#i keep calling him leonie cause my sibling calls him that

[viperbunnies]

I’d love to see Leona in your style if you’re still taking requests! 🦁💜

Ty for the request!

Leonie… kittyy…

[ladyhallen]

I Am Not A Sacrifice (She Is A Gift)

Read on AO3 | FFNET

When Sansa was a fourteen, a dragon came to the North.

It was large, pale and blended terrifyingly well with the snow. It also ate its body weight in cattle, something that had Sansa’s father age ten years before his time.

“We cannot kill that dragon,” she remembered him saying. “Its hide is as thick as a boulder and our blades would just bounce off it. It breaths ice and snow and it causes an avalanche every time it moves its tail or its wings.”

There was despair in Winterfell and Sansa did her best to be extra behaved. It wasn’t fair to her parents to have to worry about Sansa when they had a dragon to worry about as well. She ushered her siblings into being careful and Robb, for the first time, seemed to understand and helped as well. He didn’t go about with Theon in Wintertown and instead took over some of fathers duties.

And then they received news that the dragon had asked for a meeting with all the lords of the North.

“It must be a trap!” Sansa’s mother said. Her red hair, usually up in a careful braid, was loose and frazzled, a reflection of how the dragon worried her.

“We have no choice,” Sansa’s father said. His face was grim and unsmiling. Not even Arya could make him laugh. “If we do not reach a compromise, that dragon will eat us out of food and all the winter stores in a week.”

All the lords of the North converged on Winterfell, and it was a testament to the size of the castle that it managed to host all the lords, and all the guards that the lords brought with them.

Sansa had been practicing being a hostess in a while and she did her best to help her mother. It made mother smile, which was something of an accomplishment in itself.

Then, the dreaded day came and the dragon arrived. Its wingspan blocked out the sky and a great cry of fear came up from everyone.

Sansa looked out of the battlements where she had sneaked out with her siblings, Robbs head beside hers and Arya’s fingers tight in her hand. Rickon wiggled and went still while Bran just gasped in awe. Sansa took deep breaths. Her siblings would make fun of her forever if she fainted.

“You are all here, good,” the dragon said, voice deep and roiling like a thunderstorm. “I will speak, and you will listen.”

“Not like you gave us a choice, you’ve almost starved us to death here,” GreatJon Umber bellowed back at the dragon.

The dragon reared back its great head and roared. “I will speak, and you will listen!” making everyone’s ears ring.

There was a moment of terrified silence, and then Sansa’s father moved forward.

“Speak then, and we will listen,” Sansa’s father yelled up at the dragon.

The dragon rumbled and there was a moment of panic, before they all realized that yes, the dragon was pleased. Purring, like a cat.

“My name is Gilgamesh, and I am here to give you all a warning,” it rumbled. “A great Winter is coming, a storm of snow, ice and hail that will envelope your country for long, long years. If you are not careful, you will all die of the hunger and the starvation.”

There was a great deluge of whispers, but under the dragons gimlet stare, went quiet again.

“I notice that there is a heart tree here, a proper one. Good. If a Stark Monarch bleeds on the tree during Winter, you can lessen Winters hold on the land,” the dragon pronounced. “A week for every cup of blood.”

“There are no Stark Monarchs,” Robb hissed in her ear. “Or Kings or Queens at all. Ever since the Targaryen conquest, there have been no Stark Kings.”

Sansa looked at her pale brother. He seemed to understand what the dragon was saying. Sansa too felt that dawning horror of the inevitable.

“Lastly,” the dragon rumbled. “I am dying. My child is coming and will be of great aid to you, for he breathes fire. You will all take good care of my child, for he was born the Eternal Flame of Summer. You will need his Flame during your Long Winter.”

With that, the dragon sat on his haunches and stared at them all, seeming to catch the Stark siblings hiding by the battlements. “Now, you shall speak, and I will listen,” the dragon announced.

The noise that erupted was insane. Sansa let go of Arya’s hand and covered her ears. She did not let her eyes away from the dragon. It seemed displeased at the noise.

“The Long Night,” someone said. “You speak of the Long Night. It is a myth!”

“Food stores that will last for ages!” someone else said. “How on earth do you expect us to save that much food? That’s insane! It would rot!”

“You can’t expect us to host another dragon willingly! You’re eating habits are going to starve us to death, we don’t have to wait for Winter!” Sansa’s mother yelled.

The dragon rumbled again, waiting for all the questions to stop.

“I will answer, and you will listen,” he said. “If the Long Night is a myth, it is the same in that dragons are a myth. Look at me, and tell me I am not real.”

He glared at all of them with great yellow eyes. No one moved, or breathed, their courage all deserting them as they all suddenly remembered that yes, dragon.

“I will teach you how to preserve food that will last for years,” he added, looking at Master Wolken, who looked incredibly pale under the dragons attention. “And lastly, it is an exchange. If I was to give you knowledge that was incredibly valuable, then I must also get something of equal value.”

Sansa felt that knowledge settle deep in her bones. Equal Value.

“My child will not eat as much, but he will still eat, since he is the Eternal Flame. But he will also hunt, so it will be a fair trade,” the dragon finished. “I will go now, but I will come back. You must all decide wisely, for my time here is not long.”

The dragon left, as though he had not rearranged their entire lives.

“The Long Night,” Bran said. “And people called Old Nan crazy!”

“Do you think it will be very cold?” Arya asked.

Sansa shivered. “I hope everything will be alright,” Sansa said. “But father will do his best.”

Robb’s hands were warm against her back but he looked terrified.

.

That night, Sansa dreamed. The dragon had looked at her, she knew. Looked at her and found her worthy. Sansa hadn’t realized how lonely she felt among her family, that with just a look, a dragon could make her feel less alone.

“Child,” he spoke, voice calmer and less of a rumbling mass of force. “Why do you weep?”

“There are no more Stark Monarchs,” she whispered. “And our people are divided. We may yet die. I will fight for my people, but I do not know how.”

He hummed. “If I teach you, you will know. You will learn.”

“But will it hurt? Equal Value,” Sansa whispered.

The dragons eyes gleamed. “You listen well. I admire that. But the price for what I will teach you is without measure. You will know what your payment is when my child arrives.”

.

Every night Sansa slept, she dreamed of the dragon.

He taught her about leadership, about duty and about Stark Magic.

“Monarchy for the Starks is less about the title and more about the Magic, and the duty to the people,” Gilgamesh lectured. “Luckily for you, you are almost of age. Once you have turned eighteen, do not kneel for anyone. You may bow, but you must never kneel.”

“Does that mean, that we lost the title of Kings of Winter when we knelt, not when the crown was melted?” Sansa asked.

“Yes, for kings and queens will only kneel when they are conquered,” he said. “Now, have you found the Heart of Winterfell yet, Sansa?”

Sansa had found the hot springs, and the lesson proceeded.

.

.

Sansa understood what Gilgamesh meant when, a few days later, they receive news that the dragon was dead and Lord Bolton started talking about taking off the head as a trophy.

She entered the meeting chamber, with all the lords present and her siblings behind her watching her in awe.

“No,” she said to all those powerful men. “Gilgamesh the dragon, the truth speaker, will not have his head made into a trophy. He deserves better than that. He deserves to buried, or to be left alone. Let his bones rest peacefully, for he did us a great service.”

Father looked proud and everyone else looked at her strangely. Sansa stood tall and remembered not to be afraid. She would miss Gilgamesh desperately, but she knew it was his time.

And all of Winterfell waited for the arrival of the Eternal Flame, the great dragon and child of Gilgamesh the oracle; they were unprepared for the arrival of a teenaged boy carrying a sword.

.

.

“My name is Cor Leonis,” the boy said, eyes slitted like a cats – no - a dragons. Other than the scales in his arms and the horns pushing through his hair, he looked like a normal boy. “My father, Gilgamesh, bade me to come here.”

“You are the Eternal Flame, the great dragon?” Eddard Stark asked. He looked the boy up and down appraisingly. “You are smaller than I expected.”

Cor huffed, and a curl of smoke escaped his mouth. “I thought coming as a dragon would be alarming and eye catching. Also, I eat less in this shape.”

Everyone relaxed at that last sentence and Sansa had to hold back her giggles.

Perhaps it wasn’t as quiet as she thought, since his yellow eyes flicked to her immediately. He stared and Sansa stared back. The little bit of scale she could see peeking out of his clothes were fascinating. Weeks and weeks of having Gilgamesh as her teacher and she no longer feared dragons.

Eddard Stark cleared his throat pointedly, making Cor’s eyes snap to him again. “Kindly do not stare at my daughter,” he said pointedly.

“She smells of my father’s scent. He has crowned her a queen,” Cor announced, to absolute pandemonium.

.

.

There was, inevitably, a meeting.

Father, mother, Robb and all the lords who were given instructions to keep quiet. Lady Mormont looked intrigued. And of course, Cor Leonis.

“Sansa, tell us everything,” Mother said. “Where were you meeting the dragon and when?”

Sansa shook her head. She placed her hands on her lap and stared at them all quietly. “I met him in my dreams. Gilgamesh asked me for why I was crying even in my sleep, and I told him I worried that everyone in the North was going to starve despite our best efforts, because there were no more Stark Monarchs ever since the Targaryen Conquest. He said that it did not matter, because he would teach me.”

“Why you!?” Robb burst out, looking frustrated and worried in equal measure. “Surely I could hold it better.”

Cor sighed. “Gil chose her, because when she heard about blood and the Heart Tree, she was willing to bleed to death at its roots, if only to provide her people with a bit of summer.”

“Sansa,” Mother whispered, face pale. “Dear one…”

Father rounded on Cor. “She does not have to die to provide us all summer. We can manage the food stores.”

“No, a good monarch chooses duty over all else, even family,” Cor pointed out. “That, and having a heart of compassion. Can you look at her and tell me that Gil chose wrong?”

There was silence and then laughter from Lady Mormont.

“Look at all you men, alarmed that a woman was chosen,” she laughed. “If it was your boy, Bran, chosen, this would not be so troubling. But because she is a woman, you are all questioning her. Leave her be. Teach her, she is already chosen by the dragon.”

“Gil has already taught me,” Sansa said. “And we need to dig under the Glittering Crag. It has silicone sand, Gil said. A bit of steel and glass, and all of the North will have glass gardens. It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but we can then have Glass Farms!”

Sheer, utter pandemonium.

Sansa watched Cor give a small smile and wanted to see it again.

.

.

Winterfell and Wintertown became a hive of activity.

Cor’s use became evident as he started sketching out diagrams, teaching people to read and then just overhauling their entire education system just so that he could have skilled workers.

He drew out plans, scouted out the terrain, hunted some deer and slept as a boy by the large hearth of the castle.

Sansa never saw his dragon shape and she yearned to. She wondered if he would be as big as his sire, and felt her cheeks heat when she remembered his strength in singlehandedly holding up the roof of the workshop so that the people could hammer in the nails.

But Sansa had no time to think about that, except in the dead of the night.

Now that she was announced heir, all the duties that Robb had fell on to her, and some of Fathers and Mothers as well.

In retaliation, she conscripted Jeyne to be her right hand and Beth to supervise what Cor and the workers were up to in making the glass farms.

