#death has visited upon them both

[rhaenyradelights]

when you say rhaenyra is not daemon’s childwife, what do you mean?

this has been ennumerated exhaustingly by people much better with words that i, but they very very very specifically do not get married until rhaenyra is a grown woman, and that is both a result of daemon's aborted attempts at "saving her" from him, and a source of real deep pain for rhaenyra. it is so incredibly important to the crux of their dynamic that rhaenyra's childhood was marked by the euphoria of being around daemon and then long (frequent) periods of being separated from him. that's where the whole vision at harrenhal comes in....

he sweeps in and then he leaves the wreckage behind. and though a very large part of this is because of viserys, and daemon's continual banishments as punishment, it still harms her irrevocably. and even as he takes her to the brothel, he stops, and he does try to save her. it was never going to work, but it's like. very important that he tries. and not only does he try, but he leaves for a decade. and he is entirely ready to leave her again and go back to pentos with the dragon twins, before she stops him. and she, as an adult, proposes a marriage that is both politically advantageous but also an attempt to stop the constant wounding from abandonment that she carries with her. they get married in the style of old valyria, with a blood bond (are they not already bonded by blood), so that he can never leave her again in any way that matters.

but at this point. she's an adult. he's left her alone for ten years, and her childhood before then was a tapestry of dashed hopes. in all the spaces he left behind grew her fears of inadequacy, her fears of abandonment, her fierce attempts at Becoming Him when he wasn't there to be himself, an independent life carved out of a very particular cage of expectation but still, in rhaenyra's own word's, droll tragedy.

and so now when they fight, they are bringing a specific set of hurts and resentments and histories - tied to viserys of course, but also a result of the rope-burn from the stretched cord between them, and the tension between rhaenyra's current role as his queen that he must prostrate himself for, and his wife/niece, who remains, as always, the most beloved person in his life.... and rhaenyra's knowledge that even as he has married her, crowned her, and serves her, she can never truly stop him from getting on caraxes and acting of his own free will, and leaving her. he is the sword, he wants to be beholden to her and serve her, but she is not his childbride, and she never was, and that's a source of profound regret and also the site of some of their deepest pain.

[novelistwriter]

The Phantom Omega

DP x DC Prompt

Danny was an Omega, he knew that, but because of his accident, he can't go into Heat anymore. He's a bit sad that he can't have kids but he'll eventually get over it. He didn't get over it.

When he took the mantle of Ghost King centuries ago, he was expected to have heirs, but he wasn't told that until recently by the Observants.

He hasn't been visiting his dimension much, but he learned that the GIW are long gone during one of his visits to his dimension. The reason for his visits is because of his Omega instincts to nurture a Pup.

Over the centuries, Danny had felt the emotions of Pups on the verge of Death because they have no Omega Parent to care for them. He became a 'wet nurse' to those Pups he cared for until a suitable parent took them it.

Those Pups he did care for wanted him to their Omega Parent, but at the time, he wasn't able to care for Pup because he was focused on his Ghost King duties. And now that the Observants have told him that he needs an heir, they have allowed him to take as much time off of his duties to acquire an heir.

What Danny doesn't know about his dimension is that he became a worldwide Myth. He became the 'Mother of the Lost' when the Pups he cared for shared their experiences with him, and the stories became altered over time in the centuries that had passed. That also became one of his titles in the Infinite Realms.

About a month into Danny's search for a Pup that needs caring for, he feels intense emotions of Sadness from a Pup in Gotham, so he goes there as fast as he can.

What he finds is a little boy Pup crying over the bodies of his parents in an alleyway. His Omega pheromones get the attention of the Pup, who looks at Danny with tear stained cheeks. His instincts are telling him to soothe the Pup and care for him, and that's what he does, but he doesn't force it upon the Pup, he allows the Pup to cone to him for comfort.

Bruce, that's his new Pups name, and he loves his Pup. A few weeks after he moved into Wayne Manor, he felt the sadness of another Pup who lost their Omega Parent, but this time, it led him to Central City.

He had gotten a new Pup, promising the Alpha Father to care for the Pup. Barry, that's the name of his second Pup, and just like Bruce, he'll love Barry with all his heart for as long as he remains.

Years go by and Danny has been running Wayne Enterprises, since he's become the Parent to Bruce, which is a lot easier than his Ghost King duties. Bruce left the nest to go train around the world when he became an Adult. Danny respects Bruce's decision, since he's no longer a Pup (But he still is in Danny's mind). Barry had grown attached to Danny, staying in Gotham to be with Danny and Bruce, they have formed familial bonds with each other.

News of Danny spread throughout the world, this is when he learned of the 'Mother of the Lost' Myth. People have been coming to get a glimpse of him (Danny stays in his Phantom form most of the time, and his Phantom form is what's described in the Myth).

He fought off a lot of unsavory people trying to force a bond with him. It's mostly Alpha's who believe to be the perfect match for Danny. Danny isn't looking for love any time soon because he has a family to care for. This also causes Haly's Circus to come earlier than in canon.

Danny and Barry went to see the Circus when it came to Gotham. Danny couldn't save the Grayson's because he was getting food for Barry, who had become the Flash still but based in Gotham and not Central. He takes in a much younger Dick when he comforts the Pup after seeing that the Pup watched his parents fall to their death.

Many more years went by, and Danny had acquired a lot more Pups during and after the Justice League was formed. Jason, Tim, Stephanie, Cass, Kon, Damian, Billy, and two more on the way. Dani and Dan wanted a new start, so they both decided that they needed to be reborn again, this lead to Danny hosting both of their cores in him. He still hasn't told his family that he was the Ghost King, his Family learned of it when they failed to stop a summoning. Needless to say, all of the people in the summoning grounds are confused when Danny is summoned by the Cult Leader before anyone could stop the leader from chanting.

"Surprise...?"

[dcxdpdabbles]

Hi Drabbles,

I wanted to ask if you still do prompts and if you do can you do the one below?

So Danny is the Ghost King and was friends with Bruce’s parents so he felt when they died. They could become ghosts but I’ll leave that up to you. But either way, Danny feels their death and assists Alfred when he can to raise Bruce. Due Danny’s visits and Bruce’s holidays in the infinite realms they (Bruce and Alfred) became very Liminal. So they have slight powers. One day, Danny comes over with Ellie and Dan (who are like siblings to Bruce as both we deaged/destabilised and Danny raised them) but Bruce forgets he never told the newer kids about them as Danny hasn’t come over in a while. Dick has meet them, Jason has heard about of them but the rest don’t know about them.

There were three strangers in their house. Usually, that would be okay, as multiple people came and went through Wayne Manor. It was customary to hire random crews to help set up for a Gala, or maybe some representatives from the various charities they helped would come over for dinner or a meeting.

Sometimes, a few of Bruce's old party buddies would pop up to get him to stop being a dad and return to his party boy days. They've all learned how to dance around visitors and hide their identities.

The thing was, these strangers were kept from the main parts of the manor. Their rooms, the sitting lounge, Bruce's Office, Damian's art studio, Jason's library, Tim's game room, Cass' dance studio, and Duke's music record room were all inaccessible.

Bruce would always ask if someone attempted to sneak away and stop them. There was a time when paparazzi disguised themselves as crew members—the three idiots even got jobs at the cleaning company—and tried to see if they could find a scandal on the children.

Brucie Wayne was seen crying hysterically on the news that night for accidentally pushing down a piano on them. He was trying to take it up to the Music Room as a surprise for Duke and wanted to avoid bothering the cleaners to have them help him. He had no idea the rope he was using to drag the grand piano up the stairs would have snapped and rolled backward onto the paparazzi, who had previously been taking pictures of Cass practicing without her knowledge.

People told him not to feel bad, as Bruce had cameras in the hallways of his home due to the last time someone broke in, and it was obviously not his fault. Some people said they deserved it, but Bruce wouldn't hear it. He paid for all their medical bills and gave them enough funds to tie them over for three weeks while they recovered.

Everyone shook their heads at poor Bruce. After all, the piano had fallen so far that the only real harm was that each of them got a few bruises and a broken arm, but that was all.

The point was that no one went up there that shouldn't be.

Yet here, standing in the middle of the Gaming room, were three strangers who were all aggressively battling it out on an old remaster shooting game.

"This is way harder than I remember," said the oldest one, who seemed to be Alfred's age.

"That's cause you always sucked at games," The woman taunted, but her words were countered by the other man shooting her down. "Hey!"

"Ha!" Barked the last man from where he was twisting his elbows, moving alongside his running character. "I'm unstoppable!"

Tim turns to his siblings, about to ask them how they want to play the dramatic scene where they would throw these people out, but his words catch in his mouth upon spotting Cass' expression.

Her narrowed, guarded eyes watched the three with the same amount of steel she had reserved for only the worst of their enemies. Whoever they are, they set off so many alarms in her. She knows they're dangerous.

At once, this minor inconvenience turned into a severe risk to his health. He snaps back towards the strangers, tense and ready for battle. Around him, the rest of his siblings are in similar stances, quickly signing how they would attack.

What kind of message were they sending if someone on Cass's danger scale was able to break in undetected and choose to play with their things? Was it a show of what they could do? Claim that they could beat the Bats without really trying?

The woman's eyes snap towards them so fast she could have been a speedster. He had even noticed her turning around; one second, she was back to them. The next, she was half-turned, staring at them. It looked like a poorly edited video. Everyone jumps, but all she does is smile. "Hey, it's Bruce's kids! Anyone want to call the winner?"

The older gentleman drops his control, turns around to fully face them, and gasps. He puts one hand on his chest and the other right above his mouth. "Look at them! There are so many! Alfred must be so excited to be a grandfather. Why aren't you two giving me grandbabies?"

"Ugh, not this again." The man sighs, continuing to play despite the fact that the other two are no longer paying attention.

"It's fine time you find someone nice." The other protested.

"I'm not nice," Countered the player. "I highly doubt someone would want to find me."

"That's not true, Dan. Most of my co-workers want your number, " the woman chirps. "Also, stay away from my office. It's gross."

"Aren't half of your office married?"

"That's why I said most, you idiot."

"Just for that, I'm going to your office dressed like a romance novel protagonist. The modern professor who goes home for the holidays and finds his humanity again. I'll have a trench coat and everything."

"How dare you. Then I'll strut by your friends in a bikini."

"That's mean. It's not Halloween; there is no need to scare them."

"I'll kill you-"

"Enough! Honestly, you two, you're in your late thirties. Stop bickering."

"No matter how old we are, Dani will always be my little sister."

"Aw. " Dani poses the same as the older man—hand on chest, hand over mouth—and looks close to tears. "I love you too, you big waste of space."

Cass creeps into the room, somehow vanishing from view as the three strangers chat. Tim is still determining where she is, but he figures she'll strike when she has the opening. He feels Duke palm the knife in his pocket, and Damian lowers himself in preparation to throw a ninja star.

Dan snaps his head up with a laugh. "Wow, you're fast. A little too loud, though. Make sure to flatline your heartbeat when sneaking up on people."

Cass drops down over him, but Dan only laughs. Her blade goes right through him, and her fast place kicks do nothing. She accidentally cuts the controller in half, stopping the man's laughter.

"No! I was winning!"

"Ha!" Dani barks, uncaring the ninja star that goes through her right shoulder and flies through her body to exit on the other side. "Dan forfeits!"

"How does this count as forfeiting-"

"Guys, the children are trying to kill us." The older man cuts in. He levels the Waynes with large, grandfatherly eyes. "Children, why are you trying to kill us?"

He says it the same way someone would as a child why they were putting things in their mouths.

"Not kill. Just harm," Duke responds, voice low and dangerous. " Why don't you answer our questions. How did you get in here?"

"Alfred, let us in. He said we could make ourselves at home while he stepped out." The old man frowned. "He went to get Bruce from his office."

"Who are you?" Tim demands next, filing away the claim that Alfred let them. The butler would have told them days in advance if someone would have access to the game room.

"I'm Danny Fenton. These are my children, Dani and Dan." Danny introduces, eyeing the crowd. "We're close friends of Alfred and Bruce."

"How-"

"It's so good to see you all again!" Dick cheers, running down the hallway and still in uniform. He jumps over his siblings in an impressive flip, not breaking stride to race into Danny's arms.

The older man holds them open seconds before they crash together. "Dick! Look how big you've gotten. Oh, it seems like only yesterday you were waist-high!"

"Ha ha ha, it has been a few years, Granpa Danny. Hi Auntie, Uncle! How are you?"

"Dickie, my sweet pea, look at you!" Dani squeals, leaning in for her own hug. She passes through a confused Cass like a ghost. "So handsome! And Tall! Who told you that you were allowed to grow taller than me?"

"Seeing that you are barely over five' six, everyone," Dan laughs, clapping Dick on the shoulder. "It's a shame we're twins, so I'm no taller."

"Um, Dick?" Tim calls as his brother breaks in fast-paced, reassurances that no matter how tall he is, he will always be open for hugs from the shorter adults. "Who are they?"

"Oh these are Fentons. Danny helped Alfred raise Bruce, so their like our extended family."

Tim blinks, wondering if this feeling of confusion is what his classmates mean whenever they joke about being at family functions and people who last saw them as babies walk up to them like they should know them. It's an odd feeling.

"Oh, them?" Jason says from behind the hallway. He peeks in casually, lowering his gun and raising the soda can in the other hand. "I heard about them but never met them. They have level purple clearance."

"Of course we do! We build that stupid cave for Bruce." Dan scoffs. "He got stuck down there as a kid and thought it was safe just to make an entire headquarters in a hole. Honestly."

"At least Bruce has a career and children," Danny says pointingly.

"Please don't compare me to my cousin." Dani groans. "It's exhausting."

Yeah, this is definitely extended family.

[mochasucculent]

I'm rewatching Arcane, and after my third time seeing season 1 I had a hot new reading on Viktor's scenes in episodes 6, 7, and 8.

Like a lot of other people, I felt it was weird and unsavory that Viktor - very close to death with a disease that affects his lungs - suddenly starts experimenting on his disabled leg. Those two things have nothing in common, save for the fact that the cause of both might have been the toxic fumes of the undercity, which could have resulted in Viktor being born disabled if his parents were also subject to those conditions.

So why does Viktor try to "fix" his leg when his main goal is to utilize the Hexcore to prolong and improve living conditions before he's gone?

Viktor in acts 2 and 3 is motivated to save himself long enough to make a difference in the world. Even though Hextech is revolutionary for Piltover, it hasn't reached who Viktor wanted to help this whole time, the disenfranchised in the undercity. In his mind, he hasn't done enough to change the world for the better, and he will be gone before he has the chance to do so.

After realizing the Hexcore responded to organic matter when it absorbed Viktor's blood, he experiments with plants, only to find that they wither and die soon after the Hexcore makes them grow.

This causes him to visit Singed once again for anything that could help him figure out how to use the Hexcore for magic that could save lives, one last shot at accomplishing his dreams.

Viktor parted ways with with him as a child upon seeing that Singed was willing to hurt Rio, his salamander test subject, in order to prolong her life. Viktor didn't understand that cost before, but he does now, being in the same position as Singed and Rio simultaneously, both the scientist trying to make a breakthrough and the subject he needs to save in order to do so.

