#fading scars kith

[ilyuu-archive]

morning call.

the ends of the horizon stirs awake, and silks of gold drapes itself on the line that splits the skies and land. it just so happens that you wake along with it with the warmth of your other as a quiet promise. (or you wake up next to him.)

ft. albedo, ayato, childe, kaeya, kazuha & xiao.

warnings : a bit suggestive! (kaeya), fluff, kiths, a lot of kiths, soft times, blushy boys, descriptions of scars (childe), Imk if i missed anything!

albedo.

the delicate tandem of breaths shared is all you heard, the four corners of the room flooding back into your senses, filling you of all sorts of feelings and thoughts that fades as swiftly as it came. that and the cool touch of skin tightly on yours, fingers locked. his fingertips scratches the back of your hand every then and so, and every shift brings forth a calm wave, pulling you under as it crests and drowning you in familiarity.

you turn your head to the side, the pillow underneath you wrinkling, and held your breathe in when you saw him. there’s always a touch of eternity to him, how smooth and soft he looks, almost docile, whenever he sleeps. his lips slightly ajar, faint shadows of his lashes, strands of his sun-kissed hair in disarray. always the composed, and yet, not a silver of said composure is to be found in his side of him.

a pulse echoes, a bit louder - it may be his or yours, or both - as you lean in and peck the corner of his lips. a soft pink blooms on his pale cheeks, and it adds more color onto the dawn. the snow that slowly falls from the skies, clouded in its monotonous winter and bitter bite, seems to melt from his skin, almost fading all traces, as his eyes flutter just slightly to see you.

ayato.

a softness you felt familiar runs through your hair, untangling all of its ties and knots, brushing your scalp. as the tingly sense seeps in, the veil of sleep slips from you, and the world around starts to grow a bit lighter and brighter. it paints the room in a tender tint, yet frames the edges of his skin in its glow. his irises still held that solemnity that you seen in him a many times, yet faint - in lieu, a look of gentle content he gazes at you with - that air of cool collection that clings to him drifting elsewhere.

and he allows himself this small fracture of a morning as you close your eyes, lost in his touch - a bit crispy, yet soothing and ethereal all the same. there’s no pause, no slowing down, in the day ahead, as now is the only moment time can give him to spend on whatever is needed.

the world around him will continue on along with him, but, for now, he’ll ask for it to drag on a minute more as he moves his hand to cup your cheeks, stroking the corner of your eye as you, too, allow yourself this bit of the morning.

childe.

a scent tugged you out of your blanket of warmth, although the comforting tepidness you found yourself in as you do rouse awake might be a bit better - sandbearer, and a whiff of salt, albeit faded. it swirls around him and you, as you felt a tight tug of his arms, wrapped around your waist, to draw you close and closer to him. curled into the nook of his neck, hearing his slow, steady breathes, you’re almost lulled back into that sense of security.

it’s only when you spot scars, all faint and dim, a story, a chapter, marred across his figure, peeking out from underneath his shirt. a peek of his collarbone from a few loose buttons shows a strip of skin, starting from his shoulder blade and yet, not knowing where it ends. others as well, peppering from here and there, a few nicks that seems almost indistinct unless you know what you’re looking for.

of course, you shuffle a bit until the scar stands in front of you, and place a small kiss - it’s then that you feel him stiffen, his breath caught in his chest. he lets it out for it to only come off as breathless, a surprise puff of air that skims on embarrassment. and embarrassed he is, for his cheeks take on a crimson that fits him all the same.

kaeya.

a wintry puff of air drifts to the shell of your ear. you let it. it happens again. your brows furrow. it happens one more time. you pull the edges of the blanket overhead, and a muffled chuckle brings the room to life. a series of rustling ensues, that in the quiet, it sounds almost so and too much - you soon find that you’re not the only one hidden away underneath the thin cover of protection, from both the dawn and the cold.

a pair of lips that felt hot, yet cold all the same, pressed against your neck and a sigh left you at the prick of warmth shivering up your skin. his soft chuckle draws you from your daze, a carefree breath against your ear that drips with his usual allure. it wafts over to your lips where it met his - a slow exchange of heated breathes, and a small space of quiet names and murmurs.

until, there is no breath in either of your lungs, as you tug the blankets off of you both, letting the canvas of the day sift into the panels of the windows, bathed in a different type of warmth. as motes of dust floats around, you lie yourself on kaeya as his lips once more meets your skin - a chaste peck on the tip of your nose.

it still flusters you, as much as it amuses him as he chuckles, the sound pleasant and kind to the ears.

kazuha.

the tepidness of the morning does little to rouse you up. rather, it was the loose locks, splayed across the still surface of the pillows, that tickled you. your vision a bit hazy, trying to adjust to the sudden light, you only see what’s close to you - that is, kazuha soundly asleep, the occasional shift of his hands as he presses it in the small space between the two of you. be it a picture to capture a small, common moment as this, or a haiku to try and keep the feelings swaying in the air in words and letters, neither nor more will do justice to the sight that lies before you.

before you know it, your hands are already brushing his hair off to the side, tucking a few strands behind his ear for his own comfort and as lightly as you can to not rouse him awake. it’s only a few seconds in and that seems to be something to go awry, with your fingertips skimming his temple, and a sound humming in his chest. it’s then that his eyes flutter open, the light a bit too bright, aglow with the promise of a new day, before slowly adjusting to you.

and he smiles. he smiles a smile that seemed too soft, too tense, a phantom of all that is too kind living in the way his lips curved. one that is too tempting to kiss.

and so you did. (met with a surprised look, eyes slightly widened as his smile turns shy. welcomed into the realm of consciousness with a kiss - he finds that it’s quite cute.)

xiao.

a pair of piercing eyes is one of the first things you see, the settings a backdrop of melting canary and gold - it doesn’t compare to the shade of his irises, though, and you soon find yourself sleepily seeking it, a silent, slow moment of the morning spent on the crinkle of his eyes. it’s almost too soon that his skin starts to turn a faint pink, and that a sigh leaves his lips, as if to let go of the stress stiffening his shoulders. that alone sets a small smile on your face.

it’s that which prevents him from pulling away, from leaving a dent in the sheets next to you should he have left - it was a quiet yearning of his to see you smile, first thing in the morning. he has yet to understand that, out of anyone, anyone that would’ve fit with you as nicely, you decided that he was worth enough to become the very reason you light up.

for the day was already bright enough, with the sun sitting on the dot of the horizon, and you chose to brighten it up even more because of him. so he continues to stare at you, taking you in of this side of yours drawn out from the dark, the edges of the night left cornered in its crevices as you do the same.

(yes, even as his skin starts to heat up and that the smile on your lips grows in every second that it does.)

general taglist (open!) : @/zuyoo, @starz222, @haliyamori, @kazumist, @/tartaglia-apologist, @mikacynth, @angelkazusstuff, @doumalove, @kpop-and-otome, @emo-mess, @kissedbysilk . . .

[env0writes]

Juniper Journal’s Vol. 2, 6.17.24 “Secondary Education"

@env0writes C.Buck   Ko-Fi & Venmo: @Zenv0 Support Your Local Artists!   Photo by @env0

The world is ending Or so it feels For when each day introduces new sorrows What foreboding hope can any tomorrows Bring to adolescence Pubescence’s, incessant advancement of age

How many more firsts Must we experience To know that autumn surely ends And that spring is near with friends To bloom into kinder kith And let the apocalypse pass like the setting sun

I look up through a pane of glass With pained glance To wish upon stars that cannot be seen So that I might wish upon things that cannot have been For no matter the words that I write No matter my plight Cannot erase what story’s been written

So that the world keeps ending Even if fire reigns in the sky When the yearning heart aches After the blood pools and suicidal dream wakes Who will I be come this decade Or will I too, like my scars – up and fade

[gurokichi]

your blood would look so pretty as paint. i’m don’t fancy myself much of a painter, but there is beauty in the sheer violence of the act. don’t fret, though, i’m not unreasonable. i’d allow you pick where you want me to bloodlet from. perhaps your shoulder one day, and your forearm another. i’d keep a jar on me at all times, in case i ever feel inspired while going about. of course, it’ll be your job to replenish it every so often. i’d paint the world for you if i could. my brush from your hair, maybe. i’m sure it’d run so beautifully across my canvas- which would be made from a patch of your skin pulled taut on a frame. i need my greatest muse to be present in every aspect of my work, after all. i’d paint all the pretty welts and lacerations i so magnanimously impose upon your flesh all over again, so i can feel your sweet pain twice over. once, in the act itself, and the second when i use the blood you so wastefully spilled to recreate it. after all, the scars on your skill will fade with time, so i need to keep record of them in some manner, don’t i?

-👤

AHSAHKDSDFGHJKS… ERISSS I LOVE U

I thought really hard about how to possibly respond to this, but in the end, I could not come up with something that was satisfactory, so you are just getting me letting you know how much I loved this ask. I read this over and over again… as I do with many things that you say to me, but I re-read this one A LOT. I love it so so so much. I know that you’d make the loveliest paintings with my blood. You are NOT touching my hair after that story you told me, though!! ALSO… YOUR GREATEST MUSE?? STOP THAT IS SO CUTE. Eris I think I am platonically in love with you, kith kith mwah mwah!! I get a message from you, and I start giggling and kicking my feet like a stereotypical schoolgirl with a crush. What is like the friend equivalent of a crush… does that even exist?? If it doesn’t, I’m making it a thing. I just really like being your friend!! Talking 2 you makes me so happy, you r stuck as my friend forever. σ(≧ε≦σ) ♡

[esidolmail]

Hey Arashi my girlie 👋🏽

Sooo umm ramble here but like you're so cute and I just wanna give you a kith and play wit your cat omgomgomg you're so cute omgg like holy hell can we get married and get a house together w your cat and my three cats <3 I have a grey cat who's literally name is here in japanese and she meows really cute, a fat ass cute cat named Tobi who's also rlly hairy bc he's a tabby domestic long hair and a mean chaotic orange eleven month old kitty who's named chibi cuz he's real small but likes to try and get milk from Tobi. Also um. Both Chibi and Tobi meow for food like.

Also I'm kinda sad because my super cool bruise I got from P.E is fading away now it's like smooth now and not spotty anymore so that kinda makes me :( also I got scratched by Koko and OW??? I have three scars in my right near my inner elbow and two scratches on my left hand :(

- Tin-Bin

[illuminating-dragons]

Kith (5/?): Signed, Sealed, Delivered

                Viktor Krum was in love with Hermione Granger, but he knew that she loved Ron Weasley. He knew it even before Hermione did.

                He knew he had two options: he could move on, or he could pine over her forever, denying himself any chance of happiness with someone else.

