#despite these posts not targeting anyone in particular

[getaapologist]

The Tension and the Terror.............Part VI

Pairing: Emperor Geta x OFC (extremely loosely, character is named but otherwise not described besides hair length in a later part)

Summary: Letha looks out for Caracalla. Geta plays healer and they are interrupted, oh so rudely.

Warnings: Violence, mentions of blood, 18+ only

Word Count: 2.9k

Part 6 of 13?

[ Part V ]

Series Masterlist

A/N: Hope you like this! There's just something about a reserved, yet teasing Geta. I can imagine it so well. I don't think I would be able to rein myself in. I would probably already have been killed, honestly.

“I do love it when they flood the Colosseum,” Caracalla confided, leaning over to where Letha sat at his side, sharing his wide chair. He was hardly sat in it anyways, constantly getting up to lean over the ledge, watching the sharks as they circled in the water. She had hardly spared a look Geta’s way since his dismissiveness that morning. Besides, she had a new job now. 

She didn’t know what she’d do if there was a reprisal so soon, but she could try her best. It wasn’t as if she had any choice. She tried to ignore the pain radiating from her shoulder. No thought was given to her pain by anyone around her, so she said nothing of it. She wasn’t sure what could be done anyway, and she wasn’t about to ask Caracalla for some of his supply. She didn’t like the way it made her feel.

“Do you like the games, Letha?” Caracalla asked, leaning back in his throne, quite close to Letha. It didn’t bother her. But it would probably be an entirely different story if it were his brother instead. Just imagining it made her feel foolish. At least this time she could blame the heat on her state.

“Not particularly, Emperor,” she admitted.

He grinned. “Well, I think you’ll like this one. You might recognize some of them.”

Something about the way he said it struck her as particularly mean, despite his innocent tone. As if it didn’t occur to him that she could be distressed at that fact. And she was distressed. Though most of them were prone to act out their baser impulses, there were a handful that still knew how to behave around a woman. She hoped she didn’t see them here today.

As the boats appeared, any effort to converse with Letha was abandoned. She watched Caracalla react to the promise of bloodshed much like any other Roman she’d encountered. With unabated glee. He was childlike, but there was nothing innocent in the way he cheered for every fallen man, every spray of blood. He didn’t cheer for any particular side, he cheered for the violence. She now understood what Macrinus told her. That he was bloodthirsty.

And the sound. The sound. She grit her teeth, attempting to hold in the way she wanted to react to the fighting as it crashed all around her. She was dangerously close to getting lost in her memory. She could just barely begin to make out her home in the distance, the trees behind it on fire, when–

The impact of the arrow hitting the wooden post of Geta’s throne shook Letha out of her spiral. Her hands were on Caracalla in a heartbeat, seizing the shoulders of his robes and hauling him down below the wall of the Emperors’ box. Her shoulder screamed in protest at the sudden motion and forced a cry to leave her throat as she bashed it into the floor.

It was followed soon after by fearful noises coming from the smaller Emperor. His hand gripped her forearm tightly and she could tell he was on the verge of panic. As the guards moved in she helped him get up, keeping  a hand on his back to press him lower to prevent him from being an easy target as they fled the box. 

Once they were inside the innards of the Colosseum she eased her hold on Caracalla. She still stayed firmly at his side just in case someone thought to take advantage of the chaos. She had lost sight of his brother, annoyed with herself at the stab of concern that surfaced at the thought of his safety.

“This way, Emperor,” General Tegula instructed, gesturing to a small passage just behind him. Caracalla paused, feet planted in the flow of Praetorians and senators as they moved briskly past them to the public exit. “Emperor Caracalla?”

Letha moved around him, eyes searching, trying to figure out what was wrong. He looked a lot like how she’d felt back in the Colosseum before the chaos unfolded. Trapped in her mind. Terrified.

“Emperor Caracalla, we have to go back home,” she soothed, talking to him like she might a small child. “I’m sure Dondus would like to know you’re safe.”

“Where is my brother?” he asked, light eyes swimming with unshed tears. 

“Through here,” Letha explained, pointing to the doorway behind her. “I’m sure he is so worried about you. Let’s not keep him waiting any longer,” she smiled, holding a hand out for Caracalla to take.

“Hurry,” Tegula pleaded, urging them on through the passage. 

Caracalla finally gripped her hand and she gently tugged him along behind her through the descending passage, her other hand holding up the hem of her skirts so she didn’t stumble in the low light. She didn’t have time to think about the pain in her shoulder. She would check the damage done later.

Seeing light at the end of the sloped walkway, she prepared herself for the bright sun. Guards waited there to usher them to the safety of a waiting carriage. She gently held Caracalla back, stepping into the carriage first to check the occupants. She could feel him keeping a grip on the skirts of her dress. 

Sticking her head in, Letha locked eyes with a stressed Geta. “My brother?” he questioned, reminding her of her new responsibility. She reached down for Caracalla’s wrist and pulled him inside, moving aside so he could step past. The twins relaxed at the sight of each other, unharmed. 

Letha sat down on the firm wood bench closest to the opening as her adrenaline finally abated, the flaring of the pain in her shoulder now radiating down to her elbow. 

The two men sat beside each other, Geta listening intently as Caracalla relayed the horrors he’d just experienced. It was an intimate look into their relationship, one Letha suspected almost no one got to see. Though they were the same age, Geta was far and away the older brother out of the two. A natural protector. She could see genuine comfort in Geta’s face as Caracalla’s panic eased into a frustrated rant at the games being cut short. 

Letha nearly slid down to the floor as the carriage began to move, quite quickly at that. Her quick reach for something to grab onto caused her to groan, her hand reaching for her shoulder. 

“Are you alright, Letha?” Caracalla asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, holding her hand out to urge him to remain in his seat. The last thing they all needed was him hitting his head on something.

“Letha, you’re bleeding,” Geta spoke.

She was confused. 

“Your hand,” Geta urged, concern in his eyes. 

She turned her wrist and was confronted by her palm, stained with blood. She reached for her shoulder despite the throbbing pain and moved the fabric aside, realizing that the cloth covering was soaked through with blood. She let out a frustrated sigh and desperately hoped she hadn’t ripped any of the stitching. She didn’t think she would survive another visit from the healer and his needle.

Geta kept his eyes on Letha, unable to help himself. Even after they arrived home and she led Caracalla back inside, she still put aside her discomfort to follow his brother to his chambers. As Caracalla led her down the hallway, Geta could hear her assuring his brother that she would visit the healer as soon as he was safe in his rooms. It stirred emotions in Geta that he wasn’t prepared for. 

Under normal circumstances it would be him leading Caracalla back to his rooms, easing his concerns after such a stressful day. How Caracalla didn’t have an outburst at any point after the stray arrow lodged into the wood beside Geta’s head, Geta couldn’t say. It had been a while since the last one, and Letha had not yet experienced a true fit. She shouldn’t be so good at it, but she was. It was undeniable. 

Geta felt uncertain. With his usual responsibility to his brother taken up by Letha, he was left with nothing to do. He supposed now was as good a time as any to visit the bath, to truly relax and make the most of his free time before dinner arrived and he had to host their guests. An exhausting responsibility, one he wished he could delegate to his brother. But alas, his brother surely didn’t want it either.

His conversation with Macrinus had eased his concerns about her. Slightly. He had been lured in by her initially, and was captured by her show of violence, but the idea that he could become a target of it gave him enough pause to back off. This softness she had for his brother, however, warmed him right back up to her. He wanted to speak with her, to tell her he was grateful for her protection of his brother. To tell her she could never leave them now.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Emperor, but I still don’t know my way around this place. Where is my room?”

Geta looked up and felt almost startled by her presence, as if his quiet thoughts had summoned her. “Letha…”

“Yes?” She questioned, raising an eyebrow.

He forced his distracting thoughts out of his head. “Shouldn’t you be looking for the healer?”

She glanced away, down to the marble floor. “I’m not eager to find myself at the mercy of that needle again,” she admitted. 

Geta smiled slightly, mischief blossoming in his chest. “Come with me.”

She looked up sharply, confusion in her eyes.

“I’ve tended to a great many wounds,” he explained. “I can check on it at least.” 

He could see the questions she wanted to ask, could almost hear them asked in her voice. No matter how pleasant, the implication of them would still cut deeply. He didn’t want to discuss it and hoped she wouldn’t push it.

“I don’t want to take up your time, I’ll go see the healer,” she excused, stepping back. 

“But you don’t know how to get there,” Geta teased. A flutter passed through his stomach at the sight of her eyes narrowing. “Come,” he grinned, “I’ll show you around.”

She let out a sigh before taking a step towards him, her hands gesturing ahead as if to urge him to start walking. He didn’t need to be told twice, holding her gaze for a moment before turning around and strolling deep into the palace.

Letha couldn’t breathe, didn’t dare move as Geta’s ringed fingers hooked under the fabric over her shoulder. She could feel him staring her down as he lowered the strap, revealing the deep maroon-stained bandage. She figured he probably liked this, her unwilling to meet his eyes, floundering quietly beneath him. She felt like she was back in that warm room, shrinking under the weight of his teasing. 

His fingers pressed at her tender skin, making her wince. He lifted the bandage up off the wound. The pain forced her eyes shut as she bit back the groan travelling up her throat. It stayed stuck against the stitches, the dried blood holding firm.

“Hmm,” he paused, “water,” he muttered, leaving her side. She allowed herself to look at him now, watching him as he approached a table across the room where fruit and pitchers sat, waiting to satisfy any urge he might have for sustenance. He returned with a cup of clear, refreshing water. 

She looked up at him, having reached the threshold of quality time with Geta required to be comfortable. She found herself slowly getting used to the weight of his presence. It could be dangerous. 

“Do all Emperors receive the training of a healer, or just you?”

The corner of Geta’s lips quirked up at her effort at banter. “I’d hardly call it training. I can summon him if you wish,” he offered, meaning the healer.

“Do you have a needle over there?” she asked, glancing over at the tray placed on the small side table pulled up to his hip. She did find it highly curious that Geta, of all people, would have these things in his rooms. She didn’t think it was appropriate to ask why.

He wrung the scrap of cloth out slightly before pressing it to her shoulder and the stuck bandage. “No.”

She winced, but tried to hide it, for his sake. “Then I think I’ll be okay in your hands,” she answered.

“My hands, hmm?” he teased.

Her face grew hot at his suggestive tone. “That’s not what I meant.”

He let out a chuckle, unable and unwilling to hide his amusement from her. “It’s hard to know for sure, you know.” He pulled the bandage away, leaning down to inspect the wound and make sure the stitches were still stuck tight. He was relieved to find that they were. “After our prior encounter, I can’t assume you to be wholly innocent, Letha,” he grinned.

Letha turned her face and met his eyes, alarmed to find just how close he was. His grin stayed stuck firm on his lips, his warm brown eyes fixed on hers, until, for just a split second, they dipped lower, to her lips–

She looked away, her heart racing. Surely not. Surely he was just being kind, thanking her in his own way for her efforts to protect his brother. There could be no other motive. She wouldn’t allow herself to consider the alternative.

“So shy,” he teased, returning to his full height, perusing the contents of the side table until he found what he was looking for.

“Or maybe you’re intimidating,” she shot back, stilling as his fingers returned to her skin, gently smoothing a fresh bandage over the wound, loaded with some sort of healing poultice. She felt her wound grow cold for once, instead of angry and hot. It relaxed her.

He got low again, his face near hers as he pressed the edges of the tacky cloth down on her skin as gently as he dared. “Do I intimidate you, Letha?”

She met his warm, suffocating eyes. He was in control, had her right where he wanted. Where she wanted. She couldn’t lie to herself. As much as it went against everything that brought her here, she couldn’t help the way he made her feel. It was so unlike the reaction she had to anyone else. She wasn’t supposed to like him, she was meant to hate him and his brother, but with every moment spent in their presence she just felt more and more at ease. 

“Yes,” she admitted, her breathing unsteady, those snakes making themselves known again, swirling around inside.

She was a traitor. A traitor that let her eyes fall to his full, pink lips, watching as they parted slightly before he began to smile.

“Emperor Geta,” a soft, cloyingly sweet voice sounded from somewhere behind him. 

Letha again turned away, sliding out from under his fingertips. She hurriedly pulled the strap of the dress back up over the wound, ignoring the stinging as she sought to get as far away from Geta as possible while she still could. The interruption served as a rogue wave, washing icy water over her, putting out the heat Geta had brought forth. Drawing her ire.

Something close to fury overtook Geta’s features. It wasn’t directed at Letha. He quieted it before turning around to find out who saw fit to disturb him in his chambers.

“Lyra, I did not send for you,” Geta spoke, seemingly surprised.

Letha wanted to leave the room, reminded of their relationship instantly as Lyra brightened under his gaze, despite his tone.

“I heard about what happened, I just wanted to check on you,” she smiled, ignoring all signs that she might have interrupted something. Letha thought it was probably intentional. She wasn’t stupid. Or blind. “There’s still time before dinner, so I thought…” She didn’t need to finish her sentence.

