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hellotvshowtrash · 4 years ago

Note

Major angst warnings!!! As well as canon typical violence and gore. Description of blood and requests of blood and death.

Elijah x reader

Due to recent problems with witches the reader dies in his arms. As she bleeds out and her heart stops beating, Elijah sings THEIR SongTm Like I’m Gonna Lose You by Megan Trainor. And then klaus and Rebekah have to pry him off of them and practically drag him away kicking and screaming because it’s been hours (maybe days) and he’s just sitting there, soaked in her blood and cradling her slowly decomposing body.

Well... you asked for it!

Like I’m Gonna Lose You

TW: lots of blood, major character death, graphic depictions of death and postmortem decomp, hella sadness, ((sort of song based as in the ask above!)) using witches as a cop out just like plec did <3 this is by far the darkest fic I have ever written, please feel free to skip if any of this makes you uncomfortable!

Word count: 1.4K

My submission for the April2021promptchallenge! Prompt was “I wanted to be better than this.” “Maybe next time.”

I was going to make a moodboard but this gif is too fitting and good to not use

The humid Louisiana air clung to them as they swayed, gripping each other tightly despite the sweat trickling down their skin. Elijah wrapped his arms around his love, taking in the scent of her hair around him, his eyes closing in bliss. She clutched him back, breathing heavily. Golden lights hung around the pair, the silver moon glinting in the sky. The perfect night for such a perfect pair.

Elijah opened his eyes from his dream to his reality, sitting, rather than dancing, cradling her in his arms. The sticky sweat and humid air was replaced with the hot scent of iron and the thick sheen of blood. Nothing had prepared him for this. Nothing had prepared him to lose another one of his lovers. His throat felt tight, no sound escaping him as his eyebrows furrowed at the sight of her. Confusion riddled his mind, how could this have happened? How is she here now, bloody and broken when she was just dancing with him the previous night? Her smile was so wide and radiant then as she admired the new ring on her finger.

Now, she was choking, losing her consciousness and looking at him desperately. She reached up weakly, cupping his cheek with a blood covered hand.

Blood poured from her, in no slow fashion, from multiple wounds across her body. He had tried to feed her his blood, it proved fruitless rather quickly. He had made it to the empty compound in time to cradle her gently, his whispered vows and her gurgled cries filling the soundless concrete walls. He clenched his jaw, his tears creating streaks down his face.

One thing hadn’t changed from his dream, and that was the silvery hue of the moon pouring in from the open roof above them. It illuminated her in a way that Elijah had once deemed divine, but now, now it was horrible and tragic but still somehow beautiful because it was her, and it was always her and it would never not be her. He caressed her face gently and she blinked at him, her own diamond of a tear cleaning a path down her cheek.

Elijah’s breath stuck in his throat, his voice coming in a croak when he tried to string together something coherent. “I never meant to take you for granted,” he whispered to her. His voice was deeper and more gravelly than normal, and it made her smile. Even wrought in pain, her smile still made his heart jump. “I wanted to be better than this,” he choked before sobbing, dropping his forehead to hers. She shifted underneath him and he realized she had chuckled.

“Maybe next time, yeah?” She coughed and a trickle of blood escaped the corner of her mouth. Elijah opened his eyes to look into hers, placing a soft kiss on her cracked lips. Like a puff of smoke, her breath escaped her lips for one last time and her hand went slack, falling from its place on Elijah’s cheek. His face twitched at the cool air making contact with the blood she left behind before he let a choked whine through his clenched teeth, his ears unable to find her comforting heartbeat. He squeezed her tightly against his body, her own limp and lifeless.

Elijah wasn’t sure how much time had passed, sitting against the concrete wall, holding onto her. He knew that the sun had come up and gone down at least twice. He knew that the body - her body- was slowly bruising and becoming cold, a smell had begun to accumulate and her cheeks had started to sink in. But still, he held her. He held her and talked to her, telling her all the things he should have said when she could still listen. And he sang to her, but he didn’t really sing because Elijah Mikaelson doesn’t sing, but he did say their song to her as if she could hum along like she used to.

“I’m gonna love you,” he whispered, pushing her hair away from her face. “Like I’m gonna lose you,” and his voice cracked as he sobbed. “I’m gonna hold you, like I’m saying goodbye.”

The footsteps came before he was ready.

“Goodbye, my love,” he whispered to her, kissing her forehead one last time.

“Dear god, brother, what happened?” Klaus was next to him in a beat, avoiding the now dry puddle of blood beneath Elijah and his love.

“I’m… not sure,” Elijah answered in a daze. “One moment we were dancing and the next..” he drifted off, his eyes staring past Klaus and now Rebekah and Freya who held each other in horror.

Freya reached out and grabbed Klaus’s shoulder, gesturing to a mark on the body’s hand. “Witches,” she whispered. Elijah hadn’t noticed the mark before, not through his grief. He stared down at it, feeling as though his gaze could burn the mark off her cold skin.

Klaus took a moment to take in Elijah’s appearance. Dried blood coated his white button up, a bloody, smudged handprint covered his right cheek. His hair was disheveled and tears stains covered his cheeks.

“Sister, get a sheet, please,” Klaus murmured. In a whisper of air Rebekah was gone and back again, white sheet in hand. “Elijah, you must let her go,” Klaus put his hand on his brother's shoulder.

“No.” Elijah responded immediately, his own voice loud in his ears.

“Broth-,”

“No, Niklaus. I cannot leave her. I can’t let her go. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” only then did Elijah lift his eyes to meet his brother’s, realizing that Klaus was dirty with mud and blood. He looked over at Rebekah and Freya, both were frayed and Freya was slightly wounded, but all in all, they were okay. “Where were you?” Elijah asked quietly, his eyes not leaving Freya’s.

Freya’s heart broke in her chest as her eyes welled with tears. “We were dealing with these same witches.” She gestured to the body cradled by Elijah. “We should have been here,” she said, leaving Rebekah’s side and moving closer to her brother, keeping her eyes locked on his. “I’m so sorry, Elijah.” As she talked to him, Rebekah and Klaus worked gently to remove the body from Elijah’s lap. Elijah didn’t necessarily let them, but he didn’t fight them either. He maintained eye contact with his sister and as soon as his lap was freed he collapsed into her arms, sobs tearing free from his lips. Klaus and Rebekah moved the body to the nearest table, wrapping her in the sheet supplied by Rebekah. Klaus swallowed roughly and turned back to his brother.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, brother.” Freya helped Elijah stand and Klaus moved to Elijah’s other side, helping him up the stairs of the abattoir. Elijah caught a glimpse of the body in the sheet laying on the table and broke once more, dropping to his knees on the stairs, his siblings trying to keep him afloat. He turned and rested his head against the railing, staring at it - at her.

In his long thousand years, a grief like this hadn’t ever consumed him. Not because he wasn’t aware of the risks being with him carried, because he was fully aware of them, but because he had worked tirelessly to keep her safe in the last two years of the relationship they shared, because he knew they should have been safe.

“Her ring,” he croaked, his hand extending through the railing in her direction. Rebekah, still standing next to the table, moved to uncover her left hand and pull off the ring that lay delicately on her finger. Once it was in her possession, Elijah’s hand fell and he closed his eyes, his cheek pressing up against the cool metal of the railing.

As hard as it was for Klaus to be, he was speechless. He had never seen such a visceral reaction from his usually level headed brother. Freya choked back her own sob, the pain in her brother radiated and she felt it too. Rebekah didn’t dare make eye contact with any of her siblings, her eyes couldn’t leave the body of the girl she almost got to call sister.

Elijah now stands in front of the freshly bricked tomb, his eyes unmoving from what he knows lay inside. A whirlwind of events led him here and he wonders what he could’ve done differently to save her. He lays his palm across the brick, his eyes filling with tears again.

“Maybe next time, darling.”

—

Taglist: @elijahs-wife @dumble-daddy @alwaysfangirlingish @akshi8278 @drachentraum @nikmikaelsonswife @njeancastro316 @mikaelson-emma @brown-eyed-babes

For Elijah, Klaus and Kol only: @malfoys-demigod

#super dark fic #the originals #elijah mikaelson #elijah mikaelson x reader #april2021promptchallenge #I blame Leigh for this!#they requested it!#elijah Mikaelson angst #just sadness #major character death

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number5theboy · 5 years ago

Note

Please elaborate on how Five could've turned into the most insufferable character to watch

Thanks for asking me to elaborate on this text post:

@tessapercygranger, @waywardd1 and @margarita-umbrella also wanted to see a more detailed version of it, and I ended up writing an essay that’s longer than some of my actual academic essays. So buckle up.

WHY NUMBER FIVE SHOULD BE THE MOST OBNOXIOUS CHARACTER IN TV HISTORY, AND HOW HE MANAGES NOT TO BE

Number Five: The Concept That Could Go Horribly Wrong

Alright, let’s first look at Five in theory in an overarching way, without taking into account the execution of the show. The basic set-up of the character, of course, is being a 58-year-old consciousness in a teenager’s body, due to a miscalculation in time travel. Right off the bat, Five is bar none the most overpowered of the siblings; by the end of Season 2, no one has yet been able to defeat him in a fight. He is a master assassin – and not just any master assassin, but the best one there is – and a survival expert, able to do complex maths and physics without the aid of a calculator, shown to have knowledge of half a dozen languages, has very developed observational skills and, to top that all off, he can manipulate time and space to the point where he can literally erase events that happened and change the course of history. And Five knows how skilled he is; he is arrogant, self-assured and sarcastic, and his streak of goodness is buried deep inside. David Castañeda once described Five in an interview as 90% chocolate with a cherry in the middle, meaning that you have to get through a lot of darkness and bitterness before knowing there is a good core, and I think it’s an excellent metaphor. However, Five is also incredibly, fundamentally terrible at communicating with anyone, and, because he is the only one with time travel abilities, the character a lot of the actual plot - and the moving forward of it - centres around. Also he’s earnestly in love with a mannequin, who is pretty much a projection of his own consciousness that functions as a coping mechanism for all the trauma he has endured. All in all, this gives you a character who looks like a teenager, but with the smug superiority of a fifty-something, who a) is extremely skilled in many different things, b) has a superiority complex, is arrogant and vocal about it, and most of the superiority is expressed through cutting sarcasm, c) has one very hidden ounce of goodness that he is literally the worst at communicating to other human beings, d) is what moves the plot along but is also bad at talking to anyone else, meaning that the plot largely remains with him, and e) his love interest is essentially a projection of himself. Tell me that’s not a character who is destined to be just…obnoxious, annoying, egocentric, a necessary evil that one has to put up with to get through this show. There are so many elements of this characterisation that can and should easily make Five beyond insufferable, but the show manages to avoid it, and I’m putting this down to three aspects.

That Trick of Age and Appearance

Bluntly put, Five as a character would not work if he was anything else than an old man in a 13-year-old body. Imagine this character and all his skills and knowledge, but actually just…a teenager. Immediately insufferable. Same goes for him being around 30, like his siblings, all of which are stunted and traumatised by their father’s abuse. If Five, being comparatively unscathed by Reginald to the point where he explicitly does not want to be defined by his association with his father, were 30 like his siblings, it would just take the bite out of that plot point and also give him a lot less time in the apocalypse, reducing the impact it had on him as a person. And making Five his actual 58-year-old self would make him very similar to Reginald, at least on surface level, with the appearance and attitude. Five and Reginald are two fundamentally different people, but having one of the siblings being a senior citizen that’s dressed to the nines and bosses his siblings around in a relatively self-centred way does open up that parallel, and would take away from Five’s charm as a character. Because pairing the life experience of a 58-year-old with the appearance of a teenager gives you the best of both worlds. You get the other siblings (and a lot of the audience, from a glance in the tags of my gifsets) feeling protective and paternal about Five, but his age and experience also give the justifications for his many skills, his arrogance, in a way, and his ability to decimate a room full of people. It’s the very interesting and not new concept of someone dangerous with the appearance of something harmless, a child. This is also where Five’s singular outfit comes in. I know we like to clown on Five to get a new outfit, but I think what gets forgotten often is how effective this outfit is at making the viewer take him seriously. The preppy school uniform is the perfect encapsulation of the tension between old man in spirit and young teenager in appearance. The blazer, vest and especially the shirt and tie are quite formal, relatively grown up. They’re not something we, the audience, usually associate with a teenage boy wearing; it makes Five just a little bit more grown up. But there is also a reason characters in this show keep bringing up Five’s shorts and his socks, because those are not things that we associate with grown men wearing; they’re the unmistakably childish part of his school uniform. Take a moment and imagine Five wearing a hoodie or a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers; would that outfit work for him as well as the uniform does? Would he be able to command the same kind of respect or seriousness as a character? I don’t think so; the outfit is a lot more pivotal in making Five believable than a lot of people give it credit for.

Writing Nuance

The other big building block in not making Five incredibly insufferable is the writing. Objectively speaking, I think Five is the most well-written, and, more importantly, most coherently written character on the show (which does have to do with the fact that the show’s events are all sequential for him), and his arc and personality remain relatively intact over the course of the two seasons. More to the point, a giant part of what makes Five bearable as a character is that he is allowed to fail. He is written to have high highs and low lows, big victories through his skills and his intelligence, but also catastrophic failures and the freedom to be wrong. His superior intellect and skillset are not the be-all end-all of the plot or his character, just something that influences both. His inability for communication has not (yet) been used to fabricate a contrived misunderstanding that derails the plot and left all of us seething; instead, it’s a characteristic that makes him fail to reconnect with the people he loves. This is a bit simplified, as he does find common ground with Luther, for example, but in general, a lot of the rift between Five and his siblings is that they can’t relate to his traumas and he does not understand the depth of Reginald’s abuse, which is an interesting conflict worth exploring. Another thing that really works in Five’s favour is that he is definitely written to be mean and sarcastic, but it is never driven to the point of complete unlikability, and a lot of the time, the context makes it understandable why he reacts the way he does. Most of the sarcastic lines he gets are actually funny, that certainly helps, but in general, Five is a good example of a bearable character whose default personality is sharp and relatively cold, because it is balanced out with many moments of vulnerability. Delores is incredibly important for this in the first season, she is the main focus of Five’s humanising moments, and well-written as she totes the line between clearly being a coping mechanism for an extremely traumatised man and still coming across to the viewer as the human contact Five needs her to be. In the second season, the vulnerability is about his guilt for his siblings, it’s about Five connecting a little bit better to them. There’s also his relationship with the Commission and the Handler specifically – which honestly could be an essay on its own – that deserves a mention, because the Handler is why Five became the man he is, and this dynamic between creator and creation is explored in a very interesting way – their scenes are some of the most well-written in the entire show. And TUA never falls into the trap of making Five a hero, he is always morally ambiguous at best, and it just makes for an interesting, multi-faceted character, well-written character, and none of the characteristics that should make him unlikeable are allowed to take centre-stage for long enough to be defining on their own. I know a lot of people especially champion the scenes where Five goes apeshit, but without his more nuanced characterisation, if he was like that all the time, those scenes would not hit as hard.

Aidan Gallagher’s Performance is Underrated

But honestly, none of the above would matter that much if the Umbrella Academy didn’t luck out hard with the casting of Aidan Gallagher. I think what he achieves as an actor in this show is genuinely underappreciated. Like, the first season set out to cast six adults having to deal with various ramifications of childhood trauma, and a literal child that had to be able to act smart and wise beyond his years, seamlessly integrate into a family of adults while seeming like an adult, traumatised by the literal end of the world, AND had to be able to create the romantic chemistry of a thirty-year-long marriage with a lifeless department store doll. The only role I could think of to compare is Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, where she plays a vampire child who, because she is undead, doesn’t age physically, but does mentally, so she’s 400 in a child’s body. And Kirsten Dunst had to do that for a two-hour movie. Five is a main character in a show that spans 20 episodes now. That’s insane, and it’s a risk. Five is a character that can’t be allowed to go wrong; if you don’t buy Five as a character, the entire first season loses believability. And they found someone who could do that not only convincingly, but also likeably. As I said, he is incredibly helped by the costuming department and the script, but Aidan Gallager’s Five has so much personality, he’s threatening and funny and charming and arrogant and heartbreaking. He has the range to be convincing in the quiet moments where Five’s humanity comes to show and in the moments where Five goes completely off the rails. Most child actors act with other children, but he is the only child in the main cast, and holds his own in scenes with adults not as a child, but as an adult on equal footing with the other adult characters. That’s not something to be taken for granted. But even apart from the fact that it’s a child actor who carries a lot of the plot and the drama of a series for adults, Aidan Gallagher’s portrayal of Five is also just so much fun. The comedic timing is on point, he has the dramatic chops for the serious scenes, the mannerisms and visual ticks add to the character rather than distract from him, and his line deliveries, paired with his physical acting, make Five arrogant and smug but never outright malicious and unlikeable. It’s just some terrific acting that really does justice to the character as he is written, but the writing would not be as strong if it wasn’t delivered and acted out the way Aidan Gallagher does. He is an incredible asset for this show.