Sansa was busy, so she neglected her siblings. This was a mistake, because the next thing she knew, Arya had launched a mud pie at her dress as she was crossing the courtyard.

She felt numb. She had embroidered the dress personally, and sewn on the bodice. The dress was her once a year allowance to buy cloth. And Arya had just ruined it. She went away inside so that she wouldn’t cry and continued to walk, ignoring the mud and everyone smiling meanly at her.

She would have started crying in her office, except that Cor immediately swooped in and scolded Arya, her other siblings watching and all the spectators who did nothing to stop it.

Sansa stopped and stared, feeling warmer and touched that someone, at least, understood.

And Arya had to ruin it by opening her large mouth.

“You’re just defending her because she’s pretty!” Arya said meanly. “You’re such a boy, even if you’re a dragon.”

Cor just. Stopped. His eyes contracted and his hands clenched. Behind him, there was a massive rip as his trousers tore and his massive tail manifested, an evidence of his loss of temper.

“What does that have to do with respect?” Cor demanded. “I would defend her even if she was a boy, and not just because she’s pretty. She’s working herself to the bone for all of you, and you, you spoiled child, are not even helping her. She is exhausted every day, and you throw mud at her. She has managed to singlehandedly allocate supplies for three years, more if I’m counting right. A couple more months and she can manage to store food for five. That’s just from what I’ve seen. Meanwhile, I have never seen you work a day in your life.”

Sansa continued walking and felt like she was flying.

.

.

Sansa never really talked to Cor alone, because their duties ran parallel and didn’t really intersect. Aside from that first meeting, she and Cor were rarely alone.

That changed, because as soon as Sansa changed her clothes and had a bath, she sought him out where he was checking barrels for storing barley and flour.

“Ser Cor,” she said. “Thank you.”

He stood up. He seemed to have changed trousers as well and his eyes shone in the dark of the cellar. “Not a Ser. And there is no need for thanks. I am sorry I lost my temper. My manifestation must have been a surprise.”

Sansa shook her head. “No, never!  I mean, you have been holding your shape for months on end. You must manifest sometimes.”

“You’re…not afraid,” he said, less a question and more a statement.

“No,” she said quietly. Up close, his eyes weren’t really yellow but a lovely shade of burnished gold that refracted the light. His hair was many shades of dark brown. “No. At the start, I may have been afraid of Gilgamesh, but as I knew him, I was no longer afraid. But you…I was never afraid of you.”

And then…he smiled.

.

In the dark of the night, when she was all alone and no one was around, Sansa remembered that smile and pressed cool hands to hot cheeks.

.

Later, many months later, when the Long Night came and Cor manifested fully as a grown dragon and breathed fire to keep everyone in Winterfell warm, Sansa would remember being the only one who did not cower at his size.

She held her head high and did not bow to him and Cor hummed in pleasure.

And when the food stores would get low, Sansa would bleed. The howling winds would lessen and her people would be able to hunt, watched and protected by Cor’s dragon eyes.

The first three years were fine and Cor continued to push people to salvage. Sansa knew that it would last longer than five years and agreed with him. Getting food from the other kingdoms would do for later, when the stores were almost empty.

The Glass Farms proved their weight in gold when it kept everyone in the North fed for years. Sansa was thoroughly sick of radishes and scallions, and so was everyone else, she suspected. She missed real meat that was not preserved or salted or broiled.

The last two years, as Sansa would remember, were the hardest. The glass farms had a leak from all the ice and stopped production for three months. Sansa finally had to asked her father to ship food from Essos.

“And if all else fails, we can ask the Reach,” Sansa said.

“They charge through the nose,” Father muttered. His cheeks were thin, but he was flush with health. The heat Cor produced just by being near was significant.

“Needs must,” Sansa sighed. “And we can sell all the wool we’ve been making.”

Given that some days, the snow fall was crazy, everyone had been spinning wool. Or carving.  Or sewing. Or some variation of all three.

.

Cor finally finished the copper tubes he had asked for and installed them in every house in the North. There was a great deal of grumbling as no carpenter or tradesman wanted to be out in the snow. But the promise of warm houses forever more was too good to pass up.

He breathed a long and sustained flame in every house hearth and the flame settled on the logs and didn’t consume wood. It sat on the wood, but did not burn. It was warmer than ordinary fire.

“Is that…the Eternal Flame?” Sansa had to ask. Both of them sat in her solar, as was their custom after a long day of work.

Cor shook his head. “It is just dragon fire. Gilgamesh was being poetic.”

Sansa giggled and Cor smiled at her fondly.

“Cor,” she said when the fire was winding down and her eyes drooped. “When the winter is over, will you stay?” With me? She wanted to add, but was too afraid to do so.

Cor’s eyes dilated, as they did when he was experiencing great emotion. “Sansa, my queen. I would stay until you tell me to leave.”

With her heart in her throat, Sansa held out a hand, and Cor held it carefully, aware of the scales in his fingers. She felt warm and it had nothing to do with Cor’s heat.

“As queen in all the North,” she told him, like she’s sharing a secret. “I can marry who I wish.”

“As a dragon of magic and fire,” he answered. “No one dictates who I marry.”

The first kiss tasted like heat and magic and Sansa finally, finally understood Gilgamesh’s price.

.

.

Staring down at her first born, Sansa looked at the golden eyes and dark scales.

“His name shall be Gillian,” she announced.

.

In the afterlife, Gilgamesh laughed.

[omgkalyppso]

ohhh those OC interview asks look so fun!! how about 1 and 2?

(for all 3 i mean!)

##^^## AW! Thank you!!

Who makes up your family?  How close are you to them?

Sawyer signs happily, "My parents are my only family by blood, but I have many who I'm close to. My father is a midlander, native to Gridania, but settled in Thanalan. He spent much of my childhood on the road, repairing the homes of mud and clay during the floods that came with the rainy seasons. Despite that, we're close. The work always brought enough that the dry seasons were spent together, flying kites in the raging heat and painting patterns and murals on our home and on tablets with the other children at an oasis to the east. My mother held a more consistent schedule. She worked as a scribe, recording political business and generating cyphers while I was in the care of teachers. Our evenings together were always busy with chores and dinner, but I do have happy memories to lean upon."

Sawyer reaches for a pen, to scrawl their names: Turold Eldwynn and Purple Star.

.

Borgakh releases a long breath. "This has a long answer," she chuckles. "Are you sure you have time for me?

"To start, I have my late father, Thokk, who was a healer and passed of natural causes, age. My mother, Yevelda, yet lives in my home town of Realta. She was a seamstress, and still is sometimes, when people approach her with tattered dresses and children's clothes to be refitted, but she is mostly retired.

"While I am unmarried, I think my partners would agree to be called family, Marie, Mina and Cam at least. Iberis has re-entered my life, but, things are strained with him. I think of Cam and Marie's little girl, Dahlia, as my own, and my friend Lou is as close to me as a brother could be."

.

[For Fae the answer depends Entirely on the AU. I've been thinking of post canon a lot though, so we're going with that.]

"Well I— While I never knew my mother, Sitri, she is still important to me. My father, Geralt, I had the privilege of knowing into adulthood. We were very close, and I often still miss him when faced with moral decisions. He was very forthright, and always seemed to know the right thing to do.

"Luckily, I am surrounded by those I love, even when I make mistakes. Having been raised by my father, I consider Alois my brother, and we even refer to each other as siblings. Seteth and Flayn, were always as close to me as family. They didn't quite fit a role of parent or sibling, just ... reliable loved ones. I respect them a great deal. Leonie might be the closest thing I have to a real sister, in that we grew apart, and I rarely see her, but I would still move mountains for her safety and happiness, and I expect she would do the same. She had her own life to live, and I'm proud of her accomplishments, much as I can be — they're not mine, after all.

"And then there's my immediate family. My husband, Claude, and our children, Nader, Geralt, Sadaf and Simon, and our long time partners, Hilda and Lorenz and their brood, Halvard, Lorencia and Vinnie. Through them I've inherited more and miles of extended family. It's nice to realize the world can be so connected, and to be so blessed. They don't come without problems, but it's far worth it for the joy, and lessons, and love."

Who is your best friend?  Tell us about them!

Sawyer reaches out to grab Sybille by the arm, forcing fleur to bend towards them so they can plant a kiss on fleur cheek. They return to signing, "Sybille, certainly. I hired fleur years ago to join me on an expedition, to work as adventurers together and act as interpreter for the sake of the rest of the adventuring party, but our relationship has grown into one of great friendship. There is no one I trust more."

.

Borgakh holds the side of her face. "I shouldn't have mentioned Lou before, I'm liable to give him a big head, but my best friend is certainly that little warlock. I've given all of myself to protect him before, and I would again. He's earned it through our friendship, and his good heart."

.

Fae wrings her hands a little. "I don't have a friend I trust more than my partners. We keep greater secrets and stories between us than anyone else I've had in my life. I think I've always needed that as part of a romantic relationship, to be best friends, and share interests, and values, and pains. We have the four of us, so generally we can find connection and solidarity with at least one partner, if the others are too weary to shoulder a burden, or whatever the case may be."

[parasite-core]

I need to know more about tsuneer he sounds so amazing, pls,

Thank you anon this means a lot to me😭 It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about Tsuneer with anyone, he was an OC I first made in high school from a very long running RP I used to do with my partner. He’s definitely one I still really want to write a story about someday.

Short answer: Tsuneer is a living shard of a child god’s power, who has a mask that is in a constant state of decaying and fixing itself the closer the world he’s on comes to the End Times. When the mask breaks, Tsuneer is forcefully transformed into the living embodiment of the Apocalypse, to bring an end to all worlds so the universe can be restarted by said child god. This will happen 100 times before Tsuneer finally finds a way to break the cycle.

The Long Answer:

Tsuneer was the first sentient person made by the creator god of his continuity, who is usually just called The Universe, but can also be called Xeon.

Xeon is...basically a child with too much power, creating toys to play with, and so Tsuneer was originally made to be their friend and explore worlds Xeon made for him. Long story short, Xeon later made some siblings for Tsuneer and let them loose in his first world with other intelligent life. They gave Tsuneer a demonic looking mask that they told Tsuneer to keep safe. What Xeon didn’t tell him was that a new game had started—one between Tsuneer and one of his new siblings, called The Emptiness. The goal was to gain more power. If a world survived to its proper end, Tsuneer would gain more power because unbeknownst to him, his existence slowly sapped energy from these new worlds, which caused its ‘natural’ decay over time. But if The Emptiness caused the end of the world sooner, all the souls of the people killed by the early apocalypse would be absorbed by him, and he’d gain more power. Unfortunately for Tsuneer, either way the mask he was given breaks in the end and transforms him into a world ending monster. Then the remains of the dead universe are repurposed into a new one by Xeon, and the entire dark game starts over.

Tsuneer has lived an unfathomably long time, as have his siblings, who are the only beings not killed in the Apocalypse because each one has a shard of Xeon’s power at their core. They arrive to whichever world Xeon chooses in the new universe at the beginning of civilization, and exist as a constant in the world until the end times. The death of this chosen world means the death of the entire universe, since Xeon has no need of anything outside his game, so as if the deaths of entire worlds being on Tsuneer’s head wasn’t bad enough.