                The first was hard, and the second was easy, but Viktor didn’t want to make the easy choice. That wasn’t what good people did.

                So Viktor went back to Bulgaria and played Quidditch. He wrote to Hermione frequently, because he still enjoyed talking to her, and he kept in touch with Fleur. It hurt him that he couldn’t keep his promise to Cedric, the promise they made before the maze.

                “Promise we’ll keep in touch?” Cedric had asked. “It’d be nice to be friends after the competition is over.”

                Viktor would have kept that promise. Being a celebrity Quidditch player was much lonelier than people imagined, and making new friends was rare.

                Cedric was dead, though, and without his help Krum never reached out to Harry Potter. He had a reasonable amount of respect for the boy, but they didn’t know each other well enough.

                Viktor spent the next year playing Quidditch, writing letters, and getting into duels with people who claimed that Voldemort wasn’t back. Viktor saw the terror in Karkaroff’s eyes, saw the worry in Hermione’s writing. He’d seen Cedric’s dead body. It was real, and Harry Potter wasn’t lying.

                When the war started he wanted to rush to England and fight, killing everything that might hurt Hermione. So what if her parents were Muggles? There was nothing wrong with that—he had Muggle relatives on both sides. She was still beautiful, still amazing, and the idea that anyone would call her inferior, anyone would cause her harm…death seemed no small thing.

                With Karkaroff gone, Viktor thought Durmstrang might have shifted back into something calmer. They were all drawn towards the darker parts of magic, but that didn’t make them evil.

                But his Muggleborn cousin wrote pleading for help, and Viktor took a year off from playing professionally and went to teach Quidditch at Durmstrang. He kept his ear to the ground, and he knew that there was trouble brewing.

                The teachers who’d taught Viktor when he was younger were showing their true colours now. And the decent ones had no support, because Karkaroff was still Headmaster until he died. It wasn’t until after word came of his death that a party went out and dragged back a pregnant woman to be the Headmistress by virtue of the child in her womb. Viktor felt genuinely sorry for the woman, who was barely three years older than him, who had to pick up after her cowardly lover. Karkaroff had always liked them young.

                Irena Vaskoff was pregnant, twenty-five, and alone. Once the child was born, she would still be in charge, but only until they were of age. After that, she was useless.  

                And of course, there had been times when a child was born an orphan, its mother murdered before it had time to draw a breath. Already several of the Darker teachers were circling her, trying to be supportive, promising that they could give her child a father.

                Viktor wasn’t stupid. He knew that she was in terrible danger, because all it took was one wrong person in the delivery room, and Irena would die, her child snatched.

                Irena was trying so hard to hide her fear, and she was doing a decent job. But she knew what was coming, and the defences around her office became more secure by the day.

                One night Viktor was patrolling, and he saw that her light was on, and that one of her shields was down. He was going to fix it, but then doing that might seem like she wasn’t capable. Instead, he knocked on her door.

                Irena opened the door, tears running down her face, and a potion in her hand. Viktor recognized it; he’d made it for his cousin a few years ago.

                “Is that the choice you want to make?”

                “What is it to you?”

                “It’s your choice,” Viktor answered. “But I don’t want you to do this because you are afraid.”

                She let him in.

                Irena sat down, the potion still clutched to her. “I don’t want to bring this child into a life like this. As long as the Dark Lord is powerful, she will be at risk. Not only from inside this school, but the rest of the world.”

                Viktor bowed his head. “You could run. I can help you run to France. My friend Fleur’s family is there, and they would shield you.”

                “They’ll find me. And then your friend will suffer for my stupidity.”

                “I could take your child and run,” Krum said. “As long as she is alive, you would be safe.”                

                Irena shook her head.

                “I know it must be hard to imagine being without her—”

                “I don’t want to be a mother,” Irena interrupted.

                Viktor didn’t know what to say.

                “Not to this one, nor to any other. I never wanted that, but Igor wouldn’t—he wouldn’t listen! He said I’d get used to it, he took all my ingredients away. And now he’s gone, and I have them now, but I’m too much of a coward to do this.” Irena slammed the bottle to the ground, so hard it shattered. The bright liquid oozed over the floor.

                “He was wrong to do that to you,” Viktor said at last. “You gave him your choice, and he took it from you. That is a crime that is punishable by death in my family.”

                “Really?”

                “That’s why my mother is dead. She—” Viktor closed his eyes. How could he say those hateful words, the words they covered with euphemisms. But Irena deserved the truth. “She abused and raped my father, and my aunt killed her for it. We lied and said it was the Cough.”

                “I’m sorry.”

                “She was no kind of mother if she was willing to do that to an adult. What would she do to a child? Instead I had my father, and he’s all the parent I ever needed.”

                Irena buried her face in her hands. “I don’t want to stop this fetus from having life, but I cannot raise them. That isn’t fair. But I cannot leave Durmstrang in the hands of those monsters.”

                Viktor pressed his palms together. Irena was right; if the line was broken, there would be nothing to stop the teachers from participating in a mass duel for the position, the first such one in over a hundred years. There would be corpses come the morning, and the students would either conform to the new leader or die.

                “You will always be this child’s biological mother. But they don’t have to be here to keep you in your position.”

                “What are you suggesting?”

                “I will find a family to protect your baby. They will raise them, and while the child—”

                “She’s a girl,” Irena interrupted. “I may as well say that, if I know she is going to live.”

                Viktor nodded. “Then the couple will raise her, and until this horror show is over, her being alive will be enough to keep you in position and safe. They will not find your daughter, I swear to you.”

                Irena hesitated, but finally she nodded. “This is quite the risk, Viktor. For me?”

                “I want to help you,” Viktor answered. “I feel helpless most of the time. This is something I can do.”

                The next few months were an agony of keeping up appearances, keeping the teachers away from Irena, looking for a family to take in the baby when the time came. Viktor had standards; the child would be loved as well as being safe. That was always going to be important.

                He finally found Isaac and Wren Scamander. Fleur’s mother directed him there—they lived among a Veela settlement, studying their language and how it compared to other fantastic beast speak. They wanted a child but Isaac wasn’t able to sire one, and they happily agreed to take in Irena’s daughter.

                “She’ll be safe with us,” Wren promised, her silver-blonde hair showing her own Veela roots. “No one would dare come near here, and we will give her a wonderful home.”

                Krum flew back to Durmstrang, elated. It was only a month until Irena’s baby was due, and by then they would have a perfectly safe plan in place to take her there.

                Naturally, when he got back Irena was in labour.

                The six hours it took for Irena to deliver her daughter were the longest of Viktor’s life. His cousin stood guard at the door, but there was no way to get the mediwitch to Irena without alerting half of Durmstrang. Viktor held her hand and counted contractions, praying that woman and child would come through.

                But the end of the six hours was worth it,  because a tiny squalling baby was tied to Viktor’s chest, ready for the return flight. Irena was exhausted, but she put a hand on the baby’s head. “Name her Rita,” she said. Then she looked at the now-quiet child. “Good luck, Rita. I wish you all the best love in the world. I’m sorry I can’t give it to you.”

                Krum took off the next moment, flying as fast as he could without hurting the baby. To his relief, Rita slept the entire four hours back to the Scamanders, who woke up in some confusion, but mostly delight. When Viktor handed Isaac Rita, and watched him cuddle the baby close to his chest as he wept, weight lifted off his shoulders.

                Viktor removed the sling, which was modified with an Undetectable Enlargement charm.

                “There are supplies in here, and letters from Irena. One to you, and one to Rita. She wanted…she wanted to give her daughter that story.”

                “Of course,” Wren said immediately, taking the sling. “We’ll tell Rita the truth, and leave contact up to her and to Irena.”

                Viktor nodded. “I must return before anyone grows suspicious,” he said.

                “Viktor,” Isaac called. “Will you be Rita’s godfather?”

                Viktor was touched. “Of course I will,” he answered.

                Isaac handed Rita to him—his goddaughter, of all things—and Viktor kissed her head. “Fly high, Rita. I will see you again.”

                Viktor didn’t hear from the Scamanders for several months. The war intensified in Britain, and all letters stopped. That was alright though, because it was all Viktor could do to keep his head above water at Durmstrang. The tension rose to breaking point between the Voldemort supporting teachers and the rest, with the students trying their best to stay out of the way.                                                                       And finally, right before Durmstrang was set alight by one side or another, the war ended. Viktor got a letter from Hermione—the first one in a year—telling him all about it. It was tearstained, and Viktor’s tears made it worse, but the most important part was that his friends were safe, and Voldemort was dead. The Voldemort supporters left Durmstrang in a hurry, and Irena declared it to be a holiday. She baked dozens of cakes and all the students sat together in the Hall, happy and safe for the first time.                 Viktor only stayed for one piece of cake, because he had somewhere to be. He got on his broom, and flew to the Scamanders’ home.                                                                                                                                                                 Rita was five months old now, and she could even sit up. Viktor picked her up, searching her face for her father and mother. She had her mother’s strong chin and her father’s dark hair, but other than that she seemed like a completely different person. Her big smile was definitely hers alone.

                Viktor left Durmstrang that summer. Irena had things well in hand, and there was no further danger to Rita. He spent a month in Britain and stayed with Bill and Fleur, going up to Hogsmeade one weekend to visit with Hermione. Perhaps the war had changed things, or maybe Viktor had finally succeeded in moving on, but he could look at her the way he looked at Irena—a dear friend, and nothing else.

                When the visit was over, Viktor returned to Bulgaria. He rejoined the Quidditch team, but instead of the team dorms he bought a small cottage near to the Sacamanders so he could see Rita every day. They became fast friends, and it wasn’t unusual to see Durmstrang’s Tri-Wizard Champion and national Quidditch player obediently being a two year old’s ‘horsie’.

      ��         Viktor kept in touch with everyone in Britain—Harry and (to his great shock) Ron became new penpals, and so did Arthur Weasley—and his days were happier now. He had friends (Isaac and Wren were brilliant, and he made friends with several Veela, including one of Fleur’s distant cousins), he had his goddaughter, and he had Irena.

                There were times when all of those good parts of his life came together. Irena began to visit Rita when she was three years old, taking her out to get ice cream or just talking to her. At first that made Wren and Isaac nervous, but Irena reassured them. “She’s your daughter, not mine,” she promised. “But I would like to be in her life, just not as a mother.”

                She kept her word when Rita came to Durmstrang, where she acknowledged that Rita was her biological child. “Rita is the heir to Durmstrang, if she wishes it. But for now, she needs to be a good student and keep up with her homework.”

                And Rita, who helped Irena write that speech, just laughed.

                Viktor retired from Quidditch the year Rita was thirteen, and when he came to visit the Scamanders for New Years, Irena was there, and she brought a new man with her.