Alright, onto concluding this rambling. If you made it this far, I commend you, and thank you for it. The point of all of this is that Five, as a character, could have been an unmitigated disaster of a TV character. He is overpowered, arrogant, uncommunicative and could so easily have been either unconvincing or completely unlikeable, but he turned out to be neither. It’s a combination of choices in the costume department, decisions in the writing room, and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skills that make the things that should make him obnoxious and annoying incredibly entertaining, and I hope you liked my long-winded exploration of these. Some nuance was lost along the way, but if I had not stopped myself, this would’ve become a full-blown thesis.

#thanks for the ask again #TUA #The Umbrella Academy #Five Hargreeves #tua s2 spoilers #my meta #i guess #Replies #Anonymous

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ink-fireplace-coffee · 3 years ago

Text

You Are Safe Here: Character's Study

A/N: I thought the best way to get to know all the little ppl that starr in this WIP is by putting them in different situations. Here you have a really really complex sibling's relationship, an exhausted therapist, and the crazy amount of secrets the three of them can keep while being in the same room.

TW: blood, wounds

WC: 647

Characters: Tira, Nix and Eris.

---

Tira goes inside her apartment just as the sun is beginning to hide. She tosses the keys on a small table to her right, suppressing a groan when they slide off the surface and fall to the ground. She decides to rest her back against the door and close her eyes with a sigh instead of picking them up.

To be honest, Tira is way too young to feel this tired at only 22. As her mom would say she “still has all her life in front of her”, and shouldn’t feel like she is constantly carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Still Tira guesses working can make anyone feel worn out.

She counts to three and takes a step away from the door, repeating out loud the list of things she has to do: easy tasks, nothing really hard, and yet every step feels like the last one.

“Make dinner. Run bath. Check schedule. Clean up.” She takes off her shoes and leaves them in the entryway. After a beat, she also picks up the fallen keys and sets them on the table.

The girl goes to the kitchen. It is small, perfect for one she thinks, with a wall covered in colored tiles and the basics. Right now, it’s tinted in orange colors, thanks to the sunset that streams through the windows.

Tira sets the grocery bag on the kitchen table and just stands there. She should put the things in the fridge. Maybe even look out for leftovers that could save her night.

Some police cars pass right down the street at full speed, sirens blasting. Her body completely freezes, exhaustion be damned.

When she can’t hear the noise anymore, someone knocks on her door twice. Fast.

A second passes and there’s two more desperate knocks.

Tira runs to open.

Whoever she is expecting to see, it’s definitely not Eris, one arm around Nix’s neck while clutching his side. Her doormat is turning crimson.

Tira immediately takes Eris by the other arm and gets both siblings inside, her mind full with questions. She looks at Nix, and the villain shakes her head ever so slightly. She can’t let Eris know, not yet.

“We need a bathroom.” Nix finally speaks and Tira can only point to where hers is. Both siblings start limping to it.

When Tira arrives, Eris is slouched on the floor and against the bath, both hands pressing his stomach with a vacant expression.

“Why didn’t you take him to the hospital?” Tira asks, her mind finally having a coherent thought. Eris is pale and losing blood and that wound definitely needs stitches and-

“Hospitals are filled with civilians.” Violet Thorns passes through Tira and then murmurs, “And you know what would happen if I went there.”

The therapist takes a moment before understanding what Nix means: she is still dressed in her suit, and, although Eris isn’t, the sight of a villain would be enough to take her down.

Nix takes a deep breath, and opens a closet, rummaging inside and trying to find something to clean up the wound. She knows she is risking everything just by being there with Tira and his brother in the same space. She can’t let Eris know that she knows who Tira is, or the whole mission will be over. She needs to be the villain he expects her to be.

One second of eye contact with Tira and then Violet Thorns is the one talking.

“If you say something to the police or you ask for help I’ll kill you, understood?” And, just for show, she lets her fingers touch one of the leaves of a plant. When it withers thanks to the poison inside her, she looks at Tira again. “Did I make myself clear?”

Tira nods and she really looks scared.

Eris coughs and the threats are over.

#wip: yash #you are safe here #oc: tira #oc: nix #oc: eris #my writing #writers of tumblr #snippet??

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jamilelucato · 5 years ago

Text

Muggle [F.W.]

*gif not mine

Pairing: Fred Weasley x muggle!Dursley!reader

Request: (anonymous) Could you do a imagine where the reader is a dursley aka Harry’s cousin. But when Fred and reader meet they don’t know, and they fall in love since she knows about magic. But she’s a muggle of course. So when Fred takes her to meet the family Harry’s so shocked. Maybe they use to love each other and trust each other like siblings but when he discovered he was a wizard they fall apart. Because Harry has other things going on. And maybe after forth year, they completely stoped talking and they both regret it. So when they see each other it hurts both of them, but they end up making up.

Summary: y/N Dursley is tired of being away from Harry because of her parents because he’s a wizard and because he stopped reaching out. She starts going after her cousin herself and she has the help of the Weasleys to do so.

Words: +6,3k

A/N: Had no idea where this was going until I wrote it. Hope you all like it; tried to keep it as coherent to the request as I could. There’s a scene where it was supposed to be Harry and y/N but I thought it would make more sense if it was other character speaking (you know it when you see it).

Harry Potter Masterlist || Musical Hogwarts Series

___

“Wait up, girls. I think I might know these guys,” she says just when her friends’ laughs are dying out.

She takes one last look to her back, hoping nobody will notice she’s checking out the tall and red-haired boys.

“Really? From where?” asks one of the friends in a whisper.

But y/N ignores the question. She takes one last sip from coffee and rush to catch the boys before they leave the place.

“Hey, you two!” she calls out after noticing she’s never going to catch them — one of their steps equals three of hers.

One of them looks at her first, tilting his head confused. The other one finally turns too, but he seems less intrigued than his twin.

“Are you... Weasleys?” she says when she gets close enough to them and whispers the last name as if it could be a curse-word or something. It was definitely prohibited in her household.

The twins exchanged looks, confused. They pretend to not recognize her — because they sure can’t remember from where they know her. She still doesn’t know why she decided to call them out anyway.

“Two of them, yes,” one of the boys answered, taking his time to mess with his red hair. The movement certainly showed some charm. “Why?”

She gulps — she was not expecting to be asked. However, the second twin, silently until now, decides to speak up.

“Aren’t you one of Harry’s cousins?”

She shakes her head yes, pressing her lips together at the same time. Remembering to have good manners, she offers them her hand.

“It’s y/N Dursley, actually.”

“Sure I presumed your name wasn’t ‘Harry’s cousin’,” giggled the twin that shook your hand first. He had a firm grip and a welcomed warm hand. He took his time with her hand, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to let it go. “I’m Fred, by the way,” he smiled, finally freeing her hand.

The other twin quickly took your hand in his as soon as you were free.

“I’m George.”

“I remember you two. Left my brother with a big purple tong just a couple of weeks ago,” she commented, trying to diffuse the tension.

They exchanged looks, scared if the right reaction was to apologize or to laugh. It sure was rather fun watching the fatty get what he deserved for years of bad things to Harry.

Y/N noticed her comment had the wrong reaction and tried again. “It’s fine, you can laugh. He sure deserved it.”

The one who presented himself as Fred chuckled, more because of her face than because of her brother. However, the one said to be George remained in silence.

She gulped, noticing the awkward situation.

“Well, I just stopped you two because I wanted to know... about Harry,” she says with an anxious tone. Talking about Harry was always a hard thing — with her parents or with his friends. “I sometimes write him letters, you see — not that he replies — but he never shared your family’s address, and I’ve been... Rambling,” she chuckled, pressing a finger in front of her lips. “Sorry for the non-stop talk. I want to know if Harry’s okay, that’s it.”

George steps towards her but stops when he realized his twin had done the same and was faster to speak up.

“Harry’s perfectly okay,” says Fred with a smile that showed no teeth.

“He’s been well-taken care of,” added George. “Did your parents want to know?”

“Who? Petunia and Vernon?” she asks before burst into laughter. The idea that her parents could be worried about Harry was absurd. “No — it’s me who wanted to know.”

She breaths hard before stepping backwards, away from the boys. She’s starting to feel blue, and she doesn’t want them to see her in that way.

“Well, anyway... thank you, boys, for telling me. I was worried, and then I recognized your red-heads...” her voice died out. She raised her head and stared at the twin said to be Fred. “What were you doing here? Harry said wizards don’t hang in ‘munnel’ places.”

She had a great point.

“It’s ‘muggle��, dear,” George corrected y/N trying to hold his laugh.

“And we generally don’t. We have a friend, you see, muggle-born, that tells us this place has the best coffee in the world,” Fred raises his own cup of coffee to go. “We decided to see if it was true.”

“Don’t tell our parents,” chuckled George.

“Nor our little sister,” added Fred and they both started laughing at their particular joke.

Silence fell upon the three of them again. Y/N looked from George to Fred, taking her time to look at that last one. Somehow, he had captured her attention, and it wasn’t just today. Since the day they came to Harry’s rescue a couple of years ago — of course, she knew about the flying car, her window gave her a great view of the three red-heads inside it —, y/N has been fascinated with the family. She wished she had been born a witch, like Harry. Maybe he would stop avoiding her if they were equals.

She turned her face back to take a look at the coffee shop before facing the twins again.

“Sorry, boys, gotta go. Can’t let my own coffee run cold,” she smiled sympathetically. “Tell Harry to write to me, would you?”

“Sure,” answered Fred promptly.

“Thank you,” she replied and started walking away as slow as she could. That was the closest she had ever been to real wizards besides Harry, and she actually managed to keep a conversation! That was new, because last time those two same boys were in her living room, she blushed, frowned and hid behind a pillow. And that had happened just a couple of weeks ago!

“Hey! Wait!” a male voice shouted from behind her. She was turning while one of the twins was running towards her. She presumed it was Fred, although she couldn’t be sure — they were wearing the same clothes.

“What is it?” she asked, stopping her tracks so she could wait for him to reach her.

“I can give you our address. Would be easier to get a reply from Harry if you were to be the one to contact him,” he suggested, shrugging as if he didn’t care if she took the address or not. “Muggle’s post-men generally pass through our house.”

She shook her head yes non-stop, excited for the niceness of the boy.

“Here, do you have a...” his voice died before finishing the question because he had no idea what the muggles used to write things down. But he got a piece of paper anyway — it was the paper that surrounded his coffee to make it easy to hold.

“A pen?” she completed his phrase, chuckling. Then, getting one pen out of her pocket, she continued, “Always care one with me. Quite useful.”

“Pen,” he whispered, not to her, but to test the word in his accent.

She offered the thing to him. He stared at it as if it was magical.

“Never seen one, have you?” she asked, giggling with joy in her heart, but he was already writing down the address.

Fred tried to give her both the paper and the pen, but the last one she did not accept back.

“Take it; you’ll like it more than I do,” she explained when he looked at her, confused.

“Thank you,” he said, genuinely grateful, but she said nothing, and slowly he walked away, playing with the pen with his fingers. His twin met him half-way, and soon they were gone from her sight.

***

She had written to Harry. Twice, actually, and none of those times she got a reply. The first letter she sent to the address Fred gave her and the second one she sent to his school. It was funny because, although Harry Potter seemed in no mood to talk to her, his owl always showed up from time to time in y/N’s window, as if she waited for her to have something for Harry. And y/N usually had.

She was in the middle of her own classes in the public school, but she wasn’t paying attention to the History class. Frankly, she already knew what the teacher was teaching.

Inside her notebook, laid Fred’s note with his house’s address. She didn’t exactly know why she carried it around. Perhaps it meant she knew the address of a hot boy; perhaps it meant she knew a place only wizards lived. Whatever it was, she couldn’t stop staring at it and rereading it all over again.

It also had a kind of joke written on it. Fred didn’t give his real name to the waitperson, and, at first, she thought he was just scared of his name being too wizard-like. But it really wasn’t. His name was completely okay. Different from the one he actually gave the waitress — that one was a bit stupid.

Behind the address to the Weasleys, a single name was written: Merlin.

It took her a couple of minutes to remember where she knew that name from, and then she felt completely dull for not immediately getting it.

Merlin was King Arthur’s advisor and a powerful wizard, at least, that was the children books told her when younger.

Perhaps Merlin was real to them. Oh my God, Merlin was definitely real to them!

She tried once more to pay attention to the class instead of the note she had memorized, but it was worthless. When the bell announced she was free to go home, she felt some sort of relief. Part of her was thinking of writing a letter to the address she had, only this time it wasn’t going to be to Harry.

But that was stupid, right?

She didn’t have much time to think because as soon as she got home, one letter already waited for her.

“This came for you today,” said her brother in a disgusted tone.

She took the letter from his hands, desperate to see what was it about. Opening it up, she read:

Dear y/N Dursley,

This is Molly Weasley, the mother of Harry’s best friend, Ron. I’m writing to you because I’d figured you would like to come with me to Hogwarts, to watch Harry’s thrid task at the Triwizard Tournament. I’m sure by now you know all about it, but maybe your parents can’t come because of their muggle jobs — I don’t really know how it works — but perhaps you and your younger brother would like to come.

Please, write me back with a reply as soon as possible.

With love,

Molly Weasley.

Y/N couldn’t believe her eyes. She read it at least twice before putting her backpack on the floor. Dudley stared at her suspiciously, he couldn’t understand what the letter was about or who was it from.

When she was sure she understood every word Mrs Weasley wrote, y/N rushed to the kitchen where she knew she’d find at least one of her parents. And there her mother was.

“Harry’s a participant in some Tournament?” she asked loudly.

Her mom looked up from the dough she was preparing, with an uptight look in her face. She didn’t like her kids screaming.

“Huh?!?” y/N threw the letter to her mom as if showing evidence. “And we were invited to watch? Never cared to mention, did you?”

Her mom got the paper and took her time to read it.

“What is this woman insinuating? That you are going with her to that wizarding place?” Petunia asked in a mocking tone before tossing the letter to the trashcan, but not before she tore it in pieces.

“Oh, I’m going!” you shouted. “Harry needs us, needs me.”

Petunia gave her a challenging look. She didn’t know y/N had memorized the Weasley’s address and therefore would not need to get the torn to pieces letter.

Y/N got a paper from her school bag and wrote a reply, saying yes she would go, any day that was. She also mentioned she knew nothing about the Tournament so if Mrs Weasley could explain, she’d like that very much.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Petunia asked from behind her daughter. Dudley watched excitedly.

“Replying,” she simply said. But now that it was written, what would she do? Fred Weasley had mentioned it could take days before a muggle post-man would pass their house...

The answer didn’t need to be given. As if she knew and she waited, Harry’s owl came flying through the kitchen window and stopped right over the table, in front of y/N.

“Take this to the Weasleys, would you?” she said, giving the note to the owl, who didn’t wait for Petunia’s approval to leave the place.

“I can’t believe it! Your father wouldn’t like this, young lady!” her mom frowned.

“It doesn’t really matter to me. Now, how many letters has Hogwarts been delivering here about Harry that you guys haven’t told me about?” she retorted, getting up.

Her mom opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t let her.