Like Rio, Viktor is not his own end goal to his scientific pursuits. Singed is trying to save his daughter, Viktor is trying to help his people. He's his own means to an end, and is now willing to pay the cost of getting there.

Singed gives Viktor a variant of Shimmer to experiment with, the idea being that it will stabilize an organism while the Hexcore's magic affects it, hopefully allowing it to survive through the aggressive and sudden healing process.

Viktor injects the Shimmer into his leg, as well as carving runes into both his brace and thigh to channel the magic towards there before he offers the Hexcore his blood. It does Something to his leg which we don't see till the following episode.

The new reading I have of this scene is that the reason Viktor chose his leg specifically is not because he was trying to "fix" it, but because:

-He's not willing to put others' lives at risk and knows he's not long for this world, so the only test subject he's willing to use is himself

-He knows the organic matter he tests the Hexcore on might die

-Viktor's leg is a part of his body he's willing to lose if things go wrong and it rejects the transmutation (he also knows that he could just fully die then and there too and is willing to take that risk)

Obviously, the scenes involving Viktor's experimentation center his physical disabilities (shots of his back brace, the focus on his leg) and equate them with the disease that is literally killing him. The narrative lens shows us that Viktor "curing" himself begins with his disability, which sucks.

So while the boat scene undoubtedly is written to be "triumphant" because Viktor's leg is no longer disabled (shown by him dropping his crutch, the swelling music, the parallel to the scene where a child Viktor can't keep up with his toy boat), a different reading is that it's another experiment to him.

Viktor is stress testing the organic matter he infused with magic, and the scene is triumphant because he's realized his leg isn't deteriorating or weakening - it holds up. The mutation of the magic in his leg survived. It's a sign that maybe he can use the Hexcore on the rest of his body, keep himself alive long enough to do what he's always wanted to do: leave a legacy that changes the world for the better.

To me that's a much more in-character perspective for Viktor in these scenes than what is being said narratively through directing, framing, music, etc. Previously, Viktor had never expressed distaste for his disability as an adult, only commenting on it as a part of why he was isolated socially from Piltover. To me, him testing the Hexcore on his leg is merely an indifference to its current state, rather than a preference to have it changed. I don't even necessarily think it'd be a bad thing if Viktor did outright say "I would like to not be disabled", because I'm sure many other disabled people feel that way from time to time, but season 1 really does a poor job of pushing that framing of "curing" disability onto a character that did not express those perspectives himself at this point.

It gives off a big ol' "aw, poor Viktor, not only is he dying because of the political landscape that leaves disenfranchised people to suffer preventable diseases, but he's got a disabled leg too!" One of those things is much more problematic than the other lol.

Season 2 definitely hurtles Viktor very quickly into the Machine Herald perspective in which he thinks humans must evolve past ANY limitations of their original bodies, but to me season 1 Viktor just doesn't feel that way about himself. His primary concern has always been rooted in how to improve the lives of his people permanently, and it's only when he's actively dying that his secondary goal is to live long enough to see that happen.

It's something he drops completely after his experimentation results in Sky's death. He's immediately spiteful of the Hexcore and tries to destroy it - and himself.

Viktor now accepts that he will die before he's able to change the world the way he wanted, and hides the fact that he fucked with his body from everyone as he awaits his demise. "Fixing" his leg is not something he celebrates in and of itself, it's now only a reminder that the pursuit of his dream resulted in someone else's death.

The narrative does well in season 2 to frame Viktor's Glorious Evolution as a Bad Thing at least, and Jayce's speech at the end about Viktor never being broken is extremely valuable and important, but it's just weird to see him say this:

Cause to me now, that ain't what Viktor was trying to do at all! The writers may have retconned that to be the case, which is fine, whatever, but season 1 in isolation does not support that idea to me after this rewatch.

Overall, I think Arcane can have confusing directing sometimes that focuses on evoking feelings and themes rather than the richness of its characters, their dynamics, and the world they inhabit - to the detriment of all the above. In season 2, this resulted in a lot of scenes that felt emotionally unearned or muddy to me, like pretty much everything with Jinx, Vi, and Vander together rip.

It's for this same reason that I think it took me so long to really come to this reading of Viktor's season 1 scenes, because the directing bias REALLY wants to make you feel sorrow and hope alongside Viktor, even though it means he'll seem to randomly start equating his disabled leg to his illness. It just felt like a weird disparity to me until I watched these episodes again and was like "wait" lol.

Anyway peace and love on planet Earth I cannot stop thinking about Viktor Arcane

[hoaxghost]

Mouthwashing has been on the mind cause the intentionality and execution of its concepts make me dive further into it than I normally would otherwise. Haven't seen as much discussion on it but one aspect I super like is the theme of children/offspring. Heavy spoiler discussion

Like there are so many parallels you can draw between Daisuke and the unborn baby. The way Daisuke was a last minute addition to the team despite the ship only having enough resources for four members (and four cryosis pods), the way he's seemingly a burden upon everyone because he's a nepotism hire whose new to the whole job, and especially the way Jimmy's selfishness kills Daisuke in the end. Like there's a reason the fetus was located in the vent system along with all the hibiscus flowers you can find scattered throughout the section. Just as how a baby is loud, disruptive, and immature, so is Daisuke in contrasting against the rest of the team with continuous optimism, much more colourful (and childish) attire, and fondness for sweets. It's worth noting he's the only one to really mention his family back home.

It's also worth noting how both Daisuke and the unborn baby had to be 'put out of their misery' by their 'parents' (Swansea being a clear father figure and well Anya is self explanatory) despite their harm/existence being caused by Jimmy. It's the way Jimmy has convinced himself that responsibility means the 'burden' of ordering others to their deaths that makes it all the more gut wrenching. He didn't want to take on the responsibility of the unborn baby- so it led to him crashing the ship and dooming everyone to their deaths. He didn't want to go in the vents to visit the med bay so he used 'captains orders' on the one person in the crew whose too naive to refuse them. Also the whole thing with Swansea too- how the old man expresses near constant frustration throughout the game with him but then its revealed its more of a frustration with himself and his difficult relationship with taking responsibility with his family back home. How much easier it is to fall into hedonistic pessimistic alcoholism and involve his intern when faced with 99.99% guaranteed doom. At the end, it's too late for him to change anything. The only thing left he can do is to put Daisuke out of his misery cause he let his intoxication be manipulated by Jimmy. There are other facets to Daisuke's personality too I think are interesting to explore but those are more fitting for a different post... stares off into the fake sunset sky...

[bet-on-me-13]

Captive AU

So, the GIW has been around for a while.

Ghosts have been a problem for centuries, the US Government wouldn't have waited until the 21st Century to figure out a way to deal with them, so the GIW has been around for years. And the general Public knows about them, it's a common household name like the FBI or the CIA. They are simply seen as another government organization doing its job, no need to care about the Ghosts they capture, they're Non-Sentient anyways.

Over the years of their existence, they have acquired their own little prison full of Ghosts. And among that collection of Ghosts, 4 stand out.

Because they are somehow Ghost-Human Hybrids.

The first was captured a while before the others. A College Student studying Ectology had been admitted to the Hospital after a Lab Accident, where he had been diagnosed with an, as of yet, unknown and incurable Disease. He had Green Boils popping up all over his Face, and he was in excruciating Pain.

The GIW had sent a team to investigate, and they had found that the College Student was slowly transforming into some type of abomination. He was still partially human, but he was also partially a Ghost. They had him declared Dead and shipped him off to a Blacksite Facility to be experimented on.

...

The Second One came about 10 years later. Coincidentally, it was very similar circumstances. The very same pair of scientists who had been acquainted with their previous subject had just admitted their 5 Yr old son into a local Hospital. He had been in a Lab Accident that had stopped his Heart for a few minutes, and out of curiosity the GIW had sent a Team to investigate.

And what did they find, but a perfect recreation of their favorite Test Subject.

They declared the Child Dead, and sent him off to the same Facility they kept the other one in.

...

The 3rd of the Hybrids was actually created in a GIW Lab, 3 Years Later. In an experiment to see if the Hybrids condition could be recreated, a GIW Scientist had taken the DNA of the 2 existing Hybrids and had cloned them.

Of the Test Batch of 15, only 1 Subject survived. It was deemed only a Partial Success, because while they did manage to create a New Hybrid, it was Unstable and prone to melting if overexerted.

They placed it in the same Containment Unit as the other 2, and left it at that. No more Cloning Experiments had been conducted afterwards since the project was deemed an overall Failure.

...

The 4th and Final Hybrid was found in Gotham City of all places, 2 years later.

A GIW Operative had been visiting Family when their Van's Ecto-Detector had gone off. Soon after that they found the Subject in an Alleyway, seemingly disoriented from its recent awakening.

DNA testing had revealed the Hybrid to be deceased Jason Peter Todd, the adopted Son of Bruce Wayne who had been killed 6 Months Prior while studying in Ethiopia. By the Scientists Best Guess, an Anomoly in Space-Time had caused a Natural Portal to open right on top of the Teenagers Corpse, fusing his Deceased Body and nearly formed Ghost into One.

They shipped the Teen off to the Blacksite, and placed him in the same Containment Unit as the others.

...

So now the GIW have 4 Hybrids, all created from different circumstances, all different ages.

One was formed from the Slow Death of a College Age Student, after a Lab Accident had flooded his system with Pure Ectoplasm.

One was form from the Instant Death of a 5 yr old Boy, after a Lab Accident had flooded his Body with a dimensions worth of Ectoplasm.

One was created in a GIW Lab in a Cloning Experiment. She was created to be 3 Yrs Old upon Birth, and was Unstable as a Result.

One was created from the Fusion of a Long Dead Teenage Corpse and a nearly formed Ghost, in a random Space Time Event that forced both together.

...

All the Halfas are basically a Family together. Vlad is the oldest, at around 35, and takes the Paternal Role.

Danny and Ellie are the Kids, and are 10 and 5 respectively.

Jason is the Oldest Child, and takes his Older Brother role very seriously. He is 15 when he is brought in.

They all take care of eachother, through all the experiments and tests the GIW force them through.

One of the most common experiments is to have them battle the other Ghosts in Captivity. Although that is just a thinly veiled dog fighting ring that the GIW scientists like to Bet on. Sometimes they are put up against eachother, but they refuse to fight until they are electrocuted into submission.

They were also forced to Push all of their Powers to their Limits every day, just so the Scientist can see how they are growing. This had drained them, since they only got the absolute minimum amount of Ecto to survive off of, and they were forced to use it all up every day.

This goes on for 3 more years.

...

Until the day when the GIW messed up.

During one of their Constant Dog Fights, they had made the mistake of putting two Electricity Core Ghosts against eachother. The resulting battle had created an Electromagnetic Wave that fried all systems in the entire Facility.

It was a Disaster. Dozens of Scientists were killed when the Door Locks failed to contain the captive Ghosts, and even more were injured when a few of the Ghosts managed to break into the Armory on Base.

It was only hours after the whole ordeal was Finally quelled that they realized that their most Valuable Test Subjects were missing.

Vlad, Danny, Jason, and Ellie had taken the chance to run away during the commotion. Vlad had unfortunately been injured during the escape, and Ellie had been forced to use her powers causing her to destabilize a little, but all in all they had managed to escape on one piece.

But now they were fugitives on the run from the Government, with an injured adult and a sick child.

Jason had an Idea though. While he didn't have very clear memories of his life, a side effect of his late resurrection, he did remember that he used to live in Gotham. And they all remember researchers grumbling about how their scanners always malfunction when they passed nearby Gotham.

So, Jason led his little Family to the most Familiar place in the city he could think of.

Crime Alley.

[trulyumai]

Protector of his Woman

Pairing: Messmer the Impaler x Reader

Synopsis: Leaving the kingdom was a choice, but leaving his wife? Out of the question.

Warnings: Talk of violence/Death.

Enjoy!

“Does thou take me for a fool?” 

The pale flame stood tall, beside him his wife gripped onto the forearm placed in front of her frame. She stood just behind said man, looking away from the escalating scene. Too distracted by the swiveling trees and smell of pine wafting through the air. 

“Of course not, your grace! Its, well, your mother thought it best-”

“My mother disgraces me with such a request, yet is unfit to be present?” 

The golden soldier gulped, a bead of sweat dripped down the side of his brow, illuminating his face with a light sheen. 

“N-no, she traveled to the capital today, y-your grace.” 

The knight squinted. His posture was rigid and offended by the mere man's presence. 

He stood on their porch, by their house and demanded his attention to the capital? 

How offensive, how misinformed how- 

“Husband?” 

The burning flames hushed beneath his palms as the attention diverted from the man, to the small women beside him.

“Wife,”

With half lidded eyes, the man moved a hand towards her backside and rested it upon her lower spine. The aura shifted, the heat died down and the ambiance of nature could once more be heard. (Rather than the sizzling of a flame that grew onto the man's digits.)

“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad visit. It has been a while since our last outing.” He felt the strokes upon his arm, soothingly moving up and down, up and down. 

“Leave us,” Messmer didn’t need to look up once more, as the soldier fled down their stone walkway. 

“She insults us, thou knows of her intentions.” 

His gaze stuck to her lucky honeydew on bread, it stayed there globbing onto each detail. Her eyes were bright today, full of light and love. Yet there was also worry there, and Messmer bit his tongue for placing such a feeling onto her. Her form sagged beside his, most of his arm held her body up, halting it from falling upon the rocks.

“She does,” a pause

“But she’s your mother, to not make an appearance would surely soil your reputation, my love.” 

“Have I not done enough? The bodies that lay upon the mountains, are they not proof of my unwavering loyalty?” His voice raised, startling the shorter woman, moving forward he gestured his hands around their vicinity. 

“All of this, all of it! It's safe because I deemed it so. Not the lord Godwyn, Not the unbeatable Melania. Me. The beholder of flames! Yet thee can be ruined- butchered, for not returning to an unloving kingdom?”

Mouth dry, she tried to speak- to comfort the rising temper of the man but no words budged. His eyes burned bright, they looked right through her. 

“No. I will not be returning, dear wife. For my place is here, by your side, in this house that I built for us,” Cautiously the knight placed himself back in front of her, and to her surprise, bent down on his knees. 

“Messmer! Get up this instant, your knees-”

A big palm covered her lips, its texture rough and calloused. It was so warm compared to the nipping air around them. And although she tried to be mad- she really did, it was hard when such a warmth was comforting to the girl. 

“My wife, I will protect thy until the flames of this land die out, until there's no one left but us to occupy such a fool of a kingdom,” 

“However,” 

The bigger man's hand dropped from her lips, both of his limbs instead wrapped themselves around her being, until his elbows molded together. 

“Do not ask me to leave your side again. Promise me.” 

“Husband… I simply canno-

“Promise me!” The man shouted, his grip tightened fastly around her.

Her nails dug into the man's wrists, and although she wasn’t in pain, his fervent yet fierce attitude scattered her mind. She wasn’t used to such a ferocity of emotion emitting from the man, aimed at her no less.

“I- I promise, I promise my love!” 