                Derek Kovachev had a grown-up son named Milan, and he had a booming laugh that made everyone else want to join in. Irena held his hand the entire night, and for the first time in thirteen years Viktor actually felt a pang of longing. There’d been a few women along the way, and a brief relationship with Lee Jordan, but they always ended in friendships, in more letters and less intimacy. Viktor had grown to accept that.

                But now Irena was seriously courting Derek, and Viktor wondered if it was maybe time to try once more.

                But Rita took up a lot of his time, because she was dealing with being thirteen, and she was old enough to understand her father’s legacy, and deciding whether that was something she wanted to accept at all, and Wren caught spattergroit and was laid up for three months, and Isaac’s research was unfortunately taking him away from home to more remote Veela settlements…so when Rita needed to talk to someone, she always wrote Viktor. He had to be ready to answer letters at all times.

                As his years visiting the Scamanders had given him some immunity to the Veela’s charms, Viktor could work with them. He became the front man for a bookstore that dealt with books for magical peoples and books written by magical peoples. It was surprisingly popular with the locals, who were curious about the worlds of people they’d been raised to call fantastic ‘beasts’ (not something the Veela enjoyed, and they credited Newt Scamander because they weren’t in his book).  Still, the majority of their business was done through the post office (after all, Mer couldn’t get to the middle of Bulgaria easily).

                So Viktor’s primary job was going to the post office. He went to send off orders and pick up new ones (owls didn’t much like Veelas, so they wouldn’t deliver directly to the store). It meant two trips a day so they could fulfill orders as quickly as possible, and Viktor eventually got a box there so that letters from his friends and goddaughter could be picked up while he was walking back and forth.

                Because of his frequent visits he got to know the post office quite well. Stefan and Andrei Florakis were in charge, and their daughter Marta, a year younger than Viktor, looked after the owls. Whenever Viktor came in she was wearing a dress covered in feathers (but never bird shit, somehow), and chatting quite seriously with the owls as she tied packages onto their legs.

                At first Viktor enjoyed talking with Stefan and Andrei more. Stefan came from Greece, and he had dozens of stories about the magical settlements there. Andrei was quieter than his partner, but he had an extensive memory of the packages he’d seen in his time. “You’d be surprised how many people come in here with their partner’s belongings and get them boxed up and sent to Timbuktu,” he chuckled. “Really, I suppose you’d be surprised by how often people tell you what they’re sending and where and why. I really only need to know the second, but I appreciate the stories.”

                Marta would listen to the stories too, but she rolled her eyes at some of the more outrageous ones. “I don’t think my father understands that people lie,” she confided in Viktor one day. “I don’t think some of those stories are true.”

                “Maybe not,” Viktor replied. “But they are good stories, and that holds some power.”

                “Tell me a story then, Viktor.” Marta’s eyes danced. “And embellish if you need to.”

                Obviously Viktor couldn’t spend all of his time at the post office; he had work to do. But in the first few months of his new job he ended up spending several evenings there. Stefan cooked beautifully, and soon Viktor joined the family for dinner each Saturday night. They ate a feast, and then they would gather around a table with a magical map. They took turns telling stories, pointing at the places they began, continued, and ended.

                (Twenty years later, the table would be replaced with a far more detailed one, crafted by Al and Scorpius).

                Andrei’s stories were centered around stories of delivery, both of packages and people. “I started out as a ship captain,” he told them. “But I got tired of the sea when I met Stefan on my hundredth voyage, and we came back here together.”

                Stefan had travelled extensively in search of good food, and he could remember details of recipes he’d tasted decades before. He pointed out the best restaurants, and the worst, in a different town or village or city each Saturday.

                Marta, like her fathers, had many stories of travel. “I was a dancer,” she explained. “We performed across the continents.” Her stories were full of colour and light, dazzling heights and tense moments. Viktor often let his food go cold listening.

                He was nervous the first few times he shared his own stories—all he’d done was play Quidditch, nothing so wonderful as the Florakis. But it grew easier to talk, and soon he could tell stories as well as they could. He told stories about travels, about the thrill of the game and the roar of the crowd, about quiet days in the bookshop and all of their customers, and about Rita. He could talk for hours about his god-daughter, always could.

                Viktor’s favourite story came two years later, when Derek proposed to Irena, and she accepted. They were married at Durmstrang, and in the ceremony Irena named Derek Headmaster, as was custom when the Head of the school married. But what Irena did next wasn’t traditional at all.

                She summoned Rita forward, who at fifteen was taller than both of her mothers, and asked if she was willing to give up her position as Heir to Durmstrang. To shocked murmurs, Rita assented, and Irena named Milan as her successor, as the ‘son of the Headmaster’.

                It was cunning, it was clever, and it was exactly what they all wanted. Irena didn’t want to burden her biological daughter with the responsibility of her blood, and Rita wanted to leave Durmstrang and travel to Paris. She wanted to work with Gabrielle Delacour in fashion one day, but that wasn’t something she could do without breaking the line.

                Milan, on the other hand, wanted very much to be a teacher. He was already married, and had infant twins, with plans to have more children (he and his wife ended up with eight, four sets of twins in all). He was willing to take on Durmstrang, and was grateful to accept the title from Rita.

                But that wasn’t the only reason that it was Viktor’s favourite story. His goddaughter’s happiness was wonderful, his friend’s relief was great, and he was happy to see his old school get new blood.

                No, that would always be his favourite story because it was the first night Marta’s food grew cold as she listened, the first time Viktor truly saw the way she looked at him. It was the first time he realized that she might love him, and it was the first time that he realized that he loved her back.

                And he told that story many more times in the years to come, including at their wedding (held at the post office, of course—Stefan and Andrei wouldn’t hear of anything else). He told it to many people, all their friends and family; he wrote it down, he told it aloud, and he even learned to sign it from Wren Scamander.

                He even whispered it one night to his infant son Cedric, cradling him as Marta rested from her labour. The baby was so small in his arms, so much smaller than Rita, but his eyes were so intense—he was such a little person.

                Which is why, for the first time, Viktor ended the story with a truth he hadn’t dared to speak.

                “And in that hall, my son, when I heard that, I felt afraid for a moment. Irena didn’t need me anymore, and neither did Rita—she was acknowledged and she was safe. I worried that with my usefulness over, my story may have ended.”

                Viktor leaned down and kissed his son’s forehead. “I don’t mean death, Cedric, because death isn’t the end of a story. But I wasn’t going to be needed anymore, and I was set in where I was. I am so happy to be wrong, dear child. I got to have so many more stories, and I look forward to the story I will have with you.”

[palbabor-writes]

Sinew sin·ew/ˈsinyo͞o/ noun a piece of tough fibrous tissue uniting muscle to bone or bone to bone; a tendon or ligament.

warnings: SPOILERS FOR BNHA 270 onward, tw.discriptions of gore & blood, mentions of sexual touch, wee bit of muscle kink  

notes: for @sunshinepunches​ - sorry it took so long! i kith you & beg your forgiveness :]​

It’s been months.

Almost 122 days have faded into nothingness, wholly dedicated to bland preparations and distant memories; littered with promises, with the omnipresent foreshadowing of his return. 

In late April, as the buds of flowers opened and the world eased into the brightening spring, he would emerge from his chemical chrysalis, fully effectuated, ready to destroy and decay. Shigaraki would return to you in the spring.

You wondered what would be different. 

How would he behave? How would he be, once he held the prepotency of All For One within the palm of his hand? Would it change him? Mentally? Physically?

You liked him as he was. He was lithe, sleek, perfect. He valued his speed and the prowess of the quirk that lay within the tips of his fingers, relying on his honed instincts and good sense to see him through. 

But he needed more. He was avariciousness incarnate when he slunk into those moods, always grasping, scrabbling for the pieces he needed to progress forward.

He didn’t say no to the modifications, the enhancements. Why should he? After all, this is the first time he’s ever taken the easy path and he deserves to meander on the upward march to his crown.

It’s hard to see him. 

There’s too much dust, too much blood, too much that has been split apart. But he’s there, you can sense him, can feel the sheer heat of his presence, as if he’s pressed against your side. 

You need to get closer, you have to.

At the crest of the hill you pause, lungs heaving and legs shaking as you peer past the sheen of battle. There. He’s down there. 

The ground is uneven beneath your feet and you snag your toes on the loose rocks, but you keep pushing forward. The sun is ablaze in the robin blue sky and you follow the pearlescent halo of his hair, pulled, like some loadstar, toward your goal. 

He’s been in the weeds. 

He’s likely had no rest, no reprieve from the threat of attack, but he moves onward. Determination and willpower have never been attributes that he’s lacked. You hated it then, before the PLF, before the doctor, and you hate it now. He’ll rip himself apart one day, all for the want of his dream.

There’s deep divides that criss cross his arms. Some carry rivulets of crimson, of deep ichor and tattered skin, but God, how can he still be alive, when he looks like that? It’s an affront, a horror, and some discordant note rings within your inner ear and vibrates outward, chattering your teeth as it passes. 

Then, before your eyes, his skin begins to smooth. Tendons reconnect and joints flow upright. It reforms the man that you’ve come to know, molding him, like clay, into something both terrible and beautiful. 

His arms are the first to stretch. 

The newly cabled lengths coil and flex, biceps and triceps curling. The tattered fabric of that woebegone cape struggles to withstand the quick shake that he gives it, rattling the string of beads that connect it across his neck. 

Oh. That’s changed too.

His neck was once the bulkiest thing on him and you loved to dance your fingers across the dips and bunches of muscles, easing the strain his ever insistent slouch put upon him. But now? Now he looks like he’s been cast in marble.

The planes of his pectorals jerk and swell as he proudly lifts himself to his full height, shock white hair flowing about his pleased face. He’s robust in a way you’ve never seen. It’s not overkill. No, there’s not one ounce of excess and he’s still holding that familiar lean silhouette, it’s just been augmented with a little more power.

The lines of his legs are beveled, thighs blocked with steely virility and a deep-seated threat. His calves are tensed and the newness of that round bulge of muscle makes your mouth dry. 

He’s not massive. Not weighed down with the bulk and heft of some men, but he’s certainly not the same. 

Your fingers twitch at your side and you scratch your nails against the soft skin of your palm, tongue swiping over your lip as you watch him move. He’s still got that grace and fluidity, it’s just has the force of his new brawn behind it now.

What will that feel like? Will he break you? So unsure of his new strength that you’ll just shake to pieces between his broad hands, torn apart, splintered and scattered at his feet.

Or will it feel like he’s passing that strength on to you? Will he trap you between strong thighs, pinning your arching hips under him as he braces those stacked arms beside your head?