“Don’t say it doesn’t matter! Harry’s your nephew, my cousin! The only one I have!” she exploded, letting the anger domain. “I bet that if those letters invited you to study there, you’d have said yes! I bet you’d have gone!”

She walked away, but her mom fetched her by the arm.

“Young lady!” she shouted angrily, but y/N didn’t care.

“Wouldn’t you, huh? Or would you have gone?” she turned her face to see her mom, but the woman said nothing. She seemed hurt, which meant y/N had won. “Because I know I would. God knows I’d give anything to be out of here!”

And with that, Petunia let her go to her room.

***

Mrs Weasley and a pretty man named Bill Weasley appeared in front of her house in Privet Drive. They had a car with them — a flying one — and it was with that they were taking y/N to Hogwarts.

Y/N had counted hours to that moment. She even accepted Mrs Wealsey hug with a tight embrace, so thrilled she was.

Bill was the one driving while y/N was sitting in the back, but the trip was not awkward at all. Mrs Weasley asked y/N every possible question, and for once, y/N was glad someone could finally see her point of view about Harry and the wizards.

“I love Harry, I do. It’s just, he kinda left me behind with this thing of being a wizard, you know,” she said, hoping Mrs Weasley would understand her.

Bill seemed to get y/N’s point rather quickly, and she was glad for it. The Weasleys seemed so pleasant, all of them. And very handsome too, may she add.

“So, did Harry’s owl have any trouble finding you?” you asked when Mrs Wealsey’s questions seemed to have ended.

The woman exchanged looks with her son before gulping. Only then she answered:

“Well, actually, dear, I think Hedwig committed a mistake, even though that owl is incredibly good...” y/N raised a brow while listening. “You see, she delivered your letter to Fred and George at Hogwarts. They were the ones who sent the letter to me.”

Y/N could feel her facing frowning, the face of shock and confusion. She thought she had been specific to the owl, but I guess saying “the Weasleys” can mean a nine different people and there was no way the animal could know.

Bill, however, misunderstood your face.

“Fred and George are the twins, I don’t know you’ve met them...” he said, but his mom seemed to have a different opinion about the last part — Molly knew y/N remembered her twins, because they told her so, and, frankly, Molly had never seen Fred give a muggle so many compliments.

“Oh, I’ve met them,” y/N sighed, remembering that day so many days ago. She could visualize it as if it was happening right in front of her.

The flying car made a delightful trip. Molly told y/N that they usually never used it, but since they were caring a muggle, that was the only way they could take her to Hogwarts. Mrs Weasley informed that she made her husband upgrade it to make it safer.

“And he wants you to tell your experience with it, as a muggle,” continued the woman. She was nice but being called a muggle so many times was beginning to hurt.

When she finally arrived at Hogwarts, y/N was kind of disappointed. Is this it? An abandoned, ruined castle?

Bill noticed her look. “Don’t let it fool you. The castle is beautiful; it’s just that, from outside, muggles can’t see it,” there it was again, the little word y/N started to hate.

They walked in, and y/N finally saw what he meant. Hogwarts was more than beautiful — it was delightful, enchanted, unique.

That day y/N met so many wizards, she was sure that she would remember it as if the best day of her life. There were wizards from other places in Europe today as well. Some of them were Professors, some of them were parents of the other champions.

Now, she knew everything about the Tournament because Molly Weasley sent her — along with instructions of the day — a copy of a book about the competition and she spent the three whole nights reading it.

She asked if she could keep the book — a memory that wizards existed if Harry decided after today to cut relations with y/N — and Molly said she had bought it just for her.

They waited a bit before Harry finally walked in the room they were at. They were close to the fireplace, and Harry walked towards them. He didn’t seem to have noticed y/n was there too.

“Surprise!” Mrs Weasley smiled broadly and then she kissed him in the cheek.

“You all right?” said Bill, noticing Harry had finally seen his cousin.

Harry Potter stayed silently, and it seemed as if all the other families were watching the two interact. Harry loved her too, but he also knew her. She was always a fantasy lover, she would have loved to be a witch. Harry was just scared his own enthusiasm could hurt y/N.

“You came,” he said, simply.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Harry,” she smiled before ignoring her shame and pulling Harry to a hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t write much this year, I didn’t know about the Tournament,” she whispered in his ear while her tears fell.

Harry was more than a cousin, sometimes more than a brother. Y/N was just a couple of years older, but she saw him as her little boy. She had to raise him anyway because her mom couldn’t care to do it.

“I’m so sorry, y/N,” he whispered back, not letting her go yet. “I shouldn‘t have...”

“Shh..” she interrupted him, finally pushing him a bit away just to see his beautiful eyes. “It’s okay. Nobody wants to be friends with the muggle.”

She shrugged, hoping it would make Harry feel better, but it had the opposite result. She, however, didn’t let him say anything else.

Bill asked Harry questions about the castle — if it was still the same — and Molly joined in, telling her own experiences. Y/N had none, so she stayed in silence, hearing.

“Fancy giving us a tour, Harry?” Bill asked, and she knew he was doing it for her. It made her like the Weasleys a bit more.

“Yeah, okay,” agreed on Harry.

After a few minutes of walking — the castle was enormous — a couple of other red-head found the four of them.

“Fred, George, what are you doing here?” asked Bill, pulling them to a short hug. Fred barely cared — he had his eyes locked on you.

“Paying a visit,” said Fred.

“We never see the family,” added George and Harry laughed.

They said hi to y/N too, but she replied blushing.

“I believe you two are gonna follow us in the tour,” said Mrs Weasley, raising a brow towards the oldest twin.

“Why not, mum?” said Fred, smiling.

Harry just shrugged and continued guiding the group around. Fred and George always added information to Harry’s description — only to your ears because they were scared of their mother’s opinion — such as which prank they had done in each place, and where were the secret passages. Y/N like the company; it made her feel wanted.

They all stopped at the Great Hall, where they sat down at the Gryffindor’s table, as Harry explained to y/N.

“Oh, I’d like to sit at the green table,” y/N commented, pointing to it.

Harry widened his eyes while Fred and George came to y/N’s rescue.

“No, you wouldn’t,” said Fred. But he said nothing more to explain what could possibly be wrong with that table.

The other Weasleys that still attended the school and a girl named Hermione Granger also sat next to them while they ate. They all seemed excited with each other, talking about all things that sounded really cool but you had no idea of what it meant.

The tour continued after eating, and y/N loved every moment of it. She was sure she’d love to study there. Would she and Harry be housemates? — oh, yeah, the Weasley girl explained to y/N why they sat at the red table instead of the green one.

Fred and George, surprisingly, followed Harry, Bill, their mom and y/N around all day. Something told y/N they were there for her, but her insecurity never let her be sure.

They were always making jokes and — when their mom wasn’t looking — they’d cast sparkling spells just to see her surprised and amused face.

By the time they had to go back to the Great Hall for the evening feast, y/N had no more doubts that it had been her favourite day of her life. She would have to write it down in a diary or something. For one day, she was just like Harry. For one day, she was a witch.

And that was all she ever wanted.

Then, it all happened.

They called Harry to the task, and they all left to watch. Y/N said her good luck to her cousin and watched him disappear inside the maze. She was uptight during the whole thing. Something didn’t seem right. Was a school suppose to send students inside a make in the middle of the night in an activity that could kill them?

Maybe being a muggle had its perks.

“He’s taking too long, isn’t he?” y/N asked Fred, the twin sat down to her left.

“I can’t tell. Never seen a Tournament before,” he answered.

“But what about the other tasks? Where those this long?”

”No,” sighed Fred.

He noticed she was apprehensive, and he wanted to do something about it. George, who was sitting at y/N’s other side, raised just one hand high enough for Fred to see and he understood.

“Take it,” he offered his hand to her, “you can squeeze it if you are too frightened.”

She looked to the hand and back at him. Such a pretty boy... why would he be nice to her? But it was her good day, so she didn’t think much more before grabbing it.

They stayed like that for a couple of minutes. Every time y/N heard a noise, she would squeeze his hand. Sometimes, she worried she was using too much strength to do so.

When Harry finally popped out of the maze, y/N didn’t think much before pulling Fred into a tight hug. He gripped her with all his force, scared that would be the last and only time he could do so. She probably thinks I’m a freak, he thought to himself.

But then, silence fell upon the crowd that once was cheering. Noticing something was wrong, y/N let go of Fred and rushed down to the field where Harry was over a dead body.

Cedric Diggory was one of the champions, and he laid lifeless in the ground. Next thing she knew, the place was chaotic. Mrs Wealey and Bill took her out of there, but she protested, saying she’d only live when she knew Harry was alright.

They decided to use one of the classrooms to stay with y/N as they waited for information about what was happening. Bill wandered around but quickly came back, noticing it was better to stay and protect his mom and the muggle.

When the door opened a couple of hours later, and it scared Bill for a second before he realized it was only two of his younger brothers.

“George, Fred, what are you doing here?” Mrs Wealsey asked, hugging her boys.

“Keeping you all company,” answered Fred.

“Actually, Mum, Bill, I think Ron wants to talk to you,” added George.

“Ron? Why would...?” but Molly stopped talking when she realized how her son Fred looked to the muggle girl. She pressed her lips in a short smile before grabbing Bill. “Come on, Bill. And, hm, George, I think you need to show us the way.”

“Of course, mum, of course! Follow me,” and just like that, they left y/N alone with Fred.

“Take care of the girl, would you, Freddie?” requested Mrs Weasley.

“Sure, mum,” said Fred.

Y/N seemed unaware of the sat up, and Fred was glad for that. He wanted some time alone, maybe ask her on a date, but it seemed wrong now that he was about to do it. She was worried about her cousin.

“He’s fine, you know,” he started saying. “Harry is okay now.”

She looked at him, tilting her head unconsciously.

“The Diggory boy had an encounter with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Well, Harry faced him too. But Harry lived,” continued Fred, but he was rambling. Y/N was confused about those terms.

There was a dark wizard after Harry. Maybe He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Name was the guy. And Harry survived, so things were... fine?

“Where’s he?” she asked, unaware that Fred was glad they were alone together in a quiet room.

“Talking to Dumbledore,” he said, but that didn’t explain much to y/N. “Our Headmaster,” he added, pressing his lips together in the end.

Y/N sighed, getting up from her chair and walking around the room. There were many thoughts inside her head, and Fred started worrying if you were going to lose your mind. He would never have sent you here if he knew what was going to happen — if only Fred knew then Fred’d have burned that letter Hedwig gave him, but instead, he thought it was some type of sign and sent it to his mom.

He wanted to see y/N. He didn’t know why, but something about her face, her voice — even her mom side with Harry and, definitely, her curiosity with the Wizarding World — made him want to know more about her.

If you asked Harry, he’d say Fred was quite annoying, more than ever. He had all sorts of questions about the muggles to Harry, and he always made the conversation go to the Dursleys and end with y/N. Anything Harry knew about her, Fred now knew too.

“Well, there isn’t much I can do here...” y/N pondered aloud. “Perhaps I should go home. Petunia will be expecting me today, anyway.”

Fred couldn’t understand her words, so he stayed silent. That caused y/N to turn and face the ginger boy.

“Petunia’s my mum. Still don’t feel like callin’ her mum, though,” y/N said what she thought was an explanation, but Fred was still confused, even though he nodded, pretending to understand.

“If you wanna go home, I can get Bill to take you. ’M sure Mom won’t leave Hogwarts so early,” Fred sighed, thinking he would’ve to let her go without a chance to know her more.

“Thank you, Fred,” y/N stepped closer to the boy. “I wish I could stay, and God knows my rebel side is saying stay, but one of your teachers already notified me that, as a muggle, I shouldn’t stay much more.”

Fred bent his head and moved closer to her too. He was thinking.

“Perhaps you can. Sure there are exceptions, and Harry lives with you, so...”

“You can make them allow me to stay?” she asked, and her emotion was making her eyes sparks. Just then Fred noticed that, although worried and scared, she didn’t whine or cry, not even once.

Fred grabbed her hand in a rush of confidence. “Come with me, let’s find someone we can talk about this with.”

And they left. *** It was Professor Sprout that talked to Fred and y/N and honestly, she didn’t understand a word the teenagers were saying. She understood the girl was a muggle — it was obvious by the way her eyes shined, fascinated with the Professor’s clothes and wand — and she noticed Fred Weasley was in love with her.

Fred couldn’t stop side-looking at the muggle, and he nodded at every word she spoke. He also was holding her hand as if his life depended on it. Sprout had seen a lot of teens in love to recognize a couple at first sight.

So, of course, she said yes to the girl’s stay. She just warned:

“Keep her out of your dorm, will you, Weasley?”

The way both of their faces got blushed only confirmed Professor Sprout’s suspects, and she walked away laughing.

Y/N and Fred decided not to mention Professor Sprout’s comment and went to see Harry, who in the hospital ward.

They stayed there, accompanied by every other person that wanted to see Harry Potter — and believe, the place was crowded. The doctor — actually, Fred explained she isn’t a doctor as muggles know it — was a bit mad with all the people around, but y/N did the same as the others and said she wasn’t going to leave Harry’s side.

Even the twins left the place, and two other gingers with the bushy-haired girl, but y/N and Molly Weasley stayed behind.

A lot of things happened, and more than half of them, y/N did not follow. She was okay with not understand if it meant she could stay, but after the mourning of her third day in Hogwarts, Molly decided it was time for y/N to go back home. She couldn’t give worry to her parents any more than she already had.

It was Bill who took her back home with the flying car. He noticed how sad y/N looked — her eyes looking at every detail of the sight of Hogwarts and then her loud breaths as if she fought tears.

“What is it?” he asked, worried. “Is it Harry?”

She was caught by surprise. “Harry? No! He’s fine now, I saw that.”

Bill raised a brow when he side-looked at her for just a second before looking back at the sky ahead.

“I...” y/N sighed, discerning she would have to speak the truth. Something about the guy didn’t let her lie. “I will miss that school. It is so beautiful, and enchanting and... well, magical.”

Bill listened to her every word with a respectful silence.

“I’ll miss being around wizards and witches. You guys are so nice and so lucky! Do you even know it? Do you know how lucky you are because you can do magic? And God! No wonder Harry doesn’t wanna go back to my parents! After meeting your family, neither I want to go back,” y/N sighed, noticing she babbled. “I don’t want to go back to being a muggle,” she whispered, speaking with disgust the last word, and turned her face to the window.

Bill made a sound y/N wasn’t able to decipher, and he waited a while before speaking.

“I’m sorry if this is gonna sound offensive, but you are not going back to being muggle — you are a muggle. You were a muggle back at Hogwarts, you are back at home,” he said, trying hard to appear gentle. He was speaking the truth, but it still offended y/N, so she kept her eyes on the window. “But — and believe me, I’m sure of this — you are, as well as Harry, always welcome at the Burrow.”

Y/N finally stared at him.

“Burrow, you know. My family’s place,” he added that extra information that she had already picked in the air. “Mum loved meeting you. And she wasn’t the only one.”

She kept staring at him, curious.

“Anytime you wanna have a meal with the fam, they’ll have you. You are an incredible girl, and I did not get to this thought all by myself,” he said.

“Thank you, Bill. For the invite and for the, well, help,” y/N pressed Bill’s arm gently, showing her gladness. “It’s good to know you guys like me.”

***

There was nobody home, or so, y/N thought. Bill left her in front of her house, and she walked out of the car empty-handed because before leaving y/N wasn’t planning on staying long at Hogwarts. The clothes she wore back then were Gryffindor uniforms given to her by cute little house-elves, as Fred and George explained.

She walked into an apparently deserted house, so she went directly to her room. She was not expecting to find her mom there, holding one of y/N’s pillows close, sitting in the bed with a sad look towards the mirror.

“Mum?” y/N didn’t feel confident enough to call her Petunia to her face.

The mom turned to see her daughter on the door, and she let go of the pillow.

“I do wish I had gone to the wizard’s school. I wish that every day,” her mom said, surprising y/N. She was not expecting to hear an answer to a question she asked long ago. “I want to be a witch since Lily found out she was one and I’m sorry I deprived you of being as well.”

Y/N gawked at her mom like she was seeing the woman for the first time, and she probably was.