“Excuse me,” Letha finally spoke, wanting to be anywhere else than in the presence of the tall Emperor and his lover. She strode for the doorway Lyra had just passed through, trying to remember Geta’s directions as they walked the halls earlier. 

“Leave me,” Geta ordered Lyra, a bit cold. Letha left the room before she could hear any more.

As she retraced their path back to where he said her rooms were, her face burned. Embarrassed, she pushed through the door quickly and fell back against it, forcing it shut. 

“Fool,” she scolded. “Absolutely stupid, stupid.”

Her rational mind returned now that she wasn’t suffocated by Geta’s aura. She needed to get a grip on herself, fast. She couldn’t allow herself to get entangled with him. What would happen when he realized she was sent there with a purpose? That the man she’d killed had been paid by the man that owned her? It wouldn’t matter what she might feel for him. It would be her death. Even now she was descending into a well, every moment spent not killing the twins was another board being laid over top, hammered in harshly.

If she wasn’t going to kill the Emperors, she had to come up with a solution to Macrinus. If he knew she wasn’t going to complete her task, she would surely be top of his list to be murdered with all she knew of his plans. She was in more danger than she knew how to handle. Would the Emperors ever forgive her for her choices, for considering their deaths? She expected not.

[ Part VII ]

[peri]

im so embarrassed about talking to people lately. i feel like im desperately clinging to anyone i can and no one feels the same. which makes sense, i cant ask anyone to be crazy about me. i'd ruin it anyway

[rosalinrabbit]

Dealer

Blue Banisters Tracklist

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader 

Warnings: Mentions of illegal activity and trafficking and generally creepy behavior, arguing, boss/employee relationship, implied age gap, smut, sex, slight BDSM vibes, dom!Hotch x sub!Reader, spanking, degradation, praise, slight choking, oral sex, penetrative sex. 

Summary: You’ve been working at the BAU for nearly two years ever since you crossed Aaron Hotchner’s path while working undercover. When you’re asked to go undercover again to solve a case, you take a huge risk and disobey Hotch. Unfortunately for you, he thinks you need to be punished. 

Word Count: 4.9k

A/N: I may not have time for kinktober but I do have time for a lil halloween themed aaron fanfic

You are in charge of your own media consumption. Please read responsibly.

Do not translate or re-upload any of my work. Works are only cross-posted on AO3.

You met Aaron Hotchner in the middle of a particularly cold November. A ridiculous coincidence, really. You’d heard of him, even sent in a recent application to work for his team, though had some doubts you’d ever hear back. The BAU was a tough, tight-knit group. And even though you were working a case, you wondered if this might make the entirely wrong impression.

You worked for the FBI, in the Human Trafficking division. You’d been undercover for a little over two months, posing as a young grad student with a shady second job at a club. You weren’t a stripper, but you were dressed in a black latex bunny girl suit, complete with faux sleeve cuffs, a ribbon tied in a bow at your hip, a collar, a set of ears, and a fluffy white tail. Your job description, according to your boss, was a waitress. And you weren’t the only undercover agent at the club.

It had been a strange hotbed of criminal activity. Clearly enough so that the FBI had to show up for one reason or another. The outfit was too tight to conceal a proper weapon, all you had on you was a wire and a knife. You had to rely a lot on the others staking out the club, and you noticed one of them had just gotten distracted despite one of your targets acting quite shifty in the corner. This particular target you despised the most. You could tell something was very off about him, and as you were fed details of the case and studied the frequent customers at the bar, you were quite sure it was him. The guy wasn’t a seller, but you were quite sure he was buying. The girls he bought never showed up again.

That was when you noticed Aaron Hotchner enter the club with two other members of the BAU. Your eyes flickered between them and your target. They weren’t looking at him. They made the same mistake you initially made, focusing on the wrong guy. You’d spent enough time working the case to know, but your superior had never mentioned the BAU involving themselves in this particular case. 

Taking a deep breath and plastering on your customer service smile, you walked over to Agent Hotchner holding the tray of champagne glasses.

“First time here?” You asked, tilting your head to the side as you offered them drinks.

One of the other agents, a very muscular-looking black man, answered for the three of them. “Yeah, mind if we ask you a few questions?”

You smiled. “Of course. How may I assist you?” You batted your lashes, unwilling to give up your ruse even in the presence of other federal agents. You’d worked too hard for this.

“Are there any men that frequent this club, ones that you and the other workers know to stay away from?” 

“Most of the repeat customers are, surprisingly, not too bad. But there’s a few lingering around that the workers know to be careful of.” You watched your target from the corner of your eye, making sure not to look too long to tip anyone off. You watched him eye a girl who’s friend had just left to go to the bathroom. “I can point out a few, but I think you can usually tell just by looking at them,” you shrugged, putting a hand on your barely concealed hip. You carefully caught the eye of the man you were speaking to and pointedly glanced to the corner where the most suspicious regulars tended to gather. 

“That’s all, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

You smiled at the three of them, watching closely as they moved toward the wrong man. Just your luck, your target stood up at the same time as the other guy did, and they both went in opposite directions.

Attempting to casually wade through the busy crowd, you couldn’t seem to catch the eye of your undercover partner, but you saw the target talk to the girl sitting alone before luring her towards the back. Quickly, you managed to pass the tray to another worker before looking back, catching agent Hotchner staring at you. You wished there was a way to signal that you could use his help, but you didn’t know him. Instead, you mouthed the words “wrong guy” to him across the crowded floor, music blaring in your ears as you quickly turned and tried to quietly follow the man through the back of the club. 

That night, you had managed to not only get a recording of the man talking to your “boss” about their second business, but also witnessed him inject the girl in the backroom with a tranquilizer. After finally retrieving your handcuffs and pistol from your partner, you both managed to tackle and arrest the two men, and requested backup to gather evidence at the club and pick up the handcuffed men.

It must have been a ridiculous sight, you in a bunny girl costume with your gun now holstered to your hip once more, holding the handcuffed arms of a criminal behind his back in a cold dark alley. When you finally got them loaded into the cars, you turned to see Aaron Hotchner watching you. 

“Hello again,” you greeted a bit nervously, no longer playing a character and now just an FBI agent standing in hardly any clothes in front of a higher-ranking agent. “I’m Agent y/l/n, FBI, Human Trafficking division,” you held your hand out. 

He shook it. “Agent Aaron Hotchner. Unit Chief of the BAU. You tried to warn me back there,” he commented, taking off his own jacket and coming closer to offer it to you. You gave him an unsure look, and he returned it with an insistent one. 

“Thank you, sir. And yes, but it’s hard to do much of that in a busy nightclub,” you shrugged, putting the jacket over yourself and finally getting both relief from the cold and from the embarrassment of showing so much leg and cleavage in front of the man you really wanted to work under. For! Work for. Although, he was quite tall. And quite handsome.

“Still. You did a good job. It seemed like you caught something we didn’t. How could you tell we were looking into the wrong guy?”

“I’ve been working on this case for over two months. At first, I had the same assumption. But something from the profile was missing. I watched them both, and eventually came to the conclusion that I got it wrong the first time.”

“What I’m really asking is how you knew who we were going in there for.”

“Oh, I just watched you. I knew when you came in. He was the first guy your gaze really stuck on.” 

His expression showed the slightest hint of amusement. “Are you interested in a job?”

You smiled. “Very much so.”

“Send me your resume.”

“It’s already submitted for the open position, sir.”

He nodded, giving you a strange look.

“I expect I’ll see you again soon, then,” and he started to walk away.

“Wait, your jacket!”

“You can return it later. At your interview.”

That night was almost two years ago. The two of you had been a nearly inseparable pair ever since. You knew how to read him across a room, and he knew how to read you. You figured that was why he always had you with him. 

Just two months in, he told you he might be leaving the BAU after getting suspended for two weeks. His wife didn’t want him to work anymore. Said that his job isn’t who he is, just what he does.

You seemed to shock him by looking at him like you always did when the two of you spoke. As if the entire thing was obvious.

“I don’t think she can possibly understand how much we care about what we do. How what we do is who we are, and we know not everyone can do it. You’re one of the best, Hotch. You can be a good father and a good agent. Unfortunately, whether you can be a good husband and a good agent? That is an opinion left up to your wife. Her definition is what really matters, not yours.” 

You’d stood up from the chair across from his desk then, trying to hide the distress at the possibility of rarely seeing and never working with him again.

“I.. The team” you quickly corrected yourself, “doesn’t want you to leave. But I think what matters the most is what you want, Hotch. You only get one life. This is your career. This is the path you chose.” You took a deep breath. “Don’t let her choose for you, but you can choose her. We would all understand.”

He stayed. And your relationship had slowly taken a much more tense and strange turn. You were in-sync. Knew each other too well. Your heart skipped a beat when he looked at you. You both noticed the lingering looks, but never said a thing about it. You did everything you always do, together. Especially since his divorce. You shared rooms, meals, notes, just about everything. Your leg was always slightly pressed against his when sitting next to him. His arm was often placed behind you when the two of you were walking somewhere in an unknown environment. Close. You were close.

Yet your relationship had never crossed the line. The meals were usually take out, the rooms had two beds, the time spent together was all under the guise of “work.” Just work. 

And nearly two years since that first fateful night that you met Aaron Hotchner, you were back in the stupid bunny suit.

It was all Derek’s fault, you were convinced. It was his idea, and Emily, Penelope, and Derek all thought it would be funny to put you back in the costume that started it all.

You had to go undercover at a club during a Halloween party. This unsub was a freak, and everyone dressed in costumes certainly didn’t ease your nerves about the whole thing.

Crossing your arms with a huff as you exited the bathroom at the local precinct, you glared at Derek who had picked out the costume. Spencer turned around from whatever he was working on and nearly spit out his water and started coughing.

“Is this necessary? I can’t even carry a gun on me…”

“You wore it undercover before. Come on, Bunny!” You frowned at the use of your nickname. The one you got from the night you first met Derek, Hotch, and Rossi.  “I thought you’d be comfortable in a familiar outfit,” he teased. “Besides, we need you to fit the victimology. Young attractive girls having fun at parties.” While this would certainly be considered harassment in any other unit with any other team, you adored Derek. You couldn’t help but smirk a little bit at his comment.

“You’re such a jerk,” you said unseriously. “Besides, I was pretending to be a worker back then. I couldn’t say no to my boss. You, however, aren’t my boss.”

It was then that Emily and Hotch came into the room, and Emily’s jaw dropped.

“Why do you look so hot!” she exclaimed, dramatically setting the files down on the table in front of her.

“This is the outfit Derek picked for me,” you sighed. “Look familiar?” You did a dramatic turn in front of them, trying to keep your eyes off of Hotch in embarrassment.

“I could never forget,” Hotch shook his head, clearly amused, but he looked tense. You narrowed your eyes at him a bit. 

“I’ll wear it for old times sake, and because I know you guys will actually cover me.”

Derek, Hotch, and Emily went with you to the club. You were in Chicago, and Derek warned you that the parties could get a bit wild. Sitting in the back of the SUV, you couldn’t help but ask. “So, where’s your costumes?”

“Men in Black,” Hotch replied as though it were obvious.

Derek turned to look at you in the back, and pulled a cat ears headband out of nowhere, putting it on his head.

“We match.”

You all entered the club separately, and it wasn’t long until you were trying to fend people off left and right. It was getting difficult, as well. You hadn’t been in a relationship in a long time, and the lack of attention was getting to you. Well, at the very least, this evening showed you that you could still pull off the bunny suit. 

You were being hit on by a very attractive older man, and nearly giving in to his flirting, until something caught your eye. Someone that matched the description of the unsub. You snapped back into reality. Watching the man closely as he moved through the crowd. You apologized to the older man before moving to follow, also trying to find where Hotch and Derek might be, but you couldn’t see them. Despite your heart pounding in your chest, you managed to strike up a conversation with the unsub at the bar. You played the innocent young girl as much as possible, while trying to not seem too conveniently naive. Your goal was now to try and get him out of the club, away from other people. He was more than likely carrying a gun on him, and you knew whatever you were doing was dangerous.

Yet as he asked you if you wanted to go somewhere quieter, feigning that he couldn’t hear what you were saying, you agreed, hoping to appeal to his ego and not raise any alarm. You turned back to the busy club, eyes desperately searching for someone familiar, and you found him. He was up on the second floor, looking right at you. This time, he recognized the look you were giving him, his grip on the railing tightened and he shook his head, discouraging whatever the hell you thought you were about to do. And you didn’t listen. 

“You knew better than to go off and do that,” he scolded harshly, his anger seeping off of him and you felt yourself flinch. It was later that night. After the unsub attacked you in an alley not far from the club, you had managed to take him down without any assistance before Hotch and Derek made it to where you were. This was made much easier by the alcohol you had encouraged him to drink while speaking with him at the bar…

“And what the hell did you think you were doing, flirting ON THE JOB?” his voice rose and filled the hotel room the two of you shared.

“With the unsub?” You asked incredulously. “You asked me to go undercover! I got the guy! We had evidence, he’s in custody! Why are we arguing over this? It doesn’t even matter.”

This had been going on for five minutes already, starting since he shut the door to your shared hotel room. You hadn’t even changed out of the stupid costume as you sat perched on the corner of your bed with your arms crossed. The only part you had taken off were the stupid ears, now left on the nightstand.