You’ve never had much luck withstanding his advances, to tempted by that hush of his scarred lips against your skin. You can feel the tacky stick of your budding arousal, hot against your inner thigh, sighing as it eases its way under the cleft of your ass and down your leg. You want to touch him, to drag your hands down those well built curves until he’s all you know, wiped clean by the promise of what he can do.  

Yes, he’s a walking terror and you can’t wait to have him all to yourself.                        

[hljkr]

♤Red Lips | Ledger!Joker

red lips | ledger!joker

suspect(s): joker x reader

the crime committed: enamoured and charmed, moonlit late-night endeavours that were passionate with entwined bodies and intense orgasms. but there was just one thing missing from it all...

evidence: a lil’ swearing, titty grabbing, mentions of genitalia, suggested smut, intense kithes, joker’s kinda needy so ;))))), daddy kink, low key glove kink because I HAD to, y/n has a thing for scars and joker’s face (who doesn’t??), a like... pinch of angst??

- i had to do it to ‘em

(ok i really tried with this and by that i mean i spent a few hours on it with lousy editing buT this is my first time writing anything even slightly suggestive and with j so i hope this isn’t too bad??? just enjoy it ig djdshds)

Bunching the soft material of the blanket closer to your face, you let out a muffled whine as the insistent ringing of your annoying alarm clock rattled your eardrums and pulled you back down into reality and into a saddening state of consciousness. A shitty way to start the day after a blissful night only a few hours before. Last night had taken its toll on you physically, the bruises decorating your skin and scratch marks adorning your body were evidence enough but you loved and cherished every single one of them. Sighing contentedly, you thought over how amazing it was to be fucked into submission by the love and joy of your life, although he’d never explicitly ever put such a label on you. Even then, the sex was proof enough that he harboured some kind of feelings for you and that was enough to satiate your rapidly growing obsession with the killer clown all of Gotham feared.

Maybe falling in love with the mad man was a mistake, maybe he wasn’t good for you as all the city loved to preach. But who were they to ever have a say? They would never know him like you did, but admittedly even your knowledge of him was limited to what time he woke up and what time he returned. He’d never told you his name, would refuse to remove his protective layer of greasepaint no matter how much you begged and even his age was unanswered for. But what you did know was that he was your J and you’d do anything for him.

Nearly everything for him.

J was a complex and interesting person- his mannerisms and body language always screamed one thing only in the public eye but with you, he was (slightly) more careful, more passionate and while in front of everyone else he’d never be caught dead acting this way but with you, he was generous in multiple ways many could never even imagine him being. You considered yourself privileged to know the criminal mastermind of the city had a soft spot for you. And although you barely knew him, you weren’t afraid to be vulnerable with him. You’d gladly let him into your life and indulged him in your past and your secrets and gifted him your heart as well. But there was one thing that you could never deal with, and it was his lips.

The scars were gorgeous in your eyes, they only added to his already attractive appearance and made your heart leap from even looking at them. You loved to gently trace your fingertips over the smooth faded lines gracing his cheeks while he was resting, admiring them and have pride seep into your chest knowing how strong and resilient he was going through something so obviously traumatic and not allowing it to stop him from doing anything he wanted. But you didn’t lie to yourself, the things he wanted were questionable but you didn’t let it get the best of you. Being intimate with the green-haired clown, the sight of his scars made your arousal and lust for him reach heights you’d never experienced with any ordinary guy. His entire physique had you on your knees for him every day of the week without a fail.

But his lips, covered in the hauntingly familiar red paint that made you shiver at the thought of even touching with your lips. The amount he licked his lips in a day smudged and moistened the paint to a slimy consistency and it made shivers travel down your back. It made you weak in the knees in the worst way possible. For this reason, you absolutely refused to kiss him. And because of this rule, J was not a happy camper.  

♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎

“Come on doll, why don’t you give your-a, J a little kiss?” The Joker cocked his eyebrow, staring down at you from the doorway as you absentmindedly flipped through the TV channels trying to figure out what to watch.

“Because it’s nasty, all your shitty paint is sweaty and wet and your lips are probably slimy from how much you lick them,” you scrunched your nose at the thought of it, shaking your head as you turned to face in his direction. He was visibly unamused and rolled his eyes.

“You're being drama-tic,” he groaned, adjusting his infamous purple coat and stalking towards you, “It’s just a little peck, princess, would it kill ya to show me a little loving?”

“Yes.”

Glaring into his empty eyes, you rose from your spot on the bed and stood in front of him. Your arms were crossed to try attempt to stand your ground, hoping that your stance would make him back down slightly. But this was J you were talking about and your sanguine theory was quickly disproven. Rolling his eyes, his hands immediately circled your waist and pulled you flush against his body. His sturdy chest was pressed against yours, allowing you to feel his steady heartbeat while yours was embarrassingly pounding out of your chest.

“Mmm, come on, doll,” his face was drawing closer to yours, sweat beginning to build up from the nerves. You’d probably fucked a million times and sucked his dick twice that, but kissing felt like a whole other... unpleasant territory.

“J,” you whispered, sucking your bottom lip between your teeth as you carefully considered your options. From close up, the red greasepaint seemed even more gooey and sticky and you visibly winced. There was no way you were going to kiss him, not with that mess all over his mouth.

Pressing a hand against his chest, you gently pushed him back. It was far enough for him to be an inch or two away from you. Unwinding his muscular arms from around your weaker body, you turned towards the door before looking back at him and giving him a sultry stare, “if your scars are anything to go by, you’re sexier without the greasepaint... just saying.”

♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎♔♥︎

A few days later, you were leaning against your kitchen counter and in desperate need of caffeine. Dumping the heaped spoon of coffee grounds into your mug, you idly stirred the drink as you peered around your home. It had been a while since you stayed the night at your house, mainly deciding to spend your days and nights with Joker wherever he decided to spend his time. This time, he’d insisted you stayed at your own place due to some stupid bank heist he was planning with his thugs and explained that ‘he wouldn’t tolerate any distractions.’

Sighing in boredom, you picked up the mug by the handle and carefully waddled over to your couch. Placing the cup onto your coffee table, you plopped down onto the couch and kicked your feet up onto the armrest. The first thing you did was turn the TV on, instantly turning to the news channel to see if J had been true to his word the previous night.

“We have just received reports of another one of The Joker’s-”

Scoffing in disbelief, you pulled yourself up on the couch before turning to another channel- not wanting to listen to how J had lied to you about his escapades only a few hours earlier. Whenever you saw him next you were determined to give him a piece of your mind, you decided. Bringing the boiling hot beverage up to your lips, you gulped down the caffeine that scorched your tongue and burned your throat as it trickled down into your stomach.

It wasn’t any secret, you despised J’s criminal ways and his cunning schemes and all the bad things he loved. You would never force him to stop, your main concern his safety and the thought of him teasing you with his gun and the thought of the sensation of his cool knife brushing against your skin made you hot and bothered. He was quick to calm your doubts and worries, reassuring you that the evil genius could never be killed or caught for long because he always had you to come back to.

Unfortunately, due to him knowing your qualms he tended to lie about his whereabouts to purge you of sleepless nights and restless days spent brooding over him.

“Asshole,” you whispered under your breath, going to take another big mouthful of the drink when it was promptly slapped out of your gasp and tumbled onto the carpet. It narrowly avoided your couch and was a hairs width of coming in contact with your skin.

“You-a, know you love me, Doll,” J’s rough dark voice came from behind you, every hair on your body standing on end as the reality of the situation dawned on you as your back straightened up in fear, “maybe a kiss will-a, make me feel better after you were so rude to Daddy.”

Breath hitching at his creative choice of wording, your core tingled from the excitement his words brought you. Nervously biting your bottom lip between your teeth, you froze as you felt J’s gloved hand sneak around to your front and rest just above your tits. The promise of his hands hidden behind purple leather touching you made you squirm in your seat.  The delicious mix of fear and elation you felt began to cloud your better judgement, knowing deep down you should confront him about what he said but wanting to allow yourself to get carried away with him.

“A kiss? Nothing else?” you softly spoke, turning to face him with half-lidded eyes and an intense fire burning in your gut. Your eyes went to his at first, slowly analysing the rest of his features. The change didn’t register with you at first, your desire fogging your mind and didn’t allow you to see past the image of the regular J you were accustomed to.

“Is my-a, face as sexy as you imaged, Doll?”

Confusion coated your face, eyes frantically wandering around before they widened in awe at the tantalizing sight presented in front of you. His usual white and red paint had been wiped away, small traces of his black eye rimming paint remaining. He was understandably in a rush on his way to your place, but you looked past that as you took in the face of the person you loved.

Crashing his lips against yours, his chapped lips moved with vigour as he swallowed your needy whines and moans that sent heat to his hardening cock. His hand dropped and squeezed your breast painfully hard, but it made a gush of wetness leak from your deprived pussy. Twisting your erect nipple between his fingers, he pressed harder against your plump lips and easily coaxed out more sweet noises from your swollen lips.

“Fuck,” you gasped, hands lifting to grasp his green strands of hair and tugging hard on them, relishing in the grunt he lets out from the sapid stimulation. You felt like putty in his hands, ready to do anything he wanted just to please him. You wanted to ride his cock and see stars, satisfy him in ways that would have him cumming in seconds. And now without that muck coating his lips, your swollen pussy and kissable pink lips were more than willing to give him everything.

“On-a, all fours with your ass in the air, Princess. Daddy wants to have a little fun with his little girl before he-a, has to get back to work.”

[theonyxpath]

Now available for order from our partners at Indie Press Revolution: Beckett’s Jyhad Diary Deluxe Edition!

It’s ever been a loaded word among vampires. Jyhad is in force everywhere from lofty, perfumed Elysium to cloying, smoke-filled blood feasts. Jyhad’s the eternal game played by elders, Methuselahs, and worse — it’s the agenda of beings so utterly beyond humanity, one such as yourself could scarcely understand its movements. 

Luckily for you, you’ve picked up a copy of my diary. With my help you may just take a step on the first rung of understanding. Information worth having is information you must earn through blood, and oh, how I’ve bled for what’s contained within these pages. 

— Beckett 

Beckett’s Jyhad Diary serves as the definitive book of setting and plot for Vampire: The Masquerade, containing 30 chapters spanning different geographical regions, encountering vampires of every clan, profiling obscure and profound segments of the mythology, and providing countless story hooks on every page. 

Masterfully written by the likes of Neall Raemonn Price, Joshua Alan Doetsch, Myranda Sarro, Steffie de Vaan, Malcolm Sheppard, Alan Alexander, Renee Knipe, and Matthew Dawkins, Beckett’s Jyhad Diary is as fascinating to read as to use for your game Chronicles.