“Mum, it’s not your fault I’m not a witch,” y/N finally said, sitting down next to the mother and hugging her tightly. “It’s not something to blame someone for. We are who we are, but we don’t have to be mean to others because we aren’t who we crave to be.”

Both Dursleys hugged each other for a couple of minutes, in silence. They were about to cry but never gave in — they hated crying.

“What counts is what we do to be closer to our goal. You have a wizard in your house, mum, and you’ve never shown interest in him,” she said when she pulled away from her mother’s embrace.

“It’s hard for me,” Petunia sighed. “You are young and kind, different from your father and me. If anything, you get it from Lily.”

Y/N tilted her head. That was another thing she wasn’t expecting to hear.

“You are curious when I’m not. You are great and destined for greatness,” Petunia said. “I love you, honey. I know I don’t say it often, but I do.”

“I love you too, mum.”

***

One hot day of July, when Harry was back at home, but wandering downtown and the rest of the family had gone fishing for the day, y/N had the house for herself. She tried to enjoy it, but her mind was somewhere else.

Every day was like that. She started thinking about Hogwarts, then her mind would shift to the Weasleys, and she would end her thought with the face of Fred Weasley. She was going crazy. The Weasleys were barely talking to Harry — to y/N, they were practically strangers once again.

It was insane of her to think about Fred holding her hand, hugging her again, saying everything was going to be okay...

She generally had Harry to bring her back to senses and to the horror to have Voldemort walking around, but Harry wasn’t home that day. It was just y/N and her thoughts.

Until the knock on her front door; Y/N jumped from the couch and rushed to get it.

And to say she was surprised to see the person behind the door was saying the least.

“Fred?” do I have the power to summon people with my mind? Am I a witch?

“Hi, y/N. Sorry I came here suddenly,” y/N agreed, but she also didn’t mind. “It’s just... I can’t take you out of my mind.”

“Me? I’m a muggle!”

“So? That doesn’t stop you from being the most beautiful, kind and interesting girl I’ve ever seen!” It was like Fred was expecting her to be doubtful.

Fred didn’t need to say more. Y/N had learned a lesson about not enjoying the moment ahead of her, and she wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.

She threw her arms around his neck and practically jumped towards the ginger boy, pressing her lips hard on his. Fred was shocked, but when he understood what was happening, he wrapped his arms around her waist, making sure she was trapped in him, and Fred kissed her back, just like he had been dreaming of doing since the day he noticed her when was trying to hide behind a pillow in her living room.

They stayed like this, focused on each other for God knows how long before y/N finally push him away gently while gasping for air.

“I’ve been thinking about you too,” she whispered, looking up at his eyes as he smiled shyly.

“Can we do this more often?” Fred asked, going back to his normal-self and smirking flirtatiously.

“You know, there’s nobody home but me. It’s no Burrow but...” y/N was smirking too eagerly.

“Say no more,” Fred pulled her close again, playing with a lock of her hair with just one hand.

They kissed again, and this time, y/N was going to make sure they were going to do it forever.

#fred weasley #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley gif #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley x you #fred weasley x dursley!reader #fred weasley x muggle!reader #fred weasley x muggle reader #george weasley #fred and george #fred and george weasley #fanfic request

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traccigaryn · 4 years ago

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20 answers for a fanfic 2020

Thank you to @curator-on-ao3 for these questions! I'm a few days late, but who cares?

1. fandoms you wrote for this year

All Star Trek, all the time: Voyager, Picard, and DS9/TNG

2. favorite fic you wrote this year

Oh, that's such a hard question. I love them all, but I think the one that means the most was Tousled, an unrepentant bit of froth about Chakotay's hair. I hadn't written anything in months and was feeling sad but not bad about that. Despite the fact that I started out trying to make it crackfic, I think it may have been the first really truthful thing I'd written in some ways. Also, writing both Tuvok and Seven's voices, making them distinct and distinctive, was so. much. fun.

3. favorite fic you read this year

One thing that fell to the wayside in 2020 for me was reading fic. Still, I read some absolute gems and look forward to unearthing more some time soon.

It is the destiny of stars to collapse by @amoderngirl (T, Chakotay/Janeway). This story. THIS STORY. Months later, and this is still all the coherence I can manage.

Siren Song by @curator-on-ao3 (G, Tom Paris & Cristóbal Ríos). This melancholy and hopeful story was beautifully written and captured Tom and Cris to perfection.

Your Shadow Falling (Caesar) by @coffeeblack75 (E, Chakotay/Cristóbal Rios). Coffee took all these conversations we had, all her insights into these characters and turned them into something joyous and true, smutty and searching.

Not Star Trek at all and not a new story, but Gentle Antidote by x_los was everything I could want in a Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane story that also happened to be a soulmark fic.

4. favorite opening line/scene you wrote this year

"I took another sip of tea and longed for coffee." - From I Thoroughly Lived. Mostly because that is how I feel every time I am drinking tea.

5. favorite ending line/scene you wrote this year

"But in the morning he smiled at her, and she was lost all over again." From Touched.

6. a trope you wrote this year

I think the only out-and-out trope I wrote was a stuck-in-the-turbolift story. Man, I need to do better next year.

7. pairings you wrote this year

To the surprise of no one, mostly J/C, but with an increasing amount of Gen, which was an absolute dream to write.

8. a fic regret from this year

I wrote something I was really proud of, but it hasn't had a chance to see the light of day yet. Hope springs eternal.

9. a song that helped you write

I always feel weird admitting this, but I'm not a big music person? I spent several days listening to Patsy Cline in December, though, and it got me thinking about a whole series of angsty, melancholy stories based on her songs. Stay tuned.

10. total number of fics you posted

Eleven stories. My goal for the year was ten, so suck it 2020.

11. total number of words you posted

63,653 (one piece was co-authored, but I can totes claim all those words for these purposes, right? :D )

12. most popular fic written this year

If we're talking hits and kudos alone, A Sensible Understanding - I mean, it was a smut fest with feels, what's not to love? It was an AU (of sorts) of a rather different story from a few months prior and became its far-more-popular younger sibling. I kind of love that about fic writing.

Between Decks 4 and 5 has also chugged right along and struck a different chord with readers: two people, stuck together in many ways, really just needing to actually talk to each other.

13. least popular fic written this year

Ship, a little drabble I wrote about Harry meeting Voyager. I don't mind.

14. longest completed fic you posted this year

I Thoroughly Lived, coming in at 15,208 words. That was a fun one to write: first person POV, a period AU, and an attempt at gothic mystery. Also corset smut.

15. shortest completed fic you posted this year

The aforementioned Ship (100 words)

16. favorite character to write about this year

Well, that would be Chakotay, wouldn't it? Always and forever. I find the glimpses of layers and contradictions and growth endlessly fascinating. I particularly enjoyed getting to explore his relationships with others this year: Tuvok and Harry, Gerron, Seven, and Cris. Definitely planning on more of that for 2021.

17. a fic you didn’t expect to write

Wherever We're Lost (Jupiter) was probably the most unexpected. It was the first time I'd stretched beyond writing for Voyager and the first time I'd written a pairing besides J/C. @coffeeblack75 and I had so much fun analyzing Cris, thinking about how he'd interact with Chakotay, what brought them both to where we see them. So far, our stories are still the only two in that pairing, but we have more planned. And hey, we all need a rare pair, don't we?

18. most memorable comment/review

I received so many lovely comments this year, and I treasure each one like the baubles they are, but I think my favorite one came from BlackVelvet on Wherever We're Lost (Jupiter) because it encompasses steps forward for me as a writer and the feeling that I am starting to progress:

"You could say i'm an unlikely fan of this story. I haven't seen Picard, have no idea who Rios is, rarely read m/m. Then again, i am a fan of your writing. And it's a delightful feeling to pick up a story, whatever story, and start reading it with a certainty that whatever happens, it'll be amazing, cause you trust the writer. You do not disappoint."

19. fics you wanted to write but didn’t

I've had several stories involving B'Elanna that hadn't quite bubbled to the surface yet, but I think (I hope) 2021 will be their year.

20. something you want to write next year

The B'Elanna stories. The next chapter in the Mythology series. And I want to keeping branching out into other fandoms. That Nancy Drew/Frank Hardy story I've had half-written for a couple years now. Maybe some one-offs in other fandoms that give me some closure.

#fanfiction #my fic #writing meme #janeway x chakotay

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flightfoot · 5 years ago

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What's your favorite Rick Riordan series between Percy Jackson, The Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus, Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo? (or like, if you can't choose, what do you like about the series you've read?)

Trials of Apollo, no contest.

I liked Percy Jackson a lot, it was VERY well done. Percy was hilarious and relatable, but also just super awesome, his dynamic with Annabeth was fun to read, along with his dynamic with Grover, the quests had a lot of entertaining encounters, and it had some well-executed themes that tied in with the overall conflict nicely, mostly about how parents’ and adults’ negligence and even abuse can harm their kids, the overall effects of that, and just... generally trying to get the parents to shape up, as well as the effects of not respecting others in general, like with how the minor gods and by extension, their children, are treated by the Olympians. It comes up with Percy’s relationships with both Gabe and Poseidon, and most of the campers’ relationships with their godly parents, and that’s a MAJOR cause behind the entire conflict, and one of the major things that Percy tries to make better at the end of the last book.

Kane Chronicles... it’s been awhile since I read it. I don’t remember it having as prevalent a theme as Percy Jackson did, though there was definitely social commentary on racism, with how Carter was sometimes treated, and with how people had trouble comprehending that Carter and Sadie were full siblings, since while both are mixed, Carter’s pretty dark-skinned, while Sadie looks White. It was more of a background thing though, not a major plot point. I liked the characters and the plot fine, they were entertaining, and it was good overall - but it’s not a series I’ve felt a pressing need to reread either. Only real complaint I have about it is the romances centering around Sadie. Her and Anubis were kinda cute, but it would’ve been a lot cuter if she was older than 12-13, and he wasn’t a 4000-year-old god who looked, acted, and was treated as a 16-year-old. And then the whole thing with making it a love triangle with Walt who’s ALSO 16 and Rick’s method of “solving” the love triangle... look honestly I just would’ve been a lot more ok with the romantic shenanigans there if Sadie wasn’t a middle-schooler throughout it. Overall still good though, I’d be down for an adaptation of it, but it’s one of the few cases where I hope something IS flat-out changed to make the romances more palatable.

Heroes of Olympus is where I originally fell off of the Riordanverse. There was just so long between books and I could barely remember what happened between them, and with most of the books being like parts of the same quest (especially books 3, 4, and 5), unless you were constantly refreshing your memory of them via fandom, they were hard to follow, especially with several main characters and different character dynamics to keep track of. When I went back and read the whole set of them though, getting back into the series, it was WAY better, since I could read them as a coherent whole. I could tell he was struggling to juggle all the characters, but I thought he did a fairly decent job of it for what it was. I ended up liking all the characters - ESPECIALLY Leo, I thought he was great and relatable and funny, but I also wanted to hug him - and while the quest could drag on a bit at times, there were some interesting parts there. And Percy and Annabeth’s journey through Tartarus was GREAT.

The themes for Heroes Of Olympus overall were pretty much the same as with Percy Jackson, but with less emphasis I think. It was mostly just “the gods (mostly Zeus, really) are being crappy again, but this time we have enough support among ourselves to manage, except for when a god is technically required to defeat a Giant”. A lot more emphasis was placed on individual character arcs and circumstances, which I think was a good choice, since with so many main characters, they needed more concentrated character development in order to put them up to par with Percy and Annabeth. Plus it allowed Rick to still go into some different themes a bit, like racism with Hazel, trauma with Leo, insecurity with Frank, etc, in a way that felt natural and relevant. It helped that they were broken up into different books for their introductions, so not everything was dumped in at once.

The ending of Heroes of Olmypus... yeah the final battle with the GIants was lame as all hell, and honestly the quest ended up feeling a bit like busywork, but screw it, I did LOVE one part of the ending. The imagery of big, bad Gaia, who even Zeus is so scared of he just wants to hide away with his head in the ground, physically manifesting and being about to take everyone out, everyone losing hope... and then screaming as Festus appears and snatches her up into the sky as Leo gives a shit-eating grin and hurls fireballs at her while insulting her the whole time is just GREAT. I always giggle, and I honestly found it a lot more memorable than the Kronos fight, even if it was technically less epic. It seemed fitting for her to be taken out in such an embarrassing way, by the boy she’d personally taken the most from.

Magnus Chase... yeah that’s the only one I didn’t finish. Quick note: its been over a year since I tried it, so I’m operating off of memory here. I wanted to like it, and after reading through Heroes of Olympus (which i originally stopped reading after Mark of Athena) and Trials of Apollo, I was all hyped up for more Riordanverse... and was disappointed. The basic elements were there, and the writing itself wasn’t bad, but... well, I never really got attached to most of the characters this time, I didn’t find the quest very interesting, and... well, you see how I mentioned about the themes in the earlier reviews? I thought Rick bit off more than he could chew with Magnus Chase, at least with the first book. (I slogged through the first book, got a hundred pages into the second book to see whether Alex, who I’d heard a lot of hype about, could save it, thought Alex was only ok but not someone who saved the book, and called it quits).

So in Magnus Chase, Rick went DEEP into the social commentary on a lot of disparate subjects, trying to really tackle homelessness, child abuse (because no duh, that’s pretty much a staple, I think the only of his series that DOESN’T have major themes around that is Kane Chronicles), Islamophobia, ableism, and... I’m having trouble thinking of the exact term for it, but Blitzen was heavily looked down upon and derided for wanting to make fashionable armor and just being into fashion in general, so... I think it’s supposed to commentary on making fun of people for having interests that are generally seen as feminine? I guess? I dunno, it was definitely social commentary on SOMETHING, but I think the dwarves having their own particular culture here hurt whatever Rick was trying to say, since social commentary is very much tied to the culture it’s in, and we only have a small taste of dwarven culture, at least in the first book.

In any case, all these things are fine to do social commentary on, but when you’re trying to go in-depth and really address them, it helps if they’re more tied in with the overall conflict in the book, and if each issue has room to breathe. As it was, it kinda felt to me like the characters were being paraded from location to location to confront some different social issue. I just thought it was too much, too crammed into one book, and the overall conflict had pretty much nothing to do with that. Like, at the end of the book Rick tried to tie it together with some sort of “we’re a band of misfits” message, and... well, a message based on NOT fitting in with society, isn’t one that’s very satisfying or cohesive. And the individual issues, while there’s certainly cross-sectionality between, aren’t intrinsically linked, so... they just don’t mesh together very well. Not so many, all mashed into one book. Plus I just didn’t care for any of the gods, and the only characters I liked were Magnus and Sam. Blitz and Hearthstone... they were just sort of “there” for me.

I can see why people like Magnus Chase, and it’s not BAD by any means, but it just wasn’t for me. Maybe I’ll take another crack at it at some point, but I’m not super optimistic about it. As it was, I just ended up looking up the parts where Magnus met with Annabeth and read those.

Trials of Apollo though, I ADORE. Apollo was hilarious (along with the books in general), it had a pretty focused message about child abuse and abuse in general, along with how a privileged position can blind you from the travesties that are going on around you, or that you yourself cause, and I just thought the themes worked very well. Rick went more in-depth this time on the exact consequences of child abuse and the ways that a parent could abuse and manipulate their child, something that wasn’t covered as much in his earlier series, as those were more based around neglect. I’m a sucker for a good redemption arc, and I was really impressed with how it was kinda slipped in with Apollo. Like, he didn’t even know he NEEDED one, and the good guys weren’t especially pressing him on that point, it’s a realization he slowly came to over the course of several books. And you can clearly tell that he’s conceited and has issues, but isn’t actually malicious... and slowly the reader comes to the realization that he has hidden depths, that not even HE knew he had. It’s really interesting how he did some pretty bad things (or DIDN’T do, a lot of it has to do with inaction and just being uncaring), but he never comes off as being like, evil. He comes off as being an arrogant, narcissistic person at first, but then slowly finding out that beneath that is a lot of pain and trauma, and part of that persona he’s built up has been to deal with this. Watching him slowly change and grow and discover himself during the series, in a way he never had before... it’s just amazing to read. Also puts a nice cap on the Greco-Roman saga, in that the past two series had a heavy emphasis on how the gods didn’t care enough and had to have their hands forced a lot, and Apollo sort of acting as a stand-in for those other gods, showing that yes, they CAN change for the better - something that most of the gods, and even other immortals, didn’t think was possible, even as they did it.