As if those were the words he was waiting for all his life, the man crumpled beneath her frame, his head buried between the ripples of her dress, with his nose digging into her stomach. 

She didn't know just how far such a devotion could- would go for the maroon knight. 

For how could she see the future, wrapped in nothing but flame and immorality?

“I  adore you, little wife,” Yellowed iris’ glanced upon her delicate ones. 

A laugh broke out between her lips, enchanting the man entirely.

“And I you, Husband.”

As if starved the man leaned up quickly; hungrily, to lock his lips against hers. Broken skin connected with softened and smooth, Messmer moaned out in content. 

If his wife was to be the end of the world, he would be her weapon. His flames would bathe her with as much loyalty he could give. 

What would he need a broken kingdom for, when such a devoted wife lay in his arms?

[amomentsescape]

hello! Are you ok?, I hope so ❤️ (by the way, your writing is wonderful)

I would like to make a request for Yandere Slashers with an S/O who is a mermaid, who usually kills people who dare to invade her lakes, and she kills these people by drowning.

(I'm sorry if there are any writing errors, English is not my first language, and I'm writing this using Google translate)

Slashers with Mermaid! Reader

Yandere! Slashers x Reader

Includes: Freddy, Michael, Jason, Thomas, Bubba, Brahms, Norman, Billy, Stu, Vincent, & Bo

A/N: I'm doing good, thank you <3 I hope you enjoy! (Also, I decided I'm going to remove Lester from the Slasher requests. I'm still very much open to writing for him when specified, but I feel like he doesn't quite fit in with all the other Slashers).

Freddy Krueger

Meeting you was quite literally the best thing to ever happen in his undead life

He likes to team up with you, constantly coming up with different ways you both can contribute to someone's death

You pull them under, and they suddenly wake up in Freddy's world

Your dynamic is pretty ideal too

Whenever you sleep, you can visit him

And he has no issues with popping into your waters just to say hi

He does this quite often, in fact

He is very aware you can take care of yourself, but he still gets worried

You're his

He doesn't trust anyone being around you

Even if your only intention is to kill them immediately

He understands that where you are now is your home, but that won't stop him from doing whatever he can to have you live in his world

He can create the perfect environment for you

Miles and miles of nothing but water if your heart desires

Which hopefully it does

Since he isn't willing to wait much longer

Michael Myers

He never thought creatures like you actually existed

But the moment he saw your strength and darkness, he was immediately drawn in against his better judgment

He visits more often then you think

He's always around, watching

You can feel eyes on you almost 90% of the day, but you never really know where it's coming from

He enjoys watching you swim and just relax

But he especially loves seeing you drag poor souls into the tide with you

There's something so twisted and yet magical about watching you kill

But this fascination is also paired with extreme jealousy

He hates seeing you touch other people

And he almost envies the way they get to be so close to you, even if it means their demise

He hopes to find a way to take you home with him for good one of these times

You told him you loved him, so you'd be happy as long as you're by his side

Right?

Jason Voorhees

Out of all places to meet the love of your life, this one seemed especially unfortunate for Jason

But his feelings for you were strong enough to overrule his fear

He'll sit by the shore with you, hearing you talk and sing old tunes he's never heard before

He loves listening to your stories about the world underneath the current

But this always leaves him with such a deep feeling of sadness

He wants a life where you both can live together and share those memories

But he knows that's nearly impossible

He starts spending more time by the water side than the camp, finding that irresponsible teens like to be by the beach even more than the forest

You lure them in with your beauty and your words, and Jason finishes the job

He'll let you kill too if you really wish to, but he doesn't like the idea of those types of people being so close to you

He barely gets to touch you, so why should they get what he so desperately wants instead?

Thomas Hewitt

In this desert like area of Texas, Thomas has to travel quite far to see you

But the one time he accidentally stumbled upon you, he was smitten

And you surprisingly didn't turn him into another victim like all the others

He was kind to you

And now, he brings you food and stops by as often as he possibly can

You've made him little necklaces out of bones and shells

He wears every single one of them

Your bond only gets stronger each time he comes to see you

But Thomas can only take so much

Why can't you be closer?

He knows the family would love you

And he could make you so happy

His bathtub is big enough for you, he's sure of it

He knows that you won't want to leave your own home for his, but he loves you and knows what will be best for you

He's just got to be patient

Bubba Sawyer

His own family had to go on a search for him after he disappeared for a couple days

But he just couldn't help it

You make him so happy, and the more time he spent with you, the more difficult it became to leave your side

He's tried to jump in a few times to be with you, but you always persuade him out of it

He doesn't know how to swim, and you don't want him to end up like everyone else

That's when he decided that the best option would be to create your very own pond in his backyard!

That way, you could be with each other, and he would never have to say goodbye again

He hasn't told you this idea yet, but he's sure you'd be happy with it

This would also keep you from needing to kill anyone else

You're too beautiful to get your hands dirty

And it's unfair that they get to join you in the water when you won't let him do the same

He can make you super happy with his family, he's sure of it

Brahms Heelshire

He hates this dynamic between you two

He wants you at home with him so you can take care of him, and he can keep you away from everyone else

No one should get to touch you or look at you besides him

He's actually tried to drag you out of the water before, but the prospect of accidentally killing you was enough to make him stop

He never knew he could envy a body of water as much as he does

It gets to hold you, touch you, and be with you at all times

He wants that too, so desperately

Because of you, he's gone from house dweller to nature enthusiast in just a matter of days

Even when you think he's at home, he's stalking around, watching you

He insists it's to keep you safe

In fact, you haven't had to drown anyone in quite a while

And you can thank Brahms for that

The moment he sees a single soul in the area, he drags them off and disposes of them before you even have a chance to see them

He wouldn't dare let you touch another being that isn't him

Norman Bates

It honestly took him a really long time to believe that you were even real

He didn't think mermaids or sirens actually existed, so seeing you for the first time made him pinch himself to make sure this wasn't some weird dream

He also took a while to trust you since he didn't want to fall victim to your treacherous waters

But once he realized you were genuine, he dove straight in all at once

He visits you whenever he can for however long he can muster

Someone needs to run the motel, but God he wishes he could be with you 24/7

He's "jokingly" brought up the idea of you staying at the motel in a pool he could install for you

He just wants to keep an eye on you at all times

He constantly dreams of finding a way to make you human so you two can truly be together

Until you have two feet like him, it will never be enough

Billy Loomis

Doesn't tell a single soul about you

Not even Stu

And it's not because he's embarrassed or wants to see other people

He's honestly just scared that others will either think he's insane or try to capture you

Visits you every day and makes sure to pack his swim trunks so he can join you in the water

Constantly admires you and wants to run his hands along your scales

He just thinks you're all around incredible

But he has this hidden level of anger towards the situation

He wants to walk around town with you, show you off

He wants you to join him on his sprees so you can see just how powerful he can be

And he hates the idea of not having eyes on you at all times

He knows you kill anyone who isn't him, but he doesn't want you getting that close to anyone in general

He spends his nights studying ways to get you to live with him

He'll find a way to have you all to himself, even if it ends up being the death of him

Stu Macher

He actually first met you while you were seducing some poor soul to their death

And Stu was immediately enamored

He comes to see you whenever he can

He sometimes spends the weekend camping out along the shore just so he can spend more time with you

He thinks you're beautiful of course, but he can't help but fantasize what it would be like if you were human like him

You two come from very different worlds, but there's nothing that could keep you away from him

He likes to bring up the idea of mermaids and mythical creatures in casual conversations with people

How they react to it will determine whether they make his hit list

He likes to bring you jewelry and pretty objects from his victims, showing you items that you've never seen before

He talks about how one of these days, he's going to have a house built on the shore so he can be with you

And if you argue against it, he will shut down

The pent up frustration of not getting to sleep next to you every night makes his killings more brutal and his fantasies all the more darker

Vincent Sinclair

Every time he comes to see you, he brings a new portrait or wax figure of you that he made

You flood his dreams and his mind 24/7

He honestly thinks he's under some sort of spell

He doesn't mind that you aren't human like him

He's always felt very different from everyone else, so it's nice for him to have someone he relates to

But his jealousy constantly gets the better of him

Anytime you tell him of some poor soul you drowned, he can't help but feel his blood boil

Even if it ends in their death, he hates the idea of you flirting or seducing these people

The only one who should be receiving that attention is him

Barely sleeps at night

He has snuck to the shore countless time without your knowledge, just watching you and making sure your stories line up with what he observes

Is overall obsessed even more than you know

Bo Sinclair

If anyone saw you together, it would be enough to make them blush

The way you two can constantly flirt back and forth without any hesitation is otherworldly

You could have sworn he must have been a creature like you in a past life

He's so touchy when he's with you, not afraid to get his clothes wet in an effort to just be closer to you

He truly makes you feel accepted as you are and with where you live

But little do you know of his darker nature

He stalks the shore and kills off anyone that trespasses before you even have a chance to get to them

He doesn't need you looking at anyone but him

And he's already been renovating an old abandoned pool in Ambrose for you

You're going to finally be living with him like he's always wanted

You don't know this yet, but he's sure you'll be happy with the idea

It will be a great surprise

[thelien-art]

Ñolofinwë, Anairë & Grandchildren

Latest portraits

Sons of Fëanáro - Fëanáro, Nerdanel & Telperinquar - Children of Ñolofinwë - Children of Arafinwë

Now for Arafinwe and kids!!

HC:

Fingolfin: Fingolfin did look up to Feanor a lot when he was younger and would try to act like him, wearing white, red, and gold, as well as trying to become a smith one time, but later when it became clear for him Feanor had no real interest he began doing a mix of being the opposite of Feanor as well as just trying things he thought he would like before wondering if either Feanor or Finwe would approve. While I think his relationship with Finwe was great I still think it had its flaws, especially when Finwe decided to go with Feanor to exile after Fingolfin had been threatened BY Feanor, neither do I think he ever felt that close to the Vanya, as after all he was a Noldor prince, and while not the first in line, he wasn´t the last either. Of his siblings, he was closest to Lalwen and would take her counsel highest. I do think that upon his death he thought he did what was best, after all, all was hopeless, but maybe he could sacrifice himself for more peace for his people, and while doing that, maybe he could see Anairë again? I also think he took much pride in his grandchildren, although only being aware of one, and made a big deal out of being there for all his children, supporting them in whatever they wanted and helping them try different things, as long as they would never fight among themself.

Anairë: Anairë came from a noble family and knew Fingolfin in his youth before they decided to marry. After Finarfin married Eärwen, who Anairë became close friends with, she would happily take her children to visit their uncle and aunt, building expressly upon Turgon and Finrod´s friendship. While I think she took pride in being fully Noldo she did not support Feanor, thinking him rash in his speeches, and neither could she follow her people after the first kinslaying both because of the humiliation she felt upon seeing it as well as the grief, and later would move in with Finarfin and Eärwen, grieving for her lost children and husband.

Idril: As a half Vanya (5/8 Vanya??) she leans a lot into her mother´s traditions, both by covering up her hair as well as not braiding it, and while the Vanya doesn´t wear as much jewelry as the Noldor they do wear big pieces when they do, and Idril finds some kind of middle ground. I think she used to wear some gold, like her mother, before the crossing of the ice where she lost both her mother and legs (last part is a HC). While before she chose to only wear silver it was because she idolized Anairë and wanted to be like her, while after it was some kind of denial later becoming a fashion choice (?). - I do HC that the first year after Elenwë´s death Idril only wore her mother's jewelry to feel close to her, but after having to accept her mother was gone she would try to avoid anything that would remind her too much of her.

Maeglin: I know I talk about it at every chance, but I HC ËOL AS A MAIA AND I WILL NOT BE TOLD OTHERWISE, so I give Maeglin glowing eyes too for that reason. Turgon, when it gets pointed out to him, because his whole family and most of his Lords have glowing eyes, just shrugs it off and blames Melian for it. I like to think that while there wasn´t a lot of galvorn Maeglin still learned how to forge with it, he and Aredhel have jewelry made with it. He dyes his hair tips light purple as is costume to some of the Avari, to color it, as that he thinks Ëol is a Avari and he therefore is part. Yes, he has dark purple hair after Ëol but thinks that´s just something some people do have, after all some of the Sinda (Luthien&Daeron) have blue hair and Ëol purple, why can´t he have it too?? Nobody really notices as he dyes it anyway, and Aredhel is 99% sure Ëol is a Maia which is why Maeglin too has purple hair, but why would that matter, he is mama´s boy after all.

Gil-Galad: I am fully convinced Ereinion is just some guy - I HC Gil as an adopted child of Fingon, later adopted by Orodreth, and lastly Cirdan. Most of his jewelry is taken from Fingon and Orodreth, more or less without permission (light kleptomania), Orodreth would pretty much ignore it, whereas Fingon would find it funny and "accidentally" loose piece Ereinion would have shown in interest in, making a big deal out of looking for it before shrugging with a laugh declaring he didn´t care and whoever found it could keep it in front of Ereinion. Most of this is because of his upbringing, I HC him as a child of Angband, later becoming a bad habit, although he would only take things from people very close to him and give it back if asked. His vitiligo is also from Angband, as I HC those born close to Ainur suffer effects from it either physical or mental, which means that the biggest amount of elvers with born disadvantaged come from Angband, whereas the Ainur wouldn´t even try to lower the effect they have on elvers and humans, thereafter Valinor (but only certain places - where the Ainur "lives" which means that very few elvers actually live there, so it is very very few, although I do HC Edrahil of being affected by the Ainur in Valinor), and lastly Doriath.

[saphronethaleph]

Legally Mandated Vacation Days

The holoprojector in Palpatine’s private quarters activated, an image shimmering to life, and Palpatine smiled in anticipation of seeing Vader kneeling before him.

That lasted approximately half a second, until he saw the actual image.

“Your Majesty!” an extremely nervous Imperial Navy lieutenant said, saluting. “It’s an honour to-”

“Where is Vader?” Palpatine asked. “This is his personal hologram frequency!”

“Ah… Lord Vader assigned me to take his calls while he was away,” the lieutenant explained. “It’s, ah… an honour to be speaking to you… do you have a message?”

“Away?” Palpatine repeated. “Why is Vader away?”

“I don’t know!” the lieutenant protested. “Your Majesty, I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you – he just told me to take his calls and said he was using up some annual leave, since he hadn’t taken any since the year one.”

It took Palpatine a fraction of a second to actually calculate what that meant, because replacing the calendar when he came to unquestioned power had been what the youth called ‘a flex’ but it had also caused significant calendrical chaos and he personally still thought in the old system at least half the time.

Eleven years, then. Vader had eleven years of stored up annual leave, and he was choosing to expend some.

“Where did he go?” Palpatine asked.

“I didn’t ask!” the lieutenant replied. “Your Majesty, I didn’t want to die, and also I don’t think I’m allowed to ask anyway…”

Palpatine glowered at the hologram, then untensed.

Marginally.

“Inform Vader that I want to speak to him as soon as possible,” he said, then ended the call before the lieutenant could start fawning again.

“Uncle Owen!” Luke called, running down the steps of the homestead. “Aunt Beru! Someone’s coming!”

