#he knows he's not in the viking age anymore. in fact he usually just finds it amusing. but the thing is;

[lowstakesvampires]

[iliveiloveiwrite]

Late Fees // D.M.

Summary: Draco moves to a sleepy village after the war, wanting some time away. To keep himself busy and his mind occupied – away from the terrors lying in wait – he volunteers at the local library. There, he meets all sorts of characters. Mrs Taylor who has a love for trashy romance novels, Mr. Roth who is more than happy to be left alone with his books, and you.

A/N: A Librarian AU that absolutely no-one asked for.

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Muggle!Fem!Reader

Warnings: mentions of food and drink, mentions of nightmares, flirting, pining, cuteness

Word count: 7k (this got away with me)

The sleepy Yorkshire village never changed. Perhaps that is what Draco liked so much about it. Routines established and set in stone; everyone knew everyone and what they did every day.

The decision to move to Yorkshire from Wiltshire had been made overnight. Draco had sat through another painstakingly awkward meal with his barely-keeping-it-together parents and decided that he had had enough. Draco had returned to his room; hands shaking as his mind raced through the pros and cons of his decision. He needed to leave; he had to – he was injuring himself further the longer he stayed, yet he had nowhere to go. The Malfoy name was not one to be greeted with open arms and warm smiles.

He had chosen Yorkshire for the fact that other than Neville Longbottom; he didn’t know of anyone from there. With Neville training under Professor Sprout at Hogwarts, Draco had high hopes that he would run into the Gryffindor there. He was not yet ready to confront the sea of apologies he owed Neville.

So Yorkshire it was and Yorkshire it is.

He had moved in the spring; the fields surrounding his sleepy village finally turning green after the winter’s frost, fresh blooms on the trees lending the air a floral scent. The house in which he chose was relatively smaller to that of which he was used, but that was what he wanted. He wanted a complete change from what he had grown up; from what he was accustomed to. Draco needed to shake up his life entirely and his three bedroomed cottage in the Yorkshire Dales would do just nicely.

It takes six months for Draco to become bored of the same routine. He wakes on the couch after another restless night, he makes his first coffee of the day as he cooks his breakfast and then he leaves the house. He tries to spends as much time as he can outside; believing the fresh air to be doing him the world of good as he follows the well-worn paths through fields and forests, the temptation to get truly lost almost too much as he ambles aimlessly.

It takes six months for Draco to give into the desire to find something to do. He needs a job, he tells himself. Not for the money – no, Narcissa Malfoy had ensured he would be set for life when he moved out. He needs to a job to keep his mind occupied; to keep his body busy and his mind on other topics so he doesn’t continue to focus on everything that happened before. The Second Wizarding War had destroyed so many lives, and he bitterly regrets the part he played in destroying those lives. The survivor’s guilt mixed with the guilt by association is a nauseating concoction that leaves him unable to sleep, paralysed with the fear of what his mind could conjure once his eyes slip closed.

The sighting of the job advert in the window has Draco feeling as if all his Christmases have come at once. It was on his daily walk through the centre of the village that he sees the sign hanging in the window of the small library. A place he hadn’t yet ventured for fear of the silence, but a place he would happily enter if it kept him somewhat busy.

He had rushed inside; striding quickly up the small ramp and grabbed the ‘Volunteers Needed’ sign from the window, barely stopping himself from slamming it down onto the counter.

It was almost laughable; his desperation for the job, but he didn’t know how long he could continue the same mind-numbing routine. He didn’t know how much longer he could explore the forests of Yorkshire and not want to scream; he had seen vista after vista, his breath stolen at some of the views, but he wanted something else. He needed something else.

The grey-haired lady behind the counter jumped as Draco cleared his throat. “Morning dear,” She greeted, “How can I help you?”

Draco pushed the sign across the counter, “I’d like to volunteer with the library, please.”

That had been that. Madge, the elderly librarian, was wanting to retire. She had been a volunteer with the library service for nigh on forty years; her love for books something else entirely as she dedicated her life to lending them to others. After a brief conversation over the role in which Draco would take, she had given him his start date and that was that.

Draco had left the small library feeling lighter than air. The usual pressure upon his shoulders and behind his eyes barely there as he sprinted home; wanting to write a letter to his beloved mother to tell her of his news.

-----

The library was situated in the centre of the village. On its left sat the only pub, a large building that exuded nothing but happiness as it opened at noon on the dot. On the library’s right was one of the few general stores – it held everything. In his first few weeks in the village, Draco found himself spending his money there rather than travelling to other towns and cities. It had everything he could possibly need.

From his position at the desk, Draco had the perfect view of the village green along with the sole church in the village that catered to nearly every single resident. Day in and day out, Draco sat happily at his desk, sorting through returns and library catalogues as he ambled through the aisles when he needed to stretch his legs.

It wasn’t a large library. He felt certain that the library at Malfoy Manor was twice the size of the one he finds himself standing in now, but nevertheless, he appreciated this one just as much. Books had been his solace for much of his life. The library at the manor becoming his safe space at the age ten to the age of twenty. He had never worried when he was there; he could find an escape in the pages of an ancient tome explaining the histories of spells and charms, or he could find solace in one of the risker muggle books his mother kept hidden away from his father.

He doesn’t need to spend too much time inside to know he loves it. It was an oddly shaped building; octagonal with a shoot off where Draco’s new desk sits. The shelves line the walls; each one titled clearly with its genre and then books sorted alphabetically by author. The building itself was just over a century old; having seen two world wars and survived to tell the tale like many of the residents of the small village.

As Draco wanders the library, running his fingers over the spines of much cherished books, he knew he was going to be very happy within these walls.

-----

Draco meets Mrs. Taylor on a Wednesday morning a month after he started working at the library. It had not been a very busy morning; Draco spending most of it going through the ancient catalogue system and wondering whether it would be worth it to apply for a grant with the local council to get a computer. He’s thinking of his very first day in the old library, staring at the shelves and shelves of loan records when a loud cough breaks him from his daydream.

“You must be Madge’s replacement?” A feminine voice chimes: there’s no hint of the Yorkshire accent that Draco has come accustomed too in his time up north. Her accent is southern, but whereabouts, he couldn’t place.

He smiles politely at the grey-haired lady. “That I am,” He confirms, “I’m Draco. How can I help you?”

The elderly lady doesn’t reply. Instead, she rakes her eyes from Draco’s face down his body, leaving him feeling like a piece of meat rather than a living and breathing human. She must like what she sees, Draco thinks, as she smiles broadly, stepping closer to the counter. She holds a hand out to Draco, expectant in his taking of it. Draco shakes her hand once before letting it drop as she introduces herself, “I’m Mrs. Taylor, dear. I’ve been visiting this library for nearly forty years now.”

Draco blows out a puff of air; impressed with Mrs. Taylor’s dedication to the library. “So you’ll have known Madge well then?”

“Oh yes, but I can’t help but wonder whether I’ll get to know you just as well too.”

Draco reels back at the obvious meaning to her words. He raises a single eyebrow at her tone, replying carefully, “I plan on being in the village for some time. I’m sure you will see me around.”

Mrs. Taylor nudges her rounded glasses further down her nose; resting them on the tip, “I hope I do.”

Not knowing what else to do, Draco laughs, “How can I help you today, Mrs. Taylor?”

Disappointment evident in her tone, Mrs. Taylor drops a tote bag onto the counter. The bag is full to the brim with books; all returns for Draco to sort through this afternoon. He has to resist the urge to give Mrs. Taylor hope in the form of a loud kiss on the cheek; she had just sorted out his plans for the afternoon to keep his mind deliciously numb from the panic that had started to creep in once more.

“These are all to be returned, lovie,” Mrs. Taylor states, pushing the bag closer to Draco in the effort to get their hands to brush like in the romances she adores so much.

“Thank you, Mrs. Taylor. Will you be taking anymore out while you’re here?”

She laughs; her hand on her chest as if Draco had asked the most ridiculous question known to man. “Of course, I always take out new books. I shall see you in a bit, lovie.”

Mrs. Taylor toddles off, her red polka dot skirt swishing with every step. Draco shakes his head, amused by the older lady before getting to work on her bag full of returns.

It takes three books to realise the genre Mrs. Taylor enjoys reading. He catalogues romance novel after romance novel; each with a title that leaves very little to the imagination. Seducing The Viking and Romancing The Cowboy make their way to the returned stacks as Draco continues to work on the bag of books.

The more books she returns, the more he gets an insight into Mrs. Taylor’s mind. Draco has nothing against romance novels; he’s read a fair few in his time, but he had never read books with titles such as Taming The Pirate and Teasing The God.

Hurriedly, he makes a mental note to visit the romance section of the library to get a peek at any further books with such titles. He could see exactly what the appeal was; half naked men with ripped abs on the cover promising romantic liaisons in the rudest of manners. He understood why they were so popular despite having not ventured into the genre himself, preferring classic romances like that of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.

Mrs. Taylor returns to the desk; her arms full of new books to read. At the sight of her struggling, Draco rushes out from behind the counter, “Let me get those for you, Mrs. Taylor.”

“Oh… thank you, lovie,” She responds, smiling, breathless from the walk around the library but also from the weight of the books.

Draco leads Mrs. Taylor back to the desk where he spies the title of the first book in her large pile. Bewitched By The Billionaire stares up at him as he writes out the title and stamps the return date in the designated section of the book.

To help, he places all the newly borrowed books back into her tote bag, smiling politely at the grey-haired lady as he does so. “There you are, Mrs. Taylor, I hope to see you again soon,” Draco comments, handing her the full bag of salacious books.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Draco,” Mrs. Taylor croons; hoisting the tote bag full of new books onto her shoulder. She waves at him so flirtatiously that Draco cannot help but respond with a wave of his own as she leaves the library.

He feels amused long after the pensioner leaves; her overly flirtatious manner and her taste in books providing Draco his afternoon entertainment as he returns books to shelves and goes through catalogue records, trying to make some sense of the librarians that came before him.

All too soon, however, the light of the day fades behind the clouds as the sun sets. Draco releases a shuddering breath, going through his routine for closing up the library – making sure all records are locked away along with any money. He locks the door behind him, pulling down the shutter and shoving his hands into his jean pockets, setting off up the road in the direction of his home.

He dreaded this part of the day. In the daylight, he could keep himself occupied with the shelves and shelves of books, organising and recording. He could keep his mind busy, away from the terrors that lurked on the sidelines – waiting for the moment in which they could invade.

That moment is always comes. Draco tries to avoid it as much as he can; does anything he can to stave off the inevitable, but it always arrives, and it always catches him off guard.

Tonight, it’s as he’s sleeping. He’s pulled from a nightmare; scream lodged in his throat so tightly that his throat aches from the power of it. Tears trail down his cheeks as he tries to catch his breath; tries to slow his heart rate to an acceptable rhythm.

Draco looks around his bedroom; counting whatever he sees. Two bookshelves, one dresser, one wardrobe. He counts them all over and over again until his mind has cleared of the paralysing terror he had just experienced.

Nightmares came often. They started after the end of the war, and for now, it seemed like they were here to stay. It was never the same one, however. Draco had experienced so much trauma through the events of the war that his mind constantly replays them like a film; choosing a select memory and letting it play as he sleeps.

He settles his face in his hands, counting to ten as he inhales and exhales. He has to calm down; he cannot focus unless he calms down.

What feels like a lifetime later, he pulls his face from his hands, letting the inevitable wave of tiredness wash over his body. His body is tired; it’s dead tired and screams for rest, but his mind. His mind is awake and it’s restless. Draco sighs heavily, glancing at the clock on his bedside table, noting the early hour and knowing he would not be able to sleep anymore.

He flips on the light to the bathroom, turning on the shower before getting a look at himself in the mirror. skin pale save for the shadows under his eyes; whilst his sleep pattern had improved since moving away, there were still nights where Draco struggled to get more than three hours sleep. He tugs off his t-shirt, his eyes running over the pale pink scars that could not be wholly healed by Snape and Madame Pomfrey. The curse he had been hit with was brutal; only to be used on the worst of people and he understood why now. He had healed wonderfully; only a few scars remaining, but it would take longer to recover mentally from what had happened. His most common nightmare revolves around the pain he felt after the duel in the bathroom.

A shive runs through his body as he steps into the warm spray of the shower. Lavender is his body wash of choice as he squirts a large glob onto a sponge. He refuses to think as he washes himself; refuses outright to think about a thing other than what he needs to do next. Now you need to wash your hair Draco, grab the shampoo and wash your hair. Then you need to rinse off, Draco.

He talks to himself, getting himself through the aftermath of the nightmares just like he has always done. He brushes his teeth before leaving the bathroom; hoping that the spearmint of the toothpaste will overcome the acrid aftertaste of the scream that was lodged in his throat for Merlin only knows how long.

Draco dresses robotically; going through his list in his head to make it easier to cope with the fog that feels like it will be staying with him all day. He gets downstairs, only managing a cup of tea before deciding to head out.

The brisk walk to the library has Draco’s mind starting to clear. The early morning air tied with the frost has Draco startling awake even further, rejuvenating the blood in his veins and making his steps faster.

He barely looks around on his walk to the library; too used to his surroundings to be in awe of the rich landscape around him.

It’s why he freezes when he spots you.

You stand outside the library; breath nothing but white puffs in the air as you huff into your hands, trying to warm them up. You feel someone watching you; startling slightly when you catch Draco’s eyes on you.

You smile at him, “Please tell me you’re opening the library.”

Draco nods; holding up his keys as evidence, “How long have you been waiting?”

“Not long. Fifteen minutes at the most.”

“That’s not so bad if the weather wasn’t this cold,” He comments, unlocking the shutter and then the door, turning back to face you, “Are you coming in or what?”

You come back to life; dragging your eyes from the lithe figure of the man before you to meet his eyes with a sheepish glance, “Let me unfreeze and I’ll follow you.”

Draco laughs, he truly laughs. He opens the door to the library; glad to hear your footsteps following close behind him. Draco doesn’t take off his coat, he heads straight to the desk where he counts down the seconds for you to join him.

Timidly, you hand him your return. He takes it from you, automatically flipping to the record at the front of the book. “It’s two weeks late,” He comments; eyes wide, voice aghast.

You purse your lips, “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that.”

His eyebrows raise in shock, “How could I not notice that when I have to check the return dates?”

You shrug, “I’m not sure, but is there any way I can get out of the late fee?”

“What?” Draco asks, voice loud and in shock once more.

“I’ve never returned a book late. This is the first time this has happened,” You defend, crossing your arms across your chest.  

Draco hesitates, chewing on his bottom lip. He had seen the late fees waived before; had seen Madge’s notes in the columns of the records, but he had never waived a late fee before. He watches you; noting your body language as well as the dark shadows under your eyes that reflect his.

He nods twice, “I’ll waive the late fee this time.”

“You will?” You ask, your voice breathless, your eyes wide in shock.

“Yes, I will.”

“Thank you,” You say; repeating the words over and over as you smile widely at him.

Draco waves away your thanks with a motion of his hand; he’s simply happy he could bring a smile to your face.

With another smile, this one smaller – more genuine, you gesture towards the shelves, “I’m going to find something else.”

Draco nods, “Of course. I’m here to help if you need anything.”

You nod your thanks, turning from him and heading towards the stacks of books. Draco watches you walk away, unable to truly comprehend the conversation. He should have charged you the late fee; he knows he should have, but he took one look into your eyes and knew that he wouldn’t be charging you much of anything.

Clearing your throat, you bring back Draco’s attention. He smiles at you, “Did you find something?”

“I did. I’ve had my eye on this for a while,” You reply, holding up the cover to a fantasy novel, “I’m glad it’s finally available.”

Draco smiles, taking the book from you. No words are spoken as he records the borrow along with the date it needs to be returned. On a whim, he underlines the date twice before handing it back to you. You tuck the book in your bag; smiling gratefully at the blonde haired man before a laugh escapes your mouth,  “You’ve met Mrs. Taylor, haven’t you?”

Draco averts his gaze; feeling the familiar blush creep onto his cheeks, “How did you know?”

You point towards the stack of romance novels behind him, “She’s the only one in the village to read them. Madge would order them special for her to save her travelling to the next town.”

Draco feels oddly touched on behalf of Mrs. Taylor; that Madge cared that much for her to order books to save her travelling so far. He smiles softly, “I’ll have to see if there’s any new that have been published to save her reading Seducing The Viking again.”

You snort, “From what she’s told me, that one is her favourite. She would love you very much though if you were to order some new novels for her.”

“I’ll have to have a look into it though she might love me already.”

A fond grin makes it way across your face, “She’s a regular flirt, but she means well. If you’re ever in a pickle, it’s Mrs. Taylor you need.”

“How long has she lived here?” Draco asks; curiosity getting the better of him.

“All her life. She was born here in the forties and never left. She met her husband, had her family and that was that. She was settled. She’s like the village’s grandma.”

“She sounds like she has lived a whole life,” Draco murmurs, hoping slightly that the elderly lady would pop into the library today so he could hear some of her stories. It makes him miss his parents bitterly; they had their mistakes, but they loved each other wholly with a passion entirely encompassing.

“She has,” You utter, “I have to get going, but it was nice meeting you…”

“Draco,” Draco supplies.

“It was nice meeting you, Draco. I’m (Y/N).”

“It was nice to meet you too. I hope to see you soon… minus the late fee.”

You laugh once more; promising him that there would be no more late fees. Draco watches you leave once again, shouldering the bag on your arm. You tug your coat tighter against your body, shivering against the bitter cold air.

As he watches you walk away from him, Draco briefly wonders how long it would be until he saw you again, and just how much he was looking forward to it.

-----

Three weeks later and the library is the busiest it had ever been. Not only does Draco have a slew of new orders to get ticketed and on shelves, he has three people wandering the shelves.

Mrs. Taylor returned first; her tote bag once full to the brim of her returns. She had shamelessly flirted with Draco some more, stating that it was his grey eyes that did the trick. She had never seen eyes like it. Mrs. Taylor grasped Draco by the cheeks and kissed him on the forehead when he showed her the new delivery of romance books. At one point, Draco swore he saw tears in her eyes as he let her delve into the new books.

Then entered Mr. Roth. Mr. Roth was a man he had only met twice in the whole time Draco had been working at the library. He was a man of few words; happy to keep to himself and his demeanour reminded Draco too much of his own grandfather. A man he had only met a handful of times yet knew he was happy to never meet again.

Mr. Roth nodded at Draco in greeting before making his own way to the military history section, browsing the titles silently and happily. Draco had left him too it; too nervous of Mr. Roth’s reaction should he be asked for any help.

For a time, it was those two. The both of them milling about the library, adding more books to their pile to be read.

However, they are soon joined by Madge herself. She smiles widely as she enters the library; rushing over to Draco to sing his praises for how well the whole place looks. Draco blushes something silly at her words; he hadn’t heard much praise through his life, had needed to for the perfect mould and was disciplined when didn’t. For Madge to praise Draco over the care he takes with the library, it isn’t something he’s likely to forget anytime soon.

Madge leaves Draco after that. She dawdles through the shelves, knowing the exact layout like the back of her hand. She spies Mrs. Taylor by the romances and Mr. Roth by the history section, but she herself, heads towards the classics. Having read them all multiple times, Madge was always happy to revisit her favourites whether it be Pemberley, Wuthering Heights, or Thornfield Hall.

All the while, Draco couldn’t help but hope that you would walk in through the door. He had met you once, spoken to you once but he longed to see you again. Twice now he had seen you walking past the library; earphones in and nodding your head to whatever song you were listening to. He had raised his hand both times, waving to you. You waved back, smiling gently to him.

He didn’t want to tempt fate; didn’t want to harbour feelings for someone he had only met once, but he couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling deep within his gut that you were going to mean something to him one day.

If only you would enter the library.

----

It takes another week.

It’s another week of wondering and wishing. It’s another week of nightmares and early starts.

At this point, Draco has been living in this sleepy Yorkshire village for a year. He celebrated by working late at the library; organising new stock and creating a new display depicting the best reads of the month as voted for by the residents of the village. He had unashamedly added Mrs. Taylor’s newest favourite book at the top; that alone had earned him a wet kiss on the cheek.

You enter the library on a slightly warmer day in March. The month had begun frigid and frosty, but now closer to the middle, it seems that spring had finally taken its hold of the village.

You enter with yet another sheepish smile on your face, an apology already falling from your lips as you hand Draco the late book. “I know it’s late,” You ramble, “But I really haven’t had the time to sleep never mind drop it off considering the commute to work and back and the weather.”

Draco stops you by raising his hand, “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

You chew on your bottom lip, “Are you sure? I really am sorry.”

“It’s fine. You don’t need to pay the late fee either.”

“What?” You ask; hand already reaching for your purse.

“You don’t need to pay the late fee.”

“Why?”

Draco sighs, “Can I be honest with you even if it’s only our second time talking to each other?”

You nod wordlessly; nerves beginning to settle in your stomach in response to whatever could come out of his mouth.

“You look like you have a lot going on right now. You mentioned the commute to work and back, but you also look shattered, so I get it. I get what you mean when you haven’t had the time.”

You blink, the familiar burn of tears starting at the back of your throat. “You get it?”

Draco nods, “I get it. I know what it feels like to be so tired you feel like doing nothing else. I don’t know why you’re so tired, and you don’t have to tell me, but if you need to talk, I’m here.”

He’s stretching his neck out. It’s only the second time he’s spoken to you, but he doesn’t like the way the shadows under your eyes are looking. They seem to suck any happiness out of your face, leaving you almost gaunt looking.

“Can I repay you?” You ask suddenly; voice determined.

“What? Why? How?” Draco asks in a barrage of questions. He doesn’t need repayment; he would never ask for such a thing in the first place.

“You’ve shown me kindness. Can I repay that?” You state; voice clear as it rings out across the empty library.

“How?” He repeats; still unsure as to just how you would repay his kindness.

You glance at the clock; it had barely past ten am. You smile at Draco, “Would you like a late breakfast?”

It takes him less than ten seconds to answer; of course he would join you for a late breakfast. Draco grabs his coat; scrawling a sign for the door stating that he would be back in less than an hour, but truthfully, he didn’t think anyone would be in today.

----

Breakfasts consists of a full English rounded off with a pot of Yorkshire Tea. You argue stubbornly over brands of tea; yourself choosing Yorkshire as Draco opts for another brand.

Conversation never stops flowing; any silence is filled with a question or a story that always seems to lead to laughter either from Draco or yourself. Draco sits through the whole breakfast with a smile; he hadn’t felt this good in a long time. He had spent such a long while dealing with the guilt he harboured for surviving a war he was on the wrong side of.

It’s over this breakfast that he realises he needs to tell you. He needs to explain to you who he is and why he is here. Draco could talk to you all day long about tales from his education and his childhood, but they would all continue to be half-truths if he never told you about the magic that flowed through his veins and made him capable of incredible things.

Walking back to the library after breakfast, he resolves to tell you if he sees you again. You hadn’t taken out another book so he doubted he would. However, the small voice in the back of his head and also resided in his heart hoped that you would so he could confess.

-----

Draco does see you again. You start to frequent the library; wandering the aisles in search of your next read but also to spend time with Draco. You would be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t find him fascinating and handsome, but he had an air of mystery around him that you were desperate to get to the bottom to.

A friendship forms. The both of you finding yourselves better matched for each other than anyone else; becoming close and confiding in each other when things seem darkest. You confide in him your deepest secrets, explaining the nightmares that hide behind the dark circles under your eyes. Draco confesses much of the same, but his desire to tell you about the magic he can wield remains on the tip of his tongue, turning more bitter the longer he waits to tell you about himself.

He tells himself excuse after excuse: it’s too soon, it would scare you off, he isn’t ready. In actuality, he is ready, and more than enough time has passed for the relationship to be so firmly cemented that it wouldn’t scare you off.

Yet he panics, and it keeps him up more often than his nightmares. How does he tell the one he’s closest to that he can form light with a whisper of a single word? That he can brew potions to not only heal but to incapacitate?

