#but if not this will be a good challege for me in writing quickly

[ego-meliorem-esse]

Okay but why do François and Arthur keep separating if they are the only ones who understand each other that well? It's their arrogant personality? Their vicious habits and need to be correct? Bc I actually see françois more aggressive and Arthur more permissive in the end which seems to be contradictory to what I see people writing in the fruk shippers. I don't get it, no hate

Nah nah all good valid question and i do agree actually on most of what you say.

They dont separate in the traditional and common way we associate humans and human relationships with. Not fully.

Lets say they spend a vacation together. They go to the beach and drink and find bars and terorrize supermarkets during their stay. They are happy and content and a destrucrive power couple. But they are still nations and nations have more responsibilities than two moddle aged human men could ever have. So they clash on a thing or two. One takes a stab at an old phychologial wound thought healed. The other gets irritated but doesnt express it (cus emotional repression is legal apparently) and he takes a jab at the other at their weak spot. And they are irritated at each other and start to bicker bc both are too hardheaded to apologize or talk like people who didnt grow up during the middle ages. Now any small mishap irritates the other. A big fight then separation. They dont see eath other for a longer period of time after that. They might hit it off again with an old friend/enemy/lover and its fine. The problem is that François knows exactly what to say and what nerve to pick and get on it to get Arthur to react as he wants. And Arthur is too much of a sarcastic person and generally a man who enjoys a good challege which he might not get from everyone he interacts with. At least not precisely the way he likes. Like Alfred, Arthur gets bored seemingly quickly with a person. Also his affection can be missinterpreted as belittlement or even a jibe or taunt. He portrays himself as polite and appropriate but in truth he is a hard man to get along with. And few people know how to deal and distinguish his comments.

So after a randevouz with Portugal whom he hasnt seen in a while, he is once again sitting at home by himself pondering what takeout to get bc who has time to cook these days. He is still annoyed with francois but doesnt think too much of it. So after a while something happens and he wants to talk to someone about it, so having all but forgotten their little feud he picks up the phone and dials the french phone number. François picks up and you can hear the irritation in the "I thought the lord is still pissed at me. What a surprise." To which Arthur responds with "Oh do shut up. Now listen I've recetly got word that......" because who can be as stubborn as mules yet forgetful as fish at the same time? These two.

I do think to a certain degree Arthur is more permissive. Especially as he got older and saw his empire sink into that ocean he loved so much. François has more of a need to prove that he is still on top of the game so he does tend to be more assertive in some situations and discussions.

Even if they dont speak to eachother for multiple years at a time, something will come that hauls them back to one another. Be it shared history, mutual understanding or good gossip.

In short, small things break them apart and smaller things bring them together.

[oumaheroes]

Okay okay, so I’m going to try Whumptober but I’m also doing it as a challenge for me to stop myself overthinking stories and force a bit of newness. So, I’ll be trying to write every prompt the actual day itself and then posting whatever I get, no matter how long, short, or unfinished it is, with the idea that they’ll be a good starting point in the future if I like them enough to flesh out

[flyswhumpcenter]

Requiem [Whumptober 2019 - Stab Wound]

Summary: Felix gets stabbed in front of someone that isn't quite like the others in his eyes. Someone whose voice he never wanted to hear this torn apart.

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Blue Lions route, post-Timeskip, implied) Ship: Pre-Rel Annette/Felix

Content Warnings: Stabbing, major injury, depictions of blood, canon-typical violence.

Wordcount: 1,175 words

Notes: I've finally written actual whump for this challege, hurrah! It's only taken the 8th day for me to do that! I didn't quite think I'd write FE3H stuff for this Whumptober, especially when most of my friends seem to have jumped to other fandoms, or are at least less into the game as they used to be. Tbh, same, but I didn't see any other fandom I could write "Stab Wound" for (except maybe Trauma Center, but, heh... wasn't inspired for that one, you could say). I absolutely love Annette/Felix and am honestly surprised I've never written for it before. I think "Get Out Alive" almost was for them instead of just being Felix making it out of a battlefield while bleeding out (the prompt for it being "Bleeding Out", actually). Their support chain is one of my favorites of the game and I just really like their dynamic? And it allows me to pump out all the damn fucking musical imagery like there's no tomorrow, they open the floodgates of my metaphors. Anyway I love them and I've wanted to write them and this prompt seemed like a great choice

Event hosted by @whumptober2019

AO3 version available here.