Also available for V20: Beckett’s Jyhad Diary V20 Storyteller’s Screen and Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dice! The screen is a sturdy three-panel foldout with pertinent charts and quick-reference information for V20 games. The dice are, made by Q Worshop, are elegant grey-and-black featuring the numbers 1 through 9 in the familiar Vampire title font, and the V20 ankh taking the place of the 10, surrounded by thorned rose vines.

Also available: Changeling: The Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Edition!

Judge us not by our seemings for we are never what we appear. Come hither, changelings and join the dream-dance, lest the winter come and the Dreaming pass into memory.

Recall your heritage! Let the games begin!

Twenty years ago, White Wolf published Changeling: the Dreaming, the fifth of their promised five game-lines that together comprised the World of Darkness. Seen by some as a lighter, more fantasy-based setting in the modern-day, and by others as the darkest game White Wolfhad yet created, players had to face the question of what happens once creativity and magic fades from their world.

This 20th Anniversary Edition of Changeling: the Dreaming returns to that deceptively bright yet terrifying world and both compiles and completes the concepts of the previous two editions. Led by veteran White Wolf and Onyx Path developer “Blackhat” Matt McFarland, our writing team consists of longtime Changeling creators like Ian Lemke, Jackie Cassada, Nicky Rea, and Peter Woodworth, as well as familiar names such as Holden Shearer, John Snead, Maggie Carrol, Matthew Dawkins, and Krister Michl. One and all are dedicated to making Changeling: the Dreaming Twentieth Anniversary Edition the most playable edition yet – while not losing the wonder, awe, and majesty that Changeling is known for.

A revised and up to date look at the World of Darkness through the eyes of the Kithain – what has happened to the Dreaming in the last 20 years, and what is the state of Glamour and dreams?

Rules for all of the kiths including in 2nd ed, plus fan favorites from other books: selkies, piskies, clurichaun, and both Arcadian and Concordian sidhe.

Rules for the Gallain: The inanimae, the hsien, the Nunnehi, and others!

An overhauled and reimagined system for fae magic, including new Arts and the powerful but dangerous practice of Unleashing!

New full-color beautiful artwork as well as classic Changeling illustrations including remastered full page pieces of the kiths by Tony Diterlizzi.

Also available for Changeling: Changeling: The Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition Storyteller’s Screen and Changeling: The Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition Dice! Like the screen above, this is a sturdy three-panel foldout with useful reference information for Changeling Storytellers. The Q Workshop dice display the numbers 1 through 9 (with the signature Changeling luna moth on the 0 face) placed in a stained glass motif.

For more about our partnership with IPR, please see Rich’s recent Monday Meeting Notes.

Kickstarter Update

Our next Kickstarter is going to be Lunars: Fangs at the Gate for Exalted 3rd Edition, coming up on February 12 at 2pm Eastern!

Did you miss one of our previous Kickstarters? The following Kickstarted products are still open for preorders via BackerKit:

Dystopia Rising: Evolution: Dystopia Rising: Evolution rulebook

Scion: Scion 2nd Edition (Origin and Hero)

Trinity Continuum: Trinity Continuum (core rules and Trinity Continuum: Æon)

Exalted: Dragon-Blooded: What Fire Has Wrought

Vampire: The Masquerade: V5 Chicago by Night

Chronicles of Darkness: Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2

Geist: The Sin-Eaters: Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition

Community Spotlight

The following community-created content for Scarred Lands has been added to the Slarecian Vault in the last week (to be updated once DTRPG is back up):

Your product could be here! Have you considered creating your own to sell?

The following community-created content for Realms of Pugmire has been added to Canis Minor in the last week:

Calling: Librarians

Your product could be here! Have you considered creating your own to sell

[jessipalooza]

Of Unseen and Eyes, Part I

Whether people wished to admit it or not, the sea changed from land to land, place to place. In Quel'Thalas, it was fresh and teemed with magic. In Stormwind, it was sturdy and bland. In Booty Bay, it was rotten and unruly.

In Drustvar, it was ancient and stank of blood, fish, and rotten earth. 

Karsteth had manged to find an island off the coat of Drustvar, within sight of the Crimson Forest, tucked down in the south where it should have been cold - but it was not cold...it was damp, it was humid, it was uncomfortable. Nobody wanted to be there, and so it was the perfect place for a man that wanted nobody around him.

With his ship docked on one side of the small island, he trudged along the beach, rounding the large hill (or perhaps small mountain). Even Booker remained back with the ship, leaving the one-eyed, hand-scarred captain alone. He listened to the waves, the cry of the gulls as they circled fish nearby, and the crunch of shells and sand beneath his boots. 

The island was silent of people, his men far enough away that their shouting drowned out beneath nature. But that was how it needed to be in order for his gruff voice to carry as he bellowed: 

"DASIA!!"

Her home had grown smoky with the burning of offerings, and so when she felt the call to sea-soaked climes, she took it. It was simple to her-- when certain clients called, and with such need, she came. There were deals to make, things to win... and she had been hoping to hear this voice through the shady betweenplaces. 

When Dasia' feet touched the sand, though, she gasped softly, full lips parted to taste the air, the mist, the blood thick in both.

Kindred, she felt. Kin and kith alike. Welcome home, the land said. Where you belong. Amethyst-bright eyes flashed over the rocky outcroppings, the thin trees for this blasted and small islet, and she shivered with delight. She took a step, and almost lost her footing. Her magic, so well heeled for centuries, raced and dragged at her leashes, bright and eager for the hunt. She knew this place then, and her laughter filled the wave-wracked wind.

"Oh, my Captain, you always know the best places for our dalliances." She replied to him, her bare feet light on the soaked leaflitter. "My heart sings."

There was a distant call for more tar. The repairs were getting started in full swing, but Karsteth made not even a glance up. He knew where his ship was, he knew what it needed, he knew what his crew was doing...and his crew knew better than to dally. Thankfully, where his ship was wounded, he was not. 

“Cut yer weird shit, Dasia,” he said, as gruffly as ever. “We ain’t here for a lover’s triste. Y’know that well enough. Guessin’ ye even know why I called ye here.”

She hummed softly, eyes tracing over the man's features. He may not want her now, but her appreciation for him was certainly not purely professional and it showed in the smile that curled her lips. "To business then, my Captain." There was always special emphasis on that title; she had helped him secure it, and maintain it-- a possessive shade that lingered when she spoke it. 

"I know what the winds tell me; that you engaged and were so close to your goal that the blood was all but on your lips... when it again, was snatched back."

She tossed her wine-dark hair and stepped forward. "I also know she lived, and that your work is far from done, and that you need something to help you keep your shadow close and tucked neat between your boots, so as not to tip your hand to any." She stepped around him, eyes trailing from his features to his shoulders, circling the man while we words would wrap them in a thick mist.

Soon, even the sounds of his ship seemed to fade in the murk, and the scent of copper permeated, combining with the seasalt and the scent of dried herbs that clung to the witch.

"In short, you wish to make another deal, and my Captain, I am very happy to oblige."

Karsteth looked unimpressed at her 'guess'. With a deep breath in, he ran a callused hand over his face and scratched at his scruff-ridden chin. He unhitched his bow from his back, swung it to rest against a nearby rock, and sat himself down. With a wide spread of his legs, he rest his arms across his lap.

"In short, aye. I want another fuckin' deal." 

He turned his eye - nay, his eyes - up to the witch. One green and wispy with the taint of fel. One all different colors and teeming with her own magic. 

"She had a fuckin' war ship. I could sit around all day and wonder how the fuck that lil' bitch got a war ship, but it won't do me any fuckin' good. I didn't kill her, I know that much. And if she's been huntin' me'n'mine, she'll know I'm comin' next time. So I wanna make sure she doesn't. I want her fuckin' blind."

"You want more than just one girl blind." Dasia corrected, her voice almost chiding. "She hunts you now, but you know that as soon as word rises that the White Widow was wounded, there will be other sharks chasing the chum in the waters." She clucked her tongue to teeth softly. "I know your enemies are many because they are sniffing after anything that will bring them an edge... even seeking witches." 

There was always the risk he would grow violent with her, of course; she liked it, he was chaos made man and she loved that he was one of the few who could end her, wholly, upsetting so many years of planning. Still, she wanted him to know-- she was courted by others, and had not given them nearly as much as she had given Karsteth.

No other had given her two sons, despite the firsts faults. "I have not bothered with them, but they seek anyway." She finished her circling and stood before him, arms crossed beneath her heavy bosom, hip thrust out becomingly. "I will make you a deal to blind them all; they would need to have their soles on your deck to know where you are."

Leaning down, she purred softly to him. "Imagine, Karsteth, lord of the waters... unseen. By any foe. Arrive like mist over the shore, disperse just as invisibly." She closed the distance, stepped up to where he was seated, and recklessly slid her hand over his unscarred cheek. "I could make you this way."

“Who the fuck else is lookin’ for me?” He all but growled, watching her come closer but keeping his hands safely down, dangling between his legs casually. He was a predator and knew another predator when he saw one. He knew better than to take his eyes off of her. 

Without waiting for a response (it didn’t matter, after all, they’d all be dead sooner or later and he had a more pressing matter to handle), he scoffed with a whiskey-scented breath. He leaned back and gestures loosely to the witch in front of him. 

“That’s why I’m fuckin’ here, Dasia. What d’ye need this time? Some rubies, some fuckin’ flour, and the cock of a general or some weird shit as usual? Name yer price.”

As he leaned back, her hand was drawn away, and she clucked. "Other captains, other pirates. You make no friends with your white flag." She shook her head as though sadly, but he could still see her smile. "They circle, but I will help you evade."

She opened her hands to him, and in them red mist swirled. "I need very little this time; hiding is what me and mine are very very good at." Dasia purred and in her palms grew a small stone vial. "Drink this, and follow the tracks of white light amidst the red; you will find what remains of... something I need. Something I cannot get."

Dasia's voice softened, a serious note growing in the dulcet tones. "Use it where your ship is docked against safe harbor, but no step you will need to take. Get me the glowing fragment, and I will make you invisible to all your enemies. I have the stones and bones and things I need to hide you, all I ask is for this one thing; an eye lost in the Nightmare."

Karsteth arched a long brow at her words. She was a woman of deals and didn’t give anything freely. Whatever she required must be valuable enough. She must have been desperate enough. But he wasn’t going to question it and ruin an upper hand. The two had their dance. He would stick with it. 

“Glowin’ remains of what exactly?” He asked, looking to the mist and then the vial as it materialized. “Ye said an eye? How am I supposed to know where the fuck it is in all this place yer sendin’ me?”

"It will glow." She said it with surety. "It doesn't belong there, and the Nightmare is trying to consume it and it is not being consumed. You have the... easy part, it has been moved part of the way to the edge of Nightmare, and just needs the last steps to bring it back to the world of living and breathing."