He hasn’t neglected his magic whilst he’s been in Yorkshire; he’s used it well enough. To dry himself off if caught in the rain, to send books back to their shelves if he’s comfy in his seat. However, he has always been wary of his talents around you, too worried about being caught out and destroying the one positive friendship he has had since he was fifteen years old.

Draco needs to tell you. He knows he does; he’s let his feelings get in the way of confessing who he really is and what he can do. His feelings for you hadn’t crept up on him; he had constantly been aware of his changing emotions. As the friendship progressed, he found himself wanting to reach out and take your hand randomly or wanted to tuck a piece of your hair behind your ear and then stroke your cheek. These hadn’t been the ponderings of someone who held platonic feelings; they were entirely romantic, and Draco wanted nothing more than to pursue that option with you, but he didn’t know how you would feel after he confessed his magic.

Truthfully, he didn’t want to tell you because he didn’t want to see the fear and disgust in your eyes as he had so often seen reflected in the eyes of witches and wizards around him. To see that in your eyes, it wasn’t something Draco could ever be prepared for.

How long could it last though? How long would he have with you before you sniff out the lie and the friendship falls apart from there?

Draco ponders these questions as he tidies up the library; new books on shelves along with freshly returned ones. The two questions float in his mind as the late afternoon turns into the evening and Draco readies himself for closing.

He startles slightly as you enter the library. You look lovely this evening, and everything Draco wants to tell you sits perched on his lips, waiting to be screamed into existence.

“Are you ready?” You ask, leaning forward on the desk.

“Ready? For what?” Draco questions, confusion lacing his tone.

You frown, “We’re eating at your place tonight? You told me to meet you here and we’d walk there together?”

Draco’s eyes widen as he suddenly remembers the promise he made you last week; to cook for you one evening so you could eat something other than pasta and noodles. “Of course I remember,” He covers, laughing nervously, “I was just messing with you.”

Your frown deepens, “If you don’t want to do this Dray, it’s okay, we can reschedule or something.”

Draco shakes his head rapidly from side to side. “No!” He all but shouts, “Let me grab my coat and my keys and we can go.”

You laugh; feeling the awkwardness that had quickly settled between you, “Are you okay, Draco?”

Draco nods: gulping as he herds you out of the door so he can lock up. “I’m fine, I just have something important to tell you tonight.”

“Tonight?”

He nods once more; the words stuck in his throat. The decision had been made; he would tell you tonight and then deal with the consequences afterwards.

The walk to his home is silent; nerves settling in both your stomachs as minds run into overdrive over what could be said tonight. Draco – terrified for your reaction. You – terrified for what he has to say, wondering nervously whether your feelings for the blonde had been too obvious from the beginning and he was going to put an end to your friendship.

It didn’t matter how often you visited his home; it would always leave you breathless at the sight of it. It had been a home you had admired for years, knowing the family that had lived there before Draco. They had moved to the next village over, wanting to downsize after their children had left home.

The large cottage had always been gorgeous but seeing Draco in a domestic element added more appeal to you. He takes your coat from you, hanging it up before doing the same, toeing off his shoes as he does so.

You expect him to lead you to the kitchen where you had watched him cook so many times before. An expert chef as demanded by his mother, you loved to watch Draco cook and bake. He could create marvellously tasty dishes from just a handful of ingredient – a talent you wished you possessed.

However, he doesn’t lead you to the kitchen, he leads you into the living room where he switches on all the lamps in the room without touching a single switch.

“How did you do that?” You demand, wonder and curiosity making your tone sharper than you intended.

“This is where I need to you to not lose your mind,” Draco whispers, his hand reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a long stick.

“Why do you have a stick, Draco?”

“It’s not a stick. It’s my wand. Hawthorn with a unicorn hair centre.”

You frown, puzzled, “A wand? As in a magician’s wand?”

Draco nods, “If you need to sit down after I tell you, I understand.”

“Tell me what?”

“I’m a wizard,” He states bluntly, no room for argument.

You laugh; it’s breathless from confusion, “I don’t get what you mean.”

“I’m a wizard. I have magic. I can turn on the lights in any room without saying a word or touching a switch, I can brew potions that heal injuries, I can fly a broomstick and I’m pretty good at it too.”

“So you’re a wizard and you can do magic?”

Draco nods, “Would you like me to show you?”

You nod wildly; the action sending your hair flying into your face. You push it away, not wanting to miss a moment of this.

Draco sends you a bashful smile as he holds his wand out, pointing it at a lone book on the coffee table beside the couch. In a clear voice, he calls, “Accio!”

In a single instant, the book flies across the room and lands in his outstretched hand. He holds the book up to you as evidence. Your mouth drops open; in shock at what you have just witnessed. Draco represses a laugh at the look on your face, knowing how hard it must be to comprehend all of what has been unloaded on you.

“Then why are you here? In Yorkshire of all places?” You ask, even more curious for his life in Yorkshire.

Draco sighs, “There was a war. I found myself on the wrong side and I saw too many people I know die. In the aftermath, when everyone was healing and starting to live their lives again, I couldn’t move on. I left home so I could start to heal and find myself, find who I want to be.”

“And have you now?” You ask; hope shining in every word.

Draco nods slowly, “I think I have. I think I’ve started to heal at last.”

“I thought you wanted to end our friendship,” You confess, your voice no higher than a whisper.

Draco steps closer to you; dropping the book and taking your hands in his. “Never,” He promises, then he takes a deep breath, “If anything I want more.”

“What?” You gasp.

Draco bites his lip, feeling the all too familiar blush creep its way up his neck. “I want more,” He repeats.

He waits for your response, desperate to know what you think about everything else he has just unloaded on you. You open and close your mouth a few times; words failing you. Draco starts to panic, starts to form the words to take pressure off you when you step forward and kiss him.

It starts as a gentle brush of lips, but then the pressure becomes firmer, and Draco starts to respond. He gathers you in his arms, tugging you tight against him as his mouth memorises yours and every whimper that leaves it.

Your lips part under his and Draco takes every opportunity to deepen the kiss; relishing every second of the kiss and the way you feel pressed up against him. Your hands find themselves in his hair; carding through the blonde locks before tugging gently, smiling against his mouth at the groan the action elicits from the back of his throat. His hands start to wander; memorising the expanse of your body as he dips you slightly, wanting nothing more than to lay you out on the floor where you stand.

He doesn’t. Instead, Draco breaks the kiss. Pulling away with one, two, three pecks to your lips, grinning widely when you chase him for more. “You don’t care that I have magic?” Draco asks, gasping from the kiss.

You shake your head; tears shining with happy tears, “I couldn’t care less. I thought you were going to end our friendship because you figured out my feelings for you.”

Draco reaches up; tucks a piece of hair behind your ear, “Never, darling.”

You feel your face flush at the use of your new pet name. Draco choosing then and there to refer to you only as ‘darling’ if your response what to be that every time.

He dips his head once more; kissing you for all that he is worth. Pouring every ounce of emotion he has in his body into this kiss; hands grip you tightly as your hands start to wander, fiddling with the hem of his shirt and skirting the flat plains of his stomach.

“One condition,” Draco whispers against your mouth.

“Name it,” You whisper, tugging on his bottom lip with your teeth.

He groans; low and throaty as he kisses you deeply, barely remembering to break the kiss so he can mutter, “No more late returns.”

The laugh that leaves your body has you shaking in Draco’s arms. He swallows your laughter with his mouth; silencing you effectively as he leads you back to the couch where he politely persuades you into no more late returns.

********

General (HP) taglist: @chaotic-fae-queen​ @theweasleysredhair​ @harrypotter289​ @kalimagik​ @heloisedaphnebrightmore​ @nebulablakemurphy​ @figlia--della--luna​ @idont-knowrn​ @birdie-writes​ @big-galaxy-chaos​ @black-lake-confessions​ @annasofiaearlobe​ @imboredandneedalife​ @levylovegood​ @mytreec​ @haphazardhufflepuff​ @teheharrypotter​ @chaoticgirl04​ @accio-rogers​ @starlightweasley​ @dreaming-about-fanfictions​ @lestersglitterglue​ @msmimimerton​ @obx-beach​ @izzytheninja​ @slytherinprincess03​ @bbeauttyybbx​ @breadqueen95​ @acciotwinz​ @kashishwrites​ @slytherinsunrise​ @kylosleftbuttcheek​ @remmyswritings​ @xfirstfemale-marauderx​ @they-write-once-in-a-blue-moon​ @ria-rests-here​ @superbturtlemakerathlete​ @inglourious-imagines​ @ithilwen-lionheart​ @now-its-time-for-a-breakdown​ @ilovejjmaybank���

Draco Malfoy taglist: @the--queen-of-hell @minty-malfoy @obxmxybxnk @obx-beach @fallinallinmendes @ochrythum @gryffindors-weasley @kashishwrites @justmesadgirl @sycathorn-slush @dracomalfoyswifey @reaganwonders @lahoete @beiahadid @ravenclawbitch426 @detroitobsessed

[fanmoose12]

Can I have one where Levi is a highschool teacher and a lot of people assumed hes like this grumpy man who doesnt have a partner (although the students who are close to him think he's pretty cool). Then one day hanji came to give him his lunch which he forgot and the students in his class are like shook. I thought this would be cute and funny hehe

There were a lot of rumors about Mister Ackerman. Not that Armin, or anyone else in his class, found it hard to understand him – under all of his cutting remarks and cold eyes, there was a kind man, who actually loved working with children and who tried to make better people out of them. But his past was clouded in mystery, and Armin with his friends frequently discussed the most interesting rumors about their PE teacher.

The most famous was the rumor about Mister Ackerman being an ex-member of a notorious gang. No one actually knew the gang’s name, or in what city they had operated, but a few upperclassmen convinced everyone that Mister Ackerman was a criminal, who managed to escape from authorities only with the help of their history teacher, Mister Smith.

The second most discussed rumor was about another student from their school and Armin’s own best friend, Mikasa. Mikasa had the same surname as Mister Ackerman, and that fact had given birth to a gossip that she was his distant relative. Or not so distant, as some students even claimed that she was his sister or illegitimate daughter. It was true that they looked very much alike, with their dark hair and similar scowling faces, but Mikasa fiercely denied any relation to Mister Ackerman, and no one dared to ask him about those rumors.

But most interesting talks were regarding Mister Ackerman’s spouse. He wore a ring on his finger, but no one had ever seen his wife or husband, and that intrigued the students of their school. After all, everyone knew that Mister Smith was single, everyone loved Mister Dawk’s wife, Marie, who brought homemade and extremely delicious cakes on school’s festivals, and it wasn’t a secret that their English teacher, Mister Zacharius was married to a school’s nurse, Nanaba. But no one had ever seen Mister Ackerman’s spouse. No one waited for him after school, no one brought him lunch and no one accompanied him to school’s dances or trips.

“Whoever he was married to, they probably dumped him, because he is annoying,” Mikasa declared during one of the lunches. “That’s why he’s so angry all the time.”

“Or maybe, they have died?” Historia asked with a sorrowful expression on her face. “And that’s why Mister Ackerman always looks so sad.”

“He’s not sad, he’s just an asshole.” Mikasa argued.

“Nah, I think Historia’s guess is better,” Ymir smirked, wrapping her hand around Historia’s shoulders.

“You say that just because you’re dating her!” Eren interfered, pointing an accusing finger.

“Maybe,” Ymir shrugged. “But you are just a lonely loser with anger management issues, so your opinion definitely doesn’t matter.”

Eren flared up and shot up to his feet, his face red from anger. Armin stopped him, putting a hand on his elbow.

“Eren, calm down!” he whispered worriedly. “Besides, we shouldn’t discuss Mister Ackerman’s personal life so loudly.”

“Yeah, he can come in at any minute,” Sasha nodded.

“And I don’t know about you,” Jean added. “But I don’t want to run fifteen laps during today’s lesson. So shut your stupid mouths and hurry with your eating. We can’t be late for Mister Smith’s class.”

“Fine,” Eren begrudgingly returned to his seat, continuing to glare at Ymir’s smirking face.

***

Armin walked inside the teacher’s room, meaning to find Mister Smith, when he witnessed a peculiar scene.

Mister Smith was sitting at his usual place next to Mister Zacharius, as always, but today there was also a bespectacled woman Armin had never seen before. Mister Zacharius had his hands wrapped around her shoulders and Mister Smith was smiling happily, as they both intently listened to that woman.

“I’m sorry!” Armin squealed, when Mister Smith’s eyes landed on him. “I didn’t mean to interrupt!”

“Oh no, it’s nothing, Armin, don’t worry,” Mister Smith told him kindly. “Did you come to return me my book?”

“Y-yes,” Armin took a step closer and handed the book to his teacher.

“Ah, don’t be so shy!” Mister Smith chuckled. “Come here, I’ll introduce you to my good friend. That’s Doctor Hange Zoe, Professor of Archeology. And that’s Armin Arlert, one of my most prominent students.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, P-professor Zoe,” Armin shook the woman’s hand with a nervous smile.

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” she answered warmly. “Erwin told me a lot about you, he’s very proud of your grades.”

Armin’s eyes darted to Mister Smith, and he blushed, seeing the smile on his teacher’s face. “T-thank you!”

“Say, Armin,” Mister Zacharius called. “What is your next lesson?”

“Um, PE, sir.”

“What a coincidence!” Professor Zoe shot to her feet. “I was just going to see Levi! Armin, would you be so kind to show me the way?”

“Of c-course!”

“Excellent!”

“Just try not to surprise Levi too much, alright, Hange?” Mister Smith chuckled.

“Yeah, don’t give our shorty a heart attack.” Mister Zacharius added.

Professor Zoe threw her head back and laughed. “Can’t promise anything!”

***

“Ah, the school changed so much!” Professor Zoe mused, as Armin and she made their way through the school corridors.

“You’ve been here before?” Armin asked. “Have you been studying here?”

“Oh no, I haven’t. But my friends work here, so I used to visit a lot.”

“Used to? Why did you stop?”

“Oh, I’ve just returned from an expedition with my team. We’ve been digging in Norway for almost a year.”

“Trying to find something from Viking Age?”

“Yeah!” Professor Zoe beamed. “Erwin was right, you’re a bright one.”

The warm gaze of an older woman made Armin blush once more. “So you’re friends with Mister Ackerman as well?”

Professor Zoe giggled. “Yeah,” she said, playing with a ring on her finger. “We’re very close friends.”

Soon they reached the doors to the school’s gym.

“The lesson is about to start,” Armin said. “Mister Ackerman is probably inside.”

“Alright, thank you,” Professor Zoe nodded. Armin looked at her more closely, the woman seemed to be nervous.

“Are you alright?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah, of course,” she answered, running a shaky hand through her hair. “I just haven’t seen him in a while.”

Professor Zoe exhaled loudly, fixing the glasses on her face. “Let’s do this,” she whispered to herself and pushed the door open.

When Armin entered the gym, he saw that his classmates were already standing in a straight line, dressed in their sports uniform. Mister Ackerman was in front of them, and he tsked as he heard the door open.

“You know that I hate it when you brats are late to my lesson,” Mister Ackerman turned around, clearly meaning to lecture Armin. However, as he saw who was standing next to the boy, his eyes widened almost comically. “Hange?” he asked in a quiet, disbelieving voice.

“Hi,” she answered, awkwardly waving her head.

“You’ve returned? But you said you won’t be back until the next month.”

“Surprise?” Professor Zoe giggled nervously. “I brought you lunch by the way!” she dug through bag and produced a pack of sandwiches. She smiled victoriously at Mister Ackerman, but he just continued to silently stare at her, completely dumbfounded.

Armin and his classmates watched the scene with great interest. Who was this woman? Why was Mister Ackerman so surprised by her arrival?

“Dismissed,” Mister Ackerman suddenly announced, his eyes never leaving the face of Professor Zoe.

The class remained in their place, not sure if they had heard him right. Mister Ackerman had never ended his lessons earlier.

“Dismissed.” He repeated urgently.

Armin and his friends hurried to leave the gym, and as soon as they turned around, Mister Ackerman started walking towards Professor Zoe.

Armin was the last one to walk out of the gym, and before he opened the door, he swiftly looked back. Mister Ackerman was standing next to Professor Zoe, holding her in his arms. They were talking about something, but their voices were too soft for Armin to hear.

But he didn’t need to know what they were talking about to understand what was going on. Seems like he managed to solve one of the many mysteries about Mister Ackerman.

Armin was sure that there was no need to gossip about his spouse anymore. They’ve just met his wife, after all.

[bonsaiiiiiii]

100 Weird AU's? Yes.

So, I had these AU prompts on my phone for quite a while, and I was actually thinking about using them. And what better way to do it than using them with the Tracy's?

Reading and reading these prompts again (and under the gentle guidance of @willow-salix ) I thought that these prompts doesn't exactly match the brothers' everyday situation, but what if we push it past its limit? Yes, biting more that you can chew can be a little difficult, but I don't think it will be impossible. And that's where this challenge is born!

Get the Tracy's out of International Rescue's bubble and let them live an everyday situation as normal people! They can also be medieval nobles or even futuristic robots, the choice's up to you! You can choose from soo many things others don't even think about (and not even me, for a while)!

Many thanks to @tag2060 for the cover and @willow-salix for the support (both emotional and 'fic-ical'. I love both of you💚

NOTE: THESE PROMPTS AREN'T ALL MINE. I TOOK THEM FROM A GIRL I'M NOT IN CONTACT WITH ANYMORE, BUT I WAS TOLD I COULD USE THEM. ALL CREDITS FOR THESE AU'S GO TO HER, WHATEVER IS HER NAME (lmao). THE GOLD MARKED ONES (7, 11, 20, 23, 39, 47, 63, 64, 70, 83, 89, 91, 93, 96, 100) ARE ALL MINE, IN SUBSITUTION OF A FEW THAT WERE THERE, SO CREDIT FOR THE GOLDEN MARKED ONES GOES TO ME, BUT NOT EVERY ONE OF THEM.

NOTE²: SOME OF THE PROMPTS CONTAIN STRONG THEMES, LIKE DEPRESSION AND SEXUAL CONTENT. IF YOU'RE SENSIBLE TO THESE THEMES, DON'T DO THEM, NOBODY FORCES YOU IF YOU DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ:･ﾟ✧(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ:･ﾟ✧(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

To participate in this challenge, all you have to do is take one of the AU prompts from the list, one or more (or all) Tracy characters, and post your fic (can be a ficlet, or a series) under the tag #100weirdTracys and #100weirdAUs.

If you don't want to participate, please don't harass/bully me. I made this challenge just for fun, and I don't want for it to feel like something bad. In fact, I don't even regret doing this thing, even if it's strange.

Ah, I almost forgot: this challenge will be over in December, so you have 4 months to choose a prompt and make a fic about it. On December I'll review all the fics, but I'll always be reblogging and reading during these 4 months lol.

If you want to tell me something, hit me up on DM's! I hope you have fun with those prompts and those bois!

(づ￣ ³￣)づ(づ￣ ³￣)づ(づ￣ ³￣)づ(づ￣ ³￣)づ

TO RESUME:

• Swearing is allowed.

• You can write as many words as you want!

• Oc's and muses can pop in too!

• Make sure to tag your fic(s) under the '#100weirdTracys' and '#100weirdAUs' tags, so that I can find them easily.

• Always tag or contact me if you need help with anything! I'll be more than glad to help you!

• If you decide to do the mature prompts (19, 90, just to state an example) please refrain from using a too mature language and don't go further than making up. I don't like that kind of language, so it would be peachy to just avoid writing so they make wild sex behind a bush. Any kind of very mature fic or language won't be read by me, I'm sorry. You can still use those prompts, but don't work their bed life too much.

• Any dialect or first language apart from english is more than welcome in this yard! I would love even to read snippets of foreign language in fics, as long as there's a translation near it, but you're not forced to write in another language. If you don't feel comfortable doing it just don't do it, even if I'm telling you. (For the record, I love Irish so much I could listen to a person speaking this language for hours and you won't hear me complaining).

• I will accept this challenge in whatever form it takes, be it a fic, a drawing, a song, etc. I’m open to anything and I watch everything that comes before me!

φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)__φ(．．)

That said, you can find the prompts down here:⬇️

 #1 I saved you from drowning!AU

#2 I broke into your house at two in the morning because I was drunk and I thought it was my house!AU

#3 I am a door-to-door seller please buy something!AU

#4 I grabbed the wrong luggage at the airport!AU

#5 I know we hate each other, but a wedding would be more convenient for both of us!AU

#6 I accidentally poured you a love potion!AU

#7 I sent you 12 messages but you left me on read!AU

#8 I am your secret admirer and I leave you anonymous cards!AU

#9 Sorry, but I was first in line!AU

#10 We don’t know each other but let's pretend to be together because someone is bothering me!AU

#11 We pack up to do a funny trip but we end up in Bolivia without fuel!AU

#12 Locked in quarantine and we're bored! AU

#13 I do everything to find out the identity of this superhero and you try to mislead me because it’s really you!AU

#14 I got into a taxi just to find out it was already occupied!AU

#15 I called the wrong number!AU

#16 I got into the wrong car OMG I'm ashamed, but while you’re there why don’t you give me a ride!AU

#17 I found a wallet and my business is to find the owner and return it!AU

#18 I am a street artist and you complain that I play in front of your house at night!AU

#19 I caught you watching porn!AU

#20 We're two strangers that start chatting while waiting for the bus!AU

#21 Nosy and sloppy roommates!AU

#22 Old childhood friends who come back after years!AU

#23 I got shot to the arm/leg but you're there to save me and OMG ILY!AU

#24 We’re sitting next to each other on a plane and please don’t throw up on me!AU

#25 We accidentally switched phones!AU

#26 We are both contestants in a reality show and let's pretend to be together because the audience will ship us!AU

#27 I am a wedding planner and my ex’s wedding had to happen to me!AU

#28 I learned sign language to communicate with you!AU

#29 Professional model and novice photographer!AU

#30 Sorry I ran you over!AU

#31 We make out and then I find out that you are my roommate’s boyfriend!AU

#32 I’m quoting aloud the last book of a series and I’m spoiling you!AU

#33 It is a universally acknowledged truth that a bachelor with a large fortune must be looking for a wife!AU

#34 I am a Partisan and you are a fascist!AU(Italy during World War II!AU)

#35 I am the blood of the dragon!AU (Iron Throne!AU)

#36 Your dog is hitting on mine!AU

#37 I’m depressed and I decide to call a hotline!AU

#38 You are my soulmate but I am in love with someone else!AU

#39 Strange encounter at tattoo shop!AU

#40 On my mark, unleash hell!AU(Roman Empire!AU)

#41 I am an Elf, don’t look at me for ears I am ashamed of!AU(The Lord of the Rings!AU)

#42 Maybe my life should be more than just survival!AU(The 100!AU)

#43 I am an activist and I am trying to convert you to the cause!AU

#44 We are occupying the school but you are a spoilsport!AU

#45 All our friends are drunk and we're not!AU

#46 We’ve been together for three months and now you’re telling me you’re a werewolf!AU

#47 X has to go into a rocket to the moon and Y has to train X!