“We’d better see what this is about, then,” Owen Lars decided. “Did you recognize them?”

The pre-teen looked thoughtful.

“Don’t think so,” he said. “Whoever it was, they were wearing black. Not sure why.”

“Black robes are just as cool as white,” Beru commented. “I know black gets hotter, but it doesn’t reach the skin.”

Luke frowned.

“It might have been robes,” he said. “Don’t know.”

“Well, let’s see who it is,” Owen decided.

Beru’s gaze darted to where one of their blasters was hidden, as Owen headed up the stairs.

“Oh kriff,” Owen said, in a tiny voice.

Then a black shape, like death, came down the stairs.

The figure in the armoured suit and cloak wasn’t really forcing Owen to retreat, not really.

Not through any physical means, or otherwise.

He was just… walking, and Owen was responding in an instinctive sort of way to get out of the way of Darth Vader, the Emperor’s Enforcer, the sign of death across the whole of the known galaxy.

Upon reaching floor level, Vader examined Beru, then Luke, then the room around them.

“So,” Darth Vader said, in a dread but awkward voice. “How have you been doing?”

It took all those present several seconds to find their voices.

“...what?” Owen asked, eventually.

“I know it has been a while,” Vader went on, then stopped. “…ah, of course. It is unsurprising you fail to recognize me. I… was not wearing this, before.”

“Then who are you?” Beru asked. “You’re acting like you know us, but… you’re Darth Vader.”

“Yes,” Vader agreed. “I… have had a complicated last few months. I ran into someone from my past. We fought. I was seriously injured, and it gave me reason to consider what I have made of my life. About the relatives that I have failed to visit.”

Owen and Beru exchanged glances, then both looked at Luke.

“Are you really Darth Vader?” Luke said, sounding fascinated. “Everyone says you’re really scary, but you’re in our kitchen and I don’t know if that means you’re scary.”

“I am extremely scary,” Vader replied, in tones of either great seriousness or impressive deadpan. “I have killed people for annoying me. I have killed people who did not have the time to annoy me.”

“Did you cut their heads off?” Luke asked, in that way that children can. “I’ve never seen that happen but it sounds like it’d be really messy. There’s two bits of person then.”

Vader made a sound that, charitably, could be interpreted as chuckling.

“It appears I have been remiss in not talking about my work to my step-brother’s child,” he said. “I approve of you, child.”

“Step-brother’s child…” Owen said, then his eyes went wide. “You’re – you’re Anakin!?”

Vader tilted his head slightly. “Who else would I be?”

“I’ve got relatives,” Beru pointed out. “I wouldn’t have thought any of them was Darth Vader, but… we thought Anakin was dead.”

Vader appeared to think about that.

“I can see why you would think that,” he admitted.

“Does that mean you’re my dad?” Luke asked.

Vader did a double take.

“What,” he said.

For a moment, simmering anger filled the room, then it faded away.

“I suppose if you thought that I was dead, then taking in my child would be reasonable,” he conceded. “As my only surviving relatives of any sort.”

“I’ll get some water for us to share?” Beru suggested, falling back on basic hospitality. And on a way to get out of the sight of the others for a minute.

She was going to need to comm Ben Kenobi to stay the absolute kriff away from the homestead for now.

It was at least possible that Vader – Anakin – whichever would be more interested in his very much alive and present son he was reconnecting with than a mention of an absent Kenobi somewhere else on the planet who made Luke toys.

Kenobi here? The fight would destroy the homestead, and that would make it considerably more difficult to keep Luke safe… even with how the difficulty of that had jumped significantly in the last ten minutes.

[novaursa]

In the Wake of Fire

- Summary: Aegon and you lay broken together in the aftermath of the battle of Rook’s Rest.

- Paring: reader (twin!wife)/Aegon II

- Note: reader is referred to as Y/N. There is mention of reader's and Aegon's children, but they are not named. The reader is bonded with a dragon called Starfyre. For full chronological order of these works visit my blog. The list is pinned on the top. Or, you can read it as a one-shot.

- Rating: Mature 16+ (there is no adult content in this one, but the rating is higher just to be sure)

- Word count: 3 114

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff

The air in the royal chamber is thick with the scent of incense, mingling with the metallic tang of blood and the faint, acrid smoke from the battlefield still clinging to the corners of the room. The heavy curtains are drawn, casting the bedchamber into a dim twilight, where the only light comes from flickering candles set around the bed. You lie there, utterly still, your breath shallow, as if any deeper breath might shatter your fragile form.

Your consciousness hovers in the darkness, not quite tethered to the world of the living. Flashes of the battle—of Starfyre's furious roar, of the searing heat, and of the sky filled with fire and fury—pierce through the fog of your mind. But now, there is only silence, a stillness that feels both eternal and fleeting. You are aware of the weight of the covers on your body, of the softness of the pillows beneath your head, yet your mind drifts, caught between life and death.

At the foot of the bed, Queen Dowager Alicent stands, her face pale and drawn, her eyes dark with worry. She clasps her hands tightly, knuckles white, as she looks upon you and Aegon, her twin children, both lying side by side as if in death. Aegon's hand is wrapped around yours, his grip firm despite the ravages his body has suffered. His pale blond hair, usually so lustrous, is matted with sweat and dried blood. Burn marks and bruises mar his skin, yet he clings to life with a determination that only a king could muster.

Alicent’s voice, trembling with fear and desperation, cuts through the heavy silence. "They have not moved... neither of them."

Grand Maester Orwyle, his face solemn beneath the shadow of his hood, approaches the bed with careful steps. Behind him, Aemond, your younger brother, enters the chamber, his one good eye blazing with an emotion he would never openly admit to—fear. He steps closer to Alicent, speaking in a low voice, though the concern in his tone is clear.

"The children," Aemond says, his voice strained. "They are asking to see them, Mother. They are frightened... confused. They need to know their parents are—"

"No," Alicent interrupts sharply, her voice cracking with the weight of her anguish. She closes her eyes, gathering herself before speaking again. "No, Aemond. I cannot allow it. Not yet. Not until we know they are stable. I will not have them see... this."

She looks down at you, her daughter, her queen, and a single tear slips down her cheek. "They should not see their mother like this... nor their father." Her gaze lingers on Aegon, and her expression softens momentarily before hardening with resolve.

Orwyle moves to your side, his hands gentle yet firm as he examines you. He frowns deeply as he checks the wounds that lace your body, his fingers brushing over the burns and cuts that speak of a battle fought with ferocity and desperation. He looks up, meeting Aemond's gaze, and shakes his head ever so slightly.

Aemond, ever the stoic warrior, feels his heart sink, a cold dread settling in his chest. "And my sister? How is she, Maester?"

Orwyle hesitates, the weight of his words pressing down on the room. "Her condition is... dire. Worse than the King's, despite appearances. The internal bleeding runs deep, and the exhaustion has taken a terrible toll on her body. Her breathing is faint, her pulse weak." He pauses, his voice dropping to a whisper, as if the very act of speaking might tip the scales. "We must pray for her, my lord. That is all we can do now."

Alicent lets out a sob, a raw, broken sound that she quickly tries to stifle with her hand. "You cannot let her die, Maester," she pleads, her voice barely above a whisper, as if the admission itself could break her. "It will break him. Aegon... he will not survive losing her. She is his light... his other half. Without her, he will be lost."

The room falls into a heavy silence, punctuated only by the faint, uneven breaths you and Aegon draw. Orwyle nods solemnly, his eyes filled with a quiet sorrow. "We will do all that can be done, Lady Alicent. But... some things are beyond our power. It is in the hands of the gods now."

Aemond places a hand on Alicent's shoulder, a rare gesture of comfort from him. "We must have faith, Mother. She is strong. She has always been strong." His voice wavers slightly, betraying his own uncertainty, but he presses on. "And Aegon... he holds on because of her. As long as he breathes, she will fight to stay with him."

Alicent nods, though her eyes remain fixed on you, her heart breaking with every passing moment. She steps closer to the bed, reaching out to brush a lock of hair from your face, her touch as light as a feather. "You must come back to us, my love," she whispers, her voice filled with a mother's desperate hope. "You must."

The silence that follows is deafening, the weight of uncertainty hanging heavy in the air. Outside, the world continues to turn, but in this room, time seems to have stopped, as all those within hold their breath, waiting for a sign, a miracle.

And so, you lie there, suspended between life and death, your hand still entwined with Aegon's, your fate intertwined with his. The battle may be over, but the fight for your life—and the lives of those you love—has only just begun.

The dim light of the room seems to flicker with an otherworldly intensity as Aegon stirs beneath the covers. His breath comes in ragged gasps, a sharp contrast to the eerie stillness that had pervaded the chamber moments before. Pain radiates through his body, a searing agony that courses through every limb, but it is not the pain that drives him to consciousness. It is something deeper—a connection that transcends flesh and bone.

His eyes flutter open, and for a moment, they are glazed with confusion, disoriented by the lingering remnants of unconsciousness. But then, with a sudden clarity, his gaze sharpens, wild and frantic, searching for you—his twin, his wife, his other half.

"Y/N," he croaks, his voice barely more than a whisper, yet filled with an urgency that sends a chill through the room. He tries to sit up, but the pain is too much, and he falls back against the pillows, his chest heaving with the effort. "Where is she? Where is Y/N?"

Alicent, who had been hovering by the bedside, rushes to his side, her heart pounding in her chest as she sees the fear and desperation in her son's eyes. "Aegon, my love, you must stay still," she urges, her voice trembling despite her attempt to remain calm. She reaches out, gently pressing him back against the bed. "You are grievously wounded... you must rest."

But Aegon will not be soothed. His hand, trembling with weakness, reaches out, seeking yours. When he finds it, limp and unresponsive beside him, a wave of panic washes over him, greater than any physical pain he endures. His grip tightens around your hand, as if by holding on to you, he can anchor you to this world.

"She’s not moving," he gasps, his voice breaking. "Why isn’t she moving? Is she…?" His eyes dart to Alicent, wide with fear, his breathing growing more labored as his panic mounts. "Mother… is she…?"

Alicent feels her heart shatter at the sight of her son, the King of Westeros, reduced to this terrified, broken man. She quickly shakes her head, her voice firm but laced with sorrow. "No, Aegon. She is alive. But she is... she is unconscious. The Maester says she needs time to heal. But she is with us, Aegon. She is still with us."

Aegon’s eyes search Alicent’s face for any sign of deception, his grip on your hand tightening as if he can pull you back from the brink with sheer will alone. His voice is raw, pained. "She has to wake up. She has to. I can't... I can't lose her, Mother. She’s my life... without her, I am nothing."

Alicent feels a lump rise in her throat, her own anguish threatening to overwhelm her. She sits on the edge of the bed, her hand gently caressing Aegon’s brow, smoothing back the sweat-dampened hair from his forehead. "You must have faith, Aegon. She is strong, as strong as you are. You both survived... you will both survive this."

Aegon’s eyes flicker with doubt, his face contorted in pain, both physical and emotional. "She was always stronger," he mutters, his voice barely audible. "Always braver... more than I ever was."

Alicent’s heart aches at the raw vulnerability in his voice, so unlike the proud and stubborn son she has always known. She leans closer, her voice taking on a steely edge, one that Aegon recognizes from the times when she had guided him with an iron will. "You will not lose her, Aegon. I swear it. She will return to you. And when she does... we will make sure that those who have brought you both to this will pay. Rhaenyra will pay."

Aegon’s eyes flash with something dark at the mention of his half-sister’s name, the mention of the woman who has torn their family apart. He clenches his jaw, his grip on your hand turning almost painful in his intensity. "She will suffer," he hisses through gritted teeth. "For this... for all of this... she will suffer."

Alicent nods, her own grief turning into something harder, something forged in the fires of her own pain and loss. "Yes, my son. She will. I will see to it. The Iron Throne will not fall to her treachery. Not while I still draw breath."

She looks down at you, her daughter, lying so still and pale, and then back at Aegon, her son, whose very life seems to hang by the thinnest of threads. "But first, we must be strong. For her. For your children. For the realm. You must recover, Aegon, and she must as well. The gods will not abandon you... nor will I."

Aegon closes his eyes, drawing in a shuddering breath as he tries to calm the storm of emotions raging within him. His thumb gently strokes the back of your hand, a gesture so tender it belies the fury burning in his heart. "Come back to me," he whispers, his voice breaking with the weight of his plea. "Please, Y/N, come back to me."

The room falls silent once more, the only sound the faint crackling of the fire in the hearth and the soft breathing of those who hold vigil. Alicent watches as Aegon drifts back into a restless sleep, still clutching your hand as if it is his lifeline.

She stands slowly, her own body trembling from the weight of her sorrow and resolve. She looks at the two of you, her twins, her king and queen, and she swears silently to herself that she will see this through. That vengeance will be theirs. And that one day, you will both rise from this bed, stronger and more united than ever before.

But for now, all she can do is wait. And pray that the gods will be merciful.

The world beyond the veil of your closed eyelids is a distant, foggy place. It’s as though you are floating in a sea of darkness, where time is both infinite and meaningless. But somewhere in that endless void, a flicker of light pierces through—a warmth, a presence, something that pulls you from the abyss.

You become aware of the softness beneath you, the heaviness of your limbs, the dull ache that pulses through your body. The scent of herbs and medicine hangs in the air, mingling with something familiar, something comforting. Your breath comes in shallow, weak gasps, but with every inhale, you begin to feel the edges of the world around you.

Slowly, with a monumental effort, you force your eyes open, blinking against the dim light of the room. The ceiling above you swims in and out of focus, the shadows dancing like specters in the corners of your vision. It takes a moment for your surroundings to come into sharp relief, and when they do, the first thing you see is Aegon.

He is lying beside you, his pale hair dull and matted, his face set in a painful grimace. Grand Maester Orwyle is at his side, carefully changing the bandages that cover the burns marring Aegon’s body. The sight of him so still, so broken, sends a sharp pang of fear through your heart.

You try to speak, but your throat is dry, and the words catch like thorns in your throat. With a tremendous effort, you manage to whisper, “Aegon…”

Your voice is barely audible, just a breath of sound, but it is enough. Aegon’s head snaps toward you, his eyes widening in disbelief as he sees you awake. The pain etched on his face is momentarily forgotten as he stares at you, his breath catching in his throat. Orwyle immediately stops his work, his hands stilling as he watches the scene unfold.

“Y/N,” Aegon whispers, his voice filled with a mixture of relief and desperation. He tries to move, to reach out for you, but the pain from his broken hip and leg forces him back down with a hiss of agony. His hand, however, manages to find yours, and he clutches it as though it is the only thing keeping him anchored to this world.

You can see the strain in his eyes, the battle between his overwhelming pain and the sheer joy of seeing you awake. “You’re… you’re awake,” he breathes, his voice cracking with emotion. “Gods… I thought… I thought I had lost you.”

Tears well up in your eyes, both from the pain that still lingers in your body and from the sight of Aegon in such a state. “I’m… I’m here,” you manage to whisper, your voice trembling. You can feel the weakness in your limbs, the exhaustion that weighs down every part of you, but none of it matters now that you can see him, now that you can feel his hand in yours.