“Not with the unsub, you were talking to someone else before. I saw you. What were you thinking?!” 

“I don’t know, maybe that I haven’t been on so much as a date since I started working for the BAU? I got the job done, I don’t know why you’re so mad because I talked to someone who was interested in me for less than a minute!”

“You can’t take going undercover as an opportunity to inflate your ego because you’re lonely.”

You stood up then, in complete shock at the words coming out of his mouth. You didn’t even look him in the eye.

“That was low,” you murmured, suddenly moving around the room to throw your belongings back into your bag.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Leaving.”

“Y/n, wait. Listen to me-”

“No!” you stopped him as he tried to approach you. “Just because you think you know me doesn’t mean you get to throw it in my face. That’s fucking low. I have given up so much for this job, so much for you.”

“I never asked you to give up anything for me.” You zipped your bag and looked up at him. “And I don’t think I know you. I do know you. And if you want me to stop, tell me and I will, but I don’t think you’ll need to.”

“What do you think you’re-“ the end of your sentence broke off in a small yelp as he approached you and quickly had you bent over his lap as he sat on the edge of your bed, delivering a harsh slap to your ass. 

You let out a moan at the sensation, unable to bite it back because of how much he had surprised you.

“Are you familiar with the color system?”

You were reeling from shock, but nodded your head. 

“Words, y/n. I need you to understand how to use it if you want to.”

“Red means stop, yellow means slow down, green is all good.”

“Yes. Color?”

“Green,” you responded readily.

 He kept talking, and kept spanking your ass harshly as he did so.

“Do you have any idea,” slap “how many times I’ve thought about doing this to you?” slap “Even the first god damn time I saw you in this ridiculous outfit,” slap “looking like such a little whore,” slap “I wanted to bend you over my lap just like this. You certainly misbehave enough to deserve it.” 

Your legs were squeezing together as you let out broken moans at the sensation of his large hand spanking you over and over, you could feel yourself getting wetter by the second when he suddenly grabbed your face and made you look at him, craning your neck from where you were placed on his lap.

“Is this what you wanted?” You nodded, looking into his eyes. “Say it.”

“Yes, sir,” you managed. 

“Good girl,” he praised. “Get on your knees.”

He released you and you slid off of him and onto the floor, kneeling in front of where he sat on the edge of the bed. 

You bit your lip as you tried not to squirm on the floor, waiting for him to unbuckle his belt. He paused before doing so to look at you. Another look asking if you were really okay with this. You smiled at him, nodding, and he swiftly took his length out, causing you to nearly whimper at the size and the look of it. He was rock hard, and the tip was oozing precum. 

Slowly, you leaned in and licked his cock tentatively, before he grabbed your hair and pushed you down on his length eliciting a muffled moan from you as you fought not to choke. He started thrusting into your mouth slowly, and at the sound of his groans you nearly lost it. His voice was already like a drug for you, hearing it in such an erotic state was driving you crazy. So much so that you tried to sneak your hand down and rub against your throbbing clit, desperate for any kind of friction. You only got away with it for a few moments before he noticed, taking his free hand and pulling your arm away.

“What kind of girl gets so drenched just from sucking off her boss’s dick? Hm?” 

He pulled you off of his cock just for a moment, and instead of answering, you just whimpered, pressing your thighs together, and he brought you back down to his cock. He started fucking your mouth again, and you kept moving your hips, grinding into nothing as you desperately sought relief. 

“Are you really that desperate?” He pulled you off again, and you nodded pathetically, spit dripping from your mouth and eyes glazed over. 

“Words, baby.”

“Yes,” you nodded again. “Please.”

“Are you gonna be a good girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On the bed.”

You scrambled off the floor to do as you were told, hurrying over to the closest bed which just so happened to be the one you had claimed during your stay, but he stopped you.

“No,” his voice was quick and firm. “I want you on my bed.”

Your mouth dropped open slightly at his words, making you slightly curious about just how deep his instinct to claim you as “his” went. Happily, you followed his request and quickly found yourself on the other side of the room. Rather than sit and face the wall, you were feeling a little bold, and got on all fours with your ass prominently on display.  

“What a well-behaved bunny,” he mused as he took off his clothes, leaving you twitching and desperate for him, with your neck craning to the side as your cheek was against the duvet. You quietly stared as he unbuttoned his shirt, and quickly got restless when he began to reveal more of his skin.

It felt like forever until he was on the bed behind you, his cock sheathed in a condom and pressing against your still-clothed ass.

“Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes.” 

“Color?”

“Green.”

“Do you want to let me use you? Or do you just want to cum?” He asked, his voice in a deep tone and his large hand reaching to caress your neck, gently grabbing your hair between his fingers and guiding your head up to look at him. It felt like an interrogation the way he questioned you, but it drastically increased the tension, and only made you want him more, and he shifted you slightly so your back was now against his chest, firmly in his hold.

“Mm, both.”

He chuckled from behind you. One of his hands was now gripping your breast which was barely hidden. The bodice of the costume relied on flimsy see-through straps to stay up, and he was quick to tear them off, making no more than a quick snapping sound before they were thrown somewhere on the floor. You felt him begin to press kisses to the side of your neck as he pulled the top of the fabric down, revealing your breasts and hungrily kneading them with one hand. With the other, his hand was traveling down your hip and across the front of your thighs before he hooked the fabric that covered your soaked entrance with his finger and moved it to the side. You gasped at the feeling of his hand moving directly against your clit, still impatient to cum even though it was well worth the wait.

 “Damn, you’re perfect.” The praise has you reeling as you rocked against him slightly. He lowered you back to where you had been, on all fours, and you could feel himself lining his cock up with your entrance behind you. “Ready, bunny?”

You nodded, and he easily entered you in a single thrust, no doubt thanks to how absurdly wet you had become. Despite the ease of entrance, the stretch felt brutal, it had you gasping and clutching the bedding under you.

He felt so big, and you hadn’t been fucked in a while. 

“Oh god,” you whimpered. “Sir, you’re so big.”

He let out a groan that had you clenching around his length, and pushing your hips back against him. His thick fingers found your hips and gripped them tightly as he pulled out almost to the tip and slammed back into you. You hadn’t realized how gentle he had started out until he began to pound into you at full force, each thrust making your legs tremble as his length hit the deepest spots inside of you. 

Given that you had already been so worked up from sucking him off, and were still riding the end of an adrenaline high from your work in the field earlier that night, your orgasm was rapidly approaching, only encouraged by the way Aaron had gently caressed any part of your body he could reach with one hand while the other still had a white hot grip on your hips. 

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to mess with the big bad wolves, bunny?” He murmured in your ear, aware of just how close you were and he knew exactly how to push you over the edge. Your eyes rolled back when his large hand found its way to your neck, squeezing gently but enough for you to feel it. Your legs shook uncontrollably as that coil inside you snapped and you let out a broken cry at the intensity of the orgasm washing over you. His movements only faltered slightly, otherwise unaffected by the way your walls had suffocated his cock.

You didn’t have the time or awareness to register just how quickly his movements were, as he pulled out of you, unzipped the back of your costume, quickly tore it entirely off your body, and flipped you over to face him. Your face flushed as you tried to catch your breath.

“Ooh, look at you,” he groaned. “Perfect little bunny.” Despite his mockingly sweet tone, he shoved himself back into you roughly, earning a cry from your lips as your oversensitive pussy took him in once more. The pleasure he was giving you was so intense, doubled by your years-long crush for the man who was giving it to you. You were so sensitive it felt almost cruel, but you didn’t want him to stop. His hand explored your body, gripping your bare hips and squeezing your breasts, putting his hands everywhere he’d never been able to before.

“Please,” you breathed out after a particularly sharp thrust, reaching for one of his hands but struggling to get your bearings enough to get a hold of it.

“Please what, bunny?”

The only response you could give was a drawn-out moan, but at your struggle, he placed a hand in your searching one, and you immediately brought it right to your throat.

“You want me to squeeze or just hold?”

“Hold,” you murmured, blushing that he stopped to check, the moment becoming more tender than either of you had intended. He kept a firm hold around your neck without choking you, just keeping you in place. Showing his power over you.

“You’re such a dirty bunny,” he murmured, resuming his sharp thrusts as you bit your lip to muffle the whines coming from your throat. You could feel how intensely you were pulsing around him, the sight of him over you with his hand around your neck causing your eyes to roll back as he fucked you into oblivion, slowly devolving to a blubbering and begging mess.

“Fuck, please! Please pleaseplease- sir-“ you slurred, hardly aware of anything except him as his cock brushed against every sensitive spot inside of you. While his thrusts had been deep and controlled and measured, your begging seemed to cause his pace to falter.

“Pretty Bunny,” he groaned, “cum again for me, make a mess on my dick.”

Your nails dug into his arms as you let out a cry, an odd deep feeling of relief settling over you as you came again with him buried inside of you, feeling as though all your nerves were on fire. His thrusts were starting to grow more erratic as he stared down at you, watching you as you sunk deeper into bliss, becoming less and less aware of what was around you. 

“Eyes on me, Bunny,” he panted, hand squeezing your throat gently for a moment just to get your attention. Your eyes opened, locking onto his as soon as you comprehended what he had asked, staring up at him  “Fuck, your eyes are so pretty.” Even in your blissed-out state, you hadn’t expected such a genuine compliment, staring at him in wonder as his movements slowed.

“Please, wanna feel you cum in me,” you whined, rocking your hips against him as he moved his hand from your throat to tightly grip your hip, trying to pull you further into him as he slammed into you, letting out a deep groan as he came, spilling into the condom while sheathed inside of you. You couldn’t help but moan at the feeling of him throbbing, and winced when he slowly began to pull out of you before disposing of the condom and laying next to you, pulling you into his arms. The two of you stayed like that for a long moment after you wiggled your way further into his grasp and laid your head next to his chest. 

“You’re really warm,” you sighed happily, trying to escape the chilly air of the room. He laughed, a sound you rarely heard from him. 

“I was jealous,” he murmured above you. Your mind was still hazy, body feeling heavy but tingly with pleasure.

“Huh?” You managed to question through the fog, eyes opening to look at him.

“When I saw you talking to that guy. I was jealous.”

“Is that why you got so mad?” You teased.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said, I shouldn’t have yelled.”

“No, but I won’t mind getting reprimanded more often…”

“Greedy,” he smiled. 

You sighed happily. “We really came full circle, didn’t we?”

He nodded. “Took us long enough. Derek has been telling me I need to ask you out since we met at that party two years ago.”

"The bunny girl outfit never fails," you murmured, smiling at him.

"On you? Never."

[rosedere]

The Liyue Lotus and the Merchant from Snezhnaya

(Pantalone x Fem! Reader)

MDNI +18

Cw: kidnapping, Stalking, non con elements, Graphic violence (later chapters), Yandere content, Pregnancy mentioned, Forced marriage, Female/ Fem aligned Reader, *will update as the series goes on

Cross posted on AO3

Current Chapter: The White Lotus (you are here)

Next Chapter : The Lotus that became a White Rose

Synopsis: Unfortunately, The Regerator develops a fixation with you while you are working undercover for Yelan. And there’s no one who can get in his way of his prized Lotus.

-

So delighted

Drowning in happines

Floating

Far and wide

Only with you, we'll be as one soon

If it's in you, you will be loved soon

Only with you, we'll be as one soon

Baby, won't you fall in love?

You had been watching the harbor all day.

This is normally a task you complete on the regular, but today was even more urgent than usual.

Taking a dainty swig from the steaming tea in front of you from where you sat in the middle of the crowded storyteller's crowd, blending in with most of the audience, you had a perfect view of where your target was rumored to be.

After the failed mission holding Theofan in custody by your boss and the traveler, you and your bosses subordinates were sent to the shadows to find where your person of interest was.

It had just turned noon, and the skies were carrying a warm breeze singaling the change from spring to summer as you kept your eyes on the busy streets for anyone matching his description. 

Taking another sip, you looked back around behind you observing the scene before you.

The storyteller was retelling some story youd heard 50 times in the few weeks you'd been sent to watch this particular area for your target.

Everyone around you was focused on the storyteller, with a few enjoying the tea or snacks they bought from the various stalls below.

No one would suspect you were the white lotus.

The highest-ranking subordinate of Yelan's intelligence gatherers—at least thats what Yelan and Ningguang named you.

Only they knew your true name.

After finishing your cautious observation, you went back to looking towards the street for the umpteenth time this day.

A shiver ran down your spine before you saw him.

“Is this seat taken, miss?”

At first, you didn't react at all to the voice, assuming it wasn't directed at you. There were many openings in front of you anyway; it seemed silly to want to be in the corner. You weren't seeing much of the storyteller's flamboyant performance anyway.

A tap to your shoulder was what made you completely aware. Looking up you saw him towering before you.

He was wearing clothes that were not at all what you would wear in the warm season: a long dark coat with purple accents and various dark insulation on the coat he wore, his hair curled and falling past his shoulder tied back with his glasses sitting perfectly on top of his nose. He also wore dark layers, with a turtleneck being the most visible one you could see.