#48 Knight in shining armor and damsel in distress!AU

#49 We reluctantly team up against the zombie apocalypse!AU

#50 I’m a vampire and your smell is driving me nuts!AU(Twilight!AU)

#51 Monsters have attacked the Earth and the only way to save humanity is aboard giant robots piloted by two people who must maintain a mental union!AU(Pacific Rim!AU)

#52 My timer stopped as soon as I saw you!AU(Soulmate!AU)

#53 I need a lawyer and you are the best!AU

#54 I’m a Viking and I plundered your ship!AU

#55 I’m a classic dandy from the Regency Age and you’re just a silly girl from the lower middle class!AU

#56 I’m a policeman and you’re an intrusive journalist and I really shouldn’t give you any information about the new murder!AU

#57 You are a wannabe actress and I am a theatrical director who is losing patience and health!AU

#58 Due to a computer error, X and Y become college roommates!AU

#59 X wants to see the world of Y, how he lives and what he usually does, and ends up spending a night in prison!AU

#60 I attend the yoga course just to watch how flexible the instructor is!AU

#61 I am a bounty hunter and you are my prey!AU

#62 I am a secret spy and pretend to be your friend only to get information about your father!AU

#63 I discuss with you about a thing but you have in mind another!AU

#64 We are forced to be best friends just because our moms were best friends too but you're too bossy for me!AU

#65 We broke up but I never changed emergency contacts and now I’m in the hospital and they called you!AU

#66 I am an angel and you are a demon!AU

#67 I hit you on the balls during a game of paintball and oh my god I am so sorry!AU

#68 We live in a dystopian world where your partner is chosen by society!AU(Matched!AU)

#69 I’m a dragon trainer I’ll prove to you that they are peaceful creatures!AU(Dragon Trainer!AU)

#70 Date at japanese restaurant!AU

#71 You’re a cheerleader and I’m a punk and we live in two different worlds!AU

#72 I was a zombie and I was "re-animated" but you treat me like I’m still a monster!AU(In the Flesh!AU)

#73 I am your son’s teacher and I am calling to talk to you about his conduct, would he also come to dinner with me!AU

#74 I am an Achaean warrior and you Trojan and we are fighting the Trojan War!AU

#75 I met my asshole boss at the bar but I found out he’s pretty cool!AU

#76 It was not my intention to touch your ass, it’s just that the bus is crowded, it’s not my fault ok!AU

#77 I went fishing and accidentally fished a mermaid!AU

#78 I just committed a crime and I need to use you as a hostage!AU

#79 You’re the bastard who always parks in front of my door and in spite I’ll scratch your car!AU

#80 I accidentally went back in time and fell in love with you, too bad you’re a barbarian!AU

#81 I urgently need you to fix my computer but please don’t judge me for my chronology!AU

#82 I work on the cruise ship where you are spending your holidays!AU

#83 I'm out in the rainstorm without an umbrella because the weather forecast was sunny!AU

#84 I hugged the wrong person from behind!AU

#85 Celebrity on the run and ordinary citizen confused!AU

#86 Stuck in a ranch cleaning horse poop but it doesn’t matter because that cowboy is a badass!AU

#87 We got married in Vegas, but we’re total strangers!AU

#88 But, officer, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was just smoking a joint, want a hit!AU

#89 X is an astronaut and Y is a weird but funny alien that likes to scream, overreact and laugh!AU

#90 I slept with you for a bet but I loved it and I’d like to keep seeing you!AU

#91 I reveal to some friends that you wear boxers/underwear with green aliens on them but you're behind me and oh gosh total shame!AU

#92 Oops I accidentally entered a busy dressing room!AU

#93 You're a stranger but I keep crossing paths with you and I'm kinda confused right now!AU

#94 X is a medium and Y a ghost!AU

#95 X is a guardian angel and Y wants to die!AU

#96 X accidentally enters in a cat and Y has to rescue it from up a tree!AU

#97 X risks losing the house because Y’s company wants to buy the land!AU

#98 I’m an artist and I need a model do you want to pose for me!AU

#99 I’m not really sick but the new doctor is so beautiful that I found out I have a disease with an unpronounceable name!AU

#100 A strange job application!AU

φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)__φ(．．)

If you find them more practical, I also have some photos down here with all the prompts organized:⬇️

That said, enjoy! Hope it brings you joy and makes you happy while you do it!💙💚🧡💛❤💜💖🖤

[lisinfleur]

Lullaby

Author’s Notes | It’s an honor to be a part of this sweet moment! Thank you, @hecohansen31​​ for inviting me to write for our sweet @maggiescarborough​​ and participate in such a sweet gift! And you, babe, may the gods be with you in this day and all the days that follow this first in the new cycle life is offering us with your lovely presence! Thank you for being this sweet and supportive person that makes us writers around you feel fueled to continue our work just for one more smile of yours! I hope you like this humble gift and may your life be full of the sweet and kind energy you spread wherever you go! Happy b-day!

Universe | Vikings, Saxon Team

Pairing | Alfred x Reader

Info | Viking Age AU, a gift to sweet @maggiescarborough​. 

Words | 2044

⁑ Warnings: Historical inaccuracy¹.

"Y / N!"

Your bedroom door broke open and you lifted your eyes from the music sheets to look at the worried servant looking at you.

"The king..."

You placed your papers aside and got up. Whenever they were worried like that you knew it was again his disease.

Whenever his disease was hurting his body, then... You would be his relief.

"Is he in his bed?" you asked.

Foolishly.

You knew where he would be - your steps passed his bedroom.

"No. King Alfred refuses to leave the music room's divan," she answered, ignoring your knowledge of his habits.

You were the one who asked the servants to install that divan there. It would be too visual to have a bed in the castle's music room or a piano inside the king's bedroom, but that way, Alfred could be comfortable whenever his personal calvary would decide to torture him again enough for his compromises being lesser than his need for your healing fingers.

You nodded. You knew what he needed.

His eyes looked straight at you from that divan when the servant opened the door and your steps entered the room trying to make the lower sounds possible.

"My king," you bent yourself respectfully.

But Alfred sighed.

"I told you already... Forget these formalities, wife."

Wife.

In your whole life, you never thought you would become the Queen of England by his side. In fact, you never ever thought you could be a princess by his side when he was not the next in the line of the throne. But there were the two of you: the crown in his head, a ring in your hand.

Some people in his court would say he married you out of options after Elsewith died in childbirth. Poor Alfred... God wasn't merciful to him and some cruel people would say it was because he ceded lands to the pagans and invited heathens to dinner in his table, but you knew very well what was behind the curtains. They declared that child a stillborn, but you knew Alfred accepted delivering the baby into Ubbe's hands after Elsewith's last words confessed her treason and the fact that the son King Alfred had waited for so long wasn't his, but Björn's, such as many children around the kingdom were blond and blue-eyed like Ragnar's firstborn - May God have his soul, despite his heathen faith.

After his brother's mysterious death, his mother - blessed queen Judith! - who followed her son into the grave. And now his wife and the dreams of an heir she never brought to him. Poor Alfred.

Poor of your beloved and sweet King.

As his cousin from foreign lands, you thought you would end up married to an Earl of his trust. For a moment you even though he could negotiate your hand with one of the Norsemen new leaders that came, once his friend Ubbe was already married to his older brother's ex-wife - something you begged the heavens wouldn't happen in a thousand years.

But it was the crown of a queen beside his throne that landed over your head. An unexpected - but surely desired - place.

You loved your cousin since the first time the two of you could see each other. He was a sweet boy, grew up in a peaceful and wise man. The only decision of his you've ever reproved was to cut his hair so short trying to get Elsewith's attention from the bald Norseman towards himself. A failed intention, but something you were already getting used to - after all, it made him more manly, with less of the boyish sweetness you loved so much in your prince.

Yet, you loved him purely. Enough to have the best wishes when his bride finally came, to mourn in God the treason that brought so much sadness into your King's eyes; to vigil, on your knees in prayer, fasting for days begging for his health whenever that evil disease would take his joviality and throw him on his bed.

The council thought you were chaste enough for the place by his side.

You knew that ring didn't come to your finger for love. But Alfred never ever treated you with less tenderness or sweetness just because you weren't the love of his life...

Yet.

Words of his, not yours.

"I'll grow to love you, my sweet wife. I've learned it with the time that love that comes from the first sigh is flame. And flames are easily extinguished by everyday rain... Or the waves of the sea... This is not love. Love is something else I long to learn with my years by your side. A life... A whole life seems to be enough to discover what love is. May God bless me with life enough to find it in your eyes."

His marriage vows you never forget. Promises of a beautiful future you had dreamed through your whole life. But that, in times like that, would seem impossible for someone who was so close to God, so blessed by him, that seemed to make the angels eager for his presence in his rightful place in Heaven.

You came closer to his divan, sitting by his side in a small bench for servants, ignoring the fact that you were a queen and exchanging the warm cloth in his forehead, wetting it in the bowl of fresh herbal water to replace the cloth and try to lower his fever. Alfred's face frowned for a second with the difference between his body temperature and the cloth you placed on his skin, but soon it relaxed in relief as the refreshing sensation of the herbs was starting to be effective.

"You should be in your bed, my king."

You never stopped being sweet that way to him. Even thou he would always complain about the titles, you knew he liked the way you were gentle and respectful - and the court and council liked it as well so, fewer headaches for him, who had already so many to solve in his head.

"You know what I need," he mumbled, so weak, so pale that you could almost see his veins marking on his skin. "It makes me sleep peacefully. It brings me peace. Please, my sweet wife. Play for me."

The usual ask.

You caressed his face gently and got up to sit at the piano he ordered for you as a marriage gift - your favorite gift in your whole life. Your fingers touched the ivory keys, gently caressing what was your favorite thing in life after Alfred's smile. And slowly, you started one of your compositions - a calming one. One you knew he liked.

Some between the healers of the court once spoke to the small mouth that you were a witch, spreading rumors that your music was a spell that could make the king fall asleep. But Alfred ordered the church's pianist to cede his place for you on a Sunday and under his orders, you played the most beautiful songs in honor of your Lord, causing the priest to say your hands were blessed by God and your music was healing the King's soul.

From that day on, nobody questioned the way Alfred would always ask for your healing songs when he was sick. And you were free to compose more of them for him, sliding your fingers through the keys as if they were dance with grace and love.

So much love...

Alfred's body relaxed a little more. A servant came to replace the cloth some minutes later and the worry in her eyes became a tender smile.

"He fell asleep. The King is asleep, oh, thank God for the Queen's blessed hands, hallelujah!" she exclaimed in a low tone, tracing the sign of the cross on her chest.

You smiled. Yet, your fingers kept playing with a lower tone.

From time to time the servants were alternating to check on his temperature and rest, always blessing his visible relaxation or the fact that his temperature was lowering slowly.

Maybe it was the real rest he was able to reach with your notes. Maybe it was the love in your songs reaching his heart, making him stronger. Maybe the servants and peasants were right and God had blessed your hands with the gift of healing songs to your beloved King. You were never able to explain how you were able to play for hours just for his rest. Or how he was always recovered when he would wake up still hearing one of your beautiful compositions.

But when his eyes were open once again, still under your fingers' dance at the keys, there was more color in his skin, his face was less touched by the disease, and his expression more serene.

You kept playing for a while for his enjoyment before finally conducting the composition to its end, lowering the coverage of the piano keys and resting your tired hands over your skirt. Your fingers were hurting you. Your hands were in pain. But it was worth the price.

"Are you feeling better, my king?" you asked, looking at him with the same sweetness you always had in your eyes when looking into his.

Alfred smiled.

One of those beautiful smiles that got your heart for him years ago.

"Yes... The pain isn't here anymore. But I know it is yours now," his voice mumbled.

Of course, he had noticed how you would dive your hands into warm water at night, washing it in cold herbal water and alternating the temperatures several times before sleeping after that much of time playing the piano for his rest. But you would do it silently, sometimes with a smile on your face when your eyes would catch his serenity, pretending he was sleeping by your side when the truth was that he was awake, thanking God for bringing you into his life.

"Come closer, wife," he asked, and you got up, sitting beside him once again.

But this time he caught your hands into his, warming them in between his now warmed palms.

"Is this it?"

Alfred's question got you confused before he could continue, bringing all the blood of your body to blush your cheeks into crimson red.

"Is this love, my dear queen?" his eyes dove into yours and your voice failed.

But his words were so sure, so intense, straight into your heart.

"Is this love that you offer me when you cause your own pain just to relieve mine? Is this love what you put on your songs that heals my body and brings relief to my tormented soul?"

You didn't know how to answer that question. You didn't know if it was love what you felt for him - too little was taught about love to women like you. But you knew it was the purest desire of your heart to see his smiles. The beautiful smiles you couldn't live without.

"I don't know," you mumbled, "But it is yours," you confessed, smiling at him as your fingers gently caressed his hand.

GIF

His lips curled once again.

"Then blessed be God for my disease is his hand over me, putting me down so I can feel His love through your hands, your notes, your songs. Blessed be God for what the people call suffering, I call His grace, showing me how rich I am of his blessings in my life. Because everything I ever suffered conducted me towards you. And I couldn't be more grateful to have you by my side, sweet Y/N."

Your heart filled with his words, warming your chest and opening your smile when Alfred leaned himself to gently kiss your forehead, caressing your face with that tenderness you would always find in his eyes for you.

None of you could really say what was this love he wanted so badly to know. But you didn't need to name that feeling. You were grateful in your heart for the blessed home you were gifted with and the pain in your fingers was nothing - if that was the price you would pay for Alfred's smiles, then it was a cheap price to pay for what was priceless into your heart.

¹ The piano was an artistic mention to our sweet @maggiescarborough's art. Sad for him, Alfred the Great didn't have the chance to enjoy such a magnificent way to produce music since he lived in the 800 (849 to 899 a.C.) and the piano was invented around 1698 to 1699 by Bartolomeo Cristofori and introduced to the public in 1709. Nevertheless, I discovered the information after the production of this piece and I decided then to bend the time and allow our beloved king to know this art through our sweet reader's hands and to take the chance to share this piece of the pianoforte's history for you guys to learn with me!

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[kattegat-kittycat]

Fates Entwined, part VI: Safe In A Dream

After your former clan was brutally murdered, you agree to an arranged marriage with Ivar to keep your social status. You may not always see eye to eye and sometimes even find yourself on different sides of one war or the other, but somehow you can never escape each other no matter how much you try to forget, deny and run. Somehow you always end up in each other’s faces. Sometimes quite literally.

A/N:  As the fact checking goes, there actually was the possibility of mills and flour during the Viking age. I doubt that the mills in Ribe/Ripa actually date back that far, but well...

Don’t get me into the physical locations of all the Viking towns and stuff. It is incorrect in Vikings, so I don’t try to fix it now. Took me around seven hours from the German border to Ribe by bike, so I guess it would be about a day’s worth of travelling by horse. Anyhow. 

There is a little teeny tiny bit of smut in the end, slightly dubcon, little fingering, little oral, nothing in the grand scheme of things, seeing that in Vikings there are people having sex and being raped all the time. I am not that comfortable with that, so, well, it is pretty vanilla. 

As I will have to go back and rewatch a few episode to make sure I get the story woven into the series’ context at least a little sensibly, it might take a couple days (read: might be weeks) for me to update again. Just a heads up. I had this planned out a little differently first, but now I will probably have to wait for the series to end, so I know how to end this story. 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

On the edge of life.

After all these days are gone. The endless haze will rise. I close my eyes. I'm safe from all harm. I'm safe in a dream.I want you to stay. I want you to be there for me. 'Cause I need your love. I need your touch. I long for your embrace.

Entwined - Safe In A Dream

The people of Ripa had gladly accepted me back in their town and as head of the earldom. Many of them had stories to tell of my uncle ruling them with a hand harder than necessary. I was happy to be back in my hometown at the bank of the river leading through the marshes to the sea. It was beautiful and so much calmer than the hustle and bustle in Kattegat. It was softer than the fjord-environment; there were endless marshes and fields to be farmed and the sunrises were the most beautiful I had ever seen, I was sure of that. I also loved hearing the watermills at Neder-, Mellem- and Overdammen in the inner city, producing all the flour we could wish for.

My family’s estate had been ransacked, but with the support of a few helpful hands, we were able to rebuild it pretty quickly. I knew I would have to return to Kattegat in time to be back when Ivar came home, but I also had to think of my earldom now. Ripa was the oldest town in the north, and I was proud to be its earl.

I talked with my old teacher, Ole, about setting up a council to decide over all important matters in my absence and I trusted Ole to be its head. I was more than happy when he agreed to my suggestion. He had been my teacher when I was younger, so I knew I could place the fate of my home and my people in his hands. After a couple of weeks in Ripa, when I was sure peace could and would be held up even if I went away, I gathered the shield maidens Lagertha had sent with me and we made our way back to Hedeby.

But there were no signs of Lagertha or most of the inhabitants here. The town was uncharacteristically quiet considering the amount of warriors and shield maidens that usually roamed the streets and went about their daily businesses. As we drew closer, we realised that except for a few men guarding the town and the traders, villagers and farmers, the city was empty. We rode up to the Ting house, where I expected to find Lagertha or at least someone who could tell us, what had happened. As I had thought, all we found was her secondary, a woman called Ragnheiđur. She came toward us as we neared the house and greeted us calmly.

She was an imposing woman, broad shoulders and long blond hair, even for a viking warrior she was really muscular. She was as strong as most men and you could see the silent confidence in her every move. She had grown up in Hedeby and had been taken under Lagertha’s wing when Lagertha came here. As I trusted Ole with Ripa, Lagertha trusted Ragnheiđur with Hedeby, because she knew that she wanted the best for her hometown. Astrid was the person Lagertha trusted most, but Ragnheiđur was a close second. I also had to admit that it was a compliment to Lagertha’s tactical thinking that she had left some of her best fighters in Hedeby. Firstly, they could keep foreign forces at bay and second of all, it led people to underestimate Lagertha’s real military power. I made a mental note and then frowned. It only left one question:

“Where is Lagertha?” I asked Ragnheiđur, as soon as I was within earshot.

“Well, hello to you, too. I hear you had a successful journey to your hometown, Earl of Ripa.” Even though she had just shoved my nose into my own impoliteness, she was easy to laugh and did just that.

“I am sorry, there was a lot on my mind. Hello and greetings to you, Ragnheiđur. How come you are here to greet me and not Lagertha? I wanted to thank her personally for her help.”

Ragnheiđur shook her head, but smiled. She was young, but pretty unimpressed by my impatience. She herself was not the most patient person, so she knew how to take my blunt question.

“Haven’t you heard? Lagertha is now the reigning Queen of Kattegat. She overthrew Queen Aslaug who renounced her claim on the throne.”

I was about to just turn my horse around, but Ragnheiđur stopped me.

“It is about to get dark and you probably haven’t eaten. Please come in and sit with me before you leave for Kattegat. You won’t be able to change anything anymore. What has been done, is done.”

I gave her a stern look. “What has she done?”

Ragnheiđur’s face turned sad. “You know what happened. You know why she took the opportunity while you were away. You might not have been Aslaug’s greatest fan, but Lagertha knew you would try to stop her, when she wanted to kill the Queen.” She grabbed my horse’s reigns and petted its nose. “Come in and eat. You won’t change the past by endangering yourself. Don’t forget, you are important now.” She grinned at me as she spoke those words. She was so open and easy to listen to, I didn’t think twice and followed her advice.

I got off my horse and she gave its reigns to her servant girl, who brought it into the direction of the stables. I followed her into the Ting house and the shield maidens who had followed me to Ripa entered just behind us. It would probably be the last quiet evening for a while. The last evening I would not have to talk and act politics, because Ragnheiđur already started asking me about my hometown and if it still looked like I remembered it. As dinner was served, she suddenly turned a little quieter.

“Would you mind taking the princes with you to Kattegat when you are leaving?” she then asked.

“The princes?” I asked, a little confused.

“Yes, trust me, it is a long story.” And with that she started to recount the happenings of the last weeks, clearly marking her distaste in some of the events, but who was she to question her earl? I could see how I would have to treat around Lagertha in the future, because I, too, had sworn her allegiance, just like Ragnheiđur had. When I asked her if it caused her any problems, she smiled again.

“Of course we are not always of the same opinion, but in the end, I find it easier to follow Lagertha than any other earl or queen. I know who she is, I know what she wants, she doesn’t play unnecessary games. She is a just ruler. I am also in a unique position to learn a lot from her, about leadership, about life, about making hard decisions.”

I considered her words and felt relief wash through me. Maybe I had made the right decision, even if it hurt.

*

Ragnheiđur came to wake me up the next morning. “Y/N, you want to wake up. Margarete just freed the princes and they are getting ready to leave.”

I sat up in an instant, looking straight into her dark brown eyes, as I opened mine. “Gods, Ragnheiđur, you scared me.”

She just chuckled and grinned. “Haha, sleepy head, get dressed and get yourself ready, I’ll tell the princes to wait.” She gave me another look, then she left the house.

When I got out into the broad daylight, Ubbe and Sigurd stood beside their horses, obviously frustrated by the delayed departure, but waiting for me. Or at least Ubbe was, Sigurd was flirting with Ragnheiđur as best he could. She smiled at his jokes, but I could see that she wasn’t impressed. When Ubbe saw me, his face turned darker than before.

“Oh, nice, the traitor makes her entry.”

Ragnheiđur suddenly turned to him and gave him a shove. “Hey, you don’t get to talk about her that way! She is worth more than the two of you.”

I smiled ruefully. “Thank you Ragnheiđur, but he is kind of right. I did betray my promise to his brother.”

Ubbe threw me a dark look. “You know as well as I do, that I am talking about you turning your back on my mother and leaving her defenseless.”

I snorted. “You mean like you did when you came here? Don’t try blaming that on me.”

We stared each other down for a moment, until Ragnheiđur had enough. “You wanted to leave, Ubbe, now you are free to go. Don’t make a scene, just go.”

I expressed my gratitude to Ragnheiđur and then got on my horse, waiting for the princes to do the same. When I heard the sound of their horses following me, I could feel myself relax a little. We rode in silence for the first part of the journey, until Ubbe rode up next to me. Sigurd was still behind us and he didn’t make any attempts at riding up either. He seemed to be content where he was. Ubbe on the other hand had something to say.

“So, you made a pact with Lagertha to gain her support in your attempt at overthrowing your uncle. How did that go for you?” he asked way too sweetly. I wanted to slap him.

“Fairly well for the second part. Turns out, she didn’t really want my help though, but rather to get me out of the way.”

Ubbe’s eyes fixated on me. “So, you were not a part in the battle for Kattegat?”

“No, I got injured claiming Ripa and I only came back yesterday. And that was what Lagertha had hoped for. She knew I had no trouble leaving Kattegat to her, but I would not have let her kill your mother.”

“Why would she…”

“We are pretty similar. She did not only want her home back. She wanted revenge on the woman who took it from her.”

Ubbe objected: “Our mother has not stolen anything…”

Sigurd gave a humorless laugh from behind us. “My dear brother, you of all should know that our mother is far from perfect, she is manipulative and used to getting what she wants, whatever she needs to do for it. I mean, she came back to Kattegat, pregnant with you, driving Lagertha out of her own home. She used the trouble of a girl without a family to get her crippled son married. I am more confused that Y/N would have defended her than by the fact that Lagertha would want to kill her.”

It was the first time, I actually appreciated something Sigurd had said and I looked at him with surprise. “I was indebted to her. And while it might seem unlikely, I did like her. Not very much, but more than a little.” He threw me a sceptical look.

“You do realise she only used you, do you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I cannot claim that I have been at a disadvantage because of that. I did not like the way she went about it, but I do think that she believed herself to be kind in helping me, even if it served her own ends.”

Sigurd snorted. “You really do like our brother. How very odd.”

We rode in silence again, until Ubbe said:

“So, I hear you’re an earl now.”

I snorted. “I guess I am. But don’t tell Ivar that I am more important than him.”

Ubbe burst into laughter. And Sigurd shook his head in amusement.

“So, I guess congratulations are in order?” Sigurd said from behind us.

I shrugged. “I only claimed my rightful title. And I got my revenge.”

“Like Lagertha?” Sigurd asked again.

“No. I killed all his heirs and loyal followers as well. You don’t want to keep around people who hold a grudge against you. Look where it brought my uncle. Or your mother.”

“That is cold blooded.” Ubbe remarked and I shrugged.

“It is war. There is no place for feelings in a war.”

Sigurd frowned. “Why do I still keep on being surprised by how similarly you and Ivar are thinking?”

“Thank you.” I smirked at Sigurd.

His frown went deeper. “That was not a compliment.”

Ubbe and Sigurd turned uncharacteristically quiet. Until Sigurd piped up:

“Should I feel guilty for not really feeling grief about the loss of my mother?”

Ubbe’s face turned dark. “We do not know that Lagertha killed her! Maybe she is still alive. All we have are speculations.”