Tsuneer goes back and forth between wanting to make connections with the people in the worlds he lives in, and wanting to distance himself because their lives are so fleeting even without the threat looming over his head that he’ll be the one to kill them. In one of the final worlds (97 of 100 if I remember correctly) Tsuneer actually played a more active role in the world and fell in love with a mortal woman named Sen. Sen and her best friend Ren ended up getting a broken shard of Xeon’s power, which between the two of them allowed them to survive into the next cycle, although they’re barred from joining Tsuneer in the new world by Xeon and end up staying in Xeon’s ‘paradise’ until Tsuneer eventually breaks the cycle.

I’ve never written or RP’d the cycle breaking but I know how it would happen. When the 100th world in the cycle is going to die early because of a small number of people’s mistakes, Tsuneer has had enough of the unfair hand these worlds have been dealt, and finally manages to overpower The Apocalypse and absorbs the monster and its shard of Xeon into himself. With that he becomes powerful enough to be a god slayer. Which was Xeon’s true intent from the start because of a whole other storyline about a dark god who creates twisted duplicates of worlds, so he put Tsuneer through all of that to make him the one being who can stand against the Negaverse. Tsuneer does because he wants to protect the worlds that are left and the souls who have survived this long due to various circumstances. Afterwards he makes it clear to Xeon that he could and would do the same to them if they ever meddle in his life again, and he wants nothing more to do with them after all they put him through.

Fun fact, he was originally a demon grim reaper from The Abyss just called Death, but that was eventually retconned to being a persona he took on in one world during one of his more self hatred-y moods due to the aforementioned cycle of world killing. Specifically the world after he met Sen and was separated from her.

Fun fact 2, I dressed as Tsuneer for Halloween one year, and I still have The Mask of the Apocalypse which my dad helped me to make. I’ll post a picture if I can find it.

Fun fact 3, each of Xeon’s shards of power represents a facet of reality. The Emptiness’ is the Shard of Void. Tsuneer’s other brothers Leonis and Kotsu have the shards of life and death respectively. The broken shard Sen and Ren share are Time and Space. Tsuneer thought his shard was Destruction due to his nature as the bringer of the Apocalypse, but in the end when he realized the monster was separate from him, it turned out the Apocalypse’s shard was destruction, and Tsuneer’s was the Shard of Hope.

Because I’m sappy like that.

[crackimagines]

Child!Byleth AU General Info/Trivia

This list was made in response to the ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING positive reception to Child!Byleth! I was not ready for this many people to request more of this smol boi, because honestly? Part 1 was intended as a oneshot of about 3 parts, not an entire AU.

Regardless, this is just a list full of info about the small professor, it’s mostly just trivia and fun facts, both in-canon for the AU and writing facts.

Hope you enjoy!

-----

In-Canon

LIKES:

Professionalism - Stems from being a mercenary

Cute Things - Mostly due to Jeralt getting him his stuffed bird, which he still has and loves to death.

Teamwork - Nothing cheesy like because it makes everyone bond, it’s because it’s more efficient and keeps morale for the men up. (Merc POV)

Sweets - Thanks to Mercedes and Annette. Unfortunately, this now means they baby him.

His Students - TOUCH THEM AND YOU’RE FUCKING D E A D

DISLIKES:

Being treated like a child - Stems from Merc days, as he’s worked hard to prove himself. Everyone in Jeralt’s merc group treats him as an equal, which he appreciates more than anything.

Selfishness - He despises anyone trying to work for nothing but fame and fortune. If he sees anyone getting anyone hurt for their own gain when it could’ve been avoided, he honestly thinks about killing them then and there.

FAVORITE PEOPLE:

Jeralt, Flayn, Dimitri, Edelgard, Claude, Bernadetta, Ashe, Shamir, Mercedes, Annette, Raphael, Marianne, Lysithea, Dedue, Petra, Ignatz, Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain, Catherine, The Gatekeeper, Sothis, Dorothea

NOT AS FAVORITE PEOPLE:

Leonie, Ferdinand, Lorenz, Alois, Linhardt, Hilda, Leonie, Manuela, Rhea, Cyril, Also Catherine, LEONIE, Seteth, Jeritza, Hubert, Caspar, ALSO MERCEDES, ALSO ANNETTE, Also Sothis, Hanneman, Gilbert, DID I MENTION LEONIE

TRIVIA -

- Doesn’t swear unless he’s very VERY VERY ANGRY

- Dimitri is the only one Byleth feels comfortable saying they’re like an older sibling.

- Is positive Claude is going to kill him in some horrific pranking accident

- Likes Edelgard, but think she’s too arrogant for her own good sometimes.

- Jeralt and Byleth rarely talk about things a son and father should, but they still care for each other as family.

- The only one who’s seen Byleth’s true colors is Flayn. On that note, she is the only one who can make him blush.

- He used to dual wield daggers but switched to a sword because he had to teach the students. Otherwise, he would’ve stuck to them, but dual wielding was deemed was too complex for the academy.

- Bernadetta amuses him a lot with how afraid she apparently is of him, but he does want to actually befriend her.

- Still doesn’t know who Cyril is despite him shouting his name to Byleth everytime.

- Spends some time with Lysithea talking about how to make people not view them as children.

- Thinks Leonie’s obsession with Jeralt and telling how much better she’s going to be as Jeralt’s apprentice genuinely creepy.

- He doesn’t say it, but he’s glad to speak what’s on his mind to Sothis without being judged (mostly).

- He’s never named his stuffed bird due to still being conflicted on what to actually name it.

- He sings to himself, but the only one he’s actually had the courage to sing for a little is Flayn. Anyone else, he’d have to kill them because if there’s witnesses, everyone’s going to flock to him.

- He hates being in fancy events like balls, because it’s the most boring thing he’s ever had to do in his entire life, without exaggeration.

Outside-Canon

- For the art I use for child!Byleth, this is where I got it from.

https://www.deviantart.com/orbiculare/art/Male-Byleth-808382426

I didn’t know what to do for a tiny Byleth until i found that, and yoinked it cause that’s EXACTLY what I had in mind for him. So, thanks to that artist for making the visual aids easier!

- Originally, I was going to plan to make child!Byleth based off of Tanya from Saga of Tanya the Evil (Or as I like to call it, My Little Nazi). 

I decided against it because that’d be TERRIBLY edgy, and considering that adult Byleth wasn’t that much of a dick, it wouldn’t make sense if the tiny one was either.

- So instead of Tanya, I then based off his personality off of three people.

Robin from Fire Emblem Awakening: 

The personality bits I took from him was his caring nature for teammates, and a bit of their stoic-ness(Is that a word?).

Laphicet from Tales of Berseria:

The last person I took inspiration for writing tiny Byleth is Laphicet. To put it briefly, he’s a very young boy and is quite unknown to things like emotions, but his eyes light up whenever he learns something new and well...acts like a child.

CZ2128 Delta (Shizu) from OVERLORD:

You have DEFINITELY seen me use her for the earlier asks of before this blew up. In OVERLORD, she is a battle maid, but is basically a robot. She is almost completely emotionless, talks like a robot, and their combat prowess is of a fucking beast. (Minus the fact she uses assault rifles). I took all these from her and incorporated into a child, (Laphicet) and eventually growing out of it into quite a caring person (Robin).

The love for little Byleth’s stuffed bird was directly inspired by Shizu. She loves cute things and will completely hug the SHIT out of them, and she also gives things she likes stickers. (This is planning to be in an short fic, so keep an eye out for that!)

In part 1, where Byleth is acting super mature but also like a robot was directly inspired by Shizu. 

In short, without Shizu, there’d be no child!Byleth.

The rest of the traits come from Byleth themselves, (mainly being the brick wall for a face).

- If I had to choose a “theme song” for the AU, it’d probably be Overlord’s Second OP, ‘Go Cry Go’, the song lyrics being from Byleth’s POV

[404botnotfound]

Deliverance [1]

Careful when you’re swimming in the holy water.

SERIES: Far Cry 5 WORD COUNT: 4,931 SHIP: Quinn/John Seed CHARACTERS: quinn leonis, john seed

She hates Hope County.

Quinn Decides on it firmly, right then and there, that she hates Hope County. If someone asked her why, they’d probably think her answer should be something along the lines of, “well, it’s controlled by a bunch of fanatical psychopaths,” or, “the resident superstars in the local cult are kind of assholes,” or even, “ow, let the fuck go of my arm, you prick,” but it wasn’t.

No, the final nail in the coffin for Quinn’s patience with Hope County wasn’t the doomsday cult, nor the family that ran it who all had nasty reputations for freaking the shit out of the sane half of the population, or the current state of her physical health.

It was the fucking weather.

It was mid-September, for fuck’s sake. Northern Montana had no business being this fucking hot in mid-September.

Or was it late September? Fuck, she didn’t know at this point—she’d lost too many Goddamn days with the eldest Seed to even know how much time had passed since this whole clusterfuck had started--and there was no way in hell she planned on asking the owner of the hand clamped tight on her upper arm whether or not the thunderstorm that had rolled through last night was typical for the area at this time of year.

Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a filthy mouth, kitten?

She snorts out a humorless laugh as Jacob’s voice filters through her tangled knot of frustrated thoughts, wishing she could point him to her current situation and stare at him, infuriated, like: See this? This is why I swear so fucking much, asshole.

But that’d require her either returning to him or him coming to her and neither thought was very comforting in the slightest, sending shivers up her spine. She’d escaped from the Whitetails mostly unscathed, far weaker and wearier than she had been when she’d initially set foot on the County’s soil but whole and alive, and she didn’t want to risk whatever obvious mind fuckery he was toying with sinking its claws further into her. It was bad enough that even as she shivered at the thought of Jacob, a whisper of come home hissed through the back of her mind.

Only three weeks and she didn’t have to struggle to see how fucked it was that there was a piece of her being pulled back in the direction she’d fled from a little over two days ago.

The hand around her arm tightens with enough sting to rip her out of her thoughts and she’s shoved forward, forced to twist her body quickly as she falls forward to keep herself from biting it in front of half a dozen captured civilians and resistance members, a dozen cultists, and God himself since her hands were bound behind her.

And now her shoulder aches. Great. Awesome.

“Boy, you guys sure know how to treat a lady.” She snaps, lamenting that her current state--exhausted, hungry, and in pain—left her without a whole lot of verbal bite to work with. As she’s struggling to wiggle her way up and out of the mud the same hand clamps around her arm again and yanks her upright, then slams her back against a really jagged, really uncomfortable stone surface. Add a migraine to her list of grievances with the Seed family. “Son of a bitch.”

“Shut your mouth, sinner!” The cultist—what had Jess called them? Peggies?--barks back at her, throwing a stern point at her like she was a particularly misbehaved child. God fucking damn but she was well on her way to thoroughly despising religion and the pompous assholes it churned out like clockwork.

Jacob hadn’t seemed particularly religious, nor had he struck her as very arrogant; the arrogance seemed more like a smokescreen, with him. She might’ve just been pissing in the wind, though, since he’d kept her dehydrated and starved and subjected to training sessions that mainly pissed her off and gave her headaches; she hadn’t exactly been in top form, and her observational skills were more than likely impaired.

