limbs against her, making her yelp.

“Aren’t you happy about this?”

Sansa looked at Jon. Disappointment shone through his grey eyes that never left her face. Something hardened inside of her; she tilted her chin up ever-so-slightly, just as she was wont to do as of late.

“None of us know when she’s coming back,” she argued, glancing speculatively at Bran, but her brother’s face was passive. “I know what it’s like to be happy for something that’s still uncertain. Besides,” she turned away from Jon as she moved towards the door, “it’s you she’s eager to see most of all, isn’t it? The direwolf was for you only, not me or Bran.”

“Where are you going?” Jon’s voice was strained with exasperation, but she wouldn’t be moved to sympathy.

“Seeing to a room for Arya whenever she decides she’s ready to come home.” Sansa pictured her sister’s face if she were to announce that she was to share her bedchamber with her, just like they did when they were little girls; she smiled when nobody could see, knowing full well how appalled Arya would be at such a proposition, regardless of the person she had shaped into. Maybe later tonight, if the motivation still stood, she’d visit Bran and see what he might be willing to divulge if she pushed hard enough. Most of it was too cryptic for her, but there had been more than one instance when his comments were clear as day, observations that hearkened to past events no one but herself were privy to. She could never pretend to understand how it worked, but she was living in an age where everything was possible now.

Behind her eyelids, Sansa could still picture Daenerys’s dragons dancing in the sky, circling above Winterfell in a way that sometimes made her feel like they were entrapping those within. Magic has returned when the dragons were brought back to the world. She didn’t remember who had told her that, but they were accurate words, nonetheless. Would she be in their company forever? Or would it be until she bent the knee to their mother?

The world spun on her—the only thing she realized afterwards was Jon’s face, hard and worried. Fatigue was etched in the lines of his frown, but on the rest of his face had a pallor that was just as telling. Sansa blinked at him, her arm growing warn where his fingers were wrapped around.

“You’re not even going to stop for your king when he calls you now?” he demanded, his breath turning to thin clouds before his face.

“My mind was elsewhere,” she admitted. Even she was surprised by her lack of attention; staring at Jon’s face, she wondered if her own exhaustion was apparent. Sansa knew she should have tried getting some rest after returning from the godswood just before dawn broke, but her actions hadn’t quite settled. Maybe they never really would, no matter how deep a hole she dug. That was a thought for another time, though; she steeled herself for what was to come. “I didn’t mean to ignore you, really,” she insisted, while Jon continued to search her face. If he was looking for any hint of her deception, he was right to be doubtful, but that didn’t make it any easier for her to swallow. Jon was always speaking to her about truth and honesty, but he had underestimated the complexity behind both of them just as much as she had.

“What did you want from me, Your Grace?”

The corners of his mouth turned downward and he looked away, abashed, just like he always did whenever she addressed him like that. They were standing outside for their people to see; if Jon was looking to make a scene, Sansa needed him to think otherwise. There was a steady hum of sounds and voices below them, but she knew that ther were more than a pair of eyes on them. “Your Grace?”

“This is it, Sansa. It’s everything we’ve fought so hard for, our family and our home. Bran is here, and Arya’s due any moment now, no matter where she is. We’ll be together again—”

“Until you leave for the Wall,” she cut in. Sansa tried to ignore the way his fingers tightened around her arm; she was a woman changed, she convinced herself, just as she’d been telling herself ever since the godswood. “We’ll be apart as soon as we’ve come together, and where’s the joy in that? No doubt Arya will probably want to follow you when you leave, just like she wanted to follow you when you joined the Night’s Watch, and it will be the same thing all over again, only this time none of us are so naïve. At least there’s that.”

Jon stared at her, crestfallen. She thought he was at a loss of things to say, but when he spoke, it was with a carefulness she hadn’t anticipated.

“I once told Dany that I wanted to be happy, that I needed to be in order to live. She things Starks like you are immortal, but I told her were just bent on survival.”

It was so petty and out-of-place, but Sansa couldn’t help but wonder if their conversation had taken place while they’d laid naked in each other’s arms, Jon toying with her locks while her head rested on his chest. What else had they discussed in private? What else had they found in each other, other than love and intimacy, while she’d struggled to keep his countrymen from abandoning his cause?

How strange of him t talk about happiness when, at the very least, he’d found a small piece of it in Daenerys Targaryen; any hope for hers had been ripped from her, soaking her bed linen red with blood, a sacrifice she had to make so that Jon could keep his crown, so that he might come back with his honour and reputation intact.