The danger, of course, was that he would smell enough of her or just enough of life to bring the things that hunter Nightmare to hunt. But she could not traverse those lands for this item; she could not touch it, while within the Nightmare. Her deals had been clear, no matter how she chafed against them these many years later. 

Simpering, she pitched her voice softer. "It won't appear like an eye. I do not know what shape it has in the Nightmare, now that it has been there so long, but it will glow and stand out against the wilds."

Karsteth's attention dipped down to the vial in Dasia's hands. His tongue ran along his teeth again and he leaned back - not just for comfort's sake, but to sit taller, straighter.

"So, ye don't know what the fuck it looks like. Might not look like an eye. But it'll glow. And it'll be fairly fuckin' close to wherever the fuck I dock my ship. But if I take this shit ye got, find the glowin' piece'a'shit, and get it to ye, then ye'll see to it that that fuckin' bitch won't see me comin'. That she won't be able to find me."

Dasia's eyes met his. "I will make it worth your efforts. I want this eye, and you want to be unseen. A trade made by fates, yes? Steal an eye and steal sight with it." She laughed, but there was no humor in it.

If he had not called her, she would have sought him-- or sent one of her other debted dealmakers into the Nightmare. She needed this, and the sooner she had it... the sooner she could begin. Things were unfolding, becoming, far quicker than she had hoped. If Karsteth could obtain this...

"I will do exactly as you say; bring it, and you will move over waters unknown and unseen, until you so choose to be seen." Her tone grew serious, and she leaned in, eyeing his features once more with clear evaluation.

"Do we have a deal?"

As Dasia leaned in, his eyes dipped down briefly to the humorless smile. It was business, and he knew that. But it was something else, and he knew that too. He couldn't shake the feeling that she was fucking him over somehow. He knew she wasn't telling him the whole story, but he didn't give a fuck about what all of these eyes, tongues, secrets, blood, and stones were for. And yet....

Rather than offer her a gruff, verbal answer, he reached up and forcefully grabbed a fistful of dark, wild hair. Tugging her down, he smashed his lips against hers for a hard and open mouthed kiss. There was a sort of hunger to it, one that came from the sheer power of both of them being in such a close space. But he had also not had a whore for nearly a month. 

Releasing her with a bite of her lip and a taste of blood, he made a grab for the vial and tried to stand all at once.

"Aye, we have a deal."

The potion grabbed from her hands, Dasia let herself fall back a step after the rough assent. With a toss of her hair to right the mussed locks, she reached up to touch her bleeding lip with a smile. Chaos made man indeed; she was never caught so unawares as she was with him. Hunger and demand in him was always met with a surge of her own, and she had not the time to delve into such now. Yet, her smile was as genuine as a witches ever could be, and there was smug satisfaction in her words.

"Sealed with a kiss, then." Her fingertip traced in pink, she made a symbol in the air that seemed to trail fire briefly, before burning up-- and in the burning, so too did the mists finally fade. "I would linger for... further amusements, but this spell is in need of reagents, and I have perfect faith you will return to me soon with what I have requested; I would not keep my Captain waiting." There was a note of resignation in the words; she would have enjoyed a dalliance, but he had been right when he said this was no place for a tryst.

"And I don't have any time to waste," he said easily. 

Slipping the vial away on his person, he watched Dasia for a moment longer. He had seen the fire well enough, but he knew better than to question such things with the witch. There was no purpose in it. He would not get a straight answer. And neither did the answer matter. 

"I'll get whatchye need and bring it back here. With the seas as stormy as they are and the fuckin' trolls fightin' the Kul Tirans, they won't come near here. Right under their fuckin' noses."

He already started to leave, but stopped and glanced back at Dasia. "Ye will be here when I fuckin' need it, aye? Or are ye gonna pull some creepy shit and materialize on my ship when I got the eye?"

Her laughter was bright. "Here is well enough; I promised the riding of rough waters to another, I will be here on land for you to find." Dasia took a step away, not bothering to leave Karsteth with a linger glance-- she had what she wanted, and promise of his return.

Maybe they might have time then, maybe not, but she had smarting lips and heat to remember him by and that was enough.

As her gaze slid over the rock, she glanced to the mainland as well, and lifted a hand-- marks, inky and dark appeared on the skin in a rush as she felt the wind that blew from it, and the scent of magics that swirled within. "Oh, I will be here." Her smile grew sharp as she stepped between shadows of a tree, and seemed to disappear, only her words remaining. "Afterall, you brought me exactly where I need to be."

Karsteth watched as she stepped forward. He saw the blow of the breeze, and then he saw the shadows encompass her until she was not but an echo of her voice. He took in a deep breath of the ancient-scented land and sea - the blood and rotten earth of it all. 

"Right where ye need to fuckin' be," he murmured, repeating her sentiments. With a shake of his head, he turned fully and announced himself as he headed back to the White Widow, as the voices and sounds reached his ears once more.

"Get ready to make way, men! We're leavin' within the hour, repairs done or not!"

Part I | Part II | Part III

@thesunguardmg | @stormandozone 

[lyalii]

ITS HAPPENING OH MY GOD ITS HAPPENING

Girl I was not prepared for that last part

Your eyes can’t help grazing over the fading battle scars and scattered bruises, and your heart softens instantly. It visually reminds you that Din really is a human being under all that armor, and he feels all the same pain as you and many others. You try not to dwell on the toned muscles you can see, acquired from many years spent training and exerting themselves in battle, but you can’t help it

Yeah 😔 I wanna look 👀 respectfully 😇

I want shirtless din in next season is that too much to ask I want to look respectfully at his scars and give them kith and tell him he’s beautiful

Security - Chapter 11: The Rookie

summary: The princess anxiously awaits Din’s return, just to fall into the hands of his supposed partner instead.

warnings: angst, lots and lots of fluff

rating: T

word count: 3.489k

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chapter 11: the rookie

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[screamingatthevoid]

Ravens and Wolves, Part II

The long-awaited (at the very least, long-promised-and-not-delivered) Ravens and Wolves, Part II Electric Boogaloo is finished. Part III coming eventually, probably.

Leman Russ is haunted by the past, and the Space Wolves face an uncertain future.

[Part I: Nevermore on Tumblr] [Ravens and Wolves on AO3] [My Works on AO3]

Part II: For the Wolftime

211.M31 Fenris

IN THE SPACE of a moment, the world had been turned upside down. Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed by his kith and kin, was the fulcrum about which it twisted and bent. Unmoving, yet lost. There were two thousand others in the warrior-hall of the Valgard. Did they not sense the nauseating wrongness as he did? Perhaps they were no longer there after all. Perhaps he was alone. Bjorn could not tell. Two words filled all of his being.   Not you.

The primarch ascended through the upper levels of the Valgard, heading inexorably toward the docking platforms at the pinnacle of the Aett. Behind him came the Einherjar, two-score of the greatest warriors of the Rout. A shadow of their former numbers, perhaps, but every one of them was a veteran of the Heresy War.   Though there was a dark mood upon many of them, others laughed and boasted as though this were any other hunt. All knew that it was not. At their head, Grimnir Blackblood walked in silence at the primarch’s side, his features grim and his grip tight about the great maul Malanan. His one eye looked sidelong at his lord, and wondered.

  As Huscarl of the Einherjar, Grimnir had been closest to the primarch when he had entered his fugue. He had watched the primarch’s lips, and recognised the names upon them. Curze. Angron. Curze was long dead, but Angron? Russ had a score to settle there. Grimnir remembered their last battle, and his brow furrowed. It may have been a lesson, but the Wolf King had not let Angron defeat him – never that. Neither will stand, Russ had said. Lesson, or prophecy?   A giant hand slapped Grimnir’s shoulder, pulling him in close. Grimnir flinched at the touch of his primarch, and at the chill of the armour Elavagar.   “What’s on your mind, one-eye?”   “You had the look of a man experiencing a vision.” He didn’t ask what it was – such things were better left to the gothi – but perhaps Russ might reveal something of what it meant.   “Aye, it is so.” Russ chuckled, shaking his head. “All that time spent reading the runes to no avail, and a damned vision comes upon me when I’m just trying to have a drink. The wyrd is a real bastard sometimes.”   Had the wyrd finally answered the Wolf King’s question, then? “Where are we going, Jarl?”   Russ hesitated. “To find my brother.”   “Which one?”   There was a distant look in the primarch’s eye as he looked ahead, as if checking to see if a landmark he expected to lay on his path had come into sight. “I don’t know.”   Grimnir scowled. If a primarch needed to be found, there was only one place for the hunt to begin. It brought the cryptic last words of Kva Who-Is-Divided to Grimnir’s mind, the old gothi beckoning him close, dark eyes like drops of blood frozen in amber wide with revelation. The Eye is in the Well, and the Well is in the Eye.

The Fell-Handed stood alone, seemingly rooted in place on the edge of the dais where the great table stood. Bjorn was called many things – the Fell-Handed, the Bear, Daemonslayer, Wyrd-Marked, Youngest, Jarl of Onn, Shield-Bearer – but of all of them Einherjar seemed a bitter irony for the last of Russ’ guard. It was usually rendered blood sworn in Low Gothic, but lone warrior was just as accurate. The rest of the Rout let him be, treating his manner as if it were merely his usual brooding. Could they truly be so blind? Wild speculation as to the fearsome beasts the primarch would slay and the mighty trophies with which he would return from his hunt echoed in the hall of carven stone. They drank and ate, boasted and brawled as though nothing had changed. Perhaps they did not yet comprehend that it had.   “Who pissed in your mjod, Winterclaw?”   The bass rumble at his shoulder intruded on Thrain Winterclaw’s thoughts. He turned to see Haldor Twinfeng grinning at him from behind his greying beard. The jarl of Tra – once Bjorn’s own Great Company – wore a gilt-edged suit of power armour in the blue-grey that was slowly replacing the old legion colours, heraldry of the sabretooth snarling on his shoulder. His namesake, a pair of curved fangs each as long and sharp as seax blades, hung from his gorget alongside those of a dozen xeno-beasts slain in the centuries since.   “Hjà, Jarl,” Thrain replied half-heartedly. He had no retort to offer.   “Skitja, your mood is black!” Haldor pressed on, throwing an arm around Thrain as if it would impart a measure of his levity. With his other hand he rapped his knuckles against the newly blackened ceramite of Thrain’s breastplate. “Have you taken the priesthood’s colours not just on your armour, but to heart?”   “I’m not the only one.” Thrain gestured to Bjorn.   “And what of it? Bjorn’s been a miserable bastard for years, no reason you should join him.”   Thrain hesitated, wondering if he should continue. The first jarl only to have known the chapter, never the legion, Twinfeng shared perhaps the closest bond with the primarch outside the Einherjar.   “It’s not like you to keep a leash on your tongue.”   “What becomes of us now? We are not like the other chapters. It was only the will of Russ that kept us together. Yet we cannot fracture, the Wolf Brothers taught us that.”   “You speak as if the Wolf King died.” There was an edge of threat creeping into the Jarl’s voice now.   “How many of the others returned?” Thrain snapped. One by one, the primarchs had fallen or disappeared. With Russ’ departure, only Dorn would remain – the Emperor’s Praetorian to the last. “For all we are likely to see of him he is as alive as Guilliman.”   “Guilliman? Do not speak to me of Guilliman,” Haldor spat, corrosive saliva hissing as it ate into the flagstones. He had been at Thessala the day Roboute Guilliman had been laid low. He had been the one who brought home the saga of the primarch in his living tomb. He shuddered at the indignity, and the memory of the Wolf King’s fury. Russ had raged for days – threatening to march into the Temple of Correction and tear his brother’s stasis-coffin down. “Propped up like a trophy on Macragge.” It was no way for a warrior to end.   “Because they could not let him go.”   Haldor bared his fangs with a growl that warned he had at last been pushed too far. “The Wolf King will return.” He spoke with conviction beyond faith. He didn’t just believe it, he would defy reality itself to make it true if he had to. After all the madness the galaxy had seen, it might even work.   “I recognise my failing, and will be sure to correct it,” Thrain muttered, though his thoughts remained defiant. The Rout would not be held together by an empty throne and an absent king.