She still was. It had been three days since the ambush that had seen her and Jess separated and put them both on the run in opposite directions, Jess being driven somewhere up north and Quinn forced south.

She’d thought it strange that the hunters that had been dogging her steps relentlessly in that timeframe, keeping her from sleeping more than a few hours at a time if she was lucky or giving her hardly any time to inhale whatever poor excuses for meals she could scrounge up or find, had suddenly stopped their pursuit.

It made a bit more sense now that she knew she had bounced dividing lines right into John Seed’s territory. Apparently the brothers��� followers didn’t play well with each other.

She spares a few seconds with closed eyes trying to will back the budding migraine behind them and wondering whether that contention extended to the siblings themselves or if it was just limited to their cronies, thoughts interrupted by a car door slamming nearby. The two men bound on either side of her both jump at the sound; one of them begins to shake and quietly plead for it to not be him, no, why him, why him.

Now her thoughts drift onto whether or not the brothers got off on this little power trip of theirs or if they really were just that off their rockers, putting these people through so much shit that they were terrified at just the sight of one of them.

Between the screen of Peggies standing along the line of captives she couldn’t even see who had exited the vehicle, but it was hard not to guess. C’mon, she thinks to herself, make it two for two. Lady Luck hadn’t exactly been kind to her since they’d first landed that helicopter in Joseph Seed’s compound and proceeded to rip hell loose all over the County, so she might as well send her from the clutches of one of the Siblings right into another’s.

Ugh, whatever. “Hey,” she says, shifting forward and struggling to ignore the pounding that had settled firmly within her skull, trying to get the attention of the cultist that had thrown her down, “hey, dipshit!”

The man next to her hisses for her to shut the fuck up. She ignores him, attention only wavering when the waning sun briefly peeks through the overcast clouds and shines off something sitting atop someone’s head over by the car.

“D’you want a fuckin’ bullet?” The cultist demands, stomping towards her as though it might threaten her into silence.

She was too fucking done with all this shit to be threatened—it was making her reckless, and she files away this fact for later self-pity when her current plan inevitably gets her shot, beaten, or otherwise harmed. “Actually, I was gonna ask for the time. Y’see, I’ve got an appointment to keep and I--”

He backhands her. Her head snaps to the side with the blow and with her head already a jumbled, aching mess her vision swims from it.

“Ow.” Jaw working and eyes blinking the blurriness from her vision she has to fight to keep her voice as neutral and unaffected as possible. It has the desired effect—the guy looks even more pissed off at the lack of fright and subservience he’d probably expected her to fall into after receiving such abuse. “Listen, I’ve got something I need to tell you. To pass on to your boss.”

He stares at her and doesn’t move.

“It’s important. You know, Resistance secrets and whatnot.” She tries, ignoring the sudden affronted balking of the men next to her.

Finally, the man slings his rifle over his back and crouches down in front of her, staring at her expectantly. She sits up just a bit taller, but he’s still…

“Little bit closer?”

He looks irritated, but he shifts forward just enough for her to—

The cultist rears back with a howl of pain when her forehead slams into his nose with a satisfying crack, stumbling and very nearly losing his footing in the slick mud underneath; it made her migraine that much worse, but she grins wickedly at the flood of red that immediately streams from his now broken nose.

She’s lost her Goddamned mind from the stress and abuse and exhaustion, must have. Whether it was from some Molotov cocktail of those issues or the terrifying absurdity of the tangle she’s unwittingly gotten herself stuck in or even the overpowering rage at the bullshit these monsters were putting people through, she was snapping.

“You little bitch—" He lunges for her and all she can do is laugh wildly at the stuffy, undignified way his words leave his mouth.

Someone jumps between her and the aggrieved man. “Woah, woah, woah! Hey, easy. Easy.” The voice of the one that intervened is aristocratic and smooth and amused as hell. Score one for Quinn. She didn’t have a lot of ticks in her win column, so she’ll take what she can get.

The cultist doesn’t by any means calm down, stopped only by the hand on his chest and two of his fellows holding him back by the arms; Quinn resists the urge to childishly stick her tongue out at the bastard.

Then her—gag—savior turns slowly to face her sideways, one hand still planted on the cultist’s chest and the other lifted at his side, elbow bent and fingers curled just shy of a point in her direction. Slicked back, dark hair, a full beard, aviators perched atop his head. She definitely recognized him from the Church, and since she’d already met Jacob and knew for a fact this wasn’t Joseph, she’s now confident that she’s face-to-face with John Seed.

He’s missing the long duster he’d been wearing the night the proverbial shit had hit the fan, and she decides with absolutely nothing upon which to base it that he must’ve been wearing it that night to keep from stealing his brother’s ridiculously shirtless thunder, ‘cause the blue silk shirt, waistcoat, and dark-wash jeans he was currently wearing cut one hell of a figure.

Yep, definitely losing her mind.

Unfortunately with the way her vision kept doubling on her from the splitting pain in her head, she can’t really linger on appreciating the sight. Probably a good thing in hindsight because ogling one of the men causing mass amounts of grief in the County wasn’t terribly kosher.

Blinking, she lifts her eyes to meet his and finds herself frustrated to note that they were really pretty. A bright, striking blue, even from a handful of feet away.

He’s smiling at her like he knows where her mind had wandered, and she narrows her eyes in response, telling herself it has nothing to do with the fact his form keeps multiplying into indistinct blurs in between blinks. He looks at the cultist she’d attacked, gives the man a few pats on the chest, then steps away from him as he’s gently steered away by his fellows.

“ ‘But I say to you people who are listening to me, love your enemies.’ “ He says, striding toward her with assured, languid steps. “ ‘Do good to those who hate you.’ “

His eyes wander over the other people bound as she as he speaks, but she gets the distinct feeling that his recitation was meant exclusively for her; she was, after all, the only one who’d dared to attack one of their captors. Understandably. She can’t blame them.

She lets out an exaggerated groan, closing her eyes not only because the pounding in her head seems to intensify with every step he takes towards her. Indicative of whatever future relationship they were about to begin, probably. “You mind bringing the guy with the gun back? The bullet sounds a hell of a lot better than being preached to.”

“For the time being I’ll ignore your blatant disrespect for the word of God and the Father,” he says to her, crouching down before her like the cultist had before. Difference being that he knew better than to get close enough for her to strike out. Even with her legs. Damn. “This is a pleasant surprise, Agent Leonis. I’d dare to say the only other person in this County more desirable than you right now is your friend, the Deputy.”

He put some kind of emphasis on that word—desirable—and she knows in her gut it’s for a reason other than the obvious, but her head hurts too much for her to think on it for long. She lets out a snort of a laugh “Interesting word choice considering all your people seem pretty intent on riddling us with bullet holes on first sight, unless you desire us dead.” He had used her title, so she doesn’t have to guess that Jacob had already shared whatever intel he’d gotten from Burke with John and she doesn’t ask.

“Dead? Of course not. We want to show you the way through the gates of Eden. We want to save you.” John replies, and in her current state Quinn is finding that in spite of the handsome face that fond little smile on it is quickly getting on her nerves.

“Sorry, preacher man, but I’m not interested.” She’s beginning to regret using her head to attack that cultist; it’s getting harder to keep her words from slurring from the dizziness clouding her thoughts. Was it the migraine or was it the weeks of constant strain and abuse? It was probably some fucked up mix of all the above.

“That’s a shame.” He says, not sounding like he cared overmuch about her opinion on the subject. His tone was thick with a kind of faux compassion that she’s heard far too many times in her life from people that thought her bad mouth and physicality and headstrong attitude were traits that any self-respecting woman should have muted by her age.

Fingers suddenly brush across her cheek, pushing strands of muddied hair away from her face, and she flinches back. A sharp glare of warning settles on John, telling him to back the fuck off, and it’s a warning that he fails to heed.

“We all need to be saved from our sins. We need to accept them and allow ourselves to atone for them. To atone for the ones we will commit. Sin is pervasive, and none of us are ever truly free of it—consequence of being human.” He says.

“Fuck’s sake—the only sin I’m gonna commit in the near future is planting my foot up your ass if you don’t knock the choirboy shit off.”

He lets out a huff of air that’s too soft and quiet to be a laugh; it was pitying, almost. He was sad for her, and she feels a bud of petulant anger rise within her just as it had when Jacob had insisted he would teach her to behave. His fingers snap over his shoulder and he gestures around her at the other hostages. “Get them loaded up.” He says, watching as the bound men and women were led into a pair of waiting, nondescript vans at gunpoint.

She doesn’t like the look in his eyes when his focus returns to her. It’s open and accepting and could almost be mistaken for kind, but there’s an intense undercurrent to it that she can’t identify, something she feels rippling over her skin like she was standing next to an open flame rather than sees outright. “My brother did warn me of your Pride, my dear. Don’t worry, we’ll absolve you of it in due time. It may take some...coaxing given how sharp that tongue of yours is, but you’ll see the truth. One way or another.”

One of the Peggies finally reaches out to grab her and drag her up from the ground, and she grimaces at the twinge of pain from an already forming bruise. “Joy.” She says, sounding anything but cheery about it.

As she’s loaded into the van along with the other captives, she wonders if she should’ve stayed back up in the mountains with Jacob.

The sun has fully set by the time the van stops at its destination and as though to spite her the temperature quickly drops even within the confines of the van; she was beginning to sorely regret abandoning the jacket she’d nicked from a ransacked store up in the mountains due to the heat earlier. Her open-sided tank top was doing little to ward off the rising chill, and as she sits in the unmoving van waiting for something to happen she sits forward to keep her back and shoulders off the cooling sides of the vehicle.

She can hear voices outside and footsteps, but no one comes to open the back of the van and snatch her and the other captives out of it. Her eyes narrow at the doors.

“How the fuck are you so calm right now?” One of the men across from her asks. She spares him a glance, notes the dirtied, pale skin on his face and scruffy hair tucked under a ball cap and barely concealed fear in his words.

If he was looking for a way to keep from freaking out, he was gonna be disappointed. “Lots of practice and a hereditary predisposition,” she answers before turning her full attention to him. “Why? I get that the Cult’s scary and all, but there’s bound to be a chance we can cut and run. They’re not military.”

Well—maybe not. Her brow furrows as she thinks back on her time in the Whitetails. How far did Jacob’s brainwashing psycho-bullshit go, as far as discipline went? And had he applied that ‘training’ to everyone in the Cult, or just those in his own region?

“Seriously? You haven’t heard the kind of shit John does?” Is his response, and she frowns.

She’d seen the video Stevie had looked over while on the flight over, and she was well aware of the bastardized ‘baptizing’ the man performed, but aside from cold murder she can’t claim to have any knowledge of his methods.

The outright fear of the others in the van was pretty telling, however.

A woman a few seats down the line on her side of the van leans into the conversation. “She’s the FBI Agent that was with the Deputy, Sheriff, and Marshal that night. She hasn’t been around long enough.”

“And she’s here with us? Shit.”

Any dry comment she could have said is halted by the doors of the van finally opening, allowing a fresh chill from the outside in. Eager to not be manhandled again, Quinn ignores the gun that’s immediately pushed into her face and without prompting leaves the van, hopping to the ground and standing straight to stare the man with the rifle in her face dead in the eye.