He had no vision, which was a good sign. If things got ugly, you could immediately overpower him with your bow tucked behind your clothing.

You didn't react, keeping your poker face, before replying to his question.

“No, go right ahead,” you plainly responded towards the man. 

He pulled the chair to sit next to you before sitting too close for comfort in your personal space. His cologne assaulting your nostrils didn't smell of the usual Liyue scents that were made into perfumes and colognes; it smelled cold and spicy with little to no musk foreign.

You decided to look towards the storyteller, looking beyond the screens surrounding his stages towards the safe point at the top of the Yangshang teahouse.

Yelan should be there.

“My, I've never seen you around here; is this your first time in Liyue?” the man asked.

You knew he was watching you.

Despite being undercover and being familar with disguises, acting was not your strong suit.

To be honest, you never had a situation where someone approached you in your disguise in all your 10 years working under Yelan.

Saying nothing would lead him to grow suspicious, but you didn't know what to say to the man.

“No, I was born and raised in this harbor,” you curtly responded, grabbing your tea and taking a few sips.

“I guess it was my lucky day then to run into a beautiful glaze lily like you in my path,” he said with a smile curving his lips.

He was definitely up to something.

“Thank you; I wasn't aware I'd run into you either.”

Very unaware

“Have you ever heard of the Northland Bank? Miss...” he began. 

“Lián”

He smiled once more at you, crossing his hands under his chin.

“A beautiful name to fit an attractive face,” he said.

“I'm in charge of the Northland Bank; although I'm normally away to my motherland, I had to stop by to help a few subordinates, so I'm in the area for another few days,” he rambled.

Northland bank

You felt a chill rise up from your arms.

This was now escalating from an oblivious civilian blowing your cover to possibly something even worse.

Swallowing the bile from your throat, you tried to keep your composure.

"Oh, so you're not from Liyue?" You asked casually.

“I consider it a home, but I practically live in Snezhnaya nowadays,” he smiled.

“Interesting, I've never been that far; the furthest I've gone is to Chenyu Vale,” you replied.

Sipping half of your tea, you wanted to finish the cup before you had to flee.

This situation was out of your control if you said the wrong thing. The fatui were not to be messed with in the slightest.

Especially if he's who you think he is.

"Well, maybe we can go together one day; I'll have to warn; it's colder than you've ever experienced before,” he chuckled. You smile at him but decide not to respond any longer.

You hoped that if you kept staring towards the teahouse, Yelan would sense your Mayday plea.

Taking another sip of your tea, you snuck a glance besides you, only to accidentally make eye contact with him.

Great

"So, Lián, tell me a bit about yourself,” the man asked, tracing a fingertip idly on the redwood table next to you.

“What brings you here? I come every time I'm in the harbor, and I've never seen someone as eye-catching as you before,” he purred.

“I normally don't come here; I decided to come on my day off..” 

"Pantalone,” he answered with a sophisticated tone.

The inkling of dread tickled the back of your head as you heard those words.

The Regerator

You needed Yelan immediately.

“Pantalone—it sounds like a name I could hear the owner of the Northland Bank having,” you giggled cutely.

He seemed to have liked the reaction from you, at least since he only had a toothy-looking grin.

"Well, I'm glad you like it,” he said.

"So, where do you work, Lián?" I'd feel terrible if you were right under my nose this whole time.” 

“I work as an apothecary at the perfume shop.” You took another sip, leaving at most two sips left.

"Well, now I know where I need to stop more often," he said in an upbeat tone.

You glanced back at the roof to see your holy grail.

Yelan was watching from the rooftop now.

You got up, holding your tea cup in hand, and scooted the chair back.

“I must refill my teacup with more of this tea.” 

“Sorry”

You didn't look back at Pantalone before you weaved your way past the tables towards the street below.

As much as you wanted to hasten your pace, you couldn't alert him; you just had to hopefully distance yourself and make your way back to headquarters across the way.

Looking to the left and right of the bustling street, you went towards the bridge leading out of Liyue. It was a secret way to get to headquarters without alerting anyone you remembered being told in case of a situation such as this one.

“Lián”

You tried to ignore him once again, walking towards the safety of the bridge a few feet away.

You felt a hand on your shoulder curled firmly on your cloak.

Of course, turning around, you saw Pantalone humbly smiling down at your shocked face.

“Where are you going in such a hurry? I don't mind accompanying you wherever you go.”

Something was wrong.

Your fellow shadows were nowhere to be seen, despite Yelan spotting you in a compromised situation a few minutes ago.

This could end really badly if you can't shake him.

“I'd love for you to come with me, but I must hurry to Chenyu Vale for something urgent,” you sternly said.

“I don't mind coming along,” he said, too quick for your liking.

“How about this?” you said, grabbing the gloved hand perched on your shoulder in your tinier hands.

“Why don't we meet tomorrow near the harbor strip? We can talk all evening if you want.” You flirted.

Blegh

But anything to get him to fall for your trap.

“If you promise it, Lián,” he eagerly replied.

“But I'll tell you this now– I don't like deceivers or anyone who goes back on promises,” he chuckled darkly.

He tucked a strain of loose hair behind your ear as you looked up at him with your faux grin.

“I promise,” you said, holding his hands in yours.

You then quickly sprinted into the mountains, still feeling the allustrive eyes of pantalone on your compromised figure.

You didn't stop until you were in the Chasms maw.

-

“Respectfully, why the hell did you all not save me?” You shrieked in the dimly lit wooden room.

Yelan was sitting across from your now uncloaked body, revealing your brightly lit cryovision on your back, while your three coworkers idly sat next to her poised figure, idly swirling a lemon in her water.

“He was about to follow me into the mountains, and god knows what to me, I think he suspected I was working for the Tianquan,” you paced back and forth once again.

“You always said in a compromised position we'd have to lead the person of interest far from-”

Yelan put a hand out in a way to silence you.

"(Name), you know we wouldn't have let it get that far; he wasn't showing signs of being a hostile target from what Fa reported.” 

“He actually seems to be attracted to you, if anything,” she said, curling her lips into a cheeky smile before taking a sip of lemon water.

“This new development can work in our favors; we just need you to resume playing your “Lián” character, don't you think?” She smiled at you.

“But why me? Surely we can't recruit another one of the agents to do undercover work; I don't do that,” you remarked.

“If we got another agent, he would grow suspicious, and that would arguably throw you into more danger,” she sighed, resting her hands under her chin.

“You don't have to worry; we can get you a disguise by tonight, along with new rooming accommodations and your fake occupation.” Yelan looked sharply towards you, who was anxiously pacing in front of the table now.

“Ill only do it if you guarantee you'll have eyes on me the entire time—I dont trust those fatui scum,” you pouted, crossing your arms.

“Trust me (name) if you pull this off, this will be the biggest arrest in all of Liyue." Yelan smoothly replied, “You'd be in the history books for sure.”

“So cheesy,” you puffed your cheek out.

“All I ask is that you not sleep in my bed while I'm gone.” You narrowed your eyes toward her.

“No guarantees,” Yelan casually said before crossing her arms behind her head.

You only rolled your eyes before you decided to leave for the evening.

The wall back to your home you shared with your unofficial roommate felt like it was drawn out more than usual.

Making your way towards the food stall you frequent.

However, you couldn't shake the feeling of being watched as you gave your mora to the food stall owner.

Quickly grabbing your dinner, you took off towards the street leading to the small, tucked-away home you shared with your boss.

Notes:

Sorry about the shortness! Im just afraid of word vomitting every single chapter haha

[ventbloglite]

The thing is...I've read a lot of posts and listened to a lot of videos by binary trans men & women and non-binary people of any AGAB and intersex people to whom masculinity is assumed or desired.

Each group has unique experiences with unique bigotry targetted at them for being who they are. But each group also experiences misplaced bigotry, aimed at a different group but used to hurt them anyway.

There's also a distinct and very real overlap between transmisogyny and transandrophobia. The thread that connects these concepts for binary and nonbinary trans masc people, AMAB's of any identity (intersex and not), and yeah even some butch cis lesbians is what we've been harking on about so long - the inherent villianising of masculinity in particularly when deemed to be in the 'incorrect' place!

A butch woman is not expected to be 'too masculine'. If she's seen as failing womanhood in this way, she will face discrimination from others for doing this even amongst other lesbians.

Attending groups or events for 'women and nonbinary' only to find out they mean 'women and women-lite' and don't want anyone with any proximity to masculinity to be there. Being told or being able to quickly understand that your masculinity is making others uncomfortable despite the fact that you are amongst other queer people/trans people. Being expected to preform femininity to a certain stereotyped degree to prove you are 'safe'.

These are all specific things which could be considered both transandrophobia OR transmisogyny, depending on who they happen to but...now here me out, doesn't that just mean we need to sit and realise that the distinction between them isn't always rigid? That there is an antimasculine issue within the trans and queer community but it doesn't target any one particular group over another. The acceptance of queer masculinity is a must. It won't solve all issues not by far, but would go a long way into making sure trans women (especially but not just those who 'don't pass' and maybe never want to be feminine anyway) feel more accepted and less like they'll always be seen as predators for being born male/assigned male at birth. It'll go a long way into accepting the 'men' part of trans men and the 'masc' part of any trans masc. It'll go a long way to accepting butch lesbians are still women despite their outward proximity to 'maleness'.

And if you're seriously reading this and are about to go on a tirade about how masculinity is praised and desired in society - stop. Cis masculinity is praised and desired and even then it has rules.

The world is a lot more complex than men and masculinity good anything else bad but unfortunately if you keep seeing it this way even if you disagree you are going to be responsible for both transandrophobia and transmisogyny persisting.

[nostalgebraist]

declare

Read Declare by Tim Powers recently.

It had some really good individual bits, and was well-written throughout, but overall I found it kind of a slog.

Partly that was just due to pacing, or me not quite being in the target audience, or other similarly ordinary and boring reasons. But, on reflection, I think a lot of my troubles with the book come down to one big, uncommon flaw it had -- which is my reason for writing this post.

----

Declare is a hybrid fantasy/spy novel.

The spy stuff, which comprises most of the book by mass, is drawn from real history -- in particular, from the life of real Soviet spy Kim Philby -- and strives to be consistent with all particulars of that real history that are publicly known.

The book is a "secret history" as opposed to an "alternate history," intended to produce the impression: "for all we know, this really could have been what happened." It sticks to the historical record about the kind of matters that make it into said record, and only invents things in the blank spaces in between them.

As Powers put it:

I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.

You'll note that I'm being vague about what "the fantasy elements" are.

I'm doing that on purpose. Revealing much about their nature would be the kind of spoiler that actually spoils, because one of Declare's virtues -- and I really did admire this -- is the way it makes its fantastical secrets feel really secret. Like a secret doctrine, a mystery cult, an epistemic Rubicon that one does not cross lightly.

They are talked about elliptically, even among initiates (and Powers makes this feel naturalistic, not like cheap and pointless reader-teasing evasion). Before you know much else about these "fantasy elements," you know that encounters with them have a tendency to leave people scarred, broken, changed -- and disinclined to say much about what they saw.

The early chapters of the book almost feel like the opening of a "mundane" spy novel. Except they are dotted with stray glimpses, from odd angles, of... something else. Something that is clearly one single thing, with a coherent shape, only you cannot make out in full what that shape is. Something that feels, authentically, like it was not meant for your innocent eyes.

It's all very effective. Really great stuff.

But then, at least by the halfway mark if not earlier, the reader catches up with the characters. The shape of the thing comes into focus. You get what the deal is, insofar as anyone does, and insofar as there is a "deal" to get. The nature, if not the logic, of the hidden world is laid bare.

"The nature, if not the logic": this is the book's fundamental flaw. The fantasy elements of Declare eventually land in a worst-of-all-worlds no-man's-land between mystique and mechanism.

They are explained to the reader just enough that they lose their glamour; what initially feels like the mystic doctrine of a lost gospel, or the forbidden fruit of a Lovecraft story, ends up feeling more like a collection of "lore" passages accompanying tables of numbers in an RPG rulebook. Yet they are not explained enough that they make sense, the way a law-bound "magic system" makes sense; despite Powers' ambitions, they never quite become capable of explaining anything else.

To put the point a little differently, and set things up for my next one: Declare mixes together two ingredients which, on their own, are perfectly fine -- indeed, actively good -- but which absolutely cannot go together. Namely:

Mysterious, supernatural forces that feel properly mysterious, numinous, not quite bound by "our" human logic and thus fundamentally beyond our ken.

A secret-history version of bizarre and partially unknown real-world events, which supplies explanations for the weird parts and fills in the tantalizing gaps.

Why do historical mysteries draw our interest? It is not just that there is something we don't know. There are a lot of things we don't know, about history, and mostly they don't trouble us.

But there are some questions for which it does not seem possible to imagine an uninteresting answer.

When a real historical figure behaves in some bizarre manner -- as the real-world Kim Philby frequently did -- we know that, whatever cause moved them to do so, it must be outlandish in a way that matches its effect. When people act strangely, they do so for strange reasons. That is roughly what "acting strangely" means.