“Sansa?”

She came to again, pushing away those dark thoughts. “That’s a high compljment for her to offer, considering our family histories,” she pointed out, pretending to be interested in the happenings beneath them.

“What were you thinking about just now?”

“Many things,” she insisted quickly. “There’s a lot on my mind right now, now that winter’s here.” A thought dawned on her, and she faced him. “Aren’t you happy, Jon?”

“Are you?”

“I’m happy as I can be, considering the circumstances. Who knows—this may be the extent of it.” She let out a sigh. “We alter our perceptions with the things that come out way…if I held out for childish dreams and beautiful songs, I’d be awfully miserable, don’t you think?”

He didn’t respond. What was going through his mind?

“Can we begin anew, Sansa?”

“She was taken aback by his sudden request, eyes widening with confusion. “Begin anew?” she echoed.

“Bran knows what we’ve done,” he said. That made her straighten up. Suddenly his hand felt like a pair of iron shackles, holding her in place, imprisoning her for a crime she never committed. She pulled her arm back to Jon’s surprise, but he released his hold.

“Did he tell you as much?”

Jon shook his head, his face sullen. “I know from the way he looks at us.”

Sansa thought about his words. He might have been projecting his own worries, but it was more than likely. Bran never explained what he was now capable of; that had been divulged by his companion, but Meera Reed didn’t seem to entirely herself either. There was something in her that reminded her of Arya…

“What’s done is done,” she said, words that someone had said to her not too long ago, though it truly felt like it was from another life. “Are you thinking we ought to be open about it to him?” Gods, how would Bran react, if he chose to react at all?

“I’m thinking we should be open about it to each other.” His voice was but a low whisper. “If we can’t be happy the way we want to, can’t we at least be true for the sake of what’s left of us and our family?”

He wanted things to look fine in Arya’s eyes whenever she decided to return; Sansa wasn’t sure if her own desire ran in the same vein, but that didn’t she disagreed with him (?).

“Would you at least tell me what I might do to make things different between us?”

Different, or better? Could it be the same thing in Jon’s eyes? Sansa blinked at him once, twice, before looking away. The more she watched him, the more she saw Daenerys’s dragons soaring through the sky, cutting through the clouds high above. He had called her Dany again when he spoke about her; a part of her wished, in some twisted, ludicrous way, that Jon was doing it to hurt her, but even she knew the invisible dagger in her heart had never been intentional at his part, and that was even harder to accept. Funny that she had wanted him to ask her that one too many times, but now that he had, Sansa didn’t actually know how to answer him. In a world of her own creation, free of logic and all of deepest reservations, Jon would tell her the lies she wanted so badly to believe, instead of those heartbreaking truths she knew he harboured, but those she couldn’t fault him for. It made the distance between them so desirable, but it was becoming more apparent that they couldn’t live like this forever, not when things were changing the way they were. Tell me you love me as much as I love you, Jon. Tell me I was enough, at least. Tell me what we shared was enough.

It wasn’t, of course. Oh, to be fed lies, just like Littlefinger had, but it took a stronger woman to face the truth. It took a Stark to embrace and value the truth, even when it did nothing but tear her apart. And what about the things she was keeping from him? Would she ever have the heart to tell him what she had done, and would Jon understand?

“I don’t know,” she finally answered, fingering the chain distractedly. “I can’t answer you, not now.”

“But you’ll give me one soon.”

She shrugged, eyes still fixed on the scenes taking place below them. “Perhaps,” was all she said.

It was like a shock to her sense when she felt his gloved hand on the side of her face, coaxing her gently to face him. Sansa wanted to jump out of her skin, if only she could, but she was better than that.

“No more uncertainties, Sansa,” he pleaded, shaking his head once, his grey eyes bright with determination. “We can’t go on like this—I won’t let it. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“All this for Arya?” She meant to tease him, if only to quell the strange feeling between them, but it came out more as accusation. Jon frowned while she held back from wincing at her error.

“All this for us. I keep telling you this, don’t I?”

Jon wasn’t wrong, but believing him was another matter. “When I figure it out, I’ll be sure to tell you.”

“Two nights,” he bargained. “You have to answer me in two nights.”

“Three,” she insisted, pushing his hand away from her face. He always wanted to touch her, as if he were trying to convey his feelings through his actions, rather than his words, but what were they? A fragment of love that had mostly dwindled, if it had ever been real, or the last vestiges of lust?

Jon never took his eyes off her face. “Three nights, then,” he declared.