Well that was super long. But yeah, I have strong feelings on the Riordanverse, and Trials of Apollo is far and away my favorite.

#ask #long post #percy jackson #heroes of olympus #kane chronicles #trials of apollo

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preservationandruin · 4 years ago

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Rhythm of War Liveblog, Part One Part 2 (Chapters 3-8)

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[to the tune of Things I Bought At Sheetz] Now It’s time for Notes I Took At Work. This is going to be a weird experiment, because I read these chapters while at my job and took extensive notes on my reactions, which I’m now going to try to condense into something coherent.

Navani revels in a successful invention, Shallan encounters a very bad cult, I quote--of all things--Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Certain Fucker reappears, Leshwi becomes a character I like, Shallan finds a journal, I digress on Renarin’s abilities, and everyone is rightfully worried about Kaladin. Content warning; discussion of suicide and suicidal tendencies

Alright, we open Chapter Three with Navani’s AIRSHIP, which is a kickass sentence. She’s leaning over the side of the ship, to the distress of one of her fellow scholars who attempts to appeal to Dalinar to get her to stop.

“It’s Navani’s ship, Velat,” Dalinar said from behind, his voice as steady as steel, as immutable as mathematics. She loved his voice. “I think she’d have me thrown off if I tried to prevent her from enjoying this moment.”

This is great both because Dalinar and Navani are great, but also as a contrast to Gavilar saying that Navani doesn’t accomplish anything herself, she just pretends to be an inventor and stays behind other, smarter people. Dalinar says no, this is Navani’s ship, this is her victory. The ship’s base design is one of the chasm bridges; it’s operated on the same principles as spanreeds, a kind of sympathetic link where you link two fabrials and whatever happens to one, happens to the other. Just augmented with aluminum and a LOT of pulleys and hard work.

My notes also say “Eat Shit Gavilar” which i think is just, a general note.

Anyway she also wishes that Elhokar was there because he loved being up high and also watching her draw...so now I’m feeling emotions, and if that wasn’t enough, I get hit in the feelings again because the name of the ship is the Fourth Bridge, after Bridge Four because of the time they saved Dalinar and Adolin at the tower, and it not only has the Bridge Four glyph inlaid but the original bridge inlaid.

We see Dalinar and Lirin interact (my notes call this a “Dad convention”) --Lirin, of course because he’s Kaladin’s father, doesn’t really defer to Dalinar at all but does see the potential of this platform as a movable hospital; he’s discomfited by the reminder that Edgedancers are usually used for that now. Lirin really is a practical man who doesn’t believe in heroes or hero stories, which is unfortunate because they’re coming to life all around him. Also Dalinar calls him Lirin Stormblessed which is pretty funny because Lirin is Not Having It.

Also, we get this great line from Navani about Lirin and Kaladin:

However, as she stepped up beside Dalinar, she caught Lirin’s eyes--and the familial connection became more obvious. That same quiet intensity, that same faintly judgmental gaze that seemed to know too much about you. In that moment she saw two men with the same soul, for all their physical differences.

This is really interesting in light of how Kaladin and Lirin are at the moment arguing; they both are at their core very driven, caring people who want the best for their community, but they are at odds for the best way to achieve that in part because they’ve had such different experiences; Kaladin’s life hasn’t let him be the surgeon Lirin is.

For more changes in the year since we last met these characters, Dalinar has learned how to recharge stormlight and open perpendicularities at will, which essentially makes him a portable battery for the Radiants. That’s super useful. Navani likes observing the process, hoping that somewhere in it is a key to how Urithiru functions; she knows that it used to be powered by the Sibling, the third god-spren of Roshar, but after the Recreance the Sibling either died or fell so asleep the spren treat it as having died.

That’s interesting; the Sibling has been something I’ve been wondering about a lot, and confirmation that it was tied to Urithiru seems to preclude it being a godspren of Odium like I’d thought for a bit (and in any case, Odium has the Unmade and doesn’t seem the time to fragment himself into a godspren). Another spren of Honor or Cultivation? Or perhaps a spren of both? More importantly, if it really is dead, is there still a way to revive Urithiru? Last book talked about possibly recruiting Sja-anat; if we do, could she serve as an alternate power source for the tower?

We also get the Mink, the Herdazian general, slipping up on Dalinar and Navani without them noticing and also calling Dalinar the fuck out for the many atrocities that his armies and nation had unleashed on the Herdazians, which Dalinar can’t really refute. I like this guy, honestly; I’m not sure what’s up with him, if he’s just really good at sneaking around or if he has something Up With Him, but I like him.

Back with the Three (Shallan/Radiant/Veil), they wake up to find themselves in the chasms with an EXTREMELY melodramatic cult. They’re looking for proof Ialai is now running the Hypocrites Association--sorry, the Sons of Honor; Radiant refuses to move against Ialai without proof, even though Shallan and Veil both kinda wish Adolin had killed her at the same time as Sadeas and saved everyone some trouble. Anyway, the Hypocrites association wear deep, fancy hoods that leads to a great Shallan thought:

Shallan had a fleeting thought, wondering at the seamstress they’d hired to do all this work. What had they told her? “Yes, we want twenty identical, mysterious robes, sewn with ancient arcane symbols. They’re for...parties.”

They claim both to have guided the return of the Radiants and to be overthrowing Dalinar, which is hilarious because Dalinar is a Radiant so the only real extrapolation here is that, in the fantasy where they’re right about any of this, they brought the radiants back and lost control of the situation immediately and now are recruiting random strangers to try to help rein it back in. Which is still not a good look.

Oh and also they claim to be “something greater” than the Radiants, and I really doubt they’re the Heralds, so everything they say is horseshit, as is proven a second later when they test if Shallan is wearing an illusion with a device she herself sold them at an exorbitant price. And then claiming that Radiants can’t tell untrue oaths, right in front of Shallan, who is bonded to a liespren.

They’re just a very bad cult.

Also they say Ialai is the true queen, which raises many questions to me about the line of succession that gives them THAT math, especially with Gavinor alive and there. Like, somehow Sadeas’s widow gets priority over the last king’s living child? I know they’re just a stupid cult but guys, that’s not how lines of succession work in monarchies.

Anyway, Shallan hears them say that they have a mole in Dalinar’s inner circle--bad--and goes off-script, taking control to say she’s not who they think she is, and we cut back to Kaladin for the next chapter, which is called Broken Spears which prompted my note of “I don’t trust like that.” And then instantly I started laughing because of this quote:

[The windrunners] hung in the air like no skyeel ever could: motionless, equidistant.

This is not a particularly funny line unless you, like me, have never been able to forget a line from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”

So there’s that.

Kaladin has apparently fought with Leshwi before at this point (she is, iirc, the Fused who was one of the main points of contact for Moash during his arc in Oathbringer); last time, Rock’s daughter Cord managed to shoot her down. The Windrunners, like the Edgedancers, have grown in number; there are about 50 knights, now, and five times that in squires; the problem is that there aren’t enough willing honorspren to bond. Kaladin mentions that “almost all” of Bridge Four had bonded honorspren and that he knew one honorspren who was willing but unbonded, all of which leads me to believe that Rock hasn’t sworn the Oaths yet.

Meanwhile, these Fused--the Heavenly Ones--prefer one on one battles, as Kaladin noted in earlier chapters, so the Windrunners do the same; as long as they do this, the Heavenly Ones will keep to the ideals of honorable combat and will not gang up on the Windrunners. Again, it shows that they are both the orders that deal with Honorspren, even if the Heavenly Ones deal with...void-honorspren, I guess.

Also, it’s another nod to the idea of if there can be such a thing as honorable combat in a war. Both the Heavenly Ones and the Windrunners are trying for it, clearly, but is that sustainable?

Leshwi is in fact there, with a very cool aluminum-edged sword that can absorb stormlight into a gem at the hilt. She, along with the rest of the Fused and apparently the Heralds (Shalash and Taln are both in Urithiru), are stunned by the Fourth Bridge; fuck yeah, Navani and her team. She’s so cool, guys, I love Navani. Also, everyone is worried about Kaladin.

Shallan, meanwhile, is ad-libbing having even more information, which leads to a hilarious moment of her being accused of treason by a member of the cult who are trying to overthrow the current queen, so...there’s a reason I’m calling them the Hypocrites Association, alright? Anyway, Adolin decides it’s time to attack, and Radiant and Shallan manage to bluff their way into being taken along to the hideout as the Hypocrites Association retreats.

With Kaladin again, we get that the Fused see him as a particular challenge they enjoy fighting, although Leshwi always has first dibs; he fights another Fused and manages to disarm him, but decides not to kill him because killing him is pointless. Also, the teleporting fucker comes back, and yes, that is what I’m calling him until further notice.

Something happened in Aimia that led to Cord getting a set of shardplate. Is this the Dawnshard novel? Is that what happened in Aimia? I’m going to read it next regardless but now I’m curious about what happened on the Radiant expedition to Aimia.

So it turns out that the Hypocrites Association has a secret passage into and out of the chasms with a hidden door, which was probably a bolthole for escape that Sadeas put in early during the war at the Shattered Plains. His keep is also noted by Veil to be fortresslike; she notes that he was a cunning man, not just the blowhard that Shallan had taken him for. Ialai is now the sole remaining leader of the dissident Alethi army; while Radiant wants evidence against her that can have her be taken in, Veil is here just to assassinate her and have done with it.

And honestly there is a nice symmetry in Adolin killing Sadeas and Shallan/the Three killing Ialai.

Anyway, we go back to Kaladin as Leshwi fights Sigzil now; she manages to spear him through the chest, and I swear to god if any of the original Bridgemen actually die, I’m going to kick Brandon Sanderson’s ass. Those are my BOYS. In any case, Leshwi doesn’t kill Sigzil, because Kaladin spared one of the Fused earlier--honor in combat, again. There’s definitely a whole essay I could discuss about this opening few chapters and the idea of if continuing a fight is the right thing to do and if that fight can be continued in a way that is moral, but I don’t have the time for that, I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo and read this book.

I’ll shelve it along with the Oathbringer and the idea of personal responsibility essay.

We go back to Navani and get another real sense of how well she knows her team; she knows the personal tics and oddities of all the ardents and scholars who are helping her on the Fourth Bridge, which is nice to see. We also get that Renarin is here, distracting crying children by having Glys form a ball of light, and Navani has this observation:

Renarin claimed the spren [Glys] was trustworthy, but something was odd about his powers. They had managed to recruit several standard Truthwatchers--and they could create illusions like Shallan. Renarin couldn’t do that. He could only summon lights, and they did strange, unnatural things sometimes...

Really excited to see how Renarin’s powers develop similarly to or different from standard Truthwatchers; I agree that Glys is probably trustworthy because Renarin is the best judge of that at the moment and also because “the corrupted spren turns out to be evil” isn’t a very interesting plot development compared to “there can be good corrupted spren”

And then I got yanked forcibly off-topic because guess who fucking showed up. Moash decided to show his backstabbing, treacherous little face again, wearing--of all things--a uniform cut exactly like Bridge Four’s but in black rather than blue, which is just a stupendous dick move. Navani is the one who sees him, too, and we get a sharp reminder that he murdered her son.

Kaladin doesn’t hear the alarm that Navani raises, though, because he’s busy fighting Leshwi, something he seems to genuinely enjoy as a test of his skills. He pushes his home-field advantage here, managing to distract Leshwi to the point that they both seriously injure the other; Kaladin is grinning throughout, which is actually somewhat disturbing. To me it reads like Kaladin’s stopped caring about his own life in favor of trying to help others at any cost, but I’m not sure if that’ll play through as an accurate read.

In any case, someone set Roshone’s house on fire, and the teleporting fucker is there and actively attacking civilians. Leshwi is pissed off to see this and gestures for Kaladin to go and deal with that rather than continuing their fight; at this point, I really started loving Leshwi as a character. I’m a sucker for a good principled antagonist lady, they’re just a good trope.

Anyway, we get to Chapter Seven. Navani’s epigraph notes that zinc makes the spren in fabrials more active, while brass quiets them. So...you could say...that brass soothes them...while zinc...makes them riot....

Anyway, back to Ialai, Shallan notes that she seems extremely worn and tired, and she claims to support Gavinor to the throne--with herself as regent, of course. She and Shallan proceed to have an entire conversation in wine metaphors, talking about who they are working with or for, and Ialai assumes that the Ghostbloods sent the Three to kill her, claiming they want the Sons of Honor out of the way and will send her after Restares next. Veil instantly switches her vote to not killing Ialai bc she doesn’t like to be manipulated, and Adolin kicks down the door.

Ialai tells Shallan to search her rooms for “the rarest vintage” before the Ghostbloods can, and then--before she can even leave the building--she dies of poisoning, implying there’s a mole somewhere in Adolin and Shallan’s people. That’s not great, and the Ghostbloods aren’t fucking around in the slightest with her.

Meanwhile, with Kaladin, the teleporting fucker took Godeke--the one named Edgedancer here other than Lift--hostage to lure Kaladin inside, where he uses a strange, void-fabrial to drain Surgebinder powers in the room. And then makes a critical error in thinking that that will be enough:

The Fused laughed and spoke in Alethi. “Radiants! You rely too much on your powers. Without them, what are you? A peasant child with no real training in the art of warfare or--” Kaladin slammed himself against the soldier to the right.

Oh you poor idiots, Kaladin was a prodigy with the spear LONG before he was a Windrunner, went most of his army career without bonding Syl, and--crucially--one of you is carrying a physical spear. Checkmate, assholes. Kaladin quickly beats most of the ones there, including killing the teleporting fucker before he can teleport again, and lets the last one go--of course--before helping Lift get Godeke out and telling her to get the void fabrial to Navani.

Meanwhile, he’s going to go make sure Roshone is alright, where I have the very prescient note of “I bet actual money Moash is killing him as we speak.”

Ialai’s probable method of death was blackbane poison in her bloodstream; one of Shallans’ people examines the body for it, while Shallan goes to search ialai’s rooms.

Another epigraph note, this time about bronze and heliodor being used to make warning fabrials. Scadrial really was just a primer on the uses of various metals with investiture, huh?

Meanwhile, Kaladin finds the prisoners below the manor killed with a shardblade, and spins around to find Moash slitting Roshone’s throat before making what I called, in a late-night worktime daze, “just a series of rat bastard moves. Hate that guy. Just honestly hate that guy.”

Specifically, he surrenders so that Kal cannot keep attacking him--because Kal’s a good person--just after taunting him for wanting to rescue someone.

Back with Shallan, Veil is pushing her again to continue remembering their past, but she still resists; she finds a rare Shin wine in Ialai’s store, before using that to find a pattern on the floor of old, shadowyears-era glyphs with maps of the ten Epoch Kingdoms, under one of which is a notebook of Ialai’s; she tucks it in her safepouch, and we go back to Kaladin.

I really think the arc for Kaladin in this book is going to be accepting that he can’t save everyone, particularly from themselves, because he pauses and remembers how Moash had been a friend, but even more than that, he had been Bridge Four--someone that Kaladin had sworn to protect, and he’d failed:

Kaladin had failed Moash. As soundly as he’d failed Dunny, Mart, and Jaks. And of them all, losing Moash hurt the most. Because in those callous eyes, Kaladin saw himself.

Kaladin can’t keep blaming himself for Moash’s choices, because Moash chose to do this, and was given ways out, and didn’t take them. It’s not Kaladin’s fault, and believing that it is is going to get Kaladin killed.