But! Once you allow "ineffable, partly unpredictable magic" to be a cause with effects, the link between interesting events and interesting causes is broken. You can now invent explanations which are less interesting than any real-world one could possibly be.

You can survey the historical record, note down all the intriguing gaps, and then sculpt an infinitely pliable magical putty into the precise shape of each gap, so as to fill it. These fillings do not have the shape of real things; they are made retrospectively, and modeled after the patterned obstructions marring our view, rather than the real patterns which are being obstructed. They do not have spiraling implications, as real things do; they plug the gaps they were made for, and do nothing else.

Human behavior has human causes, and human causes are frequently interesting, to us humans.

It is usually a virtue, in fictional depictions of magic, for that magic to feel nonhuman.

But it ceases to be a virtue when that magic goes on to become a substitute for the real human causes of real events. It provides answers to all our questions, at the cost of removing the reason we imagined we might want to possess those answers.

"Why on earth," you ask me, "did this bizarre historical event happen the way it did?"

And I respond: "a wizard did it."

You protest that this is not an explanation at all. You profess to be just as confused as you were at the outset.

You say, in exasperation: "it can't just be that. There has to be something more. Why did the wizard do it? Is it... the sort of thing that wizards do? Is there a 'sort of thing that wizards do'?"

In real life, you'd have a point. In real life, for every X, there is a sort of thing that Xs do.

But not for wizards. Remember #1 above? Wizards are beyond your ken. Perhaps there is "sort of thing they do," but if so, it is too subtle for your dull, unmagical brain.

Which is to say: they can do whatever the author, or the plot -- or the gaps in the historical record -- need them to do on any given occasion. And then they go back into their box again, until they need to be retrieved, in order to do something else entirely.

And worse: although the introduction of the wizard does not leave you any less puzzled, it frees you from caring that you are puzzled.

There is no longer the unscratched itch of an unsolved mystery about human behavior. You are not confused about a person, anymore, but about magic. And it is perfectly clear that you are never, ever going to understand magic. Your confusion is now expected, predictable. Everything is properly in order, as you can now see. You are free to go.

And yet somehow, you find, the book is not over. It will not be over for a while yet. You have other confusions, you see, which have not yet been stripped of their human interest and robbed of their allure.

(Not everything in Declare is like this, to be clear. I may be making too much of a few sore points in the plot, I guess. Still, there's no denying that I found the later parts of the book tedious, and this is at-least-sort-of why.)

[lu-is-not-ok]

I just finished reading your hong Lu npd analysis post!!! And it was great!!! I’ve been going over his lines from previous cantos with this new reading in mind and it’s been very insightful

I was just wondering how we should interpret this one line from canto 6 in the npd reading? i don’t have the direct quote on me but basically Ishmael says something to heathcliff like “hey why did you pick on hong Lu for being a spoiled rich kid when you grew up in a manor yourself”

and hong Lu says something like “hehe I don’t mind it at all!” which confused me a bit since other times it does seem to bother him when people discuss it like you said

do you think he genuinely means this?? Or is this like a lie (conscious or unconscious?) to protect his self esteem?? that’s what really gets me with hong Lu - idk how self aware he is of his deflections and avoidant behavior? Like obviously he is probably blatantly lying in some cases (like about why he left home) but other cases idk?

Also thank you for your analyses! You’re really feeding the hong Lu fans myself included

o7 I'm glad people are enjoying the analysis. Hong Lu is a character that really grabbed me with just How Well Written he is as a liar who happens to be good at what he's doing. The way he navigates social encounters is genuinely so interesting to pick apart, I love it.

Anyway, regarding the moment you're talking about, these are the specific lines.

There's a few ways one can read that I think.

For one, it could be him responding to specifically the hypocrisy that Ishmael is highlighting here - that he doesn't mind the fact that Heathcliff was being kind of hypocritical when bullying someone for being rich despite being raised in a rich household himself.

It makes sense. Hong Lu, more than anyone, would probably understand why someone would hate rich people despite being raised among them, so he doesn't really care about the seeming contradiction of that.

There is also another option, that being the fact that all things considered, Hong Lu might just find Heathcliff's particular brand of insults genuinely funny rather than offensive. There are multiple moments where Hong Lu actively teases Heathcliff, with one moment in Hell's Chicken having him actually confirm that that's what he was doing in that scene.

Hong Lu isn't above fucking with people sometimes just to get a reaction out of them, with Heathcliff appearing to be Hong Lu's most common target of that. Him saying he doesn't mind Heathcliff's insults could be because he genuinely finds them so entertaining that he doesn't register them as something harmful to his self-esteem.

And of course, there is that third option of it being just a bullshit lie and him simply trying to keep up the air-headed unbothered persona he's been projecting the whole time. After all, this isn't him being directly insulted here, but simply recalling past events - and it's a lot easier to lie about your past feelings than it is about the ones you're feeling in the moment.

[musical-chick-13]

Please, can you tell me more about headcanons you have of River?

OOOOOOH, YES, THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!!! 😊😊

My biggest one (and probably like. the least Common™ a;sldkfaj;sldfk) is that River has pure-o OCD. Which, for anyone who doesn't know, is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder where the compulsions, rather than something like handwashing or pacing or saying stuff out loud, are all internal. They are purely things you do in your mind. This can take...many forms. Such as "reviewing" situations or your emotions or thoughts to make sure you aren't Thinking Bad Ideas or Accidentally Did Something Harmful, it can be repeating stuff to yourself mentally, it can be obsessively thinking about a particular thing to ward off Horrible Outcomes, or. an infinite number of behaviors. (For more info, you can check out this blog!)

ANYWAY. River's obsession with Hiding The Damage™ (<-her words not mine), because if she doesn't, she will Ruin Her Relationship. The way she recurrently refers to herself as a bad or heartless person, despite helping to save people/the world with no objection (suggesting this "I'm an unscrupulous person" is something she has to keep telling herself internally, probably by looking inaccurately at her previous behavior and circumstances). The implication that she keeps (successfully) convincing herself that the man she loves doesn't actually Love Her Back (no, I don't think this was something that was just shoehorned in during the Christmas special, maybe I'll make a Full Post about that someday) so she can protect herself and not Wreck Things.

And the way she kind of like...frequently sees the Most Extreme Option is the right way to solve things? (She breaks her wrist to get away from a Weeping Angel and then tries to pretend she's fine???? because The Future?????? She gives up all her regenerations to save The Doctor in Berlin. She worries about the state of the world (and her own emotional fortitude) so much when she thinks she has to kill the Doctor that she stops time and gathers millions of people to plead with him to save himself. And she impulsively, immediately breaks out of jail and suggests throwing herself into a Time Void and targets a Dalek when she thinks he's in danger. Not that these are...compulsions, per se, but this kind of black-and-white thinking (of, there are no middle-ground options, I have to do the absolute MOST I can do RIGHT NOW) is...very common among people who suffer from OCD. Couple that with the fact that she canonically Holds Things In despite worrying about a whole bunch of stuff...yeah.

(...Tbh, I think you could even make the case that doing things like "testing whether he'll rescue her"--jumping off a building when she doesn't need to, sending him coordinates when her plan is Fly Out Of An Airlock so he intercepts her, pretending to be unconscious so he'll inspect her--are some external compulsions. In the sense that she can "prove" to herself that she is worthy of love/care. Which is compounded by how she finds her parents in her adolescent years so she can grow up alongside them, since they can't like. Actually raise her. Doing the most extreme things to hang onto the reassurance of love, etc. etc. Yeah, she has a skewed view of human emotion due to being Bred As A Weapon™, but I think there's definitely room to interpret that as being complicated and intensified by something else.)

GOD that was so long, I'm so sorry. Some other headcanons I have are as follows: she likes sweets a lot. She loves contemporary (or...contemporary to us, at least--she's from the 51st century not the 21st) opera and classical music. (<-Yes, this one is purely self-indulgent.) She's a big Shakespeare fan. She has a favorite pair of super-fuzzy green pajamas that she thinks make her look stupid, but they're so comfy. She takes very hot showers because it helps her Feel Something. One of her favorite pastimes is playing strategy games (both electronic ones or board games), but she absolutely hates chess. Also, she not-infrequently commits petty theft to procure random gifts for her parents and husband. Or for gift exchanges for the Christmas parties she's forced to go to for work at Luna University.

And, lastly, she would have become an archaeologist and/or a professor anyway even if she'd never met the Doctor (this one seems to be...a little contentious). Mainly because she. Doesn't like people telling her what to do. I'm fully convinced that she would have broken away from the Silence on her own eventually, even if it might have taken longer than it did in canon. And she is a very intelligent, analytical person, and she seems to revel in historical knowledge and Finding Cool Objects, which...archeology was always going to be the perfect career for her.

[bluekittyworld]

There is Karma.

Hello sweet people, this is my first time writing something, I hope you guys like it and all feedback will be appreciated.

Please don't post my work on other sites/platforms or copy it, or translate it, thank you.

Approx. 11,000 words in total and 5 chapters

Warnings: Lot's of angst, mention of suicide, smut, 18+

Main Masterlist

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Happy Ending

Sad Ending

There is karma. It comes back, don’t use your heart in a bad way.

You were part of the popular girls at school, a rich spoiled brat as one may put it. Grade As and Bs were natural to you, you wondered sometimes if you had put in the effort, you could have scored better than all the nerds in your class, but who needed that, you were busy being the popular and pretty rich ‘it’ girl, belittling the quiet and less popular ones. There was one boy in particular, his name was Yunki or Yoonji, something like that. He wore thick framed glasses; his skin was ghostly pale, and he had contrasting pitch black hair in bowl cut. You found him an easy target as he never spoke back, no matter how many times you tripped him over, shoved him around, broke his ugly glasses, he never said anything back.

Why did you hate him so much? He didn’t care about anyone, and you hated it so much, why didn’t he try to fit in? He dressed so poorly, everyone just assumed that he was in this school on a scholarship, there was no way he could afford the fees by the way he dressed. On the other hand, you had to become mean to fit in, every day you woke up hours earlier to complete your work, prepare your hair and makeup, you had to stay relevant, have everyone’s attention, keep the ‘it girl’ title, life was so hard. So, every time you saw the careless Yoongi living his simple easy life, it boiled your blood and what ticked you off even more is that he never retaliated, come to think of it you had never heard his voice, was he mute?

This carried on for 5 years until the day of your graduation, just before graduation, you and your friends mocked this boy wearing his skinny ripped jeans, a t-shirt, and a plaid shirt. At the time your high-school boyfriend joined in too, you decided to give him a matching ripped shirt, pulling out your scissors you made a few cuts in his shirt and his bag, your friends laughed and recorded the scene. Your best friend took a few of his books, and teared them up, nobody noticed how Yoongi was having a panic attack and was on the verge of tears. Your boyfriend took the scissors and started cutting the poor boy’s hair, you did think it was pushing it too far, but nobody else seemed to care, why should you care right? Your boyfriend’s mates started kicking and punching Yoongi, he was now covered in blood and bruises, his eyes piecing into your soul, while he was being beaten up, his eyes were still fixated on you. You noticed this and felt a little bit of guilt, you pulled your boyfriend and asked to go to your favourite Korean BBQ. All your friends and his friends discarded Yoongi, leaving him in the middle of the school grounds, you didn’t even bother to look back if he was still breathing or not, nobody did.

On graduation day, Yoongi didn’t turn up, not like you really cared, you just wondered if he was okay, maybe you did go a little too far the other day. Also, it would have been a great opportunity to see his parents and assess his wealth today. Soon your friends and boyfriend came over to you, and that was the last time you thought of Yoongi.

Years had passed since graduation. You were well set into your father’s business, ready to take senior management positions, being born into an affluent family had its perks, your whole life was served on a silver platter, not a single day of difficulty. Life was monotonic and predictable you began to feel a growing sense of emptiness. Despite the success you achieved in your career and social life, there was an underlying dissatisfaction, a void you couldn't fill. A friend of yours suggested maybe participating in charity events may give you a sense of fulfilment, so you decided to join the next available event.

At this event, everyone was put into groups of 4, and the tasks varied, you were in a team with two boys and another girl. The aim was to visit the elderly and help them out with their chores for today. The drive to the house was quite quick, you didn’t really get to talk to your teammates, the only thing you knew were their names, Sora, Yeonjun and Yoongi. Yoongi rang a bell, but you couldn’t really remember if you ever knew a person with that name, maybe it was just a name of one of the many people you see every day at work, you brushed it off. 

Upon arriving at the house, you saw it was occupied by an old lady, the roofing had some issues and the wallpaper had been peeling off in various places. Yoongi took lead of the team, he suggested “Yeonjun and I will take the duty of fixing the ceiling, while you girls can start by removing the wallpaper.”

His voice was like a gentle breeze on a calm summer day, carrying warmth and serenity, you hadn’t heard such a caring voice in a very long time, even your own mother didn’t sound so affectionate.

You just nodded, while Sora nudged you, maybe you were looking at Yoongi for too long, he was looking back at you with his piercing dark eyes.

“The wallpaper removing machine is in the back of the car, let’s go get it” Sora mentioned.