[ajw720]

This on chapter 3 broke my heart. Life inside the mirror was affecting his mind already The longer he was imprisoned the faster time went. And then. It also became increasingly difficult for him to remember where he was, how he had gotten there, and most concerning who he was.

@chrisdarebashfulsmiles One of the most interesting and revealing story lines.  Certainly the most haunting one.  And one I think about a lot.  

I will put this under read more.  Spoilers ahead on parts of the Froggystory line From Chapters 3 and 6 and I allude to a later reveal.  As promised, no major story line spoilers for a few more days.  

Just a small PSA. Please read these books.  Peopleare constantly saying we are too negative. We get nothing new.  Too much time is spent discussing the paid pulse ones.  

Chris just gave us a gift.  This book is no question a love note toDarren.  A tribute to their love.  And provides an enormous amount of insight into their minds.  And secondarily, he validates our fandom atleast twice.  

People constantly ask me why I believe.  Why I am so confident. And yes.  I have some hard evidence.  But I don’t need it.  The Land of Stories series-it speaks volumes.  

This quote haunts me. And it makes me think of an ask I recently received that I have not beenable to stop thinking about.  Anonspeculated that in order to cope, Darren blocks certain things and events fromhis memory.  

Repression is a veryreal coping mechanism. And it’s heart breaking to think that his situation isso toxic that in order to function, he has to erase events from his mind.  (X).  I honestly have thought about this everyday since I read it.  And part of Froggy’s story line echos this sentiment.

In chapter 3, Froggy, who is trapped in Mornia’s mirror, is spending time trying toremember himself and who he is and why he needs to escape.  

 “You can’t let the darkness consume you,” Froggy toldhimself. “There is too much you’ll miss out on if you give in to it! You haveto find a way out of this prison so you can have a future with the people youlove! You must hold on to your identity so you don’t suffer the same fate asthe man from the Evil Queen’s magic mirror! You must fight off this horriblecurse so Morina doesn’t win!”

In Chapter 6, as more time has passed, Froggy finds a little girl who is also trapped within the mirror.  A little girl who provides an incredibleamount of insight.  There’s a lot to sayabout her but I’m limiting this to the idea of memory loss.  But I will say her words are even morefascinating now knowing who she is and that her story arc is about redemption.  A theme that also resonates in Darren’s life.

 The Little Girl says to Froggy:

 “It did once, but I forgot why,” she said. “Actually, Ifind forgetfulness very pleasant. A memory is nice for people with goodmemories, but amnesia can be quite comforting to others.”

 “You must have lived a rather tragic life to believethat,” Froggy said.

“I suppose I did,” she said, pondering. “I miss havingdreams, but at least I don’t live with nightmares anymore. Perhaps you’ll enjoyforgetting, too.”

The little girl’s bizarre outlook made Froggy even moreanxious. He didn’t know how much longer he would have his own memory, but shewas proof it was only a matter of time before his mind was wiped clean.”

 I think in these chapters, Chris affirmed that Darrenuses repression as a coping mechanisms. That in order to live his life he has to block out the negativity. So that he is not constantly consumed by his nightmares. And Ican’t think of anything more devastating.

[ivoryandbonerpg-blog]

                                     ♔ HARRY POTTER ♔

( the basics. )

AGE:18 LINEAGE: Half-Blood SCHOOL / ALUMNI: Hogwarts HOUSE: Gryffindor ALLIANCE: The Order

( personality. )

✓ / ✗ : Selfless, Strong-Willed, Protective, Sarcastic, Impulsive, Temperamental 

( biography. )

• The Boy Who Lived has been reminded about that enough, thank you very much.

• Everyone knows the story. A child no more than a year old, whose family had been wiped out by Voldemort only moments prior, had somehow managed to defeat the Dark Lord before he could even hold a wand. The world was obsessed with Harry long before he had ever known the wizarding world existed. His upbringing had been hardly as glamourous as the tabloids described. The Dursleys had been his surrogate family in lieu of his imprisoned godfather Sirius Black, and they had made it their singular mission in life to make Harry's life as miserable and uncomfortable as possible. Growing up, Harry found that he preferred invisibility to being noticed by his aunt, uncle or cousin, because when they noticed his presence it brought nothing but misfortune down upon him. The Dursleys had made it very clear that they had no choice in the matter of raising him and he lived each day thinking that he should be grateful that they put up with him at all. Unloved, unwanted Potter with freaks for parents. That had been all he had known, with his only comfort being his dreams of flying motorbikes. Until Hagrid had accidentally knocked down their door, Harry had never imagined that there was anything more beyond his dismal life with his extended family.