Orwyle steps forward, his expression a mixture of relief and caution. “My queen,” he says gently, his voice steady and reassuring. “You must not strain yourself. Your injuries are severe… you need time to recover.”

Aegon’s eyes never leave yours, even as Orwyle speaks. His grip on your hand tightens slightly, as if he fears that you might slip away again. “I can’t believe you’re awake,” he murmurs, his voice rough with emotion. “I was so afraid… so afraid I would never see your eyes again.”

You try to smile, but the effort is too great, and it comes out as more of a weak twitch of your lips. “I… I’m not going anywhere,” you whisper, though the words take every ounce of strength you have. “Not… without you.”

Aegon’s eyes glisten with unshed tears, and for a moment, he looks like the boy you grew up with, the boy who always found his way back to you, no matter what. “Thank the gods,” he breathes, his voice so full of relief that it almost breaks your heart.

Orwyle interrupts gently, his tone soft but insistent. “My king, my queen, you both must rest. The healing process will be long and difficult. But now that you are both awake, there is hope. That is what matters.”

Aegon’s gaze finally shifts to the Maester, a flicker of impatience crossing his face. “Leave us,” he commands, though his voice lacks its usual authority, weighed down by exhaustion and pain. “I need… I need to speak with her. Alone.”

Orwyle hesitates, his concern evident, but a single look from Aegon is enough to make him bow his head in acquiescence. “As you wish, Your Grace,” he says quietly. “I will be just outside if you need me.”

As Orwyle steps back, giving a respectful nod to you, he gathers his instruments and moves toward the door. The moment the door closes, sealing the two of you in the chamber’s intimate silence, Aegon’s eyes return to you, filled with an intensity that makes your heart ache.

“I should have protected you,” he whispers, his voice choked with guilt. “I should have done more… I failed you, Y/N. I failed as your husband, as your king.”

“No,” you croak, shaking your head ever so slightly, the movement sending a wave of dizziness through you. “You didn’t fail me… we fought together. We survived, Aegon. We’re still here.”

Aegon’s hand trembles in yours, and his gaze drops to where your hands are joined, his expression tormented. “But at what cost?” he murmurs. “Look at us… we’re broken. And it’s because of her. Rhaenyra… she’s taken everything from us.”

You see the darkness in his eyes, the simmering rage that has been kindling in his heart since the war began. “She will pay for this,” he vows, his voice a low growl. “For what she’s done to us… to our children… she will pay.”

You close your eyes for a moment, the weight of his words pressing down on you. The thought of more bloodshed, more pain, fills you with a sense of dread, but you know that vengeance has become a fire burning within Aegon—a fire that will not be easily quenched.

“Aegon…” you whisper, your voice faint, “we need to heal... For our children. Please… don’t let this consume you.”

His eyes soften at your plea, and for a moment, the fury ebbs away, replaced by the deep love and concern he holds for you. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” he says softly, “to keep you safe… to keep you with me. I can’t lose you, Y/N. Not now… not ever.”

You squeeze his hand weakly, your heart aching with love for this man who has been your other half since birth. “We’ll face this…,” you whisper, and as the exhaustion pulls you back into the dark embrace of sleep, you know that no matter what comes, you will always find your way back to each other.

Aegon watches as your eyes flutter closed once more, his heart clenching with the overwhelming need to protect you, to keep you safe from the horrors that still loom over you both. He presses a gentle kiss to your hand, his lips lingering on your skin, and vows silently that no one will ever tear you from his side again.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Plot Structures

A Quick Reference to 5 Plot Structures

8-STAGE PLOT STRUCTURE (Nigel Watts)

Stasis: once upon a time

Trigger: something out of the ordinary happens

Quest: causing the protagonist to seek something

Surprise: but things don’t go as expected

Critical Choice: forcing the protagonist to make a difficult decision

Climax: which has consequences

Reversal: the result of which is a change in status

Resolution: and they all lived happily ever after (or didn’t).

HOW TO TELL A STORY (Peter Rubie)

Once upon a time, something happened to someone,

and he decided that he would pursue a goal.

So he devised a plan of action,

and even though there were forces trying to stop him,

he moved forward because there was a lot at stake.

And just as things seemed as bad as they could get,

he learned an important lesson,

and when offered the prize he had sought so strenuously,

he had to decide whether or not to take it,

and in making that decision he satisfied a need

that had been created by something in his past.

MONOMYTH / THE HERO'S JOURNEY (Joseph Campbell)

Separation

The Call to Adventure

The Refusal of the Call

Supernatural Aid

The Crossing of the First Threshold

Belly of the Whale

Initiation

The Road of Trials

Meeting with the Goddess

Woman as Temptress

Atonement with the Father

Apotheosis

The Ultimate Boon

Return

Refusal of the Return

The Magic Flight

Rescue From Without

The Crossing of the Return Threshold

Master of Two Worlds

Freedom to Live

22-STEP STRUCTURE (John Truby)

Self-revelation, need and desire - combination of steps 20, 3 & 5

Ghost and story world - the hero’s counterdesire

Weakness and need* - the hero’s flaws are keeping them from having the life they desire

Inciting event - outside event that spurs the hero to action

Desire* - the hero’s story goal

Ally or allies - the hero gains an ally

Opponent and/or mystery* - an opponent or mystery that keeps the hero from reaching their goal

Fake-ally opponent - a shapeshifter or false friend

First revelation and decision: changed desire and motive - a revelation causes the hero to make a decision that results in a change in direction

Plan* - the hero’s plan to overcome their opponent and reach their goal

Opponent’s plan main counterattack - the opponent’s plan to overcome their opponent and reach their goal

Drive - increasingly desperate (and possibly immoral) series of actions the hero takes to defeat the opponent and reach the goal

Attack by ally - an ally confronts the hero about their increasing desperation and immorality

Apparent defeat - lowest point when the hero believes they’ve lost; for fall arcs, this may be an “Apparent victory” instead

Second revelation & decision: obsessive drive, changed desire and motive - the hero receives a new piece of information that allows them to continue towards their goal

Audience revelation - the audience learns a vital piece of information that’s kept from the hero

Third revelation and decision - the hero learns something about the opponent that will help them win

Gate, gauntlet, visit to death - pressure on the hero grows and they’re forced to face difficult trials

Battle* - a final (violent) conflict that determines who wins

Self-revelation* - the hero learns who they truly are

Moral decision - a decision that proves what the hero has learnt in the self-revelation

New equilibrium* - the need and desire have been fulfilled and the world goes back to normal, though the hero has changed

Stars (*) mark the minimum 7 steps that, according to Truby, are essential to every story.

ONE PAGE NOVEL (Eva Deverell)

Brainstorm 3...

...names:

...wants/goals/needs:

...locations:

...objects:

...obstacles:

...things lost/sacrificed:

...occupations:

...things on your mind:

Plotting Order

Resolution

Stasis

Shift

Trigger

Quest

Power

Bolt

Defeat

Story Order

Stasis: character isn’t living to their full potential - opposite state to Resolution.

Trigger: an internal or external impulse (or both) forces the character to take the first step towards their Resolution state.

Quest: character enters the new world of adventure, meets mentors or allies and makes a (bad) plan to solve the problem the Trigger created.

Bolt: (bad) Quest plan inevitably goes wrong.

Shift: character makes the paradigm shift necessary for them to inhabit their Resolution state.

Defeat: character makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Power: character finds a hidden power within themselves that allows them to seize the prize.

Resolution: character is living up to their full potential in their Resolution state.

NOTES

Choose a plot structure that works best for you.

Deviate from it as needed. It is a guide after all.

Some writers and editors advice you stick with a plot structure you have chosen:

Don’t look for an alternative as soon as you start to become frustrated with your first choice. You’ll only end up wasting time.

As with everything else, there is no single perfect choice.

And it may be the case that different projects need different methods.

Keep experimenting. Keep writing. Keep improving.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References

[gretavanlace]

Hush

Josh Kiszka x reader

18+ only Minors do not interact

Warnings: graphic sexual content, dirty talk, choking, light degradation, praise, slight dom/sub/switch dynamic, language, etc

Josh is vocal.

That is certainly no secret.

Anyone who has watched him strut about a stage, microphone in hand, knows that.

Off stage, he talks incessantly about both the things that matter to him, and the mundane. Things he is passionate about. Things that light fires within him and drive him to create and pack this world as full of his heart as he possibly can. Arbitrary ideas and notions. Strange ponderings.

Pontification, he likes to call it.

He’s also vocally boisterous when agitated. He loathes waiting, and will mutter complaints near your ear in line until you’re willing your eyes not to roll. A phone call to vent about the antics of one brother or another from the studio is a regular occurrence and can be counted on just like death and taxes.

“Samuel was even later than I was,” he might huff, “and now Jake’s guitar needs to be restrung because fuck this whole world if he has to use a backup. I hate them, and I want to come home to you, light of my life, keeper of the stars, goddess of all that is— oh, we’re ready…gotta go.”

Josh murmurs in his sleep, sings in the shower, talks himself through menial tasks, hums in the grocery store, carries on one-sided conversations with the cat who simply chirps along while swirling around his ankles.

At least twice a night he snatches you from drifting off to sleep with a question: Do you think I should call my mom more? If I miss her, she must miss me. Or, Did I ever tell you about that time that Jake ate shit and fell in the lake? I was thinking about it today, and…

Random thoughts and idle musings he can’t help but verbalize, you hear them all. Mostly. The ones you aren’t privy to, fall upon the nearest ear - but he’s so fucking charming even a stranger is happy to play sounding board.

Josh is also expressive when you’re wrapped up in soft, linen sheets…or wherever else he’s decided he can no longer wait to have you.

Whispers of devotion swelling like a gentle breeze across the hum of your pulse when he makes love to you. Filthy, dirty, blush-inducing declarations when he’s fucking into your trembling body like he’ll never touch it again.

And you love it…all of it. But now - with your visiting sister slumbering in the guest room on the other side of the wall - is certainly not the time.

“Baby, please…” his mouth is sucking gently along your collarbone as he grinds into you slowly, friction hard and constant against your greedy, swollen clit, “let me fuck you faster…c’mon, I need it.”

”What you need, is to be quiet,” your voice is a stern whisper, but your hands are tender in his hair.

He could easily set a pace as brutal as he desired if he felt inclined to disobey…but, ever the sweetest switch, he has opted to play nice tonight.

”I’ll be quiet,” he promises. It is a lie he truly believes, and to prove that point, you clench around him and draw forth a pitiful groan from deep within his chest.

A swift pinch at his side serves as punishment ”Shut. Up.”

”Fuck you,” he sounds deliciously desperate, “You did that on purpose. Squeezing me with that beautiful pussy…goddamn.”

”What’s going to happen if I let you make me cum? Hmm?” Your mouth falls into a delicate pout as if you just feel so sorry for him, “You know how tight I get. How I just hug your cock all snug and wet…”

”And warm,” he adds, lost in it, daydreaming in the dark of night and twitching inside the embrace of your cunt, “Soft as satin, sucking me right in…oh my god, baby, please.”

He begins moving with more purpose, dragging the head of his cock against that lovely little spot that will render you incoherent if you allow it to.

”Oh my god, please,” you mock quietly, “Look at you Joshua, what a whiny baby. What are you begging for? Pussy? Is that what you need?”

He nods frantically against your sternum, as though he doesn’t trust himself to look up at you.

You feign confusion wickedly “But you’ve got that. You’re already inside me…”

“Faster,” he breathes, biting and mouthing at your shoulder now, “Need it faster, and harder. It’s too slow, I need more.”

Clicking your tongue like he is a poor, pathetic sight to behold, you shake your head, “Slow down.”

”No, please don’t make me,” he slows, as instructed, but trails off with a whimper.

So, maybe there’s no ‘like’ about it, maybe he really is a poor, pathetic sight to behold. Yes, you decide, that’s exactly what he is…

…so why not push him even further?

With a swift tug on the roots of his curls, you issue an order ”Stay still.”

Despondent and mournful, he groans into the crook of your neck and grabs at your hips so tightly you’ll be admiring raspberry bruises in the mirror come morning. “C’mon, baby girl…lemme take it. I fucking want it.”

If he were looking at you, he’d see the devilish gleam in your eye. Aren’t you an awful witch tonight? “What? Don’t you like it when I keep your pretty cock warm for you?”

He flexes hard inside of you, simply to gain even a hint of friction. “You’re being so fucking mean.”

”Mean?” You coil around the throbbing length of him and he shudders out the tiniest sound, “If I was mean, I’d lock your pretty cock in a cage and fuck your face all night.”

For a moment, he shirks his submissive edge and hisses in your ear, low and slow, “Liar. Not with little sister in the next room…you couldn’t keep quiet with my face between your legs if someone fucking paid you to.”

In response, you shove him back and roll until your thighs are locked around his waist, the crown of his cock nestled against your clit as your hips swivel heated circles.

”Does that feel good, baby?” You’re taunting him cruelly while, in contrast, lovingly reaching up to smooth the furrow from his brow. “Does that just feel so good?”

”Wanna put it back inside,” his eyes squint shut and anyone who didn’t know better might think his expression is that of suffering. “Perfect fucking cunt, so tight, so…”

”Shh,” you quiet him with a hand wrapped around his throat, relishing the way his adam’s apple slides against your palm when he swallows hard, “shut your mouth for once.”

He’s staring up at you, wide-eyed and needy, like you painted the stars in the sky, gorgeous and glittering, just for him…and how you wish that were true. How you wish you could give him something so profound. Something worthy of his light.

”I won’t make a sound,” his vow sounds out, a cross between the honesty he wishes it to be rooted in, and the lie he knows it to be. “C’mon baby, please…fuck me sweet.”

Does he really want it sweet? Or is he simply aware that that’s all he is capable of quietly handling?

Likely the latter.

Your fingers have found your nipples, twisting and tugging on them as they tighten into pink pebbles that send shivers crawling down into your stomach with every pull. His eyes lock in on you, watching you tease them as his breathing kicks up into a frenzy.

“You’re pushing it,” he warns, grip pulling you down closer as he rocks his hips up to meet you. “Keep it up and I’m gonna fucking take it. Be a good girl now, baby…I’m done with your shit.”

”Yeah?” Your eyebrow raises in silent challenge. Does he have it in him tonight?

“Yeah.” He nods, licking his thumb to swirl much too gently across your clit.

”I think you should just behave and be grateful for what you’re—“

Stunned and dazed, the room blurs around you as you’re flipped and tossed until your cheek is pressed against the cool, crisp sheets. They smell of him, and you breathe Josh in until your lungs ache while his cock teases at your entrance from behind.

His body folds over yours until his lips sweep the shell of your ear, “You’ve done it now, baby girl. Better be quiet, yeah? Not a sound.”

With a swift snap of his hips, the silken glide of his cock fills you full as his palm presses against your lips to muffle the high-pitched moan that gasps out of you.

”Now who’s the whiny baby?” his perfect teeth sink into your earlobe and tug until it blooms with heat. The moan that seeps into his soft skin causes his lips to curl into a smirk you can feel. “This is what you wanted, you think I don’t know that?”