--------

Truth be told, Felix has always thought of fighting on a battlefield as a solitary, almost lonely experience. It’s always been to kill or be killed and counting entirely on one’s army is a sure way to end up deceased by the end of the day and, even worse, showing a severe weakness. As he hates dependence on someone else and vulnerability in almost the same amounts, he’s always carried his duty on with himself in mind and, piercing through the air, his leader’s orders. Relying on his instincts, techniques and observations is a much safer way to fight a war and nothing could ever change his mind about it.

 Although he may have counted a bit too much on his instincts.

 His ears pick up on a distressing sound. Instead of feeling enhanced by her singing voice, the lyrics melting away into a choir guiding his moves and thoughts, he hears Annette’s words being filled with pain, almost strangled. His eyes quickly follow to get a visual on the scene, rushing without thinking twice about it as soon as he sees her getting threatened by a guy almost twice her size and more than double her weight for sure, discarding the body he’s just slashed with his sword. His legs are almost running on their own at that point, adrenaline more than enough to serve as a substitute for the energy he’s just poured on the battlefield.

He won’t let this battle be her swan song, not before he’s heard her sing again and teased her on the lyrics and spontaneity of her habit.

 Alas, as he does to attack the axe wielder from behind with a sharp and to-the-point sword slash in the back, he doesn’t quite notice someone else sneaking up on him. When he does finally realize there’s a soldier waiting to kill him, it’s almost too late: their blades cross, and he feels like he’s getting punched, right before Annette’s horrified eyes. For a single moment, he wonders who is going to win, but he pushes his deep enough to inflict a mortal wound and, despite how ashamed he is of himself for having let his guard down this badly, he’s relieved to still be of the living.

 “F-Felix…!” Her voice still trembles, far away from the melodious tones she has in her mouth when she cleans the library or waters the plants. “Y-You…”

He turns his head towards her, about to reply with some witty banter, glancing quickly at the Kingdom’s forces winning against their enemy, when a sharp pain makes itself known on his flank. His sword drops on the grass before he can even think of catching it back, putting a hand on the suddenly sore spot. One of his knees buckle without warning.

“Felix!!”

 He looks at his fingers, noticing the red dripping from them and tainting the fabric of his gloves. Stretching an arm to recover his fallen weapon, the pain obvious and blurring his thoughts until they can’t be recognized. The wound is deep, he knows it from how lightheaded he now feels, the blood loss too major to be ignored. From all accounts, he’s potentially fatally wounded. If he’s won the ambush, he’s only done so by the skin of his teeth, and the blood keeps pouring.

 “I need help! Anyone, please, help us!!”

Annette’s voice is distorted by her fears and panic, her arms flailing widely in front of him. The singing usually haunting him everywhere he goes and whatever he does is now gone, instead replaced by an excruciating requiem. Surely he’s done for.

She kneels before him, letting go of an anxious breath, sniffling and sobbing. His knee buckles again, making him pitch forward, and she decides to instead put him on his back and look around, eyes sharp, the expression on her face constantly shifting between sorrow, fear and a fierce kind of anger he’s not seen her feel yet.

“I’m gonna repay you,” she tells him with hand sparking. “I’m gonna repay you, and you won’t die, and it’ll be fine, and Mercie’s gonna heal you, and it’ll all be okay, I promise,” she almost hyperventilates out, chest rising and downing at an ever-quickening pace.

 Not wanting to be quiet beaten in that territory, Felix tries rising to his feet, only for his own body to betray him at the last minute. Dammit, if he could just swing his sword around, he’d be fine being stuck there for a little bit, but he can’t even do that… His arms are weak, his legs have given up for now, and he has to watch Annette do all the dirty work he was supposed to be doing in the first place. Still, seeing this fierce side of her isn’t the most displeasing sight… If he wasn’t heavily blanking from his flank, if his head wasn’t feeling this heavy and this dizzy, it’d have been quite the sight to behold. Instead, he’s feeling his soul leave his body further and further, helpless, and he’d have rather died on the spot than be the witness of his own slow, disgraceful demise.

He also wishes Annette wouldn’t have had his blood on her delicate hands; but alas, it’s too late to have regrets.