You nodded and followed her along. Removing the wallpaper wasn’t hard at all, you and Sora had bonded quite well, it was interesting to find out about her, you learnt she ran a café nearby and had a fiancé, her parents currently live in Japan, and she has a poodle dog named Bobbi. You loved this kind of interaction; it was like a breath of fresh air being away from your routine life and interacting with people who didn’t have money on their minds 24/7. You glanced over to Yoongi’s direction now and then… there was a certain attraction you developed towards him, but you turned away each time in disappointment, him and Yeonjun were really focused on getting the ceiling fixed and didn’t really have time for other things. You really wanted to talk to Yoongi more and find out about him, maybe you wouldn’t get another chance and that really bothered you.

You and Sora were done removing the wallpaper, and the ceiling was still being plastered. You suggested to Sora “We should paint this room before the old lady comes back, it shouldn’t take too long, what do you think?”

“Perfect” Sora chimed “Let’s go to the nearby DIY store and pick out a colour.”

Sora got up and walked over to Yeonjun, by the looks of it you assumed they knew each other well, maybe they volunteered together previously, she asked “Yeonjun, my dear cousin, can you drive us in your car to the DIY store?”

Oh, now it makes sense, they were cousins, you smiled at learning the fact, you somewhat wished you were close to your family members.

At the DIY store you and Sora decided on a dusty pink colour, it would contrast well with the plants the lady had in her house. Yeonjun waited in the car and you guys were soon back, he suggested to grab some food, and as if on cue your stomach rumbled.

“Yup, ____ is hungry, we should definitely get food” Sora giggled.

You just smiled in embarrassment. The three of you had decided to buy four portions of Jjajangmyeon, not forgetting Yoongi of course.

Meanwhile Yoongi had finished up the plastering, he looked at the clock, it was 3pm, the old lady did mention she would return at 6pm, there were 3 more hours to go, more than enough time for the plaster to dry and paint over. He smiled at the fact he was ahead of schedule and thought the lady will be so happy to see the finished results. Soon you, Sora and Yeonjun came back, you distributed the noodle bowls to each person.

“Thank you” Yoongi smiled, you swear he had winked too, you felt excited like a teenage girl. You blushed and proceeded to sit down to eat, it was a nice meal, mostly Yeonjun sharing his personal life and how he has crush on his neighbour.

Chapter 2

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

Anyone who has read reports in the Associated Press, the New York Times, CBS News, CNN, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, or Axios would be under the impression that the Trump administration has offered 2 million federal workers a "buyout" offer — eight months of pay in return for a voluntary resignation. People who rely on television news were also told that federal workers were offered a buyout. This is also the preferred narrative of the White House. In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that, under the policy, federal employees who "don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again… are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of 8 months." The problem with this narrative — and the media coverage — is that it is false. A "buyout" is when an employer agrees to pay an employee a lump sum, often equivalent to the employee's salary for a particular length of time, in exchange for their voluntary resignation. After agreeing to the buyout offer, the employee receives the money, and their obligations to the employer end. The Trump administration is proposing something very different. Under the terms of the agreement, which is posted to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, employees agree to resign effective September 30, 2025. Until that date, they remain employees of the federal government but are "exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements." This, of course, is only a valuable concession if an employee is still working. The agreement is called a "deferred resignation," not a "buyout."

The agreement states that, after accepting the deferred resignation offer, "my employing agency will likely make adjustments in response to my resignation including moving, eliminating, consolidating, reassigning my position and tasks, reducing my official duties, and/or placing me on paid administrative leave until my resignation date." Administrative leave allows an employee to collect their salary while not working. But, as the agreement makes clear, that is not guaranteed. There will "likely" be changes to an employee’s official duties, according to the agreement. But they are still an employee of the federal government and are obligated to continue to fulfill whatever responsibilities are assigned to them. An OPM memo, dated January 28, 2025, states that employees who accept the deferred resignation agreement "should promptly have their duties reassigned or eliminated and be placed on paid administrative leave."

[...] The policy appears to be written by allies of Trump, including Elon Musk, who have little to no experience in the federal government. The subject line of the email, "A fork in the road," was the same subject line Musk used when he encouraged Twitter employees to resign. After mass resignations, Musk realized that a bunch of the people who left were performing essential functions and tried to rehire them. "There's no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn't have been let go," Musk said. On X, Musk falsely described the deferred resignation agreement as a "severance offer."

[...] Yesterday, the deferred resignation offer went out to 2 million federal employees, many of whom have decades of experience and are performing tasks that are essential to the functioning of their agencies. It was not targeted at individuals the Trump administration — or anyone else — believes are performing unnecessary or duplicative work. Federal employees who accept this deal do not get a buyout. They are simply gambling that their bosses place them on administrative leave. But there are no guarantees. Federal employees could find that they agreed to resign in exchange for eight more months of working from home. Even that may not be a real benefit since many federal employees are members of unions that have contractual rights to work from home.

What the OPM under Trump offered to 2M+ federal workers was NOT “buyouts”, but a deferred resignation. It is also a tool to weaken civil service.

[callmeklair]

I read your post about Ayato overhype and I 200% agree with you and appreciate you for writing it. I also read that other person's Ayato analysis and I just gotta say that that cursed fig defense is so dumb. First off that shit wasn't a thing when More Blood came out. It's not mentioned or referenced even once in any route. Because why would it be? It wasn't even thought of when the first games came out. Second even if it were a thing and Ayato truly was cursed, then why doesn't he experience the effects of the curse in any routes apart from his More Blood one (and, according to this particular Ayato stan, Ruki's)? Why doesn't he go crazy from thirst in Kou's route? Or in Subaru's? Or in Shuu's? etc etc. Also, if the curse is truly that excrutiating and debilitating then shouldn't Ayato be a complete and utter mess in the other characters Dark Fate, Lost Eden etc. routes? But he's not. He's totally fine. Because the stupid curse isn't canon to the games and you can not and should not use it to explain or justify his awful behavior in Ruki's MB route.

I'm sorry this got kind of long but I just needed to get this off my chest because it bothers me so much when toxic Ayato stans insist he is oh so pure of heart, an innocent victim and that he unlike the other characters can't be held accountable for his abusive acts 😑

(feel free to vent out in my ask box I don't mind. and sorry for the late reply, life is hectic)

the curse thing is such a loop/plot hole because in more blood EVERY diaboy gets thirsty after starting to have feelings for Yui, so yeah that curse thing isn't canon. and exactly! if that's the case, why isn't ayato suffering from thirst in other's route. okay let's not include MB considering the argument "they weren't close enough" but by the DF, all Sakamaki and Mukami boys warmed up to Yui, so Ayato should be suffering from thirst/curse in other's route????

I liked ayato, but after youngblood when I saw some people(not targeting to anyone, and I'm not just talking about Tumblr), not liking other people shipping Yui with any other boy because "they are not canon" made me slowly detach from AyaYui. otherwise they were in my top 5 a few years ago.

youngblood was just a fanservice. it was good for Ayato fans but Rejet messed it up. first the curse thing then the degrading of Shu and Subaru's character by making them "betray" ayato. which irks me because we all have read flashback scenes of these two from the VERY FIRST GAME, and we are completely aware with how sweet and gentle they were in childhood.

In CL, in Shu's route, it was shown how much he deeply cares about his brothers despite not showing it. so does it go for Subaru in Carla's route. you hear it? not in his OWN route but Carla's route.

the only difference is, because of trauma they weren't sure how to express it and always doubted/hesitated to trust or show true feelings to each other because of what happened to them. they all went through different experiences.

Ayato is Ruki's rival, just like how Subaru is for Kou, and Shu for Yuma. Ayato just came to take away Yui as a prey. "his thirst wasn't controllable and was locked in a dungeon. it was definitely the curse."

the curse didn't even exist at that time. it was just Rejet's plot to progress Ruki's route because if we remember, Ruki asked Ayato, before he took away Yui, if he had feelings for her and ayato replied with, feelings??? that's nonsense, the only value she has is her blood. It was a scene of confirmation to make Ruki realise his feelings and stop thinking "Adam is what she needs and not a snake" so that he can finally betray Karlheinz for Yui and run away with her, free her from this hell.

in conclusion, we have seen every diaboy saying how unique and special Yui's blood is, also a very rare thing (i guess?) so because of instincts as a vampire, Ayato only wanted to find Yui to drink her special blood.

the curse thing can never be canon because everyone gets thirsty in their route, EVEN SHIN in his BRUTE ending in DF. so are they cursed too??? no they aren't 😭

some actions can never be justifiable, I'll even say that about my own fav characters like Shin, Subaru, Carla, Reiji, etc.

[dreamsgazer]

Go On, Take It

Pre - relationship, post-movie. Part of the Scouting Around Universe (the reader is part of the assassins' world, but as a Scout, her role is to gather intel and prepare them for their missions).

MASTERLIST

Nice - 30 May, 02:00 GMT The dark alley was silent, save for the occasional car passing nearby. And the sound of your crying, of course; Tangerine sighed, sending you a perplexed glance.

The muffled sobs didn't slow down, and he rechecked his phone. There were no texts for Lemon, meaning he still hadn't reached their rented - under - false- names car. Figures, he fumed, trying not to move his injured shoulder. Precisely what they did not need that night. The mission had gone spectacularly sideways. Despite all the information you had provided and your Agency flying you into the city to offer additional support after the client's request, the target still managed to kill your informant, and destroy a fucking precious file - which was going to mean less money for everyone - and stab Tangerine in the shoulder with his silver paper-knife, before Lemon finally smashed his head against the wall. Tangerine was surprised that the disastrous chain of events was hitting you harder than he expected.

He supposed it made sense, though. As a Scout, you were rarely involved in direct action, and as yourself, you seldom had your plan going tits up. There is a first time for everything, he sighed, pinching his nose. It'd be better not to tell you that right now, though. Standing a few feet away, Tangerine watched you like you were some kind of bomb he hadn't figured out how to defuse. Damn it, why didn't he insist on being the one to go fetch the car?

Lemon would have known what to do and what to tell you. Crying people didn't make him squeamish.

"Fuck, you're really goin' for it, aren't you?" he grumbled, his voice gruff, almost annoyed, after a particular heartfelt sob.

You sniffled pitifully, shoulders shaking as you evidently tried—and failed—to pull yourself together. Tangerine shook his head, "Look, I ain't trying to be a right fucker here, but this isn't the time for a meltdown".

"My informant is dead, the file with the bank account number is gone, and you are bleeding", you replied bitterly, glaring at him. "This is exactly the time for a meltdown."

"Sorry for the poor bloke, but people die in this line of work, yeah? That's just the way it is."

You flinched at his words, and Tangerine immediately regretted them, though he'd rather stab his other shoulder than admit it. He took a step closer, decisively pulling a handkerchief from his suit pocket and holding it out to you.

"Here," he muttered, thrusting it toward you like it might burn him. "Use this. Can't bloody think straight with all the snifflin'."

You stared at the elegant piece of cloth and then at him as if trying to understand a foreign language.

Your tear-streaked face made Tangerine shift uncomfortably. He waved the handkerchief impatiently, the soft silk almost shining under the lampost. "Go on, take it, love. I ain't got all night."

You accepted the handkerchief with shaking hands, gently dabbing at your face. "Thank you. It's that... I didn't think a simple retrieving task could go so wrong. I thought—"

"Well, there's your first mistake," he cut in, adjusting the temporary bandage you've clumsily wrapped around his shoulder after fleeing the crime scene. "Never assume things'll go according to the plan. Most of the time, plans are for idiots who've never had a bullet in their necks or a target beating the shit out of them."

"I thought you liked plans."

Yeah, he used to. Before Tokyo, his near-death experience and the massive scar on the side of his neck.

Before the nightmares and the forced year of hiatus he had to take and the guilt for having left his brother alone for a bit.

Not that he was going to say any of that shit out loud to anyone.

Lemon didn't need to hear it to know—and he pretended for months that his brother didn't wake him up screaming in his sleep; he was already up at 3 a.m. Did Tangerine want to watch some TV?

That bastard Ladybug suggested only once to consult with his psychologist before Tangerine threatened him, pointing a gun at his forehead, literally foaming with rage.

You... well, you didn't need to know all of that about him, even if you were sweet and understanding and would probably try to make some fucking nice gesture of support that he so did not deserve.

Maybe especially for that.

He still had to understand how someone so caring and, in a certain way, innocent like you got tangled with their underground world.

He scoffed, chasing away those cumbersome thoughts. "What d'you want me to say, huh? 'Everything is fine'? 'We did the best we could'? That's not how this works. Somehow we fucked up, but this is the way it is."

You let out a heavy sigh, crossing your arms over your chest, his handkerchief tightly in your hand. "No need to use that tone, Tangerine. I know all that stuff! I just didn't think I'd feel like this. I thought I could handle it. I thought... I covered everything."

He talked again, softer this time, "You're not the first to feel like this after a job. And you can bet your ass you won't be the last. Everyone can have a bad day every once in a while."

"Not in this line of work," you murmured, gaze fixed somewhere distant. Tangerine was no match to Lemon when it came to reading people, but he started to suspect that your past wasn't as normal or smooth as you wanted to sell.