He has begun moving at an excruciatingly slow place, the head of his cock dragging gently inside you just right…but you need more.

”You think I didn’t know that you wanted me to just fucking take it all along?”

You nod urgently, tangling your hair against the pillowcase. Of course he knew, he knows you better than you know yourself. There are no secrets to be hidden away when it comes to Joshua. He hunts each and every one down like glittering treasure with ease…your body his map, the pools of your eyes ciphers he decodes without even trying.

His tongue is dancing its way along your jaw now, springing chills to life upon your flushed skin ”Tell me how good my cock feels and I’ll fuck you full.”

Another woeful sound shakes out of you and a rumbling, gravelly laugh huffs warm against your cheek, “My poor, sweet baby can dish it just fine tonight, but she can’t take it? Is that it?”

With a shhh that makes you feel weighed down heavy with lust, he lifts his palm away from your mouth. “I can take it,” you promise in a hush, “Please…I can take it, I swear.”

He is so still inside you, but the familiar stretch is enough to send a tremble tripping up your spine, spider-cracking like a jolt of electric pleasure. “But can you take it quietly? Can you be a real good girl or should I gag you like a whore?”

”I’ll be a good girl,” you breathe, relishing the sound that slips out of him, a cross between famished desire and worshipful devotion.

“Yeah?” He’s enjoying this little game too much to wave goodbye to it just yet, “You’ll be a good girl if I give you this cock?” He presses in so deeply there’s nothing left for him to give, “You’ll take it quietly and squeeze it nice and tight? Soak it with your little wet cunt when I make you cum?”

He can feel you clenching already, twisting around him like a fist, milking him, pulling him in, starved for more.

”Yes, yes, yes,” you chant softly, begging for him to get on with it, “Just fuck me, Josh…please,”

There’s that sinful mouth of his again, ghosting over your ear, “Just fuck me Josh,” he mocks in a velvet whisper, “Please.”

A sob escapes you and turns the apples of your cheeks pink…he echoes the sound back to you and fans the flames of your delectable shame.

”Quiet now, baby…” he reminds you, tone taunting and laced with self-satisfaction, “You just bite down on the pillow if it gets to be too much, and I’ll bite down on you.”

You tighten around him at the mere thought of it and tug an achingly gorgeous grunt from deep within his chest, “You like that? You want me to bite you to keep quiet? Mark you up all pretty?”

”Fuck…” you reach back and grab for him, fingers sinking into the curve of his waist, begging for it with your entire body.

You can’t seem to manage much more, but it’s enough for him, and with a swift pull back, he snaps his hips hard and fast and sets a relentlessly feral pace in motion.

The head of his cock, thick and suede-soft, kisses your cervix with each inward push, driving a wild sound out of you that you smother into the pillow, tongue dragging against the worn cotton as though it were his mouth.

His teeth are peppering your back and shoulders, gnashing his own moans way down deep into your flesh where you will secret them away forever. He gifts each sound to you on a gorgeous, stinging platter and you only want more, more, more. It is never enough with him…you are gluttonous for whatever he sees fit to offer.

”You feel so fucking good, baby,” it comes undulating across your cheekbone like a warm, languorous breeze, “So fucking wet, I can feel you all over me. You’re gonna make me cum.”

He grows impossibly hard within you and that, along with the filth he is sighing into the night and the drags of his teeth, sends you careening over the edge you had no idea you were so close to. You explode around him, and his weight grows heavier atop you as his thrusts lose rhythm.

“That’s it,” his praise is clipped and winded, “just - fuck - just like that. Keep going, so tight, messy pretty fucking pussy, make me cum, baby, please…make me fucking cum.”

He’s babbling like a brook you want to lie beside and listen to for the rest of your life. So beautiful. So Josh. But so quietly, and you know how difficult it must be for him, how hard he must be trying, and you love him all the more for it.

With a final, vicious bite, he coaxes a hiss out of you that makes him see stars as he lets go, fucking himself deeper and deeper as he rides it out, moans pressed into your glazed, shivering body like flowers in between the pages of a book.

And still, you only want more. You want his jaw to lock, his teeth to break the skin, to draw blood, to scar you…soft pink, raised marks tattooed by his kiss to remind you.

A long sigh flutters your hair, and your eyes drift closed at the soothing lilt of the sound as his fingers begin to card through your hair.

”You thirsty, baby?” His nose nuzzles at you, drawing forth a lazy smile that is half smashed into the pillow.

“Yes, but stay a little longer.”

He cuddles down into you, cheek to cheek, the weight of his body keeping you warm and safe in the silence.

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[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 6: Athena, Goddess Of Wisdom]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.2k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Here at the midway point in our journey—like Dante stumbling upon the gates of the Inferno—would it be the right moment to review what’s at stake? Let’s begin.

It’s the end of August. The delegates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago officially vote to name Aemond the party’s presidential candidate. His ascension is aided by 10,000 antiwar demonstrators who flood into the city and threaten to set it ablaze if Hubert Humphrey is chosen instead. At the end—in his death rattle—Humphrey begs to be Aemond’s running mate, one last humiliation he cannot resist. Humphrey is denied. Eugene McCarthy, dignity intact, boards a commercial flight to his home state of Minnesota without looking back.

Aemond selects U.S. Ambassador to France, Sargent Shriver, to be his vice president. Shriver is a Kennedy by marriage—his wife, JFK’s younger sister Eunice, just founded the Special Olympics—and has previously headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Peace Corps, and the Chicago Board of Education. He also served as the architect of the president’s “War on Poverty” before distancing himself from the imploding Johnson administration. Shriver is not a concession to fence-sitting moderates or Southern Dixiecrats, but an embodiment of Aemond’s commitment to unapologetic progressivism. Richard Nixon spends the weekend campaigning in his native California, a gold vein of votes like the mines settlers rushed to in 1848. George Wallace announces that he will run as an Independent. Racists everywhere rejoice.

Phase III of the Tet Offensive is underway in Vietnam; 700 American soldiers have been killed this month alone. Riots break out in military prisons where the U.S. Army is keeping their deserters. The North Vietnamese refuse to allow Pope Paul VI to visit Hanoi on a peace mission. President Johnson calls both Aemond and Nixon to personally inform them of this latest evidence of the communists’ unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. Daeron and John McCain remain in Hỏa Lò Prison. The draft swallows men like the titan Cronus devoured his own children.

In Eastern Europe, the Russians are crushing pro-democracy protests in the largest military operation since World War II as half a million troops roll into Czechoslovakia. In Caswell County, North Carolina, the last remaining segregated school district in the nation is ordered by a federal judge to integrate after years of stalling. On the Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific, France becomes the fifth nation to successfully explode a hydrogen bomb. In Mexico City, 300,000 students gather to protest the authoritarian regime of President Diaz Ordaz. In Guatemala, American ambassador John Gordon Mein is murdered by a Marxist guerilla organization called the Rebel Armed Forces. In Columbus, Ohio, nine guards are held hostage during a prison riot; after 30 hours, they’re rescued by a SWAT team.

The latest issue of Life magazine brings worldwide attention to catastrophic industrial pollution in the Great Lakes. The first successful multiorgan transplant is carried out at Houston Methodist Hospital. The Beatles release Hey Jude, the best-selling single of 1968 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. NASA’s Apollo lunar landing program plans to launch a crewed shuttle next year, just in time to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1962 promise to put a man on the moon “before the end of the decade.” If this is successful, the United States will win the Space Race and prove the superiority of capitalism. If it fails, the martyred astronauts will join all the other ghosts of this apocalyptic age, an epoch born under bad stars.

The night sky glows with the ancient debris of the Aurigid meteor shower. From down here on Earth, Jupiter is a radiant white gleam, visible with the naked eye and admired since humans were making cave paintings and Stonehenge. But Io is a mystery. With a telescope, she becomes a dust mote entrapped by Jupiter’s gravity; to the casual observer, she doesn’t exist at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

What was it like, that very first time? It’s strange to remember. You’re both different people now.

It’s May, 1966. You and Aemond are engaged, due to be married in three short weeks, and if you get pregnant then it’s no harm, no foul. In reality, it will end up taking you over a year to conceive, but no one knows that yet; you are living in the liminal space between what you imagine your life will be and the cold blade of the truth. Aemond has brought you to Asteria for the weekend, an increasingly common occurrence. The Targaryens—minus one, that holdout prodigal son, always glowering from behind swigs of rum and clouds of smoke—have already begun to treat you like a member of the family. The flock of Alopekis yap excitedly and lick your shins. Eudoxia learns your favorite snacks so she can have them ready when you arrive.

One night Aemond takes your hand and leads you to Helaena’s garden, darkness turned to twilight in the artificial luminance of the main house. You can hear distant voices, chatter and laughter, and the Beatles’ Rubber Soul spinning on the record player in the living room like a black hole, gravity that not even light can escape when it is wrenched over the event horizon.

You’re giggling as Aemond pulls you along, faster and faster, weaving through pathways lined with roses and sunflowers and butterfly bushes. Your high heels sink into soft, fertile earth; the air in your lungs is cool and infinite. “Where are we going?”

And Aemond grins back at you as he replies: “To Olympus.”

In the circle of hedges guarded by thirteen gods of stone, Aemond unzips your modest pink sundress and slips your heels off your feet, kneeling like he’s proposing to you again. When you are bare and secretless, he draws you down onto the grass and opens you, claims you, fills you to the brim as the crystalline water of the fountain patters and Zeus hurls his lightning bolts, an eternal storm, unending war. It’s intense in a way it never was with your first boyfriend, a sweet polite boy who talked about feminist theory and followed his enlightened conscience all the way to Vietnam. This isn’t just a pleasant way to pass a Friday night, something to look forward to between differential equations textbooks and calculus proofs. With Aemond it’s a ritual; it’s something so overpowering it almost scares you.

“Aphrodite,” Aemond murmurs against your throat, and when you try to get on top he stops you, pins you to the ground, thrusts hard and deep, and you try not to moan too loudly as you surrender, his weight on you like a prophesy. This is how he wants you. This is where you belong.

Has someone ever stitched you to their side, pushing the needle through your skin again and again as the fabric latticework takes shape, until their blood spills into your veins and your antibodies can no longer tell the difference? He makes you think you’ve forgotten who you were before. He makes you want to believe in things the world taught you were myths.

But that was over two years ago. Now Aemond is not your spellbinding almost-stranger of a fiancé—shrouded in just the right amount of mystery—but your husband, the father of your dead child, the presidential candidate. You miss when he was a mirage. You miss what it felt like to get high on the idea of him, each taste a hit, each touch a rush of toxins to the bloodstream.

Seven weeks after your emergency c-section, you are healing. Your belly no longer aches, your bleeding stops, you can rejoin the living in this last gasp of summer. Ludwika takes you shopping and you pick out new swimsuits; you’ve gone up a size since the baby, and it shows no signs of vanishing. In the fitting room, Ludwika chain-smokes Camel cigarettes and claps when you show her each outfit, ordering you to spin around, telling you that there’s nothing like Oleg Cassini back in Poland. You plan to buy three swimsuits. Ludwika insists you get five. She pays with Otto’s American Express.

That afternoon at home in your blue bedroom, you get changed to join the rest of the family down by the pool, your first swim since Ari was born. You choose Ludwika’s favorite: a dreamy turquoise two-piece with flowing transparent fabric that drapes your midsection. You can still see the dark vertical line of where the doctors stitched you closed. Now you and Aemond match; he got his scar on the floor of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, you earned yours at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. There are gold chains on your wrist and looped around your neck. Warm sunlight and ocean wind pours in through the open windows.

Aemond appears in the doorway and you turn to show him, proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together, how this past year hasn’t put you in an asylum. His right eye catches on your scar and stays there for a long time. Then at last he says: “You don’t have something else to wear?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Labor Day, and Asteria has been descended upon by guests invited to celebrate Aemond’s nomination. The dining room table is overflowing with champagne, Agiorgitiko wine, platters of mini spanakopitas, lamb gyros, pita bread with hummus and tzatziki, feta cheese and cured meats, grilled octopus, baklava, and kourabiethes. Eudoxia is rushing around sweeping up crumbs and shooing tipsy visitors away from antique vases shipped here from Greece. Aemond’s celebrity endorsers include Sammy Davis Jr., Sonny and Cher, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Claudine Longet, and a number of politicians; but the most notable attendee is President Lyndon Baines Johnson, shadowed by Secret Service agents. He won’t be making any surprise appearances on the campaign trail for Aemond—in the present political climate, he would be more of a liability than an asset—but he has travelled to Long Beach Island tonight to offer his well-wishes. From the record player thrums Jimi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower.

When you finish getting ready and arrive downstairs, you spot Aegon: slouching in a velvet chair over a century old, hair shagging in his eyes, sipping something out of a chipped mug he clasps with both hands, flirting with a bubbly early-twenties campaign staffer. Aegon smiles and waves when he sees you. You wave back. And you think: When did he become the person I look for when I walk into a room?

Now Aemond is beside you in a blue suit—beaming, confident, his glass eye in place, a hand resting on your waist—and Aegon isn’t smiling anymore. He takes a gulp of what is almost certainly straight rum from his mug and returns his attention to the campaign staffer, his lady of the hour. You picture him undressing her on his shag carpet and feel disorienting, violent envy like a bullet.

Viserys is already fast asleep upstairs, but the rest of the family is out en masse to charm the invitees and pose for photographs. Alicent, Helaena, and Mimi—trying very hard to act sober, blinking too often—are chit-chatting with the other political wives. Otto is complaining about something to Criston; Criston is pretending to listen as he stares at Alicent. Ludwika is smoking her Camels and talking to several young journalists who are ogling her, enraptured. Fosco and Sargent Shriver are entertaining a group of guests with a boisterous, lighthearted debate on the merits of Italian versus French cuisine, though they agree that both are superior to Greek. The nannies have brought the eight children to be paraded around before bedtime. All Cosmo wants to do is clutch your hand and “help” you navigate around the living room, warning you not to step on the small, weaving Alopekis. When Mimi attempts to steal her youngest son away, he ignores her, and as she begins to make a scene you rebuke her with a harsh glare. Mimi retreats meekly. She has never argued with you, not once in over two years. You speak for Aemond, and Aemond is a god.

As the children are herded off to their beds by the nannies, Bobby Kennedy—presently serving as a New York senator despite residing primarily on his family’s compound in Massachusetts—approaches to congratulate Aemond. His wife Ethel is a tiny, nasally, scrappy but not terribly bright woman, five months pregnant with her eleventh child, and you have to get away from her like a hand pulled from a hot stove.

“You know, I was considering running,” Bobby says to Aemond, chuckling, good-natured. “But when I saw you get in the race, I thought better of it! Maybe I’ll give it a go in ’76, huh?”

“Hey, kid, what a tough year you’ve had,” Ethel tells you, patting your forearm. You can’t tear your eyes from her small belly. She has ten living children already. I couldn’t keep one. What kind of sense does that make? “We’re real sorry for your trouble, aren’t we, Bobby?”

Now he is nodding somberly. “We are. We sure are. We’ve been praying for you both.”