 Eventually, after thunder upon thunder has struck the ground of the battlefield, Annette kneels back to him, examining the wound with tears in her eyes and horror plastered on her face. He feels like he should be telling her something to reassure her, but he’s never been good with words, and the state he’s currently in doesn’t make it any better…

“Mercie’s gonna be here soon, don’t… don’t worry! You won’t die!”

As if he was planning on doing so.

“Takes… more than that… to kill me…”

“I know…! I know, but you’re still dying, Felix!”

She isn’t wrong. In fact, she’s entirely right. He is dying and will be until Mercedes can do something about it.

 His consciousness, though, isn’t quite patient enough to wait for her to arrive to their position. Dammit… He’s always been impatient, but this is just ridiculous and ill-timed. He doesn’t want to die and wants even less to make Annette thinks he’s doing just that even further. He misses her smile even more so than he misses her songs, he figures, right as Mercedes’s voice echoes in the distance until it doesn’t anymore.

He holds on, clutching at the last shards of awareness he still has, as magic pieces back together some of the guilty wound. His vision dims to complete darkness while he’s being watched over by a gentle voice and a trace of the smile he’s wanted to see desperately all this time, leaving him with almost a sense of peace as he lets himself lose consciousness, certain he’ll somehow pull through it thanks to his companions.

 Seen like that, it’s quite the ironic fate and thoughts to have for someone like him; and yet, when he eventually wakes up, he can only show gratitude to the woman who saved him.

[whatmyheartsaw]

What My Heart Did Chapter 5, Episode 3

Thawing from Below

Present Writing always seems to get harder for a time once I uncover a new element of deeply embedded truth. Since all the discoveries about my grandfather’s murder trial and how that trauma has passed down through the generations, I’ve been numb to the stories that until now have been so important to recovery. Nearly a year has passed. My mother died in January, and my father is in a nursing home. It’s almost as if my mind and body have needed to put all the facts of my ancestry aside and place any realizations into hibernation or a dormant state until I am able to adjust and understand.

Spring is slowly unfolding again in the Shenandoah Valley. As I watch the bulbs burst from the ground and the leaves and blossoms timidly emerge from the barren limbs of flowering trees and oaks, I think back to winter’s rough hand. How do trees and plants weather ice storms, snow cover, and frozen ground to faithfully reemerge each spring? What is their defense against the difficulties they are handed each and every season?  

So, like any curious gardener or naturalist would do, I looked it up. I wanted to remind myself of the process I probably learned in 7th grade, and maybe glean some insight into how we as humans can be more resilient. I found an explanation by Gary Watson, head researcher from The Morton Arboretum in Illinois that struck me.

“Plants from climates with cold winters have evolved to survive winter by going dormant. That means not just dropping leaves and slowing or stopping growth, but also reducing the amount of water in branch and root tissues. The lowered concentration of water in a plant's tissue acts like a natural antifreeze: It means it takes deeper cold to form ice inside them.”

"There's always warmth in the earth," Watson says. "The soil may be freezing from the surface, but it's always thawing from below."

Throughout the winter, he says, plants are adapting constantly to the changes. The biggest danger to plants is a sudden deep freeze. "As long as they have time to adjust, they're OK," he says. "It's when change happens suddenly that it can cause trouble."

As I let that description of how plants adapt to the challenges of winter sink in, the correlation to my own life emerges. “There’s always warmth in the earth,” throbs in my heart like a drumbeat.  

2014-2017 Dismantling my “busyness” took some time to settle into. First it required shutting down one business, stepping down from a non-profit board, and figuring out how to be more present with a family that was 750 miles away. The road was a bit bumpy to say the least. I considered moving closer to my family, but given my business was just starting to earn me a decent living, I didn’t think about that long. So instead I traveled and tried to keep up with the work on the road. I quickly saw that if I was going to eventually relocate, I would need to reposition my business in the new town. And while I wasn’t technically opening a “new” business, the expansion to a new market wasn’t much different. For two years I shuttled back and forth between Virginia and Florida, networking, teaching classes, and taking on new clients in both locations. Busyness took on a whole new meaning. But I rationalized the effort was “focused.”