I’m not afraid of you, her eyes say, and whether or not he got that message she could see his fingers flexing around the gun. As their staring contest continues she feels another Cultist unbind her, but before she can think to attempt an attack or escape her wrists are instead pulled to her front and rebound.

Her gaze lingers, icy, as a motion in her periphery directs her forward and she moves before someone else can grab and drag her away.

They’ve been brought to the foothills of the mountains at the edge of a lake or a river, the path she was being led down well-traveled by vehicles if the grooves in the dirt were anything to go by. There are banners strung up in the trees around, pure white and gently flowing in the night breeze. Stacks of green barrels sit off to the side and she can smell the Bliss on the air even before the tell-tale sparkles begin to tint the edges of her vision.

Ahead of her the rest of the captives from the other van were being led into the water as John spouted off some kind of sermon from the book held open in his hands, and she watches as they’re all dunked under the water. They come up blinking and gasping, eyes wide and dazed; she gets the distinct feeling that it has nothing to do with simply being held underwater.

The Cultists stop her before she reaches the water, but the rest of the captives she’d traveled with continue on—all coming out of this fucked up baptism compliant and quiet.

Only when the rest of them are finished, led quietly back to the vans past her, is she brought forward. John snaps his book shut and hands it off to a waiting Peggie, looking at her with an easy smile and reaching his hands out for her.

She’s not fond of the thought that she’s being handed off, here, nor is she happy with the one that follows: why was she special enough to warrant John himself performing the rite?

“The Atonement is a process, Agent, and this is your first step towards it,” he says, either still under the impression that she was happy to be here or not caring. When they stand waist-deep in the water—with her fighting back shivers—he stops and turns her to face him. “Here you will be cleansed of the filth and the dirt the world has been heaping on you from birth, and only then will you be ready to bare your sins and free yourself from them.”

She blinks slowly at him, unimpressed.

“Are you ready?” He asks her, sounding slightly less upbeat than before.

“Sure, if it’ll make you happy,” she replies.

His eyes flash at the irreverent response, his hands moving from her shoulders to fist in the front of her shirt; she sucks in a breath and then holds it as she’s tipped backwards. Water rushes over her and stings her eyes.

By the time he finally pulls her back up she’s left blinking and gasping for air, staring up at the night sky above. It was clear of the clouds that had overcast the land earlier in the day, leaving it open and bright with a near-full moon and millions upon millions of stars.

Quinn’s not sure she’s ever seen so many stars in her life, in fact.

There are a lot of them. A lot. Way more than the light pollution back east had ever allowed to show; it was an amazing, awe-inspiring sight, all of them blinking and twinkling through Earth’s atmosphere like diamonds that she wonders if she can reach out and touch.

She’d try if her hands weren’t bound. Still, it was brilliant. Almost enough to make someone reconsider a disbelief in the presence of God.

No, wait—she blinks again, finally seeing the shimmering behind her eyes that told her she’d figured out where, exactly she’d been smelling the Bliss from.

Inhaling sharply as awareness of her surroundings returns to her and the shock of chilly night air hits her now thoroughly soaked clothes and skin, she feels herself begin to shiver violently, no longer able to fight them back.

John’s hands are on her shoulders again, holding her upright as she swayed on suddenly unsteady legs. His touch was firm but gentle, and warm. She decides she likes it even as she chastises herself for it.

“Ah, there it is. The wide-eyed wonder of clarity,” His voice, smooth like honey and so, so nice to her Bliss-addled senses, speaks to her from somewhere in her periphery. Should she look at him? She decides not to—the stars were nicer. “Are you ready to confess? To say yes and atone?”

Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth and it takes her a moment of struggling to string some unfortunately unintelligent words together. “Nah, I’m pretty sure I’m just stoned off my ass.”

There’s a single laugh disguised behind a cough from a handful of feet away, but otherwise silence surrounds her after the semi-lucid response. She counts out one heartbeat. Two. Three—

Her world tilts abruptly, dizzyingly, as he shoves her down with more force than the first time; she barely has enough time and reaction speed to cut off her breathing before she inhales any of the water and makes her whole being Blissed out situation even worse.

Not that it does much. It’s becoming apparent that even physical proximity to the drug was enough to screw with your head.

Black begins to creep around the edges of her sight before he hauls her upright again, and once more she’s left gasping and blinking the water and blurriness from her eyes. She looks at him this time, breathing heavily, taking in the sight of his barely restrained frustration and wondering what had happened to the kind, gentle demeanor he’d projected only moments before. She’ll think about it when she’s not drugged to high hell.

Jesus, his eyes were blue. “Your eyes are pretty.” She says breathlessly before her brain can catch up with her mouth.

The stark observation actually catches him off guard, his expression wiped clean of anything but startled bafflement, and she lets out a short, airy laugh at the sight. She’s not sure why it’s so funny, but it is.

When a smile breaks across his face she finds herself mimicking it, thinking to herself: This is my enemy. This is a man that was kidnapping and torturing the residents of Hope County. She should not be smiling at him. “The Cleansing is meant to wash away your sins, Agent, not give you the opportunity to feed mine.”

“I dunno about sins,” she coos in response, a voice in the back of her incredibly foggy head that sounded suspiciously like her perpetually vexed father telling her to shut up and stop poking the bear, “but d’you mind dipping me one more time? I haven’t danced in ages and I’m starting to feel like I’m back at my high school prom.”

He stares at her.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up. “Just with a shittier dance partner that’s also kind of a prick.”

That same edge appears in his eyes, sharper and deadlier and ooh but it actually sends a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold air down her spine. It looks like he’s actually considering it, and she thinks that whether or not he’d actually bring her back up again was a complete toss-up.

His jaw clenches.

Too much poking. She’d spent weeks prodding at the eldest Seed brother while in his caring hands and she hadn’t had any success in provoking something useful for her to latch onto and pry open, but John was proving to be far more mercurial even within the short span she’s known him.

She was beginning to wonder if the natural analytical chops she’s prided herself on were enough to even start unpacking this guy—and she had been confident enough in those skills to have been gunning for the BAU.

Suddenly he leans closer, the intensity of whatever roiling fire underneath his skin that much more visible with his face only inches from hers. She sucks in a startled breath, her wide eyes blinking and transfixed by his.

One of his hands settles along her jaw, thumb brushing the underside of her throat in a caress that’s both intimate and threatening. “You hide your sin behind your wit, and as amusing as I’m sure you find it, I promise you: I will pull that curtain aside and you will confess to me every sin that blackens your spirit.”

A shaky breath leaves her at the feeling of his fingers on the sensitive skin of her neck, unable to come up with some kind of dry quip in response to his words and for once thankful for it. She’s sure by this point that she’s already pushing her luck, and the thought is occurring to her that Jacob wasn’t, in fact, the most dangerous member of the Seed family.

He’s pacified by her silence, leaning away and moving around to her side. His hand on her shoulder slips around her back to the other shoulder, guiding her forward on shaky legs out of the chilly river water; the one that had been on her jaw drifts down to settle flat along the hollow of her throat instead and the warmth that radiates over her cold skin from his touch gives her another phantom shiver.

“God brought you to us for a reason,” He says as he leads her towards one of the vans flanked by two of the cultists, open doors revealing the other captives sitting inside, all soaking wet like her, “and I’m taking it upon myself to help you realize that purpose.”

Isn’t presuming to know the intent of God a sin, pretty boy?

She says nothing as she’s loaded into the van, fighting against the haze of Bliss to fume at the fact that two of four Seed siblings had now deigned to patronize to her like a wayward lamb. She was no lamb, damnit, and her last name proved that. Leonis. Lion.

She would have to save her roaring for later, because between the Bliss and the acute exhaustion she was feeling she finds herself asleep quickly, somewhere on the way to wherever they were all being taken.

[captain-zajjy]

Solstice, Chapter 19 - A Final Fantasy XV Story

Pairing: Ignis x Female Original Character

AO3 | Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

A/N: Sorry this one got posted kinda late! I've been super busy all day and only got a chance to sit down at my computer just now. It really hurts me to write Iggy struggling like this, but it would be unrealistic if he wasn't.

Gladiolus growled to Ignis’s right, and Ignis spun away on his left heel, feeling the breeze as Gladio’s blunted practice sword slashed the air where Ignis had just been standing. Ignis crossed his practice daggers in front of his chest, blocking the thrust he already knew was coming. If only all his future opponents would be so considerate as to wear a chain on their belts and cycle through the exact same combination of movements during each sparring session.

“You’re holding back,” Ignis said, shoving Gladio away from him.

“Yeah,” Gladiolus said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, perhaps, it was. “Ain’t trying to kill ya, Iggy.”

“I’d like to think it would take more than a few hits to kill me,” Ignis replied, standing on the balls of his feet to prepare for another round. “Even from you.”

“Heh. Is that supposed to be trash talk?” The chain affixing Gladio’s wallet to his belt rattled as he shifted position, marking him as five or so feet in front of where Ignis stood.

Ignis slid backwards to stay out of the man’s considerable reach. “If I intend to antagonize you, you will know it.”

Gladiolus grunted with effort once more, and the gymnasium floor quaked with the pounding of his heavy boots. Ignis easily dodged the charge by leaping backwards, but gasped as something hard and unyielding collided with the back of his shins, causing him to lose his balance and topple forward. At least he managed to catch himself before his face hit the ground, causing only his knees and pride to be battered.

“Bloody hell,” he cursed under his breath.

“Bleachers behind you,” Gladio said, helping him back to his feet.

“Yes, I surmised that,” Ignis snapped, immediately regretting his tone. It wasn’t Gladio’s fault that, in the past six weeks or so, inanimate objects had become the bane of Ignis Scientia’s existence.

“You alright?” Gladiolus asked, concern lacing his usually gruff tone.

“Fine.” Just more bruises for Val to fuss about. He wanted to be annoyed with her for that, but he knew if their situations were reversed, he would not have let the topic go so easily. Or, perhaps, at all.

“You’re getting better,” Gladiolus offered.

Ignis frowned. “Don’t patronize me.”

“When the hell have I ever done that?” Well...never, Ignis supposed. That wasn’t Gladio’s way. “I’m serious. You’re getting better.”

“Until I run into the furniture,” Ignis muttered.

Beside him, Gladiolus suddenly lurched. “Ugh…”

All of Ignis’s self-effacing thoughts vanished in the wake of his friend’s sudden distress. “Are you ill?” he asked, sticking a hand out to brace the larger man’s shoulder.

When he got a whiff of Gladio’s sweat, smelling of stale alcohol, he realized that his friend was sick, but there was no reason to be concerned.

“Allow me to guess...whiskey? Or perhaps bourbon?” Gladiolus had always had a penchant for hard liquor.

“Heh…” Gladio’s laugh was cut off by the audible churning of his stomach. “Your nose might be almost as good as Umbra’s, Iggy.”

“I don’t think one needs superior olfactory senses to tell that you’re hungover.”

“Well?”

Ignis tilted his head. “Well, what?”

“Aren’t you gonna tell me to knock it off?” Gladio asked.