A tear was still mid-run on your cheek, and he had to restrain himself from passing his thumb on it. Or giving you a kiss.

What the fuck?, he baulked at the thought.

Unaware of his internal struggle and confusion, you chewed your lip. "I'll do better next time. If you two will have me."

"Of fucking course we will. It's either you or nobody else."

You blinked at him, surprised by the uncharacteristic sincerity buried in his gruffness. He rolled his eyes, gesturing vaguely with one hand. "Don't get all starry-eyed about it. I'm just sayin', next time, you'll handle it better, and it makes more sense to have you around rather than an unknown moron who could do worse."

"Well, how could I decline after such heartfelt praise?" you chuckled.

He tsked, checking his phone. "Lemon is close, let's go."

A small smile tugged at your lips, and you nodded. "Thanks, Tangerine."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, looking away. "Don't go makin' it a habit, alright? I'm not in the business of consoling people. That's Lemon's territory."

You chuckled softly, and his eyes darted back to you, pleased. "About bloody time. Now, c'mon."

He reached out, hesitating for just a second before putting a hand on your shoulder. It was awkward, but the intent was there. "You good?"

You nodded, the weight in your chest lifting just a bit. "I'll be fine."

"Good," he grunted, stepping back and straightening his jacket. "Now, keep the handkerchief. And don't even think about givin' it back. I don't want it after… all that."

You smiled, tucking it into your pocket. "I'll buy you another one."

He lingered behind as you left the alley, watching until you disappeared around the corner. "Bloody mess you are… and somehow my problem now." he muttered to himself, his voice low.

[voidscreamintheories]

Boy and Door: You are NOT the Faeder

As always, spoilers for Hunter: The Parenting

Alright friends, this one I'm kinda shaky on and there's not much here at present, but I want to get my thoughts down.

TL;DR Door is not Boy's biological dad, and this might be a very important plot point.

As is my pattern, let's examine their TTS origins: Door was Rogal Dorn, primarch of the imperial fists, praetorian of terra, and Lord Adorable. Boy was a vox hailer serf with notoriously strong legs, and eventually the respect of some members of the adeptus custodes. Dorn became a father figure for Boy over the course of his appearance, mostly keeping him from being bullied by the custodes or Magnus. Also boy might have had latent psyker powers, we will return to this. As a side note: SuperAnchors and Nostalgia, the voices of Door/Dorn and Boy/Boy respectively are perhaps my favourite performances on TTS and H:TP. They are always a joy when they're on screen and I really appreciate their characters in both series. SuperAnchors gets a special mention for practically reshaping the perception of Rogal Dorn in the fanbase, and Nostalgia should be appreciated for turning a character litterally named "Boy" into one of the best characters in either series. Tts rant time done.

So. Boy. And Door. Look at these silly fellas, are you really going to tell me that Boy shares genetic heritage with Door? And where is his mother? I believe Door is not Boy's biological dad, and instead adopted him and has been raising him as his own. I think this is so easily accepted and never mentioned because I am honestly not convinced that Door and Markus are Big D's biological children either. I think their family is just super open to adopting anyone and everyone who comes along, and so Boy being adopted just means he's the youngest family member, no questions or qualms.

Now, this is where my REAL theory starts, and where my research into WoD kinda halted me a little bit. You see, in folklore a changeling is a child swapped with member of the fae in EARLY life. In the original WoD, changelings are... weirder... than that. I'm not sure. So I'm not a hundred percent on this one. But I think Boy is a folkloric changeling, a fae being in place of a child. I don't think Boy knows this fact, and frankly I don't think he would be able to access anything supernatural until recently. Recently being when he started experiencing "puberty disease" as listed in one cutaway card. That same cutaway card mentions it being "cured with meat". Now the fae have ofttimes been portrayed as dainty and nature loving and very "surface level fantasy" elf like. Reading about WoD fae made my head hurt so I don't know if that applies here, but MAYBE boy was starting to manifest his fae side, and eating a stable meat only (read: anti elf) diet staved it off for a time. I think those powers are now bubbling back up, despite the continued meat consumption.

I think H:TP is building up the awakening of many powers, when I get around to explaining the things we all know about Markus this will be relevant. But for Boy I think he is awakening some future telling fae abilities. I think Boy is keeping some of his hinted at seer powers from TTS, just in a different context. In the first arc we see a couple of hints to this: first episode Boy spots Pyotr while he's invisible (and you can too if you look very closely for his eyes), Boy doesn't know he has cool powers so he doesn't recognize fully his feat. But spotting an obscured vamp who can disappear even on camera is pretty above human. Next there is the final confrontation against Pyotr, some day I may type a long diatribe on why that scene in particular is great but not today. Boy manages to hit a shot on a target moving parallel to his position going LUDICROUS speed. I think he may have done this thanks to a lil bit of precognition. And finally there is the meeting with Horse.

Horse and what he IS will get another post one day, but for now let's talk a little about the vision. I think it's not coincidence that Horse calls Boy "oracle" and speaks of prophecy to him. I also don't think it coincidence that Boy sees shapes in the blood. I think Boy is a seer, and certain forms of divination uses blood and gore to make predictions (see Haruspex). Again, I will cover Horse's prophecy another time, but let's talk about the "Faeder" line. I don't think that word was chosen just cause it sounds olde. I think it's a hint and misdirection. Again, I suspect boy was not born into this family, but instead is a product of the faeries. This would mean he has a faerie father, or a fae father, or a faeder. I think Horse was telling Boy that his TRUE father will die. Buuuuuut WoD changelings are weird and Alfabusa has written important foreshadowing WAY too early before (Hello TTS Ghazkhull!), so I'm not sure. I will say to bolster this idea that it was weird for Horse to mention "milklings", another name for changelings, on the same level as other WoD big players. I think this was also a tip off to us the audience about our beloved family, aside from kindred I believe each group mentioned is represented in that role call.

Door. Door is simple, strong, and the only actual normal human hunter in the family (see my kitten theory, Markus and Big D theories pending). Based on the episode titles, and the show title itself, I think the "hunter" in question is Door, and "the parenting", refers to his relationship with Boy. Boy seems to be the writer of the episode titles (on the actual title cards) in arc 1. I hope we see Boy grow under Door's guidance, because I love these characters. And I really hope I'm right that Boy has a fae dad who will take the bullet of prophecy so we don't have to see Door desiccated on the rocks.

Let me know what you think, til next time

Good evening

[lucariogirl369]

So...I got a Striker related theory...

Every time I watch the HB s2 episode Oops, this Striker scene near the end has been and always will be burned in the back of my brain.

Just by looking at THIS screenshot in particular, you can tell one of two things going through this man's now unstable mind; knowing he screwed up big time and is about to die...or, the biggest theory of all that a lotta of us HB enthusiast and Striker simps have theorized SINCE the dawn of his introduction back in The Harvest Moon Festival...he's about to relive some trauma.

I do have a multitude of theories about everyone's favorite lil' cowboy from this side of the Wrath Ring, but this singular screenshot alone already speaks volumes. One of which is that he lost his family during sometime in his childhood and/or he was once a husband/father at one point in his life, and seeing how he despises royals (despite the fact he only worked for Stella to get to Stolas...probably to get to her next, but that's a theory for another time), he probably lost them during a fire a royal family set upon his homeland and now he's reliving the horrible memory all over again.

But for this post, I'm sticking with the one during his childhood. Again, seeing how he hates royals, bluebloods, anyone who's a part of the "rich life" or is a part of the royal families, etc. His family grew up with not much but managing to barely get by with what little they had.

Only managing to afford food, clothes, a home, etc. If his family were to have more money in the pockets, they'd save it for emergencies or celebrations like birthdays or other holidays. This would've made him a target for bullying by richer families add to the fact that he's also a hybrid. No, seriously, he's a hybrid. That aside...

I would also assume his family either worked for a royal family under contract or were put into slavery and he witnessed the treatment his parents and possible siblings received throughout his youth. Which would explain why he hates royal demons, overlords, and the like.

As for the fire...I theorized what happened was the following; his parents didn't have enough to buy for food or anything else, so, they made the riskiest decision by stealing from a royal family so they'd at least have enough for a meal, but ended up getting more so they could afford not just the necessities, but luxuries as well for their children.

That would end up being the biggest mistake of their lives. Once the royal family found out, they immediately attacked Striker's homeland, burning everything to the ground and destroying and harming the residents who lived there. Striker's parents and siblings getting the worst torment and torture of all. His parents told him to run and to not look back, but once he was far enough and he did look back...he was traumatized by seeing his family burning to death, no thanks to the noble demon taking his family away from him.

Maybe I'm looking too deep into this, but IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE! His speech also signifies more from Western Energy!

"Not every ring is some fancy-ass city. With some fancy-ass mansion, that only FANCY-ASS royals get to live in! Some of us have hard lives to live! And some of us, have EVERYTHING we care about taken away by fuckers like you!"

From his speech about royal demons to Stolas, his "deal" to Blitz from Harvest Moon Festival, and the screenshot before the explosion says a LOT about what happened to Striker! Now, whether or not we see an official flashback from the Spindle Horse crew or at least get some kinda backstory for Striker, it would make a lotta sense as to why he is the way he is!

Ngl...I feel so bad for him! I wanna take 'em home, wrap 'em up in a fluffy blanket, feed 'em ice cream, and hug and snuggle him until he has a good cry and feels better! Our little cowboy has suffered enough and needs some loves and DESERVES some kind of redemption arc! 😭😭😭

[anghraine]

Here's the rambling Hunsford/letter post I've been talking about:

I've often thought it interesting that Austen fandom doesn't seem to share many Austen critics' visceral discomfort with Darcy's letter.

Of course, trends among literary critics and among fans often are very different. It doesn't necessarily signify much that Austen fans don't tie themselves into knots trying to undercut the letter in some way. Various critics have argued that it's out of character for Darcy to write the letter, or anti-feminist, or unfair to readers, or a relic of over-revision, etc. Even critics who don't do these things tend not to engage with it all that closely.

A lot of Austen fandom, by contrast, shares my affection for the letter, at least in a general way. I very rarely see fans arguing that it's inconsistent with Darcy's personality, say, or forced by Austen to tilt the scales towards him. There's a lot of affection for the letter as an object, at the very least.

Something I've noticed, though, is that in fandom/pop culture, the double whammy of Elizabeth's rejection-Darcy's letter is pretty overwhelmingly reduced to Elizabeth's rejection.

This isn't necessarily done to attack Darcy as is frequently the case in the lit-crit. In fandom, it's often to praise him for paying attention to Elizabeth's righteous excoriation in a difficult situation and actually shaping up.

But it's very rarely the case that I see anyone praise Elizabeth for reasoning her way to accepting the painful truth of Darcy's letter. There's not much talk or appreciation about her efforts to overcome her vanity and intellectual self-indulgence. And it's not easy for her. She struggles with the letter, despite Darcy's attempts to soften the later parts of it. It's hard to accept that it's true and that she was misled by her own pride, and afterwards, she still sometimes slips into similar kinds of mistakes and has to keep working at it.

The thing about Elizabeth's rejection is that it starts from a place of absolutely righteous, justified indignation and seems entirely appropriate to Darcy's shitty proposal. She did treat Mr Collins's shitty proposal much more gently, and I think that's significant, but that fact doesn't make her wrong to be angered by Darcy's proposal or to call him out for it. So the fandom treatment of it as this piece of spectacular righteous indignation is right in the sense that she does start with that.

And then she keeps going.

She is right about his proposal. She is at least somewhat right about his general behavior—she has tended to cast it in the worst possible light it can be seen in, in a way which paved the road to greater mistakes with him and others, but he can certainly be an asshole at times. She is at least somewhat wrong about his motives for interfering with Bingley and Jane, but right that he did so. She is utterly wrong about his supposed crimes towards Wickham and thus his basic moral character.

That is, she believed him a terrible enough person to actually ruin the life of a man raised with him from infancy as a dependent of Darcy's family—a man who had virtually no other resources while Darcy is extremely powerful and wealthy, and that Darcy did it with no excuse and no reason except petty childhood jealousy. It would take a genuinely awful person to do that, especially in those circumstances.

With the Wickham thing in particular, it's not just that Darcy is in fact innocent of all Wickham-related accusations in the sense that he didn't do them. He didn't do them and Wickham is a predatory monster to boot and Darcy appears to actually be Wickham's primary intended target. Wickham will use anyone for his own benefit, but the only person he seems to make repeated, calculated efforts against is Darcy.

So Elizabeth's rejection includes throwing Wickham's baseless accusations in the face of one of Wickham's victims, and one who is also the devoted brother of someone even more victimized whom Wickham trash-talked to Elizabeth earlier. Elizabeth is entirely capable of judging and behaving better, but just didn't, because Wickham told her what she wanted to hear. That's ... bad, actually?

She feels righteous at the time of the full rejection, but that doesn't make it true, and once she does realize the full truth, she never seriously shrugs it off. Her most lingering feeling about the scene between them seems to be shame. Her entire sense of who she is as a person is shaken, just like Darcy's. They both realize, in response to each other, that their bad behavior in this one incident is connected to a wider pattern in how they think and engage with the world, even though both are wrong about some particulars with regard to each other.