The Lord of Winter and War seemed to bend the very elements around him. The fur of his great wolf pelt stirred in disrupted air currents, bristling with impatience just as she had in life. Carven bone totems and ingots of raw metal rattled against the plates of Elavagar, cacophonous in the stillness at the top of the world. Beneath his feet, hoarfrost covered the exposed mountain peak.   For the most part the mountain concealed the vast bastion that lay beneath the surface, but the upper kilometres of the Valgard were marred by spires and docking piers enough for several star forts. Atop the highest of the sky-bridges that wove between the mountain and its towers, the Einherjar grew restless as the minutes passed and Russ remained unmoving as the mountain beneath his feet. A stormbird idled on the landing platform at the other end, the sound of the engines swallowed by the thinness of an atmosphere that tested the limits of the space marines’ genhanced physiology. None reached for their helms. They were the Wolf King’s own honour guard, and they would not show weakness in the presence of their liege while he stood alone and unhelmed at the very pinnacle of Fenris.   From his vantage point, Russ looked out over the jagged peaks of the volda hamarrki that rose from the storm clouds of Asaheim like the scattered islands of the worldsea. None came close to rivalling the Fang, but even the Father of Mountains did not quite live up to the legend that the World Spine pierced the void itself. Not by the Imperial reckoning, at least. The Imperium took things too literally, as ever, but Fenrisians understood the paradox. The mountains were the pillars that held up the sky-dome, and that limit defined the boundary between Fenris and ginnungagap, the space between stars.   The stars are bright, he thought. They are calling you.   Russ put the thought from his mind, for it was not his own, even as he paid no heed to the figure who was, and was not, standing beside him. The crippled king in battle-scarred bronze equalled his stature, even hunched against a broken spine, empty hands forever twitching, grasping for the bladed staff that had fallen from them centuries ago and light years away. Russ learned long ago to ignore the spectre that had haunted him since their duel on Prospero. It was easier to face the monster that his brother had become than to look into the blood-filled eye of Magnus as he had been on that day. That it had begun stepping into the waking world did not change that.   The wheel of life and death had turned again. The last links to the old age, when he had walked the ice with the first Einherjar, were gone, and even the age that followed – that he had once believed would last forever – was a fading memory. The Allfather no longer had need of an executioner.   Still you linger.   “Does he wait for some sign?”   “Perhaps he is having another vision.”   Russ made no move, ignoring the unrest of his Einherjar and the silent whispers of the brother he murdered. He would move when the thread of the wyrd pulled him, and not before. He closed his eyes, frigid air threatening to freeze his nose, throat, and lungs as he pulled in a slow, deep breath.   The death world had shaped him, and he had recast the Sixth Legion in his own image. It had been so natural, for all the primarchs, he had never stopped to consider whether it was wise. Now the wars they were made for were over. Where other legions had adapted to the new way, Fenris would not let the Rout change. Her ice was in their veins, her claws lodged deep in their hearts. Their fates were intertwined now. Perhaps they always had been.   But his was not.   An impossible distance away, a raven cawed. The smell of blood and brimstone filled Russ’ nostrils. His ears pricked up at the sound of the second, strangled cry. The third was a rasping death rattle. Eyes snapped open, focused with a predatory intent.   The Wolf King threw back his head, and howled.

Infinities away, within turning wheels of thought and memory, the single eye of Magnus the Red was fixed on the world of ice. If his daemonic form had possessed a face, it would have been smiling.

[ocean-in-my-rebel-soul]

Elara can handle Rage. It is familiar, the beating of her heart. Shems. Shems. Shems. Rage is the tear in the sky, the blowing up of the holy woman, everyone’s repeated dismissal of her own faith and personhood. Rage keeps her warm, keeps her moving. It is her sword and shield. She can wield her wrath, and direct it for her own gain.

Hunger is an old friend. The gnawing, emptiness in her middle that hung like a heavy cloud. For a year she fasted, seeking closeness to inevitability, listening for whispers on the wind in isolated silence. She turns her stomach gurgles to augury, reaching for omens and signs in every starving clench. Desire is her drive. Hunger is her strength.

Fear is a familiar weight. She has seen her death and lived through it, a chance of faith or fate that a man in black had healed her in the forests. Fear has left claw marks and twisted scars burrowed into her flesh, and she still walks the paths where she received them. I don’t want to die, Fear murmurs to her, a death rattle of a bone-dry mouth hissed through leathery lips. Fear has her bleeding out at thirteen, once more alone, growing colder with every second. I won’t, she tells herself. I was born to do this. Elara proudly wears the heraldry of the Friend of the Dead upon her face, and peers at the world through His eyes. Fear keeps her moving forward.

Terror is new, she admits. Spiders were never her favorite creature, and now they burst with the red, gore and viscera splattering her with each strike. Terror shows her the ravages of the sickness, the red phantoms in friendly eyes, the pulsing green of the Fade ripped wide above her head. It shows her a world obliterated by ancient ambition, but she’s come back from that--she has bested time itself. Terror has to keep up, if it wants to catch her.

Despair stops Elara cold in her tracks.

It is the mouth of a lover curling around words of disinterest, shattering the illusion of sweet lies. It is the knees giving out in grief, kith and kin slaughtered indiscriminately for no more reason than the shape of their ears. Despair is centuries of isolation, of exile, yearning for the gods who can no longer hear the People. Despair is the daughter she could never be, the knight who had failed her people.The sacred vow that lay broken on Elara’s tongue, suffocating her in her sleep.

Despair comes for her, and Elara falls.

[illuminating-dragons]

Kith (4/?): Legacy

                The worst thing that the Death Eaters ever did to Dean was that they made him hate his father.

                Dean was the oldest of the three, and he remembered Daddy best. He remembered a dad who was away for work a lot, but he always had time for his children when he was home. He played plenty of games, showed them beautiful parts of the woods around their house, and never left without saying that he loved them. Dean could just remember a few times when his mother and father were together, but he remembered them being happy.

                That’s why it was such a shock when he left.

                Even the police thought he was probably missing. It wasn’t a big town, and everyone turned out to help look for Jacob Thomas, even the woman who made faces at the darkness of the Thomas’s skin. But nothing turned up, no evidence of foul play, no evidence of him leaving against his will…there was only the evidence that he walked out on three children and his wife.

                People stopped looking, and Dean stopped hoping. They eventually stopped talking about his father all together. Dean wanted to believe that his father was dead, or kidnapped. It was better than thinking that he’d left for no reason, on an ordinary day.

                When Dean learned the truth, he spent the next several months learning as much as possible about his father. He went through Auror records and talked to Kingsley Shacklebolt, who remembered his father. “Jacob helped train me,” the Minister of Magic explained. “I am so sorry that no one came to find you, Dean. You deserved to know a long time ago.”

                Jacob Thomas was top of his class, a Gryffindor who played as a Beater the same years as James Potter was Chaser. He loved to draw, and his cubicle at work had all of Dean, Lucy, and Ellie’s drawings. They’d been stored away for years, perfectly preserved, and Dean traced the childish lines and tried not to cry.

                Dean wasn’t cut out to be an Auror; his year on the run and in captivity taught him that much. But he could honour his father in a different way.

                Because there was a third part of Jacob Thomas’ life that no one knew about. You see, in between Auror missions and weekends with his family, Jacob saved people from abuse.

                There was no recourse for domestic abuse victims in the wizarding world, but Jacob hadn’t let that stop him. Dean found a journal recording at least twenty different families in crisis, where Jacob had sent people off to other cities, even off to other countries, with money and supplies and safety. The abusers were sometimes jailed, and sometimes Jacob just put ‘taken care of’. Dean checked a couple of the names, and found only old records.

                As it happened, Dean was already working at a Muggle women’s shelter, because he had a “stepfather” once, a rich man with an empty heart and cruel grasp.  It took six months of constant fear and pain for his mother for her to be able to save them properly. They stayed on the run for two months while the police searched for the man, and Dean remembered the shelters that became their homes, if only for a few nights. Giving back felt like a good way to deal with the aches in his bones, lingering from his months in the Malfoy mansion.

                To Dean’s horror, not much had changed since his father’s covert missions. There were a few laws in place now that forbade marital abuse, but there was no place for the victims to go. And the challenges of escaping an abuser that had magic too, that abused you through magic and potions…

                There was nothing, and Dean was determined to change that.

                He read his father’s book over and over, and talked to his colleagues at the Muggle shelter, and finally he was ready. Seamus supported him fully, and Parvati Patil wanted to work with him. “I can’t believe this doesn’t exist yet! We need to get this going right away.”

                Parvati looked after the little ones their seventh year, fighting duels and taking detentions for anyone she could shield. When Dean learned how to do tattoos, he drew flowers and birds and a roaring lioness over every scar.

                They chose a house just outside London, with a big lawn and trees in the backyard, with lots of bedrooms and a big kitchen. Terry Boot and Astoria Greengrass came to put in protective shields and redesign the building to make rooms for playing and learning, rooms for storage of belongings, and a healer’s room. Draco Malfoy came one day and put in secret compartments and doors, even a passageway out to the yard. “Just in case,” was all he said.

                Stan Shunpike, finally out of prison (after having done exactly nothing wrong), offered to be their transportation. “I can keep me mouth shut,” he promised, face still gaunt from Azkaban.