I gave a nod. “I cannot see your mother any more. But then again, I could only see her future when I touched her.”

“So, what can you see, if you cannot see what is going on in Kattegat or with our mother?” Ubbe asked.

“Your brother. I can see your brother.” I answered solemnly.

“He is sitting in a dark room somewhere in England. Your father is still with him, but Ivar is sure that they are going to kill him. He is ready to die with your father. He cannot really understand their language, so he doesn’t know what is going on and Ragnar won’t tell him much. He is afraid of losing him, now that he spent some time with him.”

Sigurd rolled his eyes. “Precious little Ivar was probably a big help for father.”

“He was. Ragnar had to carry him through the woods, yes, but Ivar helped him kill the traitors in their midst who were ready to sell them out to the English.”

“How do we know you don’t just make that up?” Ubbe asked. It was not a vicious question, just a curious one.

“You don’t. I don’t even know how I know this. But I can tell you one thing, your brother will not come back the same person after this. I am a little afraid of what the news of your mother’s death might do to him. He will need his brothers after that.”

Sigurd’s voice turned bitter. “We don’t even know if Ivar comes back and if our mother is dead. But I am quite sure that our little momma’s boy could use some harsh reality to wake up and realise the world does not revolve around him.”

“That, Sigurd, is the problem.” My voice had turned sharp. “He is aware of that and that is why he will want to create a world that revolves around him.”

“Should you be speaking about your husband in that manner?” Ubbe asked more amused than actually affronted.

I cocked an eyebrow. “Ubbe, I will do anything to prevent my husband from going on an insane quest to prove his worth to the Gods. But to keep him safe, I have to face the harsh reality of who he is and who he could turn into.”

Ubbe’s piercing blue eyes met mine. “Is he your husband or your quest?”

I shrugged. “A little bit of both. But before all else, he is my life.”

“Well, good luck with that.” I heard Sigurd whisper.

 *

 When we arrived back in Kattegat, I found my fears proven right. Lagertha had crowned herself queen and killed Aslaug. But there was nothing, I could do or could have done. Even if I had been in Kattegat, there would have been no chance for me or the princes to help. The people of Kattegat remembered their former leader and Ragnar’s first wife and they supported her. Nobody had liked the etheral and distant Aslaug much, whereas most people still remembered how Lagertha had helped built the foundations for Kattegat to become what it was now. I looked at Ubbe and Sigurd and I could see in their faces that they understood as well. I wondered about Margarete, but Sigurd quickly explained to me that she would be coming back to Kattegat the next morning, at least that was what Ragnheiđur had told them.

I entered the longhouse behind the two princes and watched on as they witnessed what we already had suspected; there was no way to fight Lagertha. Ubbe tried to avenge the death of his mother in a fit of rage when he saw my visions had turned reality and became even angrier when he heard that they had been quick to burn her body as well.

I had held myself in the background, because I had no reason to fight Lagertha, but after the commotion had settled and Ubbe and Sigurd had left the longhouse, Lagertha stood up and came over to me. It was no leisurely stroll, it was a prowl, she was ready to pounce and rip my throat out, if I did anything wrong.

I took a knee and bowed before her. “My queen.” I addressed her and left no doubt where my loyalties lay.

“Y/N, for a moment there, I was confused as to what to think about you appearing with the sons of Ragnar.” She remarked, making sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was hers.

I stood and looked at her calmly. “We had the same road to travel, so Ragnheiđur suggested we travel together. Greetings from her and Hedeby, they extend you their congratulations.”

She gave an appreciating little nod. “Thank you. So, tell me, how did your voyage out west go?”

“The earldom of Ripa also extends its congratulations and is at your service should our help be needed.” I said and beamed at her proudly. She took my shoulder and drew me into a tight hug. Even though she touched my shoulder only lightly, I cringed a little in pain. The wound had healed up well, but it still gave me some pain and aches. Lagertha’s eyes followed her hand and noted the reaction.

“I am sorry my queen, I got injured in the battle.”

“That’s a small price to pay to restore the world as it should have been in the first place. We just followed our fates. So you were able to overcome the usurper and kill him?”

“Him and his whole kin. I do not believe in misguided clemency. He tried to erase my family from the world and so I erased his.”

“You probably don’t think it wise of me to keep the sons of Aslaug around?”

I smiled at her wearily. “I am in no position to question your judgement on the matter. And I am thankful as my husband is one of them.”

She gave a nod. “I know. So be assured that unless provoked, I could never kill any son of Ragnar. Also, I know them to act before they think and that makes them less of a threat. The only one not lacking their father’s vision is Ivar, but as long as you can convince him to refrain from going after me, you must fear no harm.”

“It will be hard work, but I will do my best.”

“Surely he will listen to you.” Lagertha said and left no doubt that he better do as she said.

“You haven’t really met my husband until now, have you?” I asked her, slightly amused.

She frowned. “Well, you better find a way to appease him, because I will not spare him if he makes an attempt on my life.” There was a definitive edge to her voice that told me how serious she was.

I bowed my head and gave a nod. “I am aware of that, my queen. I am, however, also aware of the fact that he can be very impulsive and please consider that he is the youngest of the sons and had a close bond with his late mother.”

Lagertha looked at me for a long time, then she gave a nod. “I will take that into consideration”, then she smiled, more to herself than at me, “Ragnar was impulsive as well, when he was young. But well, we don’t even know if they will come back. And then Ragnar will have to…”

“Ragnar will not be coming back to Kattegat.” I told her.

Her eyes narrowed. “And how would you know that?”

“I saw it. I am not as gifted a seer as Aslaug, but Ragnar will be handed to King Aelle. And you know that there is no love lost between those two.”

“And what makes you think your husband will survive if even Ragnar had to surrender?”

I smiled at that. “You really don’t know my husband.” There was a sense of pride that came with these words. Ivar was sly. He was cunning and he was stronger than people gave him credit for. But the less she knew, the better.

She gave me a pitiful smile, but I knew, I was right.

 *

 I found Margarete in the kitchen the next day, preparing food for the night. She seemed slightly scared, but mostly angry. There had been no love lost between her and Queen Aslaug, but at least Aslaug hadn’t played her for a fool and used her to her own ends. She resented Lagertha for playing her.

“Can you not free me from Lagertha? I do not wish to serve her, she tricked me into deceiving Ubbe and Sigurd.”

I shook my head with a sad smile. “I am afraid not. I have yet to prove my worth to Lagertha, also, I do not have the money or the means to buy you from her.”

Margarete made an impatient gesture. “What good was your becoming an Earl, when you don’t have any power?”

I lost my patience with the girl. “Margarete! You know how to get out of this! You were already on your way to convince Ubbe to marry you.”

Margarete looked at me with wide eyes. “How do you…?”

“I know these games. A lot of slaves have slept their way to freedom. I don’t judge you for it, people have to do what they can to be free.”

“Like marry Ivar the Boneless, gain military power and overthrow their uncle?”

It sounded almost as bad as sleeping your way to freedom. Well, to be honest, had Ivar not been Ivar, it would have been exactly the same. I still smiled at her.

“And this is why I like you. We are very similar in some regards.”

Margarete took a deep breath and looked at me levelheaded.

“But Ubbe has nothing to say in whatever Lagertha does. She might very well just kill him.”

I shook my head. “He is still a son of Ragnar and that means something to the people in Kattegat. She could never kill one of them, least of them Ubbe. He looks too much like his father. So go on, take your chance. You deserve more than this. But be careful, Margarete. I cannot save you, I hold no power in this town.”

Her head bobbed in understanding. As I was about to go, she grabbed my wrist.

“Thank you. For not judging me based on what I have to do. If you ever need my help…you know where to find me.”

I smiled at her. “Just promise me to be careful.”

 *

 I could feel the mood change in Ivar, when Ragnar was handed to Aelle. I mostly felt it through the flare of anger being lit in Ivar’s mind. I could feel the slow burn of hatred consume most of his thoughts and cloud his mind, as he set sail to Kattegat.

I wasn’t there when Ivar’s boat landed at the harbour and when he confronted and challenged Lagertha, I had been to Hedeby for the day and as I returned, I heard people talk and chatter. And then I felt his presence in the town. It was not only his own anger that seeped through the streets, but also the people’s apprehension as they all knew that Ivar coming home to the news of his mother being dead at the hands of Lagertha did not bode well. I heard from somebody that Ivar had been escorted out of the longhouse back to his old dwellings. So, I entered our home, unsure if this even was our home anymore. I took a deep breath and pulled aside the curtain dividing his space from the main room of the house. He was sitting on the bed and his head shot up, as soon as I entered the space. An unreadable grin spread across his face, splitting it in two, making it look like a horrible grimace.

“My wife. My beautiful moon… Tell me, how is your shoulder, love?”

I quickly touched my fingers to the scar on my left shoulder and knew from the calculating look in his eyes that he knew. I closed my eyes.

“How do you know?” I asked calmly.

He snorted and tilted his head. “It’s kind of a funny story…” And with that he took the helm of his shirt and pulled it over his head, revealing a scar that looked exactly like the one I sported and that had not been there before he had left for England. “I had a dream. I got hit by an arrow while conquering Ripa, a town that I had never seen before, but now know better than I care for. I woke up screaming in agony. So… if this is true, you probably went to Ripa.”

I gave a nod. Why did I feel my cheeks burst up in red hot shame, when I had nothing to be ashamed of? “Yes, I did.” I said in a little voice that didn’t even sound like me.

“Even though you promised me to stay in Kattegat.” And there was the accusational tone, I had been waiting for.

“Well, I am here now, am I not?” I countered and felt more like myself again.

His eyes glared at me like blue flames. “But you went to Ripa and endangered yourself.” He pressed at me through clenched teeth.

“I did what I needed to do. And now I am back here for you.”

“You could have been killed!” He screamed at me, which took me aback. I knew his low growling, his mocking, his sardonic undertones, his playful threats, but never had I heard him scream like this. He sounded more like a wounded animal than angry. That surprised me the most. Ivar wasn’t only angry, Ivar was afraid.

“But I wasn’t killed, that’s what matters.” I tried to soothe him.

“No, it is not! I cannot have you traipsing around getting yourself in danger!”

He had pushed me over the edge of my empathy. “And what is it to you?! You were in England trying to get yourself killed!”

“It matters because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone! I cannot lose you!”

“But I am supposed to lose you and be fine with it? I know you are planning to go back to England!”

That took him by surprise. “I…They killed my father! I have to go back to avenge his death!”

“Exactly!!!” I screamed at him. “As did I! I also had to avenge my father’s death! So what is the big difference?”

Ivar looked at me for a moment, before he growled. “You are mine!” As an afterthought he added: “Also, it seems like I get injured if you get hurt. So, you die, I die.”

I raised my eyebrows. “But that probably works the other way around as well!”

Ivar had become quieter and quieter. Now he looked at me, eyes wide with simple fear. “So…you don’t know what is happening to us?”

I calmed down instantly. Shook my head. Looked him in the eyes. “I don’t. Your mother was the only one who might have known.”

His face fell and he shook his head. “I cannot believe that my mother and father are both dead.”

I took a step toward him, still hesitant, still not sure how he would react. He looked up to me, his eyes glinting with moisture. When I was close enough, he took my wrist. His grip was painfully hard on my skin, as he tugged me toward him. His other hand took hold of my upper arm and he pulled me down onto the bed with him. His lips found mine before I could say or do anything, the kiss forceful and possessive. He pushed me down beneath him and shoved my dress and underskirt up to my hips, pushing it further up, until he had me pinned beneath him, dress up around my waist. I felt exposed until he kissed my stomach, his hands gliding beneath the folds of the fabric to my breasts. I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t find the words.

“Ivar…”

He growled as he bit into the flesh just beneath my right breast, then kissed it.

“You are mine, Y/N, you will always be mine.”

I sighed, my hand gripping his hair that had become longer and a little shaggy. I liked it and gave it a tug.

“And you are mine, but you cannot just do with me as you please!”

Ivar looked up at me, across my upper body, his eyes like those of a feral animal.

“Then tell me you don’t want this!” he growled.

For a moment, we stared at each other, Ivar motionless above my naked lower body.

I made a frustrated sound and wriggled out of my dress all the way just to unceremoniously drop it over the edge of the bed. Ivar looked up and down my exposed body, then his eyes caught on the scar on my shoulder. He touched its twin on his own body and compared the two with wonder. I was just as fascinated by the scar he should not have, so I sat up and asked him to turn around. It really went through. Just like my shoulder, his had been pierced through, he had the same identical scar on the back of his shoulder that I had. I swallowed hard and looked into his eyes.

“Ivar…”, he looked back with concern, “I am scared.”

At that, he took me into his arms, his skin feeling comforting on mine.

“I am as well. Do you understand now why I cannot have you getting yourself in danger? I don’t want us to die. It is bad enough that I have to fight the English and risk your life.” He placed a kiss on the spot where my neck met my shoulder and I sighed.

“Let us not argue about this any more. I have missed you, my husband.”

“Well, you kept yourself busy, that much is clear.” He chuckled. “If you hadn’t broken your promise, I would be immensely proud of you, my earl.”

I kissed his jaw. “Tell me about your vision, how was it?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“If I am being honest, it scared me. Seeing you, seeing you in danger, it was bad. Father threw an empty cup at me, because I did not stop screaming.” He smiled, almost fondly.

I kissed the side of his cheek, gently tracing his cheek with my fingers, then placed a kiss on his pulse point. I could feel the life humming through his veins, the life he shared with me, and suddenly, I felt possessive, too. I nudged him down onto the furs and almost jumped him, kissing his jaw, his throat, his collarbone. Ivar dragged me onto him and was only happy when I straddled his waist. He looked up at me and his hands reached for my breasts. He kneaded them, then sat up to put his mouth around one of my nipples that already stood at attention. He softly bit down, sucked, making me moan as a shiver ran down my spine. He had talked about women with his father and he was all too eager to try his hand at some of the things his father had mentioned.

As he sucked my nipple, his hand massaged my other breast, pinched the other nipple. I took in a sharp breath.

His brothers were sleeping in the adjoining rooms, only divided from us by a curtain. I had heard Ubbe and Margarete often enough to know what positions Ubbe favoured, but I did not want the same notoriety. As I thought about that, I missed Ivars second hand drifting down and slipping in between my legs. Only when he touched me in my most sensitive spot, I gasped. He rubbed a little, moved his fingers back and forth, always gauging my reaction. He smiled when I bucked my hips forward as he touched me, before he quickly turned us around, lying above me, hand still between my legs. He kissed my lips shortly, then kissed down my midline, until he was just below my belly button. He looked up to me, as if asking permission, and when I gave a slight nod, he slipped further down, parting my legs and suddenly sucking on my clit. I almost squealed at the sensation, but bit my lip instead, my hip pressing upwards. I could feel Ivar hum appreciatively against my skin and the vibration almost drove me wild. His slight attempt at a beard didn’t look like much, but it teased me even further, when his lips explored a little further and he found my entrance. His tongue darted in and out of me a few times, making me grab at his hair. He took that as the right direction and inserted one of his fingers into me, as his lips found their way back to my clit. He pressed his tongue up against it, then licked along all the while moving his finger in me. He added a second finger, which was enough for now. He went back to sucking and his fingers fucked me faster than before, my hips meeting his pace. As his tongue once again lapped at me, my hips stuttered and in spite of my former promise to myself, I loudly moaned his name and tugged on his hair as I came.

My eyes fell closed for a moment, but when he came to rest beside me, I looked into his eyes. He beamed with pride and licked his lips. Then he kissed me with the fervour, I had missed. I could taste myself on his tongue and sighed into the kiss, making him chuckle.

“Did that feel good?” he asked mischievously.

I beamed at him and let him have the glory. “No, not good. Amazing.”

I had never seen the joy that spread across his face before, not on Ivar, and it made my heart jump a little.

“Gods, Ivar, I do love you.”

He chuckled and nuzzled his nose in the crook of my neck. But I was more interested in something else. I slowly let my hands wander across his body, felt his abdominal muscles contract beneath my fingers, until I reached the helm of his pants. I heard his breath catch, but he did not stop me, as my hand dipped into the front of his pants and touched his almost totally hardened member. My hands closed around his shaft and started to move gently back and forth and I could hear the change in Ivar’s breathing. He did feel something. His hips started to move in time with my slow strokes, became a little more demanding after a while, as I felt his prick harden a little more. He moved with me and after a while I let my finger swipe over the tip and then pump him a little faster. Ivar’s breathing became eratic until the movement of his hips stopped and he gave it one violent snap of his hips and shuddered. There was only a few driplets, but Ivar still seemed content and happy. It wasn’t much in the way of a climax, but it was more than nothing. I looked at his face a little worried.

“Did I make you feel something?” I asked him, shyly.

He smiled back at me. “You always make me feel something.” He gave me a kiss.

“No, I mean… did that… did that feel good for you?”

He sighed, then hummed contently. “Yes, yes, that felt very good. One could even say…amazing.” A cheeky grin spread across his face, when I looked at him a little outraged, and his eyes only sparkled with humour, before he kissed me again.

“Y/N, I will never have sex like other people do, but this? This was enough. For once, pain has not been the predominant thing I have felt and that means a lot.”

I smiled a little smile. “Yes?”

“Yes.” He chuckled in my ear. It was one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. It was a pity that I would not hear it for years to come.

[howtowhumpyourhiccup]

We Care Not

Summary: On Berk, children quickly learned that their friends weren't there to stay. Harsh Winters, famines, illnesses, dragons, so many of them barely even made it to the age of ten. And sure, Hiccup made it to the age of fifteen. But why should the other remaining five care about him? He was a runt, destined to be taken from them sooner or later. Why open up their hearts to him, why care, when all that would lead to is even more hurt?

Rating: Teen and up (I think?)

Words: 1 706

Author’s Notes: Had this one sitting in my list of "fics to post" for ages because I was never sure if I should post it. Not quite sure whether this one counts as whump or not either. Or how to even properly tag this one.

Constructive criticism is highly appreciated.

Enjoy!

Also, Tumblr, bring back the ability to put lines into a post with a button.

Also, also, this fic is based on @digitaldaisy99‘s post. You can view it here.

Ao3

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Astrid remembered having a friend once. A dear friend.

She was four, like Astrid was at the time. Their birth had been almost days apart. Because of this, they celebrated them together.

Her hair was as black as charred wood and ended at her shoulders, just like her mother's. It wasn't often Vikings kept their hair short, but they did. Her eyes were a clear blue, like a rare sunny sky. She was the most fun of all her friends.

Second only to Hiccup, who could draw and made such pretty pictures with charcoal and paper, with sticks and in dirt.

Named Unn, she always came up with the most fun games. Her energy was endless and she never failed to make them all laugh. The memories Astrid kept of her, they were bright. The few times she took a moment to remember her, she would smile.

Unn was small, though. Her legs and arms were as spindly as thin tree branches. Or more like twigs. Not as small as Hiccup, but there was barely a difference between the two. She wasn't even an inch taller than him and everybody was taller than him.

Sometimes they played on the plaza, other times they played in the forest right outside the village, the beach was also a fun place to be. When they were daring enough, they would even go up to Mildew's cabbage patch at the edges of the village. It was always Unn who suggested teasing the old man. He was mean to the village children.

She was an innocent girl. A playful girl.

When her life was taken, it was during a raid. Not by dragons, but by other people. The Winterbeards, a tribe of hardened Norsemen and women who sought resources that they didn't have and stole them from other islands.

Astrid didn't know until the morning after the fighting. When those that couldn't defend themselves, like them, were allowed out of hiding and she wondered why Unn and her mother never joined them in the Great Hall.

She never got to say goodbye. They never got to play again. So sudden had Unn been taken away from her.

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There was once a little boy on Berk by the name of Ivar and he was Snotlout's best friend. Strong, husky, boisterous, he was the dream son any Viking couple would've loved to have. He was a big one ever since the day of his birth.

The two of them were always up to no good. They'd get in trouble, either with Mildew or other Vikings on Berk. Several times they had also sought out the dangers in the forests outside of the village. Usually ended up running at the smallest of sounds too.

Out of all his friends, Snotlout thought he was the best.

There was a harsh Winter one time. Not the harshest ever, but harsh enough. On their island, that particular season was followed by an Eel Pox epidemic. Every single year, again and again, without fail.

Little Ivar got sick. Many of the Hooligans did. It took Gothi much too long to receive the ingredients necessary for a cure. More than half of the crew send out with a longboat to gather them got sick on the way, delaying their journey further.

One afternoon six-year-old Snotlout walked up to Ivar's house to ask if he was all better and if he could come out to play yet. What he found were two mourning parents instead.

Neither Ivar, nor his little sister, Inge, had made it.

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The Thorston twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, they once had an older brother.

Like most Nuts, that is exactly what his name ended on. The thing with him was, his name was Nutnut. "Nut The Nut" they used to call him. Or simply, "Nut" for short.

He wasn't like other Thorstons. He wasn't the epitome of chaos and trouble. In fact, he was quite calm. Shy even! When the twins were five, Nutnut was already on his way to puberty.

He was a caring big brother. Always looked out for his younger siblings, got them out of any trouble they may end up in, made sure they ate and washed and slept on time. The twins were a handful and they knew it. When their mother needed a helping hand, with no supportive fathers in their lives, Nut was always there. He was a loving son.

During one bad dragon raid, Nut couldn't find his siblings.

Unaware of the dangers they were putting themselves in, Ruff and Tuff followed the fire brigade around instead of staying hidden like all the others who were told to hide.

Nut spend so long finding them, evading dragons and their fire left and right until he was unfortunate enough to cross paths with a Monstrous Nightmare in a ruined part of the village where there were no adults around.

There wasn't enough left to identify him with.

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Fishlegs' interest for books and dragons, it was greatly influenced by another girl in the village.

Dagny was a cousin of his and like many of the members in his family, she was a hefty girl. Vikings would say she had the promise to be a brawny one later in life, but she was much more of a brainy one instead.

Families were close on Berk and Dagny often read books together with Fishlegs and his older sister, who often told them many stories. Dagny and Fishlegs were of the same age. Dagny was only a few weeks older.

Nobody talks about Dagny anymore. Her passing due to a famine caused by the dragons was a painful one. Dagny's parents, they didn't last long after her death. Many believed they followed her to the next world, a broken heart too much to bear.

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There were twenty-five of them. That Winter, Hiccup was the first of twenty-five babies born the following twenty-four months.

A lot of them didn't make it to their first year. More died by the time they were five. When Hiccup reached the age of ten, once again the first of that season, the six of them were all that remained.

It didn't hurt. At some point, waking up one morning and finding out another friend had died became commonplace.

They took it as a lesson. A lesson that caring hurt far worse than not caring did.

And so they all stopped.

"Guys!"

Astrid remembered having a friend once. A dear friend. Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Fishlegs, they all remembered.

His name was Hiccup. He was fun, he could draw, he was really smart, but he was also small.

He was born too early. When a famine struck he was always one of those most affected. Every year during "Eel Pox Week", Gothi called it a miracle he wasn't taken back by the Gods. With each new attack by either dragon or man, he needed to hide because he couldn't defend himself. Unlike the other kids, he couldn't even lift up a bola. He was the most defenseless.

He was the next one. They were all sure of it.

"Guys?" On his eight birthday, three years after Snotlout started picking on him and two years before their very last friend died, Astrid, Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut also decided to stop playing with him.

It was easier to stop caring for him than it was to care and lose him too.

Hiccup met them on the plaza that day, as he always did once his father finally let him go.

They didn't listen to his calls, ignored his requests to play, they pretended he didn't exist at all as they walked away.

The following days and onwards, he would notice they were starting to be mean to him too. Like Uncle Spitelout and some of the other adults.

There was little Hiccup could do, but watch them leave him behind as they decided to play elsewhere. Away from him. And it hurt.

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The remaining oldest children of Berk, now all fifteen and fourteen years of age, they met up to train together in the woods. They'd seen Astrid go there to practice with her axe and simply followed her there. Dragon training was about to begin for them soon, they wanted to train too.