And then, Moash winds up and delivers a grade-A Odium-powered Breaking Speech:

"They're going to die, you know," Moash said softly. "Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They're all going to die anyway. There's nothing you can do about it." [...] "Do you remember the chasm, Kal?" Moash whispered. "In the rain that night? Standing there, looking down into the darkness, knowing it was your sole release? You knew it hen. You try to pretend you've forgotten. But you know. As sure as the storms will come. As sure as every lighteyes will lie. There is only one answer. One path. One result. [...] I've found the better way," Moash said. "I feel no guilt. I've given it away, and in so doing became the person I always could have become--if I hadn't been restrained. I can take away the pain, Kal. Isn't that what you want? An end to your suffering?”

Odium’s deal all over again--he will take away your pain and your responsibility for your actions, but the price for that is your integrity and your honor. It’s so insidious, especially because Moash is exploiting the fact that Kaladin was suicidal to play into the idea of life being hopeless--he’s implying that Kaladin’s suicidal impulses were right and then offering another way out. It’s so, so so so awful, and Kaladin can’t even bring himself to fight it, because it’s coming from an unarmed man and it’s targeted so directly at him.

“The answer is to stop existing, Kal. You’ve always known it, haven’t you?” Kaladin blinked away tears, and the deepest part of him--the little boy who hated the rain and the darkness--withdrew into his soul and curled up. Because...he did want to stop hurting.

He wanted it so badly.

Ugh, Moash’s whole thing here is just seeding that suicidality back into Kaladin--because frankly, most of the time? When someone is suicidal, in my (admittedly limited and personal) experience? What they genuinely want isn’t to die--they just want not to hurt anymore, and they see that as the only way.

Light exploded into the room. Clean and white, like the light of the brightest diamond. The light of the sun. A brilliant, concentrated purity. Moash growled, spinning around, shading his eyes against the source of the light--which came from the doorway. The figure behind it wasn’t visible as anything more than a shadow. Moash shied away from the light--but a version of him, transparent and filmy, broke off and stepped toward the light instead. Like an afterimage. In it, Kaladin saw the same Moash--but somehow standing taller, wearing a brilliant blue uniform. This one raised a hand, confident, and although Kaladin couldn’t see them, he knew people gathered behind this Moash. Protected. Safe. The image of Moash burst alight as a Shardspear formed in his hands.

FUCK YEAH, RENARIN.

I’m gonna end this section by just discussing what happened here, because there’s a lot to unpack there. We’ve seen Shallan use her illusions to create versions of people who they could be, but this isn’t doing that--if you look at the cause and effect, it’s not that Renarin created this illusory Moash, but more that the light Renarin created called forth that Moash from this one.

More than anything, it reminds me of the effects of Gold Allomancy--creating a past version of the self, splitting the self into who you are and who you were, or who you are and who you could have been. This is not a version of Moash that could exist. He’s burned too many bridges and killed too many people in front of their infant children for that to happen.

But it could have been Moash. It’s not calling forth the truth, really, it’s showing an alternate path. It’s strange and I can’t wait to see it explored more, and it shakes Moash to his core--because of course it does. Moash’s entire speech was saying “there are only two ways out, dying and giving in to Odium,” and Renarin’s light showed that that was a stark fucking lie. There’s the third choice of deciding to stand up and protect people anyway, and it was a choice Moash could have taken, and that kills him. It eats him up inside; it’s the pain that Odium can’t fully take away.

As Kaladin said to Amaram: if what Odium says is true, if what you claim is true, than why do you still hurt?

#fuck yeah bridge four #rowliveblog #row spoilers #navani kholin protection squad #kaladin has a saving people thing #fuck moash #renarin kholin kicks ass #leshwi is unfortunately VERY cool

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fiercestpurpose · 5 years ago

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hi u talked about how jean often gets overlooked as a mother, would u be willing to talk more about it? its really curious to me how scott is often associated with the role of 'father' and his relationships with nathan and rachel, how he 'failed them etc, gets talked about to death but people dont talk about jeans as much. anyways would love to hear what u have to say!

Hi! I really have three main categories of thoughts about this: Jean’s relationship with Rachel, Jean’s relationship with Cable, and Jean’s relationship with the idea of family/her own motherhood.

Jean’s relationship with Rachel is… complicated. First of all, Jean is incredibly important in Rachel’s life, but it’s not always our (616) Jean. Rachel is obviously the biological daughter of another woman, 811 Jean, and that woman raised her and was her mother until she died when Rachel was about 8 (well before the rest of Rachel’s X-Men did). Losing a parent that young is frequently very traumatic and defining, and it certainly was for Rachel, so she develops this relationship that is not so much with Jean as it is with Jean’s death. She comes to the 616 and she learns that Jean is already dead, and she vows to reclaim the name Phoenix and honour her mother’s memory (even though 616 Jean is not really her mother). And then, at least twice during the Cross-Time Caper, Rachel has to watch different universe’s versions of Jean die, trying and failing to save her. So Rachel has this whole relationship with Jean as a concept, with Jean dying and leaving her, before she and 616 Jean ever develop a real relationship with each other.

And sometimes, people (fans and writers both) use Rachel’s preexisting relationship with Jean As A Conceptual Mother as evidence that 616 Jean doesn’t really count as Rachel’s mother. However, 616 Jean and Rachel do have a relationship. It starts with Jean rejecting Rachel, denouncing her because she doesn’t accept the future that Rachel represents and doesn’t want to consider her as her daughter. She later apologizes for this, saying that she shouldn’t have pushed her problems onto Rachel because they weren’t Rachel’s problems to deal with. And we see them hug and make up and it’s clear that they consider each other family.

That relationship, the daughter viewing her mother as a concept more than a person, the mother pushing her problems onto the daughter and trying not to accept the future that she thinks the daughter represents, reads to me as a very believable mother-daughter relationship. The circumstances are a little strange, but the emotions are familiar. Many children have a hard time adjusting to seeing their parents as their own people. Many parents have a hard time recognizing their grown children as being their own people and also their children. It’s a very complex relationship that’s certainly worth exploring, and referencing it only when they want to make a joke of it (as X-Men Gold and All-New X-Men both did) is a sign of writers who are not really invested in the emotional lives of those characters.

Onto Cable! In some ways, Jean’s relationship with him is a lot simpler because he is actually and inarguably her child. To be clear, she’s not his biological mother, and we’re going to put her blood relationship to his biological mother aside because it’s not actually that important. Jean is his mother because she raised him. In X-Factor vol 1, she becomes one of his primary caregivers once his mother is out of the picture, largely because she is dating his father at the time. (I’m not going to get into the whole Sinister-creating-Maddy-to-breed-with-Scott thing or the Maddy-living-in-Jean’s-head thing. It’s messy and it complicates things, but it doesn’t change the basic facts of Jean’s situation.) Jean in X-Factor is a co-parent with a day job, a woman who’s responsible for feeding the baby and changing his diapers and helping teach him how to walk and talk and keeping him safe from harm (that time she takes him into a fight excluded, of course). The first manifestation of baby Christopher’s psychic powers is that he and Jean share a special telepathic bond. It’s hard to tell how long this goes on for (comic timelines are, as always, vague and difficult to pin down), but it’s at least several months.

After Simonson’s run on X-Factor, baby Christopher is removed from the picture by being sent off to the far-future — only to be raised by Slym and Redd, who are, of course, Scott and Jean. As a Scott fan, a Jean fan, and a Scott/Jean fan, I’m always surprised and frustrated by how little The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix gets referenced. This is years of their lives that they spend raising their son. Specifically, twelve years, which is quite a long time, and means that Cable is probably 13 by the time Slym and Redd have to leave. Redd is the mother that Cable remembers when he grows up. She’s the one who rocks him to sleep, who negotiates with his father about how to properly raise their son, who does everything in her power to protect him while continuing to participate in a secret rebel organization. And the telepathic connection he had to her resurfaces, so that they are able to fight together on the astral plane.

(If you ever want to cry about Scott/Jean or Cable’s childhood or the Summers family in general, I highly recommend The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. I will forgive Lobdell any number of crimes because he gave us such an excellent miniseries.)

But she isn’t just there during his childhood. Jean has a relationship with her adult son as well. They work together as X-Men many times, before and after she realizes that he is her son. Of course, there are those incredibly cute panels you may have seen of Scott and Jean and Cable all getting together to celebrate Christmas. And after the defeat of Apocalypse, when Scott is believed to be dead, Jean and Cable become especially close. It is Jean that Cable confides in, sharing with her his feelings, his loss of purpose now that his war is over, how hard it is for him to be vulnerable again. And when Jean thinks Scott is still alive but no one else believes her, Cable is the one who comes with her and helps her bring him back. Unfortunately, post-Search for Cyclops, Morrison comes in, and Morrison has no interest in love or families and does have an interest in killing Jean off to further his ship.

Prime Cable is dead now, of course, so I cannot hope that writers will explore that relationship any further. (EDIT: Oh, yeah, he maybe sort of came back again in a comic last month. Clearly that shocking turn of events made a big impression on me.) I did enjoy getting to see Jean and Hope bond after his death over the love they shared for him, and I can wish that the writers will carry that relationship forward. As for Bable (baby Cable), he’s an angry teenager who experienced the events of The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #4 about three or four years ago. He’s angry, he’s upset, he’s lashing out by killing his future self. There could be something really interesting there, in Jean’s relationship with Bable, if they chose to remember that he’s still the kid she raised. Her place as the mother of a rebellious teenager is complicated because he’s both the boy who brought her husband back to life and the boy who killed the adult son that she loved. If writers looked past the soap opera of it all to actually acknowledge the emotions involved, they’d see there was an interesting story there, one that is not just about the Scott/Cable relationship but necessarily involves Jean as well.

I’m sure there are things to be said about Stryfe and Nate Grey, but I honestly do not know or care enough about alternate versions of Cable to really have a coherent picture of Jean’s relationship with them, so I’m gonna skip that.

Next, I want to talk about Jean’s relationship with the concept of family. I would like to mention (as I always do), that Jean’s entire family — her parents, her siblings, and her siblings’ children — were murdered by aliens. How she feels about this is a mystery, as the comics have not addressed it at all, but she might feel guilty, because though it’s not her fault, they were killed because of her. She might also feel guilty because while family in the abstract is very important to her, her relationship with them was strained and she wasn’t as close to them as she’d like to be. She might also feel angry as hell that somebody decided to murder her family despite them doing absolutely nothing to provoke it. Any of those emotional responses would influence how she relates to her children and her granddaughter. Maybe she becomes a little more attached and attentive because she has no other family left. Maybe she distances herself from them out of grief. Maybe she rounds up her incredibly angry son and takes him into the stars to attack aliens so they can be angry together. I think any of those, done properly, could be interesting and in-character for her, and I just want some writer to acknowledge Jean as a character with her own history and her own relationships that shape her actions.

Finally, Jean’s relationship with the concept of her own motherhood. Jean is someone who wanted and expected to be a mother. I usually tend to read Jean as coming from a more traditional and conservative family, but I don’t think that’s an adequate explanation. I think Jean genuinely wants children. In X-Factor, she says, “I always thought we’d have a girl,” when talking to Scott, showing that she had thought about children being part of their future. When she talks to Rachel about her upcoming marriage to Scott, she mentions that she thinks it likely that another Rachel will be born. She wants kids, she’s seen them as part of her future for a long time, and then she got them! She got to be a mother, to Nathan Christopher and to Rachel, as explained above. I think a woman who wanted to be a mother and now is a mother should be allowed to have real relationships with her children. This isn’t like Emma, whose distance from the Cuckoos can be read as her viewing herself more as their teacher than their mother, since Emma always understands herself as a teacher. When Jean holds a baby in X-Men Red and winks at the mother and tells her that she’s implanted a psychic suggestion he not cry so much, that’s because Jean has been responsible for a baby before. Being a mother is part of who Jean is, just like it’s part of who Jubilee is or who Sue is, and I wish that writers and fans understood that.

#Do I have thoughts about Jean? Oh boy do I!#jean grey #rachel grey #x men blogging #asks #Anonymous #long post for ts #ch: heart and soul #ch: mind and will #cable

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whatplanetdididial · 5 years ago

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Yamato and Hikari / it doesn't have to be shippy at all, please have fun with Murphy's Law however you want / and 8.

Prompt List Challenge

Did I awake from the dead to try and finish all the prompt challenges I’ve been ignoring in my inbox during my extreme writer’s block? Why yes, yes I did.

#8: “There’s only one bed.”

Type: One-shot

Characters: Ishida Yamato, Yagami Hikari

Rating: K

Word Count: ~1,000

Imagine this is somewhere in the the Tri universe during Saikai.

His mind was utter chaos. Every time he grasped at a coherent thought, it sifted away like sand between his fingertips, lost to a sea of emotions. With his frustration threatening to reach new levels, he ignored the war raging inside of him and rang the doorbell. It was now or never.

“Yamato?”

The melodic voice jarred him.

“Hikari?”

The ever-so-slight tilt of her head reminded him he shouldn’t have been so surprised.

“Sorry, I just…” he trailed.

“You were looking for my brother.”

Had Yamato been less preoccupied, he might’ve raised an eyebrow that her words were more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah.”

Hikari stepped out of the way and motioned for Yamato to come inside. He respectfully stepped out of his shoes and followed her past the entryway, glancing around the apartment for telltale bushy hair. Once he was assured that Taichi was nowhere in plain sight, Yamato edged towards one of the bedroom doors before turning back to Hikari.

“I’m guessing he’s in your guys’ room?”

He didn’t wait for a response before pounding on the door in front of him.

“I’m coming in, so make yourself appropri–“

Startled silent, Yamato did a double-take once inside the room. While taking in his new surroundings, he felt Hikari’s lithe body slink past him.

“There’s only one bed,” he commented once she was inside and facing him.

Yamato watched as Hikari sat on the aforementioned bed, patting the seat of a desk chair next to her.

“It’s been a while since you’ve been here, huh? Although technically I think a bunk bed would still count as one bed,” she added with an almost imperceptible giggle.

Flushed, Yamato accepted her offer and sat down next to her.

“I guess at some point siblings should have their own rooms. When did this happen?”

“A little earlier this year, actually, so you haven’t missed much. I’m still not really used it.”

She waved around at her belongings which were all suspiciously sequestered into one corner of the room. Yamato’s eyes settled back onto Hikari and noted a wan smile that set off alarm bells in his head.

“Is Taichi even here?”

She shifted so that she was sitting up a little straighter.

“His indecision isn’t because he doubts our abilities, you know that, right?”

The whirlwind inside of him ended its brief respite and began roaring again.

“It doesn’t matter what his gripe is, we don’t have the luxury of time to wait around. He needs to get it through his thick skull that we’re the only ones that can do anything and we need to do it now!”

Yamato didn’t mean to raise his voice at her, but Hikari took it in stride. If he wasn’t already aware of her particular skill of staying composed when most would crumble, he would have been impressed at the easy tone she continued with.

“The likelihood of having people’s blood on our hands heavily weighs on Taichi.”

“If we don’t do anything, multiple lives will be at stake, Hikari. You must see that!” Yamato snarled, shooting up in defiance. He didn’t understand why this fact was so hard to impress on apparently both Yagami siblings.

“You misunderstand,” she replied, shaking her head slowly. “Before, we weren’t in the human world and we were just oblivious, ignorant children; there is a difference between blindly doing what’s right and finally realizing that you will have a direct hand in destruction. This is the first time Taichi has needed to thoughtfully weigh the consequences of sacrificing people for the greater good.”

Yamato recoiled slightly and found his seat again.

“Sacrifice seems like a harsh word,” he trailed with only a hint of spite.

“But perhaps an accurate one, nonetheless.”

His mental storm dwindled down to a slow churn.

Yamato’s mindset hadn’t changed, but it suddenly became a lot harder to verbally convey why they still needed to take action as quickly as possible. It wasn’t that he wanted people to be caught in the crossfire, but their inaction could have just as direct of an impact on the world. The more they waited around, the more dire the consequences could become.

“I’m not taking a position here,” she interjected through his thoughts. “Please don’t think that I’m trying to say that either of you are right or wrong. I just want help you to better understand where he’s coming from. He’s as stubborn as a mule, but it might soften him up a little to feel like you’re hearing his concerns. We’re all allowed our moments of weakness and deserve the support of our friends.”