Soon there was a second grandchild on the way. As rewarding as it was to spend time with my new granddaughter and anticipate the arrival of #2, the trips were exhausting and expensive for someone chronically ill and financially strapped. Despite my efforts towards self-care, in addition to the bouts of fibromyalgia and gastrointestinal maladies, I caught more bugs that lasted longer and had less and less energy for other parts of my life.  Friends and social activities were infrequent, and I dragged myself from task to task with a gritty determination that held my fractured pieces together like glue drizzled over a pile of straw. I knew I was hanging by a thread, but the realizations of how family trauma is passed on and my intuition about how to stop the cycle kept me driving forward. I couldn’t undo what had happened to me, but I might be able to contribute to greater understanding, support, and love in subsequent generations. Quitting wasn’t an option.

What I didn’t realize was how fragile my recovery still was. Spring and summer turned to fall, and the stones I thought I was turning to reveal a saner life just uncovered another cloudy puddle of fear. Being part of the more animated, vocal family that my son married into set off all kinds of triggers. I had to practice boundary setting again and again in order to keep myself from splitting apart, and I wasn’t sure anyone understood my challeges. More intimate contact with other people’s unhappiness and passionate disagreements reminded me just how ill-equipped I was to be a grounding force within a family. Despite how far I’d come, I had a long way to go.

By early 2017 I found myself dismantling again, but in a much more dramatic way. During a trip the previous fall where I met with multiple clients, did the whole family fall activities thing, and tried to fit a visit with a friend from high school into the mix, I literally went blind. I was fighting off yet another cold, and prior to an early flight out, had booked a room at a small lake resort near the airport hoping to get some much needed recovery time. When I arrived at the hotel, I noticed my eyes were tired and cloudy, but went about having dinner and enjoying some time by the water watching the sun set. By the time I went to bed, my eyes were quite bloodshot and red, but I passed it off as fatigue and decided a good night’s rest would help.

In the morning my eyes were glued completely shut. Somewhere I had contracted a nasty case of conjunctivitis. How was I going to get my rental car back to the airport and catch my flight? I felt my way to the sink to bathe my eyes. Warm water helped, but I looked a fright and there was no time to make other arrangements. So, like every other time in my life when the going got tough, I went. Donned my sunglasses, loaded up my bags, and got safely to the airport, on the plane, and home from the airport without incident, all the while conscious of not spreading the horrific eye crud to anyone else. 

But the pink eye did me in. Despite my careful attempts to manage the infection, it moved from one eye to the other and back. Even with treatment, I was unable to see for several weeks, and stumbled through limited work. Three eye doctors and several months later, I was left with a twitch and a clue that perhaps I wasn’t seeing my life clearly. By May I had shut down the Florida business operation and was regrouping once again, wondering if I would ever find my way out of the fog of trauma. The frustration of never quite finding the path to healing was driving me mad.  

Present Today I woke to a cool spring morning, Easter in fact, and the metaphor of resurrection isn’t lost on me. I noticed the oak tree that groaned and shattered so violently during the winter’s first ice storm has, in spite of its scarred limbs, begun to rise to spring’s call with a splash of brilliant green.  

I feel as though I’ve risen from the dead more times than most people could fathom, but these old trees give me pause. The season has turned again, and I’m cautiously optimistic that I can too.

Holidays bring mostly painful memories for me – but this Easter I’m focused on the fun parts that did and do exist. The waking to eggs hidden in the house. An Easter basket and a new dress or shoes for church. A new tradition of funny bunny ear photos. 

And as I relive and enjoy the good parts, I see that the legacy of childhood abuse and how it passes down through generations is a lot like the hardness of winter. Just when we think we’ve recovered and created eternal summer in our hearts - just when we think the storm has passed - winter comes around again in a blinding snowstorm or coating of ice, freezing the soil and forcing us into hibernation. And each time the winter of our pain recurs, it’s easy to despair and believe the ravages of those traumas will never heal. But remembering there’s always warmth in the earth, thawing us from below, can help us keep going. Accepting we may never “heal,” just like accepting that winter will come again, is a sweet surrender to a truth that can settle the restless heart of a trauma survivor.  Somehow, even through generations of all kinds of human trauma and pain, just like plants, we too can wake from difficulties of winter and rise again to a new season. And perhaps that’s all the healing we really need. 

Read previous episodes of What My Heart Did HERE.