“Why would I? I’m not your boss.” And Ignis knew that, whatever his vices, Gladiolus took his duty - to both the Crown and his sister - every bit as seriously as Ignis took his own.

“Iris has really been on my ass,” Gladio grumbled.

Ignis crossed his arms over his chest. “It wouldn’t hurt you to help out around the house once in awhile.”

“It ain’t that,” Gladiolus said. “It’s, you know…”

Ignis shook his head. “I’m afraid I have very little experience with younger siblings.”

“She dropped out of school. She wants to be a Hunter.” Gladiolus sighed. “Gimme a break.”

Ignis smiled. “She’s growing up.”

“She’s sixteen,” Gladiolus replied. “And this ain’t the kind of world any kid should grow up in.”

Ignis gave his friend a sad, understanding smile. “We’ve very little say in that, unfortunately.”

“Just when the hell is he coming back?” Gladio growled. “It’s already been a damn month.”

“I don’t know,” Ignis admitted. Somehow he figured that their missing Prince was at the root of Gladio’s mood. If only he could offer some - any - insight into the Astral’s cryptric message.

At a loss, he merely asked, “Perhaps we should call it a day?” Ignis felt a bead of perspiration roll down his back between his shoulder blades, and wanted to at least rinse off before escorting Valeria home.

“You saying I need a shower?”

“I believe that would be prudent, yes.” Ignis once again shrugged off Gladio’s helping hand, instead nodding to indicate he would follow the larger man to the locker room. Ignis had memorized how many steps it took to cross the breadth of the gymnasium from the bleachers to the opposing wall, and was only uncertain of the location of the locker room door relative to his current position.

When they entered the locker room, him a pace behind Gladiolus, Ignis was abruptly stopped by Gladio’s outthrust arm. “Hold up.” Then he heard the sounds of clothing and other objects being kicked or shuffled around on the floor, Gladiolus grumbling all the while. “I keep telling them to pick up their shit,” he muttered. “This place is a pigsty.”

Given the state of Gladio’s lodgings, Ignis knew his friend’s insistence that the Hunters put their things away was more for his benefit than anything else, but he merely nodded in response, allowing them both to keep up the pretense.

When the floor was cleared, he felt his way to the showers, removing his sunglasses and clothes, leaving them neatly folded on the nearest bench. Cold water dripped from the shower head, causing gooseflesh on his skin, all except for the scarred area around his left eye, which registered the mild discomfort not as temperature, but the sensation of pressure, like someone pressing their fingers into his cheekbone.

He hadn’t been able to speak with a real doctor about his injuries since leaving Altissia, but Ignis believed that some underlying nerves must have been damaged along with his eyeball and the surrounding tissue, leaving the wires of his nervous system crossed, so to speak. It wasn’t too painful - usually - but it was quite strange, feeling pressure when the rest of his body felt cold.

“That was your friend in the Marshal’s office, right?” Gladio asked from the shower stall beside him. “The one you’ve been trying to get a hold of?”

“Indeed,” Ignis replied as he ran a bar of soap under his armpits.

“Must be pretty relieved.”

“Indeed,” Ignis said once more. If you want to know something, Gladio, you’re going to have to ask.

“So...you still up for that run to Galdin next week?”

Not the question Ignis had been expecting, and frankly a topic he’d entirely forgotten about since Valeria had arrived. The Hunters had intercepted a transmission from Galdin Quay, begging for power-related supplies - batteries, lightbulbs, and such - and promising a load of fresh fish in exchange. Lestallum had no problem charging batteries, but they were going to have a serious problem with food very, very soon. Rather than make it a one-time exchange, Ignis had volunteered to accompany Gladio to try to work out some kind of ongoing trade.

“Of course,” Ignis replied after rinsing the suds from his hair. “I can hardly leave negotiations in the hands of a man who seems to think shirts are optional items of clothing.”

“It's like I keep telling you - intimidation factor,” Gladio said in reply.

Ignis joked, but the truth of the matter was, he didn’t want to leave Valeria so soon, now that she’d finally arrived. He didn’t want to, but the city and the people needed him, and he’d promised the Marshal to help however he could - and negotiating was something he still could do, without question.

“She can stay with Iris, if you want,” Gladio went on. “Your friend.”

“I think she would prefer that.” Ignis turned off the water, ran a towel through his wet hair, then slung it around his waist. “Thank you.”

“Heh, well...ain’t the only reason I’m asking,” Gladio said as he stepped out of the shower. Ignis knew the man hadn’t bothered to cover himself, and knew that it had very little to do with the fact that Ignis was now blind. What had he just said? Intimidation factor. Ignis coughed to disguise a laugh.

“You’d like an adult to keep an eye on Iris?” Ignis ventured, returning to their conversation. He donned his sunglasses and tucked his shirt into his jeans before zipping the fly.

“It ain’t exactly babysitting, but…” Gladio’s voice trailed off into another groan. “Ain’t showers supposed to help with a hangover?”

“I believe that’s the actual state of intoxication itself. If it’s any consolation, I can barely smell you anymore.”

“Ha ha…Iggy’s got jokes.” Gladiolus thumped him on the arm. “Imma head home and sleep it off. You good?”

“On finding my way back to the Marshal’s office?” Ignis asked. “I should hope so.”

He was still a bit fuzzy on other locations in the building - the classrooms converted into the Hunter barracks, the makeshift armory, the cafeteria - but the gymnasium and ‘Vice-principal’ Cor Leonis’s quarters were the two parts of the former school that he frequented the most.

Ignis made his way up the stairs and turned down the hallway to the Marshal’s office, following the sound of Valeria’s voice and - somewhat to his surprise - Prompto’s chattering.

“Hey, Iggy,” Valeria called to him.

“Ignis! What’s up?” Prompto said.

“Prompto,” Ignis nodded toward his voice, then turned his head slightly to where he thought Valeria was sitting. “I apologize for keeping you so long.”

“Yes, my social calendar is really full this afternoon.” Valeria’s sarcasm caused Ignis to grin.

“Don’t worry, Iggy,” Prompto chirped. “I kept her company.”

Oh, dear. Ignis may have grown quite fond of Prompto, but it certainly hadn’t happened overnight. “Are your ears still attached?” he asked Valeria. “Or did he talk them both off?”

“Oh, come on,” Prompto muttered.

“Prompto is a perfectly lovely conversationalist,” Valeria said, clothing rustling as she rose to her feet. Ignis was certain Prompto was blushing profusely at such a compliment from a woman.

“You’re all scruffy,” she said playfully, nudging Ignis’s shoulder. Ignis raked a self-conscious hand through his damp, messy hair.

“You think that’s scruffy?” Prompto asked, incredulous. “You should see Gladio after three straight days of camping and no shower.”

The smell was worse than the sight, in Ignis’s opinion, but he kept that to himself.

“I said ‘scruffy,’ not troglodyte.”

Ignis snorted a laugh. Accurate.

“Huh?” Prompto said.

“Caveman,” Ignis explained.

“Ohhh. Yeah.” Prompto laughed. “Pretty much. So, uh...you guys...”

Ignis shot a threatening look in Prompto’s general direction. “What?”

“Are you, like...living together?”

“Where else would she stay?” Ignis retorted.

“Don’t you only have one bed?”

“Yes,” Valeria replied smoothly. “And there’s no space for you.”

For Gods’ sakes… “I sleep on the couch.” Ignis felt blood rush to his cheeks. “And I have lunch to prepare. Shall we?”

“Alright,” Valeria said as he took her elbow. “Bye, Prompto. It was nice to finally meet you in person.”

“Totally! See you guys!”

Ignis would have considered inviting Prompto over for lunch if he hadn’t been acting so Gods damned nosy; he knew that the only time the younger man had a proper meal was if Ignis or Iris prepared one for him. But the mishap at training this morning had already left Ignis feeling out of sorts, and the last thing he wanted was to unfairly vent his frustrations on a friend.

When they reached the front steps of the building, Ignis released his grip on her elbow and breathed deeply, despite the fetid city air assaulting his nostrils, preparing himself for the mentally exhausting task of getting them back home.

Valeria grabbed his hand and put it back on her arm. “I think I know the way back,” she said gently. Because you’re so obviously hopeless at taking the lead, Ignis imagined her saying. He knew he was being unfair - Valeria would never say something like that to him, even if it was unequivocally true.

“How was the rest of your meeting with the Marshal?” Ignis asked, trying to distract himself from his own, dark thoughts.

Valeria sighed. “I don’t know if anything I said really helped. It’s just…” Ignis felt the muscles of her arm tense. “Whenever I saw the Niffs, I wasn’t thinking about the size of their patrols, or what kind of weapons they were carrying or anything. I just didn’t want them to kill me.”

I’m so sorry, he wanted to say, although he realized at this point he was beginning to sound like a broken record with his apologies.

“You’re a civilian,” he said aloud. “Of course you weren’t looking for such things.”

“I know, I…” Alongside him, her shoulder sagged. “How was your training?”

“Mildly humiliating,” Ignis replied before he could stop himself. That’s right, Specs. Keep whinging. “I apologize.” There it was again. “You don’t want to hear me complain.”

“You can complain,” Valeria said. “You can say whatever you want. I told you before, Ignis - you don’t have to be a certain way for me.”

But I do, he thought. I do, because if you knew how unsure I am, how frightened, you wouldn’t see me as a man, but a sad, lost child. And pity was the antithesis of desire.

Valeria only took one wrong turn on the way back to the apartment; if Ignis noticed, he didn’t say anything. The sea of people spilling out of the city streets was still overwhelming and vaguely frightening - if she’d learned anything in the past six months, it was that people only looked out for themselves.

People, except for Ignis. And probably Prompto, Cor Leonis, and the others too. I want to be like that, she thought. I don’t want to be bitter and cruel like everyone else.

“When was the last time you went outside the city gates?” Valeria asked as the town square came into view. A large fountain, which had probably been quite a relaxing sight in its heyday, now sat among the crowd, its playful spouts no longer running, water in the basin filthy and brown.

“Not since we arrived, I believe, about three weeks ago. They hadn’t erected the gate then.”

“How do all the people outside not starve?” she asked.

Ignis shook his head. “I suppose their friends and family lucky enough to make it inside smuggle out what they can. But, that’s hardly an acceptable solution.”

“No,” Valeria agreed. “It’s not.” And if not for the stroke of luck that had allowed her to hold onto her identification, she would be stuck outside there with them, hungry and dirty and afraid.

“I hate the Niffs,” she said. “I really do. But this…”

“The people out there aren’t soldiers,” Ignis said. “They had nothing to do with what happened to the Crown City.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t you speak to EXINERIS about it?” Ignis suggested. “When you meet with them.”

Because I’m probably going to be laughed right out of their offices, she thought. Aloud, she said, “I’ll try.”

Once, Valeria would have marched right up to the CEO’s desk, nose in the air, every fiber of her being commanding confidence - even arrogance, perhaps. It was so easy to be self-assured when you had the weight of millions of gil behind you. Now, she was a beggar, a person who ran away from her fears while leaving others behind to suffer. You can’t go back to who you were, she thought. That life is gone now. But she didn’t want to be a scared little mouse anymore.