Aemond is thanking them, sounding touched but entirely collected. You manage some hurried response and then excuse yourself. Your hands are shaking as you cross the room, not really seeing it. You walk right into Lady Bird Johnson. She takes pity on you; she seems to perceive how rattled you are. “Oh Lyndon, look, it’s just who we were hoping to speak to! The next first lady of the United States. And how beautiful you are, just radiant. How do you keep your hair so perfect? That glamorous updo. You never have a single strand out of place.” Lady Bird lays a palm tenderly on your bare shoulder. She has an unusual, angular face, but a wise sort of compassion that only comes from suffering. Her husband is an unrepentant serial cheater. “I’ll make you a list of everything you need to know about the White House. All the quirks of the property, and the hidden gems too!”

“You’re so kind. We’ll see what happens in November…”

“Good evening, ma’am,” President Johnson says, smiling warmly. He’s an ugly man, but there’s something hypnotic that lives inside him and shines through his eyes like the blaze of a lighthouse. He pulls you in through the dark, through the storm; he promises you answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet. LBJ is 6’4 and known for bullying his political adversaries with the so-called “Johnson Treatment”; he leans in and makes rapid-fire demands until they forget he’s not allowed to hit them. “I have to tell you frankly, I don’t envy anyone who inherits that den of rattlesnakes in Washington D.C.”

“Lyndon, don’t frighten her,” Lady Bird scolds fondly.

“Everyone thinks they know what to do about Vietnam,” LBJ plods onwards. “But it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t clusterfuck. If you keep fighting, they call you a murderer. But if you pull the troops out and South Vietnam falls to the communists, every single man lost was for nothing, and you think the families will stand for that? Their kid in a body bag, or his legs blown off, or his brain scrambled? There’s no easy answer. It’s a goddamn bitch of a quagmire.”

Lady Bird offers you a sympathetic smirk. Sorry about all this unpleasantness, she means. When he gets himself worked up, I can’t stop him. But you find yourself feeling sorry for President Johnson. It will be difficult for him to learn how to fade into disgraced obscurity after once being so omnipotent, so beloved. Reinvention hurts like hell: fevers raging, bones mending, healing flesh that itches so ferociously you want to claw it off.

LBJ gives Lady Bird a look, quick but meaningful. She acquiesces. This has happened a thousand times before. “It was so nice talking to you, dear,” she tells you, then crosses the living room to pay her respects to Alicent.

The president steps closer, looming, towering. The Johnson Treatment?? you think, but no; he isn’t trying to intimidate you. He’s just curious.

“Do you know what Aemond’s plan is for ‘Nam?” LBJ asks, eyes urgent, voice low. “I’m sure he has one. He’s sworn to end the draft as soon as he gets into office, but how is he going to make sure the South Vietnamese can fend off the North themselves? We’re trying to train the bastards, but if we left they’d fold in months. It would be the first war the U.S. ever lost. Does he understand that?”

“He doesn’t really discuss it with me.” That’s true; you know his policies, but only because they are a constant subject of conversation within the family, something you all breathe like oxygen.

“We can’t let Nixon win,” LBJ continues. “It’s mass suicide to leave the country in his hands. The man can’t hold his liquor anymore, getting robbed by Kennedy in ’60 broke something in him. He gets sloshed and shoves his aids around, makes up conspiracies in his head. He’s a paranoid little prick. He’ll surveille the American people. He’ll launch a nuke at Moscow.”

You honestly don’t know what he expects you to say. “I’ll pass the message along to Aemond.”

“People love you, Mrs. Targaryen.” LBJ watching you closely. “Believe it or not, they used to love me too. But I still remember how to play the game. You’re the only reason Aemond is leading the polls in Florida. You can get him other states too. Jack needed Jackie. Aemond needs you. And you’ve had tragedies, and that’s a damn shame. But don’t you miss an opportunity. You take every disappointment, every fucked up cruelty of life and find a way to make it work for you. You pin it to your chest like a goddamn medal. Every single scar makes you look more mortal to those people going to the ballot box in November. You want them to be able to see themselves in you. It helps the mansions and the millions go down smoother.”

“President Johnson!” Aegon says as he saunters over, huge mocking grin. He thumps a closed fist against the Texan’s broad chest; the Secret Service agents standing ten feet away observe this sternly. “How thoughtful of you to be here, taking time out of your busy schedule, squeezing us in between war crimes.”

“The mayor of Trenton,” LBJ jabs.

“The butcher of Saigon.”

Now the president is no longer amused. “You’ve never accomplished anything in your whole damn life, son. Your obituary will be the size of a postage stamp. I’m looking forward to reading it someday soon.” He leaves, rejoining Lady Bird at the opposite end of the room.

You frown at Aegon, disapproving. You’re dressed in a sparkling, royal blue gown that Aemond chose. “That was unnecessary.”

Aegon is wearing an ill-fitting green shirt—half the buttons undone—khaki pants, and tan moccasins. “I just did you a favor.”

“What happened to your new girlfriend? Shouldn’t she be getting railed in your basement right now? Did she have a prior commitment? Did she have a spelling test to study for? Those can be tricky, such complex words. Juvenile. Inappropriate. Infidelity.”

“You know what he brags about?” Aegon says, meaning LBJ. “That he’s fucked more women by accident than John F. Kennedy ever did on purpose.”

“That sounds…logistically challenging.”

“He’s a lech. He’s a freak. He tells everyone on Capitol Hill how big his cock is. He takes it out and swings it around during meetings.”

“And that’s all far less than admirable, but he’s not going to do something like that around me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s not an idiot,” you say impatiently. “He was perfectly civil. And I was getting interesting advice.”

Aegon rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry I crashed your cute little pep talk with Lyndon Johnson, the most hated man on the planet.”

“I guess you can’t stop Aemond from touching me, so you have to terrorize LBJ instead.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Aegon hisses, and his venom stuns you. And now you’re both trapped: you loosed the arrow, he proved you hit the mark. He’s flushing a deep, mortified red. Your guts are twisting with remorse.

“Aegon, wait, I didn’t mean—”

He whirls and storms off, shoving his way through the crowd. People glare at him as they clutch their glasses and plates, sighing in that What else do you expect from the worthless son? sort of way. You’re still gaping blankly at the place where Aegon stood when Aemond finds you, snakes a hand around the back of your neck, and whispers through the painstakingly-arranged wisps of hair that fall around your ear: “Follow me.”

It’s not a question. It’s a command. You trail him through the living room, into the foyer, and through the front door, not knowing what he wants. Outside the moon is a sliver; the light from the main house makes the stars hard to see. “Aemond, you’ll never believe the conversation I just had with LBJ. He really unloaded, I think the stress is driving him insane. I have to tell you what he said about—”

“Later.” And this is jarring; Aemond doesn’t put anything before strategy. He grabs your hand as he turns into Helaena’s garden, and only then do you understand what he wants. Instinctively, your legs lock up and your feet stop moving. Aemond tugs you onward. He wants it to be like the very first time. He intends to start over with you, the dawning of a new age in the dead of night.

Hidden in the circle of hedges, he takes your face roughly in his hands and kisses you, drinks you down like a vampire, consumes you like wildfire. But your skull echoes with panic. I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want another child with him. “Aemond…”

He doesn’t hear you, or acts like he doesn’t, or mistakes it for a murmur of desire, or chooses to believe it is. He has you down on the grass under the vengeful gaze of Zeus, the fountain splashing, the sounds of the house a low foreign drone. He yanks off your panties, but he doesn’t want you naked like he always did before. He pushes the hem of your shimmering cobalt gown up to your hips and unbuckles his trousers. And you realize as he’s touching you, as he’s easing himself into you: He doesn’t want to have to look at my scar.

You can’t ignore him, you can’t pretend it’s not happening. He’s too big for that. It’s a biting fullness that demands to be felt. So you kiss him back, and knot your fingers in his short hair like you used to, and try to remember the things you always said to him before. And when Aemond is too absorbed to notice, you look away from him, from the statue of Zeus, and peer up into the stone face of Athena instead: the goddess who never married and who knows the answer to every question.

“I love you,” Aemond says when it’s over, marveling at the slopes of your face in the dim ethereal light. “Everything will be right again soon. Everything will be perfect.”

You conjure up a smile and nod like you believe him.

“What did LBJ say?”

“Can I tell you later tonight? After the party, maybe? I just need a few minutes.”

“Of course.” And now Aemond pretends to be patient. He buckles his belt and returns to the main house, his blood coursing with the possibilities only you can make real, his skin damp with your sweat.

For a while—ten minutes, twenty minutes—you lie there on the cool grass wondering what it was like for all those mortals and nymphs, being pinned down by Zeus and then having Hera try to kill them afterwards, raising ill-fated reviled bastards they couldn’t help but love. What is heaven if the realm of the immortals is so cruel? Why does the god of justice seem so immune to it?

When at last you rise and walk back towards the house, you find Mimi at the edge of the garden. She’s on her knees and retching into a rose bush; she’s cut her face on the thorns, but she hasn’t noticed yet. She’s groaning; she seems lost.

You reach for her, gripping her bony shoulders. “Mimi, here, let’s get you upstairs…”

“No,” she blubbers, tears streaming down her scratched cheeks. “Just go away. Leave me.”

“Mimi—”

“No!” she roars, a mournful hemorrhage as she slaps your hands until you release her.

“You don’t have to be this way,” you tell her, distraught. “You can give up drinking. We’ll help you, me and Fosco and Ludwika. You can start over. You can be healthy and present again, you can live a real life.”

Mimi stares up at you, her grey eyes glassy and bloodshot but with a vicious, piercing honesty. “My husband hates me. My kids don’t know I exist. What the hell do I have to be sober for?”

You weren’t expecting this. You don’t know what to say. “We can help make the world better.”

“The world would be better without me in it.”

Then Mimi curls up on the grass under the rose bush, and stays there until you return with Fosco to drag her upstairs to her empty bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next afternoon, you’re lying on a lounge chair by the pool. Tomorrow the family will leave Asteria and embark upon a vigorous campaign schedule that will continue, with very few breaks, until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. The children are splashing and shrieking in the pool with Fosco, but you aren’t looking at them. You’re staring across the sun-drenched emerald lawn at the Atlantic Ocean. You’re envisioning all the bones and splinters of sunken ships that must litter the silt of the abyss; you’re thinking that it’s a graveyard with no headstones, no memory. Your swimsuit is a red one-piece. Your eyes are shielded by large black Ray Bans aviator sunglasses. Your gaze flicks up to the cloudless blue sky, where all the stars and planets are invisible.

Jupiter has nearly a hundred moons; the largest four were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Europa is a smooth white cosmic marble with a crust of ice, beautiful, immaculate. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system and the only satellite with its own magnetic field, is rumored to have a vast underground saltwater ocean that may contain life. Callisto is dark and indomitable, riddled with impact craters; because of her dynamic atmosphere and location beyond Jupiter’s radiation belts, she is considered the best location for possible future crewed missions to the Jovian system. But Io is a wasteland. She has no water and no oxygen. Her only children are 400 active volcanoes, sulfur plumes and lava flows, mountains of silicate rock higher than Mount Everest, cataclysmic earthquakes as her crust slips around on a mantle of magma. Her daily radiation levels are 36 times the lethal limit for humans. If Hades had a home in our corner of the galaxy, it would be Io. She glows ruby and gold with barren apocalyptic fury. You can feel yourself turning poisonous like she is. You can feel your skin splitting open as the lava spills out.

Aegon trots out of the house—red swim trunks, cheap red plastic sunglasses, no shirt, a beach towel slung around his neck, flip flops—and kicks your chair. “Get up. We’re going sailing.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Great, because I’m not asking you to talk. I’m telling you to get in my boat.”

You don’t reply. You don’t think you can without your voice cracking. Aegon crouches down beside your chair and pushes your sunglasses up into your Brigitte Bardot-inspired hair so he can see your face. Your eyes are pink, wet, desperately sad. Deep troubled grooves appear in his forehead as he studies you. Gently, wordlessly, he pats your cheek twice and lowers your sunglasses back over your eyes. Then he stands up again and offers you his hand.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says, softly this time. You take his hand and follow him down to the boathouse.

Five vessels are currently kept there. Aegon’s sailboat is a 25-foot Wianno Senior sloop, just roomy enough for a few passengers. He’s had it since long before you married into the Targaryen family. It is white with hand-painted gold accents; the name Sunfyre adorns the stern. He unmoors the boat, pushes it out into the open water, and raises the sails.

You glide eastbound over the glittering crests of waves, slowly at first, then faster as the sails catch the wind. Aegon has one hand on the rudder, the other grasping the ropes. And the farther you get from shore, the smaller Asteria seems, and the Targaryen family, and the presidential election, and the United States itself. Now all that exists is this boat: you, Aegon, the squawking gulls, the school of mackerel, the ocean. The sun beats down; the breeze rips strands of your hair free. The battery-powered record player is blasting White Room by Cream. When you are far enough from land that no journalists would be able to get a photo, Aegon takes two joints and his Zippo out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He puts both joints between his lips, lights them, and passes you one. Then he stretches out beside you on the deck, gazing up at the September sky.

You ask as your muscles unravel and your thoughts turn light and easy to share: “Why did you bring me out here?”

“So you can drown yourself,” Aegon says, and you both laugh. “Nah. I used to go sailing all the time when I was a teenager. It always made me feel better. It was the only place where I could really be alone.”

You consider the math. “Wow. You haven’t been a teenager since before I was in kindergarten.”

“It’s weird to think about. You don’t seem that young.”

“Thanks, I guess. You don’t seem that old.”

“Maybe we’re meeting in the middle.” He inhales deeply and then exhales in a rush of smoke. “What do you think, should I get an earring?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It might shock Otto so bad it kills him.”

“I’ll get two.” And then Aegon says: “It’s not cool for you to mock me.”

You are dismayed; you didn’t mean to hurt him. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. You were mocking me. You mocked me about the receipt under my ashtray, and then you mocked me again last night. I’m up for a lot of things, but I can’t handle that. Okay?”

“Okay.” You turn your head so you can see him: shaggy blonde hair, stubble, perpetual sunburn, the softness of his belly and his chest, flesh you long to vanish into like rain through parched earth. “Aegon?”

He looks over at you. “Io?”

“I don’t want Aemond to touch me either.”

He’s surprised; not by what you feel, but because you’ve said it aloud, a treason like Prometheus giving mankind the gift of fire. “What are we gonna do about it?”

If you were the goddess of wisdom, maybe you’d know.

[virgo-dream]

The New Inn trough the ages ✨

circa 1901

during WWI

during WWII

circa 1960

october, 2022

After the wonderful @cuubism posted some photos of the New Inn (and pointed me in the direction of more) I ended up stumbling upon their instagram page, and they had these wonderful photos of the Inn through the ages! Other cool info:

The pub has existed since 1642 and it was originally called The White Hart! Here’s a transcript of the text on the plaque next to the entrance:

“In 1642 the original Inn was known as The White Hart, but when the present building was erected in 1756, it changed to The New Inn.