Although, for the twins and Snotlout that meant fooling around. For Fishlegs, it wasn't so much as "training" as it was avoiding the three others as they picked on him.

As for Astrid, she didn't get much done when the other teens refused to leave her alone.

As they made their way back home, practice quickly forgotten, Astrid's gaze caught the sight of Hiccup as he worked at the forge as Gobber's apprentice.

Her axe swung over one shoulder, she took a moment to watch as he gathered some swords and struggled to hold them all in his arms.

When they fell, he threw his arms up in exasperation and Astrid felt a sigh escape her. A sigh of disappointment.

Briefly, their eyes met and Hiccup froze up. He only stood there for about a solid second before he ducked behind the counter awkardly. Either to hide or pick up the swords he'd dropped.

When was the last time they'd talked? Not as friends, but as mere acquaintances?

Astrid realized she didn't care. She didn't mourn the friendship they used to have and lost so many years ago now.

She didn't care. None of them did.

Hiccup was going to die sooner or later. All their previous friends had and many of them had been much bigger and stronger than him. Being friends with the heir only meant pain in the future. It was easier not too care.

She joined the other teens again. The ones who made an inkling of a chance of making it to adulthood in this world. She wouldn't say she was friends with them, but they were all headed into the same direction and they were about the only others of her age. Who else was she going to hang out with?

They were heading towards the Great Hall for supper. They headed there, not knowing that this would be the night Hiccup would shoot down a Night Fury, changing Berk for the better.

[vicunaburger]

The Origins of Rockulus the Mighty

Fandom: School of Rock: The Musical Pairing: Dewey Finn x Violet Willoughby (OC) The Players: Dewey, Violet, The Students Word Count: 1,178 Warnings: None

Notes:

- This takes place during the events of the show/movie - meaning Dewey is still posing as Ned in school  - Introducing~ my self-insert/OC~ Prof. Violet Willoughby: local English professor at a nearby college, been on a few dates and sleepovers with Dewey, is totally in on the substitute scheme

OKAY THAT’S IT HERE WE GO.

The map of Horace Green was decidedly unhelpful.

The school was built like a maze of classrooms identical in size, with no real identifying markers save for a number system poorly explained in the bottom corner of the page. Eventually, after stopping several students and faculty along the way for guidance, the visitor finally arrived at the door to Mr. Ned Schneebly’s room.

Well, technically it was Ned’s room, but Ned wasn’t teaching.

Violet adjusted the visitor’s badge that was clipped to the front of her coat, making sure it was in plain sight before she knocked on the door. A few moments went by before the door opened just a little and a female student peeked out from behind the frame. Giving a small wave to the sharply dressed student, she smiled, holding up an insulated lunchbox in her other hand.

“I’m looking for Dew- Do you know if Mr. Schneebly is in?” Violet cleared her throat, feigning a light cough. “He ran out without his lunch this morning.”

The student gave Violet a rather thorough once-over, taking note to read the text printed on her badge, “You’re a professor?”

Violet nodded, “At the college on Main. I would have brought my transcripts, but they are really expensive to have reprinted.”

Before the student could ask anymore questions, Dewey Finn opened the door the rest of the way, giving the girl a less than subtle shove, “Vivi! Come inside, don’t mind the kid. In fact, ignore all of them.”

Flashing his patented goofy smile, Dewey dragged Violet inside, kicking the door closed behind them. The students had their desks all arranged in a circle toward the blackboard, which featured a crudely drawn viking with a guitar. At it looked like a viking, judging by the horns and full beard. They all sat up at attention at the sudden arrival of a classroom visitor, doing their best to all look like model pupils.

“Hey guys, this is my friend Violet. Treat her like you would treat me, but better, you got that?” Dewey led Violet to his chair behind the desk, brushing it off before she sat down.

“Good afternoon, Miss Violet.” The replied in unison.

“Oh god, thank you, but no need for all the formality. I’m just here to drop off lunch,” Violet shook her head, her garnet colored hair swinging in its ponytail. “Really, I don’t want to interrupt a lesson.”

Dewey leaned over the desk, waving his hand at the class dismissively, “Don’t mind them. I can’t believe you brought me lunch; and it’s not even in a takeout box.”

“Mr. Schneebly; according to the Horace Green Rulebook, you’re not supposed to have visitors during school hours unless they are a direct family member or visiting teacher.” One of the students interrupted.

Slowly, Dewey turned to face the classroom as though he were the slasher in a horror film, “Thank you for reminding about rules I could care less about Summer, but it just so happens that Vivi is a professor. Therefore, a visiting teacher.”

“But… she’s not teaching us anything!” Summer insisted.

He looked about ready to leap over and strangle the poor girl, but stopped suddenly and pointed to the blackboard, “It just so happens that she’s going to help tell the story of Rockulus the Mighty. The greatest hero rock’n’roll has ever known.”

Violet nearly choked on her own spit, her face turning a deep shade of fresh tomato. Rockulus was a character Dewey had made up for more… playful intimate times when she would stay over for the night. The fact that he just spoke the name so causally in front of his students made her want to sink into the floor in embarrassment. She knew he would never go into vivid detail about what really happened during the hero’s adventures, but it was still a shock to hear.

“Rockulus is made up,” A student called out from the back of the room.

“He’s not made up, ask the professor.” Dewey hopped off the desk, entering the center of the desk circle; a ringmaster of the circus. “She knows all about myths and legends, don’t you Vivi?”

Clutching the edge of the desk with a white knuckle grip, Violet nodded slowly, “Of course I do. He isn’t as well known as some of the other heroes of the modern age, but he has left quite an impression on those who follow his stories.”

Confused, the students collectively decided that maybe Mr. Schneebly wasn’t pulling a lesson out of his ass like usual. If a college professor agreed with him, maybe this rock hero was something worth hearing about.

“When Rockulus was born, all the monsters in the land descended onto his village, for his coming was foretold in the great Prophecy. He would rise to be a mighty hero, bringing music to the people of the land, fighting for freedom and justice.” Dewey started to act out his fantasies, occasionally slamming his hands down on a desk for emphasis. “One night, he set off on his own to find a way to bring sweet, sweet rock to the masses.”

He glanced at Violet, who was thoroughly enraptured with his tale. She had such a look of pure enjoyment on her face, it caused him to lose his train of thought, and he stuttered as he fumbled for the next line.

“I believe that was when he had a vision in the wilderness of The Man.” Violet gently encouraged him, “His sworn enemy.”

“That’s right!” Dewey raced to the blackboard, sketching a stick-figure with a suit and tie. “The Man is the enemy of all freedom. He feeds off the hopes and dreams of all the people he controls, using their life force to grow more powerful.”

After a beat, he drew a stick figure with a suspiciously familiar hairstyle, exaggerated chest, and skimpy bikini next to the picture of Rockulus. Violet rolled her eyes, but let him continue unimpeded.

“The Man had kidnapped the beautiful goddess Ambrosia~” He began.

“Isn’t ambrosia something they serve at picnics?” Summer made a face, clearly unimpressed at her teacher’s lack of forethought.

“Shut up.” Dewey snapped, “Anyway-”

“It totally is.” Violet interrupted this time, addressing Summer directly. “It’s not great either. Sticky.”

“You’re not supposed to agree with her,” Dewey gave an exaggerated pout.

Violet stood up, walking over and attempting to straighten his tie, “I can when she’s right. Keep going, Mr. Schneebly.”

Distracted, Dewey forgot he was in the middle of his classroom, leaning forward to try and plant a kiss on Violet’s cheek. Dodging his efforts, she went over to sit on his desk, sticking her tongue out at him when her face was out of view of the student body.

“Rockulus set out on a quest to free the foxy goddess from the clutches of The Man, but his powers proved unable to defeat such an enemy.” He continued, “But that is a tale for another time…”

Writing Tags: @mr-geuse @paxenera @leiasolo77 @go-commander-kim @ashemspirit

[aleteia-ff]

Chasing the Western Wind | Post-HTTYD3 One-shot

Inspired by the many Hiccstrid-kid drabbles I’ve read throughout the past weeks, here is my own! Instead of focusing on their birth or on them as little kids, this short is about Zephyr turning 18 and how Hiccup deals with that, as her father. And likewise, how Zephyr deals with being next-in-line to the Viking who created peace with the dragons. Spent a lot of time listening to Stoick’s Ship while writing this, and my heart isn’t much better because of it.

Chasing the Western Wind

Out of all the adventures Hiccup had been on throughout the years, being a father was certainly the most difficult and most rewarding one. He still remembered the day on which he first held his new-born daughter in his arms like it was yesterday. It’s the kind of moment that changes your life forever. As chief, he was already very aware that the village depended on him. But this was different. That little girl had nothing but Astrid and him, along with their family and friends, to keep her safe from the dangers of the world. And after many years, in which her and her brother had been his pride and joy, his most dreaded day had finally come. Zephyr had turned eighteen.

Most Viking girls would have spent that day drinking, only to come back out of bed when they really had to. But not her. Not that the party had been a dull affair. On the contrary; he and Nuffink had been busy dragging guests back to their homes until deep into the night, after Astrid’s scolding hadn’t done the trick. Especially Snotlout had gotten so drunk he’d completely blacked out – and Tuffnut had totally been responsible for it. He often wondered if the two were a good influence on his kids, but he figured two guys giving them an example of how not to do things could be just as helpful.

Zephyr herself had been distracted throughout the day however, her eyes often staring into the void in front of her. And it didn’t surprise him that he found her on the day after, just past dawn, sitting in her usual spot, on her favourite cliff. It was a place he would’ve picked himself if his daughter hadn’t pretty much claimed it, as it was absolutely gorgeous. It didn’t provide its visitors with any scenery of New Berk itself, which was a shame as the island’s nature was stunning in its own right. Instead, it gave you a beautiful look at the ocean, spread out in front of you and reaching as far as the human eye could see. He had his own spot just like that; it was the one where he’d said goodbye to Toothless so many years ago. This cliff however, faced the other way and belonged to his daughter.

It was still hard for him to look at Zephyr as the woman she’d become instead of as the little child she’d been for so many years. She was slender and although she was taller than her mother, she still didn’t quite reach her father’s height. Her long auburn hair was neatly braided on her back, its style clearly inspired by her mother’s – she even wore one of Astrid’s leather bands around her head – and its length was close to his own mother’s. Valka was luckily still around to inspire both of her grandchildren, although he did feel like she spoilt them way too much.

Zephyr’s other features were mostly Astrid’s as well. From her round face, to her nose, to the way she dressed, to her beautiful blue eyes which made it almost impossible for him to tell her no. But the look in her eyes had always been his. Astrid had first pointed that out when Zephyr was only fifteen. It was the look she had had to deal with as his friend and fiancé. And the look his dad had undoubtedly had to make peace with as his father. And she felt that, as Zephyr’s parents, they should probably start preparing themselves for the same.

It had taken him a while to see it as well. As much as he loved his children and as much as they had clung to him over the years, Astrid had always been the once to notice those little things first. A combination of a mother’s instincts and the fact that she’d spent so many years looking at Hiccup himself, she’d said. And indeed, as he now watched his only daughter gaze towards the horizon, her eyes fixated on the sea, he understood what Astrid had meant. His daughter was just like him. They had named her after the western wind. And it was calling for her.  

“Hey, Zeffie,” he greeted her as he sat down next to her, supressing a groan as he did. His body had started to tell him he was getting old, and his prosthetic certainly wasn’t doing him any favours. Still, he was positive he had many years left in him. He would make it so.

Zephyr heaved her shoulders, rolling her eyes and looking at him with an irritated expression on her face. “Dad, we talked about this. I’m not a child anymore, so you can’t keep calling me Zeffie.”

He smiled at her. He knew that all too well, but he enjoyed watching the expression on her face as she once again decided that her dad was totally not cool. “Alright, Zeph.”

That was what her friends usually called her, and he had to supress a chuckle as he could see his daughter visibly cringe. She probably thought her dad was outright lame.

Taking in her clearly unamused face with a smile, he continued. “So, did you like your party yesterday?”

“Yeah,” she answered, plucking the grass next to her. “It was nice. Although we should really prevent Uncle Tuff and Uncle Snot from sitting together.”

“Well, you know that the two are basically inseparable,” he agreed. Tuff and Snot were basically like an old married couple at this point.

“They’re great though,” Zephyr smiled, her voice trailing off into the distance. She was still distracted by whatever was weighing on her.

“What’s on your mind?” he prodded, knowing that he usually just had to pull things like this out of her.

“Nothing,” she shrugged, pleading innocence with her blue eyes. He pulled up his eyebrow at her, scolding her with his best dad-look. And soon enough, she caved. “It’s just…” She gestured with her hands, a trait she’d undoubtedly gotten from him. “I’m eighteen, dad.”

“What about it? It’s just a number,” he simply responded.

Annoying Zephyr was usually the best way to get her to talk. “No, dad, that’s not it. It’s not just a number, it’s… I don’t know, everything.” She frowned, crossing her legs and putting her hands in her lap. “I’m an adult, for all I know I could be Chief in a few years, marry, have kids, just… everything.”

“Hey, I don’t plan on dying for a long time. So don’t consider yourself lucky just yet,” he teased, poking her shoulder. Then he turned more serious. “Are you afraid of becoming Chief?”

Zephyr bit her lower lip. “Yes.”

“Why?” He could think of a lot of reasons – he’d had his own when he was her age, after all – but he needed to know hers.

She averted her gaze, looking at her hands instead of at him. “Because of you.”

He frowned. That hadn’t exactly been the answer he’d been expecting. “What do you mean?”

“Because I can never live up to you, dad!” she almost yelled, her sudden outburst taking him by surprise. She had to have been dealing with this for a long time.

As she looked at him again, he could see the tears in her eyes. “You’re Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. You created peace between dragons and Vikings, you killed the Red Death, you battled I don’t know how many dragon hunters as I have no idea which of Uncle Tuff’s stories are made up and which ones are true.” She scoffed, wildly gesturing as a tear made its way down her cheek. “You saved Berk from Drago, avenged your dad, became chief at twenty. You led everyone here, prevented the dragons from being captured by Grimmel the Grisly, built this place up from the ground and yet you still somehow find the time to look after the Hidden World and the village!”

Zephyr was visibly panting and had outright started sobbing as the words left her mouth. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer as she cried against his chest. He softly stroked her back and her hair as her shoulders shook against him.

“I just don’t know if I can do it, dad,” Zephyr sobbed. “I’m not like you. I’m not as great, or brave, or selfless. I could never live up to your legacy.”

He exhaled audibly, pulling his little girl even closer to his chest. Gods, she was so much like him it almost hurt. It felt like just yesterday that he’d had the same doubts, the same insecurities, the feeling that he’d never be able to live up to his own father. But she’d never seen that. Zephyr didn’t know the journey he’d gone through to get to where he was now.

She’d only known him as her dad, one of the people she looked up to. She’d never seen him as the scrawny boy from Berk, terribly insecure until Toothless gave him some self-worth. How hard it had been for him to lose his dad, having to step up to become chief when he hadn’t been ready yet. The way he’d doubted himself throughout all those years he’d spent on the backs of dragons and how incredibly long it had taken him to get over their separation from them. To this day, he still missed not having Toothless around all the time, even though they now saw each other as often as their duties and middle-aged bodies allowed them to.

But those weren’t the stories people told about him. His friends, his mother, Gobber and especially Astrid knew them, but the hardships they’d all gone through wasn’t what was being carried over to the next generation.

“Hey,” he called, still trying to calm his daughter down. “You don’t have to be like me.”

“As if I ever could,” Zephyr remarked sarcastically, her voice hoarse from the tears she’d shed. “You spent six years flying around on a fire-breathing dragon.”

He laughed softly. “That’s not what I mean. Yes, I flew a dragon. So what? So did everyone else on Berk.”

“But you were the first,” she pointed out, looking at him with those blue eyes he loved so much.

“Ruffnut and Tuffnut were the first to try stacking fifty yaks on top of one another. Doesn’t necessarily mean they were good at it,” he smiled.

That arguably terrible joke did get him a chuckle from his daughter. But her face soon clouded again. “But you were. Even mom says you were better than she was.”

“But that doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he told her. “Yes, I flew a Night Fury, but the time of Berkians flying around on the backs of dragons has passed. It allowed me to do things you will simply never get the chance to. And that’s not your fault, and it doesn’t have anything to do with who you are. So don’t compare yourself to me. It’s not fair.”

Zephyr sulked, not completely accepting his words. He put his finger under her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Look at me, okay?” He waited until she slightly nodded before continuing. “You are brave. And you are selfless. You are stubborn, strong-willed, and full of perseverance. And you will become great. In your own way. But that doesn’t happen just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It takes years. It took me years to get to where I am now. I have been a teenager too, and I have been insecure too, feeling like I could never live up to your grandpa.” He’d told her enough stories about the great Stoick the Vast for her to understand how much he’d meant to him. And to all of Berk. “But you will find your own way to be great. And no matter how you do that, your mother and I will always be incredibly proud of you.”

A smile appeared on Zephyr’s face, and she started to wipe away the tears that were still on her cheeks. “You might be right,” she finally conceded.

“Come on,” he told her, getting up and dragging her to her feet. “I’ve got something for you.”

“But we already did presents yesterday,” Zephyr frowned before following him to the forge. He had a small room there, where he could usually be found if he wasn’t at home or out chiefing.

He looked through his drawers, eventually finding what he was looking for. He put the little brown sketchbook on his desk, carefully opening it and folding out the papers, which had become more fragile throughout the years. It was the map he’d been working on throughout his years with Toothless. He’d completed it to show the location of New Berk and the few islands close to it, but had left the location of the Hidden World undocumented on purpose. Only those who needed to know knew where it was, and they’d share that secret with those who were worthy.

He’d made several copies tidied up copies of the map to aid New Berk’s sailors and traders, but this version had always stayed with him. Since they’d settled on New Berk, he’d only ever used it to illustrate the stories he’d told Zephyr and Nuffink about the time they’d spent on Dragon’s Edge. Especially Zephyr had always loved those tales. So had Fin, but he was more like his mother, practical and focused on what was right in front of him.

Zephyr had, just like Hiccup himself, always looked beyond that, finding herself trapped in the pitfall of overthinking things. The two siblings balanced each other out nicely in that sense; Fin was always quick to pull Zephyr back to earth when she had another outlandish idea about fixing one of the island’s issues that honestly didn’t need any fixing.

“What are you pulling that out for?” Zephyr wondered as she came to stand next to him, dragging her fingers across the decades old map.

“I’m giving it to you,” he told her with utter confidence and pride.

Her eyes visibly grew bigger as she looked from the map to her father. “But why, I –”

He gave her a gentle smile. “It’s up to you to decide what to do with it. It’s still not finished, after all.”

“But Berk, the dragons, you, mom, Fin –” Zephyr stuttered.

“Will always be here,” he reassured her. “Although I can’t speak for your brother of course.”

What appeared on Zephyr’s face then had been the happiest and most determined smile he’d seen from her in ages. She hugged him, squeezing him tightly. “Thanks, dad.”

The two months that passed from that day onwards had been some of the hardest Hiccup had had to live through thus far. He’d suspected for a while that things were going to unfold like this, and Astrid had seen it for years. Which did not mean that she hadn’t scolded him for sort-of convincing Zephyr to go through with it, but he knew her well enough not to take that personal. They both had to deal with it in their own way, after all.

He hadn’t been surprised either when one day, two weeks in, Ruffnut and Fishlegs had practically burst into the Haddock home. Asking him what exactly his daughter was dragging their oldest son into. But he hadn’t needed to do much explaining. After all, they’d experienced it too. It would only be a matter of time before the inevitable happened. Their spark was their children’s too.

So now he found himself standing in New Berk’s harbour, watching as Zephyr handed out orders to her friends. She would make a great chief one day, if she’d choose to take on the position herself instead of handing it to her brother. Who would be great at it too.

Throughout his years as a father, he had often wondered how his own dad had felt watching him go through life. Only now, years later, he could somewhat begin to understand what his father had gone through. How he might have felt when he’d thought his son had died at the hands of the Red Death, or how worried he’d been during all those years Hiccup had flown through the Archipelago, making both incredible friends and terrible enemies. And now, too, he was watching his child prepare to head into the Great Beyond. And gods, did it hurt. But he could never stop her. And his dad had known the same had been true for him.

He tightened his arm around Astrid, who was keeping an eye on Nuffink in return. The boy had had his own way with dealing with his sister’s impending departure. Somewhere last week, Astrid had pulled him out of the forest after someone had caught him kissing a girl who was distantly related to the Jorgenson family; and Hoffersons mingling with Jorgensons was out of the question. Fin had aptly responded that technically, he was a Haddock, not a Hofferson, which hadn’t exactly appeased his mother. But it had reassured Hiccup once again that he, too, would be fine.

He swallowed away the lump forming in his throat as Zephyr walked up to them, saying goodbye to her grandma before eventually turning to her brother.

“Don’t think you’re going to be chief just because I’m going to be gone for a while, Nuffie,” she teased, ruffling her brother’s blonde mop. She was still taller than him and knew all too well her little brother resented it.

“Just don’t try to become like dad by losing a limb along the way,” Fin bit back, sticking his tongue out at his sister, which earnt him an elbow in his side from Astrid. Of course the two siblings were never going to say they’d miss each other, even though Hiccup was sure they would. Zephyr had even asked her brother to go with her, but he’d decided not to, eager to seize the opportunity to take on the responsibilities his sister had had instead.

Zephyr then turned to her parents, a lopsided smile appearing on her face. “I love you.”

She hugged her mother first, Astrid going over some last-minute practicalities as she hugged Zephyr back. To prevent herself from crying right there and then, Hiccup knew. Lastly, his daughter faced him.

“So west it is, I’ve heard?” he asked, smiling away tears of pride.

She nodded. “Chasing the western wind you named me after. After all, there’s still a lot missing on your map.” She patted the satchel that was flung around her shoulder, Berk’s crest proudly painted on it. Ever since he’d given it to her, she hadn’t let it out of her sight.

She spotted the tears welling up in his eyes as she spoke and she moved up on her toes to hug him, her arms around his neck. “I’m going to be great, dad,” she whispered.

He wrapped his arms around her once more, holding his daughter as tight as he could, not knowing when he would see her again. Just like it’d been with Toothless so many years ago. “I know.”

They separated, smiling at each other once more before Zephyr drew herself away from her family, nodding towards them once more before determinedly walking towards the boat they’d been readying. “Alright guys, let’s get going before we all go crying back to mommy,” she commanded, flashing bright smiles at the friends who’d chosen to go with her. “And yes, Fishnut, I do mean you.”

The teens pushed off, their boat slowly drifting away from New Berk’s docks as the ocean took a hold of it. Hiccup could see Zephyr inhale deeply, closing her eyes as the wind caught her hair, ruffling her bangs. He imagined the way she felt right now was much like how he’d felt flying out on Toothless when they’d first headed out towards the Edge. The world she’d been staring at for so long, finally within her reach.

She held on to one of the boat’s ropes, letting herself hang over the side of the vessel, smiling and waving towards the people who’d gathered to see them leave. She would be fine. Her mother had taught her how to fight, and she had her friends with her. And he, of all people, could never keep this feeling from her. She was an explorer, just like he’d been. So there she went. Into the Great Beyond.

[tanadrin]

Reordberend

(part 15 of ?; start; previous; next)

“What do you believe in?”

Leofe had asked the question in a friendly enough way, a few days later when they were sitting together for the midday meal. Now even at noon the sky was no more than twilight, a heartwrenchingly clear gradient of color from dark to light in the direction of the hidden sun, the far side studded with stars. The Antarctic air was impossibly clear, a continent-sized whorl of dry winds cut off from the rest of the world by the circumpolar current. Katherine simply could not get used to it.

What had they been talking about? The sky, the weather, hopes for tomorrow. And Katherine had mentioned her family, how far from home she was. Somehow that had segued into faith. She still wasn’t sure what, exactly, the Dry Valleys People believed in. Then Leofe had asked her the question, and she found herself getting defensive. She remembered her parents, her teachers, the people who pressed her on what she really believed as an adolescent. She remembered the alienation she felt when she realized she wasn’t the same as the people she grew up with. That her desire to grow beyond the confines of the world as they had presented it to them meant that she would have to go. And in the going there would be no returning.