She stared at him pointedly, and Yamato couldn’t help but wonder if that was a subtle jab at his crest. He dropped his head, not quite knowing how to respond.

“Yamato.”

She placed a delicate hand over the fist he was making in his lap and he prickled at her warmth. Choosing to ignore the involuntary response, he looked up and egged her on with pleading eyes.

“You’re the only one that can reach him, I know you’ll do your best. I have faith in you.”

Her hand lingered on his for only a second more before she stood up and made her way to the bedroom door.

“He’s over at the park if you still want to catch him,” she disclosed to him. The air of finality in her voice told him it was time to take his leave.

“That’s a good idea, thank you.”

As they made their way to the front door, Yamato spun around catching Hikari off guard.

“Taichi’s lucky to have you as a sister.”

Rose patches dusted her cheeks and Yamato gave her a genuine smile.

“It’s a wonder you guys are related,” he added cheekily before ducking down to retrieve his shoes.

She chuckled and waited for him to cross the doorway threshold before bidding him goodbye.

“Good luck, Yamato. Tell Taichi I said hello.”

Yamato offered a small wave before taking his leave.

“I’ll do my best.”

#asks #digimon #digimon adventure tri #fanfiction #yamato ishida #hikari yagami #yamakari #if you squint #interpret it however you want #THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS CAME SO FAST #i literally stopped working to write it lol

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lostinmirkwood · 5 years ago

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Gendrya Kinktober Day 9: Car Sex/Leaving Marks

I got both prompts in today! Find it on AO3 here.

If they get busted he wants it on record that it’s Arya’s fault.

Sunday evening is Stark Family Dinner, capital letters required. It had been for as long as him and Arya had been together. He’d met the Starks several times as Jon’s roommate during uni but it wasn’t until Arya that he became a regular attendant. Every Sunday saw them driving an hour to Winterfell to have dinner with her siblings and their significant others, her parents, and any assortment of family friends who happened to be nearby. Tonight was no different.

Well, he takes that back. Tonight was a little different. Tonight Arya wore a knee length skirt and a white button up top that complimented her tanned skin nicely. Finished off with a pair of flats and some red lipstick and he was praying he made it home before having to resort to Storm’s End footie stats to keep his cool. Arya wasn’t helping matters much. She was singing along to the radio on the drive without a care in the world, shimmying her shoulders at him from the passenger seat as she did. He loved seeing this happy part of Arya and he couldn’t help but smile and occasionally sing back to her as they drove.

Dinner was delicious as always. He didn’t know how Cat managed to put together such a fantastic meal week after week. He’s seated next to Arya near the end of the table deep in conversation with Rickon and Bran about an upcoming season of a fantasy series they were all watching as Arya was chatting with Talisa and Sansa about something that had happened at work that week involving some mislaid documents and a very large bouquet of flowers when her hand lands on his thigh. Rather high on his thigh for where they are. He stumbles over his words for a moment before carrying on, talking about a character who had disappeared a few seasons earlier that he was hoping would return. Arya’s hand begins to subtly stroke his leg, slowly working her way up and in, occasionally brushing his inseam with her nails, as dinner moves on to dessert and Talisa begins to tell a story about an elegant elderly patient with a sharp tongue whose dressing down of her son had Talisa in stitches as soon as she could excuse herself from the room.

Gendry sees from the corner of his eye Arya’s slight smirk as her hand finally reaches its destination, palming his hardening cock through his slacks. Gendry’s suddenly glad Cat insists on setting a formal table with a tablecloth because he does not need anyone to see what she’s doing to him right now. Those footie stats become very important much sooner than he’d anticipated. With a gentle squeeze Arya rises from her seat to help her mother clear the table as Gendry downs the rest of his wine to try to regain his composure. He’d missed the past several minutes of discussion with Bran and Rickon, the former now insisting that one of the characters had in fact been replaced by a god who would try to use his powers to stop the end of the world while Rickon rebutted with the idea that that character was actually evil and would wind up destroying the world. That composure is quickly lost again as Arya leans over his shoulder to take his plate to the kitchen, pressing her tits against his back and breathing warmly in his ear.

She takes mercy on him for the remainder of the evening, if you could call sending him heated looks and running her tongue across her lower lip mercy. He praises whatever god was in charge of her lip color because the red paint hasn’t budged since she put it on. Her little stunt at the table has him imagining those ruby lips wrapped around his cock and he finds himself useless at conversation, just nodding along as the Starks talk around him. Cat eventually sends them on their way with a plan of lunch later that week with Arya and several rounds of hugs from all the Starks.

Gendry lets out a sigh the moment the car door closes behind Arya. He loves her family, loves that they folded him in effortlessly but that many enthusiastic people for several hours was a lot of energy for him. Arya’s teasing was unhelpful in the best way. They were quiet as they pulled onto the main road back to the city, the radio now playing softly in the background. Eventually Arya began to talk about an upcoming project at work that she was excited to be leading. As she spoke her hand made its way back to his thigh, again slowly stroking as he drove them home. Gendry lets her carry on, not entirely sure if she’s aware that she’s doing it given how intently she is speaking about the goals of the project. As her hand again moves to palm his cock Gendry drops his hand to hers, pressing it to his bulge and stopping her movements, “Love if you keep that up I’m going to crash. I can’t focus on the road with your hand on my cock.”

Arya pouts and brings her hand back to her side of the car. The car quiets as Gendry focuses back on the road, the litany of footie stats back on his mind. After a few minutes a soft gasp from her side of the car causes him to whip his head over. Arya is sitting there, eyes closed, shirt partially unbuttoned as one hand slowly teases her nipples through her lacy bra, the other working herself under her skirt. She peeks one eye open to see him watching her intently, before grinning mischievously and saying, “Eyes on the road Gendry, you don’t want us to crash.”

“What’s got… What happen…” he can’t quite string a coherent thought together.

“Oh, my knickers?” She asks, coyly, “They were so wet after dinner that I took them off before we left. They’re in my purse.”

Gendry groans, turning his focus back through the windshield as her gasps get slightly louder and the lewd, wet sounds of her hand between her legs can be heard over the radio in the background. Suddenly getting home to their bed is the last thing on Gendry’s mind. He swerves into a roadside pull-out and throws the car in park. Arya giggles as he frantically begins to undo his seatbelt and paw at hers. As her belt releases Gendry tugs her across the center console and firmly onto his now rock hard erection. They begin to kiss sloppily as he works the remaining buttons loose from her shirt, hands sliding up to palm and squeeze her tits as she grinds herself down onto his firm bulge. Gendry’s lips leave her mouth and move to her neck, finding that spot behind her ear that causes her to gasp and work herself against him, a wet spot growing on his pants from her dripping center.

Arya’s hands scrabble down his chest to open his belt, pulling his throbbing cock from the stifling confines of his boxers. A few hard pumps then she lines herself up over him and sinks down, taking a few strokes to work herself to the base, knees tight around his hips in the limited space afforded by the front seat of the car. Gendry releases the spot he was worrying on her neck, forehead dropping to her chest as his hands grip her waist tightly. He begins to move her over him, pulling her forward and down onto his cock as she gasps and writhes over him, hands moving to his shoulders, nails digging in through the fabric of his shirt.

The sounds of their coupling fill the car, Arya’s face is briefly illuminated by a passing car, her mouth open in ecstasy, her pupils blown wide as she stares down at him. Gasps and moans, the slap of skin and the squelch of sex all coming together to this perfect moment. Gendry grunts out, “Arry, I’m close. Gods Arya, so close,” dropping one of his hands from his tight grip on her waist, delving under her skirt to find her clit, rubbing frantically, trying to bring her over with him, football stats long forgotten.

Arya breathlessly whines, “Let go, Gendry, please let go. I’m right there.”

A few more thrusts and Gendry tips over the edge. The feel of him flooding her with his release sends Arya over too, her cunt clenching around his cock as they ride out their orgasms together. Arya drops her forehead to his, sighing. They stay that way for a few minutes, breathing together before Gendry gently pats her bum and says, “We’d best get home. I don’t want to have to explain to an officer why we’re pulled off the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with the windows all fogged up.”

Arya laughs and gently pulls herself off of him before clambering back to her side of the car saying, “I’m sure he’ll be able to guess. We probably wouldn’t be his first stop for something like this.”

As Arya is changing into her pajamas later that night she notices the dark bloom on her neck and the darkening spots just above her hips, the perfect size and spread to be bruises left from Gendry’s fingers as he’d desperately fucked her. She smiled to herself before pulling on her shirt and crawling into his waiting arms to sleep.

#I got a little meta in the middle #gendrya kinktober #day 9: car sex/leaving marks #gendrya fanfic #arya stark #gendry waters

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number5theboy · 5 years ago

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The notes I took while reading the comics are under the cut. These are not my ordered thoughts, just thoughts I had while reading. I’ll write something more coherent a bit later, once my thoughts are sorted better than these

APOCALYPSE SUITE

Diego repeatedly stabbed a Caravaggio, which just personally offends me. Also @ Reginald the fact that you left a Caravaggio in reach of your KIDS, who have KNIVES, is just as insulting. Someone save that Caravaggio since anything and anyone else is beyond saving

“Inexplicable resemblance to an Ingmar Bergmann extra” askjdsgbkdsbhsd Gerard sir that is so oddly specific. Is Reginald an Ingmar Bergman fan. Is that what you’re trying to tell us. Or is Klaus just a silent movie type

Right off the bat, the comics universe is so much more interesting than the show universe. They have boxers who beat up squids like??? Give us an adaptation with the comic world, preferably animated

The kiddos were all born to “mostly single women” dsbksdgbksdgbdsg??? Did the magical alien thingamajig check their relationship status first?

“Inventor of The Televator, The Levitator, The Mobile Umbrella Communicator, and Clever Crisp Cereal” dgdsghsgdhjsdkjhg Reginald names his inventions like Dr. Doofenschmirtz from Phineas and Ferb

Also the page that reveals/introduces Reginald is SO good, just the panelling and the action tells you so much. There’s dead bodies and excavations and masks in addition to text. It’s great.

“The Day The Eiffel Tower Went Berserk” is an EXCELLENT hook to a story

“It’s your Eiffel Tower, it’s gone insane and must be stopped at all costs.” Dksgdhjbkgsdhjbdsghjb the show could never

This comic keeps disrespecting cool art. Why is it doing that to me. Don’t let the musée d’orsay get robbed

Okay, luther came through for me on that

Dsdhlsdghlgsdhldsh the siblings arguing while the Eiffel Tower is falling apart around them had me cackling

“WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE” dsbdgsbgsdbdgsbklsd okay diego

“And just as I suspected – ZOMBIE-ROBOT GUSTAVE EIFFEL!” hello I need at least three comics of back lore on this. Why does luther have that hunch. Why is Gustave Eiffel a zombie-robot. How did we get here. Please I want answers

The missing line on the ‘e’ of ‘touché’ makes that dramatic moment way less dramatic and more funny ngl

Oh but you can be bothered to put the accent aigu on ‘séquence’

“And while you lost the Eiffel Tower, you saved Paris.” I am laughing too hard by this point. How dare this be a barely brushed upon adventure. Please I need to know more about zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel

Te Ben-robot makes me emotional and “Only my father calls me Number One”? ouch.

Also for the record, I love Luther’s design SO much

“Hello your father is dead. Please audition for my orchestra for revenge. Many thank. Bye.” Okay Conductor, whatever floats your boat, I guess

“and something worse is coming” dbhsdghbjgshbjsgbjhkgf okay Five, whatever floats your boat I guess

Allison immediately coming in with the ‘I know everyone blames you for Ben’s death, Luther, but honestly, who the fuck knows?’ dsbgbhdgshbsgdhkbj

Klaus has such an entrance and I honestly didn’t know that Claire was a comic character

The introduction to the apocalypse comes SO the fuck out of nowhere, but grumpy little Five with the ‘I knew I shouldn’t have run away from home’ speech bubble? Awesome

Also just genuinely interesting that Five truly hated Reginald and was aware of these feelings

The apocalypse introductions in the show and the comic are going for different feelings but they are both equally devastating, which is a nice touch

Also someone give show! Five a sword

Comic Diego is a fuckboy, and that’s obvious from a hundred paces

Apparently Grace makes me sad in any incarnation

Okay but the backdoor of the Icarus in the show is lifted straight out of the comics

I love the Conductor’s design so much, and his introduction is so good

Oh my god someone get a language checker, The Orchestra Verdammten doesn’t even make grammatical sense

I love the Conductor, he is so extra and just the concept of a piece of music that destroys the world…….it fucks so hard

This comic just throws wild shit at you and expects you to keep up

Just read the instructions Dr. Terminal gave his bots. Is he okay.

Why does Dr. Terminal want to eat Finland. Please I need to know what’s going on in that head of his

Gabriel Ba has excellent comedic timing

Five is a bitch and I love him

Diego hiding in a haunted house…….what a drama queen

Klaus is so fucking funny oh my god

Diego is so hilariously bitter towards Vanya. No need to destroy her like that, asshole

Love how Diego single-handedly brought about the apocalypse. What an idiot.

Dr. Pogo deserves the world

The Vanya reveal of powers is a bit. Uh. Underwhelming. Love the Frankenstein set-up tho

The art, man……..it’s so good

Comic Luther is SO savage holy shit

I love you Mister Conductor, but please stop butchering languages I know, thanks

I knew he was gonna die, but I am still hurt. Please bring him back, he’s the best character in this

“I don’t know where to begin…But I suppose I should start with the Kennedy assassination.” Okay five you drama queen

Allison is a bitch, and I mean that as a compliment

Honestly these Five and Vanya are made to be enemies, it’s great

HELL YEAH YOU GO KLAUS

This wraps up a little too nicely. Where did the moon boulder go

DALLAS

Sagfdghjasfkjghdsfjhksfhkj it opens with a ‘by the way, I’m still dead’ from Pogo

I can’t believe TUA directly inspired Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian

No seriously, I knew about sentient monument Abraham Lincoln but this entire scene FUCKS

Dsbksgdbhsgbhksgdhbkj Celebrity Surgery, the big popular reality TV show, I’m laughing

Luther and Klaus are both such messes jeesus, even if Klaus is coping better

Allison immediately kidnaps Vanya and exposes her to all the horrible shit she caused?? Dbgbhjdgkjhbgdhkj I love these versions of the characters

While Show!Diego is Walmart Batman, Comic!Diego is Walmart Rorschach

I thought I got the gazelle speech but now I’m just confused

It literally is an epiphany AND WHAT GOT HAZEL AND CHA-CHA SENT ON HIS ASS I’M

CACKLING

Also that one wordless Hazel and Cha-Cha panel……..so good

Five is a communist lmao Diego

Luther and Diego arguments are tedious in both versions

I hate the Marilyn Monroe ape scene. With a passion. It is so cursed

Also show Hazel and Cha-Cha were partners that grew apart. I think comics Hazel and Cha-Cha are in love

I am every killer ever. That is one cute puppy.

Also Klaus and God is great in every universe

Dsjfghjdhjdgjhbdgbjhkdbkjhgb Five’s face when he is outfoxed

Why do dream!Luther and Allison have am ape cyclops daughter

I love the Luther&Klaus dynamic

This is just a remix of Watchmen

I have no idea why they suddenly know what Five is up to, from the corpse of a Commission agent. What.

Wait now they can use corpses as time travel devices. What.

Okay, Klaus accidentally blew up the world. Cool?

I am so confused

Now Diego Klaus and Luther are fighting vampires in Vietnam and hurling mummies through the bush. Okay.

So Pogo always knew what kind of disasters they’d turn into? Dskbgdsbkhsdgbkgsdkh

THE WHOLE JFK ASSASSINATION ARC IS AMAZING

HOTEL OBLIVION

Hotel Oblivion really just presents a cockroach on a plate to you, huh

Reginald’s aesthetic is seriously so much cooler than he deserves

EVIL IS THE NAME OF THE FIRST PART OF HOTEL OBLIVION?!? I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE MR. AIDAN GALLAGHER

Five is a hired gun now?!? Man, that dude cannot catch a break ever

“TV is a healthy alternative to dying” esjkdsgbkgskbhdsgkbes

Who is Luther’s Japanese bro?!?