They lapsed into silence then, walking arm in arm. The streetlights glowed warmly in the constant darkness, bathing the cracked, cobbled streets in soft gold. It would almost be romantic, if not for the ubiquitous stink of filth and getting jostled by a passing stranger’s shoulder or elbow every twenty feet. What would her mother think if she could see Valeria now? ‘Get your head out of the clouds, girl,’ her mother’s voice came. ‘Romance is a waste of time.’ Or so she had always said. But hanging onto her wedding ring told a different story. Maybe it just hurt too much, Valeria thought, unconsciously moving closer to Ignis’s side.

But she knew what her mother would say about meeting with EXINERIS. ‘Don’t let those idiots push you around. Don’t you dare take no for an answer.’

I won’t, Mom. I won’t just try - I’ll succeed.

The chaos of the Market brought Valeria back to reality and out of hypothetical conversations with dead relatives. She grabbed Ignis’s gloved hand, interlocking their fingers, then pushed and elbowed a path through to his apartment.

After they ate lunch (cold, but oh-so-delicious sandwiches, again), Valeria began to clear the table as Ignis went to use the bathroom. Somewhat curiously, she noticed light coming from under the closed door, and watched him switch it back off upon exit.

“Ignis, can you tell when the lights are on?” Given what he’d told her over the phone, Valeria had assumed he couldn’t see anything at all, but perhaps she had misunderstood.

“I can,” he said. “But that’s about the extent of it.”

“Oh.” Valeria felt both pity and joy at his reply. At least he’s not entirely in the dark, she tried to tell herself. The thought only offered a modicum of comfort.

“It may seem like a trifling thing,” Ignis went on, as if she’d spoken her thoughts aloud, “but, given the circumstances, it’s actually quite useful.”

Valeria thought about that for a moment. “If you can tell where it’s light and dark, you can tell where it’s safe.”

“Indeed. Safe from the daemons, anyway.”

“That’s good,” Valeria said. She knew she had to stop looking at this as what he had lost, and focus on what he still had (his life, his wits, his strength), but it was just so damn hard. Still, she thought, I must do it for his sake.

And while they were addressing the blind elephant in the room, she thought she might as well get out what she’d been grappling with since reuniting with him in Lestallum. “Iggy, I...I want to help you, however I can. But I don’t want to insult you by making assumptions.”

The way Ignis seemed to hang his head made her wish she hadn’t said anything at all. In the nearly ten years that she’d known him, he’d always been so independent, self-sufficient. Valeria remembered riding the subway with him when they were fourteen and feeling so grown-up, buying her own ticket, going where she wanted without any adults tagging along.

She had always been on her own too, ever since her father had bolted, but her mother had ensured she was surrounded by a handful of attendants - butlers, bodyguards, babysitters. Not Ignis. His uncle made sure he was provided for financially, but Ignis had always had to take care of himself. How could he ask for help now?

“It’s not insulting,” Ignis said quietly. “It’s…” He let out a heavy sigh.

“Don’t be ashamed, Iggy. Please.” Valeria stood over where he sat on the couch and gently rested his head on her chest. “You know I think you’re wonderful, no matter what. I just want to help.”

Ignis grabbed her waist, pressing his face against her body. “...Thank you.” His voice was thick, quivering.

Oh, Iggy. Valeria buried her hands in the back of his hair, rested her head on top of his. She felt his chest heaving as he began to quietly weep. Probably for the first time since everything had happened, knowing Ignis.

“Forgive me,” he mumbled, as Valeria slid his sunglasses up and over his head, placing them in his lap so he’d be able to find them later.

“Shh, Iggy.” She held him tightly, knowing, perhaps instinctively, that he needed this. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

His sudden outburst of emotion left Ignis feeling more than a little humiliated, and more than a lot relieved. Even he could only bend so far before breaking.

You’re wonderful. You’re wonderful. Only a fool could think that of him as he was now, a shadow of the man he used to be. But Valeria wasn’t a fool. She was the cleverest person he knew, and she’d offered those words to him freely, unsolicited.

And it had been that expression of kindness, not scorn or pity, that had finally split him open, spilling out everything he’d been burying deep since Insomnia fell. Ignis couldn’t recall the last time he’d cried; intellectually, he knew that grieving was essential to processing loss, but it still felt like weakness in him, a weakness he was unable to stem once it started.

“I apologize,” he repeated once he was finished, slipping his sunglasses back on and extricating himself from Valeria’s warm embrace.

“It’s okay, Iggy,” she said gently, rubbing his arm. “It’s okay. Want some water?”

“Please,” Ignis said, swallowing the phlegm in the back of his throat, despising how brittle and raw his voice sounded. How you must look to her, he thought as he mopped the moisture from his face with his handkerchief. Like a little, lost puppy.

He drank the water she brought him, suspecting she was watching him all the while. Even as it filled him with shame, Ignis had to admit he felt undeniably lighter, lighter than he had in months, since before Altissia.

“Thank you,” Ignis said, handing Valeria the empty glass. “For dealing with me.”

“I like ‘dealing’ with you,” she said simply. He heard her rinsing the glass in the kitchen sink, the gentle clink as she put it away in the cabinet.

“What’s on the radio?” she asked, pausing where he knew his table was, midway between the kitchen and where Ignis sat on the couch.

“Ah.” Ignis lifted his head, grateful for the change in subject. “Hunters use radio frequencies to communicate when they’re out in the field, since cell reception is so poor.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “So you’re not hosting your own talk show?”

In spite of himself, Ignis cracked a smile. “Goodness, no. Can you imagine?”

“I’d listen,” Valeria said. "You have a great voice."

He shook his head, still smiling. Since the Marshal had sidelined him, Ignis tried to assist however he could, monitoring the hunters’ calls, offering strategic advice or suggestions, coordinating rescues or aid.

“Someone’s been broadcasting old radio serials,” he offered. “If that’s more your thing.” Ignis was fairly certain it was just an ordinary hobbyist, not an actual radio station, but regardless of the origin, any sort of entertainment was a welcome escape in these dark times.

“Really?” He was surprised to hear excitement in Valeria’s voice. “I loved those as a kid. My dad and I used to listen to them at night while we waited for Mom to get home.”

“Your father,” Ignis broached the usually sore subject while she fiddled with the radio dials. “Is he…?”

“Dead? No. Last time I checked he was somewhere in Accordo.” Ignis couldn’t help but feel a little shocked at the glib way she spoke of her father’s safety. There may have been little love lost between them, but he would’ve thought her mother’s death would have forced some sort of reconciliation.

“You didn’t go there?”

“There’s no way I’m getting on a boat in this mess.” Valeria found the station with the serials and joined Ignis on the couch, sitting so close their sides were touching. “Besides, I’d rather be here with you.”

“Oh.” Ignis cleared his throat, feeling a flush creep up the back of his neck. Maybe she really was a fool - a beautiful, brilliant, bloody fool.

[spine-buster]

Chapter 9 - The Beginning and the End of Everything (Finn Balor)

Gemma sat stiffly on the couch in the Devitt’s living room, the room full of Fergal’s family, including his little nieces and nephews, and clutched her drink against her chest.  His dad had poured her a glass of red wine to have before dinner, and she didn’t want to be rude, so she accepted, even though red wine always made her sleepy.  She was engaged in a conversation with Fintan while Fergal spoke with his sister Anne-Marie, Fergal’s nine-month-old niece Niamh bouncing on her knee.  Fergal’s mom was slaving away in the kitchen, preparing a nice roast for the entire family at Fergal’s request (“He definitely still loves his mammy’s cooking,” Fintan joked with her earlier), while Fergal’s youngest brother Eoin set the table.  Everybody else – Fergal’s two other brothers, and his various siblings-in-laws – were mingling about, engaged in their own conversations.  

Fergal, with that cheeky grin of his and his constant “So, did you think about it?” and “Are you coming?” questions, had managed to convince Gemma to join him on his mini vacation.  Three days in Ireland, three days in Iceland, three days in England.  He’d have to work in England, at some sort of UK Tournament the WWE was having, but Gemma didn’t really mind.  She didn’t expect him to change his plans now that she was tagging along everywhere.  Sitting in his parents’ living room, she still couldn’t believe she said yes.

“So you said you’ve been to Ireland before, then?” Fintan asked her.

“Oh yes!  My dad’s family came from Enniscorthy,” Gemma explained.  “When I visited them when I was twelve we stayed with them and did a driving tour of Ireland.  It was amazing.”

“What was your favourite part?”

Gemma didn’t have to think long and hard about the answer to that question.  Even with all of her traveling for hockey, her family trip to Ireland was still her favourite.  “I have two that to this day, I can’t choose between.  I’m a city girl through and through so I was so in love with Dublin and its history when we went.  But we also did a hike up Croagh Patrick and --”

“That view!”

“That view!” both Fintan and Gemma exclaimed at the same time, giggling at one another.  “Yes, that view is something else, isn’t it?” he asked, taking a sip of his wine.

“One of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen,” Gemma nodded her head in agreement, taking the opportunity to take a sip of her own wine.

“Anne-Marie!” Leonie’s voice called out from the kitchen.  “Anne-Marie, come in here for a moment!”

Anne-Marie rolled her eyes playfully, a smile on her face, as Gemma and Fintan looked towards her.  “Duty calls,” she said, standing up and holding Niamh against her hip.  Before she began to walk to the kitchen, she stopped dead in her tracks.  “Gemma, do you mind holding Niamh for a bit?”

Fergal was apprehensive about his sister’s idea.  Since she had stolen him away to talk to him, he wasn’t able to keep tabs on Gemma, and wasn’t sure if she was feeling comfortable or not.  He knew his family were trying to make her feel as comfortable as possible; for any other person, his family’s actions would have worked.  For Gemma…well, as always, he had no idea about how she’d react to it all.  “Annie, I don’t think --”

“Oh my God, please,” Gemma’s eyes lit up at the prospect.  He looked over at her and she was practically begging.  She’d been eyeing Niamh since she arrived with Fergal’s other brother Ciaran and his wife, Jessica.  She was so chubby and was dressed in bumblebee print pajamas.  “Give me the baby.”

Anne-Marie smiled as she watched Gemma stand up, using the edge of the couch as a crutch, and extend her arms out to take Niamh.  Fergal kept his eyes on Gemma as she started bouncing Niamh.  Niamh looked at her wide-eyed, bringing her hands up to feel Gemma’s face.

“Hello Niamh!  Hello!  Hello!” Gemma cooed at her, causing Niamh to smile.  “You’re a big baby, aren’t you Niamh?  And look at your eyes!  So big!  So blue!  Just like mommy’s and daddy’s!”

“You’re a natural, Gemma!” Fintan smiled at the sight of her holding one of his grandchildren.  

“I love babies,” she revealed, continuing to bounce Niamh in her arms.  “I’ve got a lot of little cousins I always had to look after at family functions and --”

She was interrupted by a generously loud shriek of delight by Niamh, causing everyone in the room to laugh.  “Seems like she likes you too!” Fintan laughed.  

“Good, cause she’s coming home with me!” she exclaimed, looking down at Niamh again.  “Yes!  Did you know that?  You’re coming home with me!”

Fergal couldn’t keep the smile off his face, seeing Gemma comfortable with little Niamh in her arms.  She kept cooing at the baby and looked so happy, Fergal wondered why he didn’t think of this sooner.