“It’s complicated,” was all she said at the time. But the question nagged at her. She didn’t know if she could have answered it in English, let alone in the tongue of the Valleys. But there was an answer. A hard, bright answer she felt within her, warming her during the cold and starry nights.

What did the people of the Valleys believe in? Well, that was a tough one. When she had first found the gospel-book she thought she knew. A peculiar people, setting out for desolate shores, carrying religious artifacts and ancient tongues with them--traditionalists, of a kind. After all, wasn’t that what her people had been? Secessionists, as politely called them back in civilization. Those who decided that the great ecumenical riot of culture and technology and fashion and whatnot wasn’t for them. There were lots of different kinds of secessionists, not just traditionalists. New religious movements, utopians of all stripes, ultra-individualists and ultra-collectivists, artists with ideas that couldn’t be realized safely or legally in any existing top-level jurisdiction, trillionaires who thought the law shouldn’t apply to them. The pattern was familiar: you found a big pile of money somewhere, either from your followers or from a rich patron, you bought some land, you renounced your basic and you got almost unlimited sovereignty over it in return.

But that still left some questions. Like the age of the Valleys settlements, for one. If the local chronology was correct, they were almost a hundred and fifty years old, older than any other settlement in Antarctica. That meant they weren’t technically secessionists, because there was nothing here to secede from a century and a half ago. A century and a half ago, the Antarctic coast had been even colder and the ice-free portion of the Valleys even smaller. The timeline made sense in other ways--that was after the abrogation of the Antarctic Treaties, when most of the countries that used to fund scientific outposts along the coasts had pulled back in the wake of the Collapse. Before the big multinationals moved into the Peninsula a generation later. You could’ve gotten a couple hundred people to the Dry Valleys unnoticed, maybe.

When she could, Katherine tried to get a better look at their books again. Their script presented difficulties for her. On more than one occasion, she found herself muttering irritably at an imagined picture of Dr. Wright. He could have warned her, of course; he could have said, “the Dry Valleys People speak Anglo-Saxon English; here’s a list of books to take with you.” She still would have lost them in the shipwreck, but maybe she would have remembered enough from them to get started. Heck, maybe some enterprising nerd had created a module for the language. Unlikely--a good module took a shitload of funding and years of work--but not impossible.

She had asked Dr. Gordon about John, after the meeting at the conference. If this guy was so famous, how come she’d never heard of him? Dr. Gordon had sighed, sighed in the way that usually indicated byzantine university politics, but eventually she’d given up the story.

“This was all well before my time, you have to understand,” she said. “I’m getting this secondhand and thirdhand from people who were around then, and some of this is basically School of Humanities mythology at this point. But the way I understand it, Dr. Wright was the last holdout of the old English department.

“Two hundred years ago, the School of English was one of the jewels in the crown of this university. A hundred and fifty years ago, it was still doing pretty well for itself, but, well, as much as we hate to admit it to ourselves, academia is subject to trends and fashions just like the rest of the world. And despite trying to keep up with the times, most of the things they studied were hopelessly outdated. Even back then, nobody took nonsense like postmodernism or critical theory seriously anymore. A lot of the the really interesting work was starting to get usurped by departments with more rigorous methods. The Digital Humanities school was just taking off, and there was lots of interesting work going on on the other side of campus with 20th century novelists and AI, but the English faculty stuck to its old methods. Close reading, wading through dense tomes of theory, writing long analytical essays. Things that, for very good reason, we don’t make students do anymore. The university naturally had an aversion to producing graduates who were unemployable as anything other than English professors; it felt that was unfair to its students. But the more they tried to pressure the English department to update its methods, the more recalcitrant the faculty became.

“By the time Dr. Wright was approaching retirement age, they were back to teaching dead languages. You couldn’t understand the whole history of English literature, they argued, without a grounding in foundational stuff. And that foundational stuff, that ancient British literature, well, you couldn’t understand that without the context of, oh, I don’t know, whatever the Vikings spoke I suppose. Dr. Wright was by all accounts an extremely smart person. He’d done some groundbreaking work in Austronesian and South American languages as a younger man, a real giant in his field. But eventually, for reasons nobody quite understood, he’d pivoted away from the frontiers of his field--not a big field to begin with, mind you--and retreated to ground as well trodden as, well, basic arithmetic. He moved to the English department and was teaching students thousand-year-old poetry. He said it was a natural extension of his earlier work, and the university itself was happy enough to keep someone with his stature on its faculty, but to be honest most people saw him as nothing more than a useless eccentric. Rather like the whole department.

“Well, eventually the decision was made to axe their funding. There were maybe four undergraduates left to the whole department, so this wasn’t exactly a wrench, but Dr. Wright proved a sticking point. He had tenure--it’s a system that doesn’t exist anymore, but it made him basically unfireable. He had no students, and no scheduled classes, and no funding, and no departmental library anymore, but he had a right to an office, and, well. He wouldn’t go. He came in every day just the same. And twice a week, he would find an empty lecture hall, and, he’d just… lecture to anybody who showed up. And a few people did. Some were genuinely curious. Some thought it had novelty value. I guess some were lost freshers. But he kept on that way for two or three years. It annoyed the hell out of the administration. It annoyed them so much they delayed an update to the rules on retirement for six months, just so Dr. Wright hit the mandatory retirement age and got booted out. The next semester, they abolished fixed retirrment ages altogether. Of course, they didn’t offer him his job back. The official story was that he was a beloved senior member of the faculty, and he kept his dining privileges and still got invited to all the university functions where they trot out the honored former members of staff. But after that he basically disappeared. No one has seen him on campus--or anywhere in Dublin, for that matter--since.”

So at first Katherine wondered if this wasn’t Dr. Wright’s cruel joke, a way to get back at the people who pissed him off all those years ago. Let’s send the grad student out into the wastelands without any linguistic advantage. But the longer she thought about it, the more she wondered if she wasn’t being unfair.

Because what would she have said, if Dr. Wright had come up to her at that conference and said, “Oh, I hear you’re going to visit Antarctica. Here’s a book on Old English, and a copy of the Gospels, you’ll need both.” Would she have come here if she thought these were just secessionists with a penchant for historical reenactment? Probably not.

And the fact of the matter was, they weren’t secessionists. Well, not secessionists like Katherine had ever read about. The thing about being a secessionist, whether reactionary or utopian, was that no matter how much you pretended you were doing something Different, no matter how much you tried to Cut Yourself Off from the rest of the world, everything you did, everything you professed, everything you built, existed as a counterargument to that world. The rest of the world was a great shadow hanging over your whole existence, an argument which you were trying to refute. No secessionist movement on record had lasted in its original form more than two generations, because either you eventually got tired of making that argument, an argument your children would never understand for lack of context, and you inevitably rejoined the world (though perhaps with a higher-than-average local incidence of fringe political beliefs), or the whole thing fell apart in dramatic fashion due to infighting, and somebody appealed for the special status of the enclave to be revoked.

Neither had happened here. The culture of the Valleys appeared to be stable. They were more like an ancient uncontacted people, uncurious about the outside world and existing on their own terms, than those who scrupulously attempted to refute it. They spoke a dead language, but on closer examination, there the resemblance to historical reenactors ceased. The climate was wrong--they lived more like a circumpolar people, because, well, they were. But Katherine noticed they weren’t dogmatic about their refusal of technology. They relied on genegineered bryoculture--the mosses thrived in the summertime, provided you supplemented them with a little water, and kept them from freezing. They hoarded small pieces of technology they scavenged from the wastes, laser firestarters and sonic knife sharpeners, and they used these to augment their own cottage industry.

But they were sharply conservative in other ways. They did not trade. They did not explore, beyond their own well-trodden region of Victoria Land. Their society was full of symbolism and ritual and verbal formulas, their conversations looping back and forth in ways that made Katherine suspect every one had occurred a thousand times, and was expected to occur a thousand times again. They were, in short, static. Stasis was, Katherine believed, the ultimate illusion for any society. Nothing lasts forever; eventually, you change or you die. Perhaps the Dry Valleys People knew this. Perhaps, if the world tried to force them to change, they would simply die. The idea made Katherine rather sick, but it would not be the first time in history that that had happened.

* * *

And what did they believe in, when you tried to peel all this back, and expose their heart? Leofe was cagey when Katherine asked her. Leofric was laconic enough to make his sister look positively effusive by contrast. The question died on her lips when she tried to ask some of the older men and women; they responded to the question as a mountain might answer a soft breeze. Which is to say they ignored her completely. They carried with them the tokens of a lost Christianity, but these didn’t seem to be related to their core beliefs. On the very rare occasions when they waxed metaphysical, Katherine heard them speak of the garsecg, the spear-sea, the fearsome cold ocean that girdled their world. Yet on their lips the word had deep resonances “ocean” never did; it was for them the road of death, beyond which all their foremothers and forefathers dwelt; and it was the road of their beginning, over which they had come for their deliverance. And it was the outer darkness, the darkness of the sky and the long Antarctic night, and the blackness behind the stars; and the dreamless sleep.

And even more rarely, in voices so quiet Katherine could not be sure of what they said, they spoke of dragons, the dragons that lived high on the ice, whose voice was thunder and in whose belly lived a terrible fire.

[ofisolaticn]

A BROTHERLY THREESOME REUNION

featuring: henrik mikaelson, kol mikaelson, niklaus mikaelson. tagging: @troubleson @aregentsruin summary: renuion(s). warnings: attempting formatting. v v v v long. 

KOL MIKAELSON

He's been going in and out of it, he has no idea how to stop this-- Or if he even wants to at this point. Has the curse gotten ingrained into his brain? No, no. If it had, he knew he would have done so much worse. Hurt someone he didn't want to hurt. He had managed to stay away from Davina just fine, hadn't seen her in what felt like ages. Now, he was nothing but FERAL. Like an animal lurking in the shadows waiting for his next prey, hour after hour. It was a good thing there were more than enough people trapped, right? A heartbeat picked by his ears, and his mouth watered. Throat aching for the quenching of his bloodlust. Just a second later, he showed up right in front of the unlucky guy of the night. "Having a nice night?" He wasn't a complete animal. Still holding back enough for small talk, go figure.

HENRIK MIKAELSON

It was like a ghost of a memory. Henrik remember quiet nights when his big brother Kol would make them loud. He remembered loud nights, with lots of smiles from Rebekah, Klaus, Elijah, Kol and a disapproving Finn. He remembered piggy back rides and forts and his elder siblings being--- well, amazing. But then, they were vikings. And sometimes Henrik couldn't help but wonder, had that been real? There were times he was so sure it was, then sometimes he was so sure it wasn't. This was one of those times. Because Kol looked not a day older then he knew of him. The same exact face as he wore when Henrik was only a child (1000 years ago? Didn't feel right but it was) but while Henrik had aged it seemed a moment hadn't passed for Kol. Different hair, different clothes and different way of looking at him. "Kol?" Henrik exclaimed, familiarity clear in his tone.

KOL MIKAELSON

There is something on this guy's face, an expression that Kol can read as surprise or confusion. Naturally, he wouldn't give a second though, especially not now. It would be the usual reaction of someone who just had a stranger show up in front of them at the middle of the night. In other cases, the fear kicked in the very first second, but he hadn't done anything yet. Still, there was more to just that-- It seemed like he recognized. "Am I supposed to know you?"  Thick eyebrows gathering in a small frown. There really isn't much for him to think. He'd lived for a long time after all, some people became distant and faded memories they no longer mattered. "I happen to forget people who don't cause an impression."

HENRIK MIKAELSON

"Of course you don't know me." It was said, more to himself them to actual Kol. It made sense, actually. Perfect sense. Plus, out of all his siblings Kol was usually the slowest to catch onto these things ( he was faster though, with things like pranks and magic. Faster then Henrik had ever been. ) "You would tell me stories of goblins and monsters and you used to scare me and I'd keep you up all night and you used to give me rides and-" Oh wow, he should most likely start with his actual name. "It's me--- Henrik. Hey." He spoke, anxious but all the while HAPPY to set eyes on Kol. "I know I don't-- I'm not ten years old anymore. So..." His eyes connected to Kol's. "I know it's hard to believe." And he wouldn't be surprised if Kol didn't. "Sometimes I barely believe it but.... yeah."

KOL MIKAELSON

His mumbling didn't go unnoticed, yet the only reaction Kol gave was a slight narrowing of his eyes, especially as he started talking as if they were long lost friends. Kol would remember a friend, even in this state, but he didn't remember him. As far as he could tell, his memories hadn't been tampered, and as he continued telling him stories of a life that seemed so far away, there was a brief name slipping in his hazy head. "Henrik." The name drawing out and matching the reveal, a shake of his head and a scoff. "That's impossible. " Would it? When people were returning from the dead? When he'd done so more than once in the past? When Klaus and Elijah were alive and as well as they could too? "Even if it were-- you'd still be a kid." The love for a younger brother wasn't lost, but it had been so long ago. Henrik was nothing but a memory now, especially as his blood smelled so sweet from here. "Are you expecting a parade? Welcome back party?" Did he meant to be this rude? Maybe not-- But he was so hungry, and his sanity continued slipping by the second.

HENRIK MIKAELSON

He said his name, didn't mean he believed him but it was something. "I think so too--- thought so," He said, slipping tenses and grimacing at his own self. "It feels impossible all the time. I mean, we were vikings and mom was a witch and there were werewolves and they-" A flinch, and then a pained look touched his gaze at the memories of that horrible night. Of their teeth in his skin--- ripping him apart... "Sorry," Henrik apologized for his abrupt departure from actual speech. "Oh, well," Here goes nothing. "I was brought back 16 yearsish ago. By mom. She put me with a family and then she yeeted." Would Kol even know such a word? Henrik didn't know his brother's story after all, what he'd been up to. If he was new to this world or old to it. "She just... never came back." Then the not nicest stuff happened, but that didn't need to be said in this moment. He fought a frown and instead his lips pursed. "I don't know what I was expecting, it wasn't those things but I-" A sorrowful look. "I kinda thought you all were dead. So...." He hadn't been expecting anything.

 KOL MIKAELSON

This was not a good time for reunions. Would it ever?  Henrik talked, but despite being mere steps away from him, his words sounded like an echo. The sound of his heartbeat, beating against his chest, pumping blood through his veins. The blood he's been indulging himself with at every given moment, the blood he needed. Kol tried, he did, to make sense of his words. To make sense of the situation. "She died." Not before he'd died first for a second time. A shake of his head-- Had he been brought back along with him and Finn that time? "How do I know you're not working with her?" Was she also back? His head was spinning, was this him or was this the curse that made him sound like Klaus. He wasn't the paranoid brother. Against himself, he'd taken some steps closer, for a moment the veins under his eyes popping and darkening. "You should go." Stay away from all of them, stay away from him in this precise moment. In any other moment, it left room to think-- Would've he welcome him with open arms? Or think that he'd go the best end of the stick. Definitely the better end of the stick. "LEAVE."

HENRIK MIKAELSON

"I kinda figured it was something like that." It was casual in his words, because of course Henrik mulled over the thought before. How could he not? But it didn't change the fact she left him with strangers to begin with, it didn't change that she wanted to force his siblings to change and only be a family in her way. None of it changed the fact that she left him. "Didn't you just say she died?" He frowned, confused. "plus I haven't seen her in over a decade." Still he remembered her face so clearly, just as he did the rest of his family. Faces so important, faces so clear and unforgettable. Something--- something was wrong though. He should have seen it before but had been lost in his excitement. "Kol...?" Veins. What the hell? Henrik stumbled over his own feet as he pulled himself away, he had to run. As much as he wanting a touching reunion with his brother he had died before and wasn't wanting to do it again. He wanted to say something good like 'I'll find you again' or 'Wel'll figure this out' but nothing came out. Instead he ran like hell.(edited)

KOL MIKAELSON

There was a scoff, clearly he didn't know all of their mother's ways. Or theirs. Each one of them with several chips at their shoulders. His words started to mean nothing. This could be a set up. Juat like how Esther did with Finn. This could be Finn. That bastard-- Kol only wanted to see him back to give him a taste of his own medicine. Maybe it could be now. No. Put yourself together, Kol. There wasn't clarity-- His thoughts starting to fuse up, what was real? What wasn't? All that mattered was to fill his   cravings. Who was this again? Henrik? Finn? A simple stranger on his final night? Oh yes. His name was called, as his eyes darkened again. Part of him, the smallest rational part of him, screaming to stop himself. The sole of his shoe giving a slight brush back, as if it was trying to pull him back yet-- He ran. And with that, his resolution shattered to pieces. Like a fox dashing behind his prey.    All it took was a second for him to catch up, and pull at his shoulders with such strenght. To push him back at the wall and let his fangs pierce through his neck like a starving animal. How good it felt to finally quench the thirst.

 KLAUS MIKAELSON

Late night streets and alleys enveloped in the enigma of moonlight. It's the perfect hunting ground of the nocturnal predator, even when so long ago they befriended the sun again. Klaus Mikaelson may not actively seek out to prey anymore, but he does thrive off the unsettling serenity of late nights. Plus, it's a morbidly perfect time to tend to business. A lot more DISCREET. And this is usually the case. No one around to meddle with his duties, no one with prying gazes to dodge. And, yet, here he is, ceasing his motions as a distant rumbling grows closer. Running. That is the sound of rushed footsteps. He doesn't move. He knows the trampling being is going to get to HIM first. And that's exactly what happens. A young man turns corner, bumping right into the Original Hybrid's chest. It's so quick it's almost instantaneous, but... it's enough. Klaus catches a glimpse, a very brief glimpse, a frozen second when he looks at eyes that peer back at him with a familiarity that swallows his chest and renders it the size of a flea. No time for developings, though. Surprise, surprise --- KOL rushes in to ruin it all and he cannot help but notice the painfully obvious WRONGNESS floating in the air. A flash of vampire speed and the hybrid forcibly removes his brother from the victim, giving him a mighty shove into the ground. "If I hadn't known any better, brother, I would have been tempted to say you have forsaken all your manners. Have you been watching too much National Geographic lately?"

 HENRIK 

He was running--- running as fast as his legs could take him. Something was wrong with Kol--- that was obvious. Kol would never hurt him, the brother he remembered didn't even like to hunt. He preferred tricks and traps  and laughter. Something was beyond wrong and Henrik didn't have the time to even ask. He'd been ripped apart once before and he would rather it not happen again. He was running and running and then--- damn. He only caught a glimpse of their face--- of Nik. Niklaus. The brother who was full of smiles, the one who took the brunt of their faces abuse yet would always still fight. The brother who was by his side that night before the wolves came after them, before they tore him apart. "Nik-" He began only to be cut off by the event of Kol--- KOL ripping into his neck and fuck that hurt. It really did. Henrik hadn't known pain alike this since his initial death so long ago ( though he did know other variations of pain, none of them else involved teeth ). Then Nik--- Nik was ripping him off (and the short hair suited him, Henrik couldn't help but note). He almost fell to the ground in pain but fought against the impulse, instead remaining on his feet even if the world was a bit drowsier now. "Nik?" He questioned again, this time louder and less coherent then prior.

 KOL

Kol had never minded an audience as he feasted-- What were they going to do? He was an original vampire, it was like the title already brought in the narcissistic tendencies in their genes. (To some siblings more so than the others). Henrik stopped-- and in that moment, he wasn't his brother the one he was viciously gripping and tending his hunger from. No, Henrik was his prey, and it didn't matter that only for a fleeting moment, a tiny instinct within Kol tried to stop it. The blood was all that mattered. All he NEEDED. Until, his meal got literally interrupted by a pull and push-- Frenzied look against the one who interrupted; such a laughable surprise to see Klaus of all people. Klaus who he'd resented for centuries-- The one who stole years from his life, over and over. The one who did the same things as him, or worse, and still it was Kol the brother who often got neutralized and tossed inside a coffin.  "Nik--" he growled out, a surge of anger coming through him as he pushed his arms away from. NO. The clarity tried to claw itself from the surface. Kol had decided, after his death, that he should bury those resentments-- But how hard it was. It wasn't just Kol acting, it was the curse that so freely brought back and magnified those grudges. Nik. Henrik's voice drew out through the air-- Henrik. Their younger brother.  The one who at the moment he wanted nothing more but to drain the blood from. Oh, what a crusade this was-- Between wanting to fight his older brother, and wanting to kill his younger.(edited)

KLAUS

Nik. A nickname. But more than a nickname. A name. But more than a name. It's the line between a time long lost and what is in the now. It's the remnant of a time before he decided he no longer wanted anything from Mikael, name chosen by him included, and before he turned himself into Klaus Mikaelson, the nightly terror dreaded by monsters themselves. So few still hold those remnants in their hands. Few enough to actually reel a reaction out of him. Very small, but something far from indifference. It stirs a brief recognition, petrifying as the young man with those familiar eyes gets dragged away and feasted upon. One issue at a time, however. And, in his mind, the most immediate one is the one involving the brother he does know and view as a certainty. "While I'm aware you have never been the most cordial of fools, it appears that I have stumbled upon one of those instances when you truly manage to outshine yourself." He's still speaking to Kol, back turned to the one that continues to call his name ( that particular name ), pretending that if he just elects to ignore the other, he won't have to wheel around and face a figment of his imagination or a painful remnant ( both options are equally bad ). "Don't tell me." He holds a finger up, "That haywire trail of forlorn bodies making the scenic route all the way here. Your doing?"

HENRIK

His neck hurt like hell and ya know, maybe he should run. He should probably run, Henrik knew. Yet his feet refused to walk, not even drag. Eyes too intent on the two men right before him that he thought to be long dead. "Kol. Henrik whispered, wanting nothing more then to understand what was wrong with his brother and maybe help him if he could. Then, his attention fell to Niklaus. Nik. The one who took his hand and lead him away to his death. The one he loved, and would continue loving, despite that. Nik was speaking but it was different then Henrik too, different in mannerisms and matter. Even tone. More guarded, perhaps? Not the same brother he once knew, but rather fragments of him. Remnants of the malice he endured. He was, oh he was ignoring him. "Seriously?" He expressed, words falling under his breath. "Could someone tell me whats going on--" Or should he run? He really should. Henrik did value his life but.... he valued his family too. "Please... whats going on?"

KOL

The struggle was, to put in few words, real. The rationality within Kol's mind flickered. He was trying to stop this, to stop himself, to realign his thoughts into what truly were at the time being. He was Kol Mikaelson, the wily troublemaker, the happy homicidal maniac-- but even with those titles-- Kol Mikaelson was not a man with a lack of control in himself. So he tried, he pushed himself for clarity. Forcing himself to listen to Klaus' voice instead of the rapid heartbeat coming from behind him, or the smell of blood lingering in the air, or the aftertaste on his tongue.  Words fight against him, wrestlng each other in what could be a cry of help or a cry for war. To push his ego down or to make it go head to head against Klaus. "I was cursed." Yes, the answer was yes, and oh how much he's done while cursed, he can't think at the moment. "He's--" A swallow, throat dry again despite having the crimson liquid still fresh on his lips. "Henrik."  Words short, rapid, chopped. As if he was running out of time, because... quite frankly, he felt like he was losing it again, especially as the brother in question spoke again. Why was he still there? Kol pushed himself against the wall, he was losing again, ready to lunge at their younger at any given second. Instead-- "Stop me." Words let out in a heavy breath, hands clasping Klaus' jacket as he looked at him, baring his teeth. The telltale sign of the darkening veins pointing on what was about to happen for another time.  A last beg for Klaus to do what he knew best-- And in another time, Kol would think that if he ever asked for something like this to anyone, he'd would've lost his mind. alas.  "DO IT."(edited)

 KLAUS

Kol speaks ( or something close to speaking, as much as he can seem to muster ). HENRIK. Henrik? The same kind of Henrik? He knows a brief bolt of bewilderment strikes his features, but one question topples into another as Kol clutches the rims of his jacket and does something he can't say he's ever seen him often do. There's hesitance, as well as confusion. But... But... He knows this is a race against time. No answers will come from his brother, not like this. He swallows up the surprise, the confusion and only offers a certain nod, a silent assurance in his eyes as they lock with the other original's, as erratic and drowned in bloodthirst as they are. It's the last thing he does before his hands speedily rise -- and twist his neck until his own brother's body falls limp to his feet. "Slumber well, Kol," he mutters, silently, letting his gaze shortly linger on the vampire. And finally, finally, he turns to his next immediate issue. Silently. Stiffly. A hardened glare sits in his eyes, as jumbled pieces come to form a puzzle. What does he know? So far, only what he could see: Kol, cursed and tormented, and this person, with the claim of kinship on his lips, smack in the middle of it. His vampire speed lunges him at the young man in the blink of an eye and, just as fast, Klaus has his hand coiled around his neck and him pressed to the wall, lifted just slightly off his feet. "You have precisely ten seconds to explain what you have done to my brother and why you dare parade yourself as Henrik Mikaelson," he drawls, readjusting his fingers as to allow the other to speak, "lest you would rather I leave you and your gashing wound to the mercy of vampires, the same way I would hurl a lamb to the slaughterhouse."