So the revelations of the letter are, IMO, critical to understanding the ethical concerns of the Hunsford scene. If it were actually this sequence of uncomplicated righteous glory for Elizabeth, as it's so often seen, there would be little of significance for Darcy to say in the letter, and Elizabeth would not be shocked into character growth. The only growth that would seriously matter would be Darcy's. And there are clearly people who do see their dynamic that way.

But to be blunt, that is not the novel Austen wrote. Darcy's growth, his struggles with himself, his pain, are all experienced offstage and only revealed afterwards. Instead, Austen shines the spotlight on Elizabeth. It's Elizabeth who is shown processing what Darcy says in the letter. It's Elizabeth whose shock and horror and shame are made the turning point of the novel, and whose recurrent sense of guilt for her part in the Hunsford scene is most fully explored.

It's not because Elizabeth is more at fault. It's because they are both at fault, but Elizabeth is more important to the novel and its concerns. The narrative cares more about her, whether it's in her moral failures or triumphs—because she has both.

I don't just mean that she's the most central character, by the way. All of Austen's novels have clear enough protagonists, but some of them are much more dominated by their protagonists than others. Mansfield Park splits the spotlight between the core cast quite a lot, for instance, so it can feel less focused than, say, Emma. As for P&P, Darcy is more prominent than many Austen love interests and often considered one of the most compelling ones (I certainly find him so), but it's still very much Elizabeth's show and wouldn't work nearly as well if she did not so thoroughly embody so many of the concerns of the narrative.

So it makes sense that the writing of the two halves of the central set piece basically gives Elizabeth her moment of glory, then immediately undercuts it by pulling out a significant portion of her moral ground and having Elizabeth's epiphany center on her faults, which plainly mirror Darcy's. And I do feel like this is lost in the sidelining of the letter vs the rejection.

So I've wondered where this tendency is coming from, especially considering how literally and figuratively central Elizabeth's epiphany after the letter is to the novel, to her characterization, and retroactively, to the Hunsford scene.

I was thinking it might actually be a fannish version of the same discomfort that so many of the literary critics feel over the letter, even though the push-back against it takes a different form. Maybe fandom downplays the entire second half of this central sequence for the same basic reason—it undercuts the glory of the rejection in a way that people aren't comfortable with.

But I've also considered the idea that maybe it's less that and more that fandom frequently prioritizes the arcs and the pain of male characters over female ones, even when they're more marginal. Maybe fandom is more invested in Darcy's offstage arc than Elizabeth's onstage one for the usual reason, especially given that Elizabeth frequently gets treated as an audience proxy more than a character with her own arc and choices. I do see quite a few takes about how P&P is about masculinity in this or that way because Darcy blahblahblah, and it's like ... Elizabeth whomst??

I do not have any gripe, fwiw, with individuals being more engaged by a given male character (marginal or not) than a female one, or less interested by protagonists, or whatever. But the trend is pretty unmistakable, so that could be at work.

I've also wondered if the heavy impact of adaptations plays some part, since they tend to pretty thoroughly disrupt the structure, dynamic, and contents of the letter and of Elizabeth's response to it.

I mean, I don't know. But at the end of the day, my firm opinion is that the Hunsford scene can't be fully understood without the context of the letter, and that the letter is in fact a good artistic choice. Consequently, I think that Elizabeth's behavior in the Hunsford scene is flawed at best—not more than Darcy's, but in addition to Darcy's. And this does strike me as weirdly absent from how it's talked about.

[ror-witch]

Sooooo, I’m not usually one for “sneak peaks” or whatever (mostly cause a chapter can take 180 degree turn whenever with me) but it has been such a long time since I posted anything fic wise I figured anyone who has read and left me such lovely comments on “Pressed and Faded Roses” would appreciate a sign that I am, in fact, still actual working on it 🥲

So, here you go. A snippet of what’s to come. *Spoilers obviously*

Nine months after the destruction of Torin Gulch.

Cedric clutched his prisoner's thin jaw, the small bones beneath his fingers as fragile as the brittle twigs of winter. The girl, a lovely thing who was really more woman than girl by human standards, looked desperately at the man across from her, her soft pale-green eyes watering in terror.

“Father, please! Just tell him! Please!” Her thin voice cracked with anguish, and the shifter could feel her hot tears sliding down his hands. And yet, the man, her father looked more stoic than Cedric would have appreciated. Hadn’t these yet people learned Lord Cedric didn’t bluff?

Apparently not.

His finger’s drifted down to her neck. “Now, I have been told by a reliable source that they heard you say you know the location of the rebel's base in the Western territory and we wouldn't want this precious flower here to think her father is a liar? Would we?”

The other prisoner was silent, unyielding. That was until Cedric pinched the girls windpipe hard enough to elicit a strangulated gurgle.

“No!” Came the immediate response.

Letting go, Cedric clapped his hands together. The room winced.

“Wonderful! It’s so important to set a good example for the next generation, after all.”

Cedric had never been a fan of conventional torture, well, at least, not for information’s sake. The process was slow and messy, and notoriously unreliable. More than one idiot had been dragged along on a fool’s quest following directions from a mouth who would say anything to make the pain stop. And there were much more reliable ways of gathering intelligence. In particular, humans, despite how precious their limited offspring usually were to them, allowed them to wander so freely it would make even the most negligent shifter mother aghast. He’d found this one nearly two towns away from her progenitors. An easy target if ever there was one. He certainly wouldn’t have allowed one of his hypothetical children to fall so easily into enemy hands.

“You will lead my men to this encampment, and once that little infestation is dealt with, I will allow Gemma here to return to her mother. I’m sure she is worried sick.”

“The word of a worm is no better than dirt it writhes in,” the man spat.

Cedric just chuckled. His finger’s drifted back to the girl’s face, and the air in the room chilled.

“Wait please! I—“

“You people just can not understand the concept of not having the upper hand, of not being ‘better’, can you? If someone held my daughter I would hardly be spitting insults at them. No, I would be on my knees begging for her life. But pride is the only thing that matters to your kind, isn’t it? Well, let me show what your pride buys in this world.”

There was a blur of motion, a loud snap, and the undeniable thud of a body now devoid of life hitting the stone floor beneath them.

The shrill scream rattled the shifter’s delicate ears, and his responding hiss was enough to quiet the shrieks of the fallen man's distraught daughter for a moment.

“Why?!” She sobbed, falling to her knees and cradling the man’s macabrely twisted head. “He would have told you…”

“Your father was not the only one who knew the rebels' location. Perhaps, he should have thought of that before deciding to test me. You would do well to remember this little girl. Remember it when your brethren threaten to burn my crops and disrupt my trade lines. Now get out of my sight.” As her pale blonde hair spilled over her shoulders he wondered, idly, if the girl had bastard Escanor blood somewhere in her line.

“Go find your mother,” he added, more gently, and wordlessly left her to her mourning.

Silently, ascending the stairs from the dungeons, Cedric supposed he should have handled that with a touch more decorum. But the days where he allowed humans to insult him to his face with no recourse had passed, and the man was a corroborating witness at best, hardly a truly valuable asset.

Still, a waste was a waste.

Signing, he swung open the door from the lower levels of the castle, and was immediately engulfed in the smell of salty rotting beach-cast seaweed.

The Capital seemed further and further away every day. Were it not for the rebels nipping at his tail, one could be forgiven for forgetting the dark, stormy city and all its dark, stormy inhabitants entirely.

As he slinked through the castle halls, the pale faces of servants scattered with record speed and his guards stood more rigid than oaks. He’d never been…well-liked by…well, anyone, but now most of the inhabitants of Metamoore at large had become convinced he’d gone quite insane.

But that was just as well, in his opinion. People thought insane were often underestimated, but he was thinking with a clarity that he’d not done since before…well, everything.

It was habit that had caused him to shield his eyes from the glare of sun off water as he entered the promenade that separated the two distinct buildings of this castle. After, nine months he’d gotten used to the, albeit still somewhat dimmed, presence of the sun that the areas near Capital had not seen in years. Here, in the Western shores of continents the only storms that brewed the sea caused, not…him. Cedric frowned but pushed the thought away as he pushed a great driftwood door open.

The library was, as always, deserted. The servants of the castle, wisely, did not frequent the same spots he did and Cedric was the only nobility of any note in residence. It was a small, informal setting. Perhaps twenty shelves, and one large desk facing the only window. The library of the Capital contained all the knowledge of Metamoore, but here, thousands of miles away in Wavebreak, the only records of any renown were the genealogical archives of the noble family Cedric had ‘displaced’ on his arrival and their strangely frequent travels to the sister planet earth. Which would have been useful to the Lord, and the Prince he served, should he have cared enough to read them.

Upon settling carefully at the desk, Cedric twirled a massive sapphire gem idly on the wood, and, as he had for the last seven months that he’d sat at that desk, engaged in a silent, sullen, staring contest with the singular envelope that lay upon the table nestled carefully amid a pile of papers and half-read books.

A fine layer of dust had settled on the wax seal, twinkling in the sunlight like the ground remains of a jewel.

His fingers twitched and reached out. The paper was soft and tempting under his fingertips.

“Oh dear, and you’ve been so good up until today!”

Cedric jumped out of the chair, hands clenching at his jolting heart, scales already peeking through his skin.

“Miranda! Do not do that!”

A great mass of spiky black hair blinked its four eyes languidly at him, and then burst into a cruel, raspy laugh.

He snarled at her with an intensity that would have had a human cowering, but only made her narrow her multitude of eyes to determine his seriousness. And upon doing so, she produced a thin line of gossamer from the alcove she’d been spying from and descended gracefully to the ground. Her form shimmered and in a span of a breath, gone was Beast and before him stood a waif of a girl, curtsying, though every muscle in her body exuded mockery.

“Lord Cedric,” she greeted. Her voice and body was soft and childish in sound and appearance, and yet, from their very first meeting Cedric possessed an acute awareness she was likely older than even his mother might have been.

“Miranda,” he greeted her curtly. One should respect their elders, but he was above her both in the foolish hierarchy humans arranged themselves in, and the natural order of their own kind.

“Do you have anything to report?”

“No.” She answered simply with a roll of her reduced eyes.

Cedric huffed, though he was hardly surprised. Miranda had a habit of lurking about him for no discernible reason. “Then why are you here?”

She gave a smirk. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Cedric did not answer her.

She was at his side a breath later, too close for decorum's sake, but he didn’t tense up until her fingers slid tauntingly across the table and laid delicately upon the ivory of the paper.

“What do you think will happen if we open it?” Her breath was a tickle in his ear.

He wondered if Miranda knew just how heavy that question was.

He’d received the letter two months after taking residence in WaveBreak. Two months before that he’d received a different letter between Torin Gulch and the Capital, delivered by a Royal courier on official paper, written in a servants hand, with an official seal, as if he were another servant in the Prince’s employ.

“Lord Cedric, you are ordered to take the Western Stronghold from the House of Lady Imelda. As a reward for your successful campaign I will grant you the regional capital of Wavebreak as your new seat. From there you will oversee trade between the West and the Capital evermore.”

-His Royal Highness Prince Phobos”

Perhaps, that should have stung. Certainly, it would have stung the Cedric of even a mere two days before the letter was set in his hand. Produced tears and rage or some other pitiful display of emotion. Instead, the shifter had signed, picked at a scab near his ribs and turned his troops in the opposite direction without fuss.

The ashes of Torin Gulch were heavy on his soldiers, the Prince’s biting words back at the castle even more so.

But he was no longer struggling under the weight of them.

A lifetime of servitude had left him blinded to reality. Made him a timid shell of what he’d been meant for. Oh, he’d felt glimpses of it before, in battle, after the nobles had revealed themselves as traitors, when he’d stood oh so, perilously close to the top of his Prince’s throne and looked down on those below him, and when he’d seize said Prince by the hips and had his way, however gently it had been, with him. And he’d pushed it away, afraid. Afraid and ashamed of what he was. But now? Now the truth had been laid bare with the bones of Torin Gulch. Now he, and everyone else, knew the truth of it with every haughty step further from the capital, with every broken bone, and village set to flame.

He’d not been made to be stepped on.

Not even by him.

The second letter had arrived as the blood was still being mopped up from the floors of his new castle. Delivered by Raythor who had been allowed to return to the capital, with a grim but seemingly sorrowful expression. The seal on the paper was one that was set on Phobos’ desk and was used exclusively for their personal correspondence, and this was addressed simply in the Prince’s elegant script.

Cedric.

Raythor had given him an uncomfortable little shrug upon handing it over, and said “His Highness said it explains everything.”

Cedric had sent him away with a snarl. And the letter remained unopened.

For as long as it did, the Prince of Meridian existed in a stasis in his mind. His everything, and nothing all at once. A god lurking in his black palace, untouchable, and a lover of whose flesh had quivered under his fingertips and drawn laughs from his breath.

Cedric pulled the letter deftly from the spider’s grasp.

“You know, interfering with royal correspondence can be met with the death penalty.”

Miranda chortled in delight at his not-quite threat.

“Do you not have anywhere else to be?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Cedric was quiet for time, his eyes upon the paper.

“No.”