• But as soon as he stepped foot in Diagon Alley, magic had entered his life. It was like stepping into an entirely new world, one where people thought he mattered. It was foreign to think that he mattered, even if it was for an event that bore only vague, painful memories for him. He made friends in the form of Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, had gotten homemade presents at Christmas by people who had only known his name, and he had found a home in Hogwarts. It was such a stark contrast to his life with the Dursleys that he feared that he would one day wake up to find that it had only been a dream.

• Harry’s sudden fortune did not come without its cost however, as misfortune continued to haunt him like the occasional jolt of pain from his scar. Lord Voldemort, who his parents had given their lives to defeat, reentered his life alongside Hogwarts. Since his first year, when the Dark Lord had attempted to steal the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry found himself defending his new home against his return. Year after year, Voldemort returned like the plague, and while Harry had managed to protect the Wizarding world from his return for a few years, he could not prevent his revival at the very end of the Triwizard Tournament. From then on, his life seemed to revolve around thwarting Voldemort from every angle, while attempting to warn those of influence that the Dark Lord was amassing power for yet another attack on the world.

• Now the premonitions that Harry has had for years are finally coming true. Voldemort is not only back, but has begun amassing strength at an alarmingly fast rate. At the same speed, the burdens of the war have piled onto Harry until each moment threatens to crush him with the sheer stress of it. But the Order has not been idle. No, they have been working around the clock securing households and recruiting for their cause. The most unlikely members have joined their ranks, with Harry having supported a number of unusual entries. The most notable of these was Draco Malfoy. Though the two have hated each other for years, Harry knew that now was not the time to be caught up in petty rivalries. Not that he really has the time to focus on it while he remains continuously on the run. He has invested all of his time and effort into dismantling Death Eater operations and staying beneath their radars. So long as he's alive, the Order has a beacon to rally around. So long as he's free, hope remains in the fight to bring down Voldemort for good.

• No pressure.

( sexuality. )

Heterosexual

( connections. )

⚔ Ron Weasley : The moment that Harry and Ron boarded the Hogwarts Express together in first year, they immediately hit it off with one another. Not only did he help Harry navigate through the wizarding world, but he was a stubbornly courageous friend who wouldn’t think twice about jumping into danger to support what he believes. His sense of humour has been a source of comfort even if there are few times to express it nowadays. And while he has a tendency of putting himself down, Harry knows that Ron is far more capable and talented than he lets on and tries to illustrate that belief whenever possible. Ron is the family he never had, and Harry is proud to call him his best friend, even if the Weasley sometimes has a difficult time believing it. 

⚔ Hermione Granger : While some may see Hermione as the cool logic behind the Golden Trio, Harry knows her as so much more than that. She is one of his closest friends and helps to keep both himself and Ron out of trouble more times than he can count. Hermione has been a steadfast support over the years, but has a dreadful habit of putting herself at personal risk when she does so. Harry is very protective of her, sometimes to the point where he will insist on leaving her behind while he and Ron go out on missions. It’s not that he doesn’t think she’s capable. It’s just that...with the war being as terrible as it is, with the risks being as high as they are, Harry can’t afford to have anything happen to her. Her kindness needs to be protected, even if she doesn’t want it to be. Luckily for him, Ron generally takes his side in that particular argument.

⚔ Ginny Weasley : Harry is in a bit of a confusing situation when it comes to Ginny. She’s been a part of his life since the beginning, and what began as a companionable friendship has blossomed into something new. The problem is that the timing has never been quite right, and Harry doesn’t know if he can give her the life that she deserves so long as Voldemort and his followers are after him. So for the time being, their relationship has consisted of a single kiss in the Room of Requirement and has been put on hold ever since. But when she enters his sight, he can’t help the pangs of longing that come along with it.

⚔ Draco Malfoy : There has never been a time when Draco and Harry liked one another. In fact, the rivalry that has existed between the two has only become more intense as the years have passed. Harry cannot stand for the bigotry, the affluence and the arrogance that Malfoy flaunts, and highly doubts that there will ever be a time that they truly see eye to eye. But...as much as Harry continues to dislike Draco, he cannot turn a blind eye to those in need. When he heard of the Slytherin’s circumstances, Harry was the one to vouch for his entry into the Order. While a part of him is glad to know that Draco is on his side, Harry still thinks he’s a right foul git.

the role of HARRY POTTER is currently CLOSED.