Also I just kind of really like the Luther&Diego dynamic in the comics

The show robbed us of Allison helping Vanya recover. It robbed us of Vanya getting injured in the first place, so what recovery, but still. This is incredibly sweet

God, all the villains in this universe are so intriguing. Except for Knock-Off-Adrian-Veidt, I keep forgetting that Perseus exists

“I’m a haunted house.” Is so metal as a self-descriptor

What the FLYING FUCK is Klaus doing there

Giant chicken?

The Enterprise???

“What are you doing?” “A report. I’m really interested in capitalism.” Djhsgjgskjvsevksevjesvjsefjv maybe Diego is right and Five is indeed a communist

“I know what it feels like to be unloved. I was born an object, and never treated as anything but.” It really was that bad, wasn’t it?” “For the both of us, yes.” B R U H

Evil Grace is fun

I love Allison and Five and their relationship so much

Five is interested in the stock market??

I am way too emotionally invested in whether Murder Magician and his baby make it out of there

Oh I CANNOT believe their romantic loves for their SISTERS is what unites them. I hate this.

What on earth is going on with Perseus and the flying head of Medusa

Alive Ben 😊☹

I am an idiot for not making the Perseus-Medusa connection sooner.

The Eiffel Tower now looks like the love child of the actual Eiffel Tower and the Atomium.

And now the Dr. Manhattan knock-off is here

God I love Allison so much

What the fuck is Pereus on about

Terminal eats a zoo

Scientific Man borders on plagiarism I’m sdhbgshsvjhksfvjksdjhkdsj

No no no no no not the Murder Magician

This whole baby arc makes me so soft

HELL YEAH LUTHER

Well this ended on a cliffhanger

#Lizzie reads the comics #i mean i made the notes might as well share them #i made progressively less because i really got into some of the parts of dallas and hotel oblivion

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elejahfanfic · 5 years ago

Text

Hello Love/2

Fanfiction

Part 2

AU story with tvd characters

Miguel Galindo x Elena Gilbert💖

Ft. Klaroline, Kennett

It's a love story -no vampires. Human.

Featuring a song by David Bisbal_Me enamore de ti

Also, Yemaya is played by Zoe Saldana.

♡□

So much is going on in this ch, there is so many characters - I hope it still has a coherent flow - 😅

Thanks for reading. 😀😘

Tag_@miguelsbrat

♤♡◇♧

Niklaus, or better known as Klaus to his family and friends, just taken a cab to take him to the Mikaelson residence.

He still wasn't sure if he made the right decision to return home after so many years abroad, where he had built a very good reputation and established himself as a prominent young architect making his firm The Wolf Group, as they called themselves, one of the very best. He left it to be run by his partner, Marcel Gerard.

It was one morning after he spoke to Miguel that he made the abrupt decision to take a sabatical year and spend time with the family. Actually, to be precise, with his siblings, as his relationship with his parents was not a good one.

***

Meanwhile

In Rebekah's office, she was looking at the photographs that were to go in the next issue.

"Get me Damon" she said to her assistant Vicki.

"Anything else?" Vicki asked.

"No. I'll be working till late, so you can go. Thanks" Rebekah said.

The eldest of them was Finn, who tragically died in a car crash, at the age 20. Niklaus was their second child. He was three years old when they adopted Miguel.

Rebekah chose to work hard to prove to her father that she can get the fashion magazine up and running and make a huge success of it when she took over. So, at work she was known as the shrew, some of her co-workers would refer to her as a blood-sucker at times. The Mikaelson family was regarded as the most ambitious when business was concerned. Their parents taught their children to be excellent, to strive to excel. To be the best. And they made them proud.

After, Kol, Rebekah and finally Henrik followed.

Miguel fell in love and chose to go to live in San Diego to work after he married. And as his wife died, instead of returning to New York, he chose to go to Mexico City. As for Klaus, after finishing his studies decided to travel the world, finally settling in Europe starting to work as an architect in a small firm.

The Mikaelsons were a big family.

But lately, work was all she had on her mind.

Damon got to her office in a little while, and as he entered the first thing she said was-

"We are professionals and personal stuff should never affect the work-still- I am going to say this, because Elena is my friend and I love her dearly - you're an asshole! If you weren't so damned good at what you do I would kick you to the curb."

"That's not bad. I kind of thought you would dagger me!" Damon said.

"Let's get to work. Look at those", she now showed what she didn't like about those photos and asked for a new photo session with the next month's cover person.

***

Elsewhere

Bonnie and Caroline met Elena for some good old retail therapy. The best remedy when trying to kinda mend a broken heart. A change in style, hair was Caroline's suggestion. Also, they all had already received an electronic invitation to the Mikaelson cocktail night. And they need great dresses for the occasion.

Elena kept quiet about her unusual meeting in the cafe.

In the Upper East Side, Miguel met his son at his new school. Cris as he and all his family and friends called him didn't want to go to a private school, and so Miguel enrolled him in the public school recommended by Rebekah.

Cristobal, looked a lot like his mother, very savvy, goodhearted teenager, who knew exactly what he wanted in his life. He was very close his father. The death of Emily, cut them both and glued them even more together. Sometimes Cristobal took more care of his father, than the other way around. Mostly because Miguel was very dedicated to his work.

There were certain things he still needed to do regarding the transfer, and he now dealt with all that.

"There something different about you dad" he said to him when they got out of the school.

"In what way?" Miguel looked surprised at his son.

"I don't know. But- different! You have a happy face."

"I have a happy face?"

"Yes. Usually it's - just serious." Cristobal said as he opened the car door.

Miguel looked at the watch and he had promised their housekeeper Senora Vega that they would be on time for the evening dinner. "Come on, we are late."

And there was a certain truth, he felt different. The woman Elena that he had met in the cafe was not getting out of his head. He had not felt a tingle in his heart for a woman for a very long time.

***

Greenich Village

Elena returned home later that evening and looked at the dress she chose for the cocktail party. Then at her new hairstyle, running her hands through them, inhaling deeply.

"Stop it!" she said to herself in the mirror, "stop thinking about him. Don't need anyone right now. Good-he looked so good in the three-piece suit- too good. "I am going crazy- what's wrong with me?!"

This man was not even her type. She prefered guys in jeans, with a badboy vibe about them. 'Mike' was completely the opposite. What was happening to her. Rebound thoughts. Totally crazy. Sliding the dress safely into the small closet, she went to the living room and put one of her mix playlists on.

Taking her laptop, she made hetself comfortable on the sofa. It was time to do some work. Lena's Cookie website needed updating. Browsing through the photos of her recent cookie creations made her stumble on a few she had done for her friend Yemaya's birthday. Though she was from Brasil, she was very much into mexican art and so she had requested mexican sugar cookies for her birthday fiesta.

Thinking of 'Mike', she looked up a recipe from her notes.

Me enamoré de ti, jamás lo imaginaba

Que algun día yo, de amor iba a vivir

***

A couple of blocks away

"Move in with me" he blurted out inbetween kisses and half way to bed disregarding supper.

"Enough of work." Bonnie said closing Kol's laptop nestling comfortably on his lap, pulling him into a kiss.

Kol finished writing the draft of his last research paper. Bonnie sneaked up on at him with a trey of food and wine.

"Who is joking? Move in with me. I'm serious. I want you here - all the time. It's crazy paying for two apartments, sleeping ovet here- there."

"Ok," Bonnie said,"yeah, let's be practical"

"This is not about being practical," Kol drew his fingers up her cheeks, looking at her dreamily, "I really want you here with me all the time."

"When you look at me that way, I could never say no."

"You drive me crazy" Kol smiled, "At times I can't believe you are real - and you are with me"

"Shut up and kiss me" Bonnie pressed her forfinger on his lips.

She was a person so very open hearted, giving and so loving. He met her accidently, so he thought, as he waited for Rebekah to meet him for lunch at the bar. He didn't know that the Rebekah and the others set Bonnie and he up on a blind date. He complained to Rebekah that he had no luck in the love department and that he had enough of dates that led to nowhere.

He kissed her, and he took that as a 'yes'.

***

Stefan met his fellow journalist Yemaya for a last minute check before he gave in his article for print.

"Stop joking"

"Want to grab a drink?" he asked casually.

"Just one!" she stressed out, "Last night I had one too many"

"Wow- in the middle of the week ?!"he teased her as he knew her rule not to drink during the week.

"We took Elena out to kick her shoes off. She was really down."

"I heard," Stefan said, "I cannot make excuses for my brother, he is not bad-but he makes hell of mistakes."

"All the time!" Yemaya added.

"Yeah, but I am not really into the Damon- Elena talk. Actually, I need a date for a cocktail party?!"

"You got invited too?!" Yemaya was surprised.

"Maybe it was some mistake, but it came from Mikael's official e-mail!" Stefan said.

"Yes. I would like to be your date!" Yemaya accepted happily.

"Good!"- Stefan smiled, and now waited for her to finish off what she was doing.

***

Days went by in a flash, and everyone had mostly work on their mind. Well, not everyone. Elena had something else on her mind, or rather someone else.

The Mikaelson cocktail party started to be the thing everyone started to talk about.

Esther and Rebekah were deeply immersed in the event. Everything had to be perfect.

Esther had invited all her family for a family brunch the day before.

Kol, Miguel and Cristobal arrived an hour before the meal. Cristobal immediately went with Henrik, who was two years older than him and that was a bit strange as he was in actual fact his uncle.

"What is not weird with this family" Cristobal said looking at Henrik wide-eyed.

"I kind of have to get to know Klaus and Miguel- they look too serious" Henrik said.

"Dad can be fun-he just doesn't like to show it much!" Cristobal explained. "Show me the last vynils you’ve bought."

"Come on" Henrik said gesturing to follow him to his room.

Rebekah walked in the living room all chirpy, "Gossiped much?!"

"No. Why would you think so?" Klaus said. "Then you have changed- you always had something smart to say about me"

"I did hear already comments about what a dragon you are at work, " Klaus teased, "it's only fashion, but I guess it has to be run with military precision. Father must be very proud!"

"There-you see" Rebekah looked at Miguel, who wanted to stay out of it.

"I hear you have new friends," Klaus said,"kicked the old snobby ones to the curb, I hear"

"I am sick of her snoby friends- yes-I have managed to make proper friends, and if you behave, maybe I will introduce them to you!" Rebekah shot back at her brother tapping him on the shoulder.

Esther walked into the Salon and there was gladness in her heart. All her children were there, and that was a rare occasion in the last years.

Her husband now joined them and they sat down for a very different brunch they all were used to. It was warm, chatty and quite lively.

Esther was counting her blessings, though her heart was not entirely at ease.

***

The next day, the pre-cocktail buzz was already in full flow with both the hosts as well as their invites.

Caroline talked to Elena over the phone about the cocktail party and Klaus.

"He looks really good," Caroline said, "you should check his site- he has done some amazing stuff."

"Caroline, you are telling me that I get into things head over heals like instantly. Rebekah is great, but he is a Mikaelson. Do you really want to get involved with one of them?"

"Elena, I know what you're thinking. Too close to home. Could mess up a great friendship if things go bad"

"Not thinking anything. Ok. I got to go. See you later"

"I will pick you up," Caroline said, "oh, I went back and changed the dress. I am wearing the blue dress - right- Jess is hear to do my hair. I will see you soon."

"Ok." Elena put the phone down.

Elena went to do her hair and make up herself. She was good in anything creative. She decided to wave it a bit and pin one side. She was going for a more natural look, and yet looking glam.

Simplicity has always been her motto. And yet, everything she did never looked simple. From her range of cookies to her relationships.

The door bell went and Elena was surprised to see Yemaya at the door. She had already been ready and dressed.

"Hey- Sorry. I just had to come" the woman stormed in.

Elena could see that her friend was all flustered. Something major must have happened for her to be coming and not calling.

Elena now waited to hear her spill the beans.

"Ok -I am going to say it- huh- I slept with Stefan. We went for a drink and it was just one drink -and we talked and he drove me home and then we kissed and then we kissed some more and- you know the rest."

Elena didn't understand what was so bad about it. He and Yemaya were work collegues. And that is exactly now what was Yemaya's concern.

"I said I would never get involved with someone I work with."

"Shall I guess what you told him in the morning?! Exactly that?! Right?"

Yemaya nodded.

***

In the Mikaelson Mansion, Esther Mikaelson was going through the list with her personal party organizer for the afternoon cocktail party the family was hosting for an exlusive charity event for the hospital Miguel and Kol worked for. Just one look from her said volumes when she was displeased with something. When her favourite sister died in the car crash, everyone thought that she would retreat and never come back, as she did go away for a year to grieve and be by herself. The grief changed something in her, she became a recluse, but adopting Miguel, brought her back to life. As he now walked out into the garden, greeting her with a small kiss on the cheek.

"How are you, querida madre?"

"Very well - even better now that you and Cristobal are here." Esther replied.

"This looks beautiful. Thank you for doing this."

"Darling, it is nothing. It's my pleasure. Where is Cristobal?"

"With Henrik" Miguel said and now greeted Kol and Bonnie.

Kol then went on to introduce Bonnie to Klaus and Miguel. Rebekah quickly snatched Bonnie away from the men.

"So, I'm hearing wedding bells from the distance!" Klaus teased Kol.

"Unlike you, I actually want one woman for myself!" Kol threw back at him.

"You haven't changed at all!" Klaus said. "I will leave you two to discuss whatever medical thing you will discuss"

"Bonnie" Miguel started, " she seems to be lovely!"

"What about you? Are you never going to find someone again?” Kol asked his brother.

"I don't know," Miguel said, "maybe"

"What does that mean? Have you met somebody?" Kol continued with the quizzing. "Dr Ruben has set her eyes on you. She's been asking me if you were dating anyone?"

"Please don't play the matchmaker." Miguel warned.

"Don't worry -"

Cris and Henrik came up to them and Kol now turned to them, quizzing them about the band they were forming.

The guest started arriving and Cris now observed how Esther and Mikael, together with Rebekah glided among the guests and how masterfully they played the hosts.

Damon and Stefan arrived together. Krystal made a solo appearance.

Elena, Yemaya and Caroline entered like a grand trio.

Rebekah was there like a shot and greeted her friends.

"Who invited Krystal?" Caroline shot at Rebekah straight out seeing the woman mingling with some of the guests.

"Father's office - she is the best model and it's about business -if you thought that this was a family thing only, then you are mistaken -come on -let me introduce you to Miguel and Klaus."

Elena's heart dropped when she heard the name, but when she actually saw that it was the man she had met in the cafe, her heart started beating uncontrollably. She tried to keep her composure as Rebekah officially now introduced them.

"Hello" Miguel said, curling a smile at the brunette.

"Hello" Elena muttered and smiled back at him, “I thought your name is Mike?!”

"Uhm - it's Miguel - when we were kids Rebekah would call me Mikey - uhm - I don’t know why I introduced myself using my childhood nickname - just felt like - I suppose being back in New York”

"Oh, you've met?" Rebekah said slightly wide-eyed.

"Yes- a few days ago" Miguel said, his eyes still fixed on Elena.

Se pinta de colores toda mi alma

Con esa dulce luz de tu mirada

Y al verte sonreír, vuelvo a tener fe

Elena nodded, confirming it was so, looking at her friend and then at the suave looking cardiologist.

The waitress with champagne cocktails approached them and Miguel now took the glasses and offered one to her.

"Strawberry Bellini! I think you will like it." Miguel said to the brunette.

"Thank you!" Elena took the glass. She was at ease now. His charm just enveloped her and she didn't care anymore that she had seen Damon and Krystal at the party.

Not standing far from them, Caroline already chatted with Klaus as if they knew eachother forever. He offered her a Mimosa cocktail.

"You are looking in the direction of that brunette like she had done something to you so disgracefully" Klaus commented since Caroline looked at Krystal off and on.

_ to be continued

#miguel galindo #elena gilbert #fanfiction #klaroline #kennett #rebekah mikaelson #alternate pairing #alterntive universe #the originals imagine #the originals fanfiction #crossover au #crossover fanfiction

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