HENRIK

Kol was begging Niklaus to stop him--- *Kol believed him. * Then, Niklaus twisted his neck. Henrik couldn't help it. He let out a scream watching Kol's body hit the ground with the next twisted. Eyes became glassy at the sight of it, the fear of it. "Is he dead-- Oh my--" He looked to Niklaus, knowing he could do nothing against someone who could twist anther's neck with their bare hands, let alone his big brother whom he loved. "He's dead." Then Niklaus turned to him, and Henrik expected something. Not sure what it was. Sure wasn't such fast speed directed at him and a-- a hand against his neck. Not choking him, thank god, but still threatening nonetheless. "There is no parading!" He began with. "And I haven't done anything to him--- I found him and I recognized him-- even with the new haircut!" His neck did hurt, still. The wound was still prevalent. "Vampires." He repeated, his face twisting into an anguish of emotions before finally landing on pure relief. "So that mean's he's still alive then? --- undead? And you--- are you-" Are you a vampire too? He took a deep breath in, and then, he spoke. "I could--- I could rattle on this whole list of memories and things and so many facts but I don't think--- do you want to believe me? Because I have this--- this feeling, if that's not what you want than nothing I say with change it. Will it?"

 KLAUS

There are times when the fact that his world is not necessarily others' world basically eludes him. That not everyone is just used to seeing necks being snapped and expecting everything to be fine and dandy. This is one of those times. "Relax," he proclaims, a small curve of his lips and a raise of an arm that points toward Kol's uncoscious body, "he's only napping. Much to your benefit, I would argue." After all, wasn't Kol munching on him just moments before? Either way, Klaus has his focus on Henrik-- the alleged Henrik, countless scenarios whirring in his head, very few ones that would see this reality as a TRUTH. Explanations, explanations, and he makes sure to listen carefully, to the heartbeats. He makes sure to envelope his eyes in a coating of bright golden, dark veins rooting into his cheeks - just as little extra step of intimidation. "You are even more clueless than you appear," he remarks. "I suggest paying less mind to Kol's otherworldly whereabouts and more to your own current predicament. It can so easily end unwell." And then the other says something that makes his eyes narrow. He's silent for a moment. Considering. Pondering. Remembering how he ruined everything with Freya, at first. "Henrik was a child," he begins, lowly. "I wasn't aware death also causes growth spurts."(edited)

HENRIK

It would be easy to say something snarky in retribution to such word as relax. The best response, Henrik could think of at least, was simply how.  "Napping?" He repeated it, wondering if thats what vampires always called it when their neck was snapped. It for sure sounded better then 'temporary re-dead'. "Something was wrong with him." Henrik noted, concern evident on his features. "He came after me but he didn't want to I saw it on his face. He didn't want to." He was sure of it, without hesitation saying it. Then. WOAH. Henrik blinked his eyes as he watched Niklaus' turn golden, almost sun reflected. "That's not..." He was fairly sure normal vampires couldn't do that. He was confused. "How--" Oh that wasn't nice. Even if it was fairly true. "How?" He couldn't help but ask. "I-- I don't plan to fight you or have any motives, I don't---" Would Niklaus truly just kill him on a whim? Would their 'unwell' ending be because he sneezed in the wrong direction or stumbled wrong? Then there was silence and Henrik felt his heart, in his chest, hammering. Not fear, necessarily. Just anticipation. "I uh, it doesn't. I came back-- " What was the exact years?  "A while ago." He didn't remember. "Mother, she brought me back as I was. She said- she said some stupid crap about changing everyone and she'd come back for me. But then uh, never did. Just said 'yeet' I guess." He spoke, attempting for a bit humor to lighten their atmosphere. "And so I just... bounced around I guess."  He was sheepish as he spoke, as he explained. "Now I'm here."(edited)

KLAUS

Truly, for someone like Klaus Mikaelson, every draining second is a race against time - for whoever is unfortunate enough to be his PREY in that very moment. He doesn't like circling the drain. He doesn't like those moments of uncertainty. He's not a patient person. Can you tell? "Do you usually find yourself at an inability to properly string together a sentence or should I blame it on the slight stress currently bestowed upon you?" In other words: say what you have to say already. And, at last, the other does. He listens, eyes narrowing slightly as he makes sure to analyze every single word, every single letter. He can't help but remark that the bit about Esther's desire to 'change everyone' seems to largely match up with what was the truth. "A fine tale," he concludes, appearing to retreat just slightly, only for his grip on the other's throat to lower itself toward the collar, tossing him on the ground in a move of pure impulse. "However, even if it turns out it does prove your identity, it does little to vouch for your intentions. As we have it, you are not the first grazed by mother's so called generosity, with all your predecessors being siblings she has turned against the rest of us in order to conduct her evil schemes."

HENRIK

"Well..." He grimaced, knowing the answer he had was not what his brother was looking for. ( his brother his mind reiterated to remind him how special and momentous this occasion was). "I was never good in English-- grammer class." He confessed sheepishly, knowing it would make no differance but still having that yearning desire to talk about a normal topic with his brother (his brother !). And then, well, ouch. It'd hardly be the first time Henrik was manhandled to the ground, not the first time in a bad way (though he'd had experience with the good way too) and so he was fast to recover. Flinching but not mewling over the injuries. "What intentions do I have I mean--- you're a vampire, right? You-- you both are. Can't you hear my heartbeat and see if I'm lying? And for pete's sake what reason would I have to lie? Before I saw Kol I thought each of you were dead." He confessed, the sorrow in his tone unyielding and without intention. Just pain from the fact he'd thought them dead when they were right before him now. "Did you just say evil schemes?" He exclaimed, be founded. "What--- I mean, I could for sure see mom as the evil villain type but-" Right now you're not seeming all too heroic. A sigh left his lips. "I'm not gonna beg on my knees for you to believe me or- or anything like that. Honestly, in this moment," His voice broke, just a bit, as he went on. "I'm just really happy. Even with all the blood and bites and shoving--- my brothers are alive. I'm just... I'm happy."

KLAUS

The heartbeat. True, a valid point. He often uses the thumping noise as his own personal lie detector ( he elects it's not the place or time to correct the other and mention he's not a vampire ). But, then again, anyone vile enough to have vile intentions often knows how to bypass this check-up. The other talks and Klaus' mind gets frayed, spiraling into an ocean sprung only the moment he'd welcomed a daughter into his life: reason. Or, maybe, a particular kind of weariness. The one that screams he's tired of fighting against everything and everyone. Would it truly be so terrible to have their family truly and fully whole? It's a thought. But it's clouded by other, darker, rumbles. "Evil schemes, abhorrent deeds, contemptible ploys," a raise of his arms, "name it whatever you wish." A proper deflection of the real topic at hand, Klaus. He's looking down at this person, this person who claims himself to be his brother. He's different, obviously, but it's hard to deny there's a certain familiarity. It's different from Freya. He'd never known Freya. He had known Henrik, whose eyes he had to watch fade into a lifeless darkness as he gave his last breath in his arms. For a moment, that memory alone rattles him and he needs to drag his gaze away, with a conflicted clench of his jaw. "Why now?" His voice is small, a mumble of paranoia. "Why would you show up now? Why would mother-?" He's getting angry again, though he wagers it's a result of his flurry of confusing emotions. "Henrik or not, I would not rush to rejoice if I were you. Your presence here alone can only be a harbinger of terrible things to come. This is the only way our joyous familial rekindlings have unfolded."

HENRIK

"Those names are awfully cartoonish." Henrik couldn't help but remark. "Reminds me of that show-- Phineas and Ferb. Curse you Perry the Platypus." He mimicked the accent of Doctor Doofinsmirth, almost butchering it. He grimaced, watching Niklaus' reaction. "I uh," He swallowed, suddenly feeling even more sheepish. ( small too, oddly enough. being around his big brother, brothers, made him feel small and Henrik didn't know if it was a good thing or not. ) "I lost my-" God, should he even be saying this? It wasn't necessary but it was already slipping from his tongue. "I lost my accent growing up. Discarded, I guess. Just made things easier." He admitted, not diving into how so ( Nik didn't need to hear hat crap, and Henrik didn't like to go into it. He made points not to with his kids, friends, or other people. It was easier that way, wasn't it?). "I got trapped in the city." He said simply as answer. "I came here trying to help Lisa-- she's this little girl and her... her parents died recently. So I took her to her big sister in the city and then I got trapped." He confessed. "It was total accident. Honest. I never even knew you guys were alive--- sometime's I'd even think that I made you all up." He admitted grimly. "I was so young when everything happened and then I was brought back... it was hard to believe sometimes." Her pressed his lips together, listening to his brothers words. "It doesn't... it doesn't have to be. If it has happened before I'm sorry but I'm not--- I'm not that person. I won't bring terrible things, I won't be a harbinger. I'm not interested in seeing anyone hurt, vampire or not. I just want some answers, and frankly... I want a chance to know my family too."

[tysonrunningfox]

Open Flames: Part 10.5

So I want to finish this really bad, so I’m just going to be flinging parts of it out there with impunity.  Also, I don’t think you realize that Festercup gets to be cute and moral and a good dad moving forward and I am so stoked, tbh.  And why is middle aged Hiccstrid all cute, grow up guys.  

Masterpost

( @riverrockets I see your bribe, I stare at it to feel strength, I’m a very bribable person, I will chase the carrot on the stick)

Hiccup runs into Arvid in front of the house he's been building with Astrid.  

"Hey Chief," Hiccup's step-son-in-law, step-son in-law, son-in-law and step-son--Arvid, that's easier, is bigger and more self-assured every time Hiccup sees him away from Aurelia.  He used to hide, slouching and frowning, hand moving towards the hilt of his sword like he needed to protect Aurelia from the very idea of disrespect, even at home, but now he's relaxed, almost smiling, broad shoulders dusted with wood shavings as he points behind him, "Mom's inside, Aurelia's at the Thorstons."  

He starts to walk away and Hiccup takes a couple jogging steps with him, weighing his options here.  Arvid is close to Eret, probably closer than anyone other than Aurelia and Fuse.  He might be more liable to answer the question at hand than Astrid is, but Hiccup isn't stupid, he knows how much trouble he should be in for the failed betrothal turned almost war that happened out from under her watchful eye.  

Maybe Arvid knows why he's not in trouble though.  He doesn't know why he feels like Arvid knows things, it's not like he's ever spilled secrets, it's just a hunch.  Maybe it's something in those blue eyes that look so much like Astrid's, sometimes even more than Eret's because they're never filled with that specified irritation with him that Astrid luckily abandoned years ago at this point.  

"Maybe I"m here to see you."  

"Right," Arvid smiles his dad's quiet half smile.  "What's on your mind, chief?"  He has a face Hiccup could talk to and that makes him pause.  He should talk to Astrid first.  Straight lines, simple solutions, no more of this Haddock web of communication death song amber.  

"After I talk to your mom--"

He cuts Hiccup off with a laugh, "I'm not going to get pissy like Eret if you're here to talk to my Mom, just don't start the game where you get handsy in front of me, then we'd have a problem."  

"We only do that to smoke him out of the house," Hiccup laughs and Arvid nudges his arm with a beefy elbow.  

"Well, now I know what to do if you ever overstay your welcome at my place."  He waves and walks off before Hiccup can say anything else, but he feels like he told a secret anyway.  

Whatever.  That's not why he's here.  

The front door of the half-finished house opens easily on smooth hinges and Hiccup looks around with a low-whistle, following the quiet pounding of a hammer.  He's unsure of the reasons behind her newfound interest in carpentry, but it's also kind of a happy reminder that once he officially hands off the throne to Eret, he'll also have time to find some new hobbies.  Then again, that exchange has seemed so Thor-damned close for almost three years, but it's like Eret's more and more determined to stall.  

"Looks good," he announces to the room at large and Astrid looks up with a grin, patting one of the uprights and standing.  

"About time you came and checked it out," she kisses him, again illustrating the completely confusing fact that she's not mad at him, but pulls away before he can get any concrete ideas about practicing smoking Eret out of this house. "Probably only a couple more days of work and we can get some furniture in here."

"Is there a rush?"  

"Maybe," she squeezes his shoulder and starts packing up tools, setting them in one of the neatly maintained bags that Smitelout loans things out in.  "What's up?"  

"I talked with Tuffnut and Eret and Fuse today," Hiccup starts, ducking away from Astrid's immediate glare to count some leftover nails on a rough wooden stool.  

"I thought we agreed that you meddling in our son's marriage prospects doesn't end well."  

"Technically, you told me that it doesn't end well and ordered--no, well, it was more like a demand--"

"Hiccup."  

"You demanded that I not do it again.  Which I didn't, to be clear, I just tried to foster a little bit of discussion about why they're being so stubborn."  

"How'd that work out?"  Astrid crosses her arms, raising an eyebrow and looking at him positively unimpressed.  

"Horribly, I don't know why I ever thought Tuffnut would be a viable ally in the conversation, but it was also illuminating."  He pauses for dramatic effect and to check Astrid's expression.  Expectant, a little bored, impressively uninterested given how talking about Eret getting married usually sends her into hand-wringing about Fuse.  "This entire time we've been operating with the idea that Eret doesn't want to get married, right?"  

"I think the amount of times he's announced to his married siblings that it's an unnecessary complication in their lives gave us a clue to that, yes."  

"Well, I don't know what changed, but I'm pretty sure that it's actually Fuse who doesn't want to get married and Eret is covering for her somehow."  Hiccup waits for a startled reaction and gets an eyeroll and a fond, if a little demeaning pat on the chest.  

"Right, that makes a lot of sense, it's great to be an unmarried twenty three year old openly committed to the son of the chief on this island.  I'm sure she's loving that pressure."  

"Fuse isn't you, Astrid."

"Trust me, I know."  She shakes her head, lips quirking into a barely there shadow of a smile, like she's not sure how to put a happy face on about Fuse but has new reason to.  "I think twenty three year old me could have learned something from Fuse, frankly, I probably would have used an axe, but..."

"Well, for the record, it appears that I was way more determined to keep my head up my own ass than our son is."  

"Why do you think this again?"  

"I saw his face."  Hiccup shrugs, "and he didn't have any of his own reasons, he was just copying what everyone else said.  He wasn't taking the lead, he wasn't making his own decision about it."  He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.  

It's hard.  He's almost been proud of Eret for putting his foot down about marriage.  It's confusing, because he has to watch his son do his best to mimic his greatest mistake...but at the same time, it's the one thing Eret is digging in on in any real way.  Hiccup never thought anyone could be too much like Astrid, that it could ever be a bad thing to have more Astrid in the world, but Thor's beard, that kid is self-sacrificing beyond a fault.  It's a pathology, at this point, practically a disability, because when a people pleaser attempts to keep a bunch of Haddocks and other Vikings happy, it's a threat to their life and limb.  

"Ok, but Hiccup," Astrid sighs, taking both her husband's shoulders in a firm, lecturing grip, even as her voice dips kindly, "as eccentric as the Thorstons are, they got married.  They did the standard courting proposal negotiation marriage route, that's what Fuse grew up with.  She never saw an alternative."  She looks at Hiccup importantly, gently, sad in that confused way she doesn't think she gets to be.  

Hiccup knows he can't ask her to regret those years, but Gods, sometimes he wishes he could.  

"As much as we fear the kid turning into me, I don't think he sees me as enough of a role model to mimic my life decisions."  He sighs, "it doesn't matter, I guess, if you don't believe me, but he changed his mind, it's Fuse who isn't on board."  

"Well, that's good news, if it's true," she looks around the half-finished house, nodding to herself, "I think everything is going to sort itself out."  

"Yeah," his smile is a little fake, a little pasted on, but if Astrid catches it, she doesn't read anything into it.  "I guess we just keep waiting."  

For what?  Hiccup isn't sure anymore.  If Eret is just pretending to hate marriage to keep Fuse happy, then what he thought was Eret's most solid stake in the ground is actually just a symptom of the larger problem.  He wonders, not for the first time, what his dad would do about it, and the answer scares him.  His dad would be thrilled with Eret, sure he's stubborn and violent and a little lacking in confidence, but what twenty year old Viking isn't at least two of those.  By all metrics, he's more ready to be chief than Hiccup was when he had the title dropped on him because of his dad's own self-sacrifice.  And maybe Hiccup is so worried about the next volcano that Eret might jump into that he's not ready to open up the possibilities.  It makes him wonder if he's putting being a dad in front of being a chief.  

[shellheadtmarc]

v; fallout group verse - closed

This, is in all honesty, mostly because I know people have to be going, “...what the fuck,” about shenanigans.  This, hopefully, will clarify those to a degree.

Consider all of this, but let’s make some changes.  In the aftermath of the bombs, Tony and Stephen Strange ( @rahasyamay ) run into each other, each doing their own putting out of fires, metaphorically and literally.  The Sorcerer Supreme has, ah.  A lengthy lifespan, too, so Tony and Stephen end up as a close knit family unit (the romance thing just isn’t a thing for them, if there has been hanky panky it was very brief and no doubt loneliness-induced) in the years following the bombs.  Shortly before the pair follow the BOS into the Commonwealth (relative on what shortly means), the courier from the Mojave arrives in New York, Elle Days ( @gwinnetts ), and ends up being adopted by Doctor Wizard Dad and Tired Iron Dad.  

Tony and Stephen leave for the Commonwealth, with the plan being that Elle will follow them in at a slower pace (meaning once they’ve scoped things out and made sure it’s safe) on the motorcycle Tony’s tinkered on for her in his spare time.  And it...Mostly goes to plan until Elle is jumped by a courser and her AI version of Yes Man ( formerly @securitrcn ) is taken.  Elle ends up in Goodneighbor, with her Superhero Dads starting to get worried when she doesn’t arrive on schedule and they find the wreckage of her bike.

Fort Hagen is the place Tony and Stephen claim at first, where Tony takes the actual military post and Stephen claiming the Fort Hagen Blood Clinic.  The intentions are a makeshift lab for Tony, but Stephen sees potential in the clinic with aspirations to turn it into a working hospital, since he can’t use his hands like he did anymore, no, but he can pass on his medical knowledge, and the clinic will eventually become a functioning, real teaching hospital.  From here, the two agree to go separate ways, both looking for Elle, both scoping out the Commonwealth on the whole for similar and differing reasons.

Stephen will meet the Cabots and find out the Commonwealth is hiding a lot of bad news goodies of his particular interest that he wants to secure.  He’ll also end up with Croup (later nicknamed Mooch by the Avenger squad, Recoup by everyone) Manor as a somewhat makeshift Sanctum Sanctorum in Boston.  It also doubles as something of a respite for healing and a veterinary clinic!  And yes.  Bats is in attendance.   You get used to him.

Fun fact!  Tony won’t sleep in the main building.  It’s creepy in there and while yes, he knows whatever’s going on can totally be explained by science, he will later use his boyfriend’s reluctance to sleep in the main manor and use one of the smaller surrounding buildings he and Zetta ( @gwinnetts ) builds as an excuse not to.  Croup Manor is weird and no one likes it.  Except Stephen.

Meanwhile, Tony cuts a path through the Commonwealth to get information.  Diamond City points him at Bunker Hill, Bunker Hill points him to Goodneighbor.  In Goodneighbor, he meets a former Gunner by the name of Robert Joseph MacCready ( @gwinnetts ), hires him for info on the Gunners, and intends to leave it at that, intending on making his caps back with a few games of pool before striking out to see what he can see.  When he leaves Goodneighbor, he’s still got a short, smartassed merc with him, and decides what the hell, he can make use of an extra gun.  Besides, he’ll be able to foist this guy off on someone else, and he’s just a merc, right?

(Wrong, Tony.  You are very wrong.)

Time passes.  They meet the sole survivor of Vault 111, Zetta Reynolds ( @gwinnetts ).  Thor ( @torrrden ) shows up at the 11th hour as usual wondering what the hell has happened before ending up befriending a bunch of super mutants.  Croup Manor becomes something of a meeting place/gathering place/family dinner location despite how weird it is.  

And then, after years of telling the universe, “GIVE ME BACK MY RHODEY,” the universe complies with Tony.  Rhodey ( @alloyally ), still part of the United States Air Force during the Great War, having been in many of its campaigns, and playing a bit of a game with the US Government concerning Tony’s anti-war shenanigans before the war (”I’ve been told to tell you that your behavior isn’t appreciated and you need to stop.  Wanna get take out?”  “It has been noted and ignored.  Pizza?”), disappeared not long before the bombs fell.  Given his deployments, this wasn’t an unusual thing, no, but Tony has never been able to find another speck of information about him in the years since, and has assumed him dead.

In truth, in the decades before the war, Jack Cabot exchanged some of his immortality serum with the government, in exchange for tech to better examine and understand his father Lorenzo’s weird crown that has seemingly driven him mad.  The government has been trying to remake the super soldier serum since its success with Steve Rogers/Captain America, and with that serum in hand, do so again, this time with Colonel James Rupert Rhodes.  Rhodey’s been out for a while, and is discovered in stasis by the Brotherhood of Steel, who wake him, orient him, and use him as a unique asset with the rank of Knight.

You can imagine how long he stays with the BOS once Tony finds out he’s alive.  Spoiler:  Not long.  And you can imagine how attached at the hip Tony is with him after the fact.  Spoiler:  It goes something like “I’m in the bathroom, I can hear you breathing out there.” 

You can imagine, too, how well MacCready reacts to that without having a reason to react to that way.  Spoiler:  Like a jealous boyfriend.  That has no right to be jealous.  But is gonna be jealous anyway and thank God, these two knuckleheads finally talk it out.

While forever in development and constantly being added on to (including more and more people being dragged into it), some other highlights include: + Sexual tension!  Mistakes being made!  Tony and Zetta doing the do!  Because they’re both too smart, too stubborn, and you know the whole trope of, “Make me,” being sexual tension that leads to actual sex?  That’s it.  That them.  Plus he got a nice booty and Zetta ain’t stupid. + MacCready’s quest changes!  Tony moves too slow for the whole idea of affinity and gets into a snit when MacCready takes off to take care of the Gunners by himself!  Zetta tracks his scrawny little merc ass down and calls in the calvary (Tony)!  Iron Man as Iron Man gets some play!  Lots of Gunners die!  Mostly because the won’t back down! It’s a mess!  Angry Tony!  Lots of bad feels all around! + The Rock Saga!  It’s legit verse canon now!  Robert Joseph MacCready is the worst boyfriend ever! + Stephen and his crush on Daisy of Goodneighbor!  Respecting KLEO because she’s a strong independent woman who don’t need a prime directive! + Duncan gets brought to the Commonwealth!  He’s officially the most protected kid ever with Tony being Tired Iron Dad and MacCready being MacCready!  Bonus points for the toy soldier going to him like it should have all along!  Dad!Tony reading Tolkien on request at bedtime because he hates Tolkien!  Changing the ending because you don’t tell a kid as young as Duncan his favorite in the Hobbit (Kili) dies! + Elle being loved! + Yes Man being loved and appreciated and encouraged to grow as his own person! + The Overboss that leaves Nuka World because he’s sick of the raiders unruly shit is a legit former Golden Age pirate ( @pyratetm )! + Avengers Assemble becomes a thing again! + People using Tony as a flashlight!  Tony getting annoyed by that! + Changes to all major questlines to make them canon divergent as hell because this is as much fix-it as it is rp! + Colonel James Rhodes becoming General Rhodes of the Minutemen! + M.O.E. the rebuilt synth!  He’s a first run prototype of the OS and personality matrices and is buggy as hell!  Everyone loves M.O.E. anyway! + Keep tuning in to find out what other bullshit we shove in this verse because this is already really long!