“RIGHT!  Everyone at the table!” Anne-Marie’s loud voice called out from the kitchen.  Moments later she came through to the dining room, holding the roasting pan with Ireland-themed oven mitts.  “Roast’s ready and hot!”

Gemma sat in between Niamh’s mother, Jessica, and Fergal, who had managed to wiggle his way to sit beside her.  Dinner was lively, with the siblings speaking over each other and the in-laws trying to get a word in edge-wise.  The babies were bounced on laps, and Gemma had fun listening to everyone’s conversations, their Irish accents getting thicker as the night progressed.  

When Fergal’s mother began to cut the cake Eoin and his wife brought for dessert, Fergal noticed Gemma shift uncomfortably in her seat.  He saw a small wince on her face as she wiggled around.  “You alright?” he asked, his voice low so nobody else would hear.  

“My leg’s just falling asleep,” she informed him.  

“You wanna take a quick walk?”

“I might have to,” she looked at him.  “You don’t think your mom or dad would get offen--”

“Come on, I’ll help you,” Fergal extended his arm immediately for her to use as leverage so she wouldn’t have to use the table.  The thought of his parents being upset was absurd.  She was wearing her brace, for heaven’s sake.

“Everything alright, dear?” Leonie asked as both Gemma and Fergal stood up from the table.  “Do you not like chocolate cake?”

“Are you kidding?  I love cake,” Gemma smiled.  “But my leg is falling asleep…I just need to take a walk.”

Leonie nodded her head in understanding as Jessica helped move Gemma’s chair enough so it wouldn’t be in her way.  Gemma thanked her, Fergal moving as well, giving her enough space to walk into the living room to do laps around the coffee table.  Luckily for her, the dining room and living room spaces were open, so she could still hear and be apart of conversation if she wanted to.  

“What’s up with the knee anyway, Gemma?” Fergal’s brother Eoin asked suddenly.  “Is that a torn ACL?”

Eoin didn’t see the death stare Fergal was giving him.  The one thing – the one thing – Fergal didn’t want anyone to bring up.  My God, couldn’t Eoin just accept that she was injured and move on?  He didn’t need to know every damn detail.  

When Fergal looked back at Gemma he could tell her body language and demeanour changed immediately.  “Among other things, but yes,” she said, confirming Eoin’s suspicions.  

“How’d it happen?” Eoin asked.  Fergal was going to kill him.

“Ice hockey,” Gemma said simply, not giving anything else away.  

“When?” Eoin persisted.  Fergal was going to murder him.

“This summer.”

“Shouldn’t the brace be off by now?  One of my mates tore his a few years back and it was off in what seemed like no time.”  Fergal was going to murder him and hide his body in the woods.  

“Uh…yeah.  Well…every injury is different I guess.  You’re lucky you didn’t see me with the giant one I had on right after surgery,” she tried to make a joke.  “This one is at least a bit smaller.  And to be honest…I wear the brace, like, mostly for aesthetic purposes…to remind myself that I’m not invincible, that I can’t do everything I want to do.  If it was off and I got a burst of energy I could think I’d be fine to do kickboxing but end up permanently destroying it, you know?  And I can’t do that because I need to get back to hockey.”

Fergal could tell this was a hard conversation for Gemma to have – and definitely one she didn’t want to have.  Though she’d made leaps and bounds of progress on her knee, she still had a way to go.  He looked towards Eoin, giving him another death stare, which he finally noticed.  “Well, I’ll bet it’ll be off soon for you anyhow,” Eoin smiled.

Gemma smiled too, but Fergal could tell there was nothing behind it.  “Yeah, I hope so.”

“You know, I could have just stayed at a hotel,” Gemma said for the umpteenth time as she carried her suitcase through Fergal’s cottage by the sea.  There was no way she’d drag the wheels along the hardwood floor she saw the second she walked in.  He had insisted she stay there, while he stayed with his parents, the second he knew she’d be coming with him.  She adamantly denied him, saying she would just find a hotel, until he all but physically barred her from doing so.  ‘If you book something, I’ll call them and cancel it. Bray’s a small town, I know everybody.’

“No way,” Fergal crinkled his face.  “Why make you spend money when I have an entire house you can stay in?”  

“Because I have the money to spend,” Gemma crinkled her own face, in response to Fergal crinkling his own face.  “Seriously, why aren’t you staying in your own house anyway?”

“Cause my mammy wants to see me as much as possible,” Fergal gave her a cheeky grin.  Gemma smiled as he led her down a hallway to the small but comfortable master bedroom.  She lifted her suitcase on to the bed and Fergal watched as she began to unzip it.  “Was that too much tonight, or were you okay?” he asked, concerned that she was just saving face the entire evening.  After Eoin’s questions, she was noticeably (to him) quieter.  “Sorry about Eoin’s questions, by the way.  He can be a bit of an ass.”

“You have a huge family,” she said, and he knew that was her way of saying there were a lot of people.  “But I enjoyed myself.  They’re all very nice.  Your dad is quite the charmer…I can see where you get it from.”

“Are you calling me a charmer?”

“You charmed me into coming here, didn’t you?” she looked him right in the eye.

Fergal’s cheeks blushed.  Was this the glasses of wine speaking on behalf of Gemma?  He never thought those words – any flirtation, really – would come out of her mouth.  He was pleasantly surprised and welcomed it.  “I think you specifically said I harassed you into saying yes, but I’ll take charmer if that’s what you’re giving me.”

She looked away, probably realizing exactly where this conversation was headed.  “And I was serious about taking Niamh home with me,” she changed the subject.  “That has to be the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.”

Fergal smiled at her fixation on his baby niece but he understood it completely.  She was a cute baby, after all; she had Devitt genes in her.  “So, are we still planning to go to the beach tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, nodding his head.  “I’ll come pick you up tomorrow morning.”

There was a moment of silence between them as they both stood awkwardly beside the bed, facing each other, in front of Gemma’s open suitcase.  Fergal was looking right at her; Gemma was still looking away.  Every so often, however, their eyes would meet, and the smile on Fergal’s face would grow.  “You know, as much as I give you a hard time…I’m really appreciative that you invited me on vacation with you,” Gemma said quietly, only looking at Fergal near the end of the sentence.  

“It’s not problem at all.  I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t want you to come,” he said in an equally soft voice.

“I think you’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”  

There was a small smile on Fergal’s face.  “You should get some sleep…you’re probably jet-lagged,” it was his turn to change the subject.  

“You don’t mind if I use your shower, do you?” Gemma asked.

Like he’s done many times before, he gave her a quizzical look.  “No Gemma, I want you to be dirty and sweaty this entire trip,” he said sarcastically.  “Geeze, you Canadians are so polite.  Of course you can use my shower.”

“Cheeky,” she said.  “Goodnight, Fergal.  I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

The next morning, Finn woke up bright and early and picked Gemma up at his house, bringing her back to his parents’ for a much less crowded traditional Irish breakfast.  To Fergal’s surprise, she was delighted to see black pudding – she hadn’t had it since her trip to Ireland at 12 and was excited to have it again.  His parents thought that was hilarious.  

After breakfast Fergal’s dad drove them to the seaside, since Fergal never learned to drive standard or on the left side of the road.  Seeing as it was December, the beach was barren – there was virtually no one around, save for only about three or four people and their dogs playing in the ocean.  Fergal, who knew the area like the back of his hand, guided Gemma towards the pavement, where she’d be able to walk more comfortably rather than the sand.

As they walked Fergal spoke of his childhood.  How happy he was, how much he enjoyed sports and the outdoors, how his siblings were his best friends.  Since Leonie was a stay-at-home mother she brought the kids down to the beach a lot, especially during the summer.  When he became a teenager, he’d come down himself or with his friends and stay until late at night.  

Gemma giggled at the image of Fergal and his friends doing what teenagers did down at the beach.  God knows what he got up to, especially with the ladies.  “I bet you brought all the girls down here,” she smiled.

Fergal scrunched his face up.  “Not really.  I went to an all-boys school, anyway.”

“You can’t tell me a young Fergal Devitt wasn’t a ladies’ man.”

“Young Fergal Devitt was a wrestling nerd who played with Legos after school.  Not exactly the hottest commodity,” he giggled, playing down his role as a Casanova.  Of course he had girlfriends throughout high school, and of course he brought them down to the beach, but they only lasted a few months, at most.  Wrestling was always his first love, and many girls didn’t understand that.  

“I guess I can relate,” Gemma revealed, looking out onto the ocean.  “I went to an all-girls school.  Any guys I met through friends or hockey were always, like…I don’t know, assholes,” she deadpanned, unable to think of a better word.  Fergal snorted at her choice, causing her to laugh as well.  “I’m serious!  There were two types.  Type one was the ‘Oh, you think you know how to play hockey’.  Type two was the ‘Because you know how to play hockey, you’re not like other girls’,” she lowered her voice to mimic that of a teenage boy.  “Which is a crock of shit, because hockey aside, I’m exactly like other girls.  What’s wrong with other girls, anyway?”

“You sound like my sister.  She went to an all-girls school too,” Fergal said.

“It does a girl good,” Gemma commented, smiling.  

There was a moment of silence between the two, Gemma looking back out onto the ocean again.  Fergal watched only her, despite how beautiful the morning sky looked.  “You wanna go see how cold the water is?” he asked, knowing it’s what she wanted to do.

Gemma smiled at him, and at the next walkout, they began their trek towards the ocean.  As the beach was filled with rocks and pebbles, sand only appearing about ten or fifteen feet before the water, Fergal slowed his pace because he knew it would be harder for Gemma.  She slowed her pace considerably, and looked nervous as she tried to step on smaller pebbles or flatter rocks.  She teetered uneasily a few times.  

“Ferg…” she said, her voice fearful.  “I’m not so sure this was a good idea.” “It’s alright, you’re alright,” he said, moving back slightly.  “What’s got you worried?” he asked.

“The rocks.  They just make everything uneven,” she said.  She had stopped walking at this point, not sure if she should go any further.  “My balance is thrown off.”

“Here,” he said, thinking quickly and moving so that he could offer his good arm to lean on.  “Grab my arm.”

“Ferg, I don’t know.”

“Come on, I got you,” he said.  “I won’t let you fall.  We’ve got all the time in the world.”

Gemma took a deep breath before latching on to Fergal’s arm and taking her first cautious step.  She looked down mostly, slightly ahead of her, so she could find the best place to step next.  Fergal helped her with the patience of a saint, pointing out particularly flat rocks and even squishing some down himself with his own foot.  It took them a while, but soon enough they hit the sand, and Gemma breathed out a giant sigh of relief.  

He helped her take off her shoes and cuff her jeans so they wouldn’t get wet before doing the same for himself.  Gemma didn’t bother to wait, taking a cautious step into the water as Fergal was cuffing his pants, screaming at how cold it was.  He laughed before sneaking up behind her and splashing the cold water on to her with his foot, garnering another scream followed by a death glare.  With her good foot, she kicked some water back at him, and soon, it was an all-out war.  

 Throughout all the splashing, yelling, kicking, blocking, giggling, and despite getting wet and soon shivering, Fergal realized he was having the time of his life.