From 1780 to his death in 1822, it was called The Hobart Arms after the Hon. George Hobart who lived in Ham Common and was related to the Duke of Buckinghamshire.

It has remained The New Inn ever since, and was renowned as one of the best sites for both travellers and local traffic, always employing at least one ostler.

Today, our fine historical inn offers the warmest traditional hospitality.”

All photos were taken from their official instagram, which you can find at @thenewinn_hamcommon. Drop them a follow and visit if you can! ✨

[heliads]

'homesick, but not for home' - kaz brekker

Based on this request: "y/n finally gets to visit their home country after years away in ketterdam with the crows. a sweet little slice of life with kaz finally getting to be kaz rietveld"

masterlist

merry christmas everyone! my present to you is kaz

Receiving a summons from Kaz Brekker usually means one of two things:  either you are about to be murdered, or he is going to ask you to do something before he murders you. Usually, that task involves the distribution of funds from your ledgers to his. However, as one of the bare few who has the privilege of making it to his inner circle, you would wager that there’s a third possible outcome from hearing from him:  he still wants you to do something, but you’ll be killing someone else.

Nonetheless, judging by the expression of the courier who tells you that Kaz is expecting you in his office, even being spared an imminent death doesn’t mean that this meeting will go pleasantly. Dirtyhands has a reputation around here, one just as dark and choking as those black gloves he so loves to wear. No one here knows Kaz as anything more than a shadow of a man, a killer, a convict. To learn that he wishes to speak to you is akin to hearing that Death itself is knocking on your door.

You, however, just smile and turn your feet towards the stairs leading to Kaz’s office instead. The Slat, home of the Dregs, is a rickety ramshackle of a building. Kaz has been doing his part to fix it up as he can, but the floorboards are still masterfully creaky and the oil lamps flicker ominously from their resting places beside each looming door. The stairwell is worst of all, a towering, beckoning talon that delivers you to your fate at the very top. 

Sometimes, you swear Kaz put his office on the top floor just because it would give his victims more time to contemplate their quickly approaching demise when they had to climb all the way up. Other days, you just assume that he was sick of the noise and wanted to find a place where nobody would bother him unless absolutely necessary. Knowing Kaz, both rationales are probably sound.

You knock once on the door to his office and, upon hearing your name called to come in, twist the doorknob and let yourself inside. Gathered in a loose semicircle on the few available pieces of furniture as well as leaning against the wall are Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Matthias, and Nina. Kaz sits, as usual, ramrod straight in a chair behind his desk, and gestures for you to take the final open seat.

“Looks like everyone’s here,” you note. “Should I be worried about missing anything?”

“Not in the slightest,” Jesper chirps. “Only that Kaz has been saving that chair for you this whole time. He keeps glaring at us whenever we so much as look towards it.”

Jesper looks as if he’d like to gossip about this a little more, but Wylan digs a sharp elbow into his side, causing the other boy to complain heartily. 

You just grin, sliding into your seat. “Good. I deserve luxury. I was never made to sit on the ground.”

Kaz coughs pointedly to disguise what you’re sure is a smile. “Now that we’re all in attendance, we can get started. I’ve heard news of a prospective business deal happening off the coast of the Southern Colonies. Expensive materials are being exchanged. Jewelry, artwork, the like. It’s all being conducted by Kerch merchers, but they took everything offshore to avoid the chance of getting caught. If we swoop in the night before and take all their bargaining tools, we’ll be richer and they’ll have to cave to our demands.”

“Of course, our demands,” Nina says, nodding. “What are we demanding, again?”

Inej smiles. “For them to stop breathing down our backs, for one thing. Also, they keep trying to cut into business. They needed this deal for an alliance between some of the wealthier merchers, but if each party thinks the other stole their riches before the swap, they’ll be so busy with infighting that they won’t bother us for some time.”

Kaz inclines his head gravely. “Precisely.”

Inej taps her fingers silently against her leg. “My question is when we’re going to stage the attack. We can attempt to hijack the ships before they leave the harbor, but I have no doubt that they’ll be crawling with stadwatch.”

“That’s why we’ll be sailing along with them,” Kaz clarifies. “The heist won’t happen until we’re on the shores of the Southern Colonies. That way, they’ll have let down their guard.”

Immediately, everyone reacts. Leaving the Barrel is an invitation for everything to go wrong. If rival gangs like the Dime Lions or the Razorgulls find out that Kaz’s inner circle isn’t in town, they’ll hasten to loot the place or kill your foot soldiers before anyone gets back.

“We have to leave the country?” Inej asks doubtfully. “That’s a tremendous risk.”

Kaz’s expression doesn’t shift a second, but you can still sense him tensing somehow, all too aware of the extra burden on his staff to maintain decorum and avoid attracting threats from his many enemies. “Think of it as a vacation. You’ll be able to get out of the city and go somewhere nice. Maybe even get some seaside air.”

Jesper snorts. “Kaz, your idea of a vacation is locking the door of your office and not running your numbers for five minutes. I didn’t think seaside air existed in your vocabulary except as a potential source of weakness.”

Kaz frowns. “Of course seaside air exists in my vocabulary. How else would I know to say it?”

Jesper rolls his eyes and looks as if he’d like to counter that with an equally terrible argument, but you cut him off. “I’d like to go,” you say suddenly.

All eyes turn to you. “Why?” Wylan asks.

A faint smile plays upon your lips. It’s easier to look at the ground than face all of their inquisitive stares, so you do just that. “I’m from the Southern Colonies. Used to be, at least. I’d always planned on going back at some point, but never got the chance until now.”

Truth be told, you were assuming that you would never get that chance. Your parents moved your whole family down to Ketterdam when you were about ten years old, drawn by the call of a quick profit. They were able to eke out a few tentative years, but the city swallowed them like it does everyone else. It’s just you now, you and the Crows and the dream that at one point, you might be able to revisit the place you once called home.

Even connecting ‘home’ and the Southern Colonies in the same sentence seems like something out of a dream. You’ve lived in Kerch for so long now that you can hardly imagine being anywhere else. The Crows are your family, the Barrel your home. It’s a strange life, certainly, but it’s yours.

Kaz’s face closes down. “I’ll go with you. Inej, you and the rest will maintain the Crow Club and its affiliates until we return. I don’t want to risk all of us on one endeavor.”

Matthias arches a brow. “You are willing to brave the risk of splitting up, though?”

Kaz turns a bemused expression his way. “Are you worried about me, drüskelle? And here I thought we’d never see eye to eye.”

Matthias snorts. “Don’t go that far, demjin.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Kaz muses. “The plan is set, then. We’ll have three weeks to plan, and then Y/N and I will set off.”

He allows the rest of the Crows to leave, but gestures for you to stay. You pull your chair closer to his desk, sensing that the discussion will shift into more details of the mission at hand.

Once the last of your friends have gone, Kaz turns his gaze to you. His eyes seem to stare straight through your skull, and you get the strange feeling that he could read every thought created inside your mind if he just bothered to listen a little closer. 

“You said you were born in the Southern Colonies. I need to be certain that there will be no distractions for a job like this. Can you swear to me that you’ll be focused?” He asks you.

“It won’t be an issue,” you assure him. “I’ll see the countryside and then move on. Honest.”

“Well, I should hope you won’t be completely honest,” Kaz murmurs, the corners of his lips pricking up into a slight shade of a smile. “We are still robbing people, of course.”

“Of course,” you laugh. His eyes jerk up when you do, his gaze hungry for the sight of it.

And– see, this is where you start to get into trouble. You are a criminal, a member of a gang. Every day is a fight. You know that survival is the thing that matters most in the Barrel, survival and how much money you can make off of delaying your last breath. You need to have single-minded focus totally centered around how you are going to make it through each day, but instead, your brain has started drifting to unreasonable topics like the precise shade of Kaz’s eyes or all the techniques he uses to hide his smiles.

It won’t serve you well, this feeling like a slow burn in your chest. Kaz would be the very first to tell you that weakness will only get you killed. People are a weakness. Is Kaz, though? Sometimes, in vague moments in between the times when reality comes firmly back to ground you, you can almost imagine that he might feel the same way. Would he really entertain this idea if he didn’t feel something for you? Would he leave the Barrel to go all the way to the Southern Colonies with you if he could easily send Jesper or someone else?

In the end, all you can ever do is push the thoughts from your mind. The scheming and planning period has got to be your least favorite part of a heist, but unfortunately, it’s also the segment that takes the longest. Every detail has to be perfect or all involved will be caught in the act.

Eventually, though, you find yourself shipping out on a fine sea morning, headed towards the country that hasn’t been yours since you were a child. You and Kaz are pretending to be business partners, which is true enough. His cabin is next to yours. You’re fairly sure he already knows the identity of every other traveler on the ship, just in case.

Standing on the deck and watching Ketterdam retreat into a nameless speck on the dark, vast ocean, you can’t help but wonder what the Southern Colonies will bring your way. Your heart is surprisingly light in your chest at the thought of it. You have dim recollections of the rolling hills and drifting tides, although even these memories have grown hazy with time. You can’t wait to see it again.

By contrast, Kaz, standing by your side, seems far less thrilled about the whole idea. His black gloves are clenched tightly around the railing, his grip hardening whenever the ship tilts too much. You glance around to make sure no other travelers are within earshot, then ask him with a questioning glance, “Why would you make this trip if you don’t like the ocean?”

Kaz shoots you a wary look. “I’m perfectly fine with it.”

You scoff. “Nonsense. You look as if you’d like nothing more than to drain the entire True Sea and simply walk to the Southern Colonies on foot. You could have sent Inej or Jesper in your place, you know. Why’d you want to go?”

“I have to make sure the job goes smoothly,” Kaz informs you. “Business is best handled by myself.”

You arch a brow. “Lovely. Good to know that you’ll never let something pesky like sea travel stand between you and your ambitions.”

Kaz snorts. “I should hope you’d already know that. And to answer your unspoken question, you’re here too because it’s foolish to take international jobs without someone at your back just in case of trouble. I trust you to not let homesickness for the Southern Colonies get in the way. I would advise you to stick to that.”

You smile. “Goodness, Kaz, you trust me? No wonder you didn’t want anyone else with us, if the rest knew you were shelling out compliments this easily they would have teased you for years.”

In the corners of your peripheral vision, you swear you can see a matching smile slide onto Kaz’s lips, but it’s gone the second you turn to look at him. “Precisely my thinking.”

The journey takes shorter than expected, or maybe that’s just your restless thinking. In no time at all, your ship is docking at a port of the Southern Colonies, and you’re turning in a slow circle on the coast, taking in every single sight you can.

“Careful,” Kaz tells you, “You don’t want to come across as too strong of a pigeon. We don’t want to attract any new friends who anticipate stealing something off of us.”

He’s smiling, though, and you swear there’s something a little lighter in his expression than you usually see. Maybe it really is the sea air getting to him, or maybe the fact that he’s out of Ketterdam’s grimy clutches lets Kaz relax even a fraction.

Regardless, you’re happy for it. “Ridiculous,” you say, laughing slightly. “Not all the world is like the Barrel, you know. We don’t do that sort of thing in the Southern Colonies.”

“We?” Kaz asks doubtfully. “Three steps you’ve taken off the ship and you’re already a proper citizen again, are you?”

You just grin. “What, are you jealous? Scared I’ll leave the Barrel?”

He doesn’t answer, but quickly changes the topic towards finding accommodations for the night and planning out an intelligence trip near the location where the jewels are being held. Even walking through the portside town and crossing the streets feels like magic, in a way. You lived not far from here, and everything from the curve of the avenues to the bright sun in the sky feels like coming home.

As it turns out, you and Kaz aren’t the only ones affected by the easy way of life in the Colonies. The two merchers you’ve been tracking are discussing business in broad daylight, obviously not anticipating anyone to have followed them. The job will be easy, and the few days you gave yourselves for extra planning are largely useless since no more details are relevant.

Instead, you take it upon yourself to explore the surrounding countryside. You tell Kaz that he doesn’t have to accompany you every time, of course, he can stay back in the portside town if he pleases, but he still goes with you. It’s funny, the more time you spend away from the city, the more you watch the burdens slowly lift from his shoulders, the light return to his eyes.

One time, while walking through a wooded path, Kaz tells you it’s because this reminds him of his home, as well. He grew up on a farm, once, under a different last name and in a different life. He’ll never have that time of his life back again, nor, you think privately, will you have yours, but it’s still lovely to wander around here and pretend that you could.

The job goes off without a hitch. Soon enough, you find yourselves sitting pleased with jewels and artwork hidden away in your luggage, all items recovered without their owners batting so much as an eye. You’ll leave early in the morning before they can notice you. You feel a pang in your heart at the thought of leaving already, but you hadn’t realized you weren’t the only one thinking about it until Kaz visits your room at the inn late that final night.

You had known it was him at your door from the moment you heard his crisp knock against the wooden paneling. No one else moves or lives like Kaz, with so much precision. When you let him in, though, he looks more wild than you’ve ever seen him. His hair, for once, has lost its impeccable style and gone wild and unkempt. His shirt is wrinkled and rolled up to the elbows. It would still be a good look on him were it not for the fact that you’ve never seen him so little put together in the entire time you’ve known him.

Kaz doesn’t say a word until he is certain that the door is shut and bolted behind him. Then, all of a sudden, the words burst out of his throat, so beseeching that you have to wonder how in Ghezen’s name he managed to keep them from you for so long. “Don’t stay here,” he says. “Come back with me.”

You frown. “Who said I was staying? We’ve both got tickets on the ship departing next morning, Kaz.”

He waves a hand frustratedly to signal his disbelief in this statement. “Tickets don’t mean a thing. I need you to say it.”

“I did,” you frown. “Where else would I go?”

“Here,” Kaz says heatedly. “I’ve seen the way you look at the buildings, this place. You want to say here. Don’t you do it, Y/N.”

You shake your head softly. “I love it here, yes, but it’s not my home anymore than Ravka across the sea. I’m going back to the Barrel, Kaz.”

“With me,” he says uncertainly.

“With you,” you confirm. “Goodness, Kaz, did you really think I would stay? How could I do such a thing?”

“It’s very easy for people to leave,” he tells you. There’s a heaviness in his eyes that reminds you of brothers that have been buried, of farms that have long been sold to undeserving families that were not his.

“Not me,” you whisper. “Not if it was you I was leaving.”

His eyes, which have been sweeping your figure this entire time, looking for some twitch of a finger or jump of a pulse to betray you for lying, leap up to yours again. “Okay,” he says at last. “Okay.”

He leans back slightly, wavering on his heels. “I– I’ll go back to my room, then.”

Kaz doesn’t look as if he much savors the idea, and you decide to spare him from his thoughts, just in case. “You can stay here, you know.”

A soft breath is released. “That would– I could do that.”

He does. And, as your candles burn closer to the quick, as the night settles over this city, you cannot help but be glad for the time when you’ll find yourself in a different one. It has been nice to be here, but you would like to go home. And, most importantly of all, you are glad that Kaz will be there with you.

grishaverse tags: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @mayfieldss, @eclliipsed, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000, @baju69, @crazyhearttragedy, @aoi-targaryen, @budugu

all tags list: @wordsarelife