                So the Knight Bus was an option for smaller operations, because disguises would be enough to shut up the other passengers. Dean and Parvati sat down and devised a strategy, figuring out the best way to get far enough away from the pickup place so that there wouldn’t be a trail.

                Next they needed more people. Dean wasn’t stupid—he knew that this would take extra people, otherwise they might not be able to respond fast enough. The last thing he wanted to do was get somewhere too late.

                There were plenty of volunteers: Hestia offered to be a counselor; Professor Sprout, now retired, wanted to create activities and learning for the children; Fleur came by often to give whatever help they needed. Kingsley gave them some Aurors on call (extensively background-checked), and over the years more people showed up, joining the ranks wherever they could.

                The last thing they did was choose a name for their organization, and it had to be something that everyone would understand, everyone could remember, and something that would sound normal in casual conversation. Dean came up with the perfect name.

                For most of the wizarding world, the Shelter was just called…well, the Shelter. There was never any clear public press about its activities, which was the point. But there were whispers, and art, and letters underneath the lid of Lavender’s Pretty tins. Whispers of a way out for the abused and abandoned, a place where normalcy could be regained and wounds could be healed. A place you left when you were ready, that gave you a hand out of the darkness.

                A place called Jacob’s Ladder.

[illuminating-dragons]

Harry Potter Fanfiction Masterpost

Updated as of: August 14th, 2018

Fading Scars

Open Wounds

Imprinting- Tonks, Teddy, and brief motherhood. (AO3)

I See You- Sirius and Harry have an important conversation. (AO3)

Lucky Man- Snape reflects on eyes, hair, and the worst combinations. (AO3)

Guardian- Minerva McGonagall reflects on her students. (AO3)

A Frank Talk-  Sirius has a responsibility to fulfill, and Harry's not interested in hearing about it. At least not at first. (AO3)

The Great Wolfstar Breakup of 1974 (AO3)

Fading Scars (World-building Hub)

Harry Potter and the Holiday- what it says on the tin. (AO3)

The Godsons part 1- Harry and Draco talk. (AO3)

Close Call- Harry gets injured during an Auror mission. (AO3)

The M Name- Percy announces his daughter’s name. (AO3)

The Sortings- All of the Next Generation Sortings. Doesn’t stick to canon. (AO3)

The Chosen One’s Choosing- Harry proposes to Ginny. (AO3)

Provincial Town- The Romione proposals. Yes, proposals. (AO3)

Career Choices- The original generation and their career journeys. (AO3)

A Dragon’s Quest for Forgiveness- Draco Malfoy’s redemption arc. (AO3)

A Sporting Good Time- New sports come to Hogwarts. (AO3)

Love in Time- The original generation’s love stories (AO3)

The Consequences of Eavesdropping- Teddy finds out about the Dursleys. (AO3)

In Flight- Harry right after the Battle of Hogwarts. (AO3) 

Sound, Sickness, and Sleep- Harry takes care of Ron while he’s sick during their Auror training. (AO3)

Dudley Redemption Arc

Recreation- Dudley Dursley’s redemption arc (AO3)

Test of Time- Iris Dursley has some news for her grandparents (Iris Durlsey/Lucy Kelly Weasley) (AO3)

Lay Here In My Arms

Come Together (Teddy| Maia Lupin/ Victoire Weasley) (AO3)

Greatest Joy and Privilege (Dominique (Nicky) Weasley/ Lara Cassiano) (AO3)

The Battles in my Heart (Fred Weasley II/Rita Scamander/Pierre Dwayne) (AO3)

History Lessons (Roxanne Weasley/Nat Blythe) (AO3)

Passionless, Passionate (James Sirius Potter/Abby Wood) (AO3)

Partners (Lou Delacour & Bert Joseph) (AO3)

Fearless Love (Molly Weasley II/Fiona Tremblay) (AO3)

Finding Friendship (Rose Granger-Weasley & June Quince, Rose Granger-Weasley/Carol Quince) (AO3)

A Worthwhile Fight (Albus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy) (AO3)

Muggles, Magic, and Manchester (Lucy Weasley/Iris Dursley) (AO3)

Love Squared (Lily Luna Potter/Leila Marcos/Tilly Ascough/Danny McEvoy) (AO3)

Finding Dragons (Hugo Granger-Weasley/Ricky Morris) (AO3)

Conversations Between Generations

No More Lies (Harry Potter and James Sirius Potter) (AO3)

To Dream Again (Ginny Weasley-Potter and Albus Potter) (AO3)

Why We Are Afraid (Hermione Granger and Rose Granger Weasley (AO3)

More Than A Teaspoon (Ron Weasley and Hugo Granger-Weasley) (AO3)

Pity The Living (Neville Longbottom and Ellie McEvoy) (AO3)

The Importance of Being Albus (Harry Potter and Albus Potter) (AO3)

Laugh Until You Cry (George Weasley and Roxanne Weasley) (AO3)

When You Don’t Find Them (Luna Lovegood and Lorcan Scamander) (AO3)

Grown Ups Growing Up (Neville Longbottom and Scorpius Malfoy) (AO3)

Draco Malfoy Is A Good Future Father-In-Law (Draco and Scorpius Malfoy) (AO3)

Fresh Pickled Toads (Ginny Weasley-Potter and James Sirius Potter) (AO3)

A Question of Marriage (Hermione Granger and Hugo Granger-Weasley) (AO3)

Dangers of Experimentation (Luna Lovegood and Lysander Scamander) (AO3)

Keeping Secrets (Ginny Weasley-Potter and Lily Luna Potter) (AO3)

Regrets in Retrospect (Ron Weasley and Rose Granger-Weasley) (AO3)

Poison Pen (Harry Potter and Lily Luna Potter) (AO3)

Fear of the Heart (Harry Potter and Teddy | Maia Lupin) (AO3)

Kin

Chasing Dragons (Charlie Weasley) (AO3)

Father’s Wisdom (Arthur Weasley) (AO3)

Exquisite (Audrey Kelly Weasley) (AO3)

Always a Twin (George Weasley) (AO3)

Passions to Passion (Oliver Wood) (AO3)

Hearts in Flight (Katie Bell) (AO3)

The Fourth Man (Fred Weasley) (AO3)

Waking Up (Angelina Johnson) (AO3)

First of Many, Many Firsts (Bill Weasley) (AO3)

Son of the Chosen (James Sirius Potter) (AO3)

Taking Care (James Potter Sr.) (AO3)

Nightlight (Luna Lovegood) (AO3)

Stages (Petunia Dursley) (AO3)

Beauty in Motion (Fleur Delacour) (AO3)

Love and Loathing (Vernon Dursley) (AO3)

Making Amends (Dudley Dursley) (AO3)

Charting A Course (Al Potter) (AO3)

Difficult Love (Lucius Malfoy) (AO3)

Petals and Potions (Lily Evans Potter) (AO3)

Life of A King (Ron Weasley) (AO3)

Being Ginny Potter (Ginny Weasley Potter) (AO3)

Mothering (Molly Weasley I) (AO3)

Sticking to It (Draco Malfoy) (AO3)

Kith

Lavender’s Pretties (Lavender Brown) (AO3)

House Pride (Ernie Macmillan) (AO3)

Witness (Lee Jordan) (AO3)

Legacy (Dean Thomas) (AO3)

Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Viktor Krum) (AO3)

References for the Fading Scars World

Character References (AO3)

Timeline (TBD, will be updated as it goes)

[illuminating-dragons]

Fanfiction Update

Hello everyone! 

As of today I have published 500k words of fanfiction, which is kind of mind boggling. 

Today will also be the start of a two week hiatus from publishing anything at all. 

I’m currently working on one story per fandom (HP, Sherlock, SPN), and they’re at different stages of readiness. I finally wrote out an outline template that I like and makes sense to me, so I’ve been doing more detailed outlining for these longer stories. My rule is that I won’t start publishing a long story until it’s complete, and it might be a while before any one of them is finished. 

On top of that, the Kin and Kith chapters I’ve been posting? Yeah, they were all supposed to be like 500 words or less. 

Oops. 

Not that it’s a bad thing, because I really enjoy writing them, I’m just running out of prepared stuff for the first time in like six months. 

So here’s how this is gonna work: I’m going to take a two week hiatus, and then I will post four more stories in the Fading Scars world. Then I’ll be off for another week, and then I will begin posting an SPN story (sequel to We Don’t Talk About It), which is already completed. That should take us into September, and by that point one of the three (at least) should be ready to go. 

So farewell for now; I’ll still be lurking and stuff, but this will help me build up more of a backlog, which is better for everyone all around! 

Cheers,

Acme

[illuminating-dragons]

Future Fanfiction News Flash

Okay listen I know I said Saturday but it is still the weekend so close enough! 

I’ve gotten some pretty large chunks of work done on several projects, and it’s enough to let me make a VERY ROUGH schedule of when things will be up. 

I will be posting stories every second day, I will only post when things are finished, and I likely won’t be posting two stories at once (except for some exceptions. 

So here’s how the next few months will go: 

February: 

Survival of the Worthiest (SPN): 12 chapters, multiple AUs, explore other options than many characters dying :) 

In Time (SPN): 1 chapter, the final part of the Team Goddamnit John series.

March-April: 

Sally’s Baby (Sherlock/Princess Bride):  ~23 chapters, the ‘Have Fun Storming the Castle’ sequel. There will probably be a oneshot released before then in that verse that takes place before HFSTC, focused on Molly Montoya and a lovely Princess. 

We Don’t Talk About It (SPN): 8 chapters, focuses on Sam and Lucifer during season 11. 

April-May: 

Tearing (Harry Potter): ~26 chapters, the long, plot-filled story set in the Fading Scars universe, which begins with the Veil. 

The Devil’s Mid-life Crisis: 18 chapters, follows ‘We Don’t Talk About It’, an AU of Season 12. 

June: 

Lay Here in my Arms (Harry Potter): 2 chapters, finishing up with Lorcan and Lysander. 

Kith & Kin (Harry Potter): Posting more stories of the 100+ planned chapters. 

So...yes. There will be lots of content. I’m trying to jump around between fandoms (partly because some are WAY closer to being finished than others, partly because I know not all my readers are in all my fandoms). I will be working on more projects certainly, but after all of these have been written, so I’m happy to take suggestions still! 

I will do my best to stick to this plan (which is why I don’t want to plan more than five months in advance), and there will be the odd story which gets fit in here. For example, stories in Kith and Kin will likely be added between now and posting Tearing, because I’ll need to add some characters so Tearing makes lots of sense. 

So get hype for your favourites! And you can ask...some questions. I don’t want to give too many spoilers :)

Here are some things you can always count on: 

I hate John Winchester

John Watson is bisexual and Sherlock Holmes is demisexual. 

I believe in happy endings, but it might be a hard road there. 

Cheers,

Acme