Featuring: @starkunlimited - the Commonwealth mechanic/Iron Man/various npcs @alloyally - the Commonwealth angel/War Machine (Iron Patriot sucks) @rahasyamay - the Commonwealth knock off Gandalf/Sorcerer Supreme @torrrden - the Commonwealth alien viking golden retriever/ God of Thunder @gwinnetts - the Sole Survivor/worst boyfriend ever/cutest courier ever/various npcs @justificd - Detective Depression/various npcs @securitrcn - the ai that could/an albino scaley smart boi/man who makes whale noises @beenpole - Mayor Buzzkill/anime thing 1/anime thing 2 @ersetze - Egg Spy/possible various others @inplakabl - when good girls go bad @pyratetm - you don’t fuck with the overboss

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Thor: Ragnarok review

Thor has had the worst track when it comes to the MCU. His first outing was an okay-at-best adventure that took place with a cast of boring, unfunny humans instead of on Asgard where cool shit happened. When you start out your trilogy with someone like Kenneth Branagh directing and even he can’t make it cool, you know you’re in trouble. Then we come to his appearance in The Avengers, where he does decent but still gets outshone quite a bit by the rest of the cast. Then we get to Thor: The Dark World, one of the worst superhero films ever made… the less said about it the better. Then comes Age of Ultron and Thor’s overall role is negligible, especially with his weird cave dream sequence which doesn’t amount to too much. All of this build’s Thor up as one of the least-interesting Avengers, which is a damn shame, because Chris Hemsworth plays the role with such charm and enthusiasm, it’s sad to see his efforts go to waste…

...And then comes Thor: Ragnarok, and it blows all that bullshit out of the water by doing a soft reboot to the whole Thor series. Sure, the bullshit before is still canon, but Thor got dumped by his human girlfriend so we don’t need to put up with those fucks anymore, the movie takes place mostly in the cosmos which were the best parts of the other Thor movies, and best of all we have a director who knows what we want to see and gives it to us with cheesy 80s and Jack Kirby aesthetic: Taika Waititi. More than anyone before him, he seems to really GET what makes Thor so cool in the first place, and what makes comic book movies cool in general. The other Thor movies are naught but a whimper to this film’s epic Led Zeppelin metal scream. But how? How did this film fix the fatal flaws of the films that came before?

First let’s give you a rundown of the story: It has been two years since Thor has left Earth. His girlfriend has dumped him, he has found no Infinity Stones, and as soon as he returns to Asgard he finds out Loki has hijacked the throne and hid his father, Odin, on Earth. And just when things don’t seem like they could get any worse, Odin dies and releases the wicked Hela, his firstborn child who was banished long ago for being an evil bitch. She makes it to Asgard and starts trying to dominate everything, while Thor and Loki end up on the planet of Sakaar… though Thor is stuck fighting in gladiator battles while Loki, who through temporal bullshit showed up a week earlier, has sucked up to the grandiose ruler known as the Grandmaster and landed himself in a cushy position. Soon enough Thor is up in the gladiator arena against his old pal, the Hulk, and from here Thor tries to figure out how he can get back to Asgard and whoop Hela’s ass. Can the mighty Thor manage this impossible feat, or is Ragnarok finally upon him?

The reason this movie works so well is that the film has moved away from dull Earth settings and into cosmic realms with a heavy 1980s sci-fi and Jack Kirby influence. Earth was not a very interesting setting for a character who is supposed to be a mighty physical god; the earlier films never really played to his strengths, as evidenced by the main villains being meek and unimposing in comparison to a swaggering viking like Thor. This is not much of a problem here, where all the foes Thor matches up against are more than able to measure up. Over the course of the film he does battle with the fire demon Surtur, his evil death goddess sister Hela, and of course the not-so-jolly green giant himself, Hulk. These are foes that actually give Thor a realistic challenge, and while there are obviously still scenes of Thor fighting mooks, there are actually antagonists that can put up solid fights themselves. It’s a real breath of fresh air!

Speaking of the characters, and continuing on with how moving away from the structure of the old film’s was a good thing… the previous supporting casts of the Thor movies were one of the greatest weaknesses. They were good actors (and Kat Dennings) in awful roles. But in THIS film, we get a supporting cast worthy of Thor! Gone is the dull Natalie Portman and the horrendously unfunny Kat Dennings characters that have bogged down the films in the past! Say hello to the new supporting cast of characters, with the badass Valkyrie and the charming goofball Korg! Valkyrie is an awesome, badass, worthy partner for Thor, who has a solid backstory and good characterization for her first film. Korg is just an absolutely lovable doofus; played by Taika Waititi himself, he exists mostly to add a bit of levity to the proceedings, which is easy to do as he is a hulking rock monster with a very soft, pleasant voice. These two are highlights of the movie, worthy newcomers and allies to Thor, and I hope they pop up more in the future. The interactions they could have if they meet up with the Avengers would be astounding.

Of course, we also have villains to take into account here, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Not in terms of quality mind you, because the performances are all well-done, it’s just that the villains tended to be underutilized. Hela is the chief example; yes, she has plenty of scenes where she’s badass, Cate Blanchett is perfect as her, and by fucking god that scene where she kills all the valkyries in flashback is one of the most gorgeous scenes I’ve ever seen in superhero cinema. But she’s a bit underutilized and barely deals with Thor until the very end of the film after their brief meetup. Still, she gets some cool fight scenes, so it does even out a bit, I just feel she deserved some more attention, especially with her interesting backstory. Surtur is quite a victim of this problem too, as instead of serving as a big bad, he’s relegated to a plot device after his defeat in the opening – a plot device I shall not reveal any spoilers on. Needless to say, he’s cool in his appearances, but he could have done a lot more. Thankfully, these two characters could possibly return, as their final scenes do leave things a bit open-ended.

But there is one antagonist who I can heap nothing but lavish praise upon: The Grandmaster. This is Jeff Goldblum dressed in the gaudiest clothing imaginable just… Jeff Goldbluming it up. He is absolutely perfect, hilarious, delightfully weird… it is everything I could have wanted from Jeff Goldblum in a Marvel film. There is not a single scene he’s in that’s unenjoyable, and I can’t wait for him to show up again so he can potentially interact with his equally scene-stealing weirdo brother, The Collector. Benicio Del Toro and Jeff Goldblum weirding it up onscreen together… It would be the stuff legends are made of. But yes, Goldblum, he’s a highlight of the film.

Now on to the returning characters: Odin is okay. Anthony Hopkins does a great job playing Loki pretending to be Odin, but his death scene is a bit rushed when taken out of context of the Thor series as a whole. It starts so near the beginning and wraps up the arc from the previous Thor film so quickly I just ca- oh, wait a second, Thor: The Dark World sucked ass, so why do I care if it’s stupid plot points get thrown out the window? Then we have Loki, who here just goes through the heel-face revolving door so many times it’s hard to really tell whose side he’s on at any given moment. As usual, his interactions with Thor are fantastic and enjoyable; they really do feel like bickering brothers who deep down do love each other, and Loki also gets some of the most hilarious moments during the Thor vs. Hulk gladiator fight. He’s solidly done, and Tom Hiddleston also gets a few scenes where he gets to ham it up, which is a big plus.

And then we have Doctor Strange, in a very brief cameo appearance that builds off the stinger of his film… and this scene is fucking awful. It’s supposed to be some goofy, lighthearted jokiness but it’s just so forced, awkward, and shoehorned into the film; it’s clearly only there to beat you over the head with the fact this movie takes place in a shared universe with other heroes. To be perfectly frank, the entirety of Thor and Loki’s trip could be cut out of the film with zero effect on the plot. It is just utterly irrelevant fanservice. The joke about Loki falling for thirty minutes though, that was funny, and it almost makes the scene worthwhile. Credit where credit is due, I laughed.

And now, the big one: Hulk. This is Hulk’s absolute best film appearance yet. He talks, he gets some personality to him, he gets good chemistry with Thor, and all his fight scenes are a blast, finally pitting Hulk against worthy foes (hey, he and Thor both finally get to fight people who are a good match)! And if you think Hulk’s the only one getting in on the fun, Banner shows up too and gets in on the fun; after two years stuck in Hulk form, Banner is a bit loopy, and gets tons of goofy, manic lines and great chemistry with Thor. Ruffalo is at the top of his game here; let’s see him keep this up in his next appearances.

Every fight scene is awesome, the score by Mark Mothersbaugh is awesome, every time “Immigrant Song” kicks up it’s the absolute peak of awesome… there’s nothing about this film that doesn’t scream “AWESOME!” Okay, well, there are a few things, as I’ve mentioned, but the pros heavily outweighs the cons. The awesome 80s Saturday morning cartoon sci-fi aesthetic fits Thor like a glove, giving him an enjoyable identity rather than the gloomy, overwrought, and often half-baked tone that has plagued his films in the past. This is a Thor film worthy of being a Thor film, and while I can’t say this is Marvel’s best film yet (I still like the Guardians of the Galaxy films and Civil War more), this is easily top ten best Marvel movies material, and one of this year's finest superhero films, and this is a damn good year for superhero movies! This one gets a recommendation for me, especially if you love throwbacks to the awesomely trashy and cheesy 80s sci-fi of the 80s… and boy fucking howdy do I love that shit.

This is science fantasy at its most fun, and I pray to all the gods of Asgard that Taika Waititi gets to keep the reigns of Thor for the foreseeable future. This man knows how to show us a good time; let’s let him keep doing it for a while longer. We need a bit more making up for the first two crappy Thor films, y’know?

[lisinfleur]

The Things We Do For Love

The Request:

Author’s Notes | I couldn’t resist making this become a sweet moment! You saw a man who was passing through it? Well, I DO MY HUSBAND’S NAILS HAHAHA *evil laughs* and those are delicious moments when he’s like a cat trying to run from me as if I was cold water hahaha Universe | Vikings Pairing | Ivar x Reader Info | Modern Age AU, requested by @lol-haha-joke​ for 5CW7 Words | 2107 ⁑ Warnings: None

The first thing his icy blues searched when they finally arrived in that place was a bench where he could sit to read the news in his phone comfortably.  Ivar knew very well your salon days could be exceptionally boring for him and he had developed his own way to avoid being completely swallowed by boredom and sleepiness while you were having fun and becoming prettier for him - in your own words to justify why he had to go with you to that place instead of just sit and wait for you at home. He would find a bench where he could sit and from where he could see you and answer whenever you wanted to speak to him, and take that time to update himself about the news and clean his email boxes to warrant a clean week. Perfect...

Except for the fact that you stopped him this time...

It wasn't like Ivar never had gone to that place before: you already had taken him to the salon sometimes. But that one was different: it was really specialized, with some additional to spoil the clients. And you wanted him to enjoy that with you.

"What do you mean by sitting there? Babe, that's..."

"The client's chair. I know! We gonna do this together today. No cellphones, no news, no nobody. We'll have a relaxing day, the two of us!" you said, causing him to become livid almost at the same moment.

That definitely wasn't his conception of "relaxing day" by your side.

"Love... Look, we can take some time to ourselves after the salon, I mean, a dinner together, maybe I can call that hotel we like, but... I don't wanna..." he tried.

But when you were decided to do something, Ivar knew you wouldn't go back on your decision.

"Babe, there is nothing wrong with relaxing a little. I'm sure you'll love it!"

No, he wasn't.

The last thing Ivar wanted was to expose his feet to someone he never saw in his life and sit there for hours as this person was touching a part of his body he was so complexed about.

There were some other men around in the chairs and Ivar knew that thing about having nails done and stuff wasn't something for women only anymore, but yet...

You never saw your boyfriend so rigid in a chair before.

"That's fine, you silly. You'll see... It will be delicious!" you stimulated.

And the girl that came to care for his needs wasn't different from your mood: her smile was significative and she stood beside him, offering him a small side-table to place his things so he could access it whenever he needed.

When she sat to take his shoes off, he became rigid once again, but you held his hand with tenderness and she smiled.

"That's fine, mr. Ragnarsson. Your girlfriend already told me about your needs and we prepared a special program for you today. Just relax. You have my word: I'm sure you'll want to come back more times."

A promise he would hardly fulfill, Ivar thought to himself. But the feeling of your thumb gently caressing his hand caused him to feel a little more secure and the girl gently took his shoes off, rubbing them gently with a warmed towel before placing them into the bowl attached to the chair and full of warm water, turning on the equipment.

He saw that thing working under your body dozens of times, but he didn't know the chairs were equipped with a personalized cycle of massage; nor that the bowl for his feet had a small system of hydromassage that was keeping the water warm and comfortable around his tired fingers, simply erasing the pain he usually had pulsating in his feet for the constant use of his social shoes.

The girl noticed the way his shoulders relaxed and smiled, but not her nor you said a word. She just sat beside his chair, gently starting to work in his hands, cleaning the nails before placing a cream with a good sensation to make his cuticles easier to be done.

She took less than fifteen minutes to finish his hand, changing her chair from one side to another to work on his other hand, and then, Ivar had his first surprise: his hand looked clean and pleasurable. The nails were covered with a matte nail cover that wasn't really visible but somehow was making his hand look very clean and light. She also had got rid of all that bothering pieces of skin that sometimes Ivar had the bad habit to bit and the corners of his fingers weren't bothering him anymore. Instead, they were looking smooth and it was good to look at them.

The whole time he took to notice and observe his hand was enough for the girl to finish her job with his other hand and the same sensation of comfort and cleanness showed up in his fingers once again. That was really something he wasn't expecting.

"They look clean and beautiful, right?" you mumbled with a smile.

"I have to admit they look good," he said, looking at you, "I thought I would have to be here for the same time you do," he observed, since the girl by your side was still working on your fingers.

But you smiled, caressing his face.

"Nope, nope, sweetheart. Your work is faster. I want decorations, it takes a lot of time more," you explained, smiling.

Ivar twitched his lips in a surprised expression. The girl was now involving his feet in warm towels again. With the same efficiency, she treated each one of his toes, getting rid of bothering corners, making his feet feel dozens of times lighter and even look better, despite the appearance of the bones he used to hate so bad. Ivar had to admit it wasn't so annoying to have his feet receiving such special care for a day.

He surely could get used to the massage package you prepared for him... Oh, he could use one of those after a meeting on the company! Sure thing!

By the time he was done, your nails were about to be finished and the girl that was caring for him smiled gently once again.

"I hope you had a good moment, mr. Ragnarsson," she said, solicitous.

To what Ivar answered with a satisfied smile.

"One of the most surprisingly good I ever had," he said, leaving a fat tip for the girl that thanked him politely despite being surprised with the amount of money he gave her.

You smiled. He was really satisfied and nothing was better for you than seeing your pretty boy happy. Even his expression was better when the two of you left the salon.

However, of course, something had to go wrong...

"What kind of sorcery is that, Ivar?" Hvitserk said as soon as the two of you entered the kitchen, lifting up Ivar's hand when he was intending to pick up an apple.

His older brother eager eyes observed the details of his nails with curiosity before Ivar pulled his hand from his, asking annoyed:

"What?"

"Did you get your nails done?"

There was a malicious tone in Hvitserk's side-smile that really made you cringe - shit, he would ruin everything!

"I went to the salon with Y/N. Anything with that, brother?"

Hvitserk giggled, causing Ivar to frown almost immediately.

"What the fuck is wrong, uh, Hvitserk?"

"Nothing... Just you, doing things you always condemned Sigurd for doing. Well, your hands look just like his now, pretty and clean!" he mocked, moving his hand like Beyoncé in the clip of Single Ladies, just to tease Ivar a little more.

You could see the tension elevating in your boyfriend's nape. Shit!

"I don't really understand why are you mocking him for this, Hvitserk," you said, in an acid tone that called both of them to look at you - Ivar, curious you were putting yourself into that small arguing; Hvitserk not really understanding your point. "What? Do you really think girls like these thick fingers full of remaining skin of yours?"

Ivar's furrowed eyebrows changed the expression to surprise almost immediately and he leaned his head, getting exactly what you were doing when his brother's expression changed from the mocking smile to the bad-surprise: you were hitting on his callous and you knew that. Hvitserk was a sucker for girls and you were hitting exactly in his pride by saying girls would ever reject him...

"Nice shot," Ivar mumbled for you, without sound, observing as you strafed Hvitserk's self-confidence like a machine-gun...

You were a woman... You knew what you were talking about.

"What do you mean?" Hvitserk asked, even stopping his search for food to look straight at you. "Nobody ever complained about my fingers..."

"Not in front of you, of course," you shot again and Ivar had to swallow dry to prevent himself from smiling. "You're a handsome guy," you started, walking around and opening the fridge as if you weren't saying anything, picking up the milk to serve yourself and Ivar. "Girls will always smile and treat you good, but it doesn't prevent them from speaking about your flaws when you're not around and believe me: no girl like these pieces of remaining skin on your thumb. Uhgn!" you made a disgusting sound that caused Hvitserk to cringe this time and Ivar started controlling himself to avoid laughing. "That's pretty disgusting. The bad cut of your nails as well! Have you ever thought about how uncomfortable it is to have these badly formed squares scratching around? For the girls' sake, Hvitserk... Go take some care of yourself, go? You should learn from Sigurd and from Ivar and take care of your hands...".

Ivar was literally breaking a rib to hold his own laugh and keep the serious posture to emphasize what you were saying while his brother seemed to be so worried, looking at his hands to find the details you said were bad.

"But... They're not so bad..." Hvitserk tried to defend himself with a childish tone and you left the milk on the table going closer to him and extending your hand to pick up one of his hands and one of Ivars.

They both gave their hands to you and you placed them beside one another.

Ivar's was fresh and clean from the salon - it was almost unfair to compare them both - but you did anyway. You couldn't let his brothers ruin your whole work to get your boyfriend happy.

"See? This is a pretty and desirable hand," you said, showing Ivar's. "This is something a girl wants roaming her whole body and even coming inside, silly one. This here is something that needs to have some care urgently!" you completed, showing Hvitserk's hand to himself and then pulling a card from your salon to offer him. "Here. If you want a good job done I think you can get an hour for you today."

Hvitserk accepted the card looking from you to Ivar then to his own hand once again before picking up his phone and start walking away from the kitchen, calling the salon to set an hour for him.

"And don't forget your toes!" you said, causing him to stop at the door looking at you once again. "What? I saw your feet without the shoes and jez, Hvitserk, have you ever cut your nails?? Ew!"

His eyebrow lifted almost to the top of his forehead and he left, defeated, as soon as the girl answered his call.

You and ever were still able to hear him speaking to the attendant before his voice vanished at the hallway...

"Hi... I would like to set an hour for me. Yeah... Hands and feet..."

Ivar couldn't hold himself anymore and laughed openly as you were showing a beautiful and proud smile on your face.

"It was mean, love," he said, embracing your waist when you came closer to kiss the corner of his lips. "You were cruel."

"Do you think I was?" you asked, pretending to be innocent. "I was only giving him some beauty tips... I swear!"

The two of you laughed together once again and Ivar smiled against your lips.

"Now... About that thing of hands roaming your body... And getting in... I think we can provide it, can't we?"

You softly bit his lower lip smiling.

"Anything for my boo," you said, kissing him softly.

No one would ruin your day for sure! Especially now that it was time to enjoy your sweet boy's good mood.

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[letslearnnorwegian-blog]

Growing up in Norway, how was Thor and the other Norse gods introduced to you and integrated in your culture? Were they used as heroes/heroines in bedtime stories or was there a subjected dedicated to them in school? Are there disputes with other Scandinavians countries as to where these gods originated? How does the norse mythology apply to modern times? Do you have expressions like "oh my odin" etc. do you have present traditions that celebrate them as well as vikings? These are a lot thanks:D

Hey there!

This would vary a lot from person to person, and I can only talk about my own personal experiences - that being said, while a few people still practice the old “Norse religion”, they’re very very very uncommon to come across (the norse mythology is quite faded just like, say, greek mythology etc.). A lot of it disappeared when Christianity was introduced and Norse religion became practically illegal - you weren’t even allowed to name your children “Norse names” anymore (though that’s legal again now, of course).

That being said, everyone learns about Vikings and Norse gods/mythology as a part of the curriculum in school these days (or at least back when I went to school, which is only a few years ago so I’m assuming it’s still the same). How much you learn, however, all depends on your teacher and school. Some teachers are more invested in Viking history and the Norse gods and, consequently, they teach their students more about it. My teacher was one of them - he taught us to read and write ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ (”futhark”, or Scadinavian runes, if you will) - though you never really use it (unless you decide to study it at a later date, I guess), so the majority of my classmates no longer remember it at all. In high school we occasionally had to translate sentences from Norse to modern Norwegian, though those usually weren’t written with runes. 

Personally, I’ve always been told stories about Norse gods and Scandinavian fairy tales from a young age. Whenever we saw lightning or heard thunder, my mom would tell me “Tor er ute og rir vognen sin med bukkene sine” (”Thor is out and riding his cart with his goats”) - which is how legend says thunder and lightning is created (thunder is the sound of the goats’ hooves, lightning is the sparks from Mjølner when Tor swings it around). 

The most popular story about Norse gods when I was a kid was probably the story about Balder. Besides that, common fairy tales such as Askeladden were very well known (and still are) - and some people say he’s based off of Loke, though the stories themselves never really mention Norse gods. There are a lot of trolls, though! Some fairy tales are pretty grim - seeing as trolls tend to, you know, eat people - I remember my favorite being “Gutten som kappåt med trollet” - where Askeladden tricks a troll into stabbing itself to death - IT SOUNDS SO MORBID NOW but idk it was just a regular fairy tale back in the days)

There are a lot of other common fairy tales and creatures that were very popular when we were kids (I used to loooove Huldra and we were all terrified of Draugen and Nøkken omfg - though not really trolls bc trolls are pretty…frickin’ dumb….)

I remember being pretty salty about the Marvel’s “Thor” movie because it’s so so so wrong oh my god - but I eventually realized that it’s simply based off of the Norse gods and not an actual representation of it - though, you know, they could’ve done a little bit of a better job (they named Loke’s father “Lauvøy” (“Laufey”)….which is actually….the name of Loke’s mother….??? why?????????? also they portray Odin as such a douche - I will forever stand by the fact that “Gandalf” is the most accurate portrayal of Odin in modern times (yes, Gandalf is actually based off of Odin!))

Other than that a lot of Norwegian (and Scandinavian) names are based off of Norse names or the Norse language - my own name is derived from Norse and actually means “The Strife of the Elves” - and names like Tor and Siv are extremely common (you’ll also find people named Odin, Nanna, Frøya, etc). 

As for traditions and expressions - if you have a farm (which a surprisingly large amount of Norwegians do), it’s common to leave a bowl of Risengrynsgrøt (porridge made out of rice and milk - very common around Jul/Christmas) for the nisse as a form of blót so that the nisse won’t wreak havoc inside your farm. Also, Christmas itself is called “Jul” in Norwegian, which is actually one of the many names of Odin - so you could say that “God Jul” is a Norse expression and that Jul/Christmas is celebrated due to the winter solstice- however most people still think of it as a Christian holiday (even though the majority of Norwegians are non-religious). 

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God there is SOOooOooooO much more to talk about but I feel like this post is getting way too long already lmao - sorry for rambling for so